As a perpetually bummed out teenager, I’d like to pretend that I wasn’t culling my chosen social identity from MTV’s hit parade, but that wouldn’t be true. I was as tuned in as most of my peers, especially once the channel began to venture beyond the plasticity of pop music and expose us sheltered types to the language, garb, culture, and sounds of the underground. The college set of the late 80s were already up on 120 Minutes , but us budding types were suddenly becoming hip to it as well, a younger generation now fascinated with Seattle’s dirt rockers and a sudden slew of maverick bands whose preceding years of blood and sweat was suddenly paying off. You know the rest. In 1994, the same year Green Day released its major label colossus, Dookie , I pulled the cellophane off of a CD called Stranger Than Fiction , another major label debut but from a veteran band whose origins dated back as far as 80s hardcore. The band was Bad Religion . As the majors continued to hit ...

I haven't written one of these "fond remembrance" type entries lately, having skipped all of 1995.  But, after going through the albums I'd acquired in 1996, my sophomore year in art school, I thought a couple releases would be worth addressing.  Others not so much, but I'll address them anyway. NOFX – Heavy Petting Zoo I first saw NOFX at the Trocadero the year Heavy Petting Zoo was released, the farm-animal-as-fuck-puppet theme of the album further explored via blow-up sheep, ("There's even a hole for your cock!", as I remember singer/bassist Fat Mike excitedly putting it), being volleyed and bounced throughout the audience.  And of course there was the raunchy banner of the greasy-haired 1950s looking dude on the cover in a 69 with a sheep acting as a backdrop for the band's performance.  At the time, sure it was funny.  Now?  Eh, whatever. I can't deny that NOFX was actually a solid live band and that those shows were a lot...

MC Hammer Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em Capitol/EMI Released: 2.12.90 I can boast the following: The first rap albums I'd ever heard were the Beastie Boys ' License To Ill and Public Enemy 's Yo! Bumrush The Show . The aforementioned boast is canceled out by this admission: The first rap album I ever paid for, was M.C. Hammer 's Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em . I was pulled from Catholic school after sixth grade. While I don't want to enact the cliché of misunderstood youth reluctant to completely buy into parishioners' dogma, I'll instead say that I have a liberal mother and that my inquiring mind, lack of attention and penchant for doodling in the margins of my copybooks warranted enrollment elsewhere. Plus, my mother was tired of having to come into school and discuss my behavior with my teachers/nuns. And, while I was very happy to be leaving the confines of Catholic school, I was completely unprepared for scholastic life in...

Poison Open Up and Say... Ahh! Capitol/Enigma 5.3.88 Approved by God. I didn't really care that Bret Michaels was dudded up like some tranny from the Strip. Nor did I care the C. C. DeVille had the Melanie Griffith equivalent of a Brian Setzer pompadour. To be honest, I don't know what it was that pulled me to something the likes of Open Up And Say... Ahh! , except perhaps "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" seemed meaningful at the time. Plus, there was a cute girl slung into black lingerie in the "Fallen Angel" video, which also seemed meaningful at the time. I guess the concepts of diminishing returns from fading relationships and the great potential for failure as the starry-eyed wanderer leaves Hicksville to pursue fame and fortune in L.A. weren't something I was too familiar with, being that I was 11 when this album came out. As far as I knew, Michaels was spouting Nietzsche , though I was at least aware that "Nothin' but a Good Ti...

I do, at times, think back to the many albums I’ve loved or the bands I looked up to and wonder to myself, “Why?” We’ve all done this, whether you want to admit it or not. And, most of us don’t. Granted, sometimes it’s just a matter of having been young and caught up in an era. Nick Rocks and MTV informed my musical decisions in then modern suburban America while my father’s record collection didn’t really reach past the year I was born, (which is 1976 if you must know). We all start somewhere and we learn from our mistakes. As much as I would like to state for the record that The Velvet Underground & Nico was something I picked up on when I was 7, this is simply not true. So let’s, as the Minor Threat song instructs, look back and laugh. Debbie Gibson Out of the Blue Atlantic Released: 8.18.87 “Red Hot” still gets in my head from time to time, but only the part where Debbie Gibson sings, “Red hot! Red hot!/Baby, it’s red hot! Red hot!/I need your luhh-uh-uvvvv...