Now I'll Never Be A Teen Model: 2010

I honestly can't help but arbitrarily list things. I have a best friend, a favorite cousin, a favorite band, movie, director, and album. It must come from growing up watching Vh1. If you don't know me personally, then you haven't heard the billionth time I've explained that I didn't watch MTV when I was a kid.. It wasn't because I was too cool...my mom wouldn't let me. I needed secular music. I wanted it so bad. I figured if I can't watch MTV then I'll just watch Vh1. Watching Vh1 probably played up my obsession with pop culture tragedy. I stated soaking up information about people's addictions, afflictions, plane crashes, and near death experiences. It was everything a little boy could want to know about his music. I only got more and more and more out of touch as I got deeper and deeper into music past as opposed to music present. I wanted to watch music television so I could keep up with the cool kids in my class but instead I was distancing my self the more I talked about and listened to the likes of Stevie Nicks, Bjork, Beck, Talking Heads, Prince, Nirvana, Hole, etc. I was hooked, especially by the count downs. My favorites: the 100 greatest Women of rock n roll, the 100 most shocking moments of rock n roll(the first one, not the remake they just did), and [my favorite] 100 greatest videos. I found out about alot of my favorite things from those clip shows. Ever since then I've tried to keep things in lists. I'm no longer a fan of making definitive greatest lists: mainly because I could care less about The Beatles or Citizen Kane[which are always inexplicably topping lists].

This list has a very good chance of being deleted. I didn't realize how hard this would be until I started. I've been keeping tabs for a long time on favorite albums. It always get difficult when it comes down to making a concise 20 artists list; as you can see I failed at that part. Alot of my favorite artists are not on here. Because as much as I love them it was to hard to decide[for many reasons] on a specific album.

25.Orange Juice "You Can't Hide Your Love Forever"mediafire

I'm kind of ashamed of how much I love this album. I had this album for a while before I finally started listening to it. "Three cheers for Our Side" came up on shuffle one day. I started listening to the rest of the album, and I couldn't stop. I had an obsessive crush on a poor unfortunate girl with a lot of problems who couldn't handle my unconditional affection. This album became the sound track for that period. Sometimes I can't listen to it because it reminds me too much of how badly that turned out. Edwyn Collins is a Virgo(it matters to me[fuck you]). I know every word.

24.The Cure "The Head on The Door"mediafire

I have listened to this more than any other Cure album. the songs that I love [In Between Days, Kyoto Song, Six Different Ways, PUSH(which sends me into fits of Ed Sullivan-girl squeals), Baby Screams, Close to Me(the song that made me fall in love with the cure), and Night Like This] reach into a place in my heart and pull out whatever makes me a good person so that I know it's there. I sing them at the top of my lungs. One time I told Shanna that "if a girl doesn't like the Cure, I don't think it'd work out... The Cure is how my heart works." That's really gushy and painfully cheesy but it's true. This album is not without flaws. Every time I listen to it I skip over Blood, Screw, and Sinking. Not bad songs but not near as good as the others and totally throws off the mood of the whole CD.

23.Bjork "Homogenic" mediafire

I bought this CD from Goodwill. I loved Bjork when I was (10/11/12). I slowed my roll as I started getting picked on for loving her more and more. when I was eleven, my friend on the school bus looked at me almost disgusted. He said "you listen to this shit?!" I was heart broken. By the time I was in10th grade any concern how normal kids judged me was long gone. I saw Homogenic in goodwill and remembered how much I loved Bjork, I bought it. I fell in love with her all over again. My friends still hate on Bjork....especially Homogenic. To me these are her best Songs. I even like Pluto.

22. Beat Happening "Black Candy" mediafire

I've always wondered what else Heather Lewis has done. I know Calvin Johnston went on to do Halo Benders among other things. Heather always made it for me. This is naive, childish, amateurish, but owning every second of it. Never taking it self too seriously, but still having heart. Never heavy handed but never half handed either. It's ironic and sincere at the same time. These descriptions are terrible. They might make more sense while listening to Black Candy. All of their albums are great. This one has my favorite songs on it. These songs go really well on a mix CD for a girl you like(but hasn't yet worked for me). I have a home-made Black Candy T-shirt.

21. V.A. Pink Flamingos OST mediafire

I'm afraid that including a soundtrack like this is sort of cheating. Film soundtracks are a big influence on me. Anything involving John Waters influences me. I will follow him to the end of the earth. Part of that has to do with this soundtrack. The way he uses music in Female Trouble and Pink Flamingos was part of what instantly enthralled me. Nothing was more punk to me than Divine strutting to the Girl Can't Help It with meat shoved up her skirt. Intoxica by the Centurions makes that first driving scene so cool. This soundtrack introduced me to Link Wray and The Centurions(my favorite surf rock group). The film completely changed how I listen to Surfin Bird(a childhood favorite) forever. I always feel cool when I listen to this.

20.The Vaselines "Dum Dum"mediafire

I always felt cool when listening to The Vaselines. When I was (13/14) watching Sonic Youth videos on Launch Yahoo music[before youtube]. I would scan the similar artists to Sonic Youth, The Cure, and Bikini Kill. These lonely hours that I spent on Launch music filling my head with more music and more information were my replacement for friends. Previously I had no use for the internet other than porn and Kazaa. I'm a TV kid. The bands that I discovered during this time period[through Launch and watching Vh1Classic Alternative] became my favorite bands and still are to this day. The Vaselines are one of those bands. I remember just being drawn to this picture: [http://www.boredla.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/vaselines.jpg ] I know they're considered twee and all but I've never seen that. I always saw them as really snotty.

19.David Bowie "Hunky Dory"mediafire

This has always been my favorite Bowie phase. This was the first David Bowie album I ever had. The only one I had on CD. I didn't get an ipod until 2008. Anything I ever got on CD, good or bad got listened to alot because I'd only be able to get like one CD a month. Alot of my favorite albums were CDs that I wore out in highschool. I love how cinematic Bowie's music is. I bought this CD because it had Queen Bitch. Changes was a song that I grew up hearing randomly I had always thought it was a cool song. When I got this CD I didn't know it was a Bowie song.

18.My Bloody Valentine "Loveless"mediafire

They played "Only Shallow" on Vh1 classic Alternative. I'd seen their name on Launch Yahoo music, I didn't like the name of the band. Only shallow was so loud and noisy but had a soft soggy melody. I appealed directly to me. I thought the video was cool with all of the colors. When I got the CD I stopped listening to Only Shallow and focused more on the songs that were alot more melodic. I preferred Kevin Shields' voice. I also love Come in Alone. I would lay in the field behind my house with my boombox listening to music. I have one specific memory of being back there listening to Loveless at dusk. It was perfect. I think up until that moment I wasn't sure if I had made the right choice in my purchase...I think there was another CD I was thinking about getting instead. I'm really glad I got this one. I made a homemade My Bloody Valentine shirt that year.

17.The Rocky Horror Picture Show OST mediafire

The first time I saw The Rocky Horror Picture Show, I was nine. That night was Halloween. My mom didn't allow me to celebrate Halloween...which has always been my favorite holiday. My brother was playing a baseball game I didn't want to go. I stayed the night at my Grandpaerent's. I spent the entire time in their guest bedroom watching the movie marathon on AMC. I looked forward to Halloween marathons all year. This one was especially awesome. They showed john carpenter's Halloween then a short documentary about the film. Then they showed Rocky Horror and a documentary about the film. Watching Rocky Horror I thought I was watching something that I would never be allowed to see. Something forbidden, if anybody were to catch me watching it I would for sure get in trouble. This is my favorite Halloween memory. Frank n Furter was my first punk role model. His behavior was snotty, in your face, effeminate, melodramatic, self realized and stylish. My ideal punk singer is a Frank n Furter impersonation.

16.The Cure "Seventeen Seconds"mediafire

I love listening to Seventeen Seconds when it's really cold. This is one of the Cure's most solid albums. Solid in that every song fits, every song is great, and every song follows a specific tone. I like for an album to have it's own atmosphere. It comes off as a really simple album. I started listening to this album more after I heard "M". That is one of my favorite Cure Songs. What makes that sound effect that sounds like something crashing? This is my favorite album out of the Cure's goth trilogy: Seventeen Seconds, Faith, Pornography. I used to never understand when people would say that the Cure was "doom and gloom". The first Cure CD that I got was the Galore compilation. While there are some dark or melancholy tendencies in those songs it is mostly dominated by beautiful ecstatic pop music. When I finally got into their goth trilogy I realized the Cure that I'd always heard about really existed. This album feeds into the morbidity that I always wanted from the Cure.

15.Sonic Youth "Bad Moon Rising"mediafire

IT SOUNDS LIKE THE FUCKING APOCALYPSE. Talk about atmospheric. I was too scared to listen to this album for a long time. When I first got into Sonic Youth, I knew this album existed, i 'd heard "Halloween" and "Ghost bitch", but didn't want to fuck with it(especially "satan is boring"). There was this feeling deep inside me that I still get when I listen to it. It's really unsettling. When I was 16 i fell in love with Death Valley 69. I figured I had grown up enough to be able to get Bad Moon Rising. I can handle this album. I was a senior when an acquaintance obtained it(i forced him to burn me a copy). Not long after I got it( i wanna say it was the first day or week after I got it) I was driving home at exactly sundown. When I got near my house I saw in the distance that someone was burning woods. I wanted to see it. As I drove down the dirt road looking for where it was I soon came upon the fire. The dirt road I was on bordered the woods that were burning. I was driving only a few feet away from the huge whipping flames that turned the sky red, listening to Bad Moon Rising. It felt like the end of the world. This is their "dark side of America" album.

14.Patti Smith "Easter" megaupload

Originally I was going to put "Horses" on this list...Because Horses is a masterpiece. I have this fantasy where I'm singing Gloria in front of a bunch of people. As I listened to Horses to decide what I'd write about it. While i knew every word to Gloria, Free Money, Redondo Beach, and Horses...i was really spotty on everything else. I switched to Easter and realized THAT was the album where my heart is. RocknRoll Nigger is one of my favorite songs ever. The thing that get's me about Patti Smith is that with her lyrics(on any album) you feel like something inside you is being liberated or something. She's being cathartic and so the listening experience feels just as cathartic. She has the power to communicate feelings and ideas expressed in any type of person ever.

13.Sonic Youth "Goo" mediafire

I remember when this came in the mail. Usually I would order CDs off the internet for Christmas. I had to have this as soon as possible. I fell in love with Goo when I got the Corporate Ghost videos DVD. It was so cool to me that they made a music video for every song. I went head over heels for My Friend Goo. This album had such a sense of detached cool. Mote (the first song I'd heard off Goo...one of the first Sonic Youth songs I ever had I got it back when I had Kazaa in 8th grade...not long before my dad restricted downloading programs form our computers) is one of Lee's best songs. the album title always sounded dirty to me. Turned out they originally wanted to call it "Handjob". I was really dumb. I used to write smash the PMRC on notebooks and stuff(it's on the back cover.) I didn't realize that the PMRC was no longer a pressing issue.

12.The Velvet Underground & Nico mediafire

It was really hard for me to chose between this and White Light White Heat. This was the one that I've listened to the most. Who wasn't issued this in high school? Who didn't dream of being at the exploding plastic inevitable? A friend burnt me a copy. I liked Velvet Underground but hadn't gotten around to buying a CD yet. When i was in tenth grade my friend Clay burnt me a copy urging me to listen to it. Not long after The Velvet Underground became one of my favorite bands. I thought it was so farther ahead than any of the classic rock bands that you're indoctrinated into liking. the Doors, the Beatles, Hendrix, etc... I never cared about them too much...i went through phases but couldn't find myself bowing down to anything they did. To me songs like European Son were on a completely different level. The simple songs like Sunday Morning and there she goes are so cool. I was always really attracted to how dingy they were. Everything is about drugs and drug dealers and street life with street urchins. None of those fun drugs the Beatles did either. HEROIN.

11.The Beach Boys "Pet Sounds"mediafire

I never cared about the Beach Boys until i heard this. Other than when I was a little kid, when my first CD was a compilation of sixties music called "Sun Jammings", I really had no interest in them at all. In a very short amount of time I became a die hard Beach Boys fanatic. I was always turned off by the extreme happiness. I was a dumbass. I had known about Brian Wilson's troubles for a long time but still didn't have any attraction to the whole California thing. I'm East Coast[and southern]. I wasn't able to appreciate it until I was able to see the sadness in his music(which definitely comes with age) . I was also turned off by the UNIVERSAL praise that Pet Sounds received. I'd say "it's overrated", I'D NEVER HEARD IT[other than Wouldn't It Be Nice]. I had to grow up to understand that if a song doesn't look at love in a constant present tense...it's not so happy. These are Brian Wilson's hopeful and distorted dreams of happiness and what it sounds like. I became obsessed with the notion that only from extreme darkness comes the most beautiful pop music.

10.The Cramps "Songs The Lord Taught Us" mediafire

This and Bad Moon Rising are my favorite albums come Halloween each year. The coolest girl I've ever met turned me onto the Cramps. I bought into them hook line and sinker, they love what I love: Filth, Exploitation, Sexploitation, Horror, Rock n Roll. The Cramps are the kind of band that opens thousands of doors to other music. Once you're down with The Cramps you're able to get into EVERYTHING THEY LOVE. My heart broke into a million pieces when I found out that Lux died. I never got to see them. I wanna be Lux Interior so bad. He is immortal. Ivy is too. Ivy is the perfect girl. She plays guitar really good. She's pretty. She's badass and she wrote some of my favorite Cramps songs.

9.The Violent Femmes "Violent Femmes"mediafire

Gone Daddy Gone was one of those videos I used to watch on Launch Yahoo Music when I was 14. That year we got a Best Buy in our town which I guess shouldn't have been as big a deal as it was to me. Before the only places to buy CDs were the Mall CD store[which mainly carried new releases], Wal-mart, Target, and RJs Disc Exchange[which from hear-say was awesome, but I didn't know it existed until i was like 13(which was when it went out of business). When I went into Best Buy I went crazy: they had Sonic Youth, Husker Du, The Pixies, The Cure, most of my favorite bands. They had a rhino records re-release of the Violent Femmes self titled album. I had been listening to Gone Daddy Gone and Add It Up so I bought it the moment I saw it. I listened to this CD nonstop for a month or two. Almost everyday in the car when my mom would drive me to school. I'd always skip over Add It Up when my mom was around..but when I was alone I would fantasize that I had a band and we covered it. I wore the CD out. It got so scratched up. I had a Violent Femmes Gone Daddy Gone t-shirt that I got from a mall in South Carolina on a band trip. It was my favorite shirt. My dad accidentally bleached it...but I still wore it until it was too small for me
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8.Iggy Pop "Lust For Life" mediafire

I don't know if I consider this my favorite Iggy Pop album. Mainly because he only wrote Sixteen. I do know that I don't really like alot of Bowie's renditions of the songs that he wrote. Not near as much as this album. Iggy's delivery is what makes it for me. It's just a great collaboration. Iggy Pop is a Taurus. Alot of my favorite people are earth signs...and Geminis[because we are ruled by Mercury(and RULE over communication)]. My best friend is a Taurus. One time I compared him to Iggy pop[A HUGE FUCKING COMPLIMENT] and he didn't appreciate it(he mainly listens to jazz). My friend Kaylor and I get really into this whenever we listen to this on road trips or when we're really drunk. there was a little while when this album was a MUST for every time we were together. Her song is Turn Blue, mine is Tonight. I go nuts over Tonight.

7.Marty Robbins "Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs"mediafire
Growing up I had extremely little tolerance for country music. To me country music was what my brother and his redneck/jock friends listened to. I liked Johnny Cash but i've never thought that counted. When I was 15 I took a very short drivers ed course. It was taught by this guy Coach Willet. He was kind of strange. He sweated PROFUSELY. He threatened that if we were bad in class we'd get what he called "the claw". None of us ever knew what he meant by "the claw". He had this tape, and he would listen to it in the car as we'd practice driving. When i heard Marty's voice I got really interested. Then when I was able to pay attention to the lyrics...and I under stood these songs were like little western melodramas I fell in love. These songs were BLEAK. My favorite song is called "They're Hanging Me Tonight." Coach Willet really appreciated the liking I had taken up with Marty. Usually kids in the practice car would complain about the music. I would make requests. Big Iron would come up and he'd say "Tyler this is YOUR song."

6.Bob Dylan "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan"
"Girl from the North County Fair" and "Don't Think Twice it's Alright" are my favorite Bob Dylan songs. The old house where we went to family reunions had a handful of records. I remember everyone making a fuss over the fact that this was one of them. I acted this i knew exactly what they were talking about. It was my uncle Billy's record from the 60s. He would go to the city to visit his cousins and he would get exposed to things that were happening in pop culture like this. He bought this there. Knowing that this record was such an item to covet I of course coveted it. I soon bought my own copy[a reprint]. I eventually got to keep the original pressing. Listening to this album really made Bob Dylan for me. I thought blowing in the wind was nice and all but the really confrontational songs like Oxford Town and Master's of War and Talking World War 3 Blues were a lot more exciting to me as far as politics went.

5.Pixies "Doolittle" mediafire
The pixies were the band that i got into right after Sonic Youth. The first song I heard was Velouria. They didn't have a Bossanova CD at any of the local CD stores. I bought Doolittle from Best Buy early ninth grade. I would take CDs with me wherever I went and would put them in whatever car I was in. My Friend Haley had this awful bitch of a friend Amy. I remember riding in Amy's mom's car[she's awful too.] forcing them to listen to the pixies and trying to make up meanings for the songs that weren't really true but made me sound really smart. They didn't like Tame...which I did not understand.

4.Sonic Youth "Daydream Nation" mediafire
Daydream Nation was the first Sonic Youth CD I ever owned. I ordered it for Christmas from tower records. I remember listening to it in my room knowing that my brain wasn't ready fort it..but I had to sit there and make myself get it. I knew it was amazing. I just had to adjust my brain to soak it in. I would listen to it on my boombox as i walked around on the dirt road. Whenever the guitars for teenage riot would come in I would start running with the music. I would put it on in my mom's car and go absolutely berserk. I would be flailing about with the music as we were driving down the road. My mom would get really embarrassed. Teenage Riot was the first Sonic Youth song I ever heard. I was on the school bus in 8th grade, when it really hit me. I put it on a mix CD of stuff i had recently downloaded from kazaa. I listened to it on repeat the entire way home. About a year later I bought Daydream Nation and Sonic Youth has been my favorite band of all time ever since.

3.Dinosaur jr. "You're Living All Over Me"
I used to watch the video for Little Furry Things on Launch Yahoo music. I finally got the CD for Christmas as soon as merge reissued it. This CD was instantly one of my favorites. Not much else has ever been this absolutely perfect to me. Every thing, every instrument, every note, every song, sounds so right. Like it is all exactly where it's all supposed to be. I can listen to this album in any mood. In any situation. They got back together the summer after my ninth grade year. I was freaking out. I begged I pleaded to go see them in Orlando. My parents would not let me go. I still haven't seen them since they reunited. My friend Bo saw them twice. The first time he saw them was when we were in tenth grade. I really kinda thought I was alone as far as having anyone to relate to on musical level. One day outside of school waiting to get picked up I mentioned that i really wanted to go see Dinosaur jr. in jacksonville..but I didn't have a way to get there. Bo was like DINOSAUR JR? It was a really nice moment. He went. His sister told me that he cried.

2. Sonic Youth "Evol" mediafire
By the time I was a senior in high school. I hadn't yet started downloading music other than off of Kazaa in middle school...and random songs off of myspace in highschool. I mostly bought CDs...if i couldn't get the CD I didn't really get my hands on the music other than say a 30 second clip on tower records.com[which I did utilize]. After seeing Juno some kid in my class downloaded every Sonic Youth album. I lost my shit. The next day i showed up with a bunch of blank CDs...and a list of the albums I didn't have yet. By junior year i had started looking around for the CD with no luck. Finally I got it, and it struck me that Evol was directly speaking to me: [the pop culture references, Shadow of a Doubt is based on strangers on a Train which is one of my favorite Hitchcock movies the style, the attitude, in the kingdom 19(since i was a kid i've loved songs about car crashes]. Niel Young was right when he said that "Expressway to yr Skull" is a classic...the way the guitars seem to careen and roar, those lyrics: we're gonna kill the california girls". This was the album that above all the others combined my favorite moments of Sonic Youth's sound. By the time I was old enough to fully understand my own point of views on pop culture and music I realized Evol is my favorite,, it was the first one that when i heard it i knew it felt RIGHT to call it my favorite. When I finally got to see Sonic Youth last summer. They opened with Tom Violence...they also played Shadow of a Doubt. I tried to take a video of them playing Shadow but on the video you can't really hear Kim over my singing.

1.Roy Orbison "In Dreams" mediafire
I bought this record from the antique store in lake park. I knew I liked what I heard of Roy's music[i loved crying]...but I wasn't as directly familiar with this album. Something inexplicable drew me to this album. I had never known anything about it before, but for some reason when I I saw this record at the antique store I started begging my mom for it. I didn't have any money it was 15 dollars...I asked if she could see it in her heart to buy me this record. She agreed pretty easily..because it's Roy. As soon as i got home I ran to my room and put on the record. It started slow "the candy colored clown they call the sandman tiptoes in my room every night just a sprinkle stardust and a whisper go to sleep every thing is alright."Then he goes "i close my eyes" and the percussion came in and I felt like i was levitated. This album is epic and melodramatic and SAD and really beautiful. House Without Windows is my favorite.