Hi, my name is Gabe. My best friend is Matt. Matt runs NadaMucho.com. Recently Matt burned me a copy of Faith No More’s album Introduce Yourself, which was released in 1987. 1987 was a good year. 1987 saw Matt and I complete our 8th grade year and begin our 9th grade year as students at West Valley Junior High School in Yakima, Washington, USA. During those years, we developed a mutual obsession with left of the dial pop music, along with certain co-dependent tendencies. Introduce Yourself was one of the albums that knocked us on our butts.
Until two days ago, I had not listened to Introduce Yourself in years. My original copy of the album was located on the B-side of a 90-minute cassette tape. I dubbed Matt’s Introduce Yourself cassette tape onto a blank cassette tape using a portable dual-cassette tape recorder. At 37:42, Introduce Yourself fit nicely into the allotted 45 minutes. Using hi-speed dubbing, the copying process only took 23 minutes. The A-side of this particular cassette tape is Jesus & Mary Chain's album Darklands. Although the tape is still stored in my basement, I have not listened to it since approximately 1992.
I’ve now spent the last two days listening to Introduce Yourself on my commute to and from my downtown Seattle job as a corporate lawyer. The album’s got me thinking about where I come from and where I’m going. Music was everything to me, then nothing, and now it’s becoming something again. My reintroduction to Introduce Yourself inspired me to document my musical journey, which pivoted on those formative years of 1986, 1987, and 1988. Along with Introduce Yourself, the following albums released during those three years were scratched into my soul:
Big Audio Dynamite, No. 10 Upping St. (1986)
XTC, Skylarking (1986)
Jesus & Mary Chain, Darklands (1987)
The Cult, Electric (1987)
U2, The Joshua Tree (1987)
The Smiths, Louder Than Bombs (1987)
The Replacements, Pleased to Meet Me (1987)
The Smiths, Strangeways Here We Come (1987)
New Order, Substance (1987)
The following albums were also extremely important to me, but to a slighter lesser degree:
R.E.M., Life's Rich Pageant (1986)
They Might Be Giants, Don't Let's Start (EP) (1987)
The Cure, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me (1987)
Sonic Youth, Daydream Nation (1988)
The Church, Starfish (1988)
Until two days ago, I had not listened to Introduce Yourself in years. My original copy of the album was located on the B-side of a 90-minute cassette tape. I dubbed Matt’s Introduce Yourself cassette tape onto a blank cassette tape using a portable dual-cassette tape recorder. At 37:42, Introduce Yourself fit nicely into the allotted 45 minutes. Using hi-speed dubbing, the copying process only took 23 minutes. The A-side of this particular cassette tape is Jesus & Mary Chain's album Darklands. Although the tape is still stored in my basement, I have not listened to it since approximately 1992.
I’ve now spent the last two days listening to Introduce Yourself on my commute to and from my downtown Seattle job as a corporate lawyer. The album’s got me thinking about where I come from and where I’m going. Music was everything to me, then nothing, and now it’s becoming something again. My reintroduction to Introduce Yourself inspired me to document my musical journey, which pivoted on those formative years of 1986, 1987, and 1988. Along with Introduce Yourself, the following albums released during those three years were scratched into my soul:
Big Audio Dynamite, No. 10 Upping St. (1986)
XTC, Skylarking (1986)
Jesus & Mary Chain, Darklands (1987)
The Cult, Electric (1987)
U2, The Joshua Tree (1987)
The Smiths, Louder Than Bombs (1987)
The Replacements, Pleased to Meet Me (1987)
The Smiths, Strangeways Here We Come (1987)
New Order, Substance (1987)
The following albums were also extremely important to me, but to a slighter lesser degree:
R.E.M., Life's Rich Pageant (1986)
They Might Be Giants, Don't Let's Start (EP) (1987)
The Cure, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me (1987)
Sonic Youth, Daydream Nation (1988)
The Church, Starfish (1988)
I intend to use this forum to trace my history as a music fan, and hopefully create something that my kids might find interesting one day. (I'm currently reading them Little House on the Prairie and wondering whether they will find my cassette tapes as quaint as they do Laura's corn-cob doll.) Failing that, this little project at least gives me an excuse to dust off some of those old tapes and wallow in nostalgia.
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