Albums On My Office Wall, Part 1: Rubber Soul

I'm now turning to my office walls for inspiration as I sit here and eat my Chuy's takeout for lunch. I have six album covers framed and hanging on the wall to my right, the oldest and best of which is the Beatles' Rubber Soul. I bought the LP used at a Half Price Books in 1996 while I was in college. I already had the official British version on CD, but I wanted the version I grew up with, the version my parents had, the American version that started with "I've Just Seen a Face."

As a little kid, I saw the world through Brothers Grimm-colored glasses. Life seemed weird and dangerous, with wolves in the streets and old German forests around every corner. My dad works in construction, so I thought of him as a carpenter who went to a sawmill in the woods every morning. I dreamed about being one of the three little pigs, and I would lie in bed on my stomach and hear my heartbeats as giants' footsteps in the distance.

So, in this context, the song that really stood out to me on Rubber Soul was "Run For Your Life." John Lennon's exhortation to the "little girl" (I could relate to being little) to run for her life or hide her head in the sand to avoid being killed was an affecting statement. This life-and-death scenario fit in well with my fairy-tale world.

While none of the other songs on the album had similar themes, the feel of some of the other tracks, particularly "Norwegian Wood," "Michelle" and "Girl," seemed to evoke an old European landscape (even with the sitar). I don't see how I could have actually had any idea about this as a kid, but there was just something about the way this album felt that I didn't get from, say, the Doobie Brothers' Minute By Minute, another big one from my early years.

And just look at the cover! I'm sure the boys were photographed in some English garden somewhere, but, for all I know, they could just as easily be getting ready to head into the deep, dark woods of Austria on a rescue mission for Hansel and Gretel.

I'm sure this will all seem like a pretty strange take on one of the greatest albums ever made, especially for those who are used to hearing it kick off with the upbeat R&B of "Drive My Car" (which isn't even on the old American version), but topload it with folkier stuff, focus on "Girl" or "Run For Your Life" and think about life at age 5 and see what happens.

Van Halen vs. Mike + the Mechanics: Is One Really Cooler Than the Other?

In my early record-buying years, there was no cool factor. I bought the records I liked, regardless of what anyone else thought. By the sixth grade, though, it became obvious to me that some record purchases could make me cool, at least in my own head. I asked my friend Corey (who was cool) what the cool records were. He pointed me in the direction of INXS' Kick, George Michael's Faith and Terence Trent D'Arby's Introducing the Hardline According to Terence Trent D'Arby. It was a while before I discovered that INXS was the band I had been referring to all along as "Inks." It was a devastating realization.

In the next year I grew more comfortable with my own sense of what was cool and what wasn't, but I sometimes let my early record-buying self take the reins at the store, with occasionally mortifying results.

For example, one fine, sunny day in 1988, when I was 12, my parents hauled me down to Sound Warehouse and let me pick out an album. I was really into Van Halen's "Finish What Ya Started" at that time, so I selected their album OU812. My parents denied the request due to the sleaze factor (see "The Rolling Stones vs. Aerosmith") and told me to pick something else. There was another song on the radio that I had just heard and really liked; it was "Nobody's Perfect" by Mike + the Mechanics, and it was from the same album that later produced their giant smash "The Living Years," the most sentimental, uncool single of the year.

Predictably, when my friends noticed this cassette in my collection, they wanted to know how the hell it got there. My insides twisted into a tight, little ball and I saw my cool life flash before my eyes. The end was near and desperation was dawning, so I explained:

"I was at Sound Warehouse and was going to buy the Van Halen tape, but I didn't look down when I was grabbing it and I picked up the wrong tape by accident."

"So you accidentally picked up Mike + the Mechanics?"

"Yes."

"Even though the M section is nowhere near the V section?"

"They were displayed on a table next to each other."

"And you never looked at it as you walked to the cash register?"

"Right."

"And you paid for it without looking at it or realizing what you were buying?"

"Yeah."

"And you made it all the way home without looking at it?"

"Yes."

"And you decided to open it and keep it rather than return it?"

"I didn't know you could return it."

"Really?"

"Yes."

They never mentioned it again, maybe out of pity. Or maybe I convinced them after all. Who knows. I kept a pretty straight face, and these are junior high kids we're talking about.