Do you ever sit down and wonder back over the years how it is you got to the point that you're at, popping your new favorite album into your stereo? Or how that guy in Rolling Stone got to where he's at? Or that self-described music snob who seems to listen to the best bands right before they become popular? Everyone's got a story, everyone's guilty of listening to completely awful music and LOVING it. The things that I will divulge here will most likely knock me off anyone's short list as a musical go-to guy, but I can't escape it, so here goes...
Michael W Smith / Go West Young Man - Every music collection has to start someplace; mine just happened to start in a really obnoxiously cheesy corner of the music world. Songs such as Place In This World are instant cheesy classics, and there is hardly anything worse than hearing Smitty rap on Love Crusade. Except for Carman. But I digress. And he croons so smoothly in the title song that it almost sounds as though he is singing about a hero named Question Man. This album was such a hit, it inspired an entire episode of Adventures in Odyssey. Impressive.
Ace of Base / The Sign - My parents never found out I owned this album. I wish they had. Due to my Living In Danger, I'm now stuck living life with a constant Ace of Base soundtrack in my head. I may live in a Happy Nation, but All That She Wants is to get this song out of My Mind. I'm Young and Proud, but I can't stop being a Dancer In A Daydream. Don't Turn Around, but the Wheel of Fortune has landed on "Bankrupt" and The Sign is stuck in my head for all eternity.
dcTalk / Jesus Freak - Oh, frick. Anyone who claimed to a be a Bible-believing Christian in the mid-90's had this album, and they played it LOUD. Yes, while the rest of the world had Nirvana, Bush, The Smashing Pumpkins and Pearl Jam playing in their headphones, I was gittin' down with the dcTalk. That's all I have to say about this album.
Plankeye / Commonwealth - When bands like dcTalk, Audio Adrenaline and the Newsboys got too candy-sweet and mainstream for us youth-groupers, we fell back on cutting-edge Tooth & Nail bands like Plankeye to save our rock 'n roll. They, too, got sweet and glitzy, and then they broke up. Woops.
MxPx / Life In General - The post-grunge alternative era gave way to the punk rock era, and bands like Green Day, The Offspring and Blink-182 made it big. While I liked those bands at the time, I always did (and still do) think MxPx is a better band, and Life In General is their best album. Every song on this album is insanely catchy, and there's nothing like shouting about girls with your best Left Coast punk accent. The amount of energy these guys played with was untouched, until...
Five Iron Frenzy / Upbeats and Beatdowns - The year was 1997. The Third Wave of ska was dominating the alternative music scene. In the period from late 1995 to early 1997, bands like No Doubt, Reel Big Fish, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Goldfinger and Save Ferris released their first major-label albums, and it seemed that musicians from A to Z tried to incorporate ska-flavored stuff into their music. The driving power chords. The let's-get-fired-up pep band horns. The tight guitar on the upbeat. The crazy, nonsensical, who-the-hell-cares humor. Five Iron Frenzy combined some of the best attributes of the ska movement and put on one heck of a fun live show. The movement was dead by the turn of the millennium, but no one told these guys, 'cuz they kept right on making sweet ska albums through 2003.
Creed / Human Clay - You can string me up by my musical tastebuds. Please, I might just deserve it. I loved this album. And for those of us who grew up in hardcore Christian households, this was the first "secular" album that most of us were allowed to own and not hide under the mattress. Sure, Scott Stapp was (and probably still is) a jerk, and they ripped off everyone from Pearl Jam to Led Zeppelin, but almost every person I knew was a fan of these guys. Emo-punks, hip-hoppers, pop divas, preps, jocks, geeks, nerds, nobodies, somebodies, everybody loved this album. Creed was one of those rare bands that only the most adamant musical critics and anti-pop-culturists couldn't handle.
Incubus / Make Yourself - I still had that itch for energetic music. These guys could funk and rock and croon and scream in a period of about three or four measures. Brandon Boyd is still my favorite male vocalist. Incubus' earliest albums, Fungus Amongous, S.C.I.E.N.C.E., and Make Yourself were some of the most tightly and creatively composed rock albums in the past 10 or 15 years. Then they dropped the funk, did a lot less screaming, and made up for the loss of both with a large dose of for-the-ladies crooning and all-around suckery. Beside the good ol' days, they're dead to me.
Jimmy Eat World / Bleed American - Also known as their self-titled album, post-9/11. This is one of the very few albums in my collection that has trouble staying out of my stereo for more than a month or two. I can't really describe it much outside of pure pop-rock at its glorious best. It's produced well enough so that it sounds clean and seamless, but there's enough edge left so as not to make it sound too candy-sweet. Great album, start to finish.
Dashboard Confessional / The Swiss Army Romance - (n) def. Guilty Pleasure Music. Every emo kid's best-kept secret. The best first date/great relationship/breakup/get-sad-then-heal music I've ever heard. The Swiss Army Romance was Chris Carrabba's me-and-my-guitar masterpiece, when it was still his side project from Further Seems Forever. He started writing full-band arrangements, got on the same label as The Get-Up Kids, got some airtime on the radio, and then it was all over.
311 / Soundsystem - My good friend Dustyn told me that every party he ever went to at Madison had a 311 soundtrack, which sounds about right. Once upon a time, these guys were probably the most popular band in Madison. I figured out that about the same time 311 had a big following in Madison, Reel Big Fish had a big following in Milwaukee. That sums up the difference between Madison and Milwaukee: Reel Big Fish is get-drunk-and-go-party music and 311 is get-high-and-go-party music.
Electric Six / Fire - This album defines my year at North Central, as well as the year following. Rock? Disco? Disco? Rock? I say we fuse the two together. Danger! High Voltage, Dance Commander, Gay Bar, Electric Demons In Love, Nuclear War (On The Dance Floor). These guys sell sizzle, and the immeasurable amount of sizzle that has poured forth from the mouth of Dick Valentine cannot be controlled. He even wrote a song about that - I Lost Control Of My Rock 'n Roll.
A Perfect Circle / Thirteenth Step - Ethereal, dark and catchy. This band is pop expressions from Maynard Keenan's "other band", a gateway drug to...
Tool / Lateralus - This album puts you in an absolute trance. You're amazed by what these guys can do, the things they do with music. On the surface, they rock hard, period. But you dig in to what they do, some of the time signatures they use, the guitar work and effects, the way Maynard Keenan can make his voice just blend in with the rest of the music and he becomes an instrument himself... I heard rumor that at a recent concert, they were playing the title track from this album when Keenan told the crowd to "Get out your calculators" as they progressed into the movement in the 10-minute song where they play time signatures that reflect the mathematical equation of a downward spiral. Wow. Most people write Tool off as another trashy metal band on par with Korn or Nine Inch Nails. That thought makes me cringe. I once read a great article defending Tool, as if they need the defense. Check it out.
The Mars Volta / De-Loused In The Comatorium - Before they completely ripped off Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin, they did it only a little bit with Deloused. An orgasmically explosive trip-out album, it keeps you fast-forwarding and rewinding through each song to catch that guitar riff again, or figure out that crazy drum part they just played. Or figure out what the heck they're singing about, the way Cedric Bixler will take a measure or three to warble his way through some magnificent sci-fi word. This is music that really just makes you go "Wow."
The Appleseed Cast / Low Level Owl - About once in your lifetime, a band comes along that seems to put the sounds that your brain makes into song. It's hard to describe these guys without using the words "emo" or "post-punk" or "indie rock" or "psychedelic", but that's not at all what they are. They're just The Appleseed Cast. And they put on a show that almost always turns into an hour-long out-of-body experience. Their music becomes a soundscape, every album with a meandering theme. To try and describe it will do it no justice. This is my band.
The Decemberists / Picaresque - These guys revived in me a small seed that was planted back in the days when I was 12 or so and my parents, every Sunday evening, would turn on the program "Simply Folk" on NPR. But there's enough rock in here so that you don't get too tired of listening to them. Or embarrassed. Or maybe it's Anglo-Saxon in me that finds supreme enjoyment in the way they sing about sad old folk tales and seafaring romps. They can also do a mean Pink Floyd impression mixed in with their folksiness. You can't quite put your finger on these guys.
The Arcade Fire / Funeral - The first time I heard of these guys, I for some reason thought they were another emo-rock deal, like The Alkaline Trio or something. Then I listened to the first song on this album, and honestly, at first, I didn't like them. They were hard to listen to. The production was raw and edgy, almost like it was recorded with a My First Sony in a high school gym. The guy didn't sing, he wailed. My fiancée says they sound like the Edward Scissorhands soundtrack. And who uses an accordion and a marimba with a thumping discoish beat? As these thoughts are going through your head, it all of a sudden comes together into a tight, fist-pumping beat with some of the most amazing falsetto "woo-ooo"s you've ever heard. Then you go back and listen to it again, and it all makes sense. This is a musically diverse group of people simply making music, not worrying about defining their sound. And that in and of itself defines their sound. Then they start singing in French, you find out they're Canadian, and also that you're in love with them.
Sufjan Stevens / Illinois - This Michigander writes music like most of us eat and sleep and drink Coke and go to the bathroom- in fact, he made an entire album full of what is basically random electronic excrement and it still manages to be perfectly listenable. The album was called Enjoy Your Rabbit, and he was so sick of making music that he decided to write an album dedicated to musically making fun of making music. Frick! Sufjan Stevens is a modern-day composer, his music symphonic in complexity, yet simple and straightforward. He writes albums for states, albums about Jesus, movie soundtracks (he was a major contributor to the Little Miss Sunshine soundtrack), and now he's even coming out with a Christmas album of all Christmas albums, 5 CDs full of Christmas recordings backlogged from 5 years worth of Christmases past. Anyone who appreciates the process of making large musical arrangements- band nerds, orchestra geeks, jazz junkies, folk fans- can appreciate Sufjan Stevens.
Well, that's it from my first album to the one that's currently in my stereo. If you still trust my judgment, tune in at the end of the year for my 10Best Albums of 2006. Feel free to comment, argue, scorn or ridicule.
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