30 Years, 30 Days: Day 7, 1986

You know what I remember about 1986, more than anything? More than the demise of Black Flag and The Dead Kennedy's? More than the death of Cliff Burton? More than the first inductions to the Rock N' Roll Hall of Fame? I cared about none of these things in 1986, but do you know what I did care about with every ounce of my six year old self? I'll tell you what: The Monkees.

I know, I know. How can a person who has name checked XTC, Kate Bush, Violent Femmes and many other hip canonical 80s recording so far want to spend any line space at all writing about The Monkees? I'll make what would most likely be classified as an embarrassing confession: I was a Monkees fan for years before I really came to listen to The Beatles. 1986 marked the 20th anniversary of the band, and it was all over the radio (at least where I grew up). My babysitter, Heather, was about 14 and obsessed with The Monkees, so therefore I became obsessed with The Monkees. Here's the thing: you can't control the first bits of pop music you come into contact with. In a perfect world, we'd all discover Sgt Pepper at age 5 and everything would fall into place from there. My earliest pop music memories consist of sitting in the kitchen with Heather making tapes of Monkees' songs from the radio for me. "Last Train To Clarksville", "Pleasant Valley Sunday", "Daydream Believer": these were my first steps into "rock" music. Every time I hear a Monkees' song, it's takes me back to being six and dancing around the living room like an idiot. I love it.

But in terms of the "serious" albums of 1986, I have to start with REM's Life's Rich Pageant. This is the first REM record to enter the series, and will not be the last. REM was a band I discovered in middle school, right at the height of their major label successes. I loved Michael Stipe's slightly nasal voice and the glitter and jangle of Peter Buck's guitar and the positive nature of their music. As I grew older and began to decipher Stipe's lyrics, I would learn that thematically this wasn't necessarily the case. They were one of the first bands I ever listened to that mixed overtly up-tempo music with very dark themes, sugarcoating them so you would swallow them immediately and let them bloom in your brain as you listened to it more and more.

"Fall On Me" remains in my top five REM songs, and high on the list of all-time favorites. the interplay between Mills and Stipe during the chorus is sublime, and it's one of the many songs that really shows off Stipe's range, from mid-range to high and piercing. "Cuayahoga" would become one of my favorite words long before I knew it was a river in Ohio, and Mills once again compliments Stipe in the chorus perfectly. There are so many things that make REM great, I won't blow them all in their first appearance.

And as long as we're glorifying 80s college rock, we cannot continue any further until we acknowledge the debut album from one of the most creative, pop-oriented bands I've ever heard. They Might Be Giants (or also known as "The Pink Album") is the most anti-rock album to be considered a rock album. It's full of consumer-grade synthesizers, drum machines and an accordion, for God's sake! But it has served as a soundtrack to millions of self-proclaimed freaks, geeks and nerds, and it definitely was for me. While a lot of rock music was busy making you feel not as cool as the guys singing it, one look at John Linnel and John Flansburgh and know that a) they are just as geeky as you and b) you might actually be able to kick their ass.

And lyrically, it's a high-minded nerd fest. Full of wordplay, double meanings, discrete references and the like, it is truly an album for people who spent more time reading books and listening to records than going outside, maybe building up a semblance of athleticism. This is not to discredit the fan base or the Johns, but to simply state that if rock music is truly for everyone, then someone had to make music like this in order to fulfill the promise. And as far as highlights go, this album is full of them: "Don't Let's Start", "Put Your Hand Inside The Puppet Head", "Nothing's Going To Change My Clothes", "Rhythm Section Want Ad", it goes on and on. This was the first record I ever heard that seemed to make it okay to be a nerd, or to have a mind of my own and use it, and to be amused at humor that wasn't at someone's expense or a standard "joke-punchline" format. I would devour everything TMBG put out for years, as they would continue to get better and better as players as well as songwriters. Their "descent" into kids' albums may have seemed like a middle-aged sell-out to many, but I've always seen it as the Johns just trying to inject a little intelligence and dignity into a genre that is pretty much designed to sell toys, when it should be educating while entertaining. Kudos to them.

A couple honorable mentions for today come straight from the "My Parents Played This" file, which while not as thick as other files, contains some really important music. Both Paul Simon's Graceland and Huey Lewis and the News' Fore! were played heavily in the house from 1986 and on, and both shaped me immensely. Graceland showed me a mixture of pop rock melody and world music didn't have to a niche record, it could just be great and catchy and take you out of the usual formulas of rock music. And Fore! showed me that you can be one of the most popular band's of your time, and make music that is both incredibly accessible and incredibly good at the same time. Of course, I did not come to these realizations at six, I just played these albums over and over again until I absorbed everything a six year old can absorb from music not written for them. So I must doff my cap to my folks again for bringing some excellent music to me at a young age. The record player wasn't always spinning in my house, but when it was, it was worth hearing over and over again.

-Dan