My Life In Records

We don't choose what tape gets played when we're very young and our mother is driving us to baseball practice. Or footie league or whatever you folks do over there. We just like it because our mother likes it and she's singing along. But that stuff surely has an influence on us somehow...

This was the first cassette tape I ever bought with my own hard-earned cash. Some new band from LA that people seemed excited about.

Quite simply, this was my introduction to the NYC punk bands of the time... Gorilla Biscuits, Agnostic Front etc... I was quite enthusiastic about it to say the least.

 In addition to all the obviously awesome stuff about Fugazi - being a great band with their own sound, keeping their records cheaper than everyone elses etc. - they also had a real impact on me as a budding drummer. Here was a band with a drummer who wasn't worried about being as tight or rock solid as he could be. He rushed his fills, he changed tempos slightly along with certain words or moments, all quite naturally as that's just what he was feeling, even though it might be sloppy at times. So that's how i learned to play the drums, because of those songs in the headphones.

I guess this one's obvious, so chalk it up to the same reasons as everyone else but man it was a happy time in my life when that record came out. Whether with sex,  acid, night drives... It just kills.

Hearing this album in high school probably marked the first time I realised that jazz drumming could be really powerful and loud, almost played with a 'rock' attitude. Teachers of jazz drumkit are always trying to get students to play quietly, to master the subtle touches of everything, but tunes like ‘Song of the Underground Railroad’ just blow that all to hell and steamroll the listener with a pulse like no other i had previously heard.

I've always enjoyed analysis of music, songwriting etc... The Pixies blew me away because, in a very natural way, they wrote really weirdo artsy songs that still stuck in your head like pop syrup.

During college my roomates and I rented generators and threw parties/raves in the open space behind our house. While i had a great time dancing and enjoyed house & techno as much as the next guy, my favorite place was the chillout room in the basement where this record was practically on repeat.

This was one of the first flamenco albums I ever heard - it was years ago - and it remains easily one of the best I've heard to this day. Sure Paco's had some iffy output since the 80s, but haven't we all? This is from his peak in the 70s and really showed me what a guitar can actually do. The rhythms are sick, the power is frightening and the grace is as smooth as it gets...

I dabbled a bit in ethnomusicology and became fascinated by the music of the Aka and Bayaka pygmies in the African rainforest, as well as the idea of different bugs,  birds and animals sharing the same frequencies in their voice, taking care not to compete with each other, and finding their own time of day to sing their song. This record encompasses all of that ecosystem, with river water-drumming included! Beautiful stuff.