The albums thus far discussed in this series have been enduring favorites, listened to as much now as when they first clicked with me. There is another class of Albums That Meant Something, though, consisting of works whose shadows loomed large over certain periods in my life, yet I’ve rarely listened to since. Today’s selection falls into that latter category — of great significance, but I couldn’t tell you the last time I gave it a spin.

I can tell you though, the date and place I purchased the album in question: December 31, 1991 at In Your Ear’s Harvard Square location. My punk rock pal Leech and I were scheduled to meet up my significant other of three weeks and her friend for a ride to a New Year’s Ever party in Somerville. Having a few hours to burn, Leech and I killed the time in our usual fashion — taking the long walk from Allston to Porter Square while checking out every used record shop along the way.

Pickings were slim that day…until we hit In Your Ear’s basement location on Mt. Auburn Street. The early 1990s were a boom time for used vinyl fans, as folks with more money than sense rushed to upgrade their music collections to the hot new compact disc format.  The mass dumping of used records resulted in a wonderland of readily available music for the audiophile on a budget.   Various rarities and imports aside, it was possible to score a copy of nearly any pop album from previous two decades for under a fiver.  My record collection wasn’t the product of format snobbery, but of affordability.

As luck would have it, I hit the shop’s ”new arrivals” bin in the wake of some major acquisitions, and the crates were packed with gems on the cheap (and a lot of Partridge Family stuff, perhaps in anticipation of demand generated by Susan Dey’s then-recent appearance on SNL).  Goaded by the $2.99 price tags, I splurged on a pair of LPs by two bands I knew about but had never really warmed up to.

I missed the Eighies “alternative” scene as it unfolded, being too preoccupied with 60′s rock and soul to pay much mind to big-haired Brits with synthesizers and chronic depression.  When I stumbled into the remnants of punk rock scene towards the end of the decade, I came in by way of speed metal and hardcore — semi-articulate shock and rage for its own sake, and highly suspicious of anything that smacked of ”artsy shit.”  My new girlfriend, however, was three years older than me.   Her talk about “evolving” past three-chord thrash baffled me, but also left me wondering where such a step would lead.

Truth to tell, it was my effort to get a handle on her musical tastes that really led me to pick up The Cure’s Staring at the Seasingles collection and Public Image Ltd’s Album on the final afternoon of December 1991.  The former didn’t make much of an impression — it would take another few years and a copy of Seventeen Seconds’ postpunk minimalism to sell me on the band — but Album (or Cassette, Compact Disc or whatever you want to label John Lydon’s commentary about the music biz; it will always be Album to me) dug its hooks in deep..for a while, at least.

The record is the high water mark of PiL’s career, the only album by the band (which by this stage consisted of Lydon and an array of guest musicians including Ryuichi Sakamoto, Steve Vai, Ginger Baker, and Tony Williams) that managed to sustain the balance between Lydon’s imp of the abrasive and his paradoxical pop tendencies.   The album does have its standout track — the celtopop-meets-Pistols “Rise” – but even the weaker efforts are consistently listenable and make Album one of the rarest of creatures, an LP I can listen to from beginning to end without getting the itch to skip a song.

Thus a purchase motivated by some creepy-in-hindsight psychological stalking became a near-permanent resident of my turntable during the first half of 1992, and the background music for the composition of many, many last minute term papers.  That’s the main reason why I have a difficult time revisiting Album – I can’t make it thirty seconds into “F.F.F.” without being overcome with the feeling that I ought to start work on a ten page essay about the significance of Feste’s role in Twelfth Night.

As for that new girlfriend?  It turned out that she parted way with Cure fandom after 1985 and Robert Smith’s devolution into self-parody.  While she did like PiL, she preferred the band’s This Is What You Want… This Is What You Get LP.  I still ended up marrying her despite that.

Recommended listening: Public Image Limited – Rise (from Album, 1986)

Related posts:

  1. Albums That Meant Something – Part 10 – Looking for a guide
  2. Albums That Meant Something – Part 11 – Respect the dots
  3. Albums That Meant Something – Part 12 – What I need I just don’t have