#this absolutely ruined my morning i didn't even really have fun buying the album i did bc i was so mad about this

[seekingthestars]

PSA: Don't do this. Don't be an asshole. Be better than this.

went to Target to get a Sector 17 compact ver. and was excited to see so many in stock until I grabbed one and realized someone had slit open EVERY SINGLE ONE and stolen the photocards out of them. I told an employee and he said it happened within an hour of him putting them out this morning.

not only are you absolutely ruining this for everyone else who wanted an album, but you're also hurting svt's sales by making the albums unsellable, all over a small piece of paper with a boy's face on it. DON'T DO THIS. BE BETTER THAN THIS.

[youspoketome]

ME FIRST AND THE GIMME GIMMES - HAVE A BALL (1997)

I met my best friend Kevin at summer camp in like 5th or 6th grade. I liked him because he was the only kid who brought a Star Wars dictionary to camp and he did this thing where he'd pretend to run into trees at full speed to impress girls. I'm pretty sure he liked me because I was the only kid who appreciated that he brought a Star Wars dictionary to camp and I was very impressed by his running into trees skills. The next summer I did some detective work to find his phone number so we could go to camp the same week again. Then we completely lost touch.

My introduction to Tooth & Nail Records through MxPx directed my musical discoveries for the next few years. Although I would occasionally venture out to other labels, they would still be Christian labels like Rescue Records, Bulletproof Music or Five Minute Walk*. I think the farthest I ventured out was when I rode the third wave of ska as far as The Mighty Mighty Bosstones' "The Impression That I Get." And even that was just for a single song.

*SIDEBAR: I'm realizing that I reference record labels a lot. More than the average person, I think. I realized very early on that many of the bands I listened to were on the same record label, Forefront. So from an early age I learned to use that to discover new bands. Most people have probably never heard of Rescue or Bulletproof, or if they have, they probably have completely forgotten their existence, but I always knew which record companies had the kind of bands I was going to like. This would continue for years, from T&N to Victory and Drive-Thru and Vagrant Records. It was an important thing to me for a very long time and has really only stopped kind of recently. The decline and death of the label system is kind of sad in a new way I've never thought of before.*

Even though I had that dubbed tape of DOOKIE, I never really got that into it. I don't know if it was a guilt thing or a format thing, but by the time I got to high school I had taken a hard stance against Green Day. I had a friend called John whose favorite band was Green Day and we made so much fun of him for it. John sat at the same desk as me during different periods of one of our classes and at one point he doodled the Green Day logo on it, so naturally I drew MxPx's Pokinatcha Punk stomping on it. There was another kid who sat at our table in the morning who had a THE COLOUR AND THE SHAPE Foo Fighters t-shirt that I would absolutely love now, but at the time I gave him a lot of crap for it.

It was easy to say I was making fun of these bands because they were on the radio (this was around when "Good Riddance [Time Of Your Life]" was getting a lot of airplay) and so they were "sellouts." The truth was, I had no idea who the Foo Fighters were or what they even sounded like, but it made me look far more punk to make fun of sellouts than admit that I only listened to Christian music and had zero idea who any of these other bands were.

I was so incredibly passionate about music, but so completely ignorant about so much of it. Already I was pretty much only wearing band t-shirts. Mike Herrera had a Spam shirt in the liner notes of TEENAGE POLITICS, so I got one of those, and everything else was Ghoti Hook, Value Pac, The O.C. Supertones, Squad Five-O, and Joy Electric. But all of those bands were (or would end up being) Tooth & Nail bands. I was obsessed with what I was into, and had no interest in anything else.

ANYWAY, at some point I started volunteering as a dishwasher for a couple weeks every summer at camp. Much like the first day of school when you'd wear your best brand new outfit, I always tried to wear my coolest clothes the first day of the week (The fact that a girl I liked was often there may have played a role in this too). On one week, my coolest clothes consisted of a Squad Five-O t-shirt with a Stryper logo swipe, camo cargo shorts, and argyle socks pulled up to my knees.

That same week my old camp friend Kevin, who I hadn't spoken to in years, and his friend Gabe were volunteer counselors. Obviously I wasn't there for it, but I believe that as they noticed me across the room for the first time their conversation went something like this:

Gabe: Look at that loser over there with the socks!

Kevin: Hey, I think I know that loser!

I ended up spending every free minute I had that week with them, discovering that Kevin and I still liked both Star Wars and girls and independently of each other, had both grown into not just big music fans, but into the same kind of music. The difference being, he did not limit himself to just Christian music. Before we parted ways when the week came to an end, we exchanged AOL instant messenger names and he gave me a piece of paper labeled "prescription," a list of bands for me to check out.

I don't remember any of the bands that were on that list except for Me First & the Gimme Gimmes. Between the NEVER SAY DINOSAUR compilation and Ghoti Hook's SONGS WE DIDN'T WRITE (not to mention MxPx's ON THE COVER), I had already developed a huge affinity for covers. So shortly after I got home I made the trip to the Best Buy at Northtown Mall to check out their CDs. At this point the Gimme Gimmes already had HAVE A BALL and ARE A DRAG available, but my mom suggested I go for the first one because I'd be familiar with more singer/songwriter songs from the 60's and 70's than showtunes.

There was nothing sonically groundbreaking about that album. It was a punk rock cover album. I was already listening to punk rock and I already knew most of the songs they were playing. But with it, I had just taken my first step into a larger world.

I very quickly followed up HAVE A BALL with ARE A DRAG. It also introduced me to Fat Wreck Chords (which may have also been somehow mentioned on my prescription from Kevin). I would continue discovering most of my new bands through Tooth & Nail compilation CDs, but I started branching out a little bit by buying Fat Wreck complications too.

It's crazy how important compilation CDs used to be when they don't even exist anymore. The internet ruins everything, I swear. Compilation CDs were the best. For a fraction of the price of a full length from any given band you could get like twice the amount of songs! Sure, maybe they weren't all winners, but for every band I hated like Tilt, there were three or four bands I would discover and fall in love with. There were some bands I would be introduced to from friends or my brother, but most everything I discovered on my own on a compilation CD. The following is a list of some of the bands from this era that I first heard on a compilation that I would end up either buying the CD of or dubbing a cassette of: The Cootees, The W's, Zao, Blindside, Shorthanded, The Dingees, Pedro The Lion, Roadside Monument Joy Electric, Joe Christmas, Furthermore, Strung Out, NOFX, Screeching Weasel, WIZO, Rancid, Bracket... And that's before you count the 100 band SHORT MUSIC FOR SHORT PEOPLE compilation. Technically, the LIFE IN THE FAT LANE compilation would be the first time I would ever hear The Ataris, but that's probably a story for a later installment.