Thursday, March 5, 2009

Crazy Pete Gets The Girl - Another Dorm Days Flashback!

Hey chickapees, how are ya? I hope you're enjoying the tour through my days of yore. I promise to have an original piece that's tentatively titled "The Ballad of the UGC" up by the end of this weekend. Tomorrow is probably going to be my last shift at my current job up at the University of Utah, and I'm pretty sure I won't have much to do except to craft a story in dedication to the rich tapestry that was golf at the "U." So be on the lookout for that. Anyway, tonights bawdy tale flashes back to February of 2001. There's a few new characters in this one. I dole out a little relationship advice, which in itself is hilarious. God knows, I don't think I've had a relationship last longer than twenty minutes in the last ten years. But I did listen to Loveline every night, so that means I'm qualified, right? Also, make sure you read through to the end for a little bonus video action featuring a few appearances by the characters in this story, just so you won't think I'm making this all up. And away we go:

"Crazy Pete Gets The Girl"
(February 2001)

It was in late February of year 2 in Room 302 and all of us were finally gelling as roommates. Earlier in the year, The Nate, Big Nick and I were pretty stunned when Junior and The Dave did not return, but the new guys VodkaRob, Jose' and Crazy Pete fit in with our fairly messed up personalities quite nicely. We were actually going to make it a full year without somebody giving up on us! Unfortunately, The Nate was becoming increasingly withdrawn, taking part in our weekend binges less and less frequently. Apparently something about Pete and Jose' rubbed him the wrong way. But none of us could figure out what. Kind of a shame, he missed out on quite a few good times down the stretch that year, even some not so good, and some that were both like the subject of the story today.


It was your typical Friday at Westminster. The best kept secret of that school is the vast majority of classes ran from Monday to Thursday with very few classes on Fridays. So if you played your cards right, it was almost like a three-day weekend every week! It was perfect for nursing a Post-"Margarita Thursday" hangover. And man-oh-man; I was feeling it that day. But hell, it was worth it, because tonight was the school's Mardi Gras celebration as well as the beginning of Spring Break.


We also just happened to be one day away from tickets to the AC/DC Stiff Upper Lip Tour going on sale. If you did not live in the Salt Lake area, you probably would not know just how big of a deal that was back then. After an incident with a fan getting trampled during a Razor's Edge Tour show a decade before, the band had not scheduled a tour stop in Salt Lake since. So Crazy Pete, VodkaRob, Jose' and myself were especially stoked to see those legends grace the stage once again in our neck of the woods. Crazy Pete seemed especially excited for the show, but he had been growing increasingly anxious about something else.

There was this certain female classmate of his that, in his words gave him that familiar "climbing the rope in gym class" kind of feeling. The dude was smitten with her. One problem though, she was afflicted with what was known in the Latin as "Boyfriendus-Douchebaggus." You know, she was with the wrong guy. Crazy Pete was the right guy. And since I was in the midst of a not-so-ideal situation myself with Golf-Girl, it was one of the few things Crazy Pete and I found some common ground on. Women were the subject of many of our beer drinking sessions.


Anyway, I had finally got home from an all-afternoon session in my office down at the gym assisting with breaking down tapes on UM-Western for the basketball game the next day. I stopped in the kitchen to pour a shot, grabbed a Michelob out of the fridge and cruised down the hallway to my room. Crazy Pete stopped me in the hallway. "Nickas! Dude! Candace finally broke up with that prick!"


"That's great! How'd you find out, brah?" I asked.


"Well, we were in this study group this afternoon and she told me while we were planning out the work on our class project," He replied.


"Sweet! So she went out of her way to tell you?"


"Yeah," he said, "I thought it was kind of weird."


Now, one thing that I am not very good at is catching a hint, especially from girls. Hell, the writing was on the wall between Jules and I before school even started, but that did not stop me from feeling pretty blindsided three weeks into the year when the hammer finally dropped. And after I took her to see Def Leppard too! But this situation right here seemed obvious as hell to me. "Dude, you have to call her. She wouldn't have told you about her breakup if she didn't dig ya!"


"I don't think she wants me too." He said sheepishly.


"Bullshit man! This is your chance! Call her right now!" I had no idea if that was a good idea or not. Sadly, my biggest problem over the years when it came to women was inaction. I never made the call at the right time if I ever made the call at all. "Dude, make something up, invite her over to work on your project or something." Why the hell was he listening to me?


"I don't know man." He started to wear down.


So I went over and picked up his phone, looked at her number pinned to his bulletin board and started to dial. "Pete, I have fucked up way way way way way too many times. If I let you walk away from this I won't be able to live with myself." The alcohol was definitely talking there. I got to damn near the last digit when he grabbed the receiver out of my hand.


"All right, man, I'll do it." Crazy Pete hit the last button on the phone and pulled his best Optimus Prime impression by transforming into fucking Mr. Suave! He made a little small talk and invited her over to work on their project and hang out that night. It fucking worked! Even I was surprised!


"Are you going to take her to Mardi Gras tonight?" I asked. "I think Jose' and I are going to cruise down there in a couple of hours or so."


"We'll probably just work on the project and hang out." And then he said the magic words: "We'll see what happens."


I snagged a giant can of Fosters out of the fridge to drink in the shower, entered the bathroom and flipped on everybody's favorite rock and roll institution KBER 101. Motley Crue into Metallica into AC/DC into White Zombie into Def Leppard into Godsmack; is it any wonder why I love that station as much as I do? By the end of my shower I felt good and loose. I loves me a long hot shower with a little alcohol. Anyway, I hopped across the hall to my bedroom and got dressed in the nicest pair of cargo pants and the cheesiest looking Hawaiian shirt I could find. I went with the Hilfiger with the Woody cars on it. Real subtle. It was time to get festive! I entered the kitchen/living room area to find a bunch of girls from that room down the hall and VodkaRob pounding down some cocktails.


As I was joining in the festivities, I heard Crazy Pete knocking on The Nate's door. "Can I borrow some tequila, man?" he asked. The Nate shot him down. Things were starting to get a little uncool with old Nate, but at the same time, he had a $50 bottle of Herradura he did not want going to waste. So I kind of understood. Fortunately I had a huge bottle of Cuervo in my stash that I was more than happy to part with for a good cause, and this certainly qualified as a good cause. "What are you mixing up bro?" I asked.


"I thought we'd just do some shots or something."


"Well Pete, I'll tell you what, use as much of that bottle that you want, but if Candace isn't up for tequila, you can use whatever of my stuff you want, except for the Goose. That shit is expensive!"


VodkaRob and the girls from down the hall soon vanished, leaving just myself, Crazy Pete and Jose' playing some Tony Hawk II on our little television. Big Nick and Ali were in his room "taking a nap" which usually involved a lot of slapping noises and laughing. The Nate and his girl Lisa had locked themselves up in his room and were pounding something against the wall, probably each other. Good times! It was about 10:00 when we heard a knock at the door. In his excitement, Crazy Pete nearly busted his ass tripping on a stool while running to the door. In walked Candace who seemed just a little too made-up to be coming over to work on a class project. This was a slam dunk for the Pete-ster! As Col. Hannibal Smith of The A-Team once said, "I love it when a plan comes together!" They went down the hall to VodkaRob's room to use his computer while Jose' and I had a shot and caught our ride down to Mardi Gras.


One thing Westminster always got right was the parties they threw. As opposed to the student events thrown down at the College of Eastern Utah, these were typically wild-assed soirees where the liquor flowed, the tuneage thumped and everyone was dressed to the nines. I'll get a little more in-depth about those parties in a future story. They were a doozy!


We got down there around 10:15, met up with Peeze, Dane-o, and The Line-Stepper and commenced to having a couple drinks, limbo-ing and having a good time. I didn't intend on staying too long just because we had to get up early the next day to stand in line for the tickets. The years of self abuse had taken their toll by then and I just could'nt hang anymore. So I bailed around 11:15, catching a ride with Rachel, one of my teammates from the golf team.


I got back to 302 to find some of the girls from down the hall digging through the cupboards in the kitchen. "Where do you keep your bread?!" one of them yelled at me.


"What bread?" I slurred, my head already starting to pound. "What in the blue hell is going on?"


"She's in there throwing-up!" She hollered.


So I headed back up the hallway towards my room and I heard the moaning and retching noises coming out of the open bathroom door. I saw a trail of vomit leading from the door to the john as two more of the girls from down the hallway nearly ran me over. "Where are your paper towels?!"


"Paper towels? They're in the pantry." I answered. Why the fuck were they yelling at me? I looked in Crazy Pete's room. He was lying down on his bed, the faint odor of tequila and hurl was in the air. I looked on his desk, the entire fifth of Cuervo was reduced to about 3/4 of an inch in the bottom of the bottle. I had to look at the clock twice. 11:30. Yup, only an hour and fifteen minutes had passed since Candace had arrived. Zero to puking in an hour! "That's got to be some kind of a record!" I thought. "Pete, are you all right?" I asked shaking him back into the land of the living.


"Oh fuck dude, give me a minute." He moaned.


I figured things would get a little messy so I went into my room, flipped on Scott Ian's "Rock Show" on VH1 and changed out of my good clothes tossing on a pair of basketball shorts and my Megadeth t-shirt. Whitesnake's Still of the Night video kicked on as I decided it was time to take over. I retreated to the kitchen, filled a glass of water and went back down the hallway. I went into the bathroom where poor Candace was praying to the porcelain god. "Hey. Are you gonna be all right kiddo?" She looked up, the sweat and tears making the mascara bleed down her face, giving her the vague appearance of Alice Cooper in the early years. "Here, sip some of this, real slowly." I handed her the glass, trying to not look completely horrified. "It's just some cool water." Crazy Pete shuffled in. "Grab a washcloth out of the drawer, and soak it in some cool, but not cold water," I hollered at him.


"You asshole." He hissed as he handed me the washcloth.


I handed it to her, "Here, wash your face off a little bit and hold it against your forehead." I turned my attention to Pete, "Why am I the asshole?"


"If you hadn't have made me call her, this never would have happened. This is all YOUR fault, man!" He wasn't making any sense. In my previous days I probably would have let him have it, but my many years of experiencing consistently fucked up situations had tempered me. He was obviously still pretty drunk. Anything I said probably would have made the whole situation worse. But Christ, what the hell happened in that hour? And where the hell was VodkaRob? He better be having some fun. In my best Winston Wolf from Pulp Fiction impression I looked Crazy Pete dead in the eye and very calmly laid it out.


"Pete, we'll talk about this in the morning. Right now, we've got a sick girl on our hands that we need to take care of. And considering both you and VodkaRob are still underage, if we draw the attention of the RA or the Dean we are ALL fucked. So sober your ass up right now and help out. Go and empty out one of my cans of coffee." Evidently my great aunts, bless their little old hearts thought I drank twenty cups of coffee a day. So every time I went home to Price they'd send a giant-ass can of Folgers up with me.


Pete shuffled down into the kitchen and I got poor Candace another glass of water and a multi-vitamin. I walked past my room to see one of the girls from down the hall in there looking at my music collection. "Something I can do for ya?" I asked. She looked up, blank look on her face, "I like the heavy stuff too. Are you into Creed and Vertical Horizon?" she asked. My eyes rolled, this was definitely a conversation I did not need to have right now.


"Uhhh, not now," I said more annoyed than anything as I grabbed my extra blanket and pillow out of my closet and tossed them on the couch. "Okay Pete, I'm going to need some help right now dude. She threw up her shoes a minute ago so I think she's done yakking, let's have her lie down. We need to move her out to the couch." Pete and I carried her out, layed her down on the couch, propped up her head and threw a blanket on her. The girls from down the hall finally left and I grabbed a Dewzer out of the fridge. Pete sat down on the big chair and hung his head. "Pete, you did a good job tonight. I'm proud of ya. The two of you are going to be all right, man." I said.


"I think I love this girl." He slurred. "What went wrong?"


"Cheer up dude, you've still got a chance. One bad night isn't going to kill ya's. You saw how she was dressed when she came in, it's pretty damn obvious that she digs you." I continued, "Just take it a little bit slower next time, Dude." Silence. "Pete? Hey, bro?" I looked up at him. He had his head in his hands and was passed out snoring. I threw a blanket over his shoulders, turned out the living room light, and grabbed a mop. He was probably right, it was all my fault. I guess I deserved cleanup duty.


Metallica's Motorbreath jolted me out of bed at 7:30 the next day. Thankfully the headache was gone. I jumped in the shower, cleaned up and got dressed. Tickets went on sale promptly at 9:00 AM so we had to bust ass down to the store. As I walked out, the living room area was deserted. No sign of Crazy Pete or Candace. VodkaRob popped his head out his door, looking a little worse for wear. "Hang on, let me put on some pants and I'll go with you." He said groggily.


"Take your time. Just meet me out at the Blazer." I said walking out the door.


Rob walked up to the truck looking disheveled to say the least. "Rough night?" I asked.

"You don't want to know?" he replied.


We met Jose' and another buddy of mine, Little Nick, down at the grocery store and waited patiently for the ticket lottery. In walked Crazy Pete about twenty minutes later. "What a trooper bro! You're alive!" I exclaimed. "Why aren't you in bed dude? Rob and I could have handled this."


"I had to be here man. AC/DC." he replied, horns up.


"How much of your project did you get done?" Rob asked.


"Not a whole lot. That chick is nuts. I can't remember too much."


That's probably a good thing.


Epilogue:

We ended up getting awesome seats for AC/DC, right on the floor. I even scored a hottie rocker-chick, Jess, from the dorm for a date. This was a first for me for a big rock concert. Before the show, we shot a little video in the parking lot that planted the seed in VodkaRob, Jose' and I for a little project we're coming out with in a few months. VodkaRob started an on-again/off again relationship with one of the girls down the hall. And as for Crazy Pete, well, Crazy Pete got the girl. Pete and Candace got an "A" on their project and dated well into the following summer. She became yet another one of the crazy characters woven into the tapestry of the Room 302, the Penthouse of Residence Hall 3. Score one for the good guys.


Bonus:

Here's a rough cut of the video we shot in the E-Center parking lot before the tremenduous AC/DC Stiff Upper Lip show. Hope ya'll like it!







Sunday, March 1, 2009

The ten albums that best describe who I am...

My old 9-Ball/trivia bitch Ben stumbled upon a hell of an idea. Which ten albums do the best job of explaining your personality. Kind of a desert island list here. What are the ten albums that shaped your world? Here's mine in no particular order at all:


1. AC/DC ~ Live (1992):
The first hard rock album that I ever purchased. This record captures their best recordings from one of the old Monsters of Rock tours. It was the first live record featuring Brian Johnson on the lead vox and the first live album the band released since 1978's If You Want Blood (You Got It) featuring Bon Scott. Now that one might be the better live record critically, but I didn't wear out two copies of that album in my old truck like I did with the Live record. It wasn't until I finally saw them live back in 2001 that I finally realized just how damn good that band really is. They are every bit as good and dare I say even more powerful live than they are on record. As a bonus, they're one of Keith Richards' favorite bands, and really, has that dude ever led us astray?


2. The Rolling Stones ~ Let It Bleed (1969)
Speaking of Keith Richards, when discussing the Stones, the first album almost every rock critic pulls out as the pinnacle of their career is 1972's Exile on Main St. But for my money you can definitely do worse than the record that came before it, Let It Bleed It captured the band in a state of flux. The band's founder and original rhythm guitarist Brian Jones died on the day the last tracks for this album were recorded. A lot of the band's most recognizable material came from this album like "You Can't Always Get What You Want" and "Gimme Shelter" but I kind of liked the deeper cuts like "Love In Vain" and "Monkey Man." This album also has Keith's lead vocal debut on one of my favorite songs called "You Got The Silver." Back in my senior year of high school, I had a shitty little clock radio that would also play tapes. So for the better part of a school year, I was woken up by a different Rolling Stones song every morning. "You Got The Silver" woke me up on the morning after I learned that my family was disintegrating. So that song kind of earned the title of the first song of the rest of my life.


3. Led Zeppelin ~ Houses of the Holy (1973)
Gotta echo Ben's sentiments here. Some of my most vivid memories growing up were playing this album on a seemingly endless loop while we were down in Nick's basement shooting pool and crushing Market Express Cherry Cokes. In fact, that record might have been the background music for "what Chad said," the single greatest psych out in amateur billiards history. I remember those times often because, things weren't exactly going the greatest for me at the time with the family situation and all, and I was a bitter, pissed off kid. Those days helped me get past it. Plus it also helped that one of those Page and Plant tours was the third concert we ever went to. My personal favorites off this disk, "D'yer Mak'er," "No Quarter," and "The Crunge." Also had a great mention in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure when noted thespian Keanu Reeves referred to ancient Greece as a "countryside that much resembled the cover of Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy."


4. Supersuckers ~ Motherfuckers Be Trippin' (2003)
I spent the better part of 2003 recovering from a very dark period in my life. Early 2003 found be flat broke, busted, unemployed and destitute. A buddy of mine took a chance on me and gave me a job that put me back in the golf business. Only this time, I was sitting on an overheating mower for eight hours a day in 105 degree heat. I actually really liked that job and it made me a more rounded professional later. Anyway, as I was sitting on a fairway mower hallucinating daily from heat sickness and trying to go in a straight line, more often than not, I was spinning this disc in my ancient CD player. I don't know why I didn't get into this band sooner. I think it was primarily because up until this point most of their songs were about smoking dope, which is one thing I've never really been into. This album though was primarily about drinking and fighting, which was a little bit more my speed. This one's a pretty solid punk and hard rock record highlighted by what's become a staple of their live sets the last few years "Pretty Fucked Up," as in "She used to be pretty, but now she's just pretty fucked up." It's a tune that finally made sense to me recently when I reconnected with an old friend. And in a lot of ways almost wish I hadn't. But hell, it's all good. Other awesome tracks on this disk include "Bruises to Prove It," "A Good Night For My Drinkin," and "Sleepy Vampire."


5. Metallica ~ Load (1996)
Okay, not their best album by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, most people would probably say pretty much every album not named St. Anger (which I actually kinda liked) was better than this one. And I'd be hard pressed to disagree. But for its time and place, namely rolling around in Bryan Wischer's 1982 Buick Regal in the summer of 1996 it's got its moments. Our little gang must have spun this cassette tape at least 1436 times while driving all over the state playing golf, camping and raising hell that summer. It provided a pretty good soundtrack to the last summer before our senior year. My personal favorite song off this one is the closing track "The Outlaw Torn," and was happy to see that song get fully fleshed out on their S & M album three years later. I also dug "The Hero of the Day," "Wasting My Hate," and "King Nothing." During my first Metallica concert, up at Weber State's football field, they were playing "Bleeding Me" when Ben, Nick, Chris and I, ditched our shitty seats, jumped the fence and stormed the pit. Along with about 1000 other heshers. Good times! Although, if I were stranded on a desert island I'd probably pick a different album from my favorite band.


6. Social Distortion ~ Social Distortion (1990)
I came along pretty late to this band, but was turned on to them by a few of my Metal Sludge brethren. Great old-school punk band that brought a lot of outlaw country influence (at least thematically) to the mix. Most hardcore fans of theirs will point towards Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell and White Light, White Heat, White Trash as better albums, but this album's got probably my favorite three songs of theirs: "Ball and Chain," their cover of Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire" and "Story of my Life" which is more or less my theme song nowadays. When I'm announcing games on the PA for Westminster Basketball, I play a lot of varied stuff that you'll rarely hear at any other sporting event, I'm not much of a "jock-jams" guy. But for the last 3:30 of halftime I've made it a custom to spin "Ring of Fire" as the team comes back out to get ready for the second half. When the crowd hears Mike Ness' chugging intro riff to that song, they know it's about time to get rowdy again and will the Griffins to victory.


7. Anthrax ~ The Sound of White Noise (1993)
Just an overall punishing record. When the band ditched Joey Belladonna in favor of Armored Saint's John Bush, they took on a much more serious tone than the goofy punk-infused thrash that they were known for previously. I'm usually not too big a fan when a band starts putting out more serious material. That's usually a good sign that they're becoming a little too full of themselves and are starting to get a little blowhardy. I listen to music primarily to elevate my mood, put a smile on my face, and get me jumping around like a freebasing orangutan. But this album just, plain works. They became more of a straight-up metal band with this record, and you're going to have to travel far and wide to find a better album sonically. My fondest experience listening to this album had to be borrowing my old college roommate's jacked up, top-off Jeep to drive across town one morning my senior year of college. My old Blazer was broken down, and I'd just had my wallet stolen the day before so I was feeling particularly shitty. And I needed to hit the DMV to get a new drivers license. He let me borrow his badass ride, complete with as loud a sound system as you could fit into that little thing, to run that errand. I threw in The Sound of White Noise, cranked it to eleven, and when the first couple blast beats from "Potters Field" kicked in I could literally see the windows on the dorm shake. Awesome. Great release and needless to say, I felt better. Also has the track "Black Lodge" which had one of the weirdest videos ever, directed by David Lynch and starring Jenna Elfman. I just had to sneak that track onto my playlist the day I got to host a four-hour show on the local rock station KBER 101.


8. Motley Crue ~ Motley Crue (1994)
Not a lot of people outside of the Metal Sludge community don't know about this hidden gem of a record. Hell, a lot of people don't even consider this a proper Motley album due to the band's firing of longtime lead singer, Vince Neil, a couple of years previous. In some ways they have a point, because this almost sounds like a brand new band. Nikki Sixx, Tommy Lee and Mick Mars decided to soldier on and tabbed journeyman frontman John Corabi, formerly of a little known but excellent L.A. band called The Scream, to take Vince's place. The song's on this record took a decidedly darker and heavier tone on this album than the typical Motley party anthems that came before it. I'll tell you what though, I don't think Tommy Lee's drumming ever sounded better than it did on this album, and adding Corabi to the mix also added his solid rhythm guitar work as well. So instead of having to do all of the guitar work on the songs that freed up Mick to concentrate solely on the leads giving all of the songs a lot more depth. Corabi's scratchy, blues soaked vocals did turn off a lot of fans used to Vince's cleaner, high pitched wail. I played the hell out of this album back in college, often playing along with it with my own guitar, much to the dismay of my roommates or any dogs that happened to be in the neighborhood at the time. Listened to this record a lot on the driving range warming up for golf tournaments. My own personal favorite tune on this one is "Til Death Do Us Part," but I also like "Hooligan's Holiday," "Smoke the Sky," and "Uncle Jack." Give this one a chance folks, trust me, if after two or three spins you just can't get into it, feel free to call me an asshole.


9. Alice Cooper ~ Trash (1989)
I'd be remiss if I didn't include at least one Alice Cooper album on my list. The guy is hands down, and I will not argue about this, the most original American rock star of all time. And it's a goddamn crime against humanity that he isn't in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame right now while tripe like Steely Dan, and James Taylor is. Unbelievable bullshit. Anyway, I can't just pick a favorite Alice record because, well he's got 32 of them going back to 1967. Over the years, I've managed to acquire all of them and there isn't a shitty one of the bunch. But the Trash album got my foot in the door with the guy. Senior year of high school, on those long debate trips, I was spinning the hell out of that album in my little discman in the back of the bus. Always liked "Poison," the lead track but this disc was loaded with good tunes. "Bed of Nails," "House of Fire" and what's become my favorite over the years, "This Maniac's In Love With You." Alice often credited golf with helping him to finally kick his alcoholism and eventually save his life, and I certainly can relate to that. I can't imagine what kind of mess I'd be right now if I didn't have the game in my life. People need to get wise. Based on his total body of work, both with the original Alice Cooper Band and solo, Alice Cooper is the undisputed heavyweight champion of American rock and roll and it's not even close.


10. Guns N' Roses ~ Appetite For Destruction (1987)
Lightning in a bottle. One of only a few absolutely perfect albums ever made. And that's a statement backed up by hardcore fans, critics and even people that don't seem to like heavy music all that much. Even they all agree on this one. There isn't a single bit of filler on this record. Just an onslaught. Although songs like "Welcome to the Jungle," "Paradise City," "Night Train," and "Mr. Brownstone" are lyrically about the kind of trouble you can find if you try to "make it" in the big city and fail. Anybody that grew up in my little hometown could find something to relate to here. I didn't know too many kids my age that didn't own this album back home. When my buddy Rob and I went down to Vegas to see the "new" Guns N' Roses a couple of years ago, they ended up playing most of this album. It's now wonder, as much as I like Lies, Use Your Illusion, The Spaghetti Incident?, and even Chinese Democracy, they don't quite measure up to the debut. Lately I've been cranking it whenever "Out Ta Get Me" and "It's So Easy" pop up on the shuffle in my car. But the closing track, "Rocket Queen," I'm convinced, is probably the absolute apex of hard rock. One of my top 5 songs of all time. The whole album still gets regular spins in my car.


Honorable Mention: Prince ~ Purple Rain (Dude played the halftime show of the first Bears Super Bowl in 22 years!), L.A. Guns ~ A Nite on the Strip, Live! (Probably my favorite "hair" metal band), Rob Zombie ~ Hellbilly Deluxe (All of us on the 1997-1999 CEU Golf team played the hell out of this album on trips), Metallica ~ Death Magnetic (Great return to form for the band and has been the soundtrack of the chaos my professional life has been in since September), and a special honorable mention to my buddy Bryan Wischer's famous mix, "The Tape." (The only other cassette that ever seemed to find its way into the deck in his car during the Load summer.)


How say you folks, what are your "ten albums?"