#109 "Hunger Strike" by Temple of the Dog

In the summer of 1992, I spent a few days at the beach with one of my good friends. We weren't yet 21, but Kurt and I knew that a week with a bunch of Ocean City lifeguards was probably going to be a pretty good time. At that point, neither of us had a serious girlfriend. We hadn't graduated from college nor had embarked on important careers either. Five days at the beach most likely meant a lot of drinking, hopefully a lot of girls, a lot of visits to Tommy's Sub Shop, and a lot of good times. It ended up being a great trip.

One thing I'll always remember from that week is that when we first got there, Kurt's buddies were all out guarding and left their house to us. All we had was a case of Milwaukee's Best Light and the Temple of the Dog cd. We plopped down on some couches, put the cd on, put the case in the middle of the floor, and Kurt promptly announced, "We're not leaving this room until we drink that case of beer!" Though I was probably 230 pounds at the time and well-versed in mass alcohol-consumption, twelve beers was no mean feat. I got comfortable and got ready to get bombed. It was great.

Kurt and I always had ridiculous conversations about nothing. We'd known one another since elementary school, played on soccer teams together, and knew all the same people. We just had a lot of material to laugh about from over the years. I can remember fishing with him one time and spending what seemed like an hour talking about all the different sandwiches we'd eaten from Subway... what we put on them, what kind of bread we preferred, etc. Pretty deep stuff. We used to sit at his house playing video games and talking about girls... girls we hooked up with, girls we wanted to hook up with, girls we needed to hook up with. Typical guy nonsense, but it was always a good time.

I can't recall exactly what we talked about that first afternoon in OC, but I do remember that Temple of the Dog cd playing on repeat for a few hours. Whenever it got to Hunger Strike, Kurt and I would trade parts. I'd be Chris Cornell to his Eddie Vedder, or vice versa. We were belting it out too, so I'm sure that any passerby's must've gotten quite a feast for the ears... two drunken fools singing off-key to what would become a grunge classic. At one point I think we put the song on repeat for about ten or fifteen times and just blasted it over and over again. It's funny what we DON'T remember, and yet for some silly reason I can't get that afternoon out of my head. The rest of the week included run-ins with a handicapped guy whose piss-bag kept leaking, another guy whose nickname was "Pep" because his gigantic nipples were easily the size of sliced pepperoni, numerous sloppy trips down the boardwalk, the public drunk-bus stopping right at Tommy's Sub-Shop... our Shangri-La, and nights I don't even remember because the days were so much fun. It wasn't too long after that week that I met my wife and embarked on that part of my life. Looking back on it now, that time in OC was my last crazy stand as a single guy.

On a related note... when Lollapallooza came around Northern Virginia later that year, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden were both on the bill and for one rare performance, the parts of those bands that formed Temple of the Dog got together and played Hunger Strike live. Some research told me that this was only one of three times that they ever did that. My buddy Kurt was in the audience that day and that was claim-to-fame for a long time.

"Hunger Strike" is from the album "Temple of the Dog." To hear the song, click on the icon in the widget jukebox along the side of the blog.

#108 "How Will It Go?" by Izzy Stradlin' and the JuJu Hounds

Izzy Stradlin was the dirty, bluesy, Keith Richards-y character in GNR. His backing vocals, all raspy smoke and whiskey, were an ideal compliment to Axl Rose's. He wrote a number of their cool songs too. As a result, when I heard he was going to put out an album in the early nineties, I thought that it had potential. When it was called "Izzy Stradlin' and the JuJu Hounds," I must admit that I was a little confused.

Izzy's debut ended up being a little Stones with some reggae thrown in. He actually did a scorching cover of Pressure Drop, the Jamaican standard, however Izzy's was more of a great speed-metal version. It was awesome. He ended it with a little reggae too, in a nod to the song's origins. All in all, the album was solid and ended up being the first of many Stradlin releases. Regular contributor Rick Richards from The Georgia Satellites brought his great guitar to the records and you can always find something good to hear on them.

The JuJu Hounds record came out the year I started dating my wife. I can remember driving around Patriot Circle on the back side of campus, listening to this album on my car stereo. I'm pretty sure I even copied the words to this song in a note to her once. Smooth? Cheesy? Who knows, but eighteen years later we're still together. "How Will It Go," Izzy Stradlin asked me? Not too badly, my friend.

"How Will It Go" is from the album Izzy Stradlin and the JuJu Hounds. To hear the song, click on the icon in the widget jukebox along the side of the blog.

#107 "How's It Going to Be?" by Third Eye Blind

Remember Third Eye Blind? They burst onto the scene in the mid-nineties with what was all at once the most catchy then suddenly most annoying song you'd ever heard. Semi-Charmed Life? You know... the one that goes "Do-do-do... do-do-DO-do... do-do-do... do-do-DO-do." That was followed by "Graduate," a tune that they seemed to be almost begging high school kids to pick as their end-of-year song. Another track was used in a suicide hotline commercial. I think their singer was dating Charlize Theron for a while. They were all over the place for a few months, and then they just disappeared. It's hard to stay relevant these days when literally ANYone can release an album.

I was not really a fan of 3EB, but they did have this one song that I thought was pretty powerful. Also remember that this list is supposed to be representative of all of the artists in my cd collection. This is one of my wife's cd's. I had to throw her a bone or two here!

"How's It Going to Be?" is pretty emotional stuff. It's from the perspective of a person who wonders how life is going to be for his ex-girlfriend once she realizes that he's no longer in her life. I read something where the singer talked about love songs and break-up songs, but that he'd never heard many aftermath songs... the ones about that awkward space where something so great used to be but is now gone. I can completely relate. There were these two girls I dated when I was younger that meant so much to me at one time, but when we broke up I could just never handle the relationship anymore. I pretty much never spoke to them again! I just wasn't mature enough to know how to navigate that territory. It's kind of sad to me now to think about it. It's a pity when someone so significant to you is no longer a part of your life. You can't even really laugh about the old times because you just couldn't figure that transition out. Oh well... I guess there's always facebook!

"How's It Going to Be?" is from the album "Third Eye Blind." To hear the song, click on the icon in the widget jukebox along the side of the blog.

#106 "House of Pain" by Faster Pussycat

Faster Pussycat!?! Are you kidding me? Though I've included a lot of questionable material on this list, this might be the one that makes you say, "No way, dude... I am NOT listening to THAT!" Give it a chance, people. A great song can come from ANYone.

Around the time I was in the eighth grade, my parents' marriage started to crumble. After twenty years and four kids and what I thought was a pretty good life together, it was over. It was devastating, not only because I was losing whatever sense of stability I had in my life, but my parents also had one of those incredibly ugly, bitter break-ups that cast its ugly pall over our home. The fighting was horrific. I was hurting all of the time and yet I was so ashamed to talk to anyone about it. It was embarrassing, as far as I was concerned, and the fact that most of my best friends had married parents made it even worse. I remember trying to talk to one of my buddies about it. His parents had been split for a while and I recall sitting next to him at lunch one day and managing to get out the words, "Your parents are divorced. What's that like?" I couldn't manage any more. If I did, I was going to cry. You can't do that when you're a boy... not in high school.

Though the split started in eighth grade, the bitterness lasted for a really long time. Part of my parents' settlement involved my sister and I staying with my mom in the house we grew up in while my dad moved out. Once my little sister graduated from high school, my mom would have to move out and my house would be sold. As a result, even though they were legally divorced, they were financially tied for another ten years or so. It was awful. The negativity, accusations, and nit-picking just went on and on. As I'm writing this, it's probably been over twenty five years since my parents broke up. They're civil with one another now, but the bad blood is still apparent. That's what all those years of being tied together did to them.

The song "House of Pain" came out in 1989. I wasn't really into glam metal. I thought Motley Crue, Poison, Warrant, RATT, and the slew of other hair bands might have had the occasional decent song, but were ultimately a little hokey to me. Faster Pussycat? Even their name sounded like a joke. But like I said earlier, ANYone has the potential to write a great song and "House of Pain" was one of the more poignant songs from my youth. It's this confessional narrative about a boy waiting for his daddy who just never comes home... not when he's five and not when the boy is still waiting for him many years later. The words, music, and delivery are very powerful and hit me every time. I may have not been deserted by my father, but I certainly wished he could come home again and we could all be together like in the old days. There are some great lines near the end where it goes "I didn't write these pages and my script's been re-arranged." That feeling of your life being out of your hands is most likely true to all children of divorce. As the song is finishing up, the singer speaks softly over the strains of a harmonica. If you listen closely he says, "If I learned anything from this, it's how to live on my own." A sad lesson for a young boy.

"House of Pain" is from the album "Wake Me When It's Over." To hear the song, click on the icon in the widget jukebox along the side of the blog.

#105 "Hotel Yorba" by The White Stripes

The 2001-2002 school year was an awesome one for new music. At the time, I was sharing a classroom with my buddy Scott. He was a drummer and I was just learning guitar. We talked about bands we liked all the time and spent lots of our off-periods grading papers and listening to new stuff we were finding. In the beginning of that year The Strokes broke out, I discovered Ben Kweller, The Hives came to America, Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot became the most talked-about album in a long time, and Scott read about some band called The White Stripes who were supposed to be pretty cool. I remember listening to "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground" one day during lunch. It didn't really do anything for either one of us. It took a while for us to catch on to them.

Some time later I was flipping through the channels and as I ran through my usual selections, I came by MTV2. There was this song playing that just hit me right away. It ended up being The White Stripes' Hotel Yorba. I thought it was great. Very simple... a simple stomping beat... just a few basic chords. To be honest with you, it sounded nothing like the usual stuff I was hearing on MTV. It certainly didn't fit in with all the rap music and Britney Spears crap that was on TRL every day. The voice sounded familiar, but I didn't pick up on it right away. When I saw the name of the band come up at the end, I thought, "Ok... yeah. I remember now." I came back to school and told Scott about it. It wasn't long after that Fell In Love With a Girl came out, complete with that awesome LEGO video, and The White Stripes were everywhere. I still remember emailing the mp3 of that song to a friend of mine and his response was three words, spaced out across the page "THAT WAS AWESOME."

To be honest with you, I'm not a big White Stripes guy. I love the idea of them... the back-to-basics approached, the stripped-down style of just fuzzy guitar, vocals, and drums. And they certainly have some songs that I think are just fantastic. But whenever I listen to a full-length album of theirs, I always get a headache. I have no idea why. It most likely has to do with the recording style or the level of treble on Jack's voice and guitar, but whatever it is I just can't listen for too long. That obviously hasn't stopped the rest of the world.

"Hotel Yorba" is from the album "White Blood Cells." To hear the song, click on the icon in the widget jukebox along the side of the blog.

#104 "Hot For Teacher" by Van Halen

A few months ago my wife started taking a dance class. Though she was only in the first session, if she stayed in the program through six levels there would be a graduation where she would have to give a solo performance. In it she would choreograph her own routine and dance to a song of her choice. Though she was REALLY looking far ahead, she came to me for some musical selections. We went all over the place with song possibilities until she threw out "Hot For Teacher." She thought it would be hysterical for her to dance to this, with me being in the education business and all. I actually didn't even own "1984," the album the track is from, but upon downloading it the memories just came flooding back. Where have you gone, David Lee?

Van Halen were the sh*t back in the eighties. Talk about a real American band! Had the Super Bowl half-time shows been like they are today back then, you KNOW we would've gotten a little Vitamin VH at one of them. Who else could've blown the doors off of any US sports venue like Eddie and the boys could back in their hey-day? It would've been awesome.

I still remember sitting in my eighth grade science class in 1984. My teacher was Mr. Warren. He was a real dick, to put it mildly. One time this girl Barbara who sat next to me totally copied the answers to my test. The next day Mr. Warren pulls ME aside, accuses ME of cheating, then proceeds to inform me that I was a getting a zero for the test. He wouldn't listen to any sort of argument on my behalf. Damn... I hated that f*cking guy. But you know what? I got my revenge. I had this friend whose parents split and the kids were kind of on their own. This friend did all kinds of crazy stuff. I'm not talking drugs or anything like that, but the guy stole everything that wasn't locked down. And when it was locked down, he managed a way to steal that too. Dang... the guy stole a bowling ball from Bowl America one time! Just for the hell of it. He stole fire extinguishers, street signs, magazines... you name it. He was also big into the destruction of property. We'd drive full speed down a street on trash day, just barreling into all the garbage cans along the side of the road. We plowed into a parking lot pumpkin patch pile once, just to see what would happen. I'm crackin' up now thinking about it.

One day this guy got the idea to buy a bb pistol. I have no idea why he wanted it, but sure enough he got one. We took it out one day and were trying to shoot tin cans with it. For some reason, the thing wasn't working at all. It would barely dent the cans. We couldn't figure out what the problem was. Finally he looks at me and says "Shoot that car." I told him he was crazy. I wasn't going to do anything like that. "It won't even dent a tin can," he said. "It's not going to do anything to that car." I still remember kneeling in the parking lot of Springfield Mall and aiming the pistol at this yellow VW Bug. I fired the trigger and the the glass cracked and spread like a spider web. I was petrified, but we jumped in my buddy's car and sped off as quickly as we could. "I can't believe you did that," he laughed. I kept arguing that it was an accident... that I couldn't have known that would happen, but he kept laughing all the same. He was older than me. I was his little accomplice, too young, too scared, and too good of a kid to anything bad MYself. This was my first real foray into his world. He loved it. Sure enough, that one windshield sparked an idea in his head and it became one more item on our resume of destruction. I don't think I shot any more cars personally. I still felt bad about the whole thing, though it seemed funny as hell watching him do it. I enjoyed feats of skilled target-shooting, like hitting street signs along the side of the road while driving past them. We even had a sound for it, "Shick-Tang," for every time I hit one. We shot up everything, man. The shop windows on Main Street. The glassed-in domed waiting areas at the bus-stop. We were bad. Even to this day when I hear about vandalism and my wife gets all "If they ever shoot out our car windows I'll kill somebody," I always just keep my mouth shut. I know that my time will come on day. Karma will come back to me.

So anyhow... one day I was complaining again about my prick science teacher Mr. Warren. I just hated the guy. Finally my friend said, "Want to go over to his house later?" He looked at me with that smile that told me we weren't going by for a social call. "I think so," I said. This is the reason why, when I got into teaching, that an old veteran told me never to live in the neighborhood where my students lived. This is especially true if you're an asshole, like Mr. Warren. Evening came, and my buddy picked me up. I pulled the gun from under the passenger seat, cocked it, and was ready to go. I can still see it so clearly, all these years later. My teacher lived on a corner, right where his street turned off another one. His car was out on the street, right in front of his home. I could see the lights on in his house. I knew that f*cker was inside. We slowly pulled up right alongside his car. I rolled down my window and with two shots at close range took out both windows along the driver's side. We had to actually drive down his street in order to turn around and get out of there, so we passed the car again on our way home. No one had come outside. The deed was done. The whole thing felt like a mob hit.

And why this tale of teenage destruction? I can still see Eric, this kid in the front row of Mr. Warren's class, wearing his Van Halen 1984 tour shirt, complete with its Japanese lettering. It's a crazy look into my brain to see how I got from my wife's dance class to blowing out my 8th grade science teacher's windows!

"Hot For Teacher" is from the album "1984." To hear the song, click on the icon in the widget jukebox along the side of the blog.