When it comes to albums that have had a big influence on me musically, personally, emotionally, spiritually, intellectually, and in all other ways, it is hard to argue that any one album has been more influential than Brian Eno’s 1973 debut masterpiece, “Here Come The Warm Jets”. It’s a confounding, confusing, challenging, entertaining, absurd, sublime, surprising, dense, inscrutable, and completely unique musical statement. The title is a reference to peeing (and if you don’t believe me, just look at the playing card next to the pack of cigarettes in the cover photo), the songs have titles like Baby’s On Fire and Dead Finks Don’t Talk, it’s an album where every song sounds different and there seem to be no actual musical precedents for anything you hear and yet it’s all so clearly and consistently the product of one man’s mind, a coherent experience for the listener despite the lack of any obvious unifying principle beyond pure creativity.

God I love this record.

If all albums were like Here Come The Warm Jets there would be no musical genres because there would be no repeating formulas, just music sprawling all over the place.

The thing is, there are plenty of other albums with wild and unprecedented weirdness out there. (Trout Mask Replica? Metal Machine Music? The entire catalogs of Harry Partch and Sun Ra? The Lemon of Pink? I could go on…) but for my money the album that most represents the eclectic meeting the sublime in a way that is both bizarre and bizarrely moving above any other I’ve heard is this one. It’s not being weird for weird’s sake, not a bunch of stoned hippy nonsense, it’s not trying to offend or shock, it’s just the music from inside Eno’s head turned into sounds for the rest of us and Brian has a fascinating brain.

I don’t know how many times I’ve listened to Here Come The Warm Jets. Hundreds, definitely. I’m listening to it right now. I’m listening to the song Here Come The Warm Jets which ends the album Here Come The Warm Jets. It’s the part of the song where the drums start to fade in and the tempo is not the same as the guitars and synths we are listening to so the one track adjusts to fit the incoming track with the drums. It sounds like a mistake that wouldn’t be allowed in today’s world where recordings are almost always done to snap to gridlines in digital audio workstations, tempo perfectly matched, but it’s messy and beautiful and the song title is about peeing anyhow so, make a mess, why not?

Lyrically much of the album is goofy, some of it is oddly touching and profound, but all of it feels sincere. Nothing on this album feels like a pose but it all feels like a sort of flex. Eno is showing that he is a talent who should be much much much more than the keyboard player in Bryan Ferry’s band.

There are no bad tracks on the album. It’s better not even to think of it in terms of songs, it’s all or nothing for me. Listen to the whole thing, dammit. All this track selecting and playlist building shit is for the birds. When an artist works in the format of singles and you can collect their work in whatever random order you prefer, that’s fine, I too love a mix of great tunes, but some albums are ALBUMS and are intended to be experienced as such. Jets is one of those and if you just check out Baby’s On Fire for Robert Fripp’s legendary guitar solo or On Some Faraway Beach for it’s beauty, you will not give the album the opportunity to do it’s thing, so, my recommendation, don’t try. Just strap in, listen to it beginning to end, then do it again, and one more time. Minimum three listens if you’re new to it and wondering “what the hell did I just listen to” at the end of the first listen.

The first time I heard this record back in high school I almost immediately went out and recorded my first solo album, Renegade Creative. At least, that’s how I remember it. It is easily the most eclectic thing I ever made. I love it to this day and I have Brian Eno and his warm, golden, musical, jets to thank for the inpiration.