"To fit in, I felt I
needed to agree"

Elton John - Greatest Hits


It has been a long, long time since I listened to this album, but this is where it all started, my introduction to a musician whose career I have followed for nearly half a century. I took a bus nine miles to school each day and sat in the back with some friends who were raving about this Elton John person. To fit in, I felt I needed to agree, even though I had no idea what they were talking about. The next chance I got (which wasn’t easy, living in rural northern New Brunswick in eastern Canada), I bought this record. Probably for $4.99 or thereabouts. That’s when I realized I already knew some of this guy’s music. I had a K-tel album called Fantastic: 22 Original Hits/22 Original Stars crammed with abridged versions of contemporary hits. It had “Rocket Man” on one side and “Crocodile Rock” on the other. I played the latter song so often my older brother shouted at me from his upstairs bedroom: “I know it’s a good song, but not ten times in a row!” With this album, I became a fan, buying up his back catalog a bit at a time and then, starting with Blue Moves, every new record on release from that point forward. Living in eastern Canada, I never thought I’d have the chance to see him in concert but I did, for the first time, in 1984 when I was in England for a couple of months. Eight or nine times since then, but that was the best. I missed out on his farewell tour due to COVID concerns but was happy to see the Disney+ livestream.

Supertramp - Even in The Quietist Moments


The nearest “big city” (population: 50,000) to where I grew up was Moncton, New Brunswick. My next-door neighbor, who owned several school busses, used to organize trips to Moncton so the locals could go Christmas shopping. The shopping mall was a wonder—two levels and so many stores! Among them, a record shop that was like candy to a younger kid. My parents asked me to pick out a record for Christmas, but I didn’t know much about popular music at the time. One album cover, though, caught my attention. It featured a snow-covered grand piano on a mountaintop, with sheet music for something called “Fool’s Overture” on the rack. (I later discovered that it is actually the opening section of “The Star-Spangled Banner!”) I was reading The Lord of the Rings for the first time as I was listening to that album and one song in particular, “Babaji,” always transports me to Middle Earth. Supertramp became one of my all-time favorite groups and the first I ever saw in concert, during the “Breakfast in Canada” leg of their 1979 tour. When Roger Hodgson left the group, I was at first disappointed, but then I discovered that both he and the remaining members of Supertramp tended to release new albums at about the same time, so it was a kind of bonus. I saw the Davies version of Supertramp on the Cannonball tour. A number of years ago, I wrote the first draft of a novel listening to nothing but their 1999 live album “It Was the Best of Times.”

The Alan Parsons Project - Eve


This is another “first” that hooked me on a group. I started university in 1979, moving to Halifax, Nova Scotia. It was to me a huge city (population: 275,000), and the experience of living in the dorm was transformative. I was suddenly exposed to music I’d never heard before. A lot of it! Everyone had a stereo and there were times when people left their doors open and music blasting, a phenomenon we dubbed “Stereo Wars.” One of my new neighbors introduced me to the music of The Alan Parsons Project. I particularly enjoyed the instrumental works, but the fact that they’d done an album inspired by Edgar Allan Poe piqued my interest. I was also becoming a fan of the “concept album.” Their first new album after I moved to Halifax was Eve, which had a clever (and to my modern mind, somewhat misogynistic) cover by Storm Thorgerson featuring two women wearing veils. When you looked closer, you realized they had strange eruptions on their faces that were camouflaged by the veils. Anyhow, they became another band I followed throughout their career, never expecting to see them in concert simply because they didn’t do concerts. But then, all of a sudden, they did. I’ve seen them twice, once for the On Air tour with many of the original band members and then again in 2018, where we had third row seats to a fantastic show. We had backstage passes for their 2021 concert but decided to cancel due to the pandemic. I still listen to them frequently, and their A Valid Path album was my gateway to psychedelic trance music, about which more later.

Pink Floyd - The Dark Side of the Moon


How could I have made it to 1979 without ever hearing Pink Floyd? Although released in 1973, The Dark Side of the Moon (DSOM) was still on the Billboard top-100 chart (where it remained for something like 18 years). However, in 1979, it was “The Wall” that everyone was going mad over. The record store walls were papered with the album cover and, of course, I had to get it. At the time, I don’t think I appreciated what it was truly about, but I enjoyed it and (because that’s the kind of person I am), explored some of their earlier catalog. Strangely, I didn’t go all the way back, but I did get DSOM, Wish You Were Here, Animals, and one of my quirkier favorites, Umma Gumma, which had the song with the greatest title ever: “Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict.” DSOM, though, was my favorite. I loved listening to it with headphones on as music wandered from the left channel to the right and back again, my first true experience with stereo effects. I only got to see the band once, on their “Division Bell” tour. During the concert, the heavens opened in the way they only can in Texas, and the open-topped Rice University football stadium was deluged. The rain meant they couldn’t fly any of their gadgets, but the laser lights were spectacular, reflected by the drops. The canopy over the backup singers dropped gallons of water on them from time to time, and electronics began shorting out until Gilmour no longer had any operational guitars and the concert was cut short, reportedly for the first time in their long career. The water was ankle deep on the stadium floor by the time we slogged back to our cars. But I got to hear “Money” and “Time” and many others.

"I don't think I appreciated
what it was truly about"

"I was a sucker for
electronic music"

Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells II


I probably got Tubular Bells in 1979, when I went to university. I was a sucker for electronic music and soundtrack albums even back then, buying them at a second-hand record store called The Days of Wine and Vinyl. I remember giggling at the note on the back cover of Tubular Bells, which said, “In Glorious Stereophonic Sound. Can also be played on mono-equipment at a pinch.” (Upgraded to “This Quadraphonic record cannot be played on old tin boxes no matter what they are fitted with. If you are in possession of such equipment, please hand it into the nearest police station." on later pressings.) I didn’t listen to any of his other 1970s albums at the time, but when Five Miles Out was released in 1982, my interest in his music—especially his instrumentals—was renewed. In the 1990s, I discovered a bootleg recording called The Sorcerer, which contained a live performance of Tubular Bells II along with some other tracks. For some reason I was obsessed with this recording and listened to it over and over. It renewed my interest in his music and I obtained his full catalog a bit at a time, and it remains some of my favorite music to listen to while writing. I have a playlist that combines the three parts of “Taurus” that come from different albums that gets regular play. I haven’t been as fond of his more recent releases, but I have a ton of his music.

Electric Light Orchestra - Time


Even growing up in rural eastern Canada, with access to a single AM radio station that played mostly country and gospel music (and which switched to French-language programming on weekday afternoons), I knew ELO before I went to college. We did get top-of-the-pops programs in the evenings and, on a good night, you could pick up a radio station from some far-flung place like Boston or New York. No doubt I already had their greatest hits album. I’m not sure I’d say Time is my all-time favorite of their records (that honor probably goes to Out of the Blue), but I remember vividly when it came out. I was heavily into science fiction novels at the time, so it struck all the right chords with me. I was delighted a few years ago to discover some bonus tracks from the album, in particular "Julie Don't Live Here," which I put on my Dissonant Harmonies playlist for Brian Keene (about which, more below!) Listening to the album again recently, it made me think that Jeff Lynne has written some of the most beautiful rock music ever. My wife and I had the privilege of seeing him in concert when he toured Across the Universe and we both agree it was the best show we’ve ever seen. He was obviously so delighted to be playing in front of audiences again, and the band pulled out all the stops.

Shpongle – Are You Shpongled?


It’s hard for me to pick a single album from this psychedelic trance group because, unlike with most other groups, I tend to listen to their catalog randomly. (I’m very much an album kinda guy, preferring to listen to entire records from beginning to end.) I was introduced to their music when Alan Parsons collaborated with Simon Posford on the opening track of the album A Valid Path. I was curious to know more and discovered Shpongle, which consists of Posford (aka Hallucinogen) and Raja Ram. Their music is really trippy, but I find it energetic and perfect writing music. I would say the highlight track from this album is "Divine Moments of Truth," which has a variety of remixes on subsequent albums. I also really enjoy the live album Live in Concert at the Roundhouse London 2008, where they have a massive stage presence, including opera singer Hari Om. My wife, daughter and I saw a very stripped-down version of Shpongle at the House of Blues in Houston a number of years ago—it was just Posford inside this rocket-ship-shaped console called the Shpongletron.

Koan – When the Silence Is Speaking


In 2021, American horror author Brian Keene and I released a project called Dissonant Harmonies. Our original vision for this collaboration was to release a short story collection that was essentially a concept album. However, over time, our concept changed. Each writer created an album-length, carefully curated list of songs for the other writer to listen to exclusively while we each wrote a novella. The resulting novellas did not have to be directly inspired by the songs themselves; rather, the writer would be inspired by the playlist. In that book, each of us wrote in the introduction about the songs we selected for the other author and about the songs that the other author selected for us. Earlier this year, when I was signing hundreds and hundreds of limitation pages for the German edition of the book, while eating German chocolate supplied by publisher Olaf Buchheim (note to publishers—this is a wonderful tradition that should become standard operating procedure!), I decided to listen to a Spotify channel of trance music. In keeping with the book’s theme, I decided to make a note of the songs I heard while I signed, writing them on the cover of the inner box containing the limitation pages. One song in particular, struck my fancy, a nine-minute instrumental called “Odysseus Under the Old Tree.” I put a big asterisk beside it to remind myself to look up the performers. That’s how I discovered the Russian duo Koan (not to be confused with Koan Sound, which is a different group), who have a ton of albums containing exactly the kind of music I love to listen to while writing. I now have three dozen of their albums. My favorites are the remix album When the Silence Is… and Big Blue Mix. In fact, I’m listening to the former as I write this essay.

Bio


Bev Vincent is the author of The Road to the Dark Tower and Stephen King: A Complete Exploration of His Work, Life and Influences, as well as over 120 short stories, including appearances in Autumn Noir, Summer Bludgeon, Ellery Queen’s, Alfred Hitchcock’s and Black Cat Mystery Magazines, and Cemetery Dance. His work has been published in over 20 languages and nominated for the Stoker (twice), Edgar, Ignotus and ITW Thriller Awards. In 2018, he co-edited the anthology Flight or Fright with Stephen King. Recent works include the novellas “The Ogilvy Affair” and “The Dead of Winter,” the latter found in Dissonant Harmonies with Brian Keene. To learn more, visit bevvincent.com

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