The year was 1996. I was probably a senior in high school. I was sitting in band with a friend of mine. He was down with hardcore, punk and ska so we always had something to talk about. One day, he starts telling me about this new record label he found. It was called Tooth And Nail. I expected something in the vein of Rev or Victory. But I forget, he had just “found GOD.” And when I say found, I mean, he had just dove head first into loving church, talking about god, and wearing a cross outside of his shirt collar. I still thought he was awesome, but he definitely got weirder.
Anyway, he hands me, the unsuspecting core dude, a stack of CDs. Here’s what I can recall, Starflyer 69, Strongarm (holy crap. Do you recall this chorus? “G-O-D, he is the one for me.”), O.C. Supertones (oy vey) and MXPX. I probably ended up listening to them in that order too. I can recall being very “blah” about Starflyer, grinning/grimacing while head banging to Strongarm, and nodding off to the O.C. Supertones. So you can imagine I wasn’t too psyched to listen to MXPX. But it looked punk and since I had been all about Social Distortion for the last few months, I gave it a spin.
My initial reaction was shock. “Hey, this is good. It’s not bad.” I was expecting some pushy preaching but was welcomed by songs about girls and the usual high school crap. C’mon, Swing Set Girl. That screams pre “Blink calling themselves Blink-182.” The “oldies” cover song swayed me too. I was big on those tunes, and finding a punk rock band covering one clinched it for me. It wasn’t until further inspection of lyrics that I came across the “inspirational” songs. I wasn’t put off that much though. The songs still pretty much rocked.
I gave the cds back to my friend the next week and surprisingly, I haven’t listened to this album since those days. But putting this album in the cd player, I can still recall my first reaction, where I was and what I was doing. That seems like the hallmark of good album.
If you are interested, you can hit up their Myspace page and listen to a few tracks. It’ll probably bring you back too.