25 Albums. #19 - Ramones by Ramones

Do I really need to say how this album was influential on my life?

Sure, it's lame if a band covers any song from this album, but even if you aren't a fan of the Ramones,
you'd have to be a total dumbass to say that it didn't at least help kickstart a new genre of rock and roll.

I mean, really, do I?

25 Albums. #20: Americana by The Offspring

Anyone who knows me knows that I often cite Green Day as the band that got me into the music that I'm into today (not to get into semantics, but I'll generally be referring to it as "punk" even though many purists would strongly disagree). While that is kind of true, it's also a lie. The Offspring's Americana definitely came before.

A pretty fly introduction.

Americana is probably one of the best known Offspring albums, due in part to its singles. Pretty Fly for a White Guy, She's Got Issues, Why Don't You Get a Job?, The Kids Aren't Alright... except for that last one they're all pretty campy and dumb songs. But take away all the humorous tracks (including that quasi-cover of Feelings) and what's left is pretty solid.

Overall, Americana introduced me to 90's mainstream "punk" (if you want to call it that). This album may not have been on Epitaph, but it wasn't too far removed from it either. I was too young to really understand the themes of most of the songs (or maybe I was just too dumb) but I understood that I liked how the music sounded. Given that, there's a chance that a year later when I began listening to Green Day that I would've enjoyed it anyway but Americana was still the first semi-punk album that I started listening to on my own, which is how it found its place on my list.

25 Albums. #21: I Am the Movie by Motion City Soundtrack

Motion City Soundtrack gets a pretty bad rep sometimes. I suppose being lumped into the same group as every other young pop group that poses as "punk" will do that to a band.

Unfortunately, I think a lot of people overlook the fact that Motion City Soundtrack, while they most definitely craft incredibly sugary hooks and poppy choruses, is that they owe a lot to the early 90's for their sound. Jawbox, Superchunk, Weezer, Sunny Day Real Estate... you can hear the influence that a lot of these bands had on Motion City Soundtrack. Particularly their first album, I Am the Movie. Having been a fan of some of these bands (Weezer, SDRE, and the Get Up Kids), the influence of 90's indie alternative and pop was something that I could hear as soon as I started listening to Motion City Soundtrack.


When I was 15 or so, I got a gift card for Christmas to a Sam Goody. I think it was a Sam Goody anyway. Either way, I used it to buy the first (at the time, only) Motion City Soundtrack album and it became my favorite thing ever for a few months. But I'm not including it on this list because I loved every track on the album (although it did help when I was selecting the albums). I'm including it because I Am the Movie has a million sounds on it but at heart it still remains a pop album. I listen to plenty of bands who hop around from genre-to-genre but Motion City Soundtrack found a way to meld them perfectly (one could argue that they perfected the sound on their most recent album, My Dinosaur Life, but that's for another time).

25 Albums. #22: Licensed to Ill by the Beastie Boys

This is arguably their weakest album and I'm not even going to try and defend it in that sense. It's also awful that the group originally wanted to title it "Don't Be a Faggot" and, again, I won't even bother trying to defend it. The band members themselves have also expressed dislike for a good portion of anything relating to this album. Did you know that they won't even perform "Fight For Your Right" live anymore? Apparently they haven't since the late 80's.

Brass Monkey, however, remains a highpoint of their entire career.

That said, Licensed to Ill is the album that helped me transition into discovering the world of hip hop. Sure, that's pretty typical and all- given their status as white rappers, but it was this album (and to a lesser extent, Raising Hell), that opened my eyes to a style of hip hop that wasn't what was popular when I was a developing teen (I won't name names, but there was an awful lot of misogyny and hate in many of those songs) (some might say that those things are still prominent in lots of popular hip hop acts today) (and yes, I'm aware that Licensed to Ill is the album that contains the track "Girls" and the irony is not lost on me).

That said, it opened up a new world of music where samples of older music could be used to create brand new music. I still don't listen to a whole lot of hip hop (generally if it's not the Beastie Boys, it's someone on Doomtree or Epitaph or someone who has played on the Warped Tour or something) but I like to think that Licensed to Ill had something to do with it.

Licensed to Ill also brings back fond memories of playing Dynasty Warriors 3 into the wee hours of the morning and this album would be the soundtrack to those long hours of getting lost in the game. I had three characters that I would play with: Mike D, Ad-rock and MCA. What a tribute.

25 Albums. #23: Hot Pink by The Pink Spiders

When I first heard Hot Pink, I was already well-versed in the first four Ramones albums and the Buzzcocks' Singles Going Steady, so poppy garage rock was nothing new to me. Hell, even the snotty (and, let's face it, immature) lyrics were also nothing new. So how could this album have made an impact if its nothing more than a poor man's Guitar Romantic?

The Pink Spiders are significant to me because they're the first band that I became really disappointed with for "their new stuff" because of a slight shift in sound.

I should mention that I'm not normally disillusioned when a band plays around with that sort of thing; if I like a band enough I'll give a new album enough listens until I can enjoy it. But the Pink Spiders were different. I loved their brand of ripping off the Exploding Hearts (the song Teenage Graffiti even includes a lyrical homage to I'm a Pretender) even if it was overplayed and almost gimmicky at times. But they still had this noisy, sloppy thing about them that called to me.

And then they played the same game as so many bands do. They got signed to a major. They got Ric Ocasek to produce. They made a high budget music video. And it wasn't very good. I'm not sure what it was about Teenage Graffiti (the album) that I disliked, but I think the biggest reason was that four or five songs from Hot Pink were re-done for the album when they didn't need to be touched at all. I know that's kind of petty, but I really liked the originals and the re-recordings were such a huge turn off that I didn't even care to listen to the rest of the album (and on the occasions when I tried to give it a shot I just never cared for it).

These days, I like it when a band that I like has more fans because it means that there will be more people who have heard of them and it's something I can use to bond with strangers. I try to stay away from that whole "major label album = terrible" mindset (for the most part) but I really can't get over how much I was upset by the change that this band made. It wasn't even the "major label" part so much as it was that I just didn't like the sound, but I also know that the change in sound was due to being able to afford a big name producer. I was also really hoping that since they were working with Ric Ocasek and on the same label that Teenage Graffiti would sound kind of like Weezer's Blue Album.

Quite frequently, I'll say that a band's older material is better, but with the Pink Spiders I really mean it.

Above is the Hot Pink version of Little Razorblade (with images of the band post-Hot Pink), while the Teenage Graffiti version is below.

I should say that for the record, I still love the band's first EP and Hot Pink but I just don't care much for the rest of their output. They're one of the very few bands I feel this way about, and I think that says a lot since I enjoy American Idiot, White Crosses and even the Red Album. I guess that this sort of means that it was Teenage Graffiti that has had this impact on my life and not Hot Pink. But nonetheless, they were one of the first experiences I've had with truly being let down by a new release, which is how it got its spot on this list.

25 albums. #24: A Singsong and a Scrap by Chumbawamba

I think it's a pretty common thing for people to experience some sort of "musical awakening" in college when they begin to listen to lots of protest-heavy folk music. Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Woody Guthrie, you know the drill. Some people have this experience in high school and they usually think they're better than everyone else.


Anywho, I mention all this because I did not have that same introduction to the realm of protest folk music. I had Chumbawamba's 2005 album, A Singsong and a Scrap.

Yes, the very same Chumbawamba that you're
thinking of. Let's please move on now.

During my sophomore year of college, I was beginning to listen to a lot of bands of the folk punk variety but Chumbawamba's A Singsong and a Scrap was my first real folk album. No singing out of key or songs that are only 80 seconds in length here. Singsong is 43 minutes of sweet and soft songs that pack a powerful punch. I had heard similar stuff to this when I first heard it, but it had never really sparked an interest in me until I listened to this album. Filled with flutes, whistles, cellos, pianos, even a few a capella tracks, this was all stuff I had heard before but never in a way that made me want to hear it over and over.

Lyrically the album has a very strong socio-political theme going on- something that Chumbawamba is known for. There are two covers (both a capella, the Clash's Bankrobber and  a rearrangement of the Italian song Bella Ciao). A lot of the lyrics are focused specifically on events that have occurred in Europe, specifically the UK (I wonder what the band thinks about the current riots), so while I can't necessarily relate to the specifics, it did show me a softer side to the revolution that speaks just as loud.

25 Albums. #25: Turn the Radio Off by Reel Big Fish

This album is almost single-handedly responsible for
teaching thousands of teens to think that ska is cool.

This album. This fucking album. This album came out during the peak of third wave ska's popularity and was (IS) probably one of the biggest things to have come out from that time. Sure, a couple of songs are re-recorded versions of songs from Everything Sucks (which should've been the first indication of what was to come) but it's all just so fun and silly. They sing about how much life sucks but the music sounds so happy! What a wonderful thing to sing about!

That's pretty much Reel Big Fish in a nutshell. Cheery music about how shitty life can be. These guys had the whole early-2000's emo thing down before it was even a thing. Except with horns.

The thing about Reel Big Fish is, that no matter how simplified you can make them seem, they do it pretty well. And when you're a 14 year old teenager who doesn't want to give in to listening to Taking Back Sunday or whatever was popular on Fueled by Ramen like the rest of your peers, ska seems like the next best thing. I spent almost an entire Christmas vacation listening to Turn the Radio Off while playing Mario Kart and it remains a fond memory. It also brings back lots of memories of being at camp in 2003 and 2004, where Turn the Radio Off was one of the mandatory three albums that everyone owned (the other two being Licensed to Ill and Sublime's self titled).

So how did this album have a profound effect on my life?

It taught me (in a way) to have fun with life even if everything does suck. It was an important lesson for me to learn, especially during the height of those angst-ridden years in high school. I don't know how I would've made it out alive if I hadn't (probably by listening to something else, but I like the lessons I learned).