5-10-15-20...

Pitchfork has this regular feature where they ask folks to tell stories about the music they were listening to at different times in their lives. I think this might make a fun forum game that gives us folks an opportunity to self-indulgently blab about ourselves a bit. I'm going first!

5: John Denver, Take Me Home, Country Roads
My parents had plenty of records by The Beatles, Joan Baez, Paul Simon, etc - but 5-year-olds don't want to listen to that crap. I was all about the John Denver.

10: Salt-N-Pepa, Push It
My first exposure to hip-hop. My brother taped this song off the radio and played the cassette over & over. It really freaked me out - like I was seriously scared of it cause it was so weird and overtly sexual. I guess I thought I might get in trouble for listening to these ladies telling me to PUSH IT REAL GOOD!

15: Jane's Addiction, Jane's Addiction
Before my friends & I were bold enough to venture out and really discover music for ourselves, I had an awesome older brother who would turn me onto stuff like this.

20: Willie Nelson, Hello Walls
A girlfriend had seriously broken my heart, but it was good to know that Willie had my back.

25: Caribou, Up in Flames
I'd gotten to a point where I was tired of the same old shit, and was sort of getting tired of music in general - then this album came along and really blew me away. I spent that summer on my grandma's farm in New Jersey - sweating in the sun, watching fireflies at night, and listening to this.

30: Kiln
It seemed like all I wanted from music at that point was to bathe in gorgeous, vivid sonic textures. I was listening to a lot of Ghostly Records, and Kiln were definitely at the top of my playlist.