'Call of the Valley'

The greatest album of classical Indian music and you might not be able to find better mood music. I love finding instrumental albums like these to play as almost a score. Working, messing around the house or just in need of something that can provide some sort of tempo without interrupting with wild crescendoes, vocals or the typical ebb and flow of a traditional pop song.

Call of the Valley was a 1967 collaboration by famed Indian instrumentalists Hariprasad Chaurasia, Brij Bhushan Kabra and Shivkumar Sharma. None of them played the sitar or tabla as you might expect.

In fact, Kabra is a guitar player and Chaurasia plays a flute. It opened Indian music up to the international audience championed also by the usual suspects, George Harrison, Paul McCartney and Bob Dylan.

It's actually a concept album as it follows a shepherd throughout his day in the Kashmir.

It also gets major props for a pretty cool album cover, too. The Indians generally do things a little cooler than most.

'Olympia '64'

I like it when people are called "national treasures." Like The Beatles were considered like an actual product that belonged to England that only those English could fully enjoy and understand.

Jacques Brel was that to France. He's actually Belgian, but people rarely make the distinction either way. Edith Piaf was the same way and both of their careers overlapped as these ... singers.

The United States doesn't have singers of this type. Yes, we like singers and the closest comparison is probably Frank Sinatra. Then again, I don't know if we would consider Sinatra a "national treasure." The closest comparison is like John F. Kennedy.

The thing about Brel and Piaf is that they were regarded as a source of pride to a country. Kind of a hash mark for greatness, proof that France was better than any other country in the world.

Brel sold 25 million albums. He retired from touring at the tender age of 38, but if he was living the life like Piaf, he had a 50-year-old body.

Upon retirement from touring, he planned on sailing around the world (he'd already taken up flying) and wound up in the moving pictures. After a brief career up through the early 1970s, his health began failing. By 1973, at age 44, he knew he was dying. By 49, he'd died of lung cancer.

In terms of influence, I suggest listening to Brel (it's by no means bad music ... it's really good) and then listening to David Bowie and Scott Walker, who kind of crooning rock guys that almost shadow Brel's vocal stylings to the tiniest details.

Everywhere there is influence.

'Ananda Shankar'

To my surprise, I learned that Ananda Shankar is a guy. Which is a bit disappointing only because I thought "Ananda" would be a pretty cool name for a girl and the entire time I listened to this self-titled album, I pictured a female version of Ravi Shankar (essentially, sans beard) doing Rolling Stones covers.

Shankar is actually Ravi's nephew. Despite the sitar genius being in the family tree, Ananda learned the instrument at Banaras Hindu University under a different teacher.

In the 1960s, Shankar went to Los Angeles and jammed with musicians including Jimi Hendrix. This is when he released Ananda Shankar.

Shankar also wound up providing musical direction for a number of films and television shows. Later, his music was used post-humonously in the NBA sitcom "Outsourced" about an American sent to an Indian call center to manage.

But, to me, she'll always be Ravi's good-looking kid nephew.

'Histoire de Melody Nelson'

I think scrubs on females in the healthcare industry make them look 10-25 percent hotter. It might turn a "4" into a "6," easy.

I think being French makes you 5-25 percent cooler. Hell, knowing the language automatically puts you at 10 percent cooler.

For instance, Serge Gainsbourg died in 1991 having had sex with Jane Birkin and Brigitte Bardot.

All of that and you can record a concept record about sexing up an underaged girl.

I'm far too much of a chickenshit to have been French. I would've been the worst French ever.

'Sounds Of India' & 'Notorious Byrd Brothers'

These two albums, on the cover, seem like two very different pieces of art to put together. However, they have at least two very concrete things in common.

Both were released in 1968. For Ravi Shankar, he was introducing the west to eastern music, especially that of the sitar, which had already been brought over by George Harrison of The Beatles after hearing Shankar play.

For The Byrds, Notorious ... was a direction-changing opus. More country and more psychedelic than anything that had been done before. Alt-country was born in this album.

But there's one more common ingredient. In both, there are spoken parts where someone explains something about the actual music.

On Sounds of India, Shankar himself is recorded talking about Indian music and the instruments being used on the album. He goes into rather great detail (more than the average listener would care to know, I think) about the instrument, how it works, what kind of sounds it makes and how all these pieces fit together.

On Notorious ..., producer Gary Usher records a really short explanation to the listener about the album and how the Byrds were very happy with their creation, despite the fact that only Chris Hillman and Roger McGuinn survived the entire process. Also, he explains that it's much more country than other Byrds recording and he introduces the use of the Moog synthesizer in the recording process.

Both statements from Usher and Shankar are very interesting and I'm surprised that more artists didn't do this. I guess Phil Spector had the Christmas wish on his holiday album. Otherwise, that's it. I think fans would find all this interesting. Remember when reading the liner notes on the LP or CD was actually something you did? Basically, these are recorded liner notes.

How much more interesting would music be if you had the artist or someone involved telling you about how the song was written or recorded. Or maybe the guitarist pops on and tells you how a lick is played. We're missing out here.

'Miriam Makeba'

Miriam Makeba -- or Mama Afrika -- was a South African singer, who released her self-titled album in 1960. It was her first.

She'd go for the next four decades releasing 29 albums, in addition to a number of compilation albums.

Miriam Makeba doesn't sound African in the sense that we associate African music, which may be (and probably is) totally distorted.

I thought she was some Caribbean singer or possibly South American. Not that any of these styles or genres aren't totally connected. They are. But the album exudes a very smooth and cool jazz feel straight from the 1960s.

It's easy. Makeba seems to sing loud and strong, and, yet, effortlessly, as if she were ironing a shirt while doing it.

What all these styles and genres have in common are spontanaity and the unpredictable phrasing and singing make it a perfect example of all these varying styles.

Makeba was quite the troublemaker.

After recording an album with Harry Belafonte about the horrors of apartheid in South Africa, Makeba's passport was revoked when she tried to re-enter. For 35 yeras, Makeba would never visit her home country until a free Nelson Mandela invited her back. She also married activist Stokely Carmichael, lived in Guinea and played at the Rumble in the Jungle concert event.

To cap off her political activism, she guested on an episode of "The Cosby Show," one of the more subversive shows in American history.