Counting Crows "August and Everything After"

OK, back to the topic of albums that first made me fall in love with albums. Now, mind you, these are not records I would necessarily consider my favorite. These are just albums that I got in highschool that got me totally hooked on being a record collector.

Keith and I often would buy tapes together. If a tape cost $9.99, we'd each pay $5.00. I don't know what made us buy this record. There used to be a great radio station in the Bay Area called KOME. In th early 90s, KOME played new Alternative stuff and they weren't bent on commercial stuff only. They played more stuff and took more chances than LIVE105, but they folded after a couple summers.

I remember the day we bought it, we laid on Keith's double bed and listened to the tape repeat and repeat. This was alternative music that wasn't angry, but full of emotion. It was not there for shock or gimmick, but for art's sake. The lyrics were abstract, but not so abstract that they were silly or meaningless. In these ways, it was so different than the other alternative music out there. I mean, the guitar solos are country telecaster twang solos! It had organ, slide/steel instruments, dobro.

I think the most important thing this record did was get grungy little alterna-boys off of the Nirvana/Metallica teat and expanded people's perception of what "alternative" music was.