Dave's Side One

For years, Elton John's Blue Moves felt dark to Dave in a way he couldn't quite connect with. He no longer remembers exactly how the album entered his collection, but he remembers that it never fully made sense to him. Then Dave read an interview in which George Michael discussed the album's musical influence on him. That sent Dave back for another listen. This time he caught the emotional arc of...

During his junior year in 1978-79, Dave wanted to impress a girl in his friend group. When he learned that she was a serious Billy Joel fan, he borrowed a cassette of 52nd Street and listened closely even though Billy Joel had never been a particular favorite. Then Dave came up with a plan: learn “Stiletto” on piano and see whether the extra effort might get her attention. The playing was, by Dave...

Dave's relationship with the Carpenters goes back to fifth-grade choir in 1972, when the class sang "We've Only Just Begun." While the other boys supplied the expected "ecchhh," Dave sided with the girls: he thought it was a great song. He even knew the Carpenters' version of "Help!" before he knew the Beatles' version. As Dave later became interested in composition and arrangement, Close to You a...

In 1979, on a high-school band and orchestra trip to Arizona, Dave walked into a record store near the ASU campus with a very limited budget and one purchase already decided: Journey's Infinity. Then his friend John - orchestra friend, weekend D&D companion, and devoted ELO fan - convinced him to spend more of that budget on Electric Light Orchestra's A New World Record. Dave remembers the price a...

Dave uses Standing Hampton to explore perceived momentum versus measured tempo. Choose two tracks that feel different in speed. Before checking any BPM, describe what creates the sensation: attack, subdivision, vocal phrasing, rhythmic density, accents, sustained versus clipped notes. Only afterward compare actual tempo if you want to.

Dave uses Love Over Gold as a listening laboratory. The question is not whether the album deserves a higher ranking; it is whether changing where we place our attention changes what we hear. Today's test: Listen to 'Telegraph Road' without watching the clock. At each major transition ask: could the piece end here? If not, what musical or narrative question remains unresolved?

Dave uses If You Want Blood You've Got It to explore the audience as part of a live musical event. Choose one track and listen once for the band. Then replay it listening only for the audience: where it anticipates, answers, swells, waits or changes the energy. Finally hear both together and ask whether the performance would mean the same thing without that room.

Dave uses Diary of a Madman to explore tension, dissonance and instability. Find three moments that make your ear feel unsettled. Do not name the theory first. Describe the feeling. Then replay each moment and ask what would disappear if the music were made smoother, safer or more resolved.

Dave uses Damn the Torpedoes to explore anticipation and setup. Choose a payoff you love - a chorus, riff, entrance or release. Rewind 20 to 30 seconds. Ignore the payoff on the first pass and listen only to how the record prepares you for it. Then play through the payoff and ask which setup choices made it land.

Dave uses The Original Soundtrack as a listening laboratory. The question is not whether the album deserves a higher ranking; it is whether changing where we place our attention changes what we hear. Today's test: Listen to 'I'm Not in Love' and identify three moments that exist because somebody made a recording rather than simply captured a performance. Then ask whether removing those studio-crea...

Dave uses Bridge of Sighs as a listening laboratory. The question is not whether the album deserves a higher ranking; it is whether changing where we place our attention changes what we hear. Today's test: Play the title track once without trying to identify notes or riffs. Listen only for attack, sustain, vibrato, distortion, decay and silence. On a second pass, ask which of those sound choices c...

Dave closes this week with Led Zeppelin's *In Through the Out Door* and a distinction that rankings cannot capture. Wendy, a dear friend, gave Dave the album for Christmas in 1979; after her death in 2021, the record remains inseparable from her and their friendship. A couple of months after receiving it, Dave wandered into his high-school auditorium, found friends Dave and Scott riffing on “In th...

Dave turns the Art of Listening test around and asks the audience for help. The Boomtown Rats, Todd Rundgren, and Lou Reed are artists he has repeatedly tried to understand without making the connection. Instead of dismissing them, he asks listeners for one album, three tracks and a listening path that might finally make the music click. This episode ends with a practical Art of Listening Test des...

Court and Spark gives Dave a lesson in musical restraint. With players such as Larry Carlton, Joe Sample and Tom Scott supporting Joni Mitchell, the record demonstrates that great musicianship can be heard not only in the notes played, but in placement, space and the decision not to call attention to the player. This episode ends with a practical Art of Listening Test designed to send the listener...

America's Holiday begins the band's six-album run with George Martin. Dave listens past the famous producer's reputation to ask a more useful question: what changed in America's sound, and what did Martin understand well enough to leave unmistakably intact? This episode ends with a practical Art of Listening Test designed to send the listener back to the record with a different question in mind.

Using his favorite Jethro Tull album, Thick as a Brick, Dave separates vocal technique from artistic fit. Ian Anderson's idiosyncratic delivery becomes part narrator, part character and part instrument — raising the question of whether the right singer can matter more than the technically best singer. This episode ends with a practical Side One Test designed to send the listener back to the record...

A sixth-grade listening station, a very loud kid wearing headphones, and Rare Earth's “Get Ready” lead Dave from a funny 1973–74 classroom memory to a serious listening question: what does the 21-minute LP performance reveal that the hit single edit cannot? This episode ends with a practical Art of Listening Test designed to send the listener back to the record with a different question in mind.

Dave uses It's a Beautiful Day's 1969 debut to test a simple idea: knowing “White Bird” isn't the same as knowing the album. By listening around the famous song first, the record reveals a broader, stranger band — and changes the way the hit itself sounds. This episode ends with a practical Art of Listening Test designed to send the listener back to the record with a different question in mind.

By the end of the 1970s, Alan Parsons wasn’t simply one of Dave’s favorite artists. It had become an obsession. In today's episode of Dave’s Side One, Dave closes out the week — The Records That Take Me Back — with The Alan Parsons Project’s Eve. The story begins with Dave’s best friend, who introduced him to Tales of Mystery and Imagination, I Robot and Pyramid. Something clicked. Dave estimates...

A great first album can make the second one feel almost automatic. In today's episode of Dave’s Side One, Dave remembers buying Toto’s Hydra because the band’s debut had already earned his trust. Radio offered obvious entry points in “99” and “White Sister,” but Dave’s relationship with the album wandered elsewhere. He loved the groove of “Mama,” the introspection of “Lorraine,” and the orchestrat...

The world chooses the hits. Sometimes one listener quietly chooses a different song. In today's episode of Dave’s Side One, Dave returns to Supertramp’s Breakfast in America. He loved the singles, and in 1979 they were everywhere: “The Logical Song,” “Goodbye Stranger,” “Breakfast in America,” “Take the Long Way Home.” But the song that moved Dave most was “Lord Is It Mine?” Instead of simply lett...

Teenagers don’t merely listen to records. Sometimes they assign those records jobs. In today's episode of Dave’s Side One, Dave remembers discovering The Moody Blues’ Days of Future Passed with his friend group around 1976. The album was already nearly a decade old, but it felt like a discovery. And somewhere along the way, Dave and his friends became convinced that “Nights in White Satin” might b...

Do you remember when an artist could seem to appear on the radio almost overnight? In this episode of Dave’s Side One, Dave goes back to Eddie Money’s 1977 debut. At first, nobody in Dave’s circle really knew who Eddie Money was. Then the songs were suddenly on the radio—and “Two Tickets to Paradise” became more than something Dave heard. The band Dave was playing in learned to cover it. That chan...

Sometimes the format through which we discover an album becomes part of the album itself. In this episode of Dave’s Side One, Dave returns to The Doobie Brothers’ Takin’ It to the Streets—but the record on the turntable is not the copy that owns the memory. Dave had the album on cassette first, and Side One, Cut One—“Wheels of Fortune”—became an obsession. He loved the riffs, rewound the tape and...

Sometimes the person who changes the way you hear a record becomes part of the record forever. In this episode of Dave’s Side One, Dave begins a week of "Dave's Memory Lane" — The Records That Take Me Back — with Aerosmith’s Rocks. Dave already liked Aerosmith when he first heard Rocks at a friend’s house. His friend was different: he was obsessed. He knew every nuance of the record and kept point...