Hey, it's Andy. Jenn (or J-izzle, as I call her) let me be a writer on her blog a long time ago and I have never posted. As I get ready to take a trip to Minnesota, I find myself (oddly) with some spare time. So as I procrastinate getting my son, Joash, packed and ready, I have been loading up a playlist on my phone for the 12 hour trip up north.
I did something I have never attempted before: Create a top 10 albums of all time (in my opinion, of course). Each has different meaning for me, and I will explain below.
before I get to that, I have to say that I am an "Album" guy. I like listening to a CD in its entirety because I know that is the way the artist intends it. They have placed each song in a particular order for a reason, and I enjoy being along for the ride as the album progresses. Consider it like a movie almost. You would rarely just watch one scene.... you've gotta take it all in.
My wife, however, is the opposite. She loves a hodge-podge of songs from all kinds
of artists and just puts her zune on shuffle and has no problem. Me on the other hand, when I try to use "shuffle", I end up skipping past every song because I don't feel in the mood for it. It's a surprise I can handle listening to the radio, you may wonder, but once again radio is like an experience, adeptly programmed (hopefully!) to ebb and flow and you never really know what song may be next.With that out of the way, Here is my all time top 10:
Wierd Al - Even Worse
This is the first piece of music I ever owned. I still remember getting this for christmas, in tape form! I couldn't wait to put it in my new tape player boombox! I didn't listen to popular radio as a kid (my parents only listened to oldies) - so for the most part I didn't even know what songs Wierd Al was parodying! To this day I usually still know the parody better than the original :)
Satudray night fever soundtrack
I stayed on that wierd al kick for years. Not much changed until Middle School, where I became best friends with a kid named Blake. he had me sign up for one of those music clubs where they would keep sending you CD's whether you liked it or not. He chose all 12 of the "free" cd's I got, most of it was really hard metal which I didn't like. One day we were at Kmart (which was by his house and we always ended up there when we were bored), and we saw a disco cd at the checkout for 6 bucks. Curious, we picked it up, and after listening to it Blake though it was awful. I, on the other hand, was in love. I bought lots of disco music after that, and my parents would even know if I were having girl problems because I would blast "I will survive" from my room to drown out my sorrows. I don't listen to much disco anymore, but I can get my boogie on with the best of them with the saturday night fever sountrack. I have never watched the movie, however.wallflowers - bringing down the horse
This was one from my Jr. High days. I remember playing Quake (the PC game) with this CD in the computer. For whatever reason you could play a CD in the game and each level it would play a new track. Was it good music to kill aliens by? The jury is still out on that. But the music was so good it deserved to be heard. Maybe I enjoyed it so much because my dad always played dylan when I was a kid and his son was the lead singer of the wallflowers. Same unique voice, but you could actually understand what Jakob was singing (most of the time)jars of clay - if I left the zoo
This was one of my first forays into christian music. The first christian cd I remember listening to is something from Al Denson, who played at a billy graham revival that came to our town. I don't like to count that because... well it's Al Denson. The second CD I had was Seltzer, which was a compilation cd that I loved falling asleep to (especially tracks 3&4 together were pretty mellow if I remember). I found out that one of the artists on that was Jars of Clay, and got a full CD of theirs. I know J-izzle doesn't understand my love for Jars, but if it wasn't for them... I don't know if I would be into christian music now.Five iron Frenzy - the end is here
High school was really hit or miss with me music wise. on one hand, I still liked disco, which really hadn't been cool for over 20 years. on the other hand I was really digging bands like mighty mighty bosstones and reel big fish! I even remember that the cool high school kid in his lifted jeep was blasting "Sell out" and peeling out in the parking lot on the last day of school. I really couldn't believe a type of music I liked (Ska in this case) was cool?!? It didn't last long. But my love continued, and I found a christian band, Five Iron Frenzy, that honestly was better than anything else out there. I finally got to even see them on their farewell tour, and so I have to go with their final 2 cd set, which includes a live CD of their best hits. if you listen closely enough you can almost hear the securtiy guard yelling at my friends for dancing too wildly! :)ATB- Seven years
I had a good friend in high school, and if you would have seen us hang out we didn't seem like we would be friends. It worked though. She made mention one time that she had never had a nickname before and would like one. so I nicknamed her "carrot".This is why you never ask for a nickname :) . One day when we were hanging out, Carrot showed me some new music she got from i don't know where... We lived in a small town with two radio stations, country and oldies... so I don't remember where she said she discovered this guy. But she popped the CD in and I was instantly in love. It was a somehow even more dancier version of the disco I loved! Electronic with some really cool lady singing softly in the backfground! Carrot even showed me how to use glowsticks to make figure 8's in the dark. ATB was the first techno guy I listened to and started me down another rabbit hole of obscure music that isn't really mainstream. and I can still do figure 8's with glowsticks to this day :)
strokes - is this it
Now on to college. My radio career started here in the basement of the cafeteria where I played the worst music I could possibly find. Usually my friends would just grab CD's off the rack that the band either a) sounded dumb or b) looked dumb. So we ended up playing a LOT of 80's christian rock music. I did get my radio start there but no musical tastes were acquired through that. Somebody showed me The Strokes, and it was such a departure from what I had listened to before, that I really took to it, and it set me on a path of indie-sounding rock for a while which led me to:Squad Five-0 - late news breaking
Maybe the band I was the biggest fanatic for (John reuben being a close second at the time) - my friends and I traveled 4 hours to see them at a big christian music festival called Lifelight. I had a friend that lived nearby so we stayed at her place as we spent all weekend in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. I don't remember any of the other bands, just how awesome Squad Five-O was. I ended up seeing them a few more times whenever they were near minnesota. And they had a song on a CD that almost seemed prophetic. Check out the "bombs over brodway" cd cover (left).
And the lyrics from that song: Midnight, New York City.
Broadway, going up in flames.
Ground zero, big city.
Big Apple swallowed by the flames.
Bombs away, we never saw it coming.
Bombs away, til the bombs started falling.
Down, to seal our fate.
No time to run, now it's too late.
Countdown 5-4-3-2-1.
The end is near baby here it comes.
The neon lights of the city burn.
And the sirens warn: 'Bombs over Broadway!'
Lady Liberty is laid to rest.
'Give me liberty or give me death.'
Her dream died with her last request.
She didn't expect bombs over Broadway.
So long Manhattan Island.
Our pride in you had no end.
New York, New York.
Our pride has done you in.
Lights out, New York City.
You were the first, but you won't be the last.
Freeky Deeky, huh? By the way this CD was released in 2000. Their sound progressed and they jumped off their christian label to go mainstream. It didn't work for them, but their last CD, Late News Breaking was like pure Rock and Roll candy.
Rancid - ...and out come the wolves
I actually can't remember when I found out about this CD. It was probably in High School when my friend Blake got into Punk music, and installed nice speakers in his crappy izusu pup pickup truck to blast it everywhere we went. I liked some punk, but most of it I didn't like the politicalness of it (which honestly is half of what makes punk punk ) and a lot of it seemed really... rough. just not appealing to my ears I guess. Enter Rancid. This is the quintessential Rancid CD. The other CD's of theirs before and after don't really sound like it, maybe this one was too poppy and they were losing their punk cred. But in the songs you will hear their struggles and stories with crazy good hooks that make you want to sing along the whole time! I still listen to this on road trips and pretend to drum on my wife's leg as she tries to sleep!The Clash - combat rock
I believe it was my College roommate my freshman year that introduced me to "Better" punk rock. His name was Josh, and he was probably one of the biggest music lovers I have ever met. Most of the stuff he liked was still out of my taste range, but he introduced me to The Clash, and I loved it. The reason this cd makes my top list is one of the songs on the CD happened to be my and a girl I dated in College's song. It was called "should I stay or should I go"
Should I stay or should I go now?
Should I stay or should I go now?
If I go there will be trouble
An if I stay it will be double
So come on and let me know
Should I stay or should I go?
That girl and I decided to "stay" and we are now married :)
Well that completes our musical Journey into the mind of Andy. Please exit on the right, and remember to pick up your belongings before exiting the platform. Feel free to make fun of my musical tastes in the comments below!
