Four albums=four reasons to be thankful for Brian Eno
Brian Eno should have starred in "The Man Who Fell to Earth."
The 1976 cult film about an alien masquerading as a human starred David Bowie, a reasonable choice considering his cultivated, self-consciously weird image and frequent use of sci-fi imagery. Eno, though, managed to be a lot weirder than Bowie without ever seeming to try. Bowie leaned on lyrical cues to express his futurism, but Eno's records exude a pervasive aura of other-worldliness; rock and roll as interpreted by The Man From Mars, pop songs from Jupiter, soundtracks from deep space. Beginning with Here Come the Warm Jets in 1973 and ending with Before and After Science in 1977, Eno's rock phase combined that alien quality with a prodigious talent and what he termed "idiot energy" to produce four of the best, most original rock albums of all time. more >>>
into a 98-pound weakling obsessed with Frank Zappa
I will never forget the lunch period in ninth grade when I discovered Frank Zappa.
I was a socially awkward and alienated teen in the midst of puberty, a perfect target for any number of petulant performers or genres. On that day at the local record store, however, I would find an artist who did not stand for morose nonsense. more >>>
