The Friday Tape Files, Vol 1, Ep 3

Obsession. It was somewhere between 1994 and 1997 that my obsession turned from purely writing to writing about music, and even in those tender, angst-filled, rebellious teenage years, I came to the conclusion that independently produced music was just about the best thing ever (with the possible exception being independently produced reading material). I still had my embarrassing youth collection: No Doubt, Reel Big Fish, mass-produced so-called "third-wave ska". But when I discovered Moon Ska Records near the end of their tenure as THE definitive ska label, I became, how do we say, obsessed. It became my mission to collect every Moon Ska record ever produced (and I'm still working on that). When I left my sleepy Texas dust-bowl-of-a-town for a slightly less sleepy town to the north, new people introduced me to new genres and though my adoration of The Toasters (and the Chinkees, and Discount, and just about every band on the pre-P!atD Fueled By Ramen) remained, new favorites had emerged.

By 2002, I had discovered Olympia, WA and the 1990's punk rock revival that I had largely missed because I was too busy skanking to pay attention to the Beat Happening. I was already armed with an arsenal of obsessions, a myriad of songs to which I quickly learned the lyrics. My obsession with Built to Spill came from a mixtape, in fact. My obsession with The Aquabats came from spending too much time at the comic book store. But regardless their origin, these songs, these shy discoveries, to borrow a line from Mr. Sampson, were my new anthems. Ironically, or maybe not so much so, these anthems gave me the audacity I needed to break free of a society and a structure that did not suit my liking, and became the presumptuous soundtrack to my early adolescence (much to my mother's continuous and audible chagrin).

• The Toasters — Don't Let the Bastards Drag You Down
• The Aquabats — My Skateboard
• Discount — Waiting By the Wayside
• The Weakertahns — Aside*
• Built To Spill — Distopian Dream Girl
• That Dog. — Never Say Never*
• 764-HERO — Sunburn
• Elliott Smith — Between the Bars
• The Velvet Underground — I Found a Reason
• Neko Case — I Wish I Was the Moon*
• Belle & Sebastian — The State I Am In
• Sleater-Kinney — Hot Rock*
• Built To Spill — Twin Falls
• Elliott Smith — Rose Parade

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