Social Distortion "s/t"

In the spring of 1990 my senior year was winding down and I was hanging out at my buddy's house.  We were having a pretty intense and animated tournament of Double Dribble on the NES.  My friend's dad was an intimidating giant brick shit house of a man.  A veteran and firefighter with an authoritarian streak 100 miles wide.  While my friend and I were playing the game our smack talk got pretty colorful and uninterrupted.   Verbal jabs were being tossed around indiscriminately. It was at this point his imposing father must have entered the room because we were both startled by a booming voice declaring: "these video games are a sickness with you!"  In our frenzied state of shit-talk my poor friend responded to him "oh yeah? What about your stamp collection?".  I couldn't fucking believe it. I swung my head in disbelief to look at him.  He was already looking at me, fear vibrating in his eyes.  I heard two booming footsteps and he disappeared from view. I reeled around to see his father one-armed pick him up and chuck him over their coffee table onto their couch.  I panicked and actually thought about diving through a window. He snarled "joel, it's time to leave." I was already in motion towards the door abandoning my friend to his fate.  The next day I skated to his house and timidly knocked on the door when I saw his father's car wasn't there.  We joked about our near death experience and marveled at my friends loose lips.  We spent that afternoon grateful he was alive and hit a parking lot with yellow parking curbs to skate and listened to this tape on a boombox. We started shit talking again almost immediately.

Forgotten Rebels "in love with the system"

There was an awesome indie/punk record store called Poptones just across the Canadian border in St. Catharines, Ontario.  Back in the late '80s it was really easy to get across the border, this was a pre 9/11 world and all you needed was some kind of id and a ride. If you weren't waiving a firearm around in your vehicle the border crossing was painless.  It was a rarity that we would make it up there, but the instances that we did were fun.  The exchange rate used to make us feel like wealthy overlords.  We'd make it to the record store and then skateboard around feeling like cultural and international attaché. I remember on one of our trips I bought a Samhain t-shirt (which I subsequently turned pink in my first attempt at laundry) and this #forgottenrebels album on cassette.  The Forgotten Rebels were a great snotty Canadian punk band that would make pretty regular appearances in Buffalo.   I caught them a couple time at the now defunct River Rock Cafe.  Snotty tongue in cheek songs about faux - nationalism and necrophilia.  Offensive and catchy so immediately endeared to us.  We would gleefully sing the chorus to "fuck me dead" while carving our skateboards through crowds of people.   Just to be "shocking", just to offend and annoy.  It felt glorious at the time.  We weren't really interested in pushing the envelope for sub-cultural acceptance, we were just peacocking for imaginary girls.  And really, isn't that the most powerful force in teenage life?  This record has my favorite 'Rebel's song: the title track "in love with the system".

Iron Maiden "piece of mind"

Upon reflection I'm still not quite sure who is more important to my personal development: #ironmaiden or their cover artist #derekriggs .  This was always my personal favorite Maiden album and it was also the first back patch I had for a denim jacket.  When I began buying music for myself with my allowance I had limited access to lps and cassettes.  The only places I could reasonably get to on my bicycle were department stores which didn't have the most diverse selection.  I would pedal up to Hills and stand in their music section and systematically examine record covers.  Until I found Iron Maiden.  The first one I bought was "number of the beast" because I had caught and loved the video for "run to the hills" (never caught that "hills" thing before.  Synchronicity. ) after that my weekly trip was to buy another Maiden cassette.  This was my second because I was drawn to the artwork more than the others (later that year they would release the powerhouse album "powerslave").  I was a cassette purchaser because all I had was a boom box I had won from selling a shit ton of magazine subscriptions at school (rather my mom sold those subscriptions and I reaped the reward)  I had always envied the 12" artwork on lps but Hills didn't carry them and besides I had no way to play them.  I squinted and hunched over the tiny cassette album art.  I started re-drawing the album art almost immediately.   To this very day I can reproduce a bunch of them from memory.  I cut alot of my artistic teeth this way.  There was a tiny little store in the Thruway Mall (which has since been leveled) that sold back patches and bongs.  My mom had made plans to go to the mall and I saved my allowance that week and went off on my own to buy a backpack to emulate the older hesher in my neighborhood. When I saw this "piece of mind" patch I stopped browsing and rushed to the register to pay.  I begged my mom to sew it on my jacket (which she did, love you mom!) And I strutted off to school the next day.  I sound like a "back in my day" old fart but back in my day you got in fist fights at school over heavy metal back patches.  The social lines were entrenched and vicious. Simpler times.

Subhumans "ep-lp"

Punk rock has definitely shaped my political and world view.  These bands introduced me to ideologies outside of my family, my school and television.  These ideas resonated with me as feelings I had but could not put into concise statements.  A friend made me a mix tape in 1989 and it contained the song "religious wars" by the #subhumans .  The song spit angry anti-religious lyrics over fast blurry punk.  While nowadays that sort of thing is commonplace at that time in my life I devoured that vitriol.  It became anthemic. The thick english accent sold it as worldly to me, that there were people who shared these thoughts across an ocean made me feel less small.  This bands forays into reggae made them stand out to me and sounded extremely exotic, especially considering my heavy metal background.
I got to catch this band a few years ago and over 20 years after I first heard them.  The played a small club here called the Mohawk Place.   They sounded great and though we were all alot more paunchy than we were in the '80s it was a rare moment when catching an act that long after they meant so much to me actually lived up to the nostalgia.  For a while I solely listened to this type of music, bands like the dead kennedys, MDC, minor threat and bad religion.  Today I am as liberal as they come when it comes to politics.  I love the idea of socialism blended into our flawed democracy.  I take my kids to activist rallies and pride parades.  I teach them to celebrate diversity and embrace empathy.  All that stuff is in no small debt to the songs and lyric sheets I obsessed over. Listening to this cd again it actually renews my vigor and also startles me at how applicable this struggle still is over 30 years after it's release.

The Sisters of Mercy "floodland"

I had heard this record a few times through the drummer of my first punk band.  He had also introduced me to the film "The Hunger" (and it's incredible use of the Bauhaus song "Bela lugosi is dead") around the same time.  It was through these experiences I perceived "goth" music to be about a dangerous sexually that was beyond my comprehension.  I was suburban kid who thought Molly Ringwald was kind of hot so these dark baritone voices leering over skeletal spooky rock we about as foreign to me as a plate of Ethiopian cuisine at the time.  Being a young man I was of course interested in the dangerous sex thing.  Our band played a legendary buffalo punk/goth club called The Continental many times and after our sets we would always adjourn to the upstairs dance floor where people dressed in black danced like they were tied up in bondage ropes.  We would drink the bar's notorious "purple motherfucker" cocktails and join the regulars on the dance floor.  It sounds cliche to say this but that dance floor seemed a place where anything went.  Even a naive suburban boy like myself could end up gyrating to electonic tympany drums next to vampires.  I learned to play the bass line to "Lucretia..."   I can still plop that one out (along with the Cure's "love cats ")   Sadly the Continental has been leveled and a culturally historic landmark of Buffalo is gone.  I miss that dirty dump.  Dirty in every sense of the word.  Turns out goth WAS all about dangerous sexuality and I loved being a voyeur to that hot mess.

Seam "the pace is glacial"

I had seen an ad for this #seam album in fanzines in 1999.  I remember loving the album title "the pace is glacial" and the stark cover resonated with me at that point in my life.  It was a time I carried my bass guitar for eight blocks at least twice a week to my band's Main street practice space.  That walk was the only thing that ever felt important to me, it was a commute to the most important part of my life.  Being in an indie rock band felt so natural, as natural and as important as breathing. It was like we were a sad, self-obsessed coven.  We would stand in designated points of the rehearsal room and conjure melancholy songs, make them appear through repetitive recitation. I secretly had a stash of musical "spell books". CDs I would mine for ideas.  This record was a big one.  It's meandering and dynamic songs, off-key vocals, thoughtful instrumentation and it's glum spirit.  I popped this in today while our littlest son is playing and recovering from his bout with encyphalopathy.  His recovery has been linked to music and I wonder if this one of my children will ever gladly trudge through snow and slush while carrying a guitar case to a dilapidated building to try and invoke music that has always seemed mystical.  Will he ever have an album that he hides, that he doesn't share with friends who have similar musical tastes because it feels too personal?  Well 18 years later I'm letting the cat out of the bag: if you heard any of my indie rock bands back then I was heavily mining this record for inspiration.  Which means i was ripping it off.  Not note for note or anything like that, I had too much pride for that.  I would play along to these songs and then noodle about while these songs played in my head finding my own song that shared the spirit.  I did not do it very well but damn I felt good about the time spent .

Capital Cities "in a tidal wave of mystery"

We let our kids watch music videos on YouTube on our television.  I'm always curious as to what music they are picking up in the world on their own.  The video for "safe and sound" got some heavy rotation and led to many Menter family dance parties.  This past Christmas I bought the two younger dudes a little portable cd player for the bedroom they share and I compiled a mix CD of some of their favorite songs.  Both of them shook many a booty to that cd and it's opening track "safe and sound" by #capitalcities . 
A little over a month ago our youngest had seizures and we took him to the hospital to find out he had encephalopathy caused by influenza.  It was a very scary thirteen days we resided in Children's Hospital.  For the first half of it our poor little guy was unresponsive to us and continued having seizures.  We cried alot, we were rallied by our wonderful friends and families but we were pretty deep in despair.  While sitting there I was trying to think of beacons to guide our little man's brain back to us so I decided to play his favorite song on my phone.  He immediately began bouncing and moving his arms on my lap.  We were overjoyed to see the response!  He is recovering well and we cherish his little smile.  While he responds to all kinds of music when he is cranky I will put on this cd and he immediately smiles and dances.  I went out and bought the cd for obvious reasons and now it nestles on my wall as The Thing That Brought My Boy Back.  I'm not sure it's a great album (it has grown on me after all these repeated listens) but I love it and it has become a prized centerpiece in my cd collection.

Bathory "s/t"

Don't judge me.  I didn't own this #bathory cd until today. For my 45th birthday my in-laws sent me amazon gift cards (which I love) and in now seemingly tradition I spent them on overtly satanic material.   I own the next  four in quorthon's discography.  Even after listening to this beast my favorite remains "the return", that's not to diminish the well documented importance of this album to some of my favorite albums, the black metal genre and my affinity towards satanic looking goat heads.  I don't know how it took me this long to land this disc. It's an evil murky mess from 1984 and sounds like much of the records you have already in your black metal collection.  I will admit that there are a bunch of cds that I keep around because I fear some other music aficionado coming over and pointing out essential holes in my collection.  Up to this point some corpse paint adorned music nerd would have been able to scoff at my expanding black metal section over the absence of this disc.  Well not after today my grim brethren!  I kind of wish I was joking at the amount of relief I experience over obtaining this album.  I feel more smug.  I don't feel like a fraudulent owner of most of the darkthrone catalog.  Come at me metal bros. I'm ready and my collection is now bullet - belt proof.