Anyone who knows me has probably wanted to slap me in the face at least once for my prolific quoting of movies, lyrics, famous sayings, books, bathroom wall graffiti, dog barks, car alarms and other important noises.

I started to wonder what the deal is with my love of quotes and I realize it’s really just an extension of three other things I love:

1. Words
2. Humor
3. Wisdom

I’ve always been a word nerd. My dad was a journalism major with a masters in English. One of his brothers and his sister were journalism majors. I was a journalism major in college and have friends still working as writers. More than words (don’t start singing it!), I love a good turn of a phrase, which is why I tend to admire even goofy lyricists.

David Lee Roth wrote the lyric once, “And the meek shall inherit shit,” which to this day makes me laugh for no apparent reason.

I stumped an entire college English department when I asked them to tell me what you call two words that are spelled the same but sound different and have different meanings: i.e. wound (an injury) and wound (past tense of wind). I got that from a lyric too.

Language is fascinating to me because it is a living entity. In the movie Stargate, James Spader said, “It hasn’t been a living spoken language in over 1000 years” in describing an ancient language found on another planet. That always struck me as amazing that a language could die unless it is used. See, I can even come up with a quote for THAT! It’s a sickness, I tells ya’.

Humor is also an important part of who I am. My dad knew seemingly every good joke ever told and he loved telling them. He also loved hearing new one’s and retelling them over and over. My whole family has a good sense of humor and there are days when I’m kinda funny too. Shut up.

Lastly, wisdom is something that interests me. I really don’t care too much about rote knowledge. I like trivial knowledge because it is mostly worthless and a huge drain on my time, but the basic bricks and mortar of how things work is pretty boring for me. But, if there is wisdom in it, particularly something that strikes me as clever or poignant, it has my rapt attention.

Put the three together in any combination and you can get some pretty amazing quotes. Things like:

“Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.”

“Rock stars. Is there anything they don’t know?”

All great quotes that I love. There are hundreds more. What makes them great is context. If you can figure out how to fit them into a conversation where they actually make sense, BONUS! Sure, it will annoy the hell out of some people, but those it doesn’t will find you infinitely fascinating. They won’t, but you can tell yourself they do and it will be easier because you have a snappy comeback for them if they gripe.

Of course, quoting every line of a movie or tv show as it is rolling might make someone want to punch you in the throat, so you may want to tone that down a bit, but, otherwise quote your ass off. Not literally, cause that would hurt.

Gimme some of your favorite quotes. Maybe I’ll use them and not give you any credit! And there’s nothing you could do to stop me because they don’t have verbal plagiarism laws, do they, smart guy? Sorry, what?

No, this isn’t some tribute to an odd indie band – maybe I have that wrong. And this isn’t about my love for baseball because I’m not really a big fan. This is about the soothing sounds of baseball on the radio.

Before you think I’ve retired and moved to Boca, let me explain.

Some days (or nights), I don’t want to listen to music. I hear it a lot. But, if I’m driving, I don’t just want silence either. That leaves me with conservative talk radio or sports. Being liberal (yeah, a commie pinko!) and a sports fan means I always choose the latter. Mindless talking heads yammering on about trades and random crap is pretty boring, but baseball isn’t.

To me, football and basketball are sports for watching – in person or on television. Golf is for tv viewing while napping on Sunday (everyone knows this). NASCAR is for being drunk and having sex with sheep. I think they shipped the NHL back to Canada or Russia or some country where it snows like 350 days a year. So, that leaves baseball.

On tv, baseball is damn boring. If I go to a game, I just want to eat a hot dog and eyeball the hot girls in the stands. What? At least I’m honest (and pervy – you know you love it, sicko)!

Few things, however, are more enjoyable and relaxing than a play-by-play announcer (like the Astros hall-of-famer, Milo Hamilton, pictured above) and his jovial color commentator. When I was a younger, I thought a “color” commentator was a derogatory term for Joe Morgan. Then, I realized that I’m retarded and that these are actually the guys that chime in with comments, scores, etc.

What’s great about this time-honored combo is the random banter they have throughout a game. In football and basketball, the action is usually too complex or fast paced to spend much time talking about anything other than the game. But, with the time between pitches, time between batters, ball scratching and arguments with the umpire, there is more than enough time to jabber incessantly about pretty much anything.

I remember reading that Chris Berman from ESPN once used every line from the song “Hotel California” to describe a game he was calling. I’m not sure if this is true, but I can totally see it. “I think they pink champagne’s on ice. I mean, they’re just prisoners of their own device out there.”

The best part of this interplay is the way the announcers intersperse comments and announcements with the actual game call. They sound something like this:

Announcer: One ball and two strikes to Lopez.
Color: You know, I never get tired of the hot dogs here at Minute Maid.
Announcer: That is quality ballpark food to be sure…that’s outside for ball two.
Color: I had a loaded chili dog earlier and it was mighty tasty.
Announcer: [pause - crowd murmur in the background]
Announcer: Is that what I smell? Foul tap down the right side.
Color: [chuckle]
Announcer: The Kiwanis Club of Kingwood is in the stands…WHOA! Look out. Somebody got a souvenir on that foul ball.
Color: And a concussion…
Announcer: Hopefully, the Kiwanis Club isn’t in section 103 today.

I absolutely LOVE that stuff. It’s even more exaggerated at spring training games where only a few hundred people show up and they’re in some little town like Alligator Mom, Florida or Desert’s Asshole, Arizona. You can hear fans yelling stuff from the stands and there is rarely a seven-second delay so the announcers just have to cover for it.

It’s relaxing. It’s funny and, let’s face it, it’s good, clean all American fun if that includes steroids and sex with strippers, and you KNOW it does.

Recently, I’ve posted a few times about various sexual aides. On Thursdays, I write about things I love and while there aren’t any sexual aides I love (including you, Jenna Jamison molded vagina), I do love my friends, particularly friends like Hala who decided to send me a photo of the cream below in the hopes I might blog about it, which I’m totally going to do.

So, here I present to you Sure Grip, the vagina tightening cream.

Where to start…where to start. I’m not going to talk about the ingredients in this concoction because I don’t know what they are and I don’t want to know. For all I know, it could contain whale semen and ground up squirrel bones, which is exactly what was in the penis enlarging cream I saw at this place in San Francisco. What?

Let me just make some observations about the packaging.

Sure Grip is a horrible name.

It sounds like super glue and, last time I checked, you don’t want your lady’s vagina holding onto your penis like how that welder’s hat was stuck to the beam leaving that poor guy hanging there in the old super glue commercial. Also, I’m not sure that a vagina that “grips” anything is necessarily a good idea unless you are a naked performer with the need for a special skill.

Tighten-Her Cream is an AWFUL tagline.

Mainly, this is just poor grammar. What’s with the dash? Who proofreads this stuff? Is it “TIGHTEN-HER cream” or “tighten-her CREAM?” The second one doesn’t even make sense unless you are talking about cooking and then why put this in a sex shop? For all I know by this tagline, she’s trying to whip up a feisty meringue to top off a lemon pie and she wants those peaks whipped to perfection. Oh, yeah, I bet she wants them whipped to perfection!

What is wrong with that guy’s hair?

Is it pulled back in a pony tail because he is some skeezy porn star or what? It has streaks in it too which are either highlights, light from the flash or impending baldness. I’m not sure which is worse. While I’m on the subject of this dude, what’s up with the Don Johnson ostrich egg blue short sleeved button down? I had a shirt like that in 1984 and I wore it with a white jacket with the sleeves pushed up. But, I was like 15 and mildly retarded, so I had an excuse.

The chick isn’t wearing a wedding ring.

In virtually every ad, women wear wedding rings. This supposedly is a subliminal message about her stability or some crap like that. They have studies that show women are more apt to buy things when the women in the ads wear wedding rings. Clearly, this product, though specifically for women’s anatomy, is not aimed at them. I’m sure most women could care less whether their vagina’s are virgintastic, but a guy might want to buy this if he is feeling less than confident about his own size, particularly if his nickname is needle dick.

“Tightens your vagina as if it were your First Time.”

Again with the poor grammar. Is “First Time” a holiday? Why is it capitalized? Honestly, ladies, do you want your vagina tightened like it was your first time? I’m no expert, but I’ve heard stories that the first time isn’t the most comfortable experience ever. I know women buy all sorts of crazy creams and ointments and even inject cobra venom into their faces (I’m fairly certain it’s cobra venom), but rubbing this stuff on your baby maker is probably not the first thing you are thinking of buying when they hit the Lancome counter at Macy’s.

“For that honeymoon fit.”

I don’t even know what that means. Are they suggesting that on your honeymoon, your wife’s vagina was so tight you thought she used a cream on it? Do they think your wife had a trainer for her vagina to make it “fit” before the wedding and, if so, what exactly did this trainer do? Or, maybe they saying that all women are virgins on their wedding nights? Um, sure.

Mainly, I’m picturing the conversation between husband and wife when he brings this home for her:

Husband: Hi, honey, I’m home.
Wife: Hello, dear. How was your day?
Husband: Good and yours?
Wife: Just wonderful.
Husband: I brought you home a surprise!
Wife: Really??? What is it? Diamonds? A trip to Fiji? A diamond-crusted ticket to Fiji?
Husband: Do they even make diamond-crusted tickets?
Wife: Nevermind. What is it?
Husband: Close your eyes.
Wife: Ok.
Husband: Remember our honeymoon?
Wife: In Scranton? Yes, I remember.
Husband: Nevermind Scranton. Remember our wedding night?
Wife: Yes.
Husband: Remember how tight your vagina was?
Wife: Um, what?
Husband: Seriously, remember?
Wife: WTF?
Husband: Now, you can have that honeymoon fit vagina all over again!
Wife: (opening eyes)

At this point, I imagine she stabs him in the genitals with a fork and threatens to rub Sure Grip on his asshole. Then there would be crying and biting and fluorescent lights would flicker and blood curdling screams would emanate throughout the house. But, then again, I tend to think of marriage like a Japanese horror film, so maybe that’s something I should work on.

Just for clarification on the Things I Love, does not include Sure Grip, however, it does include photos of Sure Grip sent to me from friends.

Growing up in the 70′s, I got to witness the beginning of the video game revolution first hand. I played Pong when it came out thinking that this floating white square might be the coolest thing I had ever seen. I owned an original Atari and had those little hand held video games that were made entirely of little blinking red LED lights.

I went to the corner store to play Asteroids (badly) and, ultimately, poured quarters (and tokens when the arcades got smart enough to force you to use the whole dollar) into games at the arcade.

I played a lot of games at that arcade – Defender, Centipede, Pac Man, Ms. Pac Man, Stargate, Dig Dug, Missile Command, the list is long. On most, I was average, but there was one game in which I excelled: Galaga.

Last year, I went down to Joystix on a Friday night to get re-acquainted with some old friends (no, not vodka). Shining back at me like a beacon in the bleary night was a beautiful Galaga arcade game. For years, I’ve sworn that one day I’m going to own an original Galaga upright video game just because.

I needed only a single quarter to hit the high score and I hadn’t played Galaga in at least 5 or 6 years.

By the time I was done, my forearm was cramping. Being out of video game shape is very similar to being out of game shape in pro sports except that instead of rock hard abs, endurance and, you know, talent, you need a forearm like Popeye and a stomach lining made of lead to endure the hours of shitty nachos, stale popcorn and flat fountain drinks you’ll consume while destroying your vision in a dark, dank arcade. It’s like being a super hero and your power is social awkwardness.

Sure, your hand eye coordination will improve, but not for anything other than pretty lights on a screen. This might come in handy if you need to swat at a fly that lands on your television screen. Otherwise, it’s pretty useless, but it doesn’t matter because Galaga is awesome and you can suck my Challenge Stage with two ships if you don’t like it.

A little Galaga humor to end my post. Hope you enjoyed it and, if you did, I really wouldn’t admit it to the general public.

Lots of things in this world can bring you pleasure – great music, vacation, sex with prostitutes, crack. It’s all part of the rainbow of life. For me, on the short list of things that make me happy is cake.

Not only is it sweet and delicious, but it makes you feel special, like it’s your birthday any day you eat it, and who doesn’t love that!?

When I was a kid, my favorite was chocolate. I still really enjoy a good chocolate devil’s food cake with chocolate icing. I particularly like the devil’s food because I like feeling as if I’m eating something prepared by Satan himself. There’s a comforting feeling knowing the Prince of Darkness got his claws in a mixing bowl and whipped a little dessert just for me. It’s sweet really.

But, my favorite of all is white cake with white icing. This is not a racial thing. I don’t think you should keep black and white separate. In fact, I encourage interracial cakes. Hell, marblize those bastards even. Power to the batter, bitches.

Anyway, white cake with white icing is just fantastic. Don’t leave me near a plain wedding cake or I’ll eat the whole damn thing and even lick the little bride and groom…and the cake topper too – AHTHANKYOU!

Sheet cakes are usually made this way, although I don’t like the whipped cream icing nearly as much as the buttercream. In fact, as my ex-wife will attest, I went through a “sheet cake phase” where I randomly brought home sheet cakes from the store and ate them a little at a time right from the box. That was the summer I gained 75 pounds, suffered a triple coronary and smelled of fondant. Terrifying.

Other cakes high on my list include red velvet, angel food cake (my grandmother made the best version of this), ice cream cake and cheesecake, though that’s more like a pie, but I’m not going to quibble over sugar.

It should be noted that I also love cupcakes. Look, if I love a good sheet cake, why would I discriminate against its tiny little offspring. While I don’t make a practice of eating it regularly, I’m not opposed to veal or lamb, so why would I be adverse to eating baby cakes – and no, that is not the name of a stripper I met in Vegas.

Truth is, that wonderful combination of sugar and flour is hard to beat when it comes to dessert. Sure, ice cream is yummy, chocolate is decadent, pastries are tasty, pies are nom and tarts are tartastic, but cake will always remain king of the dessert heap, even the King Cake they have for Mardis Gras even though it has that crazy plastic baby inside destined to lodge in your throat and kill you if it doesn’t first come to life and stab you in the eyeball.

It’s just like that movie, Chucky Takes the Cake. Ok, maybe not.

Photo by groovehouse.

It’s Twitter, it’s Twitter, for fun it’s a wonderful toy!
It’s Twitter, it’s Twitter, fun for an @girl and an @boy!

Sing it to the tune of Slinky. You’ll get it. If you don’t, that’s ok. Not everyone gets everything, much like the thing I love for today.

Some don’t understand it. Others think it’s stupid. Still others think it hung the moon.

Twitter is the annoyingly pervasive web 2.0 “microblogging” service that is one part chat, one part blog and 100 percent time waster. It is often the equivalent of “I just at a cheese sandwich” or “Dude, Obama totally won and shit!”

However, it is also a fantastic way to find interesting links to stories, break news (the first photos from the plane that crashed in the Hudson were from a Twitter user), promote yourself, crack goofy one-liners and drop a quick note to someone without having to mess with your cell phone or email client.

More importantly, Twitter is one of the things that makes the internet so interesting and diverse. Sure, there are people on Twitter who just want to sell you something or whose Tweets are so inane that you want to stab yourself in the trackpad. There are people who Tweet way too much and at really inappropriate times (I don’t want to know that you just had an orgasm or that they just closed the lid on the coffin, thanks).

But, Twitter also engages people in interesting conversations, hooks people up for lunch when they don’t know where to eat, delivers information quickly and efficiently when asked, keeps you posted on what people are doing this weekend and lets you talk about ninjas all you want (that last one may just be me).

Twitter brings together two things that are clearly and wholly internet:

1. The short attention span of the average web user.
2. The desire of people to talk endlessly about themselves and learn about the trivial minutia of the lives of others.

It is the perfect place to be completely and sometimes inappropriately personal while still retaining a degree of casual distance and doing it in 140 characters or less.

If there is a better tool for the internet age, I don’t know what it is.

Need proof, follow me on Twitter.

In honor of this most stupid of holidays, I present to you what I hope will be a weekly series of posts on the Things I Love. Someone told me recently I should do more regular things on my blog. After I told them that I would honor their request by telling them to SUCK IT every Monday, I realized that wasn’t such a bad idea. So, I start with the 10 Albums That Influenced My Life.

This list is different from the 10 Albums That Influenced My Drinking or the 10 Albums That Punched Me in the Nads. Those will be upcoming. This list is about the ten records that most effected who I am as a person, musician and music fan. I got the idea for this list from venerable music aficionado and local dj David Sadoff who tagged me in a Facebook meme about the same subject.

Feel free to post your own.

10. KISS – Alive II

I can still remember the way this album smells. I had the poster version of the inside of this album on my wall along with Ace Frehley and his flaming guitar. In third or fourth grade, KISS was virtually all I could think about.

Until this, I was influenced heavily by what my mom listened to in the car on the way to school. Fortunately, that was mostly oldies, light rock and R&B stations, so I was a kid of the 70′s hearing The Beatles, The Zombies, The Hollies, Marvin Gaye, Elvis, Al Green, Aretha Franklin, Sam & Dave, James Taylor, The Little River Band and other great music that wasn’t disco.

But, KISS was it for me. I had their trading cards and was a member of the KISS Army. I dressed up as Gene Simmons one Halloween when I was about 10. I used to draw their logo in class when I was bored and talk about the rumors of them being devil worshipers at recess – clearly appropriate talk at a parochial school.

I can’t say I listen to this album or KISS in general that much anymore, but it was the first record I had my parents didn’t understand and the first record I had that you could play really loud and it made sense. That had a huge impact on me.

9. Mark Whitfield – The Marksman

Noting this album is important for two reasons. First, it demonstrates that this list does not necessarily list my FAVORITE albums of all time, but rather the one’s that had the biggest influence on me. Second, it is important because this was the first traditional jazz music I had ever heard.

I was 19 or 20 and working in a music instrument store. Someone at some music distributor screwed up and thought we were a record store and sent us promo after promo of new records. This was the beginning of grunge, so I remember distinctly getting Pearl Jam’s Ten and everyone in the store sitting around and saying, “Who’s this 70′s band that made a record?”

Whitfield’s disc was the only jazz CD we received, but we all liked listening to it even though we were all pretty much hard rock and metal guys. It was relaxing when you had been dealing with kids sitting in the back room and trying to play “Sweet Child of Mine” all day. It also helped me to realize that jazz music wasn’t just instrumental rock or thereabouts.

This album lead me to explore the world of jazz. Before long, I was listening to Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Milt Hopkins, Joe Henderson, Winton Marsalis, Dave Brubeck and Thelonious Monk. A lot of that was also due to my ex-wife, Rebecca, but it was Whitfield that started me down that path and, for that, I’m eternally grateful.

8. Al Di Meola – Elegant Gypsy

At a time when I thought the only fast guitar players in the history of music had names like Yngwie and Vai, Di Meola was a revelation to me. I got a copy of Elegat Gypsy on cassette as a whim and was absolutely blown away. Being a teenager, I had limited depth of musical knowledge and this stuff was pretty heady to me.

Maybe just as importantly, it was my introduction into the world of Latin music. The first Latin rhythms I remember hearing were on this record. That ultimately lead to Salsa and Afro-Cuban music along with bossa nova and others. It was what gave me the foundation to know how to play a basic samba when I started playing in a Latin rock band.

It didn’t hurt that the musicianship on this record was off the charts, but the influence to me was more about feel and style than skill. It gave me the perspective that maybe 15-year-olds don’t actually know everything. Shocking, I know.

7. George Winston – December

I was about 17 or 18 and I was looking for an album that had “Carol of the Bells” on it. For some reason, I really liked that Christmas song and I had even tried to crudely replicate all the parts on bass using just two tape decks in my bedroom.

I went over to Sound Warehouse near my house and dug through the bin of Christmas music as it was nearing the holidays. Most of the versions I found were vocal and I wanted an instrumental version. I found December and took it home not having any idea just what a phenomenal album I found next to The Chipmunks Christmas Album.

On first listen, I was immediately relaxed. To this day, it is the most relaxing thing I can listen to that isn’t a sound made by nature. The piano is so spare and so beautiful and it just sounds like winter.

Winston’s work has since been remastered and featured on Oprah’s Favorite Things, but it was that holiday in the mid-80′s when I first found what would ultimately rank as not just one the most influential albums of my life, but also one of my favorites.

6. Led Zeppelin – Houses of the Holy

I had never heard “Stairway to Heaven.” Impossible as it may seem given my love of Led Zeppelin, when I was a kid, I never listened to them. Even throughout my teenage years when I finally heard Stairway and a few of the other album hits, I was not moved to go out an buy any Zeppelin.

It wasn’t until I got to college that I bought Houses of the Holy completely randomly off of one of those “10 Albums for a Penny” lists. I think I got it mixed in with Tom Petty, the Cult and Rod Stewart (the old stuff, not that “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy” shit). It was the CD version – one of the first discs I ever owned in fact. I dropped it in the player and was absolutely floored.

How had I never listened to them before? To this day, “Song Remains the Same” is one of my favorite songs by the band, but all the amazing stuff on this record blows me away. As a bassist, I learned it backward and forward. John Paul Jones quickly rose to the top of my list of favorite bass players where he still sits today.

Later, I got II, ZoSo, Physical Grafitti and others, but Houses of the Holy remains my favorite Zeppelin album and one of the most important albums of my life.

5. Rush – Exit…Stage Left

When you are a young rock bass player and living in the 1980′s, there are a few guys you are probably going to worship. Geddy Lee tops that list.

What is interesting about Rush, and often overlooked, is that they were a really fantastic ROCK band. Sure, they were progressive and they wrote really long songs, but they were as balls out rockin’ as pretty much anyone. This live record (one of three live records on my list, ironically) demonstrated that fact.

To this day, Rush still sells out arenas and stadiums around the world. The fact that they aren’t in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is worth its own blog post. But, for my purposes here, this record changed how I viewed rock music and Lee certainly changed my bass playing. It made me realize that rock music – remember I was a metal head in the 80′s – didn’t have to be rhythmically boring and it didn’t have to follow the construct of pop music.

Exit…Stage Left changed my attitude about rock music and that, in and of itself, is more than enough to get it on this list, but the influence of Lee’s playing pushes it into the top 5.

4. Atlantic Rhythm & Blues – 1947-1974

As I mentioned above, my mom listened to oldies in the car fairly often. Artists like Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, Wilson Picket and others were all in the rotation and all of them were on Atlantic Records.

I bought this boxed set in the early 90′s at a time when my musical influences were changing dramatically. Much like hearing the blue and red Beatles greatest hits albums and trying to figure out how I knew the words to all the songs, hearing the songs in this boxed set was like listening to the voices of old friends from my childhood.

Disc 7 (1967-69) was, by far, the one that resonated with me the most. “Respect,” “Soul Finger,” “Skinny Legs and All,” “(Sittin’ On) The Dock Of the Bay,” “Rainy Night in Georgia,” “Think”…were all songs I loved and remembered.

As a musician, it influenced how I played and the grooves I liked. As a person, it deepened my ongoing love affair with R&B and soul music, something a white kid from the suburbs didn’t normally hear.

It became such a point of reference for me in music too. I could immediately spot music in films I had never even thought about before. The Blues Brothers suddenly made sense as more than just a funny movie. It also helped me to realize, when doing further study, just how important the music of that era was for America and how it viewed black people.

Needless to say, it is right at home on this list.

3. Van Halen I

When I was in middle school and high school, I used to HATE having to cut the grass. To this day, I absolutely abhor doing yard work. I’m sure it didn’t help that my parents had a fence overgrown with honeysuckle and the bees loved it. I got stung at least once every summer from the age of around 10 to about 17.

For at least a couple of summers, the thing that got me through it was listening to Van Halen I on my little Walkman. In fact, I listened to it so much, I vividly remember being out in the yard cutting the grass and hearing this high pitched squeal. It was the tape disintegrating.

Few albums have ever been equal parts fun and serious music as Van Halen’s debut record. The musicianship was off the charts. The songs were memorable. And the fun-loving goofiness of frontman David Lee Roth pulled it together and kept it from becoming too serious.

This is still one of my all-time favorite records, but it’s influence on me was so significant because it was the first record I ever loved from beginning to end. There were no songs to be skipped. I loved them all. To this day, that is a rarity for me. I can probably count on less than both hands the number of albums I like from beginning to end.

It was also important to me because the whole thing felt like controlled chaos and that was really attractive. Sure, it was loud and crazy, but there was a measure of control exerted over the music that made it almost adult music for kids. It was serious in its execution, but fun as hell. And it SOUNDED AMAZING.

The combination of the great songs, the sonic quality, the ridiculous musicianship and the unbridled joy of this record left an indelible mark on me and it is probably the primary reason for my love of loud rock music – the kind that is only half as good when it isn’t cranked on your stereo.

2. The Beatles – Revolver

The first Beatles albums I ever heard were the blue and red greatest hits compilations. I vividly remember driving to Austin on my way to my first year of college at University of Texas and my roommate put in a cassette he made with cuts from the two records. I couldn’t understand how I knew every song I heard.

Fact is, the Beatles are like that. Even if you don’t know them, you KNOW them. They are a part of pop music consciousness. When I was a kid, there was a station in Houston that played ALL Beatles music – KBTL. There always seem to be shows like “Breakfast with the Beatles” on radio and they are a never ending source of influence for musicians around the world.

After hearing that, I bought the White Album, knowing the name and thinking I should buy it. I loved it. But, it wasn’t until I bought Revolver that I discovered the band that would be my favorite of all time.

I purchased the vinyl version from some used record shop. It was ratty around the edges, but the vinyl was pristine. I didn’t really know the songs on it except “Elanor Rigby” (the reason I bought it) and “Yellow Submarine” (I probably heard it on Sesame Street). I vaguely knew “Good Day Sunshine” and had heard “Taxman.” I thought “Got To Get You Into My Life” was an Earth Wind and Fire song, since they had covered it in the 70′s.

But, it was the deeper cuts on the album that blew me away. “And Your Bird Can Sing,” “She Said She Said,” “I’m Only Sleeping,” “Here, There and Everywhere,” these were all amazing songs that I listened to over and over and over.

When I got to the final song on side two the first time, I almost turned off the stereo before it came on. Then, I heard that sitar and “Tomorrow Never Knows” came blaring out of the stereo. I turned it up louder and was mesmerized. The thick layers of sound, the backward guitar, the frenetic horns, the deep foundation groove and Lennon’s pinched and squeezed vocals were transcendent to me, and I wasn’t even stoned!

The Beatles were such innovators in so many ways and I figured that out firsthand with this album. “Tomorrow Never Knows” may be the first recorded example of what we think of today as “loops” since the bass and drums never change throughout the entire song.

This album completely opened my mind to the possibilities of pop music. It fundamentally altered my perception of pop music and turned me from a guy who liked the Beatles into a full-fledged fan. It was from this point forward that I listened endlessly to Beatles records and dissected them musically to figure out how they did it. Revolver was a sea change for my life as a person and a musician.

1. Sting – Bring On the Night

It may seem strange to have this at number one. It’s not a terribly well known record and it’s not really like anything else on the list. Let me explain.

In the summer of 1987, I was hanging out with my friend at his house and he mentioned he had this documentary about the guy from the Police. We sat down to watch it and I was completely floored.

As a teenager who brushed off virtually anything that wasn’t hard rock, heavy metal or some musical masterpiece with underlying heaviness, seeing guys this good play music that grooved this hard without a loud or even distorted guitar shook my world.

In every sense of the word, this ROCKED! It was intense. It was driving. More than that, it was funky as HELL. This band made up of incredible young jazz musicians just blew like crazy and it really freaked me out. I immediately bought Dream of the Blue Turtles and the live CD listed here.

It forced me to re-think everything I had thought about music in the past and re-define what rock music was to me. It began one of the most important periods of musical discovery in my life and lead me to some of the most influential records including several on this list.

I won’t say that without it I never would have discovered jazz or The Beatles. But, I definitely think it would have slowed that process dramatically.

When things influence us, they open us up to new possibilities and give us ideas we never would’ve had before. Bring On the Night absolutely did that for me and it remains a seminal musical moment in my life.

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Your turn. Comment and add some of your own. Oh, and Happy Valentine’s Day.