Class of 2001: Allison's Senior Year

I had my first big musical awakening during my senior year of high school. All of the necessary elements were in place:

• The Internets came to life with streaming media and everyone’s favorite illegal downloading tool came to be: Napster.
• The Rock Shop opened in little ol’ Bethel Park, PA. Our very own indie rock record store! The Rock Shop was owned by the nicest, most approachable guy in the world: Mike.
• I started dating a boy who would become the archetype for all boys thereafter. Not only was he tall, skinny, and moppy-haired, but he made me mixtapes. And that has made all the difference.

Music I listened to before these three things came into my life = not good.

Milana and me in NYC during our senior year.

I was a high school senior between August 2000 and June 2001. These are ordered by date. Unlike Evan, I did not cheat. (In some instances, I may prefer a different song from another album. When that occurs, I’ll let you know.)

Elliott – Blessed By Your Own Ghost - False Cathedrals - August 22, 2000
The Roboto Project in Wilkinsburg. What a place. In the middle of what was then a really shady neighborhood in Pittsburgh, there was a place for all the punk and indie rock kids to put on mostly local shows. National acts were frequent, but they were not widely known ones. I saw Elliott open for The Weakerthans in a performance space no bigger than my Boston apartment. The place was a sweat factory in the best way. I love this song. (And I’m pissed that by following the rules – unlike Evan – I’m missing out on The Weakerthans Left & Leaving by a month and a half.)


Jets to Brazil – One Summer Last Fall - Four Cornered Night - August 29, 2000
On one of the boy’s mixtapes. The best part of this song on the mixtape was that it cut off early because the tape ran out. When I listen to it now, I always anticipate the cut off. You’d think after nearly ten years of listening to the actual track from the album that I’d get used to the “full” version. I don’t think I ever will.


Brandston – Boys Lie - Trying to Figure Each Out EP - August 29, 2000
Brandston is one of these bands that I think everyone knows, and then it turns out only I do. I wouldn’t have picked this song. I wouldn’t have picked this album. But it’s all that came out when I was a senior. The best choice would have been “Summer in St. Clair” for all the personal reasons I won’t go into here. But “Boys Lie” is a great song, and it definitely does what it needs to do for this mix: throw me right back into my 17-year-old self.


The Juliana Theory – If I Told You This Was Killing Me, Would You Stop? - Emotion is Dead - August 29, 2000
The day this came out, my friend Milana and I drove to The Rock Shop when it opened and each bought a copy. We drove around the South Hills listening to the newest album from a band with a lead singer we were both ridiculously (serious – ridiculous!) in love with. We had lunch and Panda Garden and I went to work at Hollywood Video afterward. It was an awesome day to be seventeen. (I also wrote the lyrics to this on a note I gave a boy I was mad at once. Because that’s how you communicate when you’re a burgeoning indie-rock dork.) KUDOS TO WHOEVER PUT THIS WITH NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS!



Koufax – Out Of Your Element - It Had to Do with Love - September 5, 2000
I walked into Club Laga for a Get Up Kids show and these guys were on stage. I remember stacks and stacks of keyboards and dudes climbing over each other to get to different keyboards all over the stage. It was awesome. I’m a sucker for a synth. And as a result, these guys definitely sucked me in that night. Sadly, that’s the first and last time I’ve ever seen them. (That night was also the first time I heard The Anniversary, a band a formed an intense love for over the years. If they had released an album during this time frame, they’d be a top feature of this list.)

At the Drive In – Invalid Litter Dept. - Relationship of Command - September 12, 2000
I like the first At the Drive in record so so so so so so so much more. It was an album more in line with my senior year than Relationship of Command. One night in particular comes to mind when I sat in a car in an empty lot at 3 a.m. listening to In Casino/Out. I may or may not have been alone. So, this will have to do.


Hot Rod Circuit – This is Not the Time or Place - If It's Cool With You, It's Cool With Me - September 19, 2000
The most un-HRC of the HRC songs I could have picked. This is the first HRC song I heard though (because it was on a mixtape), so I feel like it’s only right to include it. I listened to a lot of HRC those days, because they were the boy’s favorite band for a long time. I love this song. I wish I was still 20 going on 21.


The New Amsterdams – Never Treat Others - Never You Mind - September 19, 2000
IF I HAD MY WAY, “I’M A LONER DOTTIE, A REBEL” WOULD HAVE BEEN ON THIS MIX. (The New Amsterdams will have to do.)

AFI – Morningstar - The Art of Drowning - September 26, 2000
Remember when AFI didn’t suck? That was pretty awesome, huh? Black Sails in the Sunset was an incredible album! The Art of Drowning was just OK. You could start to feel the slippy slope they were on. I would have put “The Last Kiss” on here a billion times if I could. We anticipated The Art of Drowning though. Waited and waited and when it arrived, we pretended to be excited about it. I can see through all of that now.


New Found Glory – Eyesore - s/t - September 26, 2000
Two words: Warped Tour. Taking the trolley from Bethel Park to Station Square in downtown Pittsburgh. Goofing and running around the crowded car and annoying all the commuters around us. That memory is the only reason I didn’t flip a shit about a dozen times when I took another jam-packed trolley downtown this summer to see the Penguins Stanley Cup victory parade. I just kept saying to myself: YOU WERE THOSE ANNOYING LITTLE FUCKS TEN YEARS AGO – SO CHILL.


The White Octave – Style No. 6312 - Style No. 6312 - October 17, 2000
This is a song from a mixtape from the boy. I would listen to these mixtapes from him over and over and over and look for the hidden messages he was trying to send me. Verbalizing emotions or feelings was never the kid’s strongest suit, but these mixtapes made up for every bit of that. The tapes also made me fall in love with discovery. I’d never known a world of music so vast and untapped before. Every mixtape was a litany of bands I’d never heard of and songs I’d grow to love. I might not know any other songs from The White Octave. Because the only one that could ever matter to me is this one.

Dashboard Confessional - Shirts and Gloves - The Swiss Army Romance - November 14, 2000
Ahhhhhh. Dashboard. Here we have the first artist ever searched for on Napster on the Rowland Family computer. It was the boy who introduced me both to the magic of Napster and then to Dashboard. I could have picked an angrier, more upbeat track off Swiss Army Romance, but this one has a secret little nod to Dawson’s Creek, which makes me giddy. Can you find it? No? “So make sure that I’m up to date on TV night / I hate to miss out / I think I miss you most Wednesdays and Saturdays.” Figure it out.


Rainer Maria – Thought I Was - A Better Version of Me - January 23, 2001
I have a confession to make: I didn’t start listening to Rainer Maria until I was a freshman in college. BUT – they did play an important role in my senior year. I was playing in the Bethel Park talent show – Telerama – for the second year in a row, but this time I was going solo: just me and a guitar. The boy was supposed to come to the show, but at the last minute decided to go to the Rainer Maria show downtown instead. I was crushed. After almost a year of dating! Needless to say, this was pretty much the beginning of the end of first love. And it is all Rainer Maria’s fault. (I love them now; hated them then.)

Bad Astronaut – Greg’s Estate - Acrophobe - February 6, 2001
The best thing about having friends who are all a year older than you: college parties when you’re a senior still stuck in high school. My friends moved out of the dorms and into their own house (their own house!!) during my senior year. I’d go down to South Oakland on the weekends for parties and ruckus-raising of the teenage variety. This album was a soundtrack to those parties. We’d listen to it through at least once – sometimes thrice – a night. Man, those were the days when property destruction never made one pause and think, “This is WRONG.”


Weezer – Islands in the Sun - Weezer (Green Album) - May 15, 2001
Oh, to go back to the days when Weezer didn’t totally shit on their albums with ridiculous titles (Raditude?!)… Weezer Green was such a big deal my senior year! My friends in college went on elaborate road trips to see their reunion shows (The Get Up Kids were the openers for that tour and they played gymnasiums decorated like a school dance!), but I had to stay home and go to high school like the high schooler I was. Oh well. Hip, hip.


Travis – Flowers in the Window - The Invisible Band - June 11, 2001
Travis is one of the only bands on here that I discovered for myself. And I did it by watching that terrible MTV show Twelve Angry Viewers. Do you remember that? Where they sat twelve popular-culture-only minded people in a room and had them watch three or four music videos (ON MTV – I KNOW!) and then they voted on them. The ones with good scores went into heavy rotation. The ones with bad scores would never been seen again. The only episode I ever watched from beginning to end had Travis’ “All I Wanna Do Is Rock” on it. And it was PANNED. That’s when I knew something was starting to change: I wasn’t thinking along the same prepackaged, canned lines as the majority of the people my age anymore.


Well, there you have it. My senior year. I would go back and relive the whole thing - beginning to end. Til next time...