What follows is not a list of favorite albums. For me, that would be an ever changing and unidentifiable mass of records depending on mood, sleep cycle, time of year and any number of outside variables.
These are the albums that form the bedrock foundation that helped to shape who I am and that I can feel coursing through me down to the genetic level. These are the records that, to this day, I have to listen to at face melting volume every time I put them on. Each of these albums can stake a claim to some percentage of my hearing loss from years of punching myself in the ears with them.
There are three releases from Pittsburgh bands involved here which may seem like a cop out of some sort but I think it should serve as a reminder to not overlook what's going on in your own backyard. One of those records from a Pittsburgh band is only three years old which should serve as a reminder to keep your ears open because you never know when a record is going to slap you in the brain and save your life.
Since music is art and not a sport, I tried as best as I could to put this list together in biographical order and not ranked as one album being better than another.
I broke the list in half since I went a bit long on words and don't want to take up too much of everyone's time. Tune in next week for part two.
. . .
Nirvana—Nevermind
It's easy for a lot of people to push Nevermind aside due solely to the amount of times we have all heard the singles off of that album. This record broke open a lot of minds. Mine included and in ways that my adolescent brain could not put into words at the time.
Coming from a sheltered youth that was peppered with a parenting style more fitting for the Eisenhower era, I didn't know that music could have an element of danger or anger to it. My mother's record collection consisted mainly of greatest hits records from Barry Manilow and Kenny Rogers.
With my father's attempts to bottle up any signs of rebellion in his children or anything that didn't fit his narrow view of normal, most car rides around town either took place in dead silence or with the radio tuned to an AM news station in great anticipation of a traffic report. The car radio was only to be used as a tool while piloting a motor vehicle and never for entertainment.
After hearing “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” I was thoroughly confused. I had no idea that music could do that and wanted more of it. That song was the bait. “Breed,” “Territorial Pissings” and “Drain You” were the eyeopeners and the hidden track “Endless Nameless” was the box grater taken to my brain. That song was several minutes of unintelligible screaming over savage music and that sealed the deal for me.
Nevermind set me on the path to looking for more than what was immediately around me. I didn't know where I was going but I knew I wanted to go.
Rollins Band—The End Of Silence
I always wanted to write something longer about The End Of Silence but could never separate myself from it long enough to do so. This record is too personal to me and I can't bring myself to share it with anyone out of fear of it losing its powers. But I can tell you how I landed on it.
As someone whose angsty teenage years took hold in the mid 1990s, Black Flag wasn't a thing for me so I had no idea who Henry Rollins was. I was only eight years old when that band called it quits in 1986 so I kind of missed the whole Black Flag thing.
Most people who were cognizant in the mid 90s remember a music video with a guy that was painted red and screaming that he was a liar. I didn't have MTV as a kid so, much like everything else, I had no idea what the hell that was either.
Then on August 17, 1994, at the ripe old age of fifteen, my sister took me to Metropol for my first real concert. It was Rollins Band and Helmet and I have not been the same since.
This was the first stretch of touring with Melvin Gibbs on bass so they only played songs off of the new album, Weight, so he wouldn't feel like he was in a cover band. This meant that after the show, The End Of Silence was still a hidden treasure for me to discover.
A few weeks later, the grind and bullshit of going to a Catholic high school kicked in and I started squirreling away my lunch money so I could start buying used CDs instead of food. I picked up Weight first because that was what I knew. A few trips to CD Trader later, there was a used copy of The End Of Silence in the bin and to this day it was the best purchase that I have ever made. I suddenly had my own personal soundtrack to walk around with on my contraband walkman. Every song felt like it was addressed to me personally even if I had no clue what the subject matter of those songs actually was.
Black Flag—Damaged
Once I had a handle on the Rollins Band, it was time to play catchup with Black Flag. I was not ready for the speed and ferocity with which the songs on Damaged were played. I was accustomed to the bricks in a cement mixer sound of the Rollins Band and did not think that a similar message could be conveyed over fifteen songs in thirty-five minutes. It was over so quickly that I had to listen to it again to make sure that I didn't miss anything.
That record was a rabid badger attacking my teenage brain. Songs about the cops, vandalism and not fitting in. I was sold. All of the MTV/trust fund punks at school were singing the praises of Dookie but Green Day's poppy bullshit couldn't keep up with Damaged in a million years.
The mirror punching on the cover of Damaged said it all for me. That was exactly how I felt in junior year of high school and, depending on how my day is going now, how I feel on a regular basis when I have to deal with my fellow humans.
Helmet—Meantime
Even though I had picked up Meantime around the same time as the Rollins Band CDs that I was subsisting off of, it wasn't until senior year of high school that the album really clicked with me and it was a welcomed addition to the soundtrack in my head. By the time the second song, “Ironhead,” ended all I wanted to do was punch the nearest human being for absolutely no reason.
I was completely done with tolerating the rich kids, jocks and assholes that I had to contend with until graduation. My patience was gone and I wanted to get on to the next thing and this album helped me blow off steam on the long walks to and from bus stops for busses that more often than not failed to show up.
Meantime chugged along with an abrasiveness that just felt right. Later on, I learned that the drummer, John Stanier, was the one primarily responsible for the way those early Helmet records were so pummeling. I always felt that there was something missing from the newer Helmet albums and I think his playing was the key to their sound.
Crayon Death—Three Sixteen
Most of the time when you have a coworker that's in a band that band is not very good but you do the polite thing and go see their band out of pity. That was not the case with Crayon Death. They actually sounded good to my eighteen year old ears.
Post high school, I worked at a sandwich shop with the singer of the band, Dave Hummel, and I would never have known he was in a band unless one of our other coworkers hadn't told me. It was a subject that he never brought up.
Crayon Death was finally playing an all ages show at Luciano's on Forbes Ave., by Duquesne University, so I made sure to get myself there. The place was a shoebox with a bad PA so I had no idea of knowing what I had just seen from the back corner of the club. A few weeks later, I was handed a tape with six songs on it that would eventually end up on Three Sixteen. I put the tape on when I got home and was blown away.
Luckily for me, Dave's other job was being a bartender at the Attic/Club Laga and Crayon Death was more or less the house opening act every time there was a metal band playing. By the time the band called it quits in 1999 I was lugging gear, taking pictures and recording the audio of their shows. I would quickly fire off three rolls of film and then take a spot next to the speaker stack and scream along to every song.
I loved that band and that record so much that back in 2014 I almost sunk several mortgage payments worth of cash into putting Three Sixteen out on vinyl. The remastering was done and ready to go when events outside of my control made moving forward with the project unadvisable. More information about that debacle can be found here.
Someone did post some of the tracks from Three Sixteen to YouTube but they are the original mastering from 1997. Below is a link for a free download of the 2014 remaster.
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