Albums That Time Forgot

This week, Janet asked a tough question:

What are the best albums you believe most people have never heard?

I've never been on the cutting edge when it comes to music, relying first and foremost on the radio before purchasing any albums. Word of mouth from friends led me to to the more rare or up and coming groups out there. Just yesterday B13 tipped me off to Trivium, a band that just might be the next Metallica.

I spent the most time listening to music in college, long hours blasting cassettes while drawing or painting. I abused the radio privilege at my first job, and one day came back from lunch to find it gone with no explanation. I amassed the greatest amount of CDs at my current job, listening to them through headphones on my computer with declining frequency as my workload increased to the point where I'd forget to put on any music. The bulk of my CDs are in my cubicle, the place where I spend the most time. Without access to them right now to refresh my memory, and since most are more current, I've turned to my cassette collection. Here are some albums that I haven't thought about in a while, though I'm sure I'm not the only one who has heard them:



The Last Action Hero Soundtrack
Guilty pleasure of the film itself aside, the album really rocks, and I listened to it repeatedly when I was in college. Where else can you find AC/DC, Alice in Chains, Megadeth and Cypress Hill in one place? The title song was even sung by Tesla(the Signs guys, not the electrical guy). I personally never got tired of the soundtrack, only stopped thinking about it for a few years, although a friend of mine confessed that one day driving in the car he got so sick of it, he ejected his copy and hurled it out the window.

The Cable Guy Soundtrack
I realize there's something of a theme here with movies I enjoyed along with a minority of the population. The karaoke scene with Somebody to Love is what sold me on picking up the tape, and I found a variety of great songs on there. To this day I can't listen to ”Standing Outside a Broken Phonebooth With Money in My Hand” by The Primitive Radio Gods without thinking of that movie. At the time, Filter's “Hey Man, Nice Shot” seemed to be everywhere, from radios to tv shows to soundtracks, and The Cable Guy included that song as well.

Mad Season: Above
At the height of Grunge in the mid ‘90s, a dream group was formed for one album, a side project featuring members from several of my favorite bands, notably the late Layne Staley from Alice in Chains and Mike McCready from Pearl Jam. The sounds varied from mellow blues rock like Long Gone Day to steadier rhythms such as ”I Don't Know Anything”.

Candlebox
It seems odd to include a one-hit wonder here, and while the song ”You” got an insane amount of airplay, especially on Q104.3 before they switched to a classic rock format, there were a lot of other great songs on their first album as well that I'm sure many people haven't heard, such as ”Arrow”.

No Alternative
This charity album included nearly every band I was listening to in the ‘90s, and a few artists I hadn't heard before. The cassette actually contained bonus tracks not found on the CD, and a hidden, uncredited Nirvana song that got a lot of airplay and led me to purchase it. We knew it as “Verse Chorus Verse” at the time, though apparently ”Sappy” is what the song is currently known as.

Urge Overkill: Saturation
Among the bands included on the No Alternative compilation, Urge Overkill's fourth album was another one of my college favorites. They peaked in popularity, fading again after its success, and I've actually been operating under the assumption that Saturation was their first and only release. Sister Havana may be the song the public is most familiar with. The Stalker is another great track with a grinding rhythm.

The Beavis and Butt-Head Experience
Yet another collection of some of my favorite groups of the ‘90s, it included Nirvana, Megadeth, Primus, White Zombie, Sir Mix-a-lot and Red Hot Chili Peppers(pre-every Chili Peppers song is the same one era). The songs were separated by various quips and misadventures of the animated duo, including a hilarious scene in which they get into Run DMC's crib by claiming to be “from Hollis and stuff.” Also not to be missed is Beavis defiling Anthrax' bus followed by the band covering The Beastie Boys' “Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun” Heh heh, it's cool, yeah, cool cool.