youspoketome

[youspoketome]

The Get Up Kids - Eudora (2001)

I went to college in the middle of nowhere, far too long of a drive to keep working at Wal-Mart, so I knew I was going to have to find a new job once school started. After orientation, my mom and I drove around trying to find somewhere I would be ok with working at that was also close enough to the middle of nowhere. We found a Hollywood Video that I applied at, but really ended up figuring the best we'd be able to find would be at the Ridgedale mall, about a half hour drive from school.

I forget how many places I picked up applications for that day. I'm pretty sure I tried Suncoast, and not Zumiez (I had long since given up on ever figuring out how to olley, and had overcompensated by becoming decidedly anti-/way too punk rock for skateboarding) or Sam Goodie (I remember walking in, seeing N'Sync or the Backstreet Boys on the TV screens and turning around and walking back out), but I know for a fact that I skipped Hot Topic. My friends and I did not go there except maybe to make fun of things. By this time I had learned that real punks did not do two things: (1) use the word "punk," and (2) shop at Hot Topic. Real punks bought their band t-shirts online, and so did I. So there was no way I was ever going to consider working at Hot Topic.

I did buy a couple t-shirts though. They were buy one get one half off.

A couple days later I went back to the mall with my friend Kevin to turn in the applications I had picked up. For some reason I decided to go back to the stores I'd skipped and picked up another handful of applications that I filled out in the car, and HT was one of those. I was still not terribly serious about getting a job there though, so when Kevin asked if he could draw a picture in the "additional information" space on the back page I told him to go ahead. So of course, out of all the applications I turned in that day, the only place that called me for an interview was the one I had let my friend draw a picture on the back of the application. (I found out later that the drawing was actually the reason I didn't get put in the pass pile.)

I did well enough in the interview to get the job, despite my awkward Green Day T-shirt under an unbuttoned Goonies workshirt combo I never wore any other time in my life. (I had thought "interview means button up shirt, but Hot Topic means Goonies shirt, then panicked walking into the mall thinking I was overdressed and unbuttoned the whole thing.) When I first started, there was a drawer full of CDs for in-store play that at the start of every shift each of the employees working that night would grab from to put into a 5-disc changer that would play on shuffle in the store. At that point most of the CDs in that drawer were of bands I either didn't like, had never heard of, or both. So most nights while other people were picking albums by Tool, System of a Down, VNV Nation and Basement Jaxx, I pretty much just alternated between choosing Operation Ivy and Green Day's Warning.

Over time I discovered more though, as I'd hear a song play that I liked and I'd walk over to the CD player and see which album was playing. The two biggest ones that I kept walking over to check on were Reggie and the Full Effect's Promotional Copy and the Get Up Kids' Eudora. I had no idea one was a side project of the other, they just were the first bands I'd heard that represented a new sound I was getting into.

In high school during the Napster days a friend had tried to get me to check out Reggie, but since the albums all had weird fake songs and sketches, she kept telling to listen to a song title that was actually a weird, distorted voice talking for about 2 seconds. I just ended up being really confused and didn't follow up on it.

The Get Up Kids I had never heard of before. Honestly, I'm not sure who put them in the CD player that first time I discovered them, because no one else at that store liked them. But they caught my attention quickly enough that soon I was the one putting the CD in regularly.

I don't really remember what specifically called out to me and made me love those bands, but there was something about them that caused me to stop what I was doing and walk over to the CD player to find out who it was that was playing. But this installment is less about the bands themselves and more about how I discovered them. Yes, I still love Reggie and The Get Up Kids to this day, and yes, they really started steering me in a new direction musically. But they were also the first two bands I discovered through work at Hot Topic. I would work there for basically the next 12 years, and it would become directly or indirectly the largest influence on my musical tastes for most of that time.

#you spoke to me #the get up kids #eudora

[youspoketome]

My Favorite Albums of 2019

The last couple years for my favorite albums lists I've been doing write ups for each album, which is fine, but I realized after last year that I was basically writing short reviews of each one, and that doesn't make any sense. These are literally my favorite 10 albums of the year, no one needs to read a review of them written by me. You should know going in that I like them. So instead, this year I'm just going to try to sell you on each one real quick. That might turn into something quasi-reviewish, but it's not what I'm going for.

Pedro The Lion - PHOENIX

I love Pedro the Lion and David Bazan is one of my absolute favorite musicians. I don't think there's a huge difference sonically between the band and his solo work, but going back to the band name really fits with the theme of the record. The name Phoenix works both as the band rising from the ashes, but it's also an album full of reminiscences and thoughts on his hometown growing up. It's haunting and beautiful and sad and honest and was my favorite album of 2019.

If you're only going to listen to one song, listen to: Black Canyon

But you really should also at least listen to: Yellow Bike

Starflyer 59 - YOUNG IN MY HEAD

This is probably lazy and too simplistic, but I think of Starflyer 59's long career in three general phases: (1) loud, fuzzy guitars with lots of feedback and kind of mumbled vocals, (2) an evolution of that with more poppy hooks and varied instrumentation, & (3) Deep voiced, Americana-esque rock and roll songs about growing and being old. I think phase 3 is my second favorite phase (after 2), and this is still my number 2 album of the year. That is how good this band is! I'm pretty sure it's my favorite phase 3 album.

If you're only going to listen to one song, listen to: Young In My Head

But you really should also at least listen to: Remind Me

Frank Turner - NO MAN'S LAND

Frank Turner is a former hardcore band frontman turned acoustic singer/songwriter. At first this translated to mostly upbeat pub songs and sing-alongs, but as he's gone on further as a solo artist he's started branching out musically more and more. Usually this has worked for me, but on list previous album last year, not as much. His newest album is a concept album with each song telling the story of a notable (though not necessarily well known) woman from history, and he's done such a good job of tailoring each song to fit with the subject. There's still that punk rocker in there (The Lioness), but then he breaks out some jazz chords, muted horns and a scat solo on Nica (a song about a woman who lived for jazz), or makes the song about Dora Hand (a woman who lived and died in Dodge City during the time Wyatt Earp was assistant marshal) sound like a cowboy song. They're still definitely Frank Turner rock and roll songs, but it's really cool what he does stylistically on this album to go along with the concept.

If you're only going to listen to one song, listen to: I Believed You, William Blake

But you really should also at least listen to: The Death of Dora Hand

Coyote Kid - THE SKELETON MAN

I knew I was going to like this album. Before their name change this year, Marah in the Mainsail's last album was in my top five albums of 2017. But then it turned out I love this album. Durry's growl is on point here, but I feel like on this one you can really get a sense of how good of a singer he is underneath. Coyote Kid still have some heavy Murder By Death influences, but they expand to places MBD never go. It's dark and it's heavy, but it's also soothing and pretty. From the epic buildup of The New Dark Age into Femme Fatale to the haunting closer of the titular track, The Skeleton Man takes you on an amazing journey. (and I haven't even mentioned the story of the concept yet!)

If you're only going to listen to one song, listen to: Skeleton Man

But you really should also at least listen to: Undertaker

Jimmy eat world - SURVIVING

This is my favorite Jimmy Eat World album since FUTURES. I've enjoyed every album since then, but they have all kind of mushed together in my head so that, while I enjoy all the songs, I couldn't tell you almost any of which songs go to which albums. SURVIVING is a little darker like FUTURES was and seems to have more distinguishing songs on it. Or maybe that's just representative of my mindset listening to it. I don't know, I'll let you know in a year or two if it mushes together with INVENTED and DAMAGE.

If you're only going to listen to one song, listen to: 555

But you really should also at least listen to: Congratulations

The Hold Steady - THRASHING THROUGH THE PASSION

Any band could have a song with a lyric along the lines of "it doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be worth it," but there's that "sorta" that Craig Finn throws in there that makes it a Hold Steady song. He's not the best singer in this list (he doesn't really even sing), but his lyrics, mixed with his delivery are what make this (and all Hold Steady) album(s) great. Nowhere else are you going to find a song where the vocalist conversationally says "Sorry I'm late, I got caught in a mosh with this dude that said he used to play with Peter Tosh, but he never brought it up again once I said, 'man, I don't believe you.'"

If you're only going to listen to one song, listen to: Denver Haircut

But you really should also at least listen to: Epaulets

Silversun Pickups - WIDOW'S WEEDS

I didn't like Silversun Pickups at first. For some reason I always kind of thought of them as a modern Smashing Pumpkins and I never cared for Smashing Pumpkins. But then I developed a taste for the Pumpkins and that opened the door for me to enjoy Silversun Pickups. They eventually won me over big time, only to let me down on NECK OF THE WOODS. I felt like BETTER NATURE was a step back in the right direction, but similarly to Jimmy Eat World's newest, I feel like the songs standout more on WIDOW'S WEEDS in a way that will hold up better going forward.

If you're only going to listen to one song, listen to: Neon Wound

But you really should also at least listen to: Songbirds

Copeland - BLUSHING

BLUSHING isn't the record I was expecting after Copeland blew my mind with IXORA and it's companion album TWIN. It's atmospheric and spacey and moody, but not really as hooky as their previous work. It's not an album I listen to sing along to, it's an album I absorb as a whole, drinking in the atmosphere of the thing. You can't just listen to it once, you have to let it seep in through your pores. That's not to say it's abrasive or anything, it's Copeland, so it's beautiful. It's just more of an experience than a collection of pop songs.

If you're only going to listen to one song, listen to: Pope

But you really should also at least listen to: the rest of the album.

Bayside - INTERROBANG

I've heard Bayside referred to as the poor man's Alkaline Trio, but I've never cared for that description. They are kind of like a cross between the Smoking Popes and Alkaline Trio, but with an extra pinch of something thrown in. That something extra is an almost metal heaviness that those bands never touch that Bayside really leans into on their newest album. Usually when pop punk/emo bands try to do heavy they add some screaming on a bridge or sooner chugga chugga breakdowns somewhere, but not Bayside. You've still got Anthony Raneri's classic crooning, and then there are some heavy riffs on this thing.

If you're only going to listen to one song, listen to: Bury Me

But you really should also at least listen to: Interrobang

Kanye West - JESUS IS KING

Ok. So I know Christan people who suddenly jumped on the Kanye wagon with this album, singing it's praises. These people are wrong. I also know long time Kanye fans who either wrote this album off or brushed it aside because of the lyrics. These people are also wrong. Is this peak Ye? No. It's not even in the same realm as MY BEAUTIFUL DARK TWISTED FANTASY, much less as good as some of the other ones. But I think it is my favorite since YEEZUS. And that's not a bash on the other more recent stuff (KIDS SEE GHOSTS almost made my top 10 last year), that's an indictment of how much I love this album. The Sunday Service Choir adds a new texture I love, but Kanye is still doing Kanye stuff: ridiculous lines like "you my Chick-fil-A," and random drop beats for screaming (which aren't even random if you're paying attention to the lyrics). It's got hooks and flow, while also being weird and occasionally abrasive exactly like a good Kanye West album should be. Unfortunately, because it's Kanye, and he's had a history of mental illness and lifestyle changes that seem like publicity stunts, no one knows how to react to this. Is his conversion genuine? I don't know. Only God really does, and that's ok. I desperately hope so, not because of how many other people he could reach, or because it would allow me to enjoy his music more or anything like that. I hope so, because I care about Kanye West as a person and would be overjoyed for him to join my heavenly family. But if it's not, and this ends up like another Bob Dylan blip? That will be a bummer, but like Bob Dylan, it won't affect my enjoyment of his musical output.

If you're only going to listen to one song, listen to: Selah

But you really should also at least listen to: Follow God

Honorable mention:

Teenage Bottlerocket - STAY RAD

STAY RAD honestly could have been number ten on this list, but it was close and I had more to say about Kanye.

[youspoketome]

New Found Glory - New Found Glory (2000)

My first big purchase after getting a job was to buy a computer. We had a family computer that we all used for most everyday use, but I wanted an iMac that I could carry with me to my friend's house to Applelink together and play multiplayer StarCraft and Diablo II. Second generation iMac's came in several colors named after fruit like grape or blueberry. In the catalogue, strawberry looked like a really cool shade of red, so that's what I picked out. And that's how I ended up with a pink computer.

The first thing I did after getting it home and getting it all set up and hooked up to the internet (my room didn't have a phone jack, so it was set up in my brother's old room), was to see what these mp3 things people were talking about were. It didn't take long before I found a website that had like 8 songs on it including a few by Craig's Brother and some from a Huntingtons Ramones cover album (I can't remember if it was ROCKET TO RAMONIA or FILE UNDER RAMONES), and from there I was off and running.

Two things happened shortly after that that expanded my music discovery incredibly: 1) I found a way to plug a phone cord in in an upstairs room, run it out the window, down the side of the house and into my basement bedroom window, allowing me to have my computer hooked up to the internet in my bedroom where I could use it all hours of the night. And 2) Napster.

As I've already established, I've loved cover songs pretty much since I got into music. So I was less trying to discover new bands on Napster and more doing search after search for "punk cover." At that time songs were notoriously mislabeled and half the songs were incorrectly credited to Green Day or Blink-182, because they were the punk bands that had crossed over to mainstream popularity. There were some songs that were correctly labeled though, and I was able to find a handful of cover songs by a band called A New Found Glory.

Due to some turnover, the people from Walmart that I was taking breaks with had changed a bit. Gone were Eric in Shoes and Jim in Toys, replaced with my friend Randy who had gotten a job in toys, Leann in... Actually, I'm not sure where she worked, and Cashier Shaun, whose claim to fame was that he owned more Blink-182 t-shirts than were even available from the band (he had made one or two in a printing class in school). In talking to Shaun I found out New Found Glory (they'd dropped the "A") were coming to town, so (after he assured me they would play songs from their cover album, FROM THE SCREEN TO YOUR STEREO), we got the group together to go.

In hindsight the lineup for that show (which I'm pretty sure was NFG's first time playing Minneapolis) was really weird. Less Than Jake headlined, who I knew because of "Jen Doesn't Like Me Anymore" and their album GREASED (because, you know, covers). The other openers were the Teen Idols, who I knew my friends from the Rent-a-friends liked and I had heard on SHORT MUSIC FOR SHORT PEOPLE, and Anti-Flag, who I had also heard on SHORT MUSIC... but didn't remember the song because I had hated them pretty much from the moment I learned of their existence.

New Found Glory didn't play a single song from FROM THE SCREEN TO YOUR STEREO, and the first thing Shaun did after we found each other after the show was apologize, but it didn't matter. They were awesome enough that I bought a t-shirt without even hearing a studio recording of an original song.

I did get their self-titled CD shortly after that. It was one of those times where I bought a CD while I was out with friends who did not care about my new CD, so I just had to sit in the back of the car reading the liner notes while wishing I was listening to it instead of whatever crappy music was playing.

New Found Glory weren't necessarily a life changing band for me. I still like them and still listen to them (I was genuinely excited for FROM THE SCREEN TO YOUR STEREO 3, which came out last month), but sonically they weren't that big of a leap for me. The thing to note here is how I discovered them. Until now, all the new bands and albums I had gotten into I had discovered by word of mouth or compilation CDs or literally just picking it up off the shelf and buying because of a song title. Now music discovery had just gone digital.

#you spoke to me #new found glory

[youspoketome]

SQUAD FIVE-O - BOMBS OVER BROADWAY (2000)

I don't remember when I first heard Squad Five-O, or I would definitely have written about them sooner. It was probably around when my older brother got a job at Northwestern bookstore that he started buying a bunch of CDs, which I would then dub into cassettes. Some were by Tooth and Nail bands like the OC Supertones and Value Pac that I had heard on comps anyway, but also some bands from other labels like Kosmos Express, Five Iron Frenzy, and most importantly to me, Squad Five-O.

Somewhere in between MxPx changing my life and discovering The Ataris, I discovered Squad's WHAT I BELIEVE and when it was released, FIGHT THE SYSTEM and I was obsessed in a whole new way to me. I started modeling my entire life after that band. I started bleaching my hair because Jeff Squad bleached his hair, I started only wearing my hoodies zipped up about 2/3 of the way because Johnny Five wore his hoodie like that on a tour poster I had, I set my default font on AOL Instant Messenger to neon green with black background to match their logo on FIGHT THE SYSTEM (which they stole from Poison), I got in trouble in algebra class for writing the lyrics to "Fight The System" on my shared graphing calculator at the end of class and leaving it there for the next person. If you read the installment about Me First and The Gimme Gimmes you might remember my camo shorts with knee high argyle socks. I was wearing that because of Squad Five-O. To this day I have one single tattoo, and it's a tattoo I first saw on Jeff Squad and decided I wanted when I was about 15.

I'm pretty sure my first real rock and roll show (meaning not DC Talk at the Target Center or a Billy Graham crusade) was Squad Five-O. They were the perfect band for a Christian music venue like the New Union. Christan venues were notorious for not letting you have fun in the crowd. You can jump up and down, you can move around, but you can't jump into another person or touch someone else while you are moving around. So moshing and crowd surfing were right out. The beauty of Squad though, was since all their songs constantly switched back and forth between ska parts and punk parts, no one got in trouble. The heavier punk parts would play and the crowd would freak out, but before anyone could get pulled from the crowd, the ska part would kick in and everyone would stop moshing and start skanking. Those shows were some of the most fun I ever had in a pit (and I use that term very, very loosely).

So anyway, fast forward to 2000. I've discovered The Ataris and secular music, but I'm still a Tooth and Nail kid at heart. I've started taking classes at community college through PSEO, and so I'm using their computer lab. (I still distinctly remember this.) I go to toothandnail dot com and before the normal home screen loads, there's a page with a giant picture of Squad Five-O announcing their new addition to the Tooth and Nail family. I didn't even hit the continue to home page link, I opened a new window to get to my email and I literally emailed everyone in my address book (95% of whom had never heard of Squad Five-O or couldn't have cared less about them if they had) to let them know that SFO had signed to Tooth and Nail Records. I think I got two responses to that email, one telling me I was a huge nerd and one telling me this was old news and he already knew about it.

Over the ensuing months demos from the new album would show up in a couple different T&N compilation CDs. They were definitely different, but not bad, and I was going to give them the benefit of the doubt. I continued to excitedly wait for the new album.

Squad Five-O had always had a thing for 80's metal. As I mentioned earlier, they completely stole the Poison logo for their own logo on FIGHT THE SYSTEM. The first time I saw them, every single shirt they had at their merch table was a spoof of Guns N' Roses, Judas Priest, Stryper or some other metal band. But on BOMBS OVER BROADWAY they just went for it. The producer they worked with on this album had previously worked on albums by Cinderella, LA Guns and Ozzy. Gone was the punk/ska hybrid I loved. Gone was the raw energy I soaked up. Gone were the bratty kids shouting anthems. They were replaced by big hair, aviator sunglasses, sleeveless t-shirts and rambling guitar solos.

I still bought it. I still bought a poster and multiple t-shirts (I want to say I had three shirts from this era). I still went to see them (with The Juliana Theory, who I hadn't even discovered yet). But that was the end for me. I didn't buy their next, self-titled album, and to this day I've not listened to their major label album after that. The magic was gone.

I recently listened to a podcast about this album and period for the band, and it sounds like Brandon from T&N heard the demos, knew it wasn't right, and begged them to stick with their previous sound. Even Jeff expressed regret that the producer had made them slow all the songs down and sapped the energy that was there in their live shows and even on the demos.

The thing with BOMBS OVER BROADWAY was until that album I don't think I had figured out yet that bands could change for the worse. Everything I had listened to to that point had just been on an upward trajectory. I had stopped listening to DC Talk and Audio Adrenaline by this time, not because they changed, but because I had. Ghoti Hook's TWO YEARS TO NEVER came out around the same time, and I actually heard the first demo from that album on the same comp as one of the Squad demos, but that one doesn't stand out to me as much. Conrad had quit Ghoti Hook and I think I just assumed they wouldn't be as good anymore without him. Squad Five-O had added members and signed to my favorite record label, who could have imagined they'd get worse? It was kind of an eye opening album for me.

Coda (or: I'm not sure when else I'll get to tell this story, so I'm going to tack it on the end here):

BOMBS OVER BROADWAY obviously had a lot of imagery of planes and destruction and New York City (the lyrics to the titular song literally go "Midnight, New York City/Broadway, going up in flames/Ground zero, big city/Big Apple swallowed by the flames."). At the time it was about vanity and American consumerism, but after 9-11 it became much more real and tasteless. On September 12 or 13, 2001, I got up and got dressed went about my day. While waiting in line for lunch my friend Kara (one of the two respondees of my excited email) kind of looked at my t-shirt and gave me a weird look. I glanced down and said "Squad Five-O. They're a band," and didn't think any more of it. After school I went to work (I was working at Hot Topic by this point, we'll get there pretty soon) where I wore a hoodie most of the night, but after the mall closed and we were cleaning up, they'd turn off the air and it would get really hot and stuffy. So after I got too warm I took off my hoodie and for the first time in the day really took notice of the shirt I'd been wearing all day: a Squad Five-O t-shirt that above the logo featured the Twin Towers falling over with a mushroom cloud coming up between them. I suddenly realized why Kara had been looking at my shirt so strangely, and never wore it again.

#you spoke to me #Squad Five-O #bombs over broadway

[youspoketome]

My Favorite Albums of 2018

I tried something new this year. All year long, every time I bought a new album I added it to a note on my phone as a list so that I could adjust the order as needed. Some things settled into their order quickly, but a couple spots went down to the wire. Embarrassingly, I was just looking at my 2015 list and six albums on that list were the previous albums by six of the bands on this list, and one was a solo album by the singer of a seventh band listed here. I'm not quite sure what that means in the grand scheme of things. And that seems like a long enough introduction, so here we go!

Murder By Death - THE OTHER SHORE

Honestly, I thought Murder By Death was finished having albums on top of my best of lists. I had been so disappointed in GOOD MORNING, MAGPIE. That album had like two good songs, but the rest was at best forgettable filler and at worst sounded like a parody of themselves. The two albums since then had definitely been better, but still not at the levels of their earlier albums. Enter THE OTHER SHORE: an incredible return to the long form concept album following a story of love and dying planets in a western in space. It's full of catchy hooks without ever being clichè, small character moments and big, world-ending finishes. Best of all, it's got ripping 2-minute long cello solos. This is peak Murder By Death right here.

mewithoutYou - [UNTITLED]

mewithoutYou is another band I've loved for years, but thought was coming off of a weaker album. I enjoyed PALE HORSES (it made my top ten list the year it came out), but it didn't have anything that really grabbed me and made it a necessary part of the mwY canon. [UNTITLED] immediately feels important. It's not the most easily accessable album, but when have mewithoutYou ever been accessable? This is an album that has layers that you can appreciate as you dig down to them on further listens. Over the years mwY's sound has evolved from the heavier hollerin' of [A->B] LIFE and CATCH FOR US THE FOXES to the completely clean and folky IT'S ALL CRAZY... and back again. [UNTITLED] really blends things together by taking the heaviness from early albums and adding them in for flavor rather than building the songs around them, giving the songs depth and intensity. For my money, it's their best album since BROTHER, SISTER. Still waiting on that album/EP collector's edition to ship though, so no pictures.

Gregory Alan Isakov - EVENING MACHINES

I've enjoyed Gregory Alan Isakov's previous albums of folky songs fit for sitting on the front porch at your farm while reading an old book, but whenever I'd see him live my favorite song was always the non-album track "Liars" and I'd always wish he'd record it. That song seemed darker than anything else he'd written and had this slow build to an epic climax that almost gave you chills. He finally did record it on his studio album with the Colorado Symphony in 2016 and then he followed that up with his most eclectic album yet. From the soft and haunting opener "Berth," all the way to the end, EVENING MACHINES expands on what Isakov is willing to do, keeping that same welcoming, mellow feel, but getting there in new ways and with new instruments. "Caves" captures that darkness "Liars" had in a way that is wholly satisfying to me. It feels like he wrote the album I didn't even realize I had been wanting him to write all along.

Emery - EVE

I've always enjoyed Emery, but it wasn't until their last album YOU WERE NEVER ALONE when they broke the album down song by song on a behind the scenes podcast that I fully appreciated them as musicians. Unlike a lot of bands that came out at the same time in the same genre, Emery is a band with multiple members who have actually studied how music works and can point out and name every single time signature and key change in every song. Now with EVE, I've been able to listen to the little details, noticing and appreciating the attention they give to every little part of each song. The way they don't add the screamed vocal at this part of the song because that seems to obvious, so they save it for when it'll be more striking. How they add the harmonies and layer the vocals. Some bands with that kind of background forget how to write a catchy song or what makes a song enjoyable to listen to, but Emery has this ability to perfectly blend this crazy musicianship with honest, straight from the gut songwriting. The end result is an album full of fantastic songs with awesome little parts and details that make it special and stand out.

Thrice - PALMS

For me (and a lot of people, I think) Thrice and Thursday have always been kind of linked. I discovered them at the same time, both on their second albums. They were post-hardcore bands, similar enough sounding to compare to each other and they both started experimenting with their sound on their fourth albums. Then they both announced they were breaking up within a day of each other. The weird thing is when I first discovered them, I preferred Thursday hands down. Then they both released their third albums and cemented my opinions of them, so much so that I decided not to buy Thrice's fourth album when it came out. Man, that was a huge mistake. That fourth album, VHEISSU was the album when Thrice hit their stride, expanding and exploring their sound with each release since then. Each of their post-reunion albums have continued this trend and PALMS might be their best full album yet.

Frank Turner - BE MORE KIND

To be honest, I'm surprised this album is this far down. If you had me rank my expected best albums of the year list at the beginning of the year, Frank Turner with have been number one with a bullet. But BE MORE KIND was not the album I was expecting, and I was a little let down by it. That I'm saying that my number 6 album of the year was a bit of a let down should tell you how highly I think of Frank Turner. It starts off strong with the mellow opener of "Don't Worry" followed by a full on banger in "1933." But the third track "Little Changes" just didn't hit for me. It seemed like Frank Turner dumbed down for the masses. And it's not that it's too poppy; I enjoy myself a good pop song. It's just that the songwriting seems so simple. There are a number of really good songs throughout the rest of the album (like "Blackout"), but the overarching feel for me is that it's too simplistic, there's no depth to any of the songwriting. All that said, it's hard to rag too much on it because how can you bash an album that's sole message is to be kind and positive and to treat other people decently? Maybe it's that message that made him lose his teeth. In summation, I like Frank Turner a lot, even when he's disappointing me.

Smoking Popes - INTO THE AGONY

INTO THE AGONY is the Smoking Popes first album in seven years. They were putting out albums more frequently than that while they were broken up! After being broken up from 1999-2005, the Popes returned with STAY DOWN, which was not the strongest album to come back on. It was mostly a downer and ended up being completely forgettable for me. This time, upon returning from a seven year album cycle with new album they've knocked it out of the park. It's upbeat and catchy, it's slow and meaningful, it features Josh Caterer's soaring vocals, and it's another fantastic entry into the catalog.

Death Cab For Cutie - THANK YOU FOR TODAY

I think Death Cab's existence as a band is better broken up into stages. You've got the pre-TRANSATLANTICISM era, the TRANS/PLANS era, NARROW/CODES, and now KINTSUGI/THANK YOU. TRANS/PLANS is my favorite era. It's where I discovered Death Cab, it's where I spend the most time with them, it's just the best. But after a bit of a dip there for a couple albums (not saying they were bad, it was just a dip), I felt like KINTSUGI was a step back up, and now THANK YOU FOR TODAY continues in the same vein. It's a more electronic/synthy sound than previous eras, which sets it apart from their highest peaks, so you're not just constantly comparing it to something they'll probably never reattain. I really enjoy where this era is taking them.

Alkaline Trio - IS THIS THING CURSED?

This past summer I decided to give Alkaline Trio's AGONY & IRONY a listen for the first time in I don't know how long. Everyone agrees Alkaline Trio used to be good and then got less good, and I agree, but that specific album was for me the low point, mostly because of "Love Love Kiss Kiss." But then this weird thing happened: I really enjoyed it. Even that song, which is still doofy, wasn't as bad as I remembered. I was so bummed out about it at the time, but that album has some really good songs on it. Even at their lowest point, I still really like Alkaline Trio. IS THIS THING CURSED? is a new Alkaline Trio album. It's got Matt songs, it's got Dan songs, it's got one Dan song that kind of too doofy (Little Help?), it strangely has multiple song titles that end in question marks, and it has an acoustic closer featuring Matt's scratchy-voiced wailing. This is another solid Alkaline Trio album.

The Decemberists - I'LL BE YOUR GIRL

Every year at the same time, all of the baseball websites post their top prospects lists, where they rank the upcoming minor league players in all of baseball or on each team individually, so people can get excited about the next wave of baseball All-Stars. In almost all of these lists you've got your top five or six guys who are clearly the best players in that team's minor league system in that order, but then at about number seven they kind of become interchangeable for a while. You could switch prospect #8 with #12 and no one would cause too much of a ruckus because they're all pretty similar at that point. We've reached that point in my best albums list (really, we reached that point with Alkaline Trio). These final couple spots could have also gone to 6666 by Four Fists, 9 by Saves The Day, KIDS SEE GHOSTS, or if I was in the right mood, even the new MXPX or the Matthew Thiessen solo album. What pushed I'LL BE YOUR GIRL across the line was (a) my wife's incredulousness at my mentioning it might not make the cut and (b) the fact that "Once In My Life" and "Everything Is Awful" have full-on been our anthem songs this past month. This is the Decemberists doing what they do. Folky songs about sea monsters, horse gallop rhythms, and cowboy sing-alongs. Throw in some synth lines to keep things fresh and baby, you've got a stew going.

[youspoketome]

Ten Essential non-Christmas Christmas songs

I was a subscriber to Alternative Press magazine for quite a while. Even when I wasn't a subscriber, we would get them in at work and I would read them there or buy them and read them at home. The point is, I read a lot of AP for a long time. And I bring that up because one of my favorite features in AP was always the "10 Essential..." somethings on the last page, where they would come up with a topic and then write a quick blurb about what they thought were the 10 essential whatever the topic was. All that to say, I've decided to steal that format here. If I think of other topics I may revisit it, but I make no promises.

I find in my life I come into contact with two groups of people who have very strong feelings about Christmas music. There are the people who hate all of it all the time no matter what, and the people who listen to it in July. Both of these groups are wrong. Christmas music is great... Between the day after Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. People who blanket hate it all are being stupid and just haven't given the right albums a chance (Actually, ten essential Christmas albums might be a decent topic someday), and people who listen to it outside that window are just doing it wrong. But there are some songs you can listen to outside the Christmas Music Window that can still count as Christmas songs. And the haters can't hate them arbitrarily, because these are songs that weren't necessarily written as Christmas songs and were released on normal albums, but still work as Christmas songs. (So, sorry Stryper's Reason For The Season, you showed up on a Christmas themed single before you showed up on the re-release of THE YELLOW AND BLACK ATTACK, so you don't count.)

So without further ado: here are my ten essential non-Christmas song Christmas songs.

Have It All - Ace Troubleshooter (from THE MADNESS OF THE CROWDS)

This one is almost cheating. I think my brother had a roommate in college who was friends with the guys (and girl at that point) in Ace Troubleshooter, and so I ended up with a copy of their first self-released album BACK IN THE SHOOTIN' MATCH. That album has some laughably bad songs on it such as "Chilly Minnesota" and a terrible cover of the Spin Doctors' "Two Princes," so I never gave them a second thought even after they signed to Tooth & Nail. But years later I heard "Have It All" on a T&N Christmas compilation and was shocked by how good it was. It was so good that when I found a copy of the album it was from for a dollar I snatched it up. Unfortunately, the rest of the album was just blah, and that is literally the only song on it I ever listen to (and even that, only during the Christmas Music Window.)

If I Was Santa Claus - Atmosphere (from LUCY FORD: THE ATMOSPHERE EPS)

Slug's talk of what he would do if he were Santa Claus is an easy way to consider this a Christmas song, but it's Ant's use of what sounds like a music box rendition of "O Holy Night" that makes "If I Was Santa Claus" not only a Christmas song, but an incredible song.

It's Always Christmas At My House - Huntingtons (from SPLIT with Darlington)

I think this release probably slipped by a lot of casual Huntingtons fans. It wasn't released by Tooth & Nail and I never saw it in any stores. The only reason I have it is because they were selling it at a show when I saw them shortly after they released it. Which is a shame, because it's got some really great jams on it, both by the Huntingtons and on the Darlington half. The Christmas song here (which was saved from obscurity by a T&N Christmas comp) is kind of a tribute to violators if the CMW.

12.23.95 - Jimmy Eat World (From CLARITY)

Is it weird to you that I only own CLARITY as a burnt copy with a ridiculous "I heart punk" quarter machine sticker on it? Because it's weird to me. CLARITY is such an amazing album. "12.23.95" isn't even the best song on it (Actually it isn't even their best Christmas song. Jimmy Eat World are the only band that has been able to turn"Last Christmas" into a genuinely good song.), but it may be the best of all of the non-Christmas Christmas songs.

D**k in a box - The Lonely Island (from INCREDIBAD)

It counts!

A Stick, A Carrot, & String - mewithoutYou (from IT'S ALL CRAZY! IT'S ALL FALSE! IT'S ALL A DREAM! IT'S ALRIGHT)

A song that is so obviously about the Christmas story , and I never even thought of it as a Christmas song until Dustin Kensrue covered it for the re-release of his Christmas album, THIS GOOD NIGHT IS STILL EVERYWHERE.

Jamie's Kisses - Pep Squad (from NO DOY!)

I do not actually own NO DOY! and never did. The only Pep Squad songs I ever had were on 4 or 5 T&N come comps I had. This is another song I never thought of as a Christmas song for years. Every year my cousin makes a mix of new Christmas songs called "Red, White & Twisted." Having learned he was doing this shortly after buying Twisted Sister's A TWISTED CHRISTMAS (and knowing he started making these mixes in the late 90's), I just assumed he meant twisted as in not normal. It took me years before I was listening to TOOTH & NAIL ROCK SAMPLER VOL. 1 and picked out the line "Jamie's kisses are like candy cane on Christmas. Jamie's kisses are all red and white and twisted." Christmas song.

In Like A Lion (Always Winter) - Relient K (from APATHETIC EP)

Another almost cheater. This one was written for a "songs inspired by the Chronicles of Narnia" compilation, but didn't make the cut. Instead it ended up on the APATHETIC EP, which came out right on the cusp of Relient K becoming not embarrassing. I listened to it at work at the time, but didn't own it until it showed up on the Relient K Christmas album LET IT SNOW BABY, LET IT REINDEER. I would end up acquiring the APATHETIC EP sometime after that.

A Holiday Song (Happy Holidays) - Starflyer 59 (from THE FASHION FOCUS)

This one has everything you would want from a Starflyer Christmas song: a sweet guitar line, mumble/crooned vocals, organ interjections, and jingle bells chiming throughout. THE FASHION FOCUS was the album where SF59 lost a lot of the fuzz from their earlier albums (and renditions of actual Christmas songs), but their shoegaze brilliance was far from over.

The Night Santa Went Crazy - "Weird Al" Yankovic (From BAD HAIR DAY)

And of course we finish with murder. Lots and lots of bloody reindeer deaths and nervous breakdowns. Pure delirious, chaotic fun that was exactly what I was looking for in a new original Christmas song as a 13-year-old and hasn't gotten stale to this day.

#you spoke to me #ace troubleshooter #atmosphere #huntingtons #jimmy eat world #the lonely island #mewithoutyou #pep squad #relient k #starflyer 59 #weird al

[youspoketome]

The Girlskouts/The Rent-a-friends - Splitting Up (199?)

Immediately after reconnecting that week at summer camp, Kevin and I did what every pair of music loving high school friends did: we started talking about forming a band. Our band had everything: a name (Joe Buck, named after another guy who worked at camp that we thought had a cool name, not the sports broadcaster), a logo (it looked like the G.I. Joe logo), a talented musician on guitar (Kevin), and an enthusiastic companion who also owned a guitar (me). All we needed was a drummer, bass player, and some songs and we were going to be huge.

So imagine my disappointment when Kevin informed me that he was going to play bass for the Rent-a-friends. Oh, I put on a good face and acted excited for him, but inside I was dying.

Ok, so that's maybe a little bit blown out of proportion. I wasn't just acting excited. My best friend was in a band that was actually a band. They were going to play at the New Union, the same venue I had seen Squad Five-O at. That was awesome.

I don't know if it was Kevin's first show or not, but shortly after he joined I did see his band play at the New Union. At that particular show, they had a former member playing keyboard with them. I believe the phrasing used to introduce me to him before the show was "This is Tommy. He used to be in the Huntingtons." None of them could have known it, but that right there was about the most impressed I could have been with their band and I hadn't even heard them yet. At this point I don't know if I had ever even listened to the Ramones, much less the Queers or any other pop punk bands, but the Huntingtons were on Tooth & Nail Records so they were huge for me.

I bought a copy of their split CD with the Girlskouts* that night. If I remember correctly, I'm pretty sure they had forgotten to bring CDs to that show, so I actually ended up paying one of them for their own personal copy that was in their car or something.

*SIDEBAR: A weird thing about the Girlskouts that I hadn't thought of until now: I never met them. I never saw them. They were close enough to the Rent-a-friends that the two bands made a split CD together very shortly before I befriended them, and then entirely disappeared. I often heard that I looked very similar to Nate Girlskout, but that was all I ever heard about that band.*

Obviously I liked both bands musically. At this point I hadn't heard too many local bands and didn't really have anything to compare it to on that level, but I never thought it sounded sub-par. Both bands' halves were full of catchy pop punk songs that I could sing along to. But honestly their influence on me reached far beyond just that.

Even though they lived about a 20 minute drive away, that band pretty much immediately became the center of my circle of friends. Since I ended up hanging out with the same people they were, they added a new twist to my liking songs by bands whining about girls not liking them: now when I sang along to "I want you out of my head" I was actually thinking about the same girl that the song was written about.

I also started going to local punk shows. I don't think I missed more than a handful of Rent-a-friends shows for the next several years. I would often end up driving gear and/or band members to shows and hangout with the girlfriends until they played. The first time I saw Joy Electric was when the Rent-a-friends opened for them. I discovered the Lawrence Arms at a Rent-a-friends show. l got to meet the Huntingtons because of them (Cliffy told me my completely un-broken-in leather jacket that I was wearing in 80° heat was cool, which was gracious of him).

I didn't give up trying to be in a band, I mostly just transferred my intentions to joining that band (to this day, the only things I can play on piano are the keyboard parts I taught myself of two Rent-a-friends songs). I was never able to afford a moog and so it never happened (at least that's the reason I've been telling myself for 20 years), but most of my strongest and best memories from my high school years involve that band, whether they're at shows or not.

#you spoke to me #the girlskouts #the rent-a-friends #splitting up

[youspoketome]

THE ATARIS - LOOK FORWARD TO FAILURE (1998)

I got my first job when I was 16, working in the pet department at Walmart. On my first day I met Jim in Toys, who had red hair and was wearing a NOFX t-shirt. I don't think I knew who NOFX was yet, but it had the word "punkers" in the Snickers logo, and I knew I liked punk, so he immediately became my favorite person there and we (along with Eric in Shoes) started taking our lunch breaks together. Usually we would just walk across the parking lot to the Cub Foods deli or he would drive (I didn't have my license yet) across the street to Taco Bell, but every once in a while we would make a Best Buy run.

A lunch break Best Buy run was not the smartest idea on the world. We got a half hour break and it was a little over 10 minute drive to Northtown Mall where the nearest Best Buy was at the time, so even if we hit every green light and he drove like a crazy person to get there, we'd still only have about 10 minutes to browse, check out, and get back to the car. Generally, this was a journey taken only on the release date of a new CD someone wanted.

But it was worth it because the Northtown Best Buy was the best Best Buy. It was the closest Best Buy to us, but I knew people from other cities who would drive all the way to that one because it was the "punk rock Best Buy." Whoever was in charge of ordering music for that location was awesome. It's hard to imagine now, but back then you could go in there and lose yourself walking around the CD section for hours. Obviously, on these trips we didn't have hours, less than 10 minutes, but that didn't stop me. Those lunch break Best Buy runs were where I bought my second Me First and the Gimme Gimmes album, my first NOFX album (PUMP UP THE VALUUM), and a whole pile of Fat Wreck Chords compilation CDs.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure it was on one of these ill advised Best Buy runs when I happened across The Ataris. I was casually walking down the CD isle, seeing what I saw when the header card for the band caught my eye. I'm not even all that into video games, but something about a band in the late 90's being called The Ataris was enough to get me to pick up a CD. Then it was the title of track one that sold me.

For some reason at this time I was really into Bill & Ted. It had been 10 years since Excellent Adventure came out and at that point The Matrix was still fresh and exciting, so when people talked about Keanu, they were talking about Neo. Nevertheless, my first two purchases on eBay were VHS copies of Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey.* So when I saw the song title "San Dimas High School Football Rules" on this Ataris CD I was obligated to buy it.

*SIDEBAR: My love for Bill & Ted is something that legitimately confuses me. Not that they're bad movies like I don't understand why anyone would like them. I still like them and am excited that they're finally making a third one. I just wore my Excellent Adventure t-shirt the other day. What's confusing is that I went from being completely opposed to it to loving it and I have no idea where the transition was. I know that Death was a character in Bogus Journey and so naturally I assumed it was a "bad" movie for that reason. And I remember going to the state finals for the History Fair (it was like the Science Fair, only with history) in 7th or 8th grade where Excellent Adventure was playing in the cafeteria during down times and sitting on the other side of the room so I wouldn't have to watch it. And then next thing I remember is my best friend Travis and I being infatuated with it (I was Bill, he was Ted. Similar to how I was Joe and he was Frank Hardy. Good thing only one of us had blonde hair or we'd never have figured out which one of us was who.) and then buying it on eBay. Zero transition.*

It probably helped that I had picked up the LOOK FORWARD TO FAILURE EP, instead of BLUE SKIES, BROKEN HEARTS... NEXT 12 EXITS, which also has "San Dimas" on it. I would end up getting BLUE SKIES and it would become my favorite album, but for a blind buy, the $8 for an EP was easier to part with than the full length price of $15 or so.

I don't remember the first listen or what specifically caused my obsession, but I did become obsessed. I was kind of predisposed to love "San Dimas" based on the title. "Not a Worry in the World" had a sweet dual vocal thing near the end and "My So Called Life" was pretty funny, but I think what won me over was "Between You and Me." I was 16 and had never come close to having a girlfriend. I was the kid who found one girl he liked and just pined over that one specific girl for years. Lyrically, The Ataris were perfectly suited to me. The album titles alone set the mood for what they contained: song after song about unrequited love and breakups (which of course, I had no experience with) that spoke to me like nothing else had yet. Suddenly my endless whining about girls had a soundtrack that made it sound much cooler.

I immediately started preaching the gospel of The Ataris to anyone who would listen. I told everyone LOOK FORWARD TO FAILURE would be the best $8 they'd ever spend. I bought BLUE SKIES and their first album, ANYWHERE BUT HERE. I started frequenting the message boards on their website (this was back when pretty much every band had a message board on their website) and counting down the days until the release of END IS FOREVER.

If you were to ask me today who my favorite band is, I'd hem and haw for a while and talk about how I don't really have a favorite band anymore and my favorite kind of just switches back and forth between David Bazan and Frank Turner and I'm currently listening to Frank Turner so let's go with him, but that might change in 5 minutes. But for like 5 years if you had asked me that question, my answer with no hesitation would have been The Ataris. I don't think I will ever love another band the way I loved The Ataris at that point. The first thing I ever made for Sarah, way before we were even close to dating, was a mix CD that I decorated with stars and both started and ended with "Song For a Mixtape" (started with the short version from LET IT BURN and ended with the full length version from END IS FOREVER). "I Won't Spend Another Night Alone" played as Sarah and I walked out of the chapel after being pronounced man and wife at our wedding. They will always be my "favorite band."

Now here's the punchline. I don't know exactly how much later, but years later I was looking at some old CDs and picked up LIFE IN THE FAT LANE, an old Fat Wreck Chords compilation. The back of that one only listed the bands and not the song titles, but halfway down I noticed "The Ataris." This was fairly unexpected since I knew for a fact that I bought that comp before I discovered The Ataris. So I opened it up and checked the liner notes. Sure enough, "San Dimas High School Football Rules." The song with the title that caused me to impulse blind buy my first album by my favorite band? I already had it on a compilation. I'd listened to it who-knows-how-many times and had even never bothered to check who it was. Life is weird.

#you spoke to me #the Ataris #look forward to failure

[youspoketome]

ME FIRST AND THE GIMME GIMMES - HAVE A BALL (1997)

I met my best friend Kevin at summer camp in like 5th or 6th grade. I liked him because he was the only kid who brought a Star Wars dictionary to camp and he did this thing where he'd pretend to run into trees at full speed to impress girls. I'm pretty sure he liked me because I was the only kid who appreciated that he brought a Star Wars dictionary to camp and I was very impressed by his running into trees skills. The next summer I did some detective work to find his phone number so we could go to camp the same week again. Then we completely lost touch.

My introduction to Tooth & Nail Records through MxPx directed my musical discoveries for the next few years. Although I would occasionally venture out to other labels, they would still be Christian labels like Rescue Records, Bulletproof Music or Five Minute Walk*. I think the farthest I ventured out was when I rode the third wave of ska as far as The Mighty Mighty Bosstones' "The Impression That I Get." And even that was just for a single song.

*SIDEBAR: I'm realizing that I reference record labels a lot. More than the average person, I think. I realized very early on that many of the bands I listened to were on the same record label, Forefront. So from an early age I learned to use that to discover new bands. Most people have probably never heard of Rescue or Bulletproof, or if they have, they probably have completely forgotten their existence, but I always knew which record companies had the kind of bands I was going to like. This would continue for years, from T&N to Victory and Drive-Thru and Vagrant Records. It was an important thing to me for a very long time and has really only stopped kind of recently. The decline and death of the label system is kind of sad in a new way I've never thought of before.*

Even though I had that dubbed tape of DOOKIE, I never really got that into it. I don't know if it was a guilt thing or a format thing, but by the time I got to high school I had taken a hard stance against Green Day. I had a friend called John whose favorite band was Green Day and we made so much fun of him for it. John sat at the same desk as me during different periods of one of our classes and at one point he doodled the Green Day logo on it, so naturally I drew MxPx's Pokinatcha Punk stomping on it. There was another kid who sat at our table in the morning who had a THE COLOUR AND THE SHAPE Foo Fighters t-shirt that I would absolutely love now, but at the time I gave him a lot of crap for it.

It was easy to say I was making fun of these bands because they were on the radio (this was around when "Good Riddance [Time Of Your Life]" was getting a lot of airplay) and so they were "sellouts." The truth was, I had no idea who the Foo Fighters were or what they even sounded like, but it made me look far more punk to make fun of sellouts than admit that I only listened to Christian music and had zero idea who any of these other bands were.

I was so incredibly passionate about music, but so completely ignorant about so much of it. Already I was pretty much only wearing band t-shirts. Mike Herrera had a Spam shirt in the liner notes of TEENAGE POLITICS, so I got one of those, and everything else was Ghoti Hook, Value Pac, The O.C. Supertones, Squad Five-O, and Joy Electric. But all of those bands were (or would end up being) Tooth & Nail bands. I was obsessed with what I was into, and had no interest in anything else.

ANYWAY, at some point I started volunteering as a dishwasher for a couple weeks every summer at camp. Much like the first day of school when you'd wear your best brand new outfit, I always tried to wear my coolest clothes the first day of the week (The fact that a girl I liked was often there may have played a role in this too). On one week, my coolest clothes consisted of a Squad Five-O t-shirt with a Stryper logo swipe, camo cargo shorts, and argyle socks pulled up to my knees.

That same week my old camp friend Kevin, who I hadn't spoken to in years, and his friend Gabe were volunteer counselors. Obviously I wasn't there for it, but I believe that as they noticed me across the room for the first time their conversation went something like this:

Gabe: Look at that loser over there with the socks!

Kevin: Hey, I think I know that loser!

I ended up spending every free minute I had that week with them, discovering that Kevin and I still liked both Star Wars and girls and independently of each other, had both grown into not just big music fans, but into the same kind of music. The difference being, he did not limit himself to just Christian music. Before we parted ways when the week came to an end, we exchanged AOL instant messenger names and he gave me a piece of paper labeled "prescription," a list of bands for me to check out.

I don't remember any of the bands that were on that list except for Me First & the Gimme Gimmes. Between the NEVER SAY DINOSAUR compilation and Ghoti Hook's SONGS WE DIDN'T WRITE (not to mention MxPx's ON THE COVER), I had already developed a huge affinity for covers. So shortly after I got home I made the trip to the Best Buy at Northtown Mall to check out their CDs. At this point the Gimme Gimmes already had HAVE A BALL and ARE A DRAG available, but my mom suggested I go for the first one because I'd be familiar with more singer/songwriter songs from the 60's and 70's than showtunes.

There was nothing sonically groundbreaking about that album. It was a punk rock cover album. I was already listening to punk rock and I already knew most of the songs they were playing. But with it, I had just taken my first step into a larger world.

I very quickly followed up HAVE A BALL with ARE A DRAG. It also introduced me to Fat Wreck Chords (which may have also been somehow mentioned on my prescription from Kevin). I would continue discovering most of my new bands through Tooth & Nail compilation CDs, but I started branching out a little bit by buying Fat Wreck complications too.

It's crazy how important compilation CDs used to be when they don't even exist anymore. The internet ruins everything, I swear. Compilation CDs were the best. For a fraction of the price of a full length from any given band you could get like twice the amount of songs! Sure, maybe they weren't all winners, but for every band I hated like Tilt, there were three or four bands I would discover and fall in love with. There were some bands I would be introduced to from friends or my brother, but most everything I discovered on my own on a compilation CD. The following is a list of some of the bands from this era that I first heard on a compilation that I would end up either buying the CD of or dubbing a cassette of: The Cootees, The W's, Zao, Blindside, Shorthanded, The Dingees, Pedro The Lion, Roadside Monument Joy Electric, Joe Christmas, Furthermore, Strung Out, NOFX, Screeching Weasel, WIZO, Rancid, Bracket... And that's before you count the 100 band SHORT MUSIC FOR SHORT PEOPLE compilation. Technically, the LIFE IN THE FAT LANE compilation would be the first time I would ever hear The Ataris, but that's probably a story for a later installment.

#you spoke to me #me first and the gimme gimmes #have a ball

[youspoketome]

MXPX - TEENAGE POLITICS (1995)

I once bought a bright orange and navy blue Superman t-shirt in a size XL simply because it existed. It's hard to believe in this day and age, when comic book shirts are everywhere and comic book movies are breaking records every other week, but there was a time when a Superman shirt, even one with stupid colors and two sizes too big, was really exciting.

So I think that explains why I was so shocked to see Tom from MxPx wearing a Superman t-shirt on the cover of 7 Ball.

7 Ball was a magazine that covered slightly more alternative Christian music than CCM (a magazine that literally named itself "Contemporary Christian Music Magazine"). Apparently they didn't have much (read: any) budget for photoshoots though, so when they decided to put MxPx on that fateful cover, they just used an image from their newest album ON THE COVER. I took that magazine home and without even hearing them, I immediately became hugely interested in MxPx.

That summer, my dad took me to Sonshine Music Festival, a fairly large, weekend long Christian music festival in Willmar, MN. I remember the biggest draw was Petra playing on the mainstage on Friday night (I had to skip a baseball tournament in order to make it to see them), but I was also incredibly excited that MxPx was playing. By this time I had at least heard their cover of "Summer Of '69" although I can't for the life of me recall how or where. I made it a high priority to be ready for them to play, to the point that my dad and I threw a frisbee back and forth during an entire Stavesacre set, just so we'd be at the proper stage when they were finished and it was MxPx's time.

I think my dad made it halfway through the first song.

Really though, good on him for trying. He waited through that entire Stavesacre set for this band of tattooed and pierced punk rock kids to play and he gave it a go. Then he told me he was going to check out the other stages and left me to rock out on my own. Well... As much as an awkward 13-year-old who has never actually heard the band playing can rock out.

Once the set was over I was determined to buy a CD. The trouble was, as I have mentioned, I was terrible at saving money and didn't have enough cash to afford anything from their merch table. That didn't deter me though, Northwestern Bookstore had a booth set up on the Sonshine grounds where they were selling CDs. I still couldn't afford TEENAGE POLITICS, but ON THE COVER was a shorter length cover album, so it was cheaper. I could be off on the details, but I think it was $8 and I had $6. I thought for sure I'd be able to borrow $2 from my dad for a CD, but had underestimated his distaste for my new favorite band. I went home empty-handed.

That still wasn't enough to get me to give up though. Around this time I had a subscription to Breakaway Magazine (or maybe it was still my older brother's subscription then. At some point his subscription just transferred over to me.) Breakaway was a Christian magazine for teenage boys that had a couple advice columns. One of those columns focused on relationships and life, and one was more about movies and music. Every month that second column basically consisted of variations of two questions: One: "Should I listen to (insert non-Christian band here)?" (Answer: no, unless that band was Genesis. For some reason,they were ok with WE CAN'T DANCE.) And two: "My parents won't let me listen to (insert Christian band here) because they rock too hard and my parents think anything that sounds like that must be evil." The answer to this one was always essentially "have them read the lyrics, and when they see what the band is singing about, your parents will come around!" So I borrowed a copy of TEENAGE POLITICS from one of my older brother's friends and supplied my parent's with the lyric sheet.

Breakaway was wrong.

Ok, quick theology aside (it's relevant, just bear with me). In Ephesians 2:8-9 Paul writes "For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. (NASB)" Christianity is not intended to be a bunch of people following a bunch of rules, it's about having a relationship with Jesus Christ and accepting His sacrifice of His life for your sin. Yes, Christians should live in a way that will be pleasing to Him, but no amount of being good is going to get anyone into heaven. To live your life putting the emphasis on a list of things you can't do instead of on salvation through Jesus is called legalism.

My grandma had a lot of legalistic beliefs. For example, she wouldn't even play solitaire, because some people use playing cards for gambling. Which is why my parents didn't really love it when they they came across "legalistic people suck. Legalism makes me sick. I wonder what makes them tick. I want to go puke on it" in that lyric sheet.

And that dashed my hopes of buying an MxPx CD.

There were multiple repercussions to this ruling. First, I very much learned the wrong lesson from all this. I had gone through all the proper channels (learned of a band in a Christian magazine, saw them at a Christian music festival, followed a different Christian magazine's advice for winning parents over) and was still shot down. So shortly after this when I was at my friend Matt's house and he showed me a new band called Green Day who sounded "exactly like MxPx," I decided to skip the getting approval step altogether (Breakaway would eventually cover Green Day in one of those "don't listen to this non-Christian band" columns). I had another friend dub me a copy of DOOKIE onto a cassette and I listened to it strictly on headphones.

Secondly, I was introduced to Tooth & Nail Records. Perusing that Northwestern Bookstore booth at Sonshine was also my first exposure to Ghoti Hook, whose first album SUMO SURPRISE would end up being one of my next CD purchases. Shortly after that I obtained a T&N mail order catalogue, which I would go over and over and over again. Crux's FAILURE TO YIELD, Blenderhead's PRIME CANDIDATE FOR BURNOUT, TOOTH AND NAIL ROCK SAMPLER VOL. 1, and I'M YOUR BIGGEST FAN VOL. 1, all T&N releases, were my next four purchases after that. Somewhere in there I also got a VHS tape of Tooth & Nail music videos. Up until this point, I was looking for that Forefront Records spine, but my brand loyalty changed allegiances to Tooth & Nail almost immediately. And would stay there for another 10-15 years.

I never would buy TEENAGE POLITICS. The two CDs I bought in between Ian and Ghoti Hook were NEVER SAY DINOSAUR, a tribute to Petra that featured your usual CCM bands like Audio Adrenaline and Jars of Clay, but also featured a cover by MxPx, and SELTZER, another CCM compilation that MxPx got thrown into. They were also featured on that music video compilation and I'M YOUR BIGGEST FAN, so I snuck them in where I could. At some point in the next two years my cousin ended up with a copy of TEENAGE POLITICS, and was more interested in my copy of Geoff Moore and the Distance's HOMERUN. By that point I had already almost entirely abandoned my pre-T&N CD collection so it was a no brainier to make that trade. I think it ended up being one of those rare win/win trades. I think he still breaks out the Geoff Moore from time to time and TEENAGE POLITICS is still my favorite MxPx album to this day.

#you spoke to me #mxpx #Teenage Politics

[youspoketome]

IAN - SUPERSONIC DREAM DAY (1994)

The first disappointment.

Ok, if I’m being totally honest with myself AMERICAN PRIDE by Alabama was my first disappointment. I certainly never came right out and said that, but it wasn’t what I was looking for when I bought it. After getting really into country music radio, the first song that ever moved me to part with my hard earned money was “I’m In A Hurry (And Don’t Know Why).” So when I went out and bought my first ever cassette tape, I was expecting an album full of bangers like that [probably the first and only time IIAH(ADKW) has ever been referred to as a banger]. Yes, that album also had “Take A Little Trip” and “Hometown Honeymoon,” but so much of AMERICAN PRIDE is made up of ballads like “Richard Petty Fans” and the titular song that it’s definitely weighted more of the ballad side than what this 9 year old wanted.

It wasn’t a bad album though, which is why I’m not going to really call it the real first disappointment. It didn’t cause me to become jaded and stop going out and buying more tapes. It was more of the first example of something not sounding like I assumed it would.

ANYWAY, at some point my little brother and I discovered that every weekend on on one of those channels that you never watched (this was back when Fox was still just beginning to make it’s transition into a full fledged network, so you really just had the big three networks, PBS for the kids shows, and a lot of garbage on any of the other channels that happened to come in.) there was a TV show that just showed Christian music videos, so we started planning our evenings around it.

The weird thing is I don’t remember that show playing any videos by the really popular CCM bands of the time like DC Talk, Audio Adrenaline or the Newsboys. I remember “Pleasant Valley Sunday” by Code Of Ethics, “Lovely Day” by Out Of Eden (neither of which did I realize were cover songs) playing pretty much weekly and I remember “Jesus Is For Losers” by Steve Taylor (but that one only stuck out because I very much didn’t get it, lyrically). It was the first place I ever heard Jars Of Clay though. I thought “Flood” was a great song and I was saving money for their album when my older brother went and bought it himself. At first I was very disappointed, but after listening to the whole thing decided I had dodged a bullet there (see those first two paragraphs, but replace “Alabama” with “Jars Of Clay” and “I’m In A Hurry (And Don’t Know Why)” with “Flood” and you’ve pretty much got my reasoning for that one too. Actually, of every album I’ve mentioned here, that first self-titled Jars Of Clay one probably holds up the best of all of them).

One other video that caught my eye was “Supersonic Dream Day” by Ian. Just Ian. One name, like Cher or Madonna. I don’t remember much about that video except at one point he had a traffic cone on his head. I just tried to look for it on YouTube, and apparently it doesn’t exist anymore, so you’ll just have to take my word for it. So my next CD purchase was SUPERSONIC DREAM DAY.

At this point, I was buying all my CDs from Northwestern Bookstore, the same Christian bookstore chain I had bought FREE AT LAST, NU THANG, and HOMERUN from. We didn’t have a CD player in our car yet, so we’d go out for the day, I’d buy my CD, and then have to wait until we had stopped for groceries before we’d go home and I could listen to my new music. So we got home and I put my new CD in the player while we carried all the groceries from the car into the house.

I knew before the car as empty that I had made a terrible mistake. Scroll back up there and look at that CD cover. Look at those sweet overalls! That’s the picture of a guy who runs around with a traffic cone on his head. That’s the kind of guy who poses dancing on a fat guy’s head in the liner notes. That’s the kind of guy who releases an album full of upbeat, fun 90’s dance tracks, right? Wrong. I honestly don’t remember what any of the rest of that album sounds like, because it was all super boring and slow. While I gave liking it a valiant attempt, it was really just a lost cause.

Incidentally, Ian later grew a last name and started a band called All Star United who weren’t altogether terrible. My older brother, who was making fun of me for liking Ian before I even bought that CD, bought their first album, and I ended up dubbing that one over my copy of Boyz II Men’s II (Yeah, we just kind of skipped over that one).

Appendix A: Ian dancing on a fat guy’s head.

Appendix B: All Star United’s self-titled debut album dubbed over a copy of Boyz II Men’s II.

#you spoke to me #ian #supersonic dream day

[youspoketome]

DC TALK - FREE AT LAST (1992)

One year at camp they started showing music videos before chapel started. I really liked TV, so naturally I made it a point to get to chapel as early as possible all week in order to watch as many videos as possible. I’m hoping this was winter camp, so I can tell myself that I was really just trying to come in from the cold, but let’s be honest, it was probably summer camp and beautiful outside.

Anyway, I watched a lot of music videos that week (or weekend! We can always hold out hope it was winter camp.), but only retained two of them… And one I promptly forgot all information about. (Years later I would discover that it was “PDA” by Audio Adrenaline.) The other video though, was “Walls” by DC Talk. That song blew my mind, and the first thing I did when I got home was rush to the Christian bookstore to buy the album if came from, NU THANG. (Ok, full disclosure: it probably wasn’t first thing. I was very bad at saving money. I’m sure there was some delay while I amassed enough money to buy a cassette tape.)

Once we got to the store though, I ran into a problem. DC Talk had already released a new album called FREE AT LAST. So I had to decide whether to get the tape with the song I knew I wanted, or to get the newest one. Throwing another monkey wrench in the situation was that there was also a featured tape on display called NO ROOM 2 BREATHE by a group called Dynamic Twins. I had never heard of them before, but my brother must have heard them somewhere because he was pushing hard for me to forgo DC Talk altogether and go for NO ROOM 2 BREATHE. After an extended period at the listening station switching back and forth between the three of them, I decided on FREE AT LAST.

I don’t think I’ve heard Dynamic Twins mentioned again since that day, but I just googled them and apparently that was their second of three albums. I like to imagine there’s a timeline out there where I bought their album instead and then proceeded to become a huge rap fan. In that timeline I never cared about JESUS FREAK when it was released and so never made the transition from rap to rock along with DC Talk. I never go on to discover the other bands that changed my life, never got a job at Hot Topic, never met my wife at work and my entire life is different. This may be the darkest timeline.

As it was, DC Talk always had that rap/rock/soul combo, even dating back to “Walls.” So even though I thought I was getting into rap, I wasn’t.

It’s funny to me to talk to other people my age about music from the mid-90’s, because I have no idea what anyone else is talking about. I didn’t even know who Nirvana was until after Kurt died and people started wearing those white t-shirts with his picture and dates on the front and that quote on the back. My only knowledge of Madonna was that she was the reason I wasn’t allowed to watch Dick Tracy because “she wore underwear for clothes.” I honestly just didn’t have a clue about any mainstream music; I was living in a different world. FREE AT LAST led me to Audio Adrenaline’s DON’T CENSOR ME (and eventually back to their self-titled first album which contains “PDA”), Carman’s ADDICTED TO JESUS, The Newsboys, Geoff Moore and the Distance’s HOMERUN, SPACE by Bleach, and Skillet’s first album. If that tape had the Forefront Records black and yellow spine, I was there.

It’s hard to put into words how important DC Talk was to me. Garth Brooks was the first thing I connected with, but it was still my dad’s music. DC Talk was mine. They were the first thing I discovered for myself. I’m fairly confident that my first concert was DC Talk at the Billy Graham Crusade at the Metrodome, followed pretty closely by DC Talk’s Welcome To The Freak Show Tour at the Target Center. The first song I ever wrote was a blatant ripoff of “Walls.” (I still remember the hook, but there is no amount of money you can pay me to share that with anyone.) My little brother, cousins and I literally spent hours lip-syncing and dancing together to FREE AT LAST. I at one point in junior high definitely made the statement “DC Talk and Audio Adrenaline are there two greatest bands of all time.”

And I absolutely believed it too. Which is why it’s odd that to this day I have never listened to all of SUPERNATURAL. FREE AT LAST was my gateway album. JESUS FREAK was my first CD, which really redirected my musical direction. NU THANG (along with HOMERUN) was my first CD purchase. But I never even bought the WELCOME TO THE FREAK SHOW live album until I found it used on clearance probably 5 years ago and bought it for nostalgia’s sake. By the time SUPERNATURAL (and especially SOLO) came out the world had moved on. But to this day I have not taken those other three out of semi-regular rotation.

• Note: At some point I misplaced my original cassette tape. This is a photo of the CD I upgraded to.

#you spoke to me #dc talk #free at last

[youspoketome]

My Favorite Albums of 2017

David Bazan - Care

Years ago David Bazan, along with Pedro The Lion bandmate TD Walsh, released an album under the name Headphones. It was to Pedro what The Postal Service was to Death Cab For Cutie. It retained all the dark, quiet heaviness of Pedro The Lion, but entirely with synthesizers and electronic sounds. Unfortunately, although it might be my favorite thing he's ever done, that album flopped hard and apparently Bazan promised his wife he would never release another Headphones album again. So I was extremely pumped when he announced that his new album was going to be completely electronic. CARE is the follow up to HEADPHONES that I've been wishing for all this time. Bazan's signature sad and honest songwriting matched perfectly with a bunch of electronic blips and bleeps.

Lo Tom - Lo Tom

Another favorite is Starflyer 59, so when Bazan announced he was teaming up with Starflyer's Jason Martin (and others) to form Lo-Tom I was pretty excited. I'll be honest, I was hoping for some Martin/Bazan back and forth vocals, but I can't complain at all about the final product: Bazan's crooning over a nice mix of Starflyer/Luxury type riffs that were the result of a bunch of friends getting together to have some fun and make some great music. My only real complaint is that the relatively short length of eight songs just makes me thirsty for more.

Brand New - Science Fiction

It's disappointing that this album won't make some "best of" lists because of information that came out this year about Jesse Lacey. But if we started judging quality of music based on the quality of the person making it, we wouldn't be able to listen to anything anymore. On the basis of the music alone, SCIENCE FICTION is easily one of the best albums of the year. It enters into the Brand New canon as the perfect conclusion to the constantly evolving sound of a seminal band.

Acceptance - Colliding By Design

I feel like all too often after a band breaks up and then gets back together again their return album is pretty much always a disappointment. So when Acceptance announced they were back together and releasing a new album I was excited, but with reservations. PHANTOMS was one of the best albums of 2005, but they broke up so quickly after it's release, you never even got the opportunity to think about about a follow up. COLLIDING BY DESIGN is the rare exception where it doesn't feel like 10 years have passed. It feels like the natural next step for the band after PHANTOMS, building off of that sound and adding an almost 80's pop feel to the music. Hopefully we don't have to wait another 12 years for album number three.

The Lulls In Traffic - Rabbit In The Snare

Speaking of bands breaking up and getting back together, during the four years that Copeland was broken up, Aaron Marsh formed The Lulls In Traffic with LA based hip hop artist Ivan Ives. In that entire time they managed to release maybe three songs. And one of those was a Christmas song. So naturally it took Copeland's reunion to get the Lulls to release their first album, RABBIT IN THE SNARE. At first, hip hop seems like a strange thing to combine with Copeland's laid back sound, but Marsh has adapted his sound just slightly enough so that it works perfectly. While I would have enjoyed getting this like five years ago, I'm glad we finally did get it.

Teenage Bottlerocket - Stealing The Covers

I usually don't consider cover albums for my "best of" lists, or at least severely handicap them, but Teenage Bottlerocket's STEALING THE COVERS it's such a great idea I had to make an exception. While it is an album of cover songs, it's not songs you're familiar with getting makeovers, it's all covers of songs by local bands that they've toured with over the years. Most of which either novelty bands or at least novelty songs. The result is probably the funniest album of the year.

Devin Shelton - Sensation

Devin Shelton's SENSATION was not the album I was expecting. As one of the vocalists for Emery, I thought I'd be getting a more laid back offering like Emery's other side project Matt and Toby's first album. Instead, what I got was a smooth, blues-y, old school R&B album. It took me a minute to get into, but once I gave it a couple listens it grew on me a ton.

Marah In The Mainsail - Bone Crown

Years ago, when I was managing the Burnsville Hot Topic store I hired a 16-year-old kid named Austin Durry. When one of my other employees, Austin Tang, asked me about the new kid I said something to the effect of "he's a youth group kid. Swoopy hair. I think his favorite band is Underoath." Austin replied with "Corey, there are only so many of 'us' we can have." Almost 10 years later, Austin and Austin are now both members of my favorite local band, Marah In The Mainsail. Marah's first album THOUMATROPE was solid in its own right, but this year's BONE CROWN is fantastic. Sounding reminiscent of Murder By Death, mixed with Mumford And Sons, mixed with mewithoutYou (only because they're the only other band I can think of that can get away with writing songs about woodland animals) mixed with something darker and more sinister, Marah sounds familiar and completely fresh at the same time. Topping it off, BONE CROWN is a concept album following a story that feels like something that would have happened if Quinton Tarantino had been inspired by Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox.

New Found Glory - Makes Me Sick

After RADIOSURGERY and RESURRECTION (not terrible albums, but entirely forgettable), New Found Glory was beginning to turn into a band I would keep buying new albums from because of how much they meant to be once upon a time, but not because I was enjoying the current output (I'm looking at you Taking Back Sunday). Luckily for them MAKES ME SICK is a return to relevance. NFG is continuing to change and they'll never be the band I loved in high school and college, but if they keep putting out albums at least as memorable as this, they will keep being a must have band for me.

Foo Fighters - Concrete and Gold

I feel like every other year the Foo Fighters announce they're taking a hiatus, and then the next thing I know they're announcing another new album. Then that album is a predictably solid rock and roll album. CONCRETE AND GOLD is another entry into this pattern. Dave Grohl is still there savior of modern music.

[youspoketome]

As far as I’m concerned, all three of these came out in the same day. I was nine years old when The Chase, the third if these to be released came out so my memory is probably very flawed, but that’s how I remember it.

Up until this point I had obviously listened to music with my parents before.* We’d often listen to KOOL 108, the oldies station on the radio, and for sure we listened to things like Sandi Patty’s kids album, but I hadn’t yet connected with anything to the point where I wanted to listen to it on my own.

*SIDEBAR: My earliest memories are from a family vacation we took in 1986 to Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia. I have distinct memories of playing with green plastic army men in the back of my grandparents’ Winnebago, a terrifying taxidermied bear at (I think) Abraham Lincoln’s birthplace, and most strongly, Ronnie Millsap’s Greatest Hits being the soundtrack to the entire trip. Looking back, there’s something hilarious about a three year old singing along to “I’m having day dreams about night things.”*

Then one day my dad came home with No Fences, Ropin’ The Wind, and The Chase and everything changed. I don’t have a moment where I put on some other kid’s Walkman and heard a specific song that changed my life or anything like that. I just have Thunder Rolls, Friends in Low Places, and Rodeo all at the same time. Suddenly there was this one guy who had all these great songs. My dad was always a fan of The Beatles so you’d assume I was aware of how many songs of theirs I knew, but I only remember hearing them occasionally when they’d play on the radio. Garth Brooks we would put in the tape and just listen to hit after hit after hit.

But Garth wasn’t just the first artist I discovered a love for, he also opened me up to music. Naturally, we started listening to country music radio around this time. This was also when I bought my first pack of blank cassettes to tape songs off of the radio. (Because I’m awesome, I labeled those tapes as “Max Rebo & the Jizz-Wailers” and “Figrin D'an & the Modal Nodes.”) Garth Brooks opened me up to music discovery. My first music I purchased for myself was Alabama, Little Texas, Joe Diffy, and Tim McGraw cassettes. My time spent soley in the country music world didn’t last long, but it was powerful and influential.

#you spoke to me #garth brooks #no fences #ropin' the wind #the chase

[youspoketome]

By the time I left Hot Topic there wasn’t much left for me to miss anymore. By that point, the only thing keeping me there was convenience and comfort. There was one thing that I still enjoyed up until the end though, and that was talking music with other people who loved music. Not just the “have you listened to so-and-so’s new album yet” or “you like them? They’re terrible!” conversations either. (Although I did enjoy those too.) I’ve always been really proud of how many people I was able to introduce to new bands that became if not their favorite band, at least one of their favorites. One thing I always enjoyed was the conversions about the discovery of a band or an album and how often my story would parallel someone else’s. The “wow, I also hated them at first, but that exact song was the same one that won me over too!” type conversations.

That’s really the one thing I miss most that I don’t get anymore. So for a while now I’ve been trying to think of a way to recapture that somehow. This blog is my latest attempt. My plan here is to write an entry for each album or band that has influenced or effected me in some significant way. Not even especially about what that album sounds like or why I sonically like it, but the story behind how I discovered or fell in love with it. I don’t know that these albums actually saved my life, but they changed it that’s for sure.

Now you may be asking yourself “what does a random Tegan and Sara DVD have to do with any of this?” Well I’ll tell you. If you’ve known me for a while, you know I’ve made a few attempts at blogging in the past, whether it be about baseball or comics or whatever. Baseball and comics are two things I am very passionate about, but somehow writing about them quickly became a chore and not something I desired to do at all. So, that is why I’m starting out with this. “It’s not fun. Don’t do it!” will be my motto. As long as it’s fun and something I am enjoying, I’ll keep going. But I’m just going to throw this out right up front. If it’s not fun, I’m not going to do it.

Hopefully it will be fun. Hopefully it will do something to fill that void I’ve felt for the last couple years. The main problem is if I’m missing having conversations, this blog is by definition not a conversation. So feedback is welcomed. Let’s have a conversation.

#you spoke to me