Think of 20 albums, CDs, LPs (if you’re over 40), that had such a profound effect on you they changed your life. Dug into your soul. Music that brought you to life when you heard it. Royally affected you, kicked you in the wazoo, literally socked you in the gut, is what I mean. Then when you finish, tag 15 others, including me, make a donation to Any Blogger Can, sit back and drink a brewski, watch your favorite DITL. Make sure you copy and paste this part so they know the drill.

Here are mine. Except I did 22 albums.

And I’ll warn you ahead of time that I seriously doubt the existence of any human being out there with even five of the same albums as me. Shoot, I bet there isn’t anybody with even THREE of these on their list. What can I say? I’m very weird awesome in my own way.

There are people who say they like this album, or were “changed” by it, and then there are the rest of us who really were. You know who you are – the kind of fan that lists an album because it’s cool to list an album. If you can’t sing every lyric, every studio-added sound effect or murmur and can’t sing out the rooster parts or actually played the end of the album in the infinite loop, you don’t count.

We start the eclectic. This is a double-album with only four (4) songs total. Yes, one song per album side. I told you I was weird awesome.

I could list several of the Fresh Aire series because I immersed myself in all of them at one point or another, but I’d have to say Fresh Aire II was my first and most potent.

There was this one song, Mere Image, that I played dozens of times per week. Yes, it was that fetching. I still do sometimes. I even dreamed up my own music video to the song and still want to make it come true. It has a wistful nostalgic energetic make-you-cry-after-dancing feel.

I made my own homemade version from the DVD because the many of the songs had versions on the actual published soundtrack that were different from the movie and that devastated me to no end. I hate it when movie soundtracks do that!

There’s a song on there that kind of feel like dueling electric guitars and I frequently would daydream about my brother and I performing this on stage. Alas, he is the guitar player and I’m the guitar hero.

So shoot me. Wait, I already shot myself for this one.

This is one of many tastes I picked up from my dad, who had this and the next album on vinyl. I would put it on and be amazed. When I discovered headphones it sent me to the next level. This is one of those albums that you put on, close your eyes, and let the sounds take you over. In fact, a lot of my picks are sensual albums – you don’t just put them on in the background or flick on the radio to listen. They are to be enjoyed specifically, not as the soundtrack to your daily life.

Om.

Tracks 7 through 12 are the ones to get lost in.

I had to put in the “Everything” compilation album because once I discovered the ‘Dan, I consumed every song they had and played this collection on repeat for about a year.

It was hard to choose between this and Ride the Lightning but I listed to Master of Puppets a tad bit more. Plus, it has Orion on it.

I had the double-album set. I can still list all the disciples because of this album.

My first CD, ever. I got it for my 15th birthday.

This is another one of those that will be unique to me, and guess what? Awaken? intense 15-minute long song.

This is another one where the released soundtrack differed from the video release (DVD) so I ended up ripping my own MP3′s off of the video so that it would match. I’m linking you to the DVD instead of the CD since it’s the one with the music I love. The CD actually took off a couple of tracks!

It’s hard to choose just one because of Grace Under Pressure and Signals and Power Windows and AFTK and 2112 and… and… and… But this is the one I sank into deeply and didn’t come up for air for weeks.

I don’t expect anyone to understand this one. But, man oh man. I love this album. It’s like the Lord of the Rings put to music but without J R R Tolkein.

Can’t list one of the TaW albums since I got the whole collection and put it on repeat. Definitely changed my view of self-published music in a very positive way. This guy is my hero.

Again, this is an artist that has so much to choose from, it’s hard to pick just one album. I choose it because my dad had it on vinyl and it was my first Zep album. I wore that puppy out once I heard What Is And What Should Never Be. This is the first time I actually made a tape that was just entirely one song repeated over and over from the album. I did this to save on battery life on my knock-off Sony Walkman because rewinding took up too much battery.

As a senior in high school, I’d sometimes put this CD in, lay back, close my eyes and simply float. Especially on track #2. I seriously think I floated a few times while wearing headphones. Too bad they weren’t wireless back then. I think it was the wire that stopped me from hitting the ceiling.

I remember freshman year in High School – as a band geek *and* a computer geek, I wasn’t all that popular, but that was fine with me. In fact, instead of being popular I was more of a target. But there was this one time when my walkman and collection of tapes was “confiscated” by The Current Cool Guy in the gym along with the “let’s see what Dork-Man is listening to, shall we?” verbal introduction to a humiliation assault. As he went through picking out The Ultimate Sin, Black Sabbath’s We Sold Our Souls for Rock and Roll, Van Halen’s 1984, Motley Crue’s Theatre Of Pain, Led Zeppelin and Rush, he said aloud “wow, for a nerd, you listen to some really cool music” and handed me back my stuff and went on to the next nerd. Later that week he borrowed The Ultimate Sin from me and I was left alone the rest of the year.

Let’s go crazy, Broadway style!

So.  Did anyone have even more than one that they shared with this list?

Yeah. Didn’t think so.

(Bonus topic: I spent more than an hour on this post.  It meant a lot to me.  However, I anticipate a very low comment turnout.  I’m finding that the more important (ie, personal) a blog post is to me, the less other people will care about it.  Sometimes the stupidest shortest post generates the most interest.  There seems to be a direct inversely proportional relationship between the amount of effort I put into a post and how interesting it is.  However, I will post it anyway because I’m one of those “this blog is about ME” people.  At least for now I am.)

So I did a meme post yesterday (wrote my own) and realized I’ve never done a meme before.  Never was interested in them.  Mostly they seem pointless, too long, and frankly, a little too nosey for my tastes.

But a few have caught my eye.  On Avi’s site and Sarcastica’s site and Dave’s site I noticed the Band Name / Album Art Meme.  And what they came up with was actually eerily like an album cover.  I could totally see someone’s album looking like that!

So, would mine look good?  Would it seem inspirational?  Would it interest me in purchasing the album?  Let’s see.

Not bad.  Not too good, but not bad.  The rules are here for your convenience (copied from Sarcastica)

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first article is the name of your band.

2. http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last 4 words of the very last quote is the title of your album.

3. http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
The 3rd picture, no matter what, is the album cover.

Then make your picture and post it on your blog.  (note: if you don’t have a blog, but you follow the steps, you could email me the results and I’ll make your album cover and post it in the comments here)

Wayne’s note: it seems that this would be pretty easy to automate, so instead of having to do the work, a script went out and got the things, randomly placed the text on the image and voila! you have your album cover.  Anyone seen that yet?

Dilbert Widget

Those really smart and funny people over at dilbert.com have come out with a widget, and it’s in pre-release. You can embed it in just about any blog or web page, and it even integrates with some of the services to just add right in. I do my embedding the old fashioned way (via code) but I was still impressed with what it supported.

What does the widget do? Well, it has all the comics, IN COLOR back to 2005. Not only that, but you can rate the comic. A nice future edition would be to be able to embed a specific favorite comic strip in a blog posting, either by day or some other mechanism.

So I’m going to try to embed it here to see if it works. My only complaint is that I use a 150-pixel wide sidebar (as do many people) and the thinnest widget they have is 160px. I don’t want to change my theme to support this one widget, so I’ll keep it in this post for now.