Subscribe to PostsSo without further babbling, here is a giant page of video links!!
I remember driving somewhere with Terri when ‘Squeeze Me Macaroni’ popped on one of the College stations. We raced back to my house (no cell phones back then) and I had to call the station and find out who it was. I had an inkling that Mike Patton was singing, but I’d never heard anything so frantically delicious before… Within days I had the album and it’s easily one of the most complex things I’ve ever listened to. Can you fuse more musical styles and samples into 40+ minutes of listening? I still feel like i hear something new everytime I listen to it…
Skinny Puppy – Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse:
This time with Terri & Steve up in Steve’s ‘nook’… I remember vividly them slapping this on in a “you have to check this out” sorta way. It took less than a few seconds to grow on me and I was hooked. I think they sampled their way through this album and ‘Rabies’ (to kind of demonstrate the spectrum of Skinny Puppy music up to that point). Too Dark Park would go on to be one of my favorites by them, but I’ll never forget hearing ‘God’s Gift maggot’ or ‘Stairs and Flowers’ for the first time…
Therapy? – Hats Off To The Insane:
This EP just floods me with memories of the later college years. It crossed through different groups of friends (I don’t know if I listened to it more with Phil or Mike back then…). Edgy but straight-ahead rock, crisp production and killer riffs…
The Beastie Boys – Paul’s Boutique:
Dean Cohen first played this for me in his car and I made us drive around so I could hear the whole thing. At the time I was not a fan of Licenced to Ill in any way shape or form, but this album made me do a 180 on my perception of the Beastie Boys at that time… Lyrically awesome and again with the frantic… It felt purposefully ‘all over the place’ in just the right way…
Dr. Octagon – Octagonocologyst:
Rotated this one up from the ‘others’ list in this revision. I remember Tim played this for us on New Years Eve (I think in Berger’s car), as we party hopped. I never laughed so hard in my life yet couldn’t get enough. The insanity of the lyrics were genius. And the production was awesome. But I mean come on… A Horse In The Hospital? What more could you ask for…
Catherine Wheel – Happy Days:
Caught a ton of flack for this one in the first pass at this, so lets be clear… Ferment & Chrome are way better albums, but in the sense that I became aware of Catherine Wheel and was motivated to seek out those other albums, I have to put Happy Days here. I think for me, this album played enough on my more hard rock/metal background to bring me over into the shoegaze realm. I remember listening to it over and over when I first got it and clearly went seeking more stuff by them.. It was only then that I was completely blown away by Ferment and Chrome… Okay, I guess when I put it that way I should have left ‘Happy Days’ off the list…
Smashing Pumpkins – Gish:
Start to finish one of my favorite albums when it came out. Can’t remember specifically who turned me on to it, but I do know shortly after we saw them play a free show at some crappy bar in Ohio City and ugh, that was a bad show. Turns out the Pumpkins aren’t notoriously great live, but Gish was so great it didn’t really matter.. Perfect blend of heaviness and psychedelica…
The Cure – Seventeen Seconds / Disintegration:
It’s so hard to pick one Cure album here. So I’m cheating and putting two… Seventeen Seconds represents everything I love about the older Cure stuff whereas Disintegration brings me back to some ex-girlfriend memory times and everything that was going on in 1991… They’ve never really sucked me back in past a few songs on Wish, but thankfully there’s so much good stuff to go back to that it doesn’t matter…
Pixies – Surfa Rosa/Come On Pilgrim:
Early BG/East Merry house for me.I actually think Berger played it over and over and I got sucked in everytime. Such a perfect mesh of Frank Black’s & Kim Deal”s vocals merged into just weird enough guitar hooks. Perfect to chill to or to throw on at a party…
Pop Will Eat Itself – This Is The Day…This Is The Hour… This Is This:
This was a weird call for me but I think it again was the merging and meshing of a few musical styles and lots of samples and snippets to make some very catchy music that got me. I had seen many years earlier the video for “There Is No Love Between Us” on 120 minutes and PWEI was a band I had kept an eye out for. Grabbed this album and played the crap out of it for a while. “Wise Up, Sucker” and “Not Now James, We’re Busy” are 2 of the best tracks…
Ministry – The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste :
Tossed between this and “Land of Rape And Honey”… I think I heard ‘Mind” first, but bought them both at the same time. The first 3 tracks on ‘Land’ – Stigmata, The Missing & Diety” make a perfect dovetail into the whole “Mind” album.. Plus back then there was nothing better than hearing ‘Thieves’, ‘Burning Inside’ or ‘So What’ played on a decent stereo at 20X louder than needed levels…
The Cranes – Loved:
I think I chose this just because I was way into this style of music at the time, but hadn’t heard vocals like this before. Almost childlike and angelic at the same time, they create just enough tension against the music that it works perfectly…
Helium – The Dirt Of Luck:
A little stretch of female vocalists here, of which I am and always have been a sucker for… I think it was actually the video for “XXX” off ‘Pirate Prude that hooked me but ‘Pat’s Trick was the first album I got and I played this over and over. ‘Superball’ & ‘Honeycomb’ are standouts here…
Throwing Muses – The Real Ramona:
Totally takes me back to living on East Merry with Scott, Ryan and Eric… This seemed to always be on. It may have been being piped in from somewhere, I’m not sure.
DJ Shadow – Endtroducing:
Will never forget Tim playing this as we drove to NYC. I hadn’t heard anything like it in terms of production & flow. The beats were awesome and the diversity of sounds throughout the album blew me away…
R.E.M. – Fables Of The Reconstruction:
Hard to pick an REM album as well as a few remind me of different significant times. So I just went with my favorite here. I’d seen the video for Driver 8 on 120 minutes and had heard some ‘Lefe’s Rich Pageant’ stuff at Garnetts house, but this was the first REM album to get me start to finish…
Faith No More – The Real Thing:
Dunno where to start with this one. First year away at school and this weird mix of metal/rap/funk comes blasting along. It’d be years before I’d realize just how amazing Mike Patton’s vocals could be or how truly ‘out there’ some of his projects would become, but all I knew was this band was awesome. Then they pop up on Saturday Night Live all crazy-like, and the videos for ‘Epic’ & ‘Falling to Pieces’… Wow…
Babes In Toyland – Fontenelle:
This one popped in my head this morning and had to make the list. If not for Kat Bjelland’s vocals alone, but such a dirty, edgy band. Handsome and Gretel is prpbably the song that best typifies this album as a whole…
Mindless Self Indulgence – You’ll Rebel Against Anything:
The newest album on my list, this was the first album in a long time that made me perk up and think there could still be something I hadn’t heard yet. If I thought Mr. Bungle was frantic, this was frenetic and delerious! The best cover of Tom Sawyer ever… “Shut Me Up” was the first song I’d heard and it bowled me over with its crisp raw power…
Nirvana – Bleach:
Substitute Nevermind here to signify the time period (who wasn’t in college when that came out and wasn’t affected by that album in some way…), but I remember hearing Bleach in Gil’s basement and being truly blown away by those songs. One after the other, and then when ‘Negative Creep’ came on…In High School it was the metal that always meant ‘hard’ to me but here was something so raw and abrasive and in no way the crispy polish of the metal stuff. And it was blowing me away…
Nine Inch Nails – Pretty Hate Machine:
Another in that “I hadn’t heard anything like it” category. Not only the completely different production but lyrically it was spectacular. So depressing and miserable you couldn’t get enough of it…
Kings X – Out Of The Silent Planet:
Can’t remember if we saw or heard them first but again, for the time, this was unlike anything I’d ever heard. Was listening to a lot of metal back then and this was like something so bizarre. Thrash-type riffs, slowed way down that they thudded through you instead of bombarding you, and then layed on top instead of screaming we’ve got some of the most amazing harmonies…
Lush – Split:
Perfect…..
My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult – Confessions Of A Knife:
Who thought taking basically disco and gogo type beats, laying some samples on top and lyrically jumping between the occult and other blasphemous topics could be so fun! Sure, ‘Days of Swine and Roses” and ‘A Daisy Chain 4 Satan’ don’t need to be as long as they are, but who cares! Then seeing them live blew me away…
Metallica – Master of Puppets:
Vividly remember being 16, working at KFC with a bunch of 18 year-old metalheads from Mayfield Heights… Then I heard this album and thought I’d heard the heaviest, most brutal thing ever… Needless to say it sounds tame now, but no less meaningfull or significant for the time…
———————–SOME OTHERS——————–
- Opiate – Tool (BG – Andrew, Matt, Turgon times…)
- Shout At The Devil – Motley Crue (All about this in 7th grade)
- Queensryche – Rage For Order (This and Mindcrime all about Bill’s house…)
- Max Q (Best album nobody knows about – from Michael Hutchence that is…)
- Sonic Youth – Goo (Just a classic)
- Bob Mould – Workbook (Darkest happy music…)
- Iron Maiden – Number Of The Beast (Happiest dark music)
- Nirvana – Nevermind (’nuff said)
- Pain Teens – Stimulation Festival (Still can’t wrap my head around it which is why i like…)
- Foo Fighters – Colour And The Shape (Most solid alternative album ever…Not a riff or song left behind)
- Siouxsie & The Banshees – Kaleidescope
- Pigface – Fook
- Queens Of The Stone Age – Rated R
- Ratt – Invasion of Your Privacy (9th grade!!! In walkman all summer…)
- Sisters Of Mercy – First And Last And Always
- Soundgarden – Louder Than Love
- Spinal Tap – Spinal Tap (Need to be able to mix in the funny)
- Bad Religion – Recipe for Hate
- They Might Be Giants – Flood
- Dogs In Space Soundtrack
- Tones On Tail – Everything
- Primus – Frizzle Fry
- Bauhaus – Mask
- Skinny Puppy – Too Dark Park
- Final Cut – Consumed
- Sinead O’Conner – The Lion And The Cobra
- Butthole Surfers – Psychic, Powerless Another Mans Sac
- Public Enemy – It Takes a Nation Of Millions
- Red Hot Chili Peppers – Uplift Mofo Party Plan
- 13 Songs – Fugazi
- Steel Pole Bathtub – Lurch/Butterfly Love
- Difference Engine – Difference Engine
- KMFDM – UAOIE
- Lacuna Coil – Comalies
