This Record Changed My Life II

Zan Rowe | Triple J
Fugazi – Red Medicine

As a teenager, a heap of my musical discoveries came from my best friend’s big sister. Her and her mates steadily built a collection of, up until then, totally foreign records to me. Fugazi hit me like a shot to the head. Their visceral, discordant songs pulled me in, and before long I found myself climbing the stairs up to Au-Go-Go records in Little Bourke Street to buy Red Medicine in 1995. It opened up my world: to the DC scene, to Fugazi’s politics in relation to the production and fair distribution of music, and most importantly, it ripped open my brain to an incredible energy that captured everything I wanted to hear as an angst filled teen – screeching guitar sounds, guttural cries, angular guitar and tight drums. It was perfection. I still listen to it and feel chills when Do You Like Me wrenches out of those cutting guitars into a perfectly pop hardcore moment.

Darren Levin | Editor, Mess+Noise 
Aerosmith – Get A Grip

I really wanted to say something cool like Gilberto Gil’s 1968 or Like Flies On Sherbet, but Aerosmith’s 1993 album Get A Grip opened me up to a lifelong obsession with music that few would think possible for an overproduced turd of a record featuring a pierced cow teat on the cover and three power ballads that sound exactly the same(Cryin/Amazin/Crazy). I first heard Living On The Edge while rollerblading at an activity centre in the sleepy (read: boring) Melbourne suburb of Nunawading. I think they played it between Snow’s Informer and Two Princes by Spin Doctors. I bought the album from Brash’s the next day. And then I bought Rocks. And Toys In The Attic. And Alice In Chain’s Dirt. And Soundgarden’s Superunknown. And Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation. And Pavement’s Slanted And Enchanted. And You Am I’s Hi Fi Way. And…

Shaun Diviney | Short Stack
Blink 182 – Enema Of The State

This is the album that really got me into punk rock. As I heard it, I knew this is what I wanted to do with my life, to be like these guys. The sound and the movement reeled me in but it was the songwriting that kept me around. I taught myself guitar to these songs and learnt every one inside out. I think the reason it appealed to me is that it didn’t take itself too seriously; it taught me music could be fun, and I think that’s something a lot of artists today can relate to.

Yelawolf | Artist
Group Home – Livin’ Proof

There have been a few albums that have been a part of my life for a period. Whenever you go through something in life there’ll often be an album that you go to while going through a hard time in your life, or very good time of your life. But Group Home’s Livin’ Proof was an album that spoke to me. I was at rock bottom: with my mum, living on the floor of an apartment in Nashville, and those beats inspired me so much. All I listened to was that album over and over again. It’s funny because I was surrounded with Triple Six Mafia, I was surrounded with 8ball, MJG, Skinny Pimp all the Suave House, everything Southern. But there was something about Livin’ Proof and that album that was just perfect. It just spoke to me. It is an album that is part of my life that I’ll never forget. But honestly, there have been a lot.

Chit Chat | Music MAX Presenter
Miles Davis – Kind Of Blue

I grew up with jazz in the house but in my teens I was happy to let The Clash, The Cure and Talking Heads distract me. Sometime around 20 I discovered Kind of Blue and it’s been with me ever since. Recorded in 1959, it’s an all-star cast including John Coltrane, Cannonball Alderley and Bill Evans. This album is a rare and exotic bird where the sum of the parts makes a much greater whole. This is a proper album that should only be played in correct order, end to end, to get the desired effect. In fact it’s the only truly perfect album in my collection. It’ll wake you up in a gentle way and put you in a good mood all day, it’ll tuck you in and let you drift into the deepest sleep, it’s superb on those road trips where no one needs to talk to feel complete. You can drink to it, but you’ll only buy fine wine as a fitting tribute. Play it in the yard on the warmest summer day or around the fire in winter. You can’t breakup to this album, it’ll make you strive for a better sexual technique, it will transport you at any given moment to New York City, the place of its birth. “From the rocking of the cradle to the rolling of the hearse” this is the album above all others that will soundtrack your journey.