Purple Monkey Dishwasher, Pass It On.

A number of blogs of people I know, or Amanda knows have been doing a list of their top ten high school albums. It's spread from Marco to Jenny (whom I also stole the "Shuffle" post from, which she took from Marco), to Michael. Now I'm doing it. The three of them are a few years older than I am, so my list should be significantly different. Here it is.



10. Jimi Hendrix- Band of Gypsys. Of course, this didn't come out while I was in high school. A good percentage of what I'll write about didn't. I was into older stuff in high school. I listened to this album incessantly. It's amazing. It's heavy jazz/funk. Not rock at all. My brother, Dan spent a year learning every second of this album on his guitar. We bought a bootleg video of the concert, a CD of a guy telling you which nobs to turn to get the guitar tone. It was an obsession.
9. Pixies- Surfer Rosa. Holy shit. I'd never heard anything so unhinged before. I bought it, only to take it home and find the disc was broken inside the case. It took another week for it to come into the store again, and when it did. This was one of the albums that I spent a lot of time listening to pushing carts in the Target parking lot. Ah, Walkmans. How inconvenient was that huge circle that I carried around.

8. The White Album- In middle school, I dabbled with the idea of enjoying heavy metal. I tried, oh, how I tried to enjoy a Marilyn Manson album, or a Sepultura album. I really tried. Of course, I couldn't stand the shit. During this time, I got in a little trouble at school. You draw one pentagram on your algebra notebook... So, my teacher feverishly calls my dad, tells him I'm on the path to hell. He forces me to cut my long hair, takes all my tapes and CDs and goes through the lyrics to each one. Anything objectionable, gone. Metallica, Nine Inch Nails, Pearl Jam, Nirvana (for not having lyrics, so they must be doing something subliminal). I talk him into letting me sell them to the record store. I get enough credit for two CDs, The White Album and something I don't remember. I don't think I've listened to any album as much as I have The White Album. It's perfect. If I had to choose one album to keep out of the thousand plus we own, that'd be the one.
7. The Velvet Underground & Nico. The fondest memory I have of this album is driving down 401 in my dad's truck, the windows down, the volume all the way up. "The Black Angel Death Song" is blowing my mind, and then what I thought for a moment was a second drum part, turned out to be my tire going flat. Also, playing this on the CD player in second period art class. Jessica Davis was loving "Sunday Morning", and then she joined everyone else in hating the Velvet Underground and me.
6.Ben Folds Five- s/t. Another carryover from middle school. I listened to the tape of this so much that it eventually broke the tape player in my mom's Ford Contour (which I would later crash.)
5.Blind Melon- Soup. Probably the least cool album on this list. I have a soft spot for this band, and I'm not ashamed to say it. I bought it in a huge record store in Akron when we were visiting there one year. I remember playing it a lot in my grandma's basement while Dan and I were avoiding my uncle Wayne.
4.Fugazi- Repeater. I've written about this before, so I'll keep it short. I listened to this pushing carts at Target. A lot. It made me a mini communist and I quit my job. Before I could quit my job, I was driving that Ford Contour and crashed it while a Fugazi song was on 88.1. I should clarify that I didn't crash the car through my negligence, someone hit me over on Martin Street by Moore Square.
3.Modest Mouse- This Is A Long Drive For Someone With Nothing To Think About. I listened to a burned copy of this over and over for pretty much all of high school. I can't attribute any specific memories to it, though. Probably a couple of long drives, though.
2.Aesop Rock- Labor Days. We listened to this a lot senior year. My friend Derrick would take us to eat at Bojangles at lunch, and then do something crazy with his truck. Usually, he'd drive it into this field that is now a Target. He had 4 wheel drive, and just didn't give a fuck. The grass was really high in that field, and there were a lot of big holes in it. I'm not sure how we didn't get injured while he was doing that. He did wreck it shortly afterwards, along with at least one more car before we graduated. Might have been more than one, actually. Derrick's since joined the Marines. A completely unbelievable thing.
1.The Cherry Valence- s/t. The first time I went to Kings was to see Nebula and The Cherry Valence. Nebula was neither here nor there. They didn't leave an impression on me because they went on after the best band in town. I saw Cherry Valence every time they played in town. They routinely blew my mind. It was like if James Brown replaced whatshisname in AC/DC.


honorable mentions.
Ghostface Killah- Supreme Clientele. Listened to this plenty of times playing video games over at Lamont's.
The Doors- Morrison Hotel. I really liked the Doors in high school. A little too much.
Coldplay- Parachutes. Are Coldplay pussies? Yes. Am I? Probably best to leave that unanswered.