Between 1991 and 2001 I had gotten through high school, most of college, a couple trips to a mental hospital, an intense long-term but disastrous relationship, learning jazz improv, some recordings of experimental music, drinking, a few drugs, listening to a lot of trip-hop, jungle, noise, a period of involvement with a certain performance art/UFO cult, started an artistic collective that no one would join, stupid hair tricks, cut myself and pierced my ears with safety pins, grew out and painted my nails, tore aluminum cans in half with my teeth, saw a lot of shows, worked a job I probably should have stuck with but probably couldn’t have stuck with, moved out of South Jersey, learned very little Japanese, and there was a stint as a drummer in what I’m going to call a “basement rock” band. The band ended after about half a dozen shows in the middle of nowhere because of the fame. I was medicated but sober, living with some friends who were all trying to figure out what a fuck they were doing since they had all quit their jobs to live in a house together and play in a band since there was now no band. I began working a series of retail jobs.

At first I got work near the house. I hated it. It just seemed like it was pointless and would never get better. (Which was true.) I tried to get jobs that I would like more, arts-related. The commute didn’t matter, I told myself. Just anything that is less stupid. I “succeeded”.

It’s hard to pick which commute was worse. It was by foot, bike or train. Usually a combination. I had a CD Walkman but used an old cassette one I still had if I was biking because I hated having the thing skip. Don’t let mp3 haters fool you, kids: they never perfected skip-proofing. And those things were relatively kinda big and heavy for about an hours worth of music tops. There was logistics involved. Just saying.

I’ve cut the list in half because the year divided pretty cleanly between two jobs I had then.

1. Pixies – Surfer Rosa

   There’s a lot you (or I) could say about this album but on tape one side is exactly the length of a well-paced bike ride between Kearny and the Harrison PATH station.

2. Hives – Veni Vidi Vicious

   Why do people still talk about the Strokes as “the return of rock” but forget the Hives?!? This was the fucking album.

3. Strokes – Live at WFMU (tape bootleg)

   The Strokes have some alright songs but the production on their albums is a joke. This is more like the sound of The Modern Age ep which I never got a copy of so if I hadn’t taped this when it was rebroadcast I wouldn’t even remember why people cared in the first place. I did see them live and they good, that EP is good. But this show was the only thing I thought was great.

4. Beastie Boys – Hello Nasty

   A great long album for long train rides, drinking a lot of coffee and being in Manhattan.

5. Ghostface Killah – Supreme Clientele

   My favorite solo Wu record. Sister’s ex-boyfriend left this in her apartment. A legit cassette, maybe one of the last one made on a major label(?) He had this thing where he thought rap sounded better on tape. He might be right in this case. This particular tape sounds great, at least it did when the tape was new. I would’ve gotten it on CD…or would I? Have all the other GFK albums on CD but got them after this one. Might have only had the first Wu-Tang at that point in 2000. Maybe not even. Scandalous. The way some of the material repeats would be annoying on CD and I would’ve listened to it less for sure. It gives it a mystery to not be able to tell which track is which, with the skits and the cryptic song titles and the Iron Man cartoon samples. There’s some almost pop tunes like We Made It, but at least half of this album makes no sense and I love it. It makes perfect sense in the context of Wu-Tang but if you try to think about it you another way you almost can’t believe it’s a real album.

Things get a little fuzzy again after my 23rd birthday when I started drinking again. Hard to say exactly why just then, but I guess a period of denial had ended. I started to make music again. It was pretty bleak. It was also nothing like anything I was listening to.

1. Sleater-Kinney – Dig Me Out

   This album is great all around, but it’s so much about the drums. I couldn’t have my kit set up in the apartment I was in. (This probably explains part of the depression at the time that I had picked to live in that particular place. But this wasn’t a time of bad decision making as much as no decision making. I just kinda went with the flow of what my friends we’re doing and we were all pretty dumb. But it beat living at home.) Anyway, most days I would get home from work and I had the early shift so the apartment was empty the whole afternoon so would get drunk and play along with the whole album on my legs. The bruising would get pretty bad and I thought this was cool for while but started thinking I might get a bloodclot that would go into my brain. This isn’t how bloodclots that can get into your brain usually happen, but you know, I wasn’t thinking super-clearly at the time.

2. Sleater-Kinney – The Hot Rock

   This is more the heavy emotional content. I can never get into guys singing this kind of stuff. I just don’t buy it. Also more great drumming. Overall it’s probably their best album. Nobody does counterpoint like Sleater-Kinney.

3. Pizzicato Five – The Fifth Release from Matador

   Lead-off track A Perfect World is one of my favorite drum practice tracks. It’s like two drummers or a bunch of samples or something I think. I used to try to play along to the next track too but it’s almost impossible, so it’s great practice. Not much in the way of drums on the rest of the record, so you’ve got to just keep hitting repeat. But the the whole album is one their best. I tried to do a cover of Serial Stories a few times but it didn’t work. (A crazy idea even before the Japanese licensing problem.) I think it could be done but I was just obsessed with the idea of doing covers for a while but got over it. Relatively speaking I guess it’s not that high on my crazy idea scale.

4. Pizzicato Five – Sound of Music

   I had a lot of Pizzicato Five albums that I listened the hell out of (I paid import prices for those things, you’ve got to get your money’s worth). But I kept coming back to this first one I heard, not Made in USA, I lost my copy(?). I guess trying to figure out how I got so deep into it. And what is the whole…deal with this music. Is it gay? Is it ironic? I try to listen to non-Japanese music that is similar sometimes to try to prove it’s racist but it doesn’t take. Maybe it’s a little racist. There. It’s probably the least worst type of racism tho, right? Maybe? I don’t know, I think it’s good music. This album is mostly redundant if you have the other albums but it’s a really good collection with a great package and lyrics with translations. I did The Night is Still Young once at karaoke with a bunch of internet weirdos which is honestly my ultimate fantasy when learning one of these songs. I live the dream.

5. eX-Girl – Back to the Mono Kero

   I like to think I had heard this band and was not baited by the shamelessly baiting cover of the American release. [the original] I mean the music seems like my thing. More “my thing” than P5 is, or should be. Another good drumming record, I remember them a lot more than my commuting records or most things around that time really. But it’s Zappa-influenced noise rock, over ambitious bad singing, obtuse lyrics, the obtuse-est…it’s the ultimate in a way. Their other albums haven’t grabbed me that much. This one really has an arc.

Ok, were caught up.%