365 project, "don't need a helmet, got a hard, hard head/don't need a raincoat, i'm already wet"

176.

Artist: Pearl Jam
Album: Vitalogy

I have two distinct memories of this album.

As it was released in 1994, my first copy of this album was on cassette. (I later re-purchased it on vinyl because I could not resist the fun in listing to the song “spin the black circle” on a black, spinning circle. See? isn’t that fun to think about?) It didn’t take me very long at all to realize that my two favorite tracks on the cassette (“nothingman” and “better man”) were in the exact same place on opposite sides of the tape. This resulted in my playing one song, popping the tape out of the walkman, flipping it, and playing the other song. This happened more times than I care to remember, really, though life for me got a lot easier with the invention of the flip switch on the newer models of the walkman. This meant that I no longer had to physically switch the tape, I just had to flip a switch. awesomesauce.

The other story still makes me laugh, even all of these years later. I have always, since I started owning music, spent the first few weeks after buying a new album with said album stuck on repeat. In later years, that has meant making copies of the album so that I could have one in the car and one in my room, plus one on my ipod, but in 1994, this wasn’t the easiest task, so I just basically walked around with headphones on my ears nonstop. Actually, I used to take my walkman in the car with me whenever we would go anywhere, so that I didn’t have to listen to my dad’s music in the car. I still do this on the rare occasion that I am riding anywhere with my parents, though its far more likely that I will just drive myself so that I can sing along at the top of my lungs without disturbing anyone else’s conversation.

So if I was 14 when this album came out, that would have made the twins 10 years old. 14 and 10 seem to be the perfect taunting ages, and obviously we were no exception. We still all pick on each other, even hovering around 30 years of age. I guess its just a sibling thing.

Anyway, it has seemingly always been my mission in life to make my brother Tim listen to the same music that I listen to. I guess this was largely due to the fact that his musical taste is similar enough to mine that he could be converted, while the other two were farther out there, my sister listening to top 40 stuff and my baby brother listening to rap. I distinctly remember chasing Tim through the back yard one day trying to put my headphones on him in order to make him listen to the song “bugs” on this album. He didn’t know what the song was, but he didn’t want to listen, so he kept running from me until we got yelled at to get into the car. We climbed into the van, and I spent the entire trip to mom-mom and pop-pop’s trying to make him listen to the song. I never did succeed.