She Woke Me Up With a Bang-Bang

so today while it was 4 degrees and pouring rain outside and i was dancing around the house with panzer alternately whispering, singing and screeching the very age-inappropriate lyrics of the violent femmes' "blister in the sun" to him, i had the same thought i've had a million times for the millionth and one time: music peaked in the 90s -- it is never going to be this good and clever and wonderfully angsty ever again.

i am confident that the music of the 90s will survive, for all greasy teenagers to enjoy. i see it already. the lead singer of sublime died in 1996, and kids today still go around threatening to smoke 2 joints before they smoke 2 joints. and then i smoke 2 more. (not my favorite, but certainly catchy...) they still talk about what kurt cobain might've been. (had he not suffered an apparently self-inflicted "contact perforating shotgun wound to the head" in 1994, the year i entered the 7th grade.) i still see as many kids in korn t-shirts today as i did in 1998. (even my mom's 60+year-old husband is a fan, luring aaron into the basement for loud replays of korn concerts of yore.) and that is saying nothing of the beastie boys, counting crows, rage against the machine, live, smashing pumpkins, etc. timeless as the dragon-skull-dagger-zodiac tattoo.

i'm sure my parents, among others, are reading this and cringing. and i'm sure they said the same thing about the music of the 60s when they were my age. which to be fair, the music of the 60s was pretty fantastic. and it led to the birth of music as a social and political statement, which i enjoy and respect, but nothing beats angst. especially on cold, rainy days.

now i wake up to my radio-alarm to songs about teenage dreams and tight jeans and my hump-my hump-my humps. the good news is that these songs immediately fill me with a blood-pumping rage and urge to immediately jump out of bed, slam the alarm off, and stalk to the shower muttering expletives about the state of the world if this is what's on the radio.

makes me wonder what kind of worthless crap "music" panzer is going to listen to in 15 years. i make a silent plea to the flying spaghetti monster that it not be ke$ha.

and on that note, i have identified five albums mommy will approve of, any day any time, rainy and angsty or not:

by the way by the red hot chili peppers

good mourning (or better yet, my personal greatest hits mix) by alkaline trio

love by the beatles (already a panzer favorite)

the walking wounded by bayside

bang bang by dispatch