Soundtrack Of My Life

One of the benefits of having a Digital Audio Player (DAP) as opposed to a CD-player is the “shuffle” feature. I know I’m not fucking De Gama discovering this shit, but it serves as a preface to what I think will be a somewhat interesting ongoing category. See, by shuffling my 60GB of music while at work brings up songs I’d normally not choose to listen to: either I’ve burnt myself out on it, it’s not the right song for the mood, or I’m simply amazed I hung onto that particular CD. The unintended consequence of shuffling, however, is dredging up the memories tied to certain songs/bands/albums, whether good or bad. Driving home today, one of those moment happened and gave me the idea for this category.

Know, also, that I’m going to try and keep these posts to specifically memorable moments/times. You won’t find the “Soundgarden reminds me of my 8th grade year” generic bullshit.

Even though it does… I’ll at least delve deeper than just that sentence.

• THE ALBUM(S): Terraforming by The Postman Syndrome; Is This Room Getting Smaller? by Onesidezero; Point No. 1 by Chevelle
• MINI-REVIEWS: Very Tool-lite. All three of these bands attended the Maynard James Keenan Vocalist School, meshing their clean verses with the sporadic throat-rending screams of the then-current nu-metal trend. In The Postman Syndrome’s case, this resulted in a bizarre concept album that remains one of the few “album as a continuous song” concepts that actually works in my mind (a close second to The Mars Volta’s Deloused In The Comatorium). The band members are currently in different groups, but I’d fucking kill for a solid sequel to this disc.
  Onesidezero never got particularly heavy (although they made up for in their shitty follow-up) and Chevelle was years away from becoming the boring modern rock that now blares from the radio. All in all, some solid hard rock releases for the turn of the century.
• WHY THEM: Point No. 1 reminds me of my frequent trips to Columbus during my community college days. Getting the fuck out of my hometown was always at the top of my list, so visiting my buddy in the capitol was a great escape. Our mutual friend had moved into her new apartment (with five other girls, natch!) and were in-process of settling in. One of the girl’s old roommate had an EPK (promotional video) for this band Chevelle. I sat and watched the stop-motion animated video for “Mia” at least ten times before dragging my buddy down the street to Magnolia Thunderpussy to buy it.
  Fast forward to my eventual move to Athens, late 2000. I knew practically no one, thanks in part to my community college choice (everyone had dorm buddies, it seemed). Being underage and not knowing the town, I’d spend most of my nights with my dial-up internet (ha!), downloading mp3’s. During one of these nights, I stumbled across Onesidezero and immediately fell in love.
  During a history class, I was surprised to recognize a guy from my community college days… T-Founds. He listened to the same shit I did (at the time) and he offered to introduce me to the Perry County Gang (where I also re-met Trent Steel). I immediately ingratiated myself with the guys, and became a staple at every party (much to their regret, I’m guessing). At one of the soirees, I met my buddy Danison’s mysterious roommate Dirt. He started flipping through my CD book and stopped at Point No. 1.
  “You know these guys?” he asked, amazed.
  “Fuck yeah. I love that CD!” I said.
  That’s all it took. From that point on, any new band I got into was immediately passed onto the Perry County Gang for mass consumption. Pretty much every hard rock/nu-metal album that came out between 2000 and 2002 was blared from both Mound and Shafer Streets at obscene volume. Is This Room Getting Smaller?, in particular, was an immediate hit with T-Founds and Dirt, who rapidly ruined the disc for me by playing it for weeks on end. (Onesidezero also brings up the awkward and semi-sad memory of sitting on the beach, watching the sun rise, and thinking about a recent breakup. Complete cliche, trite bullshit, I know, but it fucking happened to me in Virginia Beach and the last two songs on the album teleport me back there every fucking time.)
  When I eventually discovered The Postman Syndrome and their debut (and, sadly, sole) album, it became the staple of my crew. I can’t even count the amount of times we listened to that fucking album from start to finish, pounding beers/playing cards/bullshitting. I even passed the album down to my little brother, where it became a huge fucking hit with his group of friends (especially Kiki) and I was safe knowing I’d be able to hear it when I visited him. To this day, Terraforming remains one of my favorite albums, start to finish, or all time.

Alright, nothing fucking earth-shattering. I didn’t murder a drifter and eat his body to any of those albums (that’s coming up later), but they definitely take me back each time I listen.

NEXT TIME: The Soundtrack To My Courtship