There are a few standard questions you get asked when talking about music. What are your favorite songs? What are your favorite albums? Who are your favorite artists?
That last one has always given me a bit of trouble. For whatever reason, I don't have a lengthy roster of bands and artists with discographies I dearly love. It's true I often tend to think in terms of albums as opposed to careers, but I do that because of how often albums are preceded or followed by others I don't care for in the same way. To love an artist, they need to go above and beyond just having one or two albums that have spoken to me. It's a deeper, and longer lasting connection, and it isn't one I have with very many.
I will never be one of those people who can make a 'top fifty' bands list, because I can't lie to you and say I have deep affection for that many of them, as whole entities. Perhaps I set my bar too high, but that's where it resides, and I'm going to work with it.
With that being said, in no particular order, here are those I would call me absolute favorites.
Tonic: It has been more than twenty years since I would have first declared Tonic to be my favorite band. They are one of the three on this list who are essential to who I consider myself to be, and they are the only band where I can put on any of their records and be just as happy. "Lemon Parade" may no longer be my favorite album ever, but it's immeasurable how much Tonic's music has meant to me. I have been struggling lately with whether or not they are still my favorite band, but they will always be one of the most important. They are as close to perfect as any band has ever gotten.
Meat Loaf: As I have said many times, I might not have ever become a music fan if I didn't hear "I'd Do Anything For Love" on the radio. His voice, and Jim Steinman's songwriting, made me fall in love with music. Meat had his ups and downs, and there are a handful of records I try to pretend don't exist, but I can't describe what great Meat Loaf music makes me feel. I don't know who I would be without those records, and there's something about them that acts like a reset button, putting things right when I don't know what else will work.
Dilana: Love at first hearing doesn't have the same ring to it as first sight, but it's just as powerful a reaction, and it's the one I had with Dilana. I didn't need to know anything more than that voice to feel a rope being tied around my heart, and the slack has only been shortened as it gets pulled in with each passing year. When I complain about words not being capable of expressing the depth of a feeling, I am referring to experiences like this. I can say her voice resonates at the same frequency as my soul, but does even that say enough? She is the voice of conscience, love, and god, all echoing together.
Jimmy Eat World: As I get older, I realize mood swings are more shades of gray than they are different ends of the rainbow. Jimmy Eat World's music can be bright and shiny, or dark and heavy, but it always comes with a tone of melancholy I find myself living in. Like a little black dress goes with everything, so does Jimmy Eat World's tone. It might be the closest reflection of my mental state of any band, which explains why I find myself listening to them as often as I have in recent times.
The Wallflowers: As I have said before, there is an entire side to myself I may never have discovered without the "Breach" record. I don't know if I had ever given any consideration to poetry before, but Jakob Dylan's words sparked something inside me. As a lyricist, he is who I find the most inspiration in, even to this day. "Some flowers just bloom dead," he may have written, but Wallflowers are always in season.
Dave Matthews Band: When I talk about how important mood is, few things are better explanations than "The Lillywhite Sessions". The songs don't talk about issues that resonate with me, nor with words that particularly do, but there is a looming, pervasive sense of depression that seeps through every note of the record. That is something I connect with as much as I do the wonderful melodies. That worn out feeling is present more often than I remembered across the discography, and it's actually the last two records that have stoked the fires within me. Aging, eh?
Elvis Costello: I own more Elvis Costello albums than anyone else in my collection. He is a volume scorer, but despite the shooting percentage, the highlights are there and hard to turn away from. I learned a lot about songwriting listening to "King Of America", and the rest of his career has taught me lessons about the merits and the dangers of experimentation. When I thought myself to be an 'angry young man' (though I wasn't), early Elvis fed into that image. He matured, as we all do, and that has given his music the ability to be seen through more facets. Just like a diamond, eh?
Halestorm: Outside of the music I encountered in my formative years, nothing has made as much of an impression as Lzzy Hale's voice. She echoes in the spaces still left empty in me, serving as a reminder the sponge is not yet saturated, and there are still more feelings I can absorb. Having that reminder saves me a lot of internal struggle, and there is something oddly soothing when Lzzy screams the key line of a song at us. Music soothes the savage beast, whichever way around it happens to be working.
Ronnie James Dio: When I want to remember the grandeur and power of rock, there is only one voice that can do the job. "Stargazer", "Gates Of Babylon", "Heaven & Hell", "Fallin' Off The Edge Of The World", "I", and the list goes on. Dio was heavy as a philosophy. I might not be, but there are moments when we need something to convince us we are so we can make it through whatever we face. Dio does that for me, whether it's Rainbow, Sabbath, or a few of his solo band albums. Rock on.
Blues Traveler: "Four" was the first CD I ever owned, and I couldn't begin to count how many times I sat in front of the stereo rambling through the bridge of "Hook". Back then, I had no idea what the song was about, and these days I laugh at just how right it was. John Popper would teach me lessons about prison murder and Cyrano De Bergerac, and whatever form Blues Traveler took from album to album, his voice would often come perilously close to the one in my own head. "Miserable Bastard", from his solo album, is supposed to be an anthem, right?
Edguy/Avantasia: I can trace the exact moment I started to look at metal as a genre to hearing Edguy's "The Headless Game" playing as I sat in on a friend's college radio show. There was something special about Tobias Sammet's songwriting that caught my ear as nothing else heavy really ever had. Little did I know that over the next few years, Tobi would continue writing gem after gem, giving me a vision of a musical future I've been disappointed not to be living in. No one else has ever blended hooks and heaviness as easily, or as well. I'm no metalhead, but Tobi is the one songwriter who makes me at least reconsider before throwing the label away.
Graveyard: Despite my personality, I'm not much of a fan of the blues, or blues rock. Graveyard is the one band that stops time, that makes me understand the way music freezes memories in a form of amber, and that shows me the appeal of the past that is otherwise lost on me. They write simple songs delivered with a raw honesty that strips down the gloss and polish to the bare bones of what makes music so great. It's all about a riff, a melody, and a voice that can carry an emotion. Graveyard, especially on those almost flawless first three records, reminds me that you can scribble changes in every color under the sun, but the blueprint is written in ink for a reason.
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