“I grew up listening to the only record my mother owned, a greatest hits collection of second wave ska band The Selecter entitled Selecter Selected Selections. She said that she had “gotten it as a gift in college” and never listened to it or really enjoyed it. She always stayed on the Enya side of things.
Me and my brothers listened and danced around the indestructible Fisher Price record player listening to that Selecter record on repeat for hours.
Sleeping in the Aviary – Talking Out of Turn
I blame this album for my older brother’s intense passion for the third wave ska bands of the 90’s, which were mostly awful when compared to this.
This great song about the virtue of patience was on a children’s music record called Music Machine, that had all sorts of songs containing life lessons such as gentleness, kindness, and self-control.
Herbert the Snail singing the chorus of this song still plays in my head every time I start to get pissed off in line at the grocery store or stuck in traffic. The verses are pretty bad, but the slow-motion chorus is worth the wait.
The first record I ever bought with my own money was Prince’s “Batdance” single on 7 inch. The b-side “200 Balloons” is also great. This has to be one of the strangest songs to ever reach number 1 in the US. It’s basically a cut and past remix of a bunch of different tracks Prince was working on at the time with sampled dialog from the Batman movie over it.
Prince doesn’t sing very much at all, but when he does it’s pretty classic, with real zingers like: “Hey Duckie, let me stick the 7 inch in the computer.”
Then I grew up and my dad gave me all his old classic rock albums. Of course I loved them all and got obsessed with the Beatles like everyone else. This great collection of mostly Bruce Springsteen, Beatles, and Willie Nelson albums has since been lost to an ex-girlfriend’s apartment, never to be retrieved.
What bugs me the most is that I know for a fact she cannot, and never will, feel the joy and exuberance of blasting Bruce Springsteen’s “Candy’s Room” at top volume first thing in the morning. Darkness at the Edge of Town sits there collecting dust. It’s a travesty, really.
After that break up, I spent a whole summer getting drunk on rum in the mid-afternoons and listening to the 30 or so Hawaiian records I had purchased at a feverish pace to replace my lost record collection. This seemed to help calm my nerves and enjoy my summer as best as I could.
George Ka’inapau was my standout favorite with his beautiful falsetto serenades.”
—Elliot Kozel
Enter to win a vinyl copy of Sleeping in the Avairy’s latest You and Me, Ghost by letting us know in the comments which song influenced your musical tastes as a wee lad or lass—and we want a video link to that track.
Sleeping in the Aviary – Someone Loves You
We’ll choose one winner next Tuesday, 12/6!
