Domestic Geek

With Marcus' AppleTV purchase, the blog post earlier this week about the upcoming Police CD release and various conversations the last couple of weeks with coworkers about favorite music, I decided to start compiling a list of my favorites. It's funny how various events in life dictate why you like a particular group or album. A lot of these will be greatest hits type compilations because I happen to own a bunch of those. So, without further ado:

Thirteen of My Favorite Albums (in no particular order)

1. Xanadu Soundtrack featuring the music of the Electric Light Orchestra and Olivia Newton John. This is my favorite album and movie of all time. I don't know why this movie stuck with me so, but I love it and ELO is one of my favorite bands of all time, as well. It also featured one of my favorite classic performers, Gene Kelly. He happened to be a clarinetist in this movie and so was I back in the day. I was also big into roller skating, which was another theme of the movie. My favorite tunes on this are the OLN/Tubes collaboration called "Dancin'" , the hauntingly sad ELO track "Don't Walk Away" and the optimisitc "I'm Alive."
   
2. Saturday Night Fever featuring music by the Bee Gees and various other disco artists. I know everybody bashed disco and burned albums, etc., but I'm not afraid to say that I love disco. I still do. The very first time I danced with a guy he was wearing a silk shirt, white pants and we were under a disco ball. This was a really sad movie, though. I was pretty young when I first saw it, so I didn't really see the sad, pathetic nature of Tony's (the main character's) life until I saw it many years later. In addition to the Brothers Gibb, my favorite tracks are the classical/disco mixes of "A Fifth of Beethoven" and "Night on Disco Mountain."
   
3. Hooray for Boobies by The Bloodhound Gang. Marcus liked these guys long before I did. I just didn't get them. When this album came out, however, I changed my tune about them. You all know the song "The Bad Touch" (You and me baby ain't noting but mammals...) and I tried to pick another couple of favorites to list, but they're all good! I like the little humorous filler tracks, too.
   
4. Classic Queen & Queen Greatest Hits I grouped these two together since I almost always listen to them both in their entirety as a double CD set. I love almost every song that Queen put out. Freddie Mercury et al were definitely one of the finest musical acts ever. I think his passing was the first loss of a musician that really struck me hard. I was too young when Elvis and John Lennon died to truly appreciate what their loss meant. "Who Wants to Live Forever" and "Bohemian Rhapsody" are two of my most favorite cuts. That was so cool how Rhapsody got a resurgence in popularity after the Wayne's World movies came out.
   
5. 1984 by Van Halen. This is the very first cassette tape I purchased with my high school graduation money to play in my first car stereo that I also received for graduation. The album has extra significance since 1984 was also the year I graduated from high school. In addition to the fact that I loved VH's music and had a major crush on Ed, it was another of those groups from my coming of age, so to speak. Sadly, it was the last album with David Lee Roth, but at least we got to enjoy his solo career. Favorite tunes are "Hot for Teacher" and "Panama."
   
6. Antics in the Forbidden Zone by Adam and the Ants as well as some Adam Ant solo work. I first heard of Adam and the Ants via their videos on MTV. I absolutely loved the "Antmusic." In fact, I used to go to school sometimes with a white makeup stripe across my face and those little braids like he had. Ha! It seems so lame now! Anyway, I also love "Strip" and the chart topper "Goody Two Shoes."
   
7. ChangesBowie by David Bowie. Once again I can thank MTV for turning me on to David Bowie. Since this is a greatest hits one, it's really hard to pick favorites. "Space Oddity" has always been one of my favorites as well "Fame." This was one of the few acts I saw in college that wasn't hard rock or heavy metal. The Glass Spider tour hit the old Mile High Stadium in 1987 according to Wikipedia. That sounds about right. A friend got tickets at the last minute (hours before showtime) and I almost didn't go. I'm glad I did, though.
   
8. Purple Rain Soundtrack by Prince and the Revolution. The soundtrack to a semi-autobiograhical movie by the same name and another cassette that I bought with my high school graduation money. I don't get Prince as a person, but I do love his music. I was really mad one night when a college roommate had some rather shady friends over and the next morning discover many of my cassettes were gone, including this one. I went out immediately and purchased myself a vinyl copy and made myself a new tape. I believe this was also one of the very first CDs I acquired. I'm not going to pick a favorite because I really like every track on this one.
   
9. Cinemagic by composer/pianist Dave Grusin. Dave Grusin writes music for movies, thus the album title. A college roommate turned me on to this disc. He was the first person I ever knew that owned a CD player and had quite the collection filled with the most wonderful composers. I think he wanted to get into film directing. As an aside, he was also the first guy I ever met that owned an Apple computer. Anyway, my most favorite song on here is the "Heaven Can Wait" theme. I loved that movie and I love the sound of a soprano saxophone.
   
10. Cabaret featuring Liza Minelli. I don't know why I'm into all of these films about tortured artists. I absolutely love Liza's voice. I was too young to understand this movie the first time I saw it. I was enthralled with Joel Gray's emcee character, though. I taught "Cabaret" to a group I had at band camp one summer (we had to put on musical numbers as a group activity), but there weren't too many kids in the late '80s that could really appreciate it. In addition to the title track, my other most favorite tune is "Money, Money."
    
11. Metallica by obviously Metallica. Dubbed "The Black Album," both due to the monochrome color scheme of the cover and the view by many fans that the band "sold out" to mainstream music. I personally liked all of the tracks on this one. True, not as hard as "Master of Puppets," but artists can't be expected to produce the same stuff over and over. I really love "Enter Sandman," "Don't Tread on Me" and "Sad But True."
    
12. Countdown to Extinction by Megadeth with frontman (former Metallica member) Dave Mustaine. I loved several songs on this CD. It's one of the ones I used to listen to when I first started working pizza. There are many nights that listening to the songs on here was the only thing that kept me going. My most favorite were "Symphony of Destruction" and "Sweating Bullets."
    
13. Use Your Illustion I & II by Guns 'N' Roses. Even though these are two separate albums, I count them as a 2-Disc set. These contain some of my most favorite GnR songs ever. I absolutely love the song "November Rain." It's so sad and heart wrenching. The video was totally amazing for it, too.
    

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!