Roughly contemporaneous albums that I acquired during my first two years of high school

Angel Dust, then and now

I'm voting for the album that's the most "first two years of high school" for this era, which was also my era. Feels like it should be AIC, Queen or STP, though Incesticide and Singles make strong cases.

Badmotorfinger all day long.

Probably Nevermind but voted for Pure Guava.

REM is probably the most out-of-step with the general vibe of this list huh? But I just can't not vote for them.

Out of Time I swiped from my dad's collection (bought exclusively for 'Losing my Religion' iirc). My brother bought a floor model stereo and found a copy of Automatic for the People inside when he got it home (he gave it to me as he was Mr. Hip Hop at the time and had no interest). So both kinda incidental acquisitions that wound up having a pretty big impact.

Is it more out of step than Tori Amos or Shakespeare's Sister?

prob gonna vote for either little earthquakes or extreme ii, a record i am only familiar with because of maura but which i have developed a lot of affection for

xpost lol

I should note that I was listening to pretty much only top 40 stuff prior to this time. Points of transition I vividly recall: randomly catching and being entranced by the video for 'Here's Where the Story Ends' the summer before high school (which became my gateway to 120 Minutes), hearing 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' for the first time (obvs), that cool senior dude in my art class (whose total dick of a brother was in my grade) finding out that I liked FNM and copying the Mr. Bungle album for me.

There was a ton of less stereotypically grunge-y stuff I fell in love with at the time, video-by-video, but that I wasn't going to have the opportunity to own or hear at length until we moved away from the middle of nowhere.

I took a ladyfriend I was trying to impress* to a Dream Theatre gig around this time. Still pretty much the worst show I've ever been to and she was rightfully horrified.

I think the correct answer is Dirt, though I'm edging suspiciously towards Illusion 2.

*It didn't work out.

Beasties or Twin Peaks.

I have a shameful Dream Theater high school past, but I learned a lot about playing odd time signatures.

Supplemental list of albums I didn't personally possess but which I was intimately familiar with because the dude I grew up with who lived next to my grandma (who we visited fairly frequently) used to play them all the time:

Jackyl - s/t
Slaughter - Stick It Live
Tesla - Five Man Acoustical Jam
Van Halen - For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge

It's gonna be Ministry or Soundgarden for me. (This was college-era stuff for me; I graduated high school in 1990.)

I never owned the Twin Peaks soundtrack, though I did own the Eraserhead soundtrack (for some reason).

Check Your Head for me, although usually I go to bat for the Singles Soundtrack.

xpost This was just after the show had ended, I guess. I'd missed out on the PHENOMENON but I checked both the soundtrack and VHS copies of the first season out from the library and then played my bootleg copies of same ad infinitum.

O.L., I feel like you and I could have been great bros if we had known each other back then!

Q: did you also enjoy SNL and Wizard Magazine, if so you are probably correct.

SNL, sure (doesn't everyone in high school?); never read Wizard. But I really liked R.E.M. and comics!

i had that dream theater album during the same time period (first two years of high school). i remember loving "PULL ME UNDER."

you want to feel really bad? check this out

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6h2h4zIhwuM

I'm not afraid!

Actually, y'know what...Imma just go ahead and listen to that whole album rn. I need to switch my brain all the way off and get some work done anyway, plus I'm an absolute glutton re: punishment.

I tried to listen to it again recently. I stuck it on the car and was physically repulsed. Turning it off, I nearly crashed the car into a bloke on a mobility scooter. So many metaphors.

sad lol. I hope I can avoid that particular fate while sitting at work but I guess nothing is guaranteed.

Godspeed. Let us know how it goes.

The second half of Images and Words still totally holds up. The first half, not so much (although Pull Me Under is still good)

(< 60 seconds in) Hoo boy...what have I done...

(Also, I must've really given this thing a lot of chances because I'm realizing that I apparently know it like the back of my hand.)

Okay, 'Pull Me Under' was actually dece (the singer's operatics aside). I'm fairly certain I could approximate the drum changes throughout from memory.

WTF is the 'Whitesnake meets Gerry Rafferty' shit on the next song, though, holy god.

Better to save the mys-tray than give in to the secraaaaaaaaaat (*clarinet trill*)

Pretty sure this is what we had in mind when my brother and I used to improvise ridiculous prog lyrics at length.

I remember thinking at the time that this sounded like a band full of dads. My opinion on that front remains unchanged.

It's like Dennis DeYoung fronting Rush except like a decade and a half after the peak of either former band.

Honestly just fast forward to Metropolis already

Dudes have chops, I'll give them that. But what is the value of chops when employed in the service of evil.

The only Dream Theater I ever want to hear again is the first minute of 'The Mirror'

Man, for better or worse, I'm sticking this out, every brutal track. And clearly not actually doing the work I alluded to earlier.

Oh cool, they got Enya to do a little guest keyboardin' on 'Surrounded'. Quite a coup!

Angel Dust & Check Your Head tie this one, AD wins in terms of hours listened

This is like if Savage Garden was an ELP cover band.

Sorry, I'm destroying my own thread.

lighttodarkdarktolightlighttodarkdarktolight

It's just that compared to when I first heard this, I've developed a much broader array of ways to say 'this is bad'.

The absolute worst thing about working for Roadrunner Records for three years was having to go to a Dream Theater show. This despite the fact that all the members were incredibly nice dudes ("a band full of dads" is an incredibly apt description - they are some minivan-driving motherfuckers who happen to be incredibly skilled musicians).

Check Your Head is an easy pick for me. The Beastie Boys had such a huge impact on my youth and teen years.

I'm on to 'Metropolis' now. Trying to remember which Genesis game this was the soundtrack to. Comix Zone, maybe?

In this theater, we present the dreams you have when you chow down on a burrito too close to bedtime.

Okay, I was being mildly snarky (or a lot snarky) by suggesting this was sourced for a Genesis soundtrack, but 47 minutes into 'Metropolis' I feel very much like I'm in the midst of a 16-bit boss battle.

If Mr. Bungle had been fronted by Geoff Tate instead of Mike Patton, that band would be Dream Theater.

Check Your Head is an easy pick for me. The Beastie Boys had such a huge impact on my youth and teen years.

This is something I missed by just a few years. I liked "Fight for Your Right (to Party)", but never heard Licensed to Ill front to back at the time; *loved* Paul's Boutique, but had lost interest by the time Check Your Head came out, and nothing they ever did post-PB really did it for me. That one album was so wild and brilliant, everything afterward fell short. And the idea of going to see them live held no interest for me at all. My little brother saw them around that time, though, with (I think) Cypress Hill and Da Lench Mob.

Paul's Boutique had passed me by completely, somehow. The first time I heard 'Pass the Mic' was a head-turning 'whoa, so that's what those dudes sound like now?' moment.

Check Your Head was the one for me, since I was so into playing drums and funk and the live instrument version of everything (hip hop, drum & bass, etc). Still think it's their best sounding recording.

Back to Dream Theater: so like I geddit if people were into these dudes in order to get a hit of the wanky progginess that was otherwise kinda out of fashion at the time, but then how did they justify the thing where every other track is just like the lead singer indulging his inner John Tesh over twinkly new age synths for four minutes?

All right, I honestly don't know how much more of this I can take.

Officially, I can now say that Images and Words will not be receiving my vote in this poll.

This is like being under local anesthetic and watching with foggy wonder as someone disassembles your body. Like you know this is the worst thing that could possibly happen but...you just can't look away.

Fuuuuuuuuuuck that last track was interfuckingminable. I think I'm going to put on Metal Machine Music and scour my brain clean for a little while.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

dang this list whiffs on all the records from that era/radio format that i have any fondness for

Shakespears