The Songs That Remind Him of the Good Times

Read the following album titles and think of what they mean to you.

The Verve - Urban Hymns
Suede - Coming Up
Oasis - Definitely Maybe
Blur - 13
Pulp - This is Hardcore
The Cardigans - Gran Turismo
Manic Street Preachers - This is My Truth Tell Me Yours
No Doubt - Tragic Kingdom
Garbage - Garbage
Alanis Morrisette - Jagged Little Pill
Portishead - Dummy
Sarah McLachlan - Surfacing

If you're between, say, 22 and 26, these albums may have contributed to the soundtrack of your adolesence, as they did for me. I couldn't help grinning inside when I saw them at a secondhand CD stall at a campus bazaar today. The sight of them together in one place brought me back to a time when little else mattered: a time when the greatest cause for worry was remembering an unfinished assignment on the day it was due; when the greatest cause for celebration was discovering later that the teacher who gave the assignment was on sick leave; and when the greatest people on earth were rock stars because they could articulate all your angst and disaffection so perfectly, yet look so cool.

There were many other CDs from those years on sale: Ash's Nu-Clear Sounds, Ocean Colour Scene's Moseley Shoals, and other Oasis albums, to name a few. Even local act Concave Scream's 1997 debut, Erratic, was available. They were all rather pricey for used CDs (but in good condition), ranging from $10 to $15 apiece. After much deliberation, I picked up Lamb's Best Of and Mono's Formica Blues. Goodness, it's been so long since I've heard Life in Mono!