Come out and play
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Artist:
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Album:
I bought my first album in 1994, in the age of 13. It was none other than...
YUP! The Offspring were my first obsessive band crush, and their singer, Dexter Holland, my first artist crush. It was because of this album and my crush that I bought my first music magazine ever (from which I got introduced to Girls Against Boys, Morphine, Afghan WHigs, etc). They had The Offspring on the cover :)
Before this CD, me and my friends were exchanging cassettes like crazy. Then we all started to get CD players, and the new ear began. I remember saving money to buy this CD, and going to a small record shop near my flat to get it. At the time, my 13 year old brain thought that if a CD's inner sleeve did not contain the lyrics, it was not worth buying (no internet and googling at the time, of course). I talked about these worries of mine to the record store employee, who indulged me, and since we could not open the sealed case, we used a little pencil through a tiny hole in the case to stir the sleeve and see if it contained lyrics. It did, so I went home with.
The album starts with a very short welcome narration, which, needless to say, I had never heard before, so I regarded it to be an exciting intro. I enjoyed the CD thoroughly {head-banging to it probably gave me permanent brain damage}, and played it over and over again. Favourite song went from Self-Esteem, to Come Out And Play, to Bad Habit, to Killboy Powerhead. One day, after the last song on the album, I couldn't be bothered to stop it, so I just let it be, while I was laying on my bed, reading a book. Suddenly, after about 5 minutes of silence, I hear music! A secret instrumental song! Oh joy! I had no idea of this concept till that time, and you can imagine my happiness.
Even though The Offspring always was an exception to my musical taste, I have a very soft spot for this album. The record store I bought it from exists no more, but my memories of the day always will.
Relative post: http://mog.com/Mike_the_Knife/blog/1267326
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Comments (41)
For some reason I do not have any Offspring in my library. Sad day. One of my friends is a huge fan of theirs. I'll have to borrow some from them.
I remember the excitement I used to have buying cds. Occasionally I will still get it but only if I've been anticipating an album for some time, or if I find something that I did not at all expect to at a given store. Plus I buy less cds now than back in the day. I try to focus on vinyl more.
I can't remember the first time I came across a hidden track or what cd is what on, but I had a similar elated reaction as you haha. Nice post, Anna.
I have their first 5 CDs. I stopped after that, and I don't really listen to them anymore, but the memories are there :)
So exciting! Now we usually get to hear the album before it comes out on CD, so we are more sober. I think that the young ones will never feel that excitement with CDs, growing up in the internet era and all. If I focused on vinyl, too, I'm sure I'd be bankrupt by now ahahha
It was such a good feeling! Thank you :)
I'm a broke student, yet I keep buying vinyl and concert tickets. One of these days I will starve lol.
Music feeds our minds. We shall never starve! :)
Haha indeed
It's funny you mention this album. I, like every other teenager in America bought this record when it came out in the 90's. I recently went on a search for it to add a song or two to my Memory Lane playlist and guess what? I have it no longer! I have no recollection what happened to it. I stopped trading in CDs for cash years ago when I got rid of Tools 2nd album and the Brainscan soundtrack, so it wasn't a trade in. But, isn't it weird when you can't remember what happened to an old CD...?
As for The Offspring, I wasn't as obsessed w/ them as I was w/ Green Day and Nirvana, but like you, Anna, I haven't bought or listen to much by those two bands in ages.
Todd, if worse comes to worse....
Eric, maybe you lent it to someone and never got it back? It has happened to me many times :(
Nirvana and Hole are two more of vintage CDs for me :) I only had a cassette with some Green Day, I think.
I think the only band of that type/era I still listen to is Screaming Trees.
My first CD was Insomniac by Green Day, when I was 9. Close, I suppose. I didn't really start listening to music for real until my senior year of high school, where I tried to argue with my friends that the Ramones for British, and one of my friends from Flushing, Queens was like "Dude, I live two blocks away from where Joey Ramone" grew up. In shame, I bough a Ramones greatest hits comp, and in the liner notes they explained what punk was about, and then I was like "huh, that sounds kind of cool." The rest is history.
I too like these guys a lot, they are fun and always put out a pretty good album as far as I am concerned. If you have not gotten their newest offering Anna, you really should pick it up. It is quite good
Oh TyransAnger! So close! And even closer, I thought AC/DC were British at that age, and debated it as well hahahahha
Ah, liner notes. I loved reading them, especially if they had something like you mention. I also read who the bands thanked, and was happy when they thanked their fans :)
Hey Kevin! I have not heard the latest, first single aside, they are very far away from what I listen to now. I might give it a spin now that I got all nostalgic :)
By the way, we both share the early desire for the need of lyrics. I used to hate it when you would open the liner notes and there would just be pictures of the band
....well, I remember when lyrics were never included with the album unless it was Mitch Miller. When certain bands started the practice in the mid-sixties....it became tendy, then it almost became mandatory
Aww, look how cute you are with your little treasure!
It took one listen of "Come Out and Play" at a club to convince me that I needed this album. There was nothing better than driving along and head-banging to "Gotta Get Away", that was my favorite song.
Good man, Kevin! We need the lyrics. Must have lyrics! If I had gone home with Smash only to find out that it didn't have lyrics, I would have been very disappointed.
Jeff, oh thanks for the info, I didn't know! I'm glad it evolved that way. My English wasn't very practiced at the time, so I really needed lyrics!
Based on the new CDs I've bought lately, I think we're going backwards in the trend. Luckily, we now have the internet :)
Dale hehehehehhe :F
My first contact was Self-Esteem and it was a done deal. Gotta Get Away, yes! I liked that a lot, too :)
It's strange how our tastes evolve from High School into adulthood. I'd say like Tynans, music wasn't more than just the radio until senior year in High School and then it took 2-3 more years into college to discover college radio - Luna, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Pavement, Spoon, etc...
I always dug Ixnay On The Hombre (hearing 'All I Want' on the Crazy Taxi soundtrack really ignited the passion for that album), but I have a special place in my heart for Conspiracy Of One (my parents bought it for my 12th birthday!) Lost interest after Splinter; it's the Offspring equivalent of St Anger.
The summer that this song came out, when it was being played every ten minutes om the radio, I was working at a video editing facility in the Daily News building. One Friday when the workday was over I was standing around with some fellow employees of varying degree when one of the girls made a referrence to how humid out it was and how on humid days like this she felt most comfortable when her boobs weren't so close together "You've got to keep them seperated, ya know?" she said, to the group as a whole.
So while this song doesn't have the same hold on me as it does for many, I do have a very fond memory attached to it. Big sweaty boobs.
I thnk I mentioned on Mike The Knife's post that my first album was 'Close To You' by The Carpenters, which really dates me, lol. Oh well. Had a HUGE crush on Karen Carpenter!
That was my first album (on cd) too! I bought it and Pearl Jam's Vitalogy the same day. I was listening to it the other day in my car and enjoying how rockin it was! Love this post.
Hi Anna. I fondly remember making mixed tapes for friends and family. As CD's came on board I held off buying this format for years cause I have an extensive vinyl collection. I finally bought my first CD in the early 90's. It was Soundgarden. My first LP was Genesis, The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway.
I too am from the generation that lyrics were hardly incuded. No internet to look up the lyrics so what most of us did was listen to the song until you had the lyrics memorized. Can't tell you how many times I played a song until that happened. I used to play a game with vinyl records ....name that song after the record went around the turntable once and then recite the lyrics. cute pictue,Anna
Keep Em Separated/Come Out and Play also, for me, was one of those songs that I loved IMMEDIATELY. I actually bought the CD, but that was the only only Offspring album I ever purchased....not b/c I stopped liking them exactly, I just was never hooked on any of their songs like I was that one.
Of course, I AM a little older than you ;) but I can certainly relate to my early teen (actually, even before preteen) years of saving up for albums, album, albums!!
My first album was Billy Joel's The Stranger....when I was 8!----now that dates me, but who cares...music fanatics, unite!!
You were jailbait, huh?
LOL, I guess we all were at one point :)
Dachmo has the priceless comment on this one. !
used to love this single and other popular song they had out back then. i was in my early 20's in 94. they played come out and play at all the alternative dance clubs when it first came out. i always danced to it. i still enjoy it when i hear it today :)
my god i remember that summer fondly. my cousins, brother and i would go to my grandparents house after swimming lessons; we would instantly run downstairs to drink barqs rootbeer and watch mtv where they had this song on repeat. we didnt mind.
Eric, I went from alternative in the first 2 years of high school to more sophisticated rock, made an electronic turn at 18, then a hip hop one, and then I came back to my indie roots almost 3 years ago. Odd were life takes our tastes...
Robin, I don't think I have actually heard Conspiracy of One. I think it came out at a time when I had moved elsewhere. Love your memories around Offspring!
David ahahahhahaahah congratulations. I think that the song will NEVER again be the same for any of us.
OO
Uncle A, so much I don't know about you yet! :)
Helen, awesome! We are sisters in musical birth now :) Certainly makes for goooooood car music!
Thorn In My Slide, heya :)
The charm of those mixed tapes still hasn't faded from my head. I still have some in a drawer. It's my mini museum of music. Ah! Our CD beginnings are close! Do you now give more weight to vinyl purchases than CD ones?
cpetersonart, oh how many times did we listen to the lyrics! We would sometimes get stuck on a word, and it made us very frustrated. We even played the song for our English teacher, so that she would tell us what the word is. And of course, analyzing the lyrics. I specifically remember realizing that in Offspring's Self-Esteem the phrase "when she's ready to go" meant that she's about to climax. Dirty revelation, oh joy. All this repetition resulted to me still remembering lyrics from that time. I love your game! Thank you :)
Andrea, after buying Smash, I went and bought their previous two albums. The obsession was official (a T-shirt and a flag followed....ahhahaha).
Nonsense! Age is a state of mind :)
I totally relate to that memory. After Smash all my saved money went to music related things. And I'm glad it was so.
MFU!
Bill, what is jailbait? :)
Chris, I cannot argue with that...
Tranquil Rain, one of us one of us! :)
We were frequenting (and by that I mean "haunting") a small rock bar at the time, and we would always go bonkers when it came on. Regular circus!
Sam, I love how it turned out that we all have fond memories connected to this music. From David's boobies to your swimming lessons, we cover everything! MTV's heavy rotation of the songs we fancied was like a blessing.
Oh vintage video!
this was one of the earliest albums i bought on CD as well... and i listened to the heck out of it back then
now...Offspring make me wanna tear my eyes out whenver i hear them :o
That Offspring album brings back high school memories for me! It's one of those classic 90's cd's.
Hey American :)
I'm realizing now that we were all infected at some point.
hahhahaha I bet you use the CD as a coaster!
In Hiding, welcome to the cult! We take no prisoners (so far).
Classic 90's all the way. And we all survived them :)
The infection lives on for me. I'm still addicted to Pearl Jam lol
This was the second album I bought, third I own. I actually have my first 100-200 albums in the order in which I purchased them and I've never sold a cd. I used to sit in front of my parents' home theatre system (the only cd player in the house) and listen to this over and over again.
My friend and I would daydream of the day I got my license so we could go blasting down the interstate blaring "Bad Habit" in the '84 Chevy wagon.
I stopped listening to them around the Conspiracy of One era, when Dexter seemed to latch onto the "Pretty Fly for a White" song crafting for the band's singles.
I've heard from a number of friends that the new one is awesome, but I still haven't picked it up yet.
I remeber when this came out! I was a bit cautious at first, because I grew up with bands like Fugazi and this had an inkling of stolen style to me, but it grew on me fast. Good song writing, no B.S. What rock and roll should be!
I was in my last year of medical school by the time this came out but it was very popular even among those of us in our late 20's. I liked that these guys were or had been graduate students. I loved this album and Green Day's Dookie at the time. I also bought the Offspring's Americana a few years later as a resident. My favortie song of theirs is "Have you ever" the first song on Americana. I was on the verge of walking away from residency and the field of medicine as a whole and the song captured my feelings at the time exactly.
I'm with you and Kevin on the whole lyrics thing. My first album was the Beatles's Blue Album (i.e. later greatest hits) in the early 70's. I still have the original vinyl with lyrics on the liners right here.
Nice! :-) I think it was more or less when Definitely Maybe was released and I was also 13 or something. Good days. The kid sitting behind my desk used to love Offspring and he gave me a copy of this album on tape. In the mean time I was trying to survive Metallica's absence and going softer musicwise. Turning to Bjork and Oasis and even being a Gallagher fanatic before long. There the bitchy fight started between me and the Offspring kid. Oasis vs. Offspring. It was damn fun. Until the headmaster took our walkmans and had a mouthful at us that is.
Ahh, when I went to buy my first album around the same time (I was 4!) it was between Smash and Salt n Pepa's Very Necessary. I went with Salt n Pepa :P