By Christian Lipski
I could listen to “Seventeen” a million times, and each time it will take me back to my junior year in college, hanging out at my friends’ houses and watching MTV or The Box. Like all good glam metal, Winger is carefree and lightweight, and makes me believe (if only for three minutes) that the only important things are partying and girls. And at the time, those things were relatively important to me.
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By Christian Lipski
For a brief shining period in my life, this was the hardest music ever. My brother (yet again), acting as the advance scout, returned from the fringes of the music world carrying Metallica’s debut in a thick mesh net. It was like the Ozzy Osbourne and Judas Priest I had heard, only faster, more aggressive. It sounded like freedom!
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By Christian Lipski
I will admit that the novelty of an all-female metal band was the initial attraction. Metal was so uniquely associated with the posturing womanizer that it was a great advantage to have a band that inverted the standard. But they could honestly play and more specifically, they could honestly play the kind of music I liked.
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By Christian Lipski
I remember buying this CD in college, in a love/hate relationship with Bon Jovi. On the one hand, they were so commercial and inoffensive and harmless (and barely glam metal). On the other, the songs on New Jersey were freakin’ flawless. My friends and I did the “ironic” thing, where we’d like the songs because they were cheesy, but deep down inside (at least for me), there was a real love for them. They’re fun fun songs, and epitomize the arena rock style.
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By Christian Lipski
I never actually owned this album until this year, but I’ve listened to it quite a few times. In the summer of 1988 my brother and I had jobs at the same company, so he would come pick me up at my apartment in Lake Merritt (Oakland) and we’d carpool. Since it was his car, it was his music, which was fine, as I liked hearing what he was listening to. That summer it was usually So Far, So Good. . . So What! at peak volume as we smoked and drove to work.
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By Less Lee Moore
Remember when you were old enough to like “cool” music but still young enough to shamelessly appreciate crappy music? For me, that time was 1983.
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By Latanya
I was only seven in 1983, so I wasn’t as musically aware as I was in 1988. Granted, by 1988 I was 12 and in the seventh grade, and I was much more expressive by this point. Thankfully, my ears were perked up higher so the following albums stuck out
from that year.
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By Jimmy Ether
It’s difficult for me to fully express the effect that the Minutemen had on me. “Life changing” may seem over-dramatic, but it would not be inaccurate. They were the ultimate underground band. A perfect blend of outrage, respect, art, sweat, and brotherly love. They never fit the hardcore genre into which they have been historically placed. They were not about aggression, rebellion, and noise. They were blatant self-expression and open-mindedness. They projected a very conceptualized vision of what a free, musical lifestyle meant. . . zen and the art of “the spiel.” They dabbled in self-mythology while remaining entirely modest everymen from blue-collar San Pedro, California.
By Christian Lipski
Nothing’s Shocking is a great example of an album that I liked more for the individual statement that those specific songs made than the band itself. I didn’t really follow Jane’s Addiction after their debut, and I never felt sad about that. What I do feel sad about is that I looked on my iPod and I do not have this album on it. Okay now I do.
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By Jemiah Jefferson
This is the first music that I ever bought in a record store (or, I should say, that I begged my mom to buy for me—I had absolutely no money of my own at the age of eleven, since I never got an allowance as a child. . . or a teenager, for that matter). I bought this on cassette, probably from a Sam Goody or something similar, in a mall. I bought it months after its release, in the fall, after a punishing summer where “Every Breath You Take” kept its stranglehold on the Billboard #1 slot for what seemed like forever. I have always quite disliked that song, and after seeing so many other worthy songs attempt to break through and fail (most particularly “Is There Something I Should Know?”, Duran Duran’s vastly superior single, which topped out at #4, much to my rage and frustration) I learned to hate it, and I still hate it.
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