Mission: Immersion 10.0 – Wheels In Motion by Any Trouble

Stiff 1981

I truly love Power Pop with all my heart, thanks to early weanings on Big Star, The Posies, The Beatles and things of that nature. There’s a downside to it, though – more than almost any other genre of music, it can seem very contrived when not done right. This is because generally, the people who make Power Pop are extremely gung ho about it, and are dedicated to keeping it alive. This is a good thing, but dedication is not the same as inspiration, and if you’re too dedicated and not inspired enough, the idea pool gets pretty shallow.

Mission: Immersion 9.0 – Pacer by The Amps

Elektra 1995

I picked up this special Record Store Day release becuase I love Kim Deal. To be a real music geek, it’s almost required – Deal played major roles in the Pixies and the Breeders, two of the most important rock bands of the late-twentieth century. For a music aficionado to say they don’t like her would almost be akin to a math genius saying they don’t like the Pythgorean Theorem. Deal is that important to modern rock music – she brings equal parts fun, brilliance and chaos to her tunes, all wrought with an originality of spirit that is the key to her standout approach.

Mission: Immersion 8.0 – California by American Music Club

Frontier 1988

Thank heavens for Love Garden Sounds and Kief’s Music. Thanks to these amazing record stores, I am able to live in Kansas without having to buy my CDs and vinyls from Hastings (OK, I bought one vinyl from Hastings ONCE, but it was a copy of one of my all-time favorite records – Meat Puppets II – for fifteen bucks, so sue me). Both stores always have all sorts of awesome stuff, like this American Music Club record I acquired at Love Garden. I can’t imagine there are tons of Kansas folks who really dig on AMC, since head songwriter Mark Eitzel is so stubborn about making his songs as slow and depressing as possible.

Mission: Immersion 7.0 – History by America

Warner Bros 1975

I’ve heard tons of America songs over the years, but I never even realized it. That’s always cool to me, when you’re just casually listening to some record and a song pops up that you know. It transforms the whole experience and makes you listen a little closer, and in my case makes me want to look up a bunch of info on Wikipedia and the like. It was a domino effect with History, America’s greatest hits record – I put it on thinking I would only know two of the songs, realized I knew more like five or six, started looking at the album cover more closely and realized it was produced by George Fucking Martin, looked up the Wikiness and realized late SNL great Phil Hartman did the album cover, and BOOM! Now I’m kind of in love with it.

Mission: Immersion 6.0 – School’s Out by Alice Cooper

Warner Bros 1972

The Alice Cooper records in which Alice Cooper was still a band, and not just the one dude, were pretty sweet. I don’t know them all that well, and I’m not even very familiar with many AC songs other than the well-known ones and a few others, but I have listened to records like Billion Dollar Babies, Easy Action and Killer, and I greatly appreciate and observe the difference between the two eras. If you’re bothering at all with Alice Cooper, it had better be the group era, or you’re either a glutton for punishment or you just enjoy wasting your time.

Mission: Immersion 5.0 – Rocks by Aerosmith

Columbia 1976

Aerosmith may have descended into self parody over their 40+ year career, but how could that be avoided? The longer your band is around, the longer you have to pay to keep it around, and eventually, some aspect of it is going to get cheapened. Name me one band that’s been together longer than 30 years that hasn’t cheapened themselves in some way. Aerosmith definitely falls into this category, but before they met this fate, they were a pretty kickass band.

Mission: Immersion 4.0 – Cuts Like a Knife and Reckless by Bryan Adams

A&M 1983

My record collection is full of the most random stuff. One of the main reasons for that is the fact that here in Lawrence, every year there’s this big music and equipment expo out at the fairgrounds, and you can get a whole huge bag of records for $5. This is the only scenario in which I would ever end up with a Bryan Adams album. I was poking through these thousands of vinyls looking for ANYTHING at all that I might even remotely enjoy, and upon seeing Reckless I said to myself, “It has ‘Summer of ’69′ on it. That’s a great jam. It has to at least be worth it to own that tune on vinyl, right?” And Cuts Like A Knife was right there, so I grabbed it as well. It was the same story with the Abba records, although after listening to Bryan Adams, I can say I definitely value the Abba records more…and I didn’t even like them all that much!

Mission: Immersion 3.0 – If You Want Blood…You’ve Got It by AC/DC

Atlantic 1978

AC/DC have been getting unfairly lumped in with a lot of inferior dumb rock bands recently, and younger generations are seemingly starting to devalue them. I am here to reiterate the importance of AC/DC. Sure, they are a dumb rock band, but only in the most organic and unpretentious sense. If they weren’t the first of their breed, they were certainly the first that really did it right and set a solid precedent for what good, hard rock and roll should sound like. If You Want Blood…You’ve Got It is the band’s definitive album because it’s the only solid live portrait of the Bon Scott era – the best era – and the live setting is so important to the AC/DC experience.

Mission: Immersion 2.2 – Voulez-Vous and Super Trouper by Abba

Atlantic 1979

I decided to lump these last two Abba albums together for a couple reasons. First of all, it’s true what most say about Abba – you really only need the greatest hits collection (in the case of Abba there are several, but the consensus seems to be that Gold is the best). Secondly, after three Abba albums, they all start to kind of blend together anyway. As I’ve stated previously, they have a formula they do not deviate from too often – sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

Mission: Immersion 2.1 – The Album by Abba

Atlantic 1977

Thanks to my recent undertaking of listening to and reviewing every album I own, I now have three Abba albums to get through in the next three days. That’s a lot of Abba, and it kind of worried me at first. But after checking out The Album, I’m actually pretty excited. It also helps that I read Chuck Klosterman’s brilliant article on ABBA fairly recently (from his book Eating the Dinosaur), in which he deconstructs their distinguished formula and explains why they are one of the greatest groups of all time. It’s a great read, and you should check it out.