Marian’s Marginalia

My Real Actual Influences

So I made a list once upon a time of my musical/artistic influences, and wrote them down and touted them proudly.  But my parents saw that list and called baloney.  So with their help I’ve drawn up a more accurate list of childhood influences, as well as the roster of the top 10 most influential albums I’ve loved and listened to in becoming a musical self.  Here ya go, world, more honesty.  In no particular order, stuff I listened to a gazillion times at some point in my youth, with a few I’ve spun enough times to make the list even though I came to them in college or after:

1. Yes – 90125, Fragile
2. James Taylor – Sweet Baby James, Never Die Young, & New Moonshine
3. Stevie Wonder – Songs in the Key of Life
4. Quincy Jones – Back on the Block
5. Beatles – Sgt. Pepper
6. Paul Simon – Graceland
7. Simon & Garfunkel – Bookends, Bridge Over Troubled Water
8. Weird Al Yankovic – everything
9. They Might Be Giants – everything thru 2005
10. The Aquabats – everything thru 2004
11. Menotti – Amahl and the Night Visitors
12. Beethoven – Symphonies No. 3, 6 & 7
13. J.S. Bach – Goldberg Variations, Cello Suites
14. Gilbert & Sullivan – Pirates of Penzance, The Mikado
15. Lyle Lovett – Joshua Judges Ruth, I Love Everybody
16. Ragtime
17. Les Misérables
18. Miss Saigon
19. Cats
20. Kasey Chambers – Barricades & Brick Walls
21. Norah Jones – Come Away With Me
22. Jason Mraz – Waiting for My Rocket to Come
23. Harry Connick, Jr.
24. Ella Fitzgerald
25. Oscar Peterson
26. The King’s Singers
27. Diana Krall – All for You
28. Carole King – Tapestry
29. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
30. Jewel – Pieces of You
31. Jars of Clay – Flood, Much Afraid, If I Left the Zoo
32. Sting – Mercury Falling, Soul Cages
33. Dave Matthews Band – Under the Table & Dreaming, Crash
34. Earth, Wind, & Fire
35. Tower of Power
36. The Temptations
37. Holst – The Planets
38. Stravinsky – Rite of Spring, Firebird
39. Copland – Billy the Kid Suite, Rodeo, lots more
40. Leonard Bernstein – complete works
41. Brand New Heavies – Brother Sister
42. Joni Mitchell – Clouds, Blue, For the Roses, Court & Spark, Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter
43. The Proclaimers – Sunshine on Leith
44. Marc Cohn – Marc Cohn, Burning the Haze
45. Carly Simon – Have You Seen Me Lately
46. Julia Fordham – Porcelain
47. Bruce Hornsby – Harbor Lights, Hot House, Spirit Trail
48. Bonnie Raitt – Luck of the Draw
49. 100 Carols for Choirs (Oxford hymn book)
50. Christmas with Julie Andrews
51. Pink Martini – Sympathique, Hang on Little Tomato
52. Moulin Rouge soundtrack
53. Romeo + Juliet soundtrack
54. Peter Mulvey
55. Stephen Fearing
56. Kris Delmhorst – Songs for a Hurricane, Five Stories
57. Five Iron Frenzy
58. Brent Bourgeois
59. The Newsboys
60. Audio Adrenaline
61. Into the Grey
62. Susan Ashton
63. Regina Spektor
64. Sarah Harmer – You Were Here, All of Our Names
65. Postal Service – Give Up
66. Iron & Wine – Our Endless Numbered Days
67. Iron & Wine / Calexico – In the Reins
68. Baltimore Consort – Bright Day Star, The Mad Buckgoat, The Ladyes Delight
69. Polyphony (choral ensemble) – O Magnum Misterium
70. Carbonleaf – Echo Echo

And my top 10 Most Spun Albums, right up until I produced Vanilla (some are still spun constantly):

• Milk-Eyed Mender by Joanna Newsom
• Blue by Joni Mitchell
• Songs for a Hurricane by Kris Delmhorst
• Marry Me by Saint Vincent
• Le Fil by Camille
• Sixpence None the Richer by Sixpence None the Richer
• Seven Swans by Sufjan Stevens
• You Were Here by Sarah Harmer
• The Crane Wife by The Decemberists
• Begin to Hope by Regina Spektor

There.  Now I don’t have to keep repeating this list for people.  Lots of awesome folks have been left off of it, but I believe it’s truest to what I listened to growing up, rather than what I listen to now and wish I had listened to growing up.  Then again I was never all that cool.

Mission accomplished!  This is now written down.  I’ma go do real work with this out of my head.