The Incoherant Ramblings of a Poetic Compulsive: Memory Lane for 25 please, Alex

I’m not sure what the answer to the Jeopardy clue is, but the question is definitely, “what is bad music I thought was really cool when I was a teenager.” Today’s post is about the 25 most nostalgic albums in my collection. Not my favorites, not the “best” albums…the most nostalgic. So for you youngens there gonna be a lot of stuff from the 80’s and 90’s in here. Not all of it is “bad” music. A lot of it still holds up. But a lot of it is simply sentimentality too. So no comments about “this sucks” or “that was terrible” or “that band’s lead singer shot himself” OK? Get your own nostalgia! :) There’s a lot of Christian music on here (over half) as well as secular and there’s probably some references to a thing called “Jesus Northwest”. It was a festival I attended every year from 1992 till 1997 and had some pretty heavy impact on me as a kid in terms of music.

First a little background as to why I’m posting this. See, I’ve been in an independent, but very ambitious Christian rock band for the last 2+ years. Earlier this week I quit. There’s a whole ‘nother blog post there (probably a whole ‘nother blog for that matter) so I won’t get too much into that. But one of the things you do, when you’re in a band, particularly with good friends, is you talk a lot about nostalgic musical influences. I’ve never met a musician that wasn’t quick to give a long dissertation on what influences he or she had and why. I think it stems from a basic, instinctive desire to want to be on VH1’s “Behind the Music” and sit on the comfy couch and tear up when they ask about what inspired you when you were a kid. So dim the lights, pop the popcorn, and queue the montage!

Honorable Mention: “Audio Adrenaline” self-titled freshman release

#25 – “Joshua Tree” by U2
U2 stormed on the scene when I was still in elementary school. What’s ironic about it is that in 1990, my mom had a pretty tight hold of what music came in to her house so my only exposure to this album was from what radio I heard when my mom wasn’t around. Like many kids in my generation I was a latchkey kid. Had I not been, I may have never developed my love for music because I probably wouldn’t have been exposed to much of it before several years later. So anyway, there were all these songs I knew I liked, “With or Without You”, “Still Have Found What I’m Looking For”, “Where the Streets Have No Name” that were being played constantly on the radio and I liked them. But the irony of it is I didn’t even know they were by the same artist, not to mention all on the same album (give me a break I was 9, OK?). So Joshua Tree gets the nod for number 25, the hardest spot to decide on in a top-25 countdown, because that’s the spot that has ten candidates and the other nine won’t make the list at all.

#24 – “Nothing But the Best” (a greatest hits collection) by White Heart
If you’re at all familiar with White Heart, Christian rockers of the early 80’s, 90’s and early 00’s, then you’re probably familiar with Nothing But the Best. This double-album is the greatest example I’ve ever seen of a greatest hits collection. Truly only the best songs from the band’s repertoire are represented here. There’s a “Rock Hits” CD and a “Radio Hits” CD, which is to say that the soft music (power ballads mostly) were put on their own disc. White Hearts previous record label’s have released numerous favorites, and greatest hits collections and Billy Smiley has gone on the record as saying that White Heart had nothing to do with those releases and White Heart wishes those labels would simply stop doing it. Anyway, back to the music…this collection came out in the mid-90’s and it was in my player non-stop for a very long time. I don’t know if there’s a single song on either disc that I think doesn’t deserve their spot on the album. This collection is pretty heavy on the “Brian Wooten” era White Heart (Powerhouse, Tales of Wonder, Highlands) but that was my favorite stuff too, so I was glad to hear that, as well as the best stuff from prior to Powerhouse but all the tracks are with Rick Florian’s vocals.

#23 – “Legend of Chin” by Switchfoot
Despite Switchfoot’s transformation into the 800lb Christian rock gorilla recently, storming the country with their lastest release, Nothing is Sound (which I love coincidentally), Legend of Chin is the only Switchfoot album on this nostalgia list. Probably because the rest of the albums came out too recently to really feel nostalgic about them. Remember this isn’t, “my favorites” just the ones I’m most sentimental about. Dan found this CD on one of those cardboard cutout display units with cheesy broken headphones to listen to music on in the merchandise warehouse at Jesus Northwest (I want to say 1996?). He dragged me over and said I had to hear it and of course I’ve been an enormous Switchfoot fan since that day. Dan and several other friends and I went to Switchfoot’s first concert that fall after Jesus Northwest. To my recollection it was Switchfoot’s first show ever in the Portland area. They played the Expo center (it’s the kind of place that has gun shows and trading card conventions). A band called Ruby Joe opened for them. Here was this great, pretty much undiscovered band, recently signed, playing this horrible venue and to make matters worse, my friends and I were the only ones there to see them. We screamed and cheered after every song and they played their whole set and we yelled out requests. After the show they hung out with us for a good solid hour. Just me and my friends. Nothing is Sound shot to #3 on Bilboard after one week and they’ve already gone platinum with the album. My guess is I’ll never get an opportunity like that with those three (I hear it’s five now) and they’ve probably changed somewhat since then. But I have my memories and that’s good enough for me. Perhaps even more reason why this album is so darn nostalgic for me is because I listened to it everywhere I went. I went to Hungary to visit my missionary girlfriend and many times when I hear “Underwater” or “Might Have Ben Hur” I get visions of flying on a plane to Europe or being there in Budapest with my girlfriend (now my wife). Every time I drive the stretch of I-97 between Bend and the California border, I put this album on. Don’t know why, just really puts me in a great, nostalgic mood.

#22 – “Evolution” by Geoff Morre & the Distance
I think half the reason I was so enamored with this album is because of Mark Lowry. His intro to the first song, Evolution, as the high school science teacher I found to be pretty darn funny back in 1995. There was some good music on here though too. “Life Together” pretty much described the kind of relationship I had with my friends at that exact point in time. Lots of great ballads on this one.

#21 – “Off the Deep End” by Weird Al
What can I say. My friends and I were pretty enthralled with this particular Weird Al tape (yes, we listened to it on tape, not CD). I think mostly that’s because it was the only one Dan had and I spent a lot of time with Dan and his brother back then. That and it made fun of a lot of music that I was finally familiar with due to an increased exposure to mainstream music.

#20 – “Nevermind” by Nirvana
No, I was not one of the many people that bought this album when it was popular. I actually got into Nirvana around ’94, just before a 12 gauge got what was left of the cocaine-laiden, beer drenched grey matter that passed for a brain. Note, I did say before he shot himself, so I wasn’t a poser that only got interested from the hype, but at the same time, I was definitely a late bloomer (pun intended…get it?). Nevermind.

#19 – “Squint” by Steve Taylor
This is another one I can pretty much thank Dan for. We listened to this album quite a bit in high school. The lyrics were, and still are, just great. Hits like “Bannerman” and “The Lament of Desmond R.G. Underwood Frederick the IV” (yes! I can still name it!) were really good and got some attention from radio and MTV, but my favorites were the obscure songs. “Sock Heaven”, “Easy Listening” and “Cash Cow (a three part rock opera)”.

#18 – “Serious Hits Live” by Phil Collins
So, this is one of those albums my music aficionado friends make fun of me for liking. But this album and I go way back. Back to the 1988. I was seven or eight years old when dad decided he wanted to buy a CD player. He made the decision fairly reluctantly. Seems kind of silly now. Anyway, mom said we could each get one album so we actually had something to listen to on this CD player when we got him home. Many of my suggestions were denied, shot down, summarily dismissed. But I’d heard “Another Day in Paradise” on the radio and could convince her it was an album with a wholesome message based on that. It was my first CD. And yeah, I listened to it a lot.

#17 – “Bloom” by Audio Adrenaline
Awe yeeeeah, here we go. “Never Gonna Be As Big As Jesus” baby. Was anyone ever as sick of a song as I was of that song? Dan put together no less than three full-length music videos to this song for various youth events, contests, etc and I helped with a couple. You get really sick of a song you wind up working on for that long. Lots of good stuff on this album though. I wound up covering nearly every track of this record in one band or another, or for worship material.

#16 – “Jesus Freak” by dc Talk
OK, this hardly even requires an explanation (except maybe why it’s so low in the list). I was there, live, where they played the world premier of the single. The first time the public ever heard it, I was standing 6 feet away from the device it was playing on. Jesus Northwest, 1995. What’s funny is Dan actually figured out what it sounded like to some degree long before it was released. Dc Talk did a little-publicized feature film called “Free at Last” that played next to nowhere. Anyway, the instrumental background to the movie trailor was this really rockin tune. He told me then he thought that was probably the music to this “Jesus Freak” single coming up soon. He was right.

#15 – “Change Your World” by Michael W. Smith
In the words of Han Solo to Chewie, “Laugh it up fuzzball!” Sure you’re getting a good chuckle out of this one…but you know what…back in the day pickins were slim people. And when you mom censors everything you listen to, they’re slimmer still. In all truth though, for Christian pop music, this was a great album. Still the best he’s ever done in my humble opinion. I don’t keep up with him anymore, but back in 1993 it was great stuff. My second CD ever. To this day, I’m still sick of “Friends”.

#14 – “So Much for the Afterglow” by Everclear
I was in high school, not junior high when this album came out. I don’t remember if my mom had loosened her grip on what I could listen to, or if I simply started going behind her back. Either way she wouldn’t have been thrilled about this one. Nearly every song on here was a hit. “Father of Mine”, “Everything to Everyone”, “Buy You a New Life”, and no less than 5 more. My friends and I listened to it on repeat for our weekly LAN gaming parties.

#13 – “The Colour and the Shape” by Foo Fighters
Great album. Tons of hits. Turn on a modern rock radio station anywhere in the country during this album’s hay-day, even for an hour, and you’d hear “Monkeywrench”, “My Hero” and “Everlong”. I must’ve been driving about this time because I was listening to a lot of radio in the car by now.

#12 – “Free at Last” by dc Talk
Dc Talk’s third release was really my first dc Talk album. I had a copy of Nu Thang on tape but I got it the Christmas that Free at Last came out so it didn’t really get a fair shake from me. Free at Last, however, was the first album I really listened to like a mad man. Wore the print on the tape right out. Memorized the lyrics to every song. My friends and I could each take either Toby, Kevin or Michael’s part in the car, play the whole album and sing along, then switch parts and play it over again. We must’ve drove our youth leaders crazy.

#11 – “Friend Like U” by Geoff Moore & the Distance
Dan and I were listening to this album up in my tree house. I think one of us (or both of us) was going through a break up with a girlfriend at the time. Songs like “Good to be Alive” and “Friend Like You” really help with that kind of depression. Several songs on this album made my favorite mix tapes for a long time.

#10 – “Going Public” by Newsboys
This was the first album I really tried to play to when I got my first electric guitar. Huge hits on this album too. “Spirit Thing”, “Shine”, “Truth and Consequences”, “Going Public” and more. Most of this album is a stellar project. It’s still my favorite Newsboys album to this day.

#9 – “Don’t Censor Me” by Audio Adrenaline
You thought “Never Gonna Be as Big as Jesus” was a song worth getting tired of? “Big House” is twice as worthy. Great song, great album, great band. I don’t know what happened to Audio A after Barry Blair left to produce and manage and Bob Herdman left to run Flicker Records, but they haven’t been the same since. This album epitomizes my music tastes in the early 90’s. I went an saw Audio Adrenaline live no less than 7 times while they were still playing songs off this album. “We’re a Band” is still one of my ten favorite songs of all time.

#8 – “In Utero” by Nirvana
My mother threw this album out once. I burned it or cracked it in half twice at the persistence of my youth leader at the time that music like this was garbage and “garbage in, garbage out”. I lost it once too. So I’ve bought it like 4 times, giving the band way more money than ever would have happened if I’d just hung on to the first copy! “En Bloom” was pretty inspiring to me at the time. “Heart Shaped Box”, “All Apologies” and “Pennyroyal Tea” all prime examples of the grunge movement that was going on while I was listening to Geoff Moore and Mark Stewart.

#7 – the blue album by Weezer
To my knowledge, this album doesn’t actually have a name but it’s still one of my all-time favorites. Talk about timeless classics. Not a bad song on here. I was right to fall in love with this one. This is one album that was cool then, is still cool now, and will always be cool and I was part of that “movement” I suppose, as an avid listener and follower of the band. Rivers is pretty much a genius. My friends and I memorized every word and tonal inflection and air guitar riff on this album.

#6 – “Unseen Power” by Petra
Unseen Power had just been released in 1993 when I started getting into Christian music and current rock and roll. Little did I know at the time Petra would never put out a better album with more good songs. The soundtrack to much of my childhood that year is this album.

#5 – “Go West Young Man” by Michael W. Smith
OK, so you get to laugh at me again. I heard “Place in This World” on the local top 40 “Z100” station in 1991 and, to my recollection, it was the first Christian music I ever heard. This was the second Christian music album I ever bought (tape of course). Some great pop tunes on here.

#4 – “Sixteen Stone” by Bush
As I entered high school in 1994-1995 I started listening to more and more mainstream alternative rock radio. We had cable too at the time. I remember the first time I heard

“Comedown” on MTV. “Holy cow” I said to myself as I slouched on the couch eating my third ice cream sandwich for dinner. It was uber catchy. Then on the radio, and again, and again. And then more songs from this Bush album. “Machinehead”, “Everything Zen”, “Little Things”, and of course the stellar mega-hit that was “Glycerine”! Then I went and purchased the CD and found that “Alien” might actually be my favorite song on the disc. There was maybe two songs that weren’t my favorite at the time this album came out. I listened to it over and over and over anywhere I could that my parents wouldn’t find out. I was definitely driving around this time. I learned how to play most of them too. They became my favorite band for about a year. But they never put out another album that could even remotely hold a candle to this one. Subsequent projects had one, maybe two semi-decent songs and none of them came close to the caliber of the six I listed here.

#3 – “Greatest Hits” by Air Supply
So here’s the second of two “great hits” collections that made my most nostalgic list. But for this one, I have to take you way back to memory lane. This was one of the albums my mom let my dad keep after they had me. He had it on tape. Most of these songs are from the 70’s to be sure. Before my time. It’s nostalgic because my dad mostly listened to talk radio in the car. But on a few select, lazy Saturdays and on long trips, he’d bring tapes because my mom hated him pounding on the dash in some sort of violent attempt to keep the reception of political propaganda as he drove out of state. He always brought two tapes, and this was one of them. Most of the time we took long trips, we were moving. And that was usually cross-country. I catch a lot of flack for liking these guys form my band mates and other rocker types. I can’t help it. It’s part of my early childhood, man.

#2 – “Innocent Man” by Billy Joel
Remember how I said brought two tapes with him in the car? This is the other one. Still really great music even today though. The best stuff BJ ever did is on this album. Every song is good.

#1 – “Beyond Belief” by Petra
Well this came as no surprise to anybody that knows me. We seemed to have instinctively known when Petra was taking, or had taken the stage. Dusk had developed into full blown darkness as we made the 1/8th mile, mostly uphill trek to the crest of the amphitheater. After we showed the gatekeepers the blurry ink stains from that morning’s initial , we turned to the right and walked slowly up the small hill lined and scattered with folding chairs, families and couples on blankets, many standing and peering through the chain link fence. The crowd beyond the small hill I could not see but it began to be clear to me the entire populace of the festival had gathered there. No one was missing this concert. The stage lights glittered and danced on stage. They changed colors from soft blues to soft yellows, greens and reds as a palm muted clean electric guitar riff bounced up and down the scale accompanying John Schlitt’s tenor vocals. My saunter turned to a jog as my intrigue was sparked, and then I reached the pinnacle of the amphitheater’s bowled outer edge and looked down on what I later learned was tens of thousands of people. In a matter of seconds from my reaching the top and ascending on the scene about 80 yards as the crow flies from the front corner of stage right, Louie Weaver’s stick crashed upon the head of the snare drum and the light picking of the clean guitar riff turned into a roaring thunderous overdriven chord strum. The flood lights beamed in perfect rhythm with the drum hits and chord strums and illuminated the entire dust bowl showing off the crowd of thousands, all fist-pumping in unison and screaming out the same two words in magnanimous vernacular, “Beyond Belief, Beyond Belief!” The blood rushed from all over my body to my head, my eyes locked in gaze at the entire scene, my ears straining to catch every little nuance as the distorted guitar rolled through the post-chorus mantra and the bass thumped in time with the kick drum in a pulsating pattern of pure perfection.

The entire display was like watching the gears of a well-oiled antique clock methodically tick along. Seeing the crowd react to the music, the musicians, and seeing those on stage react in kind to the emotional overtones that flowed from the grandstands, from those in the woodchip-covered pit down below and those closest to the stage reaching out. It was more than surreal. It was euphoric. Better than any drug I’ve ever had to this day. I finally discovered a music that touched my soul deep down in a place no art had ever penetrated before. I had not only discovered one of the greatest friendships that I would carry through junior high, high school, college and into my adult life that day; not only discovered the joy of belonging to a group of fellow believers from my own church were my own age and lifestyle, but I discovered rock and roll as it stylistically manifested in the late 80’s and early 90’s for the first time and immediately fell in love not only with the music, the genre, the band and the song, but the very art of creating it struck me at that very moment as an endeavor I wanted to cultivate and be a part of. But beyond this, gazing at the thousands, I learned that I was not alone. There were Christians here, that were proud of what they were and who they were. And as they chanted “Beyond Belief” at 117dB it was a moment of serenity and peace that my heart had never experienced. These were kids. Kids my age. Loving rock and roll and able to take it home to their church-going parents and not have them burn it in effigy.Something inside me stirred that night. I sat in awe for the next couple of songs until I snapped out of my comatose-like state and ran down the amphitheater’s bowled edges, into the barkdust-covered, mostly fenced off dirt pit that engulfed the most fanatical 5% of the throng and proceeded to work my way up to the front of the stage or as close as I could get to it. I dismissed both the remarks and dirty looks I got from people scared I would try to somehow “cut in front” of them, block their view or obstruct their kids’ line of sight from the demigods on stage. Dan and I later joked that at one point it seemed a drop of sweat or spit from John Schlitt had landed upon my forehead and justified my lack of showering for the weekend. Truth be told the shower waters were about 34 degrees Fahrenheit and even in the heat of a nearly-100 degree day my body convulsed at the idea of sharing my frozen edification with dozens of burly, hairy, male thrill seekers. That night after the Petra concert and their encore, I ran (literally ran) to the mobile covered Christian book-tent containing hundreds of CD’s from Christian artists of every genre. I had never really taken a close look at the selection before this point, and for the life of me, I can’t quite ascertain why. Dan and I stood in a rather long line as I waited to purchase my first cassette tape copy of Petra’s “Beyond Belief” album.

I stayed up all night long memorizing the words with a walkman and a flashlight.

Bazooka-Joe made it so at 10:56 AM

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Friday, September 23, 2005

Memory Lane for 25 please, Alex

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