Just say yes...

1987 was quite the interesting year for me. I was 10, and started realizing and noticing things that have made their indelible marks upon me. When this CD was released at the end of that year, it made quite an impression in my young and impressionable mind. Why is this? Here's the track listing:

1. Never Let Me Down Again (Remix) - Depeche Mode
2. Lips Like Sugar (12" Mix) - Echo & The Bunnymen
3. Out of Hand (Extended Version) - The Mighty Lemon Drops
4. Ya Ho - James
5. Work Is a 4 Letter Word - The Smiths
6. No Stars - Figures On A Beach
7. Young Manhood - The Wild Swans
8. Somebody Gotta Do It (Remix) - Ice-T
9. I Wanna Live - The Ramones
10. Can't Hardly Wait - The Replacements
11. Feeling, A - Throwing Muses
12. How Men Are - Aztec Camera
13. Cherokee Chief - Casual Gods (Jerry Harrison)
14. Hideaway (Remix) - Erasure

As a kid who colored his hair red and blue that summer and wore a ripped up jean vest, I'd already heard the Depeche Mode track and seen the video. But Echo and the Bunnymen? The Smiths? Ice-T? The Ramones? Aztec Camera? Throwing Muses? THE REPLACEMENTS? Fully half of these tracks turned me on to something I found amazing at one time or another in the interceding 20 years. Throwing Muses took me some warming up to, as did the white-boy soul of Aztec Camera's Roddy Frame, but for a 10 year old mind that was full of Bon Jovi, This was some revolutionary stuff, man. Revisiting it now, It's a crappy Ramones song, The Smiths track is somehow uncharacteristic, and the Depeche Mode track is like 8 minutes long, just right for a leather daddy with some poppers to put on a mix tape for his lair. But the Replacements track... Probbly the best 'Mats song to use if you're going to hook someone into fandom. The Throwing Muses track would make a fine soundtrack to a girl on LSD staring into space while languidly pulling out her hair. Not quite what you might expect if all you've heard of them is "Not too soon", A college radio staple of the early 90s as well as a fine song. I'd love to give this an A. I can't. Jerry Harrison could never hack it outside of Talking heads and Tom-tom club. I don't like Erasure. The Wild Swans and Figures on a Beach and James are all no good. But the music on this CD led me to other sources, such as Thrasher Magazine's Notes from the underground column, which turned me on to so much more... This was, for me, a seminal, if half-assed album. I love it.