And the cards are / no good that you're holding / unless they're / from another world

TOP TWENTY MOST INFLUENTIAL ALBUMS IN GLEEMONEX HISTORY
Part II of IV [I is here]

Bootleg Series, vol.1-3 (Bob Dylan, 1991)
I went to the mall with my grandmother, who – just because that’s how she rolled – bought me an entire stereo system, complete with 6-CD changer. She also insisted I get something new to play in it, so, being a big ol’ Bob Dylan fan, I went with Rolling Stone’s recommendation and bought this 3-disc set. I played it all spring and summer long, and it’s still one of my faves; best tracks are “Blind Willie McTell” and “Series of Dreams.”

Pretty Hate Machine (Nine Inch Nails, 1989)
Ohhh, kids. How the little white middle-class suburban high-schooler longed to pretend she was not a member of the Methodist Youth Fellowship, but rather a hard, gritty cynical tough grrl with a nihilist streak a mile wide, and ohhh, how she played this disc again and again and again and wrote bits of the lyrics all over everything for like THREE YEARS …

Footloose soundtrack (Various artists, 1984)
My second non-Muppet-related musical obsession. I had the LP of this, then the cassette tape, and y’all. Y’ALL. Permanently burned into all the nooks and crannies of my brain tissue, this one, at a time when the crenellations were still forming.

OK Computer (Radiohead, 1997)
This soundtracked my time in exile – the 20 months Mr. Gleemonex and I spent on the moonscape of west central Texass while I was in grad skool. We had a lot of fun there, but it was just such a strange part of our lives. We roasted our own spices to make garam masala, we drank a lot of Lone Star out by the pool, we watched Dazed and Confused sixteen hundred more times, we drove to Dallas to see Empire Strikes Back, we made plans to move to San Francisco (sight unseen, on my part), we listened to OK Computer.

One Chord to Another (Sloan, 1996)
When we weren’t in the mood for people bitching about some guy who buzzes like a fridge, like a de-tuned radio, we listened to the Beatle-y bopping-around sounds of Sloan, Nova Scotia’s finest. It never fails to lift the mood.