Item the First:

Today I received my "offer letter" from Durham. It's very concerting to see things spelled out, but it's disappointing to know that I still have to wait a month to hear about funding. But going back to my previous point...seeing in writing that my supervisors will be Carol Harrison and Lewis Ayres just about made me have an aneurysm (in a good way). So now I should probably own all their books, which fortunately aren't many.

Item the Second:

Chad's recent post on his top 20 albums got me thinking about the music that has influenced/is most influencing me, and it's tough to narrow the list down to just 20 albums...so I thought I'd focus mainly on artists, highlighting the most prominent albums that have worked on me over the years. And I left my list at 22. You can laugh all you want at some of them, but just remember: we all have skeletons in our gig bags. These are not in order of importance, just alphabetical.

1. Arcade Fire (Funeral) - Funeral was their first main album, and I revel in the fact that I adored them before Neon Bible came out. I think I was mostly reveling in the fact that I loved a quasi-alternative band from Canada.
2. Blue Man Group (Audio) - BMG was the soundtrack of my senior year of high school, and it got me pumped up for more than one AP exam. I just can't get past the fact that it's a band full of percussive power that has the guts to paint themselves blue. Plus, one of my dreams is to play with them one day.
3. Coldplay (Rush of Blood/Viva la Vida) - I was not on the Coldplay bandwagon to begin with. When "Yellow" was a popular song, I enjoyed hating them. Then A Rush of Blood to the Head came out, and I was hooked. Though I was not a huge fan of X & Y, with Viva la Vida I'm back in the camp. This is one of the only CDs I can listen to straight through several times in a row and not get sick of it.
4. Dave Matthews Band (Crash/Everyday/Live in Central Park) - Though I realize many of you out there are sympathetic to this, others of you are rolling your eyes. Roll away. But you can't deny that Carter Beauford is one of the best stinkin' drummers in the world. I don't idolize people (or at least I try not to), but he's the closest I'll get to wanting to actually possess someone's complete skillset.
5. David Crowder (All I Can Say/A Collision) - Crowder's second and fourth albums suffered from unfortunate poppiness (though Can You Hear Us? is one of my faves). His start as a Baptist praise band leader through acoustic awesomeness is highlighted on All I Can Say, which seems to be pretty hard to get a hold of nowadays. With A Collision, though, he really integrated acoustic/bluegrass with rock/electronic in such a way that I almost wept when I heard some of the songs on it for the first time (during my last semester of college, studying abroad in Australia). Very, very powerful stuff.
6. The Decemberists (The Crane Wife) - I dug Picaresque (especially because I got it for free from eMusic back in its infancy stages), but it sat unbothered for a long time on my hard drive until The Crane Wife came out. Colin Meloy has brought back the uberballad - the lost art of a CD being an integrated entity that tells a story, and God bless him for it. Of all the "alternative" bands I like, the Decemberists are the ones Cherith has the largest affinity for. When you become a disciple, then shoot for The Tain. You won't be sorry.
7. Enya (A Day Without Rain) - This is where I will probably lose most of you. Though Rob introduced me to Enya years ago, and though my US history teacher in high school used to make fun of her, right when I needed something like A Day Without Rain, I had it. I have cranked out 6 major term papers to this CD since college, and when seasonal affective disorder was hitting me hard in college, I must say that this CD really helped. It's amazing what you can do with four chords and a haunting voice.
8. Genesis (Invisible Touch) - For those who hung on past Enya, you probably now feel betrayed. This was Genesis' 13th stinkin' studio album, and though it's hard to peg this as their best (it isn't), it was the one that got me into them. I mean, c'mon...Phil Collins!
9. Gotye (Like Drawing Blood) - Gotye is one guy (an Aussie, though not natively) who is a whiz at sampling, and he can play just about anything. You really, really have to listen to this album. "Heart's a Mess" will haunt you the rest of your life. It got me through some tough times in Australia.
10. Interpol (Turn on the Bright Lights) - Most of you will not like Interpol, primarily because of Paul Banks' voice. But get past it and you enter into a world some call "post-punk," some "alternative," and others "um, what the heck is this?" Un/fortunately they've made it onto the Rock Band scene, but maybe others will fall in love with them like I did back in college. (And yes, the Interpol shirt you see me wear on occasion is because of the band, not because I did the international police force.)
11. Jimmy Eat World (Bleed American/ST) - Though they've only had a couple popular singles, to me Jimmy Eat World represent all that is good with popular rock-n-roll. The songs are catchy, well-played, and [decently] well-written. They remind me of good times in high school. Futures is a good recent release, but I'll always go back to the first stuff.
12. Led Zeppelin (everything) - There is not a single LZ album that I do not like, so it would be rude of me to single one out (though, ironically, IV will always hold a special place in my heart). John Bonham should be included in my pantheon of revered drummers. If you've never listened to the Zep, you really should get on that.
13. Muse (Absolution) - Muse is probably the most interesting rock/electronic group I've ever heard, despite the fact that the vox can get somewhat repetitive.
14. Pedro the Lion (Control) - Control may be in my top three favorite albums of all time. I started listening to Pedro in college when I was in a band with a couple guys, and we decided we wanted to get a bit more minimalistic. We covered "Of Minor Prophets and Their Prostitute Wives," and that was it for me. I was hooked to their proclivity for all things simple, and they really helped chill me out as a drummer. Don't get me started on the raw honesty of their lyrics.
15. Pink Floyd (though everything, mostly The Wall) - I remember in middle school when I used to listen to the radio before going to bed...and some track from The Wall came up and I dug it. The next day I asked my dad, "Dad, have you ever heard of a band called Pink Floyd?" Of course, he laughed.
16. The Presidents of the United States of America - Millions of peaches. Peaches for me. Millions of peaches. Peaches for free. If you didn't listen to this CD in the '90s, you were ostracised. This was also one of the first tapes I ever owned.
17. Radiohead (The Bends) - Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy In Rainbows, but I prefer the rock-ier side of Radiohead. For that, I have to go back a few years to when I first got into them, during the Summer of 2001. This was just an awesome CD.
18. Sigur Ros ( ( ) ) - That was fun to type. I love all their stuff, but when I was a freshman in college (when I didn't know how to pronounce their name), I was recommended this album by a hall-mate. I didn't know "ambient Icelandic awesomeness" was a genre, but now we all do.
19. Sparta (Wiretap Scars) - I don't dig too many voice-raising bands, but Sparta's one of them. Those of you attuned to the genealogy of rock will realize that Sparta is one-half of the offspring of the splitting of At the Drive-In (the other band being the Mars Volta), and frankly, it's the half I like the most.
20. Thursday (Full Collapse) - I'm not so much into Thursday nowadays, seeing as I'm waiting for them to do something slightly more innovative than they have been, but in college my RD fed me Thursday, and I was delighted. This is the second main screamy-sort of band I enjoy. Now if I could just find my t-shirt...
21. U2 (Best of 1980-1990) - The reason I chose a "best of" CD is more because I'm delineating the point at which I lose interest in U2. No matter what they do now, they can never compare to the awesomeness of Joshua Tree and the few albums afterward. Plus, "Where the Streets Have No Name" was on the radio when I proposed to Cherith. But that's another story.
22. Weezer (Blue/Maladroit...maybe even Make Believe) - Patrick Wilson is the third member of my pantheon (I'm not calling them a Trinity), because he's not overly-complicated and is a model of solidity. The Blue album is also one of the few CDs I can listen to over and over again without getting sick of it. It probably has the most sentimental value of any album for me, as well, and is one of the earliest albums I ever owned. You will often see me donning my Kermit/Flying V/W shirt for this reason.