{"id":43,"date":"2008-04-29T13:09:23","date_gmt":"2008-04-29T17:09:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/nsftmfx\/2008\/04\/29\/jonah-46\/"},"modified":"2008-07-03T23:22:06","modified_gmt":"2008-07-04T03:22:06","slug":"jonah-46","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/nsftmfx\/2008\/04\/29\/jonah-46\/","title":{"rendered":"Jonah 4:6"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Lord God appointed a bush, and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort; so Jonah was very happy about the bush.<\/em><\/p>\n

For many years, I spent a large amount of my time sorting through and working in a local record store, The Record & Tape Exchange<\/a>, in Fairfax, VA, where I grew into a music aficionado of sorts; even if there was a seemingly infinite amount I had to learn, I became relatively entrenched in the life of the album collector\/listener. I was never very good at it, it turns out, & there are many people who are still going strong (most notably my friend and ex-coworker Math<\/a>, whose album reviews & creative input into the music world – especially in the realm of free media & Plunderphonics <\/a>– are really something special). Still, when all has been said & done (though hopefully not for good, hopefully not forever), I have amassed somewhere around 1,500 albums, & digging through them these days makes me spin; there is so much I have yet to listen to, so much education I’ve yet to take the time to care about.<\/p>\n

At this point, I figure the best place for me to start in my music-time-capsule would be at the proverbial start. Thus, in the footprints of the illustrious Jim Groom<\/a>, who has yet to start posting results from his own Formative Films project, I bring to you my Ten Formative Albums, a list that is pretty comprehensive (all things considered, though I am still very young & I still have hundreds of albums sitting on my shelf that I haven’t listened to yet), & as I myself have discovered, surprising in intervals. Most of the albums here I still rather like, but there are a couple that I can’t sit through all the way even if I really wanted to without skipping a handful of tracks. Also: at least one of them I would still consider one of my Top 5, so that’s got to say something about the power of music-memory. Anyway, I’m going to tackle this Day-by-Day style until they’ve all been covered in semi-detail, & of course we’re going Bio-chronologically – meaning it will follow the timeline of my own life, regardless of when the album itself came out.<\/p>\n

So, let’s do this.<\/p>\n

Silverchair – Freak Show <\/strong>(1997)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

What I remember most about this album is a day in third grade, when my teacher left the door to the classroom closet hanging open, & I saw cardboard boxes full of CD’s. I don’t know why they were, & I can’t for the life of me think why my teacher would have delivered dozens of CD’s to her classroom instead of her home, but I do remember spotting from a good distance Silverchair’s Freak Show<\/em>. My sisters, some of the most formative figures in my very early music life, had this album, the band’s second, on cassette tape & would play it in their room. I had heard the music, but only in snippets, & something about it was unbelievably unscrupulous to me; it would follow in a soft-loud-soft pattern, but it was never tired. Anyway, when I confronted my teacher about this stash I had discovered, she gave me some meaningless excuse & moved on, but to this day I’ve always wondered if maybe she loved that alt-rock no-name disc as much as I would grow to.<\/p>\n

In sixth grade, “Freak” would become my favorite song, & I would listen to it up in my room on repeat. I can’t really remember why for the life of me, but it can’t be denied that Silverchair was definitely the first band that was THAT band for me, if that makes sense. I would go on to buy all their albums, even when they came out with new ones & I hadn’t heard a single song (for better or for worse, as I would find out with Diorama<\/em>, which though I hated at first, I now consider the band’s inarguable masterpiece). All in all, the album still semi-holds-up to scrutiny. It’s a bit overproduced (typical of any Nirvana soundalike at this time period), but still there’s a lot of heart though. They were very young, talented, & just as intense as I needed my music to be at 9 years old (see also: not very).<\/p>\n

[kml_flashembed movie=\"http:\/\/youtube.com\/v\/xZ9kBQrZXOI\" width=\"425\" height=\"350\" wmode=\"transparent\" \/]<\/code><\/p>\n

Later, I would find out that the remix of “Freak” on their Greatest Hits album was actually much better than the original. Whatever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Lord God appointed a bush, and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort; so Jonah was very happy about the bush. For many years, I spent a large … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[305],"class_list":["post-43","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/nsftmfx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/nsftmfx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/nsftmfx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/nsftmfx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/nsftmfx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/nsftmfx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/nsftmfx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/nsftmfx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/nsftmfx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}