Growing up with The Men

I will tell you that I have always been like this. I'm aurally addicted. When I was in 2nd grade, I was obsessed with "We Didn't Start the Fire". I didn't have the means to play it on my own but my dad had given me a copy of the album Storm Front in cassette form. My step-father also liked Billy Joel, so we played it in his truck often. Until, that is, we were on a family vacation driving from Portland, OR to North and South Dakota, through Montana and the rest of it. We were listening to "We Didn't Start the Fire" when the truck's caught on fire. That fire ate through the dash, devouring that cassette tape. I didn't hear the song again for years.

But when I was a little older, maybe 9 or 10, I began to gorge myself with music. I had a CD player by then, it also had radio, and I listened to z100's 5 @ 9 every night. I knew every word to Bel Biv Devoe's "Poison", I could recite Whitney's "I Will Always Love You", and I was particularly obsessed with All-4-One's "I Swear". I had a very small collection of CD's, mostly ones my dad had given me. Mostly albums the labels were sending him to review in his position as station program director. Mostly not very good records. But I would listen to them, over and over. I'd put my favorites on repeat and probably drove my mom nuts.

One of those records was the self-titled LP by The Men. I found it in a Goodwill today for $2 and jumped on it. Listening back, I'm amazed by how relevant it still is. Aside from a laughably-reverberating snare drum sound, its pop sensibilities are timeless. It's a lot like Crowded House and the Tragically Hip, with a more gravelly vocal tilt, and incredible guitar tones. Anyway, you may not even dig it, but I thought I'd open a window into my world. I probably listened to "Goodnight, Sally" over 1,000 times when I was 10. I think that says something about me today.

Listen:
Goodnight Sally
Easy Target
[from The Men|buy]