This is a twofer: “Life’s a Riot with Spy vs. Spy” by Billy Bragg, and Suzanne Vega’s self-titled debut. I think the Vega album was probably more influential for me, but it’s pretty close. Both purchases were the result of seeing them live. I was able to immediately get the Vega record, but the Billy Bragg record took me ages to find. The reason was that I was looking for an album called “F**k me, I’m Famous,” which, of course didn’t exist. 

I started the school year seeing Echo & the Bunnymen play at Irvine Meadows. But first onstage that night was a guy alone, who sounded like a one guitar Clash. He introduced the set saying, “This is off my new album, “F**k me, I’m Famous” and he played “New England” with the chorus, “I don’t want to change the world / I’m not looking for a new England / I’m just looking for another girl.” Myself band-less … exhausted by the politics of the day … I was hooked! But I could never find that stupid album! My other favorite lyric from that song is, “I saw two shooting stars that night / I wished on the them, but they were only satellites / It’s wrong to wish on space hardware / I wish, I wish, I wish you cared!” 

At the end of the year, Suzanne Vega shows up for a noon concert at Ackerman Union. Another artist completely alone with a guitar, but quieter. It felt more portable. Her voice reminded me of Astrud Gilberto, pure, vibrato-less, intimate. In fact it was practically speak-singing, maybe Lou Reed influenced, maybe Laurie Anderson. And it was really bedroom music, songs told from and to those walls. Perfect for the disguised introvert that I am. “Cracking” opens the album with “It’s a one time thing…it just happens a lot,” and the last line of that song is “Wondering where the hell I have been.” 

“New England” and “Cracking” are like two sides of the same story, the disappointment of satellites and leaping for the “one time” repeatedly, then losing all sense of direction. It fit perfectly with the annual reinvention I felt as a freshman, sophomore, junior, then senior. 

And of course, the simplicity of the format, that’s what got me through college and into my career. I took one acoustic and one electric guitar to England after graduation and played on the street to extend my wandering. I had my Billy Bragg cassette with me. Not only did Billy have printed on the cover that you shouldn’t pay more than £2.99 for the record, but the opposite side of the cassette was left blank and recordable to “Bootleg the Bragg, confuse the enemy!” Of course, on that blank side, I recorded some of my own songs in tunnels by the canals in Venice. 

Tying things up, the first and only time I played CBGB’s, Lenny Kaye was an invited guest of my publisher which thrilled the hell out of me not only because of Patti Smith, but also because he produced “Suzanne Vega.” He was with Seymour Stein, and couldn’t have been nicer. (Seymour and I argued about my song, “Jackson, Mississippi,” but that’s a story for another day.) 

A couple years later I was in London and did some recording with Billy Bragg’s guitar tech/bestie, Wiggy who introduced me to the world of Cockney rhyming slang. 

Regarding impact, the reason “Suzanne Vega” had more of an influence at that time was that I’d been invested in the lane of Dylan to Strummer from where it seemed Billy Bragg emerged. Suzanne Vega, led me deeper into Joni Mitchell, probably prepared me for Nick Drake, and when I heard Lou Reed’s “New York” a few years later, I was truly ready to dive down that glorious Velvet Underground rabbit hole.

Again, this was music that played in the house when I was a kid that I worked my way back to after “learning” the songs from other artists. I knew “Work Song” from Nina Simone. I knew “Dat Dere” from Rickie Lee Jones. “Afro Blue” from John Coltrane (the music was actually written by Mongo Santamaria, with Brown’s lyrics coming in 1959 for Abbey Lincoln to debut…)

I actually think it was my mom who was the most ardent OBJ fan in the family and encouraged me to see him if I ever had the chance. The opportunity came at The Jazz Bakery some time in the mid-nineties. Much of this debut record was still in his repertoire, as it should’ve been when you start out with such classics. But what was so remarkable was how the passing of time gave the songs even more depth. OBJ had actually been in advertising before committing to music, and he also had written a musical around the time he started working with Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln on the “We Insist!” record. His performance was something like cabaret in the best way possible, meaning that it was theatrical and the storytelling was precise. And it was so honest, fearless. 

I should have started writing this earlier… listen to the music, you’ll get it. Good night…or good morning!

This was another record my father played for me for I could walk. And when people ask me if I’m Brazilian, it’s because these rhythms were among the first that I ever heard. It’s kin to the ability to pronounce certain sounds in languages that we lose we try to learn them later in life. I don’t claim to be an expert, but the music and I’ve played with echoes of Bossa Nova and samba is a direct result of this and the Joao Gilberto and Antonio Carlos Jobim records in heavy rotation when I was playing the Quaker Oats drum!

This was another record in my cassette collection as I busked around Europe after college. Though I’d had the sounds in my head for years, it was during that time that I actually figured out the chords that would shape my songwriting after that. 

It’s really the vocal songs that get me on this album, that slightly flat, vibrato-less, innocent and intimate voice made fall in love before I knew what that was. It was such a thrill in the 90s to actually meet Astrud Gilberto after a show at Catalina Jazz Club. 

And Kenny Burrell is the guitar player! I didn’t put that together until I met him also in the early 90s, realizing that the sound that felt like it was part of me from birth was the man I was helping to play records for his Duke Ellington class at UCLA. 

I think that Burrell’s warmth and Gilberto’s purity are things that I’ve aspired to put in the brew whatever music I’ve created. 

I won’t say that this is a perfect album, but it was the welcoming invitation into a world of music that really enriched my life. 

(And, this cover is usually on my wall…)

This popped up on a playlist yesterday. It was “Four Women,” I think. It prompted me to listen start to finish. I used to hear this coming from the living room at our house and always wondered who that man was with the funny voice singing. “Break Down and Let it All Out” always kind of got to me in my bedroom down the hall. Flash forward from my memories as and 8-year-old to my 20/21-year-old self, very aware of Ms. Simone. She accompanied me via cassette as I traveled and busked through Europe with my copy of “The Autobiography of Malcom X.” That cassette was with me when I landed on the air-mattress in my dad’s living room in Inglewood. 

Somewhere along the line I started singing “Black is the Color of my True Love’s Hair” in my shows. I don’t think I knew it was an Irish folk song when I first learned it. It felt like a pure celebration of black beauty. As a mixed kid in this White-ish folk/rock scene, it felt good to sing something #blackAF, unapologetically black. I’d even sometimes do the live version from Nina’s album, “Black Gold,” incorporating her guitarist, Emile Latimer’s take specifically addressing female beauty. His voice is so similar to hers that for many years, I thought Nina was taking a gender flipping approach, which struck me as another genius creative risk for 1969. 

One night at Luna Park, this kid from NY was sound-checking before me and he started playing “Lilac Wine,” also from “Wild is the Wind.” Yep, Jeff Buckley. I felt a kindred spirit and he turned out to be an amazing artist and extremely generous with me as I was starting to do shows in NY. 

This also makes me laugh, wondering what my dad might have said to his version of “Lilac Wine,” since he chastised me for playing Bowie’s version of “Wild is the Wind” over and over, saying, “Why did that white boy sing Nina’s song?!” Oh, Pops…

I love the idea that in a pre-internet world I was able to mishear, misunderstand, and incorporate these songs into my being, only to have them become even more meaningful as I grew up, listened more, and found others equally moved by this record. 

I went down the rabbit hole last night and found I’m REALLY not alone, as Pitchfork named this as number five in the list of best albums of the 1960s, just below “A Love Supreme” and above “Abbey Road.” 

Yeah, you don’t even have to mention the name of the artist for those album titles to recall their impact. But in a spiritual way, in an ambitious, poetic way, “Wild is the Wind” has probably inspired me in an equal way. And, though it feels a little weird to see it ranked so highly, because it felt like my private sanctuary, knowing that I’m not alone gives me hope. 

And, letting the lonely, the misunderstood, the misfits, the oppressed know that we’re not alone was one of the greatest gifts Nina gave anyone who took the time to listen.