Personal Albums

[RockyRaccoon]

We all have our charts with our favorite albums of all time for different reasons, but I want something different with this thread.

Name an album that you have a deep, personal connection with. Not an album that's necessarily your favorite ever just because you love the album, but an album that brings back memories, or was connected to a specific time in your life, or that reminds you of someone.

We listen to music because we love it, but also because it touches us in a way that other forms of art, or anything on the planet might not. What's an album that you will always love, and why?
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2023 Chart

Early Psychedelic Rock

Electronic Chart

[RockyRaccoon]

I'll start:


Rockin' The Suburbs by Ben Folds

I discovered Ben Folds at a very difficult, transitional time in my life, and the album that I really latched onto was this one. It was the first Ben Folds album I listened to and it was the one I really connected with.

Some of the songs are really goofy, songs like "Not The Same" which is about a guy who takes a bunch of LSD, climbs a tree and comes down the next day a born-again Christian (which is based on a true story). Those songs along with a few others are really good songs, fun songs, but the songs that really hit me are some of the slower ones. When I first heard "The Luckiest" I said to myself, "This is one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard", and it ended up being the song I danced to for the first time with my wife at our wedding. It's become mine and my wife's "song".

"Fred Jones Part 2" is a beautifully written, brutally honest story about an old man who gets laid off from a job he's put a lot of years into and gets no credit for it. It's beautiful, and the harmonies done by John McCrea (from Cake) really add depth to it.

But perhaps the one I connected to (and still connect to) the most was "Still Fighting It", a song written to Folds' son right after he was born all about how parents have no idea what they're doing and how tough it is growing up (something I could really relate to at the time). I've felt that a lot, personally, and I certainly did at the time as my life was changing drastically. When Folds would sing "It sucks to grow up, but everybody does" I just felt that. I had always thought as a kid that parents had an idea of what they were doing and when I had my first kid at 19 years old, I had no idea what I was doing, and this song kind of reassured me in a way. Like it was saying "it's ok, we're all making this up as we go along."

I love this album, I always have and I always will, and it will always hold a special place in my life. It may not be one of the best albums ever, or even Ben Folds' best album, but it'll always be one of my favorites because I happened to connect to it at just the right time in my life.
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2023 Chart

Early Psychedelic Rock

Electronic Chart

[glynspsa]

The Wall by Pink Floyd

this album reminds me of my late friend Matt

[Daydreamer]

[RockyRaccoon]

[jepstein]

We Are The Same by The Tragically Hip

2009 was the first summer I had regular access to a car, I'd just graduated and was working a summer job I didn't really have to put effort into, and I still lived close to all my best friends. Listened to a whole lot of different music since that car had an aux cord, but this album sticks out as the soundtrack of that summer.

A group of us would drive around and figure out things to do most evenings (or…drive and never figure it out just as often).

Though more than specific times, I generally associate albums with specific people. As an example,


Get Born by Jet

Is an ex in my mind. Her choice of album (and no, Cold Hard Bitch is someone entirely different)

[Tha1ChiefRocka]

So this is an album that is about as far from personal as you can get, but I guarantee that my personal reason I enjoy is different than anyone.


Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles

I originally had written this on my chart, but I'll tell my inane story here. In 2003 my brother and I got the original Xbox. We had never had a game console before, and we were very excited to play some games. One of the first games we bought for it was Tony Hawk's Underground. The coolest feature on the Xbox to us was the fact that you could rip CD's onto the hard drive and then pull them up on some in game soundtracks (the in game soundtrack was amazing as well) to enhance the experience of open-world skating. The albums we had on the game were Sgt Peppers and these two:


Electric Ladyland by The Jimi Hendrix Experience


How The West Was Won by Led Zeppelin

These two albums along with Sgt Peppers are emblazoned upon my psyche like almost no other albums are. i have heard every song off these albums hundreds of times (except for the 20 plus minute Zeppelin ones). I have weird memories of skating in Russia while "Fixing A Hole" is playing, or landing a really important trick while Jimi Hendrix was shredding. I doubt that anybody else was introduced to these albums, or many albums in the weird subliminal way I was.

[RoundTheBend]

At least 10 albums are on my overall for nostalgic reasons in addition to me thinking they are also fantastic.

[Jimmy Dread]

Easy


Fabulous Greatest Hits by Prince Buster

It was 1996. My Mum, being a former Mod, used to wax lyrical about the Blue-Beat scene where outside of listening to early Who, The Small Faces and Georgie Fame working class kids would bop along to the latest sounds from Jamaica, specifically ska. My Mum's all-time favourite track was Prince Buster's Al Capone (she always had good taste). Anyway, for years she'd try and find it to no avail, until one day I spied out of the corner of my eye in a Canterbury record shop a CD of Prince Buster's seminal collection of ska classics, this being the second track. I gave it to her for Xmas - her eyes and ears lit up and we spent the best part of Xmas Day skanking along to it. I burnt a copy for myself - suffice it to say it was a watershed moment which led to my later love of all sorts of Jamaican music.

Mum died a couple of years back and every time I hear this record (got in on vinyl too now) I can't help thinking of her - it was our record. Even more ironically a week after she died I took my Dad to a car boot sale (he and my Mum used to go to them weekly - she used to buy knackered jewellery, clean it up and sell it on - much like I do with records now). Browsing the stalls, I stumbled across a table where an old DJ was selling his old 7"s. And what did I find? A Blue Beat pressing of Al Capone.

Someone was watching...
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'Reggae' & t'ing
Folk 'n Stuff
SHAMELESS RECORD DEALER PLUG

[RockyRaccoon]