Vic grew up in various locales around New York State before ending up in Buffalo, NY for college. He currently lives in Southern California with his wife and two sons. With that all said, it’s time to dig into some crucial tracks with this prolific songwriter and axe master…so take it away, Vic…

More than songs, a point in time.

I am 47 years of age. I grew up in the pre-digital era, pre-streaming, pre-computer age. Admittedly, I was late to the digital party. I did not get my first cell phone until 2006 (I was 30) and did not get my first PC (a used 2004 MacBook) until 2011. I used computers of course as needed for doing college projects, papers and emailing, but they were always on someone else’s machine and/or a public computer. Being a parent of two boys currently aged 6 & 9, I must admit a twinge of jealousy for how easy they have it nowadays. A song that I kept hearing them play ad nauseam was “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” by Tears for Fears, a ubiquitous anthem from their 1985 album, Songs from the Big Chair.

I did not realize this until the 4^th^ day of hearing this song, seemingly in a loop because of how much my kids love this song, that I loved this song too and coincidentally around the same age. This song was my entry into the world of “modern” sounding rock. It had classic sounding synths, electronic drums and searing electric guitar solos, all these things appealed to me at that age of 9. It was surreal to hear this song and both my kids singing the lyrics and dancing to it, just like me and my sister Rose did when we were kids.

Another overlapping song was “Crazy Train” by Ozzy Osbourne. Luke (my younger guy) was watching a video on YouTube and the famous guitar riff by Randy Rhodes was playing in the background on a loop, I caught myself running out and decreeing, “Luke, that’s one of my favorite songs! Wanna hear Daddy play it on my guitar!” His reaction was one of the cutest things ever, he screamed “of course Daddy!” and thus I played him that signature riff on my acoustic I had handy. It sounded nothing like the fuzzily distorted electric original, but it did not matter, he heard the notes and was convinced I wrote it, that it was my song.  Eventually on one of our forays to the park, I played the original track, lyrics and all and he was blown away. We both sing along now at the top our lungs to “Crazy Train.”

Music has been a major component of my life, anyone that really knows me can attest to this. I was honored to be asked to contribute to the new project Crucial Tracks created by my good friends Jason and Chris, it got me thinking about the past and how much music has played a role in my development.  My kids have greatly impacted my life and sharing some music together is one of my favorite experiences as a parent thus far. My mother passed this Spring, it was sudden and unexpected. It was devastating and I am still not quite through the grieving process, some days are better than others, but regardless she is always in my thoughts. Music was a major bonding force for my mom and I, some of the most important memories I have tie back to specific songs. Here are a couple that really matter to me.

My mom had an incredible record collection. In hindsight, her albums spanned many decades, ranging from the 40’s on through the 80’s; holiday albums, showtunes, Motown, classic rock, disco and even some progressive rock. The album that was my first “love” was Rubber Soul, the Beatles were my introduction to emo. I was heavily affected by them, the harmonies, the soothing tones, the lyrics being laden with feeling, chock full of anguish, joy, sadness, they ran the gamut. “In My Life” was my mom’s personal favorite and of course it became my favorite. I still get weepy when I listen to this song, it still fills me with all those feelings and makes me feel closer to mom.

My early exposure to the Beatles was followed by none other than Tina Turner. Her Love Songs album released in 1984 was one of my mom’s later official vinyl purchases, she had other Tina Turner albums, she loved her earlier stuff, but the song that she really influenced me with “What’s Love Got to Do with It.” This song’s soothing melody and keyboards were such a nice aural experience on her old Fisher Hi-Fi. I listened to this song a lot, so much so that I memorized every lyric at 8 years of age. I would ask my mom what some of the more mature lines meant, with her not really knowing how to field my inquiries. She would just say, it’s kind of hard to explain, but let’s just say she (Tina) was smart and would not take any man’s crap. My mom was so funny and honest.

In 4^th^ grade my mom enrolled me in guitar classes at my school. She offered me a choice, guitar or piano and since Drums were a nonstarter, guitar it was. As a reward for good grades in the middle of my 4^th^ grade year, my mom bought me an electric guitar and a small starter combo amp. I was in bliss, the amp was a 10-watt Gorilla amp, it had a distortion knob, and this was the start of my guitar odyssey, an obsession that would live on to this day. One of the most important lessons on guitar didn’t happen in the classroom though, it was at my cousin Vito and Michael’s basement in Long Island during a trip that was for one of the holidays when I was about 10 years old. It was the first time I would be exposed to Black Sabbath; the fateful day my brain’s little wires would be hijacked by heavy metal. They sat me down on a cozy chair, placed headphones on my ears and pressed play on the record player, the song that blasted me into out of space was “Iron Man,” an iconic anthem that evoked such incredible imagery, I was hooked.

I spent a good chunk of that visit playing their drums and guitars in the basement, playing along to the album again with the headphones on full blast, learning the song one note at a time, my cousins jaws dropped, seeing that I was able to learn it by ear and my fingers were able to form the power chords, they screamed up the stairs to everyone to come see, I became a bit of trick pony that day. Mom would make me bring my guitar to all the family functions, showing off the newest songs I was able to learn at home. The next milestone on guitar was learning one of my favorite songs, still to this day it is top tier to me; “Barracuda” by Heart, a tune that both scared and thrilled me. The eerie sounds of the high-pitched harmonics, the triplet strumming with the syncopated galloping kick drum, all these elements still strike a nerve when I still listen to this song, same as it did when I was 10 years old.

Fast forward now, heavy metal was a big part of my musical journey, and one of the moments that sticks with me still that involved music and my family was a trip we took from Queens to Troupsburg, a town in southern tier of New York which we would end moving to during the summer before my 7^th^ grade year. During this trip my dad let me put my newest tape into the stereo of the 78’ Thunderbird and it had a feature where it would flip the tape at the conclusion of the side. The trip took 7 hours, it felt like 7 days, the tape played the entire trip, it was Skid Row’s self-titled album, my dad never popped it out. This explained to me overhearing him singing “18 and life, you got it…. 18 and life you know” in the house the next day, which coming from a Romanian with a very thick accent, was pretty god damn funny. He would ask me, “who is this Ricky, anyway?”

During the next decade my taste would broaden and my love for metal evolved. During my high school years friendships would impact my musical taste and I would end up eventually influencing friends with my taste. It was not until 10 grade that I would hear Prog Rock again, the stuff that I heard early on mom’s Fisher Hi-Fi would be some of the same stuff that would be played at my good friend Dave’s house. The most memorable song that still to this day remains one of my favorite tracks of all time is “Runaround” by Yes; pop sensible, yet classy and artsy, all the things a prog rock anthem ever needed.

Later in 10th grade, another band would enter my life that would change me forever. Nirvana was being played on a Canadian video channel called Much Music before they hit big in the states. I had heard the big hit like everyone else, it was impossible to avoid, I loved it too and just like everyone else, I bought the tape. Or so I thought, but in fact, I did not buy the right tape. I bought a different one, because K Mart sold out of Nevermind and I purchased the only tape they had left, a collection of B-sides and previously released originals and covers on smaller labels called Incesticide. This album to this day is still my favorite release by Nirvana and “Aneurysm” is one of their best songs in my humble opinion.

Grunge crashed down on me like a 50-foot wave, I was the perfect age for it, 15 and full of small-town angst. A privileged white kid for sure, but I was open to learning about the struggles of the world, the inequalities that existed and the struggles others faced. I did have empathy at an early age, thankfully due to how I was raised. I was susceptible to music that had meaning, songs that were about something and thus my entrance into hardcore and punk music.

In 1994 I left home for college and at the University of Buffalo I discovered Hardcore. While unloading my car into my dorm I met Keith Brown, who would later become one of my best friends and cofounder of my first hardcore band, Union. Keith and I shared so much common music, it was such a bond for us, my first memories of that Fall in Buffalo are with him playing acoustic guitars, singing along to Violent Femmes, Janes Addiction and even our own silly made up songs. We later ended up linking up with fellow UB alumnus Mike Jeffers and my initiation into hardcore music would commence.

The first hardcore song that really resonated with me was “Firestorm” by Earth Crisis, the pummeling riff and drum cadence, the palpable anger of Carl screaming “A FIRESTORM TO PURIFY” it all culminated into a new noise that would become a crucial piece of my musical puzzle.

Musically, the latter half of my college experience was spent entrenched in indie rock. While still loving hardcore, I became disillusioned with scene politics and the hypocrisy of a lot of the people who were preaching hardcore values, while being quite the opposite. I gravitated towards like minds who made music that was for weirdos, the art freaks, the stuff that really excited me to listen to. One of the first big doses of this came when my sister Rose started booking shows and giving my bands opportunities to open some of these shows. A band that really left a big imprint on me was a Boston based band called Helms. I opened with a solo set for Helms during the winter of 2000 at Mohawk Place and it was one of the best shows I had ever seen. This song still holds up as one of the best songs I have ever seen live.

I started channeling a lot of the things I was hearing into my own songcraft. It was not until probably the formation of my band Maceo Ruez in the Fall of 2000 that I felt like I was able to properly articulate myself and infuse my influences into the music I was making. I started purchasing music again voraciously, just like I did when I first got into college and some of these first purchases still stand the test of time. I spent a lot of time at New World Record, Home of the Hits and Record Theatre, these places were a hub of discovery, they were places where not only would you purchase music, but you would discuss music. And on the off chance, you might even get to see a live in-store performance. One such chance happened for me in the summer of 97’ at the old location of New World Records. I was able to see Toronto based singer-song writer Hayden Desser perform there, it was one of the most intimate memorable live shows I have seen, and it instantaneously made me a fan. His songs were sweet, darkly humored dirges, simultaneously sad and funny, it was this contrast that made such an impact on me and led me down my own path of lyrical honesty. His song “We Don’t Mind” is a great example of how simple chords with just the correct dose of genuine feeling is all you really need.

My journey of music continues, I harken back to the things from my early days. I still discover new things and old things I somehow missed along the way. The most recent experiences with my kids getting into some of the songs that I grew up loving as well proved to me how it is one big cycle and that good songs have staying power. There is undeniability to a good song. And of course, taste is subjective, but I will always swear by those songs that have led me to where I am, those artists that helped cultivate my perspective and even my abilities as an artist in my own right. It is more than just a song to me, it’s a place in time that I can travel back, a good song can transcend me. Good songs can be therapy.

Listen to this issue of Crucial Tracks

Find this issue’s playlist on Apple Music.

Thanks

Thanks to Vic for sharing his Crucial Tracks! You can find Vic online:  website / Instagram. (And of course his music on Bandcamp, Apple Music, and Spotify.)

A little about me before we dig in: I was born in Buffalo, moved to Cleveland for art school & stayed for the better part of a decade, eventually moved back to Buffalo for grad school, and then opened Mirabo Press shortly thereafter with two partners. I’m a studio artist focusing on printmaking, enamel, and sculpture, as well as a collaborative printer and Co-Founder at Mirabo.

Listen, this was a lot harder than I imagined it would be. I can’t choose the 10-20 most important songs to me. The pressure! The inevitable misrepresentation! The sheer amount of songs I love! Parts of the process were a blast, though. I went for a deep dive through my ancient iPod and combed through my digital listening platforms, which turned out to be wholly unnecessary but induced some real glee.

At the end of the day, I chose songs that stood out when I thought back to certain eras in my life. They sort of go in order of chronological relativity to those eras, but that gets murky. Admittedly, a couple of them are just straight up favorites, but having to think about why that is was an intriguing exercise. It’s not necessarily a list that’s indicative of my taste and it’s leaving out a LOT – multiple entire genres full of music that are biographically important. Looking at the list as a whole, the most common thread is that many of these songs, in one way or another (immediate or via slow burn) made an impact on the way I think about art – the experiencing of it and the making.

Cortez the Killer – Neil Young & Crazy Horse (Zuma)

Neil was a regular in my parents’ homes and when I grew up and moved out, he became a regular in mine. And in my car. And at the studio. I love Neil Young. That dude does whatever the hell he wants regardless of the stipulations of his record deals, pressure to be consistent, critical reviews, whatever… plus the fact that he absolutely does not have the voice for mainstream popularity is impressive given his success. I have many top Neil songs like Old Man, Down By the River, Dreamin’ Man, Harvest Moon (come on, the literal sweeping broom as a background layer…) and then you’ve got what I think of as the real and humorous sketchbook pieces like Piece of Crap or F*!#in’ Up. Cortez takes the cake for me, though.

The song takes its time unfolding, beginning with some undeniably great sounding guitar. It starts out with a vignette of the conquistador, Cortez, but also references Aztec rule, and then mysteriously switches to a romantic first person tale late in the song. We’re looking at a minimum of three time frames here, all linked by who knows what. It’s a narrative with room for wonder and I’ve always been a pretty big fan of that.

Great Gig in the Sky – Pink Floyd (The Dark Side of the Moon)

A lot of Pink Floyd’s music, as well as Gilmour’s solo work, has been bread and butter listening for me my entire life. We had the Pulse DVD on at home regularly and I remember being a kid and completely in awe of these strong female vocalists who took the spotlight during Great Gig in the Sky. Despite being lyricless, you can deeply feel those vocals. When you watch these women sing you can just tell how good it feels. They’re IN IT.

As I got older, not just the rawness of it got me, but realizing that it was one of my introductions to abstraction. This song doesn’t need language to communicate, there’s nothing representational about it. But, you can feel it. You can read the narrative. It’s human, it’s sheer creation, it’s gorgeous. And chasing that feeling of being “in it” is an endless cycle which begins the moment you’re out of it again.

Free Man in Paris – Joni Mitchell (Court and Spark)

This was another childhood intro thanks to my mom. I knew all the lyrics from an early age and had pretty rich visuals associated with the story. I think I sort of understood it then. I remember not wanting to be like the subject of the lyrics, constantly held back from freedom by what I’d now describe as the commodified, capitalist side of the music/art world.

As happens, the meaning changed for me over time. While I’m clearly nowhere in the orbit of the level of the subject of the song (Mitchell’s friend, agent David Geffen) I’ve worked in commercial galleries and I run a collaborative printmaking studio, I know what it’s like to have people wanting things from you and for so much of your social life to also be your professional life. I also feel that it applies within my own practice – not letting the “professional” side of things hamper the creative.

I love that the song is describing something that’s ultimately a bummer – this man gets to have a brief spell of freedom during vacation, but not to live that way regularly. However, the melody and instrumentation is lighter, it’s got layers that feel happy… It captures well the relief associated with a true break.

Children of the Revolution – T. Rex (single)

I was introduced to T. Rex through the film Billy Elliot. Their songs were the perfect vehicle to carry the story of a boy with a secret talent for ballet through coming of age in a working class English family during a tense mining strike. You’ve got I Love to Boogie, Cosmic Dancer, and others. They fit all the moods, and they’re all fun to listen to. And then there’s Children of the Revolution.

I was in early high school and this was the shit. It was an anthem hitting my teenage brain at exactly the right moment. Simple and to the point, “you won’t fool the children of the revolution” says it all – it challenges the norm, it tells the adults they can’t manipulate or control us, it’s energetic and exciting and glam. Honestly, it still serves that younger, louder, less complicated sense of rebellion when I listen to it now.

La Mer – Nine Inch Nails (The Fragile)

I used to listen to Nine Inch Nails a lot. I was even wearing a NIN shirt in my senior photo (oh my god…) A lot of their music is obviously dark and angry and achy and aggressive. But, La Mer stuck out – it’s beautiful. The lyrics, which are in French (cue high school attraction to anything remotely mysterious), are about freedom from fear. What could be more appealing than being relieved of that burden?

I was full of respect for Trent Reznor and his significant musical ability. I was interested in the way he wrote music, played many of the instruments, and I was starting to think, probably unknowingly, about process at this point. Of course, thinking about process eventually became the backbone of my entire studio practice. An industrial, gritty musician making softer songs about finding light in the darkness struck me as very romantic and that search is something I returned to again and again.

Born in 55 – Ben Bullington (White Sulphur Springs)

I first met Ben Bullington during a family trip to Montana in my teens. Ben was a stellar songwriter and a close family friend. He started out as a geologist, then became a doctor, and was always writing and playing music in his spare time. He received a cancer diagnosis in his late 40s and with that, he left his profession to pursue his passion and recorded as much as he could, playing in singer/songwriter circles in Nashville and touring with his remaining time. He introduced me to Tom Waits, Springsteen’s album Nebraska, and some country music traditions that I thought I wouldn’t like but ended up loving. In the last exchange we had before he passed, he shared some advice – “make art that moves you and it will move others”- and that has been a core tenet for me ever since.

I was lucky to not only see Ben play in music venues but at our kitchen table and on the back porch. His ability to paint a picture was seemingly innate. While he sang about things wholly alien to my own experience, like life in a tiny ranch town in Montana, he did it in a way that made the scenario feel completely familiar. Instinctually understandable. His music captures being human, a difficult thing to do genuinely. Some of Ben’s music makes me cry, some makes me feel quiet, or warm, but my favorite song in the way of storytelling is Born in 55.

The Chain – Fleetwood Mac (Rumours)

What can I say, it’s Fleetwood Mac. I grew up with their music playing in both my mom’s and dad’s houses and it’s just… fun. Later, my dear friend and studio mate in art school brought a record player into our shared space and we would blast Fleetwood Mac and Stevie Nicks (and Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks and Dusty Springfield and, and and…).

I remember being in high school and repeatedly watching an early YouTube video of Stevie Nicks in her bright, breezy dressing room singing what must’ve been a very early iteration of Wild Heart, and not being able to pinpoint what was so appealing, but knowing that it was. I think that sort of sums up the majority of my feelings about Fleetwood Mac.

Take Off Your Cool – Outkast ft. Norah Jones (Speakerboxxx/The Love Below)

I don’t have tons to say about this one, it’s just one of those songs that sticks to your ribs. When I came across it, I was taking a course on collaboration with other artists, so the logistics and outcomes of combining creative practices was front of mind. Intellectually, I was excited by hearing quite disparate styles of songwriting and performance melded into a single structure. On a more intuitive level, the song just felt good. It’s comfortable and sounds good and has a little sultry spice. Hearing it during those years of rapidly going through outward identities before settling into myself, I remember interpreting the lyrics as a sort of standard by which to judge closeness and realness in various relationships: could I just be myself around this person or did I find that to be difficult? In order to truly collaborate, I think you do need to shed any pretenses, so I guess it’s all connected.

The Visitors – Ragnar Kjartansson

I realize this doesn’t exactly fit the prompt but it does involve a song and it is one of the deepest impressions for me. The Visitors, a multichannel video installation by Ragnar Kjartansson happened to be on view in the University at Buffalo Art Galleries while I was in grad school and I feel immeasurably fortunate to have been able to bask in it repeatedly. It felt like an experience that subtly made a mark on the molecular level.

To briefly set the stage, the installation involves a dark gallery with multiple screens. On each is a musician, simultaneously playing an hour long song in unison in different rooms of a big old house in the Hudson Valley. One plays a grand piano in a grand room, some play in the light of gigantic upper floor windows, another is naked in the bathtub with his guitar, and so on.

Through few words and very gradual, collaborative evolution, the song loosens up and unfolds. With an oft repeated refrain of “once again I fall into my feminine ways,” and wide ranging, dreamy instrumentals, this song is frankly stunning. If you ever have the chance to see The Visitors, you must, and you need to stay for the whole thing. It’s blissful. Kjartansson, who wrote the song, describes it as “a feminine nihilistic gospel song” and I can’t imagine what else might sell you on it.

Spitting off the Edge of the World – Yeah Yeah Yeahs ft. Perfume Genius (Cool it Down)

One morning during the summer of 2022 I woke up early and it was bright and sunny and warm in my bedroom. I looked at my phone and had a notification that Spitting off the Edge of the World was released. The first new Yeah Yeah Yeahs song in almost a decade! I was cautiously psyched, if that’s a thing. I immediately put on my headphones and proceeded to listen to it from my bed on repeat for an hour and a half. I think I might have smiled the entire time. I was definitely totally focused. I don’t know about you, but that level of attention for that length of time is pretty rare for me these days.

I’ve been a Yeah Yeah Yeahs fan since my first semester of college. They were on all the time in the foundation art studios and I was immediately in. Y Control, Date with the Night, Maps, so good. Poor Song, SO GOOD. Karen O’s solo work on Where the Wild Things Are, so very good. But I’m pretty sure this song is my absolute favorite.

I also have to note that between a lot of the music I listen to either being on around the house growing up or from any of the mass mp3 downloads at my desk in high school, it’s not that often I can remember the exact circumstance in which I first heard a song before college. This was definitely one of those rare and fantastic times.

Listen to this issue of Crucial Tracks

Find this issue’s playlist on Apple Music and Spotify. (Editor’s Note: at least one track wasn’t available on each service. Sorry!)

Thanks

Thanks to Rachel for sharing her Crucial Tracks! You can find Rachel online: website / Instagram.

Even though my life has taken a winding path, music has always been a constant; no matter where I lived, what job I had, or who my friends were, music was a part of my life. I’ve been skateboarding for almost four decades as well, and that’s the only other thing besides music that’s been a continuous presence – so after forty years, I think it’s high time for me to take a look at the songs that made me who I am today, and how they came into my life.

First, a note: this is going to be a completely unvarnished view of my musical taste and the songs that affected me. It’s not going to be some pretentious list of deep cuts that no one’s ever heard of, and it’s definitely not going to impress anyone. This is a story; the story of my life in music.

I debated about the best way to tell the story, and settled on chronological (in relation to when things came into my life, not necessarily when the albums/songs came out). So, let’s begin at the beginning, shall we?

I really started to “notice” music when I was about six or seven years old. Of course, I had no musical taste yet, so I just listened to what my parents listened to. Enter: Kenny Rogers. My mom always played his records around the house, and as a little kid, I became strangely infatuated with The Gambler movies. I was fascinated with how his songs told a story, then the story played out on the screen. Predictably, based on my mom’s love and my newfound fascination, my first concert was Kenny Rogers at the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium on August 30, 1984. I’ll bet you’re expecting me to list The Gambler as my first song right? You gotta know when to hold ‘em/know when to fold ‘em, right? Guess again. Not even close. It’s “Islands in the Stream.”

Until I heard this duet with Dolly Parton, I don’t think I really understood that two people could sing a song together, or sing it to one another. I was obsessed with the way Dolly & Kenny were “talking” to each through song. When I went to the concert, we sat up in the nosebleed seats, they were literally made of concrete, and it was 100 degrees, at least. My mom kept putting ice cubes down my shirt to keep me cool. And I waited for Islands in the Stream. And waited. And waited. And he never played it…until the encore. There I was, losing my little mind as the music started, and then, to my absolute dismay: no Dolly. No Dolly Parton. Some woman I did not know got on stage and sang Islands in the Stream with Kenny, and I was so disappointed. Still, this is where my musical journey began.

Dolly Parton/Kenny Rogers: Islands in the Stream

We had a hi-fi in our house, a piece of furniture with a record player, speakers, and a stereo all-in-one. My mom was a waitress, so she’d work late at night, then get up in the early afternoon and clean house, do laundry, etc. While she was cleaning house, she’d always put records on, and if I was home, she’d dance with me. She’d put my little feet on top of her feet and bop around, holding my arms, or she’d reach down and grab my hips, and move them in time with the song; she’d say “like this – on the beat.” I’ll always remember her cranking the volume up and blasting her way through some mundane task. That’s when I learned that music wasn’t just about storytelling, it was also about emotion. Cue my mom’s favorite housecleaning band: Journey.

The first time I heard Wheel in the Sky I was absolutely dazzled by how complicated it was – building from this melodic intro into something so mountainous, so lush; it was like being wrapped in a blanket of sound, sitting on the floor in front of that hi-fi, watching my mom dance through folding the clothes. It just swallowed me up whole. I’d been listening to Kenny Rogers stripped down, clean-country delivery, and here comes this full-on, multi-track cascade of rock. And Steve Perry’s voice? I was like: mom, humans can sound like this?

Journey: Wheel in the Sky

Honorable mention in this category: Chicago, You’re The Inspiration. Peter Cetera also doesn’t sound human, in the best kind of way. My mom used to sing me this song while holding me on her hip, spinning in a circle, and I felt so special & loved. I think I’ve been chasing that feeling for the rest of my life.

Chicago: You’re The Inspiration

After cutting my musical teeth, I did start to develop my own taste, influenced by what I heard on the radio and by the new-fangled audio-visual powerhouse that was MTV. I’d save up a little bit of money to buy a 7” single or a tape – the first record I owned was STYX: Mr. Roboto. The first two tapes I owned were Kool and the Gang: Emergency, and Tears for Fears: Songs from the Big Chair. I loved the echo-y, reverb-driven, pop new-wave anthem, Shout. I think this is when I really started to understand that there were multiple genres of music, and started to grasp that they made you feel different ways – I was able to identify how songs made me feel, but more than that, I was able to identify what I wanted to listen to when I felt a certain way. That became so important so fast as I approached adolescence.

But first, a tiny digression from the timeline: for much of my early childhood, I lived in the country and had to take a school bus into town, and the bus ride was long. I used to sit up front, and the older kids would sit in the back. I’ll never forget the day a kid named Alec got on the bus with a huge boombox, sat down all the way in the back, and turned on Led Zeppelin. I’d never heard anything like it, and I will never, ever forget what song it was: Over the Hills and Far Away. When the drums came in at about a minute and a half, I just sat in the front seat with my mouth open. I felt like I couldn’t even see. It filled the whole bus from back to front, top to bottom, and everyone just say in silence, listening. That started a love affair with Led Zeppelin that continues to this day, who are arguably one of the greatest rock bands of all time. And I will argue with you about it.

Led Zeppelin: Over the Hills and Far Away

I started skateboarding right around this same time, 1985, and that catapulted me into a world full of other kids, kids who were a lot older than me, and who had musical tastes that had been shaped by the skating subculture. It was only a matter of weeks before I was introduced to punk/metal bands like Suicidal Tendencies, DRI, JFA, and more. We’d be skating in someone’s driveway, a little cassette boombox ripping out tunes, and I’d try to act as cool as a nine or ten year old can, and I’d squirrel away what we were listening to: TSOL, Misfits, King Crimson, Black Sabbath, Minor Threat, and so, so much more. I started buying skate magazines, and the backs were filled with ads for music, and I logged all those names away too. When I’d finally saved a little more money, the first chance I got I headed to the record store and bought DRI and Suicidal Tendencies tapes. Quite the departure for a ten-year old who just two years prior was crying about Dolly not coming out for Islands in the Stream.

To the point though: this is when I learned that music could express negative emotions as well as positive ones; I could feel the anger, the angst, the frustration – and even though I was incredibly young, I was getting a sense of how the world worked, that it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, and that a lot of those negative emotions were probably the result of a fucked-up system. After all, I’d recently found out there was no Santa Claus. If you know anything about Suicidal Tendencies, you probably think the logical selection here is “Institutionalized.” But that song didn’t really affect me; you might notice that a lot of the songs on my list are the first song on the album. They were often the ones that affected me the most, the ones that I’ll always remember.

Suicidal Tendencies: Master of No Mercy

Another small digression: one of my friends who skated had an older brother who also skated, and I always remember that his room was covered with Iron Maiden posters. I loved the gruesome cartoon-y visuals of Eddie, and it seemed like every time we walked by his room, some kind of blistering metal was pouring out. That’s when I first heard what I still think is one of the greatest metal songs ever made, that still affects me to this day.

Iron Maiden: Run to the Hills

Now, here’s where things get a little weird.

I love what I’ve always called the “principle of adjacency.” It’s the idea that sometimes you pick something up in a store, a record, a book, etc., just because it’s next to something else. Because it’s literally, physically, adjacent to something. And that’s how you find new things. So, long before algorithms and long before “suggested for you” lists, I used the principle of adjacency to find new music. Basically, I just “browsed.” And when you browse, you just look at the album covers. If you’re a straight teenage boy, what’s gonna catch your eye? If you said boobs, you are correct. It was boobs. Enter: The Pixies: Surfer Rosa. I’d been looking at that cover for months, trying to muster up the courage to buy it, and although the record store had put a little sticker over the boobs on the cover, I knew what was going on under there. Did I know what the band sounded like? No. Did I care? No. One day, I finally went for it. And when I got it home, I was right, boobs. But after one listen, I couldn’t have cared less about the boobs. I think my actual brain chemistry changed. I thought to myself: how can music possibly be all of these things? It’s pop, it’s punk, it’s country, it’s noise, it’s chaos, it’s melody, it’s everything at the same time and like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. I remember thinking specifically: “this is art.” I really had no idea what art was, but I had some notion that it was something as courageous and powerful as Surfer Rosa. That tape didn’t leave my walkman for months. Honorable mention here: I went backwards and found their EP Come On Pilgrim, which blew my mind too, so if River Euphrates didn’t exist, I’d have to pick: Isla de Encanta. If there was a way to put almost every Pixies song from the first four albums on this list, I would.

The Pixies: River Euphrates

I’m not going to lie to you, I was precocious. And maybe annoying. But, I was thoughtful. I was always trying to read and listen to things that were well beyond my years, but I’m glad I tried, because it opened my eyes to mortality, oppressive systems, inequality, the trappings of capitalism, and more. If there’s a single band that guided that journey for me, as I’m sure they did for many others, it was the Dead Kennedys. That’s when I learned that music could be political. Not just storytelling, not just emotional. It could be used as a tool to convey information and raise awareness. If you’re in love with capitalism or have no idea why you work ceaselessly under the yoke of an unforgiving system, listen to the Dead Kennedys for a month, it’ll cure you. You’ll come out the other side a changed person. I did. And I was only 13.

Dead Kennedys: Holiday in Cambodia

I can’t leave out Bad Religion, even if it puts me over my limit. They taught me that it’s good to be smart, and there’s an incontestable power that comes with knowing what the fuck you’re talking about. And they know what the fuck they’re talking about. And, hands down, they fit the most unimaginable vocabulary words into punk songs. I mean, come on:

Let’s gather round the carcass of the old deflated beast,
We have seen it through the accolades and rested in its lea,
Syntactic is our elegance, Incisive our disease,
The swath endogenous of ourselves will be our quandary,

We’ve nestled in its hollow and we’ve suckled at its breast,
Grandiloquent in our attitude, impassioned yet inept,
Frivolous gavel our design, Ludicrous our threat,
Excursive expeditions leave us holding less and less,

So what does it mean?

That’s fucking poetry. If the Dead Kennedys make you question/hate politics and government, Bad Religion makes you hate consumer capitalism and question the meaning of life in an incredibly existential way. The title says it all:

Bad Religion: The Positive Aspects of Negative Thinking

About this time, I was discovering hardcore music through friends, and it checked a lot of the boxes: it was loud, it was angry, it was full of discontent, but it was also personal, political, and everything in between. I went to my first hardcore show when I was 13: Gorilla Biscuits, Outface, and Mind War at the River Rock in Buffalo, NY. I’ll always remember my friends Larry & Eric showing me what it was going to be like at the show; we “practiced” in my room as they explained what moshing was, how people were going to be smashing into each other and me, and they pushed me into the edge of my bed and the walls of my bedroom. They were like, “it’s going to be like this, but ever crazier.” And I was like: “no way.” I was wrong. It was fucking insane. But, I loved it. There should be a hundred hardcore songs on this list for a hundred different reasons, but I’ll just pick one from my first show.

Gorilla Biscuits: New Direction

About this time, and for the next few years, I got deeper into skating than I’d ever been, and the influence that it had on my musical taste is immeasurable. Skating is so comprehensive, so complex, so all-encompassing, so all-inclusive, so diverse; it comprises art, fashion, music, politics, cultural production, and everything in between. Some of the most interesting, edgy, and controversial people started off in the skateboarding scene, as skaters, as videographers, as graphic designers, as directors, as writers. What they were doing in that space was so avant garde, so out there; there were no guardrails, no one telling them what they could and could not do, so they tried everything. If you think skateboarding is just about skateboarding, you couldn’t be more wrong. Skate videos were, and are, a treasure trove of music and experimental video and conceptual art. I’d hear songs I’d never heard from bands I’d never heard of, and I’d run to the record store the next day to buy the tape – sometimes, for better or worse, because the rest of the album wouldn’t be anything like what I’d heard. Bands I found through skate vids could fill a whole book, but I don’t know if anything can top when I heard Dinosaur Jr. for the first time in G&S Footage.

G&S footage

Dinosaur Jr: The Wagon

Dinosaur Jr. touched something in me that I didn’t even understand was there; it was so raw, so unpolished, so churning and visceral, every inch of the song was full of emotion, and J. Mascis’ voice was so powerful yet so fragile – but it was something more than that: he couldn’t sing, but that didn’t matter. It didn’t matter, because all I cared about was that he wanted to sing. Something inside me clicked, and I realized that 90% of what I listened to wasn’t because it was objectively “good,” it was because it was urgent, it was spontaneous, the musicians wanted to be there, needed to be there and even if they couldn’t sing or play their instruments, they were going to put their message in the hands of the people and move on, or exorcise their demons while you watched, mouth agape, empathizing from the sidelines. I could hear them yearning for something, and all I knew is that I was yearning for something too, but I had no idea what it was.

In case you haven’t guessed, this cued the inevitable wellspring of teenage angst that most people encounter, from existential dread to emotional instability to spiraling hopelessly into a bottomless pit of “what does it all mean.” I don’t intend for that to sound trite or condescending; I still feel the same most days, thirty years later, and it’s not something you shake off easily. But I always had music to support me. I’d listen to people who were clearly on the same emotional journey as me, and I’d follow along as they worked it out (or didn’t) and try to mine their experiences for clues about how to navigate my own travails. My friend Joe and I were fond of deep dives into these subjects, so it’s only fitting that he’s the one who introduced me to Joy Division. He’d found them through a skate video, bought the tape, and one day we were driving along in his black Chevy Corsica, and he popped it into the stereo, and he was like: “you have to hear this; it’s fucking weird, like nothing I’ve ever heard.” And on came Shadowplay. And he was right.

Joy Division: Shadowplay

During this time, I was still on a steady diet of punk, hardcore, metal, and all kinds of other underground music, hundreds of bands that I’d wake up to and go to sleep with – thousands of songs that became the soundtrack to my early high school life. But here’s where I departed from my peers, and I’ve never really understood why: I started to listen to “girly” music. In my head, it just stood to reason: I liked girls, girls made music, I was going to listen to it. My friends were pretty unforgiving and relentless when it came to ridiculing me for listening to Sarah McLachlan, The Sugarcubes, Mazzy Star, The Breeders, PJ Harvey, and hundreds of other pop stars, singer-songwriters, and female-fronted bands. I think for me, it was a welcome respite, hearing songs crafted in a different way, from a different perspective, one that I deeply wanted to understand. I’m sure that a lot of my motivation was bound up in trying to parse and make sense of sexuality, sensuality, gender, relationships, love, but I’ll never know for sure. What I did know for sure is that I wanted a rounder, fuller experience of music (and the world), and I was getting it, and my friends who shit on me for listening to “girly” music weren’t.

Sarah McLachlan: Possession

Mazzy Star: Ride It On

To the same end: Kim Deal is an absolute icon in my mind, crafting an idiosyncratic sound like no other, approaching music in a meticulously refined yet brutally elemental way. And that voice. So peculiar. The Breeders will always be on this list, and although I loved the album Pod, the Safari EP always moved me in a way I can’t describe.

The Breeders: Safari

I’m not trying to be too romantic or nostalgic or clumsy about this, but at that point in my life, girls were a mystery, and they were something to be “figured out.” So, I thought to myself, what better way to figure them out than by listening to them. They were right there, telling us their stories through music, and all I had to do was listen. Maybe this came naturally to me; my parents got divorced when I was nine, and although it was amicable, I spent a lot of time with my mom and her friends, who were all women. I always felt more comfortable around women, their modes of conversation, the way they articulated their feelings. But there was a single day when that deeper listening changed me entirely, and that’s when I found Liz Phair. In 1993, when Exile in Guyville came out, I bought it immediately. Why? Boobs. There’s a boob on the cover. And, foiled once again, when I popped it in the tape player, the boobs didn’t matter at all. Because instantly I heard the most unflinching, catastrophically honest, horrifically detailed, shockingly genuine music I’d ever heard. It was all bones in the sound, all meat in the lyrics, it was a strange meal of feelings I was completely unprepared for. I just saw her Exile in Guyville tour this year, running through the whole album from start to finish live, and it still makes me feel the exact same way it did in 11th grade. Stupefied, terrified, in love, in lust, intrigued, repulsed, sad, angry, confused, and just…too full of the world, so full of the world that I have no hope but to just get steamrolled by it and try to love the steamrolling.

Liz Phair: Fuck & Run

I spent the rest of high school filling out my musical repertoire with more hardcore, punk, classic rock, and “girly” music while playing in a hardcore band called Contempt. But I was definitely keeping my eye on what was coming next: bands like Fugazi were ushering in an era that would give birth to emo, math rock, indie rock, and more. There’s no way I could leave them off the list – again, a band that when I heard them for the first time, sounded like nothing else I’d ever heard on earth. It was like jazz and prog and rock and punk and hardcore and something else I had no name for…and I’d known Minor Threat, I’d been witness to and participant in the scene, but this was…uncharted territory. No one knew where this ship was going. And no one’s ever done it better to this day.

Fugazi: Repeater

If I look closely at my musical timeline, I realize that a lot of discovery happened in short, two-year long bursts. 1985-87, 1989-91, 1993-94, 2001-2003, 2010-12, and even more recently, 2021-23. If we’re being honest, sometimes it’s a schlog to find new music. It’s really easy to settle into the familiar and stick with what you know, but there’s also a lot of joy to be had in finding something new. But, it feels like phase changes in chemistry – you build up all this potential energy, then change phases, but then you plateau again as you build up more energy. It’s almost like I need the time off in between times of discovery to digest what I’ve taken in, and give myself a break – I often worry that if I were always listening to something “new,” that I wouldn’t be giving the music its due; I’d just be bouncing from one new thing to the next, without really taking it in and letting it make meaning, or making meaning along with it.

I gotta be honest again, I don’t remember much about the late 1990s and the music, it kinda felt like a flat time. Hard to deny the influence of grunge and other bands I loved: Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Mudhoney, but I don’t think they really make the top twenty. Honorable mentions during this time, however, driving around in my friend Eric’s car and listening to Sugar. We’d both known Husker Du and followed Bob Mould as he made Sugar, and we’d listen to Copper Blue over & over, but it was the Beaster EP that really stuck with me. Tilted in unrivaled in its sketchy but calculated power, a wall of sound with a thousand photos and a thousand memories pinned to it.

Sugar: Tilted

So, we’re going to skip ahead to the early 2000s, when things were really happening in NYC. This was when The Strokes, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Interpol, LCD Soundsystem, and other bands were having their heyday and ushering in a whole new scene, and I loved them all. I lived in Maine at the time, and I’d head down to Boston, Hartford, and NYC for shows. The return to something irreverent and almost dangerous in music was appealing to me, a throwback to the decadent 70s and 80s. But, I also found something I’d been missing for a while in music: a return to storytelling.

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs made me feel like music could be uncontrolled and uncontrollable again, so they’re on this list.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs: Date with the Night

But bands like Rilo Kiley and Okkervil River made me feel like storytelling could be relevant and powerful again, by being both personal and universal at the same time. I never know the true circumstance of what they’re singing about, or if it’s even real, or if it’s autobiographical, but I do know that when they sing it, it applies to me too. And often, they’re delivering the message better than I ever could. I think Jenny Lewis is a modern troubadour, one of the greatest musical storytellers of all time.

Rilo Kiley: All the Good That Won’t Come Out

Okkervil River: For Real

Around 2003, I found Sleater-Kinney, and I thought to myself: how the fuck did I not know about this band? They were part of the same scene I had been a part of forever, they were making incredible music that was right up my alley, and somehow, they’d slid by under my radar. So, I took a deep dive into these Olympian heroines and came away changed. One Beat will never not be on my list: it feels like the song is going fifty directions all at once while continuously returning to the center, it’s disorienting and pushes you away at the same time it pulls you in; it’s a masterclass in how to make something ostensibly unpalatable palatable by sheer force of will. Again, I could tell they wanted to be there and wanted to be making what they were making.

Sleater-Kinney: One Beat

In a similar vein, geographically and stylistically, I’d loved Bikini Kill for a long time, but when Le Tigre came out, I couldn’t help myself. Here was a band with a punk pedigree that was trying to merge that with a pop/electro sensibility; it was fun, it was wild, it was confrontational, it was intellectual, it was a breath of fresh air, and it changed the way that I viewed how music, and musicians, could evolve.

Le Tigre: Deceptacon

Slight rewind: honorable mentions from around 2001: The Shins. Before I moved to Maine, my friend Christina worked at the Buffalo Public Library, and she’d acquire new music for them. She turned me on to The Shins, Neutral Milk Hotel, and a lot of other stuff that I might not have found. I lived in a small third floor apartment with windows that looked out over the street, old victorian houses that would get covered with snow in the winter – I’ll never forget listening to those songs while staring out across the street, watching the flakes stack up and bury the world.

The Shins: Caring is Creepy

You want to talk about storytelling? This fucking guy, Jeff Mangum, is inimitable:

Neutral Milk Hotel: Holland, 1945

If you haven’t realized it yet, death & dying & existential woe is a theme in my life and the music I listen to, so even if it seems like a hack move, it feels impossible not to include Johnny Cash’s rendition of Hurt. A man at the end of a long, complicated, provocative, monumental life examining what he’d done, who he’d hurt, what he’d left behind, what he gained, if anything at all. Thinking about what his legacy was. This song made me want to treat people in my life better, if only to try to avoid that kind of pain, if at all possible.

Johnny Cash: Hurt

Flash forward, 2006:

Band of Horses: The Funeral

To know me as hardly golden / is to know me all wrong

C’mon, that’s just beautiful. I’m not even sure what else to say about this song; another voice that doesn’t seem human. If it doesn’t touch you in some way, you’re probably dead inside. But even if you’re dead inside, it should still touch you, because that’s the whole fucking point of the song.

What about now? What about recently? I recently saw Futura 2000, the graffiti artist, at an event here in Buffalo. When asked about music, he was really frank, and just said: “c’mon, I mean you have to admit it, music doesn’t mean as much when you get older, it’s not the same. I still love music, but it just doesn’t hit the same way it did when you were young.” And in so many ways, he’s right. When you’re going through formative times, the music that heals you or opens up wounds or shocks you or comforts you gets inside your soul. But, as you get older, there are less formative moments, fewer ways to get inside your heart, get inside your soul. The music doesn’t have as many paths in, because we start to close them off. I try not to do this, but it feels like/seems like an inevitable part of growing old. If everything meant as much as it did when I was 13, it’d be unsustainable. The sheer brightness of the world would burn out your eyes over time, so occasionally, and sadly, more often, as you’re older, you have to look away sometimes. I’m still searching for meaning every day, I’m still looking for the people who are telling stories, stories that are relevant to me, I’m still looking for songs that matter, but I’d be lying if I said that they weren’t fewer and farther between now. So, I’ll leave you with a few things I’ve found in the last couple of years.

One, what I think is one of the best love songs in recent memory:

Ezra Furman: My Zero

Two, a band that was always on my psychedelic/classic rock radar, but the hook and fuzzy, blurry beauty of this song can’t be denied:

Status Quo: Pictures of Matchstick Men

Three, a band that is definitely dangerous and makes me feel alive again:

Black Lips: Modern Art

Four, a song from an album that found me at the right time and right place to mean something:

Youth Lagoon: Officer Telephone

Five, a girly band that reminded me why I got into girly music:

Alvvays: Archie, Marry Me

Six, a current artist that gave me a sense of the modern zeitgeist and modern problems and modern attitudes, that when I heard her, I said to myself “ohhhhhhh, that’s how people feel now.” It’s romance deconstructed and obliterated then reconfigured into something new, something somehow hollow and full at the same time.

Courtney Barnett: Pedestrian at Best

Noticeably absent from my list: hip-hop, rap, R&B. Note: it’s not because this music isn’t meaningful to me, or that it hasn’t had a huge impact on my life, but it probably deserves its own post, separate from this one. Only so much space, so much time, so keep your eyes peeled in the future for a top twenty hip-hop list from me.

Listen to this issue of Crucial Tracks

Find this issue’s playlist on Apple Music and Spotify.

This site will dig into those tracks through interviews with people of all walks of life – artists, authors, musicians, teachers, and more. Learn about the songs that made them who they are today and then listen along to playlists published on Apple Music.

My name is Jason Dettbarn — one half of the crew behind Crucial Tracks. Since I’m kicking off the first Crucial Tracks interview, I figured it’s probably a good idea to include a little background on myself, as if I’m one of the awesome people we have queued up.

I live in Buffalo, NY and work in web development for a company out of the Philadelphia area. I’ve got a wife, three kids, two dogs, a cat, and a variety of other animals.

Some of the fun projects I’ve done over the years:

• I’ve taken pictures and videos of bands for the last 30 years,
• I have a personal blog that I don’t update as much as I’d like. I like to write about music and the impact of music on your life
• During the early pandemic I wrote a series I called One Last Wish, where I wrote about an impactful album from every year of my life from elementary school through high school. It was fun to take a deep dive into a specific album and what it meant to me.
• I’ve published a song-a-day playlist on Apple Music the last two years (2022 and 2023) — it acts as an amazing musical diary, you should try it!
• I do annual round ups of my favorite albums (2021, 2022, 2023)

The more I talked about my One Last Wish project with friends, the more I thought it would be awesome to get a little glimpse into the songs that influenced the people I admire. So, this blog was born!

I also have the perfect partner in crime (and friend for almost 40 years) — Chris Fritton, aka The Itinerant Printer — who thinks about this stuff as much, if not more than I do. Between the two of us, we came up with a pretty amazing list of people to approach for the first year of this project. I really hope you subscribe and stick around to read them all!

Each interview will feature 10 to 20 songs, along with running commentary from our guests. With this being the inaugural issue, I debated on format and the best way to present my selections. I considered chronological (both release date and life experience date), but I went with organizing my selections by genre and then building out my playlist as a mixtape. I know everyone is different, so it will be interesting to see how each issue and playlist are presented by our roster of immensely talented people.

Anyway, the stage has been set — the site and first contributor introduced — so I think it’s time for the show. Enjoy!

Hip-Hop (or the power of MTV)

Hip-hop wasn’t the first music I fell in love with (that would be “Footloose” by Kenny Loggins), but it was definitely the first genre that really drew me in as a kid. Let’s dig in to some of the tracks that got me to where I am today.

“It’s Tricky” by Run-DMC — off Raising Hell (1986)

It was the spring of fourth grade. I got Raising Hell and King of Rock on cassette, both purchased at Ames department store with birthday money I received from my relatives. The first albums I ever bought with my own money. I played the shit out of those tapes — so much so, Raising Hell broke and I had to get a new copy.

Of course this was just the start: my friends and I soon put together our own rap group. Each day after school we rapped along with every track. (I still know all of the words.) Our rap group culminated in a hallway performance (of an original song) for the 5th grade student teacher we were enamored with — it couldn’t have been any more cringe, but she was kind enough not to laugh.

Also see: my 1986 issue of One Last Wish on Raising Hell.

“Can I Kick It” by A Tribe Called Quest — off People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm (1990)

“Pacifics” by Digable Planets — off Reachin’ (A New Refutation of Time and Space) (1993)

Hip Hop evolved very fast, from the simplistic beats and samples of the early and mid 80s to much more complex structures and lyrics. The most appealing to me were the jazz-influenced groups like A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, and Digable Planets.

My introduction to this sub-genre of hip hop was Tribe’s “I Left My Wallet in El Segundo” video on MTV. This got me hooked, with People’s Instinctive Travels… and The Low End Theory (1991) becoming my most played albums of early high school. Digable Planets’ Reachin’… was the soundtrack of my senior year. Listening to that shit on my cheap Walkman knock-off just made me feel cool.

My favorite part of this genre are the lyrics — pure poetry and they told stories. Important stories in many cases. Rap and hip hop were no longer just about bragging, rhyming words, and rhythmic beats. To me, this was the first time I saw music as art.

Also see: my 1991 issue of One Last Wish on The Low End Theory.

“Deep Space 9mm” by El-P — off Fantastic Damage (2002)

Fast forward about 10 years and thanks to the Internet and specifically eMusic, I got into underground and alternative hip hop through labels like Definitive Jux. The label was run by Jaime Meline, better known as El-P. I routinely spent my monthly download credits on albums by him, Mr. Lif, Aesop Rock, Cannibal Ox, Murs, The Perceptionists, MF DOOM, and others.

Underground hip hop was the perfect combination of two things I loved: rap music and punk. Not punk in the sense of the music style, but the attitude and message. El-P was that to a T. Just listen to the song below. Not only is he one of the most underrated lyricists in hip hop, but his production is just so unique, raw, and creative. You know an El-P beat when you hear it. Thankfully, he’s still putting out music with Killer Mike through Run the Jewels.

Rock Music (or Jason discovers guitars and that his parents weren’t wrong about Led Zeppelin)

“Cult of Personality” by Living Colour — off Vivid (1988)

Living Colour’s Vivid was my first rock album. Released in May 1988, I was just about to turn 12 years old and was finishing my 6th grade year. I started skateboarding that year, reading Thrasher magazine, and generally expanding my horizon through many new experiences.

One of my biggest memories from the 6th grade year was skating with Chris in the church parking lot near my house, boom box on the curb, and blasting Vivid and Guns N’ Roses Appetite for Destruction as we learned how to skate.

Looking back, Living Colour was the gateway that eventually got me interested in punk and hardcore music. In fact, I’ve come to realize it’s the keystone of my interests — hip-hop, punk, hardcore, pop music, and progressive politics.

You gave me fortune, you gave me fame
You gave me power in your god’s name
I’m every person you need to be
Oh, I’m the cult of personality

Those lyrics couldn’t be any more relevant 35 years later.

For more, see: my 1988 issue of One Last Wish on Vivid.

“Kashmir” by Led Zeppelin — off Physical Graffiti (1975)

This story is as old as time: parents try to show their kids “good” music, kids roll their eyes and proceed to put their headphones back on / tune out / leave the room. Whatever that generation’s go-to “blow your parents off” move is… I did the same to my parents and my kids have done the same to me.

That all changed when my friend Brian continually talked about how good Led Zeppelin was and I did my best to pretend I knew exactly what he meant. Of course I knew the name Led Zeppelin. In fact, I heard them many times over the years, but I didn’t actually listen.

Luckily, my parents had a few records and tapes I could listen to when they weren’t home or paying attention. I got hooked. (I also listened to their Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Black Sabbath, and Heart records while I was at it…)

My favorite Zeppelin album has to be their sixth, Physical Graffiti, the double album released in 1975. It’s a long listen, but I also think it’s the band at their creative peak — exploring and combining many of their styles and influences like Middle Eastern music, funk, metal, jazz, pop, country, folk, blues, and prog rock. It’s quite the musical journey.

For more, see: my 1990 issue of One Last Wish on Physical Graffiti.

“Smells Like Teen Spirit“ by Nirvana — off Nevermind (1991)

In 1991, I received the cassette version of Nevermind for Christmas. It turns out, I wasn’t alone:

Nevermind had its best sales period during Christmas week of 1991, when it sold a spectacular 374,000 copies in a mere seven-day frame

Like most of us at the time, I was sucked in by “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the short ride. Overall, I think Nirvana epitomized the Gen X experience: noisy, angsty sly sarcasm, and enough hooks to get you through it all. As a teenager, you couldn’t ask for anything more.

Beyond music, Nirvana obviously wasn’t the reason we moved to Seattle in 1999, but the introduction to the Seattle music scene was a huge selling point. We lived in Seattle for five years and enjoyed many bands during that time at some of the classic Seattle venues: The Crocodile, Showbox, Paramount, Rock Candy, Neumos, El Corazon/Graceland/many other names, Cha Cha Lounge, The Comet, Paradox, and many more. The 1999 to 2004 period was amazing for us in terms of shows – I can’t imagine experiencing all of the scene history that pre-dated that time.

Also see: my 1991 issue of One Last Wish on Nevermind.

“Break My Body” by Pixies — off Surfer Rosa (1988)

The Pixies are such a crucial band for any fan of alternative music. Surfer Rosa was my introduction to the group and the album I played (guitar) along to in my bedroom. I’ve never been a good guitar player, but this is the band that got me interested in playing music and thinking that maybe I could do it too.

“Suitland High School Theme Song” by The Most Secret Method — off Get Lovely (1998)

The Most Secret Method was one of the first shows my buddy Mark and I put on in college. The band came back to Buffalo (and Mark’s basement) a few times and we all actually became friends, even driving to see them a few times in various other places like central NY and DC.

Putting on this first show led me to do shows (mostly in basements) for bigger bands like DRI, TSOL, The Dismemberment Plan, Juno, and others. I absolutely loved the DIY aspect of helping out bands and sharing the music I love with others in the community. If no one is bringing the bands you like to your town, what better way than doing it yourself?

“In All Respects” by Garden Variety — off Knocking the Skill Level (1995)

Besides being one of the more underrated bands of the 90s, Garden Variety was a heavy influence on the main band I was in during college. We didn’t last long, but we did record a few songs and play two shows — one opening for Candy Machine (a band that was on Dischord Records) and Catapult (a super good indie band from Albany)…

Playing live music was one of the key experiences in my life that helped with self-confidence and overcome being a super shy kid.

“Truckers Atlas” by Modest Mouse — off The Lonesome Crowded West (1997)

Modest Mouse is the band that makes me think of my time in Seattle. After college my (future) wife and I moved to Seattle with a few friends. Our cross country trip took us on many adventures (the Circus Museum, the Corn Palace, the Badlands, Mount Rushmore, Yellowstone, and many more places) as we took the I-90 from Buffalo all the way to downtown Seattle. The soundtrack for our trip was mainly Modest Mouse and Heart. And “Truckers Atlas” is the road trip song.

I’m going up, going over to Montana
You got yourself a trucker’s atlas
You knew you were all hot
Well, maybe you’ll go and blow a gasket
You start at the northwest corner
Go down through California
Beeline, you might drive three days
Three nights to the tip of Florida

Our first night in Seattle we stayed at a friend of a friend’s house and went to see Modest Mouse in a University of Washington cafeteria. It was a surreal and memorable experience — taking in everything we saw, knowing it was going to be our new city… as well as seeing one of our favorite bands in a small venue.

“Head Rolls Off” by Frightened Rabbit — off Midnight Organ Fight (2008)

“Head Rolls Off” was the song that got me on to Frightened Rabbit and Midnight Organ Fight. Frightened Rabbit quickly became a favorite band. I saw them three times during their Pedestrian Verse and Painting of a Panic Attack tours and watched virtually every video/interview/concert/acoustic set that was posted on YouTube between 2008 and 2018.

Anyone who came of age in the 90s remembers when Kurt Cobain committed suicide. It was a defining moment of that time. It was and still is sad, though for me I don’t think I quite grasped the reality of it at the time, beyond the sadness. Mental health was not the topic that it is today.

I’m really glad that more people take mental health seriously now and use therapy (and other resources) to help deal with these issues. I know as I grew older (compared to my teens and 20s) I made my mental health more of a focus, including therapy. Growing older also means having loved ones struggle with depression and/or thoughts of suicide… or sadly, even worse. My family has definitely seen these struggles first hand.

And for that reason, I think Scott Hutchison’s suicide in 2018 hit me much harder. Scott was very open with his depression and struggles with suicide ideation in interview and song. Death and suicide were common topics. One song even referenced the area where he was later found.

I followed Scott, his brother Grant, and the band on Twitter in 2018. The news of Scott’s disappearance spread fast and I checked in every hour hoping for Scott to be found safe and sound. Unfortunately that didn’t come to pass, as Scott was found dead the next day, which just happened to be my birthday.

I couldn’t bring myself to listen to Frightened Rabbit for a couple years. Tears flowed with every listen. I’ve only recently started listening to them again. Scott’s music, his honesty, his perspective are missed.

When it’s all gone, something carries on
And it’s not morbid at all
Just when nature’s had enough of you
When my blood stops, someone else’s will not
When my head rolls off, someone else’s will turn
And while I’m alive, I’ll make tiny changes to earth

Hardcore (or Jason learns about politics)

Hardcore music was definitely the entry point into me even remotely caring about politics. Beyond liking the aggressive music, the lyrics from bands like Chokehold, Endpoint, Outspoken, Fugazi, and Earth Crisis had serious, engaging political messages (with varying degrees of heavy handedness.)

I took it all in and learned as much as I could (still to this day!) This led me down the path to books by Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, and others. And with that, my ideology was forever changed. Having grown up in a union household, I was already pre-disposed to left leaning politics, but hardcore music and Noam Chomsky locked it in.

Also see: An Ode to Hardcore on my blog.

“Omission” by Quicksand — off Slip (1993)

Quicksand is a top 10 favorite band of all time. The band’s music (and their debut LP Slip) was the gateway that led me to discover many of the other bands I mention below. Well written heavy songs, that probably fit more into the post-hardcore genre, with introspective lyrics. The connections you could discover from this band (as an introductory starting point) will lead you into many different directions: Gorilla Biscuits, Youth of Today, Bold, Burn, Revelation Records, NY Hardcore, and much more. A whole world of music for me to discover.

I, said
Why do I always have to spell it out for you?
Our story is always changing
We change it to hide the pain
And when the truth rears
Its ugly head, it’s all too late
Too late for the omission
That you kept inside and wished it wasn’t you

Also see: the 1993 issue of my One Last Wish newsletter on Quicksand.

“Caste” by Endpoint — off Catharsis (1992) “Innocent” by Outspoken — off The Current (1993)

One of the first really big hardcore shows I went to was headlined by Endpoint and Outspoken at The Icon in Buffalo, NY. Seeing them play live 100% sold me on the genre. They quickly became my two favorite hardcore bands. Not only did they have a unique sound compared to most of what I had heard to that point (and really since), but the lyrics were just so good. Here are a couple of sample songs:

“Caste” lyrics by Endpoint

“Move,” says the rich man to his right hand. You sell your life away. “When?” says the poor man. He’ll never understand. It will always be that way. Hope is the savior, it will be the cure. It fuels them on. Dreams are the only escape from the rich man’s rape. So they still hold on. Equality: lies. Freedom: lies. But their spirit still shines. Justice: lies. Independence: lies. You cannot take their minds. All men are created equal? We’re not even born equal. One nation under God? God doesn’t have enough money.

“Welfare,” says Uncle Sam. Yeah, it will be the plan to look out for our own. Silence is the real plan to hush the poor man. Keep him out of the rich man’s home. The poor see the segregation of this social nation. The fire burns inside. Hate, it will be the fate of this nation great and the government that lied.

I’m feeling pushed. I’m feeling down. How can I be proud of this great nation when our streets are filled with pain and starvation? I love my home, but won’t close my eyes. When will the politicians stop all the lies? All men are brothers, why can’t we sympathize? Empty promises won’t wipe the hate from their eyes.

“Innocent” lyrics by Outspoken

Alone. He doesn’t want to face the prejudice. Afraid. While the fear lies in the ignorant. All love is legitimate. It is hatred that is the enemy. An innocent man portrayed as being guilty. What crime is love between two people. The crime is hatred caused by ignorance of difference. Have to open my eyes to see a wider range. Have to open my mind. I’m the one that need to change. Difference. Have to open my eyes to see a wider range. I’m the one that need to change. Change is unavoidable. Understanding. Have to open my eyes to see a wider range. Have to open my mind. I’m the one that need to change. Change is unavoidable. Understanding. Difference. Have to open my eyes to see a wider range. Have to open my mind. I’m the one that need to change. Change is unavoidable. Ignorance breeds intolerance. Love is all powerful. Hatred is a weakness. No limits on love. Have to open my eyes to see a wider range. Have to open my mind. I’m the one that need to change

“Waiting Room” by Fugazi — off 13 Songs (1989)

Fugazi is by far my all-time favorite band. The perfect combination of punk, hardcore, reggae/dub influences, DIY, creative musicianship, and intelligent lyrics. The perfect band.

“Waiting Room” is basically my anthem. I’ve always been a fairly patient person, so a song about a person working (maybe quietly) toward something bigger really speaks to a shy teenager who is starting to discover themself.

But I don’t sit idly by (ahh)
I’m planning a big surprise
I’m gonna fight for what I wanna be
And I won’t make the same mistakes (Because I know)
Because I know how much time that wastes
(And function), function is the key
To the waiting room

“Worlds” by Farside — off Rochambeau (1992)

“Worlds” was pretty much my break up song from senior year of high school. Beyond that, Farside showed me that there is much more to hardcore and punk music than fast drums and heavy guitars. Farside knew how to write songs and still had much of the same message and approach to go along with the rest of the hardcore scene. My favorite thing about hardcore music is how diverse it was in terms of styles and sub-genres, yet still accepted by the scene (for the most part.)

The Moon won’t shine for me
The way it used to
There is something missing, but
Your hand is not there to hold
You let the left side
Of your brain take over
Your heart is inactive now

Don’t run away from
What is inside of you
Don’t run away from
What you’re feeling
Well, I can’t believe
You took back so much
Of the things you said to me

“D4” by Unbroken — off Live. Love. Regret. (1994)

Unbroken was another of my favorite hardcore bands, combining absolutely brutal heavy music with emotional, introspective (and relatable) lyrics. Their album Life.Love.Regret. was another cassette I almost wore out freshman year of college.

Pour myself into a mold of you
Grasped too fast. lost my reflection
Why must I contest myself
Always against myself
Imitation gets so far. but it kills from within
I’m sorry if I can’t feel. I’m sorry I’m not real
Every time I think I’m right. I come out wrong
Every time I think to myself. I’m against my self

“Turncoat” by Despair — off One Thousand Cries (1995)

I was fortunate enough to be long time friends with a couple of the members of Despair, which allowed me to travel as a roadie, run a merch table on tour, and get to see other hardcore scenes first hand. There aren’t many times in your life you get to travel around the Northeast, meet a ton of new people and bands, then on the last day of tour drive overnight through Pennsylvania to be dropped off at work, early in the AM. Oh to be in your 20s again!

My viewpoint in the video above. (photo)

“Rodeo Clown” by Lifetime — off Hello Bastards (1995)

I don’t think there is a single person that grew up listening to hardcore music in the 90s that wouldn’t listen Lifetime as a crucial band. Absolutely one of the most beloved bands of the decade, combining the speed and ferocity of hardcore punk with the lyrics that any emo band of the time would have loved to write. Catchy, fast songs with lyrics you can’t help but sing along to…

The last time I saw you
I tried to move right through the crowd
And I was calling your name
But the band played too loud
The last time I saw you
I tried to move right through the crowd
Was calling your name
But the band played loud

Listen to Crucial Tracks

Find this issue’s playlist on Apple Music.