An Old Time Memory

I feel the need to show some love to semi-forgotten bands from my childhood today. I've been listening to an exorbitant amount of Alien Ant Farm lately and it always throws me off when I'm playing it in the car and someone says something like, "I remember them. I used to love them!" Why did you stop listening to them then? It's funny how you can truly love an artist and for some inexplicable reason let them slip through your fingers... or ears.

Naturally, I can understand how certain songs or even entire bands bring back so many memories from a certain time that you can't stand to listen to them anymore but personally, I've always been a gigantic nostalgia fan. When my mother brings out the albums with mold and dust on them, it always turns out to be a good day. She tells me stories of how she used to sit in her bedroom listening to Buffalo Springfield Again for hours and tape up the Tom Petty record inserts on her walls. It makes her seem more human. Music is the most human thing on earth.


For me, other than the oldies bands my family was listening to, it was bands like Incubus, Mest, Eve 6, Mindless Self Indulgence... that was in the early teens and mostly because my best friend was into them. Then came my obsession with Everclear that hasn't gone away as much as metamorphosized into a distant love. Of course before that there was Michael Jackson and Paula Abdul, my crush on Frankie Valli, and much later the neverending saga of singer/songwriters like Jason Mraz and John Mayer - a man I once had to wait in general admission lines for five hours in Baltimore to see (we won't even discuss Britney Spears or *NSYNC - luckily that died fast and never went to ugly extremes like 98 Degrees).

I work at a venue where forgotten artists like Third Eye Blind, Toad the Wet Sprocket, The Breeders, and Toadies get love and where a band like Hanson has fans waiting in tents the night before. Naysayers be damned - It just goes to show that the old adage: "There's someone for everyone" is absolutely true.

Some of my old-time favorites:

Alien Ant Farm - Attitude. Still one of my favorite songs..


Incubus - Echo. Absolutely beautiful.


Paula Abdul - Cold Hearted Snake. This really brought back memories! She's just fantastic.