pigs on the wing

This morning I was thinking it seems time for another musical post. I post a lot of new music on this blog - or music that is at least new to me. But today I am remembering an old album that was really influential earlier in my life (Pink Floyd's Animals), and I thought it might be nice to have an occasional post in a new kind of category: influential albums. This will be the inaugural post, even though I know that Animals was not the first influential album chronologically, or even the most influential album in my life. It is, however, the album I am thinking about right now.

In an age of iPods and downloading music, the notion of "album" is dissipating. While I am okay with this change, I am nostalgically remembering the days, even just a few years ago, when I would buy an album (aka CD) and immerse myself it its flow and its whole as well as in the individual songs.

Animals came out in 1977, but I didn't really start listening to it until probably 1981. In 1988, when I spent a good portion of a spring semester in grad school traveling home every weekend to visit my ill grandfather, I listened to this album almost exclusively on the drives -- 2.5 hours there and 2.5 hours back. I was driving my first car, my little red Dodge Colt hatchback- with standard shift (my choice) and a very good stereo (where my values were then). I had this album on cassette, and I would have it play on loop, with its 17 minute songs, its 11 minute songs, its 1:25 minute songs.

The music on this album got me thinking about the human condition and all its aspects. I loved every song. I loved the place the music took my brain. And then one day, on Route 26 north between Binghamton and Rome, somewhere near Georgetown or Hatch Lake, my little Dodge Colt hit a patch of ice, and I and the car did several 360s. I think I was ironically listening to Sheep at that moment.Time stood still, and I wondered if this would be how it would end. When the car came to a stop, I was an ice skid down from where I started spinning, in the other lane, facing what would be oncoming traffic, if there had been any. I did not hit anything -- not a guard rail nor roadside grass. I did not end up in a field or in the lake. I was pretty shaken up. But somehow I quickly gathered up my composure, which I found sitting figuratively in the back seat, and put the car in gear and turned myself around, knowing that it was not a day I was meant to die. The whole experience was fairly other-worldly, given the Pink Floyd music that had become internalized as well as external. I turned off the tape, and I didn't listen to the album much after that. The tape is somewhere. I did purchase the album on CD in the early 90s and have listened to it occasionally. I still enjoy it, but I still remember the experience I now associate with it.

Today, however, I found the YouTube collage video of the album (linked above), and rediscovered the sweetness in Pigs on the Wing (Parts 1 and 2). I am thinking about other influential albums, and without a doubt, they may conjure up some other recollections, mundane or otherwise, for future posts.

You know that I care what happens to you,
and I know that you care for me too,
so I don't feel alone,
or the weight of the stone,
now that I've found somewhere safe
to bury my bone.
And any fool knows a dog needs a home,
a shelter from pigs on the wing.