Shuffled: Growing Up With Music Edition

Every other Wednesday I hit the shuffle button on my 90 gigabytes of music and post the results. I might have to justify some of the stuff in my library, but hopefully it will help inform you of new music -- Or at least be entertaining.

This edition of Shuffled reveals some of my history with music. How extremely late to the party I was, why I was that late to the party, and how punk came to be my first musical love. I've come to the conclusion that the blurbs I write in Shuffled should be about my personal experiences and stories I have surrounding the music in my library. There are a few stories in here you might find funny, but I also hope they tell you a little bit more about all the music I hold in the highest regard. Now, forget this serious crap and be entertained by the music and stories within!

---

Bad Religion - The Lie
From The Process of Belief
Buy the MP3 or the whole album.

The Process of Belief actually stands pretty high on my list of Bad Religion albums. Yeah, that's when they "sold out" and started to "compltlySUXXZORSOMG!!111!ELEVENZE!1!" Still, I had only come to punk a short time before this album released, so it holds some amount of nostalgia for me.

---

The Who - I Can't Explain
From My Generation - The Very Best of The Who
Buy the album.

You know how a lot of kids grew up hearing their parents playing music throughout the house, and it really cemented a deep nostalgia for that type of music in their minds? That didn't happen for me. The only exposure I had to my dad's love of the rock he grew up with was swiping his CDs when I was a teenager and ripping them to my computer. Liking classic rock was all the rage when I was in high school and I felt like I should catch-up. I still feel that way, but I never get around to it. Yet bands like The Who and Pink Floyd still sit on my iPod. One day, one day.

---

Diesel Boy - Dear John
From Sofa King Cool
Buy the MP3 or the whole album.

I think all of Hopeless Records and Fat Wreck Chords catalog really helped ease me into punk as a teenager. I wasn't a big fan of music until late in middle school, and I basically started with the stuff that was on the radio -- from The Offspring and Green Day to much more embarrassing things I won't mention. Stuff like Diesel Boy was like a ramp to the world of punk. Something that was much more appealing than just leaping off the edge.

---

Modest Mouse - The View
From Good News for People Who Love Bad News
Buy the MP3 or the whole album.

Back when my musical tastes had yet to form, I distinctly remember digging through my brothers music folder with a friend of mine. We were laughing at some of the band names, and Modest Mouse had us rolling on the floor. Ridiculous! We went back to downloading segments from Whose Line Is It Anyway?, content in the fact that we were right about everything that was good. Of course the joke was on us years later when we both became fans of Modest Mouse, but it still is a silly name.

---

Guttermouth - Use Your Mind
From Teri Yakimoto
Buy the MP3 or the whole album.

We were on vacation and I had decided it was time for me to take my first real plunge into purchasing a punk album. You know, for a souvenir. I picked out Guttermouth's Covered With Ants and presented it to my mother. She looked a little concerned.

"Guttermouth would imply that they say bad words." she reasoned.

"No, they just...that's just their name. It doesn't mean anything about the music." I defended.

She bought the CD and I spent the rest of the camping trip sitting inside our van listening to it. Of course there were plenty of bad words, but I'd won that battle with logic and reason...or something. My love of that album easily transferred to their past releases. I'd later put deep thought into pretend rocking out to "That's Life" at my middle school's "Mock Rock" and blowing away the jocks that played Korn, but I never did.