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What was your 'keystone' album?

I know, it's difficult. As I stated in my OP my keystone was the album that broke me out of the box named 'singles chart' and into an almost infinite world of 'other stuff' and I became almost overnight a rockbore of the first order able to hold my own in the 6th form common room and carry around LP covers without fear of ridicule. Does that help?
By that criterion, my keystone album was undoubtedly...

wait for it...

Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield!

At the age of 11, having heard nothing much beyond the top 40, it came as a revelation. Thank goodness for older brothers.

I recently made a list of 10 albums that influenced my musical taste for one of those Facebook "chain letter" things. Apart from TB, two other early contenders are Todd Rundgren's A Wizard a True Star and 23 Skidoo's Seven Songs, both of which boggled my ears and opened my mind in different ways.

I still return to Rundgren and Skidoo occasionally, but rarely listen to Mike Oldfield these days.

I also have keystone albums for jazz and classical music, but I'll save those for another post.
 
By that criterion, my keystone album was undoubtedly...

wait for it...

Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield!

At the age of 11, having heard nothing much beyond the top 40, it came as a revelation. Thank goodness for older brothers.

I recently made a list of 10 albums that influenced my musical taste for one of those Facebook "chain letter" things. Apart from TB, two other early contenders are Todd Rundgren's A Wizard a True Star and 23 Skidoo's Seven Songs, both of which boggled my ears and opened my mind in different ways.

I still return to Rundgren and Skidoo occasionally, but rarely listen to Mike Oldfield these days.

I also have keystone albums for jazz and classical music, but I'll save those for another post.
That's +3 for Tubular Bells! I may have to declare it the most influential album ever released. Today I actually dug out my copy and gave it a spin for the first time in years and you know what? It's still one of the most singular records you could listen to. Eccentric, beautiful, humorous (in a Canterbury scene sort of way) and awe-inspiring.
 
Tubular Bells is an album I knew visually long before hearing it. I remember record shop window displays being full of it. Virgin must have sent out tons of empty sleeves to promote it as I remember shops with nothing else in the window. I’d have been 10 at the time so it took a little time before I started hearing proper albums. I was very much into T Rex and Slade singles at that point.
 
Kraftwerk-The Man Machine
Gary Numan-Cars
Ultravox-Vienna

The synthesiser sound fascinated me, futuristic music. I was 10 in 1979.
Also Equinox by Jean Michel Jarre, heard it at a Cubs talent night being played to a 3 legged dance act, quite surreal tbh.
 
One of the biggest influences for me in regard to Album was Deep Purples' Made In Japan. A collection of songs played live (with a little editing). Live albums were considered at that time as dangerous live cannons because it could show up all the mistakes or accidents which happened live on stage. But alas Made In Japan proved a great success to the surprise even of the band members, and sort of kicked of the idea of making live albums by other artists. For me that album reflected the best of Deep Purple from those times, the sound had a lot of verve, and it displayed the musicianship of band members and Ian Gillan's voice was at its most potent (he still has a lovely voice but cannot reach those elusive highs as he did in Child In Time in 70's).

However the most effective super influence for me were the Beatles. I was a young boy then, their songs sort of totally invaded contemporary music, however I could never understand retrospective praise for Sgnt Pepper...album, I still don't understand why it was so special; maybe it bought something new at the time of release?
 
My first copy of TB owned as a school kid was on the tan label I think, long since sold and replaced with the b&w label laminated sleeve original. There was a time about 20 years ago where you could still find close to mint originals in the £1 bins of some shops who only cared about titles, not pressings. I liberated a fair few that way, kept the best myself and cashed the rest in at £15 or so. Likely worth a good bit more now.
God, another one bought on the day of release but lost in the Great House Move Mystery.
 
Thinking a out it I can actually trace a lot of this stuff directly to Reaction Records in New Brighton; a wonderful second hand record shop in the ‘70s run by a couple of cool hippy biker types who were very kind to curious little kids like us and gave us lots of suggestions as to where to look next. We could just trade whatever it was back in the next week if we didn’t like it. I learned a heck of a lot from that shop.
.

In a similar fashion, when I was still at school, so well before driving, I would catch the bus into Sutton where there was, now long gone, a little independent record shop in the arcade (long gone too) which always had a good selection of records. It was probably within a year or so I found Beanos in Croydon which was a veritable mine of good music. To this day I still have a huge number of records sourced from Beanos.
 
The Police Zenyetta Mondatta changed my life aged seven. First album I bought with pocket money. My considerably older sisters kept knicking it and eventually it was wrecked with scratches, food and nail polish. If I had been older I would have lamped them.

I found a copy in a charity shop in 2000 for a quid. This coincided with my getting back into vinyl. First time I played it on the old format again the good memories flooded back, a very emotional moment.
 
If, as I understand it, a keystone album is the album that broke you out of mainstream pop chart stuff then mine would have to be My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by Brian Eno and David Byrne or Kraftwerk's Radio-Activity. Both albums that I still listen to today and that opened the door to so much more.
 
I never really embraced pop chart music when I was young. Two of my older brothers (8 & 10 years older than me) were both heavily into music during the 60s and 70s.

They both rapidly moved on from singles (Beatles, Stones, Kinks etc.) in the late 60s to album based music (Floyd, Hendrix, King Crimson). It was at this point that I started showing an interest in music.

Friends at school were into the usual suspects of the early 70s but I gravitated to the Canterbury scene and VdGG.

I only really started collecting records when my brothers left home taking their collections with them.

My first album was In The Court of the Crimson King. So I guess that must be mine.
 
Tough thing to narrow down. Your epiphany?

In 1970 I was 12 years old. My Dad hung out with the richest guy in the village and I used to babysit there. I was quite advanced for my age. Apparently.

They had a big house. He had a nice collection of guitars , lots of LP's , a big HIFI and a proper collection of shotguns and rifles (we used to go shooting every Sunday morning)

I was left alone to mess around with of all this. But quietly. Because the kids were In bed.

I used to listen to all sorts of stuff - Cat Stevens - Tea for the Tillerman, Fairport Convention , Free, Led Zeppelin , Ten Years After , Humble Pie.

That Gibson Hummingbird guitar will live with me forever.

Woah. Memory overload. I'll shurrup now..
 
For me it was probably Caravan "In the Land of Grey and Pink". Although Led Zep II made a big impression too.

My parents had Oklahoma! and South Pacific soundtracks which I still like.
 
What a brilliant thread. Music has made a significant impact on my life. There is something extraordinary about the power of music and it’s fascinating to read so many deeply personal insights on how folks have been touched by it.

Others have said how hard this is. There are so many eye opening moments when a recording has made it’s mark. I was just 4 at the height of Beatlemania but my sister was 15 and she had the records. Astonishingly I was allowed to play them and Please Please Me and Rubber Soul were on constant repeat. Big Hits High Tide and Green Grass was an explosion in my head.

School mates knew about NME and Sounds and my horizons broadened. An important record was (and is) Warrior On The Edge Of Time. I loved the guitar players - Peter Green, Paul Kossoff, Townsend, Page, Hendrix, etc and the punk thing seemed to sit alongside ok to me (with plenty of debate and argument of course)......

My keystone record is Shamal by Gong from spring ‘76. I was 14. A bloke at school was banging on about this amazing ‘plank spanker’ called Steve Hillage so I scraped together £2.49 and bought it in Boots the chemist. Turned out Hillage only played fully on one track and the chords were weird. It was unintelligible to me - strange time signatures, jazz drumming, sax and marimbas and no easy tunes. But two quid was big money to me so I just kept at it until it clicked. I’ve tired of Hello by Status Quo but never tired of Shamal. It’s wonderful. I got the Gong back catalogue and Gazeuse came next with Allan Holdsworth, and off you go........

Shamal was a portal into a different world and gave me the palate to discover jazz, world music and classical which have been hugely satisfying. I still love the rock stuff.

MichaelC - Beanos was a haunt for me too - I reckon you and I have substantially similar record collections judging by many of your enjoyable posts over the years.

Sorry I’ve droned on. Funny how something as unimportant as a record can have such a massive effect on us.

Good listening!
 
The Yes Album was mine.

listened to on late sunday night Radio Luxembourg's album show (Kid Jensen?), in bed, under the covers using a micro Russian radio and an ear piece. Then bought it, and played it on a rotary chisel.......it has just about survived that torture, and I still have it.
 
Led Zeppelin IV - the first time I heard Black Dog did it for me. LZ is still my favourite Rock band, but the Allman Brothers Band runs a very close second...
 
"Marks" (their first album) is equally fine. Less keen on the other two from the '70s, and haven't heard the ones from this century.
Yes, I have both Marks and Mountain Queen but nothing else. I see that their whistle test appearance doing The Dance has just appeared on YouTube. I saw this back in the day and rushed out to buy Mountain Queen. It took me ages to find it as no one seemed to stock it but it is one of my treasured LPs. And it sounds great - really well recorded.
 


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