My wife and daughter tagged me in the “post 10 songs & albums that influenced your music taste” trend on Facebook, and—although I normally resist such things—I figured I should go along. It would be a fun way to reminisce, and kind of a challenge to see if I could really narrow my choices down to just ten.

Then I figured, “Oh hey, I am wordy and rambly, and don’t just want to share a pic of the album with the same cut-n-paste blurb from the original trend. Maybe I should put this on that blog thing I continually ignore.”

Bonus: Since I’m “in a creative funk” / procrastinating / uninspired / suffering “this is pointless” syndrome regarding writing fiction, maybe this will get me putting thoughts into words into sentences into something online.

So the first choice was “November Rain” from Guns ‘n’ Roses, Use Your Illusion I. This was one of the few songs I practiced and learned during the last year or two of formal piano lessons I took between ages 5 and 13.

I loved the mix of evocative piano and Slash’s sweet guitar solos, and it was fun trying to figure out how to mimic those wildly different styles on the keys.

A bunch of those songs stick out in my head as high school favorites—mostly the ones with fun piano parts.

Off the top of my head and in no particular order: Locomotive, Estranged, Civil War, Yesterday, Live and Let Die, Don’t Cry, Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door, and 14 Years come to mind as favorites. You Could Be Mine is up there on my list too, but I didn’t realize it until Terminator 2 came out, which is one of the true cinematic masterpieces of all time.

Regrettably, while learning to play November Rain, I ignored my piano teacher’s warnings and encouragement to keep practicing the stuff I didn’t like to play—tough classical music and such. I remember a conversation with him where he said something like, “If you’re not going to practice, then I don‘t have anything else to teach you.”

Teenage Me heard the latter part and ignored the condition at the beginning of the sentence. I figured I was good enough for anything I wanted to do. Maybe I thought that I didn’t need anybody… contrary to the final lines of the song, oddly enough.

Just a few years later, I met some jazz pianists who admitted they weren’t all that great, and they were doing things on the keys that I couldn’t understand or follow. Then it dawned on me that I had so much more I could have learned. So… not just an album, but a life lesson.

Side note: My favorite song of the two albums is probably Estranged. I think it’s because (imho) it has even more variety in the musical dynamics and it also has a lot of energetic parts that I loved playing on the keys, even if they weren’t meant for piano.