Top Songs

I've always been kind of a music nut, but not in the same way my brother Kurt is a music nut. He is more of a music walnut, where as I am a music peanut. Kurt loves classical music and ONLY classical music, everything else is complete trash. Although I was surprised that when he picked Mel and I up from the Kansas City airport he was listening to NON-CLASSICAL music, which pretty much rocked my foundation. I guess what I'm trying to say is, if Kurt can change, and you can change, everybody can change!

Kurt is the chump in the yellow footies here.

Anyway, I started off listening to Alternative around the turn of the decade (80's/90's), and my first favorite band was Pet Shop Boys/Erasure because they're pretty much the same anyway. Once I found out they were gay, well, that was the end of THAT.

This picture of me on the piano was pretty much the only time I played, and I'm sure it was a rousing rendition of "Bill Grogan's Goat."

In 6th grade KJQ, the only station I ever listened to, went off the air and was replaced by X-96, which I was not emotionally ready for. So that started my radio renaissance, where I started experimenting with other stations, even the despicable "Hot 94.9".

That reminds me of the time when we went to Burger King when JoEllen was still in elementary school, making me no older than 8. We went to year-round school, and we were "off-track", which meant 3 weeks of vacation at random times during the year. Mom "treated" us to one fast-food meal every off-track, usually at Skipper's, but sometimes Burger King. We chose the Burger King because of the awesome playground, which was over there by where TGIFriday's is.

Somehow JoEllen got a hold of a 97.1 KISS FM bumper sticker and there was this contest where if they spotted your car with a KISS FM sticker, then you can win 1000 bucks or something. So on the way home, JoEllen sat in the back of the brown station wagon holding up the sticker in the window, but Mom was outraged that Jo would be defiling our station wagon with such a trashy radio station. But Jo kept sneaking up the sticker, as if we would be spotted in the 15 seconds and win 1000 bucks. I was super excited, I was sure Jo was going to win!

Back to the radio renaissance: In 6th grade I started listening to R&B, which at the time was awesome with hits like "Everybody Dance Now" and "Good Vibrations". That lasted until 8th grade, when I got sick of the repetitiveness of R&B and started getting into KBER, which was your white trash Dad's favorite station. White Snake, Winger, Tesla, Poison, Saigon Kick, W.A.S.P., and of course the classic sounds of AC/DC and Metallica. That's when I first joined BMG and got my 10 free CD's for one cent, plus 4 bucks in shipping.

One of the CD's that came in that first shipment was Nine Inch Nails' Downward Spiral. JoEllen saw that I had purchased it, so she and her best friend Dawn took their righteous authority and broke it. I was super angry, but of course I couldn't tell Mom and Dad, because then they would've found out about all my other CD's.

That's when I took my music to the underground. Me and Baldwin purchased a PO Box at the local post office box so we could get our music shipped there, not having to worry about our parents checking the mail or any overzealous sisters stomping them out. That enabled us to sign up with all sorts of fake names (like Amanda Hugandkiss and I. P. Freely) and get the same deal from BMG again and again.

By the time high school hit, I was into Pearl Jam and the grunge era pretty hardcore. I mostly listened to X-96 and 107.5, but also still stuck with KBER. I can still remember my 6 preset radio stations in that crappy Toyota Tercel I drove, shown here in the snow:

1. X-96
2. 107.5 The End
3. Q-99.5
4. Star 102.7 (Hey-they didn't play ALL gay music)
5. Arrow 103.5
6. KOHS 91.7 (in the summer it was off, so I switched off between 105.7 and 94.1)

Delivering pizza throughout high school gave me a LOT of time to listen to music, plus I traded CD's with my buddies Erik, Jeff, and Dirty Dan all the time. I also DJ-ed at KOHS, so that gave me access to a lot of music as well. I even did an "internship" at 107.5 where I would sit in the studio with Dom Casual every day for a couple of weeks and watch him do his thang. Then Baldwin got jobs with various radio stations and me becoming a DJ after school became more and more a reality. By the time I finished high school I had pretty much completed my pizza system, so at that point I realized that I didn't want to work midnight shifts for the rest of my life, so instead I stayed in school. Good choice.

Anyway, here are my current top 20 songs. There's only one rule for these songs: I have to have heard them for more than a year. You can't just hear a cool song on the radio and add it to your top 20 and then get sick of it in a month. So it's got to last a year.

1. Brothers on a Hotel Bed - Death Cab for Cutie
2. Screenwriter's Blues - Soul Coughing
3. Longroad - Pearl Jam
4. Nutshell - Alice in Chains
5. Last Stop This Town - The Eels
6. Beethoven II: Arietta. Adagio molto semplice e cantabile
7. Bad - U2
8. Jackass - Beck
9. Wake Up - Mad Season
10. Heartbeats - Jose Gonzalez
11. The Adventure - Angels and Airwaves
12. Mad, Mad World - Gary Jules
13. H - Tool
14. Either Way - Guster
15. Blood Brothers - Bruce Springsteen
16. The City Sleeps - MC 900 Ft Jesus
17. Fool in the Rain - Led Zeppelin
18. Housin' - Rage Against the Machine
19. Staple It Together - Jack Johnson
20. Babylon - David Gray