pmPilgrim's Top 10(+10) Life-Changing Albums (part 2)
Yesterday I posted numbers 20 - 11 of my Top 10(+10) life changing albums. My crazy eclectic tastes may have surprised some. Well, not as much as I was surprised, believe it or not when I finished working on this. I will actually talk about that tomorrow. But, for today, here we do the Big Top 10 Countdown:

10. The Band- Music from Big Pink (1968)
Dylan’s backup band on their own after the Master is laid up and they do their own thing with power. There aren’t many songs better than The Weight! What changed in me was the broadening of the understanding again and again of what music is. This whole list could be summed up that way. There’s music for everything under the sun. And it can lift you to new places over and over again.

9- 8. Al Hirt- Honey in the Horn (1963)/Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass- South of the Border (1964)
As I said yesterday, I’m a trumpet player. Been doing that for 44 years. Well, it was early in that career that I heard Al Hirt for the first time. When I heard him play Java (and later When the Saints Go Marching In) I knew I had found my patron saint. I discovered that the trumpet does a whole world more than playing taps. It became a part of music. I have never been the same! Herb Alpert came along a little bit later me and I fell deeper in love with the trumpet in new ways. I played in a Tijuana Brass-style group in high school. And, a trivia note: Herb Alpert and the TJB was the first “popular” concert I ever went to. It was at The Greater Allentown Fair. There’s even a picture of the crowd of that concert on the back his album, SRO. In any case, without these two I would never have appreciated Miles Davis or the Philadelphia Brass from yesterday's list, or Wynton Marsalis or Armstrong, or- well, you get the picture.

7. Jefferson Airplane- Surrealistic Pillow (1967)
From Someone to Love through White Rabbit this is a trip! No LSD or marijuana needed. Music is its own high, its own trip, when you let it work its magic. No wonder people have gotten into music wars. Music can do more than you think it can- coming up behind you, grabbing you and turning you around to see what you’ve never seen before.

6. Nitty Gritty Dirt Band- Will the Circle Be Unbroken Vol. 1 (1972)
To be introduced to the GREATS of bluegrass and country for the first time is a remarkable experience. This is Americana and Bluegrass from the roots that is many of the original artists. The NGDB should be in every music Hall of Fame for this album preserving and extending the unique music that is bluegrass, the jazz music of country/folk/Americana.

5. Moody Blues- Days of Future Passed (1967)
When my best friend’s roommate came back to school with this album he made all of us come into his room, sit back and let it spin. It was one of those FIRSTS. Long, long before Nights in White Satin was cut down and released as a single, we were transported into a new world. And none of us were drinking or using! The power of music as they combined the London Symphony Orchestra and their rock into a week in life was unequaled. No one has topped this.

4. Bruce Springsteen- Born to Run (1975)
Here is passion and rock and life and just about everything else rolled into one. Just when it looked like rock was selling out and losing out, along comes Springsteen and kept me rocking past my mid-20s letting me know that you don’t have to be young to like good kick-ass rock!

3. Bob Dylan- Greatest Hits (1967)
Okay. I’m cheating. But this is about the single albums that changed me. It was with this album that I first became aware of the overall power and quality of Dylan. I knew Dylan's music. I enjoyed it. But here they put these all into one place- and it just blew me away. Dylan had done to folk (and rock) when he went electric what The Beatles did with Sgt. Peppers. This album let you see it in its development. From here I went back and fell in love with all of Dylan’s music. Poetry in musical motion! Challenging and exciting and always life-changing.

2. Beatles- Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)
No one, but no one ever turned the music world upside-down like this album did for me. All of a sudden Rock and Roll was more than a collection of hits. This was a whole new way of listening and responding. It hasn’t lost much in all these years, even with the (more than) slightly psychedelic style. And hey, some of us are beginning to turn 64. (Not me, but Sir Paul did.) Who would have thought it possible?


Wait one minute. Springsteen at #4; Dylan at #3; Beatles at #2? Huh? Have I lost my mind? What in the world could have been a greater influence that any of those three?


Hard to imagine. Hence, even my surprise when I realized that the single most life-changing album in my life was:


1. Geroge Gershwin- An American in Paris- specific album unknown.
Eighth-grade music class. A budding musician (trumpet in the band). A poor, once-upon-a-time piano student. The needle dropped at the start of a recording of this timeless work. “Listen,” said the teacher. “Tell me what you hear” without telling us the name. What I heard was the transforming power of music to move the soul, to paint pictures through the instruments, to take you places where you had never been and introduce them to you in all their intimacy. The single most life-changing musical moment in my life. Amen!!! The rest of this list depended on this one moment and one album to have opened me to the music of my own life.

Tomorrow: Some reflections.