Recently, my buddy Alan and I were talking about the albums that were most influential to us. In fact we did a whole YouTube live stream about it if it's something you'd be interested in (YouTube: Perfectly Excellent). The topic wasn't necessarily our favorite records of all time, but those really important ones that were life changing and sent us down different paths. One of the five records I selected was this compilation album that I heard for the first time in 1994 early on during my senior year of high school. It then dawned on me that I still only had the CD that I bought back then and never picked up a copy on vinyl. Due to its importance, I felt that I really needed to correct this.
In 1994 I started to go through something of a musical crisis. The hip hop landscape was drastically and rapidly changing into something that I didn't really like the sound of anymore. I knew absolutely nothing about anything that was going on outside of the hop hop world until a friend of mine, Scott, played me the Beck album Mellow Gold because there were a few songs on there that he thought sounded enough like the Beastie Boys for me to be interested in them. Not only was he right about those songs, I ended up loving that album. Especially the weirder stuff and that sent me digging around to find more things like that.
That's where my other friend Dave came into the picture. He wasn't even a particularly close friend at the time. Just a guy I had a few classes with, but he was more knowledgable about punk and indie rock than I was. He let me borrow his CD copy of this album. When I played it for the first time, it was kind of that second awakening where I just couldn't comprehend what I was hearing. This stuff didn't sound like anything I had ever hear before. I had no idea that music like this was being made and even less of an idea of where to get more of it. That led to my friend Pat taking me to Flipside records for the first time and I was finally able to really start exploring rabbit holes.
I'm pretty sure it was the diversity of sounds that really intrigued me when I first started listening to this album. There's loud songs, quiet songs, fast songs, slow songs, weird songs, serious songs and everything in between. There were a handful that jumped out at me immediately. I can't tell you how much I loved (and still love) the Peechees song "Patty Coahuila." At least the actual song after the intro thing (which is way too long). I bought three different Smog albums trying to find a song anywhere near as good as "37 Pushups." I was not successful.
This compilation is where I discovered The Spinanes (who I ended up being a huge fan of, especially their first album Manos), Rancid (this is pretty much the only Rancid song I ended up liking, though enjoying this song let to Pat recommending I try out Operation Ivy) and Team Dresch (whose record I bought on an early trip to Flipside, but I didn't end up enjoying the record as much as the song on here).
This album also marked the beginning of my Compilation Era. I bought so, so many comps during this time period as it was pretty much the most economical way to discover a whole pile of new bands all at once. I did discover a ton of bands this way. But all of that sort of stems from listening to this album at a very important, transitional time in my life. I'm grateful that I heard it when I did (especially as a good amount of it doesn't really hold up to me 30+ years later) and I'm really appreciative that Dave let me borrow this. I haven't spoken to him in over 25 years, but him lending me this album had a far more profound impact on me that I'm sure he realizes.
Various Artists - Rock Stars Kill:
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