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ALBUMS OF OUR LIVES: HICKEY’S VARIOUS STATES OF DISREPAIR

When I first heard Hickey’s Various States of Disrepair I knew I’d found what I’d been looking for. The only problem was, I’d found it too late.It was at a merch table in the grimy-ass corner of some...

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ALBUMS OF OUR LIVES: RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE’S EVIL EMPIRE

I grew up on eighty acres in a hollow outside of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, Reader’s Digest’s “Best Place to Raise a Family” in 1995. The front forty was flush with cedar and pine, the back forty,...

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ALBUMS OF OUR LIVES: BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN’S DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN

Elizabeth and I took our first road trip a few months into our relationship. As the miles went by on the interstate, I changed CDs, one hand on the wheel while the other one slid the discs into and out...

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ALBUMS OF OUR LIVES: PETER GABRIEL’S SO

Whenever I felt the waves of homesickness approaching during my semester abroad in Vienna back in 1987, I knew what I had to do: button up the grey scratchy Tyrolean jacket I’d bought at a flea market,...

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ALBUMS OF OUR LIVES: NEKO CASE’S MIDDLE CYCLONE

The year 2008 tumbled out of itself and took with it the things that consumed my days. Within a month I had lost my job to the upholding of liquor laws, my college education to an unavoidable...

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SONGS OF OUR LIVES: JOY DIVISION’S “LOVE WILL TEAR US APART”

Ben, a cellist, sold copies of our ’zine, Sketch Fifty-three, for a quarter to the other kids in the Greater Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra—most of whom, though their moms drove them to rehearse Haydn...

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Albums of Our Lives: The Thermals’ The Body The Blood The Machine

It begins with an act of divine intervention. “God reached his hand down from the sky,” sings Hutch Harris. “He flooded the land, then he set it afire/ He said, ‘Fear me again, you know I’m your...

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ALBUMS OF OUR LIVES: RUN DMC’S RAISING HELL

It was a cassette copy with no case, and my dad gave it to me a couple of years after he’d moved out. I was about nine. I knew enough about the album to yelp “This is priceless!” as I ran to my...

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Albums of Our Lives: Songs: Ohia’s Magnolia Electric Co.

The news of Jason Molina’s death came to me in a storm. I was about to teach a class when I saw the first posts announcing that he was gone. I didn’t know what to do. I almost cried in front of my...

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ALBUMS OF OUR LIVES: TO THE EXTREME BY VANILLA ICE

We all had braces. When we smiled or laughed, we flashed steel and colored rubber bands. We shared a language. We talked about tightenings, fittings, about which brands of gum were safe to chew, and...

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ALBUMS OF OUR LIVES: BOB DYLAN’S BLONDE ON BLONDE

I’m seventeen, and my Dad and I are on a train between Boston and New Haven. We’re visiting colleges, and we’ve rented a car to drive up and down the Eastern Seaboard. This plan, however, has been...

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ALBUMS OF OUR LIVES: STEVE EARLE’S GUITAR TOWN

Before someone spilled Hi-C on it during a hot Iowa summer and my car window fixed sunlight into its silky black innards, warping Steve Earle’s voice into that of a sexually beleaguered chipmunk, that...

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Albums of our Lives: Rufus Wainwright’s Poses

If I had written a list of pros and cons, I might have seen how moving to Austin from Seattle with a boyfriend who had just kicked heroin, and with stripping as my only job prospect, was not a recipe...

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Albums of Our Lives: Linda Ronstadt’s Heart Like a Wheel

The cover was a black and white close-up of a woman, her hair windswept, her name scrawled above her in a font usually reserved for truck stops: Linda Ronstadt. I’d retrieved the album and its torn...

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Albums of Our Lives: Dan Zanes’ Rocket Ship Beach

Our music collection was unassailable until I became pregnant with my first daughter. From Johnny Cash to Bruce Springsteen to the Ramones to Poi Dog Pondering, my husband and I had curated the...

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Albums of Our Lives: Moxy Früvous’s Bargainville

I was twenty when Moxy Früvous’s music found its way to my dorm computer through the copious file sharing we all participated in after the death of Napster. I had just completed the tenth issue of my...

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Songs of Our Lives: Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s “The Inflated Tear”

Eighteen years ago a song unlike any music I’d ever heard by someone I’d never heard of before altered the course of my life. One day in a jazz history class, amid the staples of Louis Armstrong, John...

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Albums of Our Lives: Hole’s Celebrity Skin

1. The car I drove when I was 20 smelled like rain. When it stormed, the passenger side floor filled with a puddle so deep I’d have to bail it out with a folded floor mat. When I drove faster than 60,...

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Albums of Our Lives: The Counting Crows’ August and Everything After

A few days before we left a life in New York, my then-husband drove home drunk from a bar in the Bronx—up, somehow, through the curves of the Major Deegan that I could barely follow sober, across the...

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Albums of Our Lives: Death Cab For Cutie’s Transatlanticism

When I heard Death Cab for Cutie’s Transatlanticism it was the first time I remember seeing sounds, understanding stories told to me set to music. A decade later, I still remember hearing those stories...

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