Friday Playlist: High School Musical

Inspired by seeing Nine Inch Nails and Jane's Addiction last week, I've been thinking a lot about other music I used to listen to in high school. It was an odd mix of stuff, influenced by my friends, my brother (who in addition to recommending music directly, would often mail home CDs he received as promo items at the college radio station where he worked), and to some extent "alternative radio" which hadn't yet been completely extinguished by this point.

What follows is a big list of some of the songs and artists to which I listened most frequently during my high school years. I tried to pare it down, but I couldn't get below 22 tracks. Sorry, everybody. Time doesn't permit me to do a per-track explication (much as I'd like to) but just assume that I like all this stuff for various reasons. [Editor's note: vague enough?]

It's worth noting that for some of these bands, I listened to their best or most iconic albums in junior high, or didn't really come to know their back catalogs until college. It's also worth noting that despite the length of the playlist, this is actually a very small sampling of what I was listening to in those days - completely ignoring tons of great music like the Beatles, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, etc. and also glossing over tons of crap like Cypress Hill and Danzig (not to mention all the death metal). But i tried to keep this all to music was either released within my high school years or stuff I listened to mostly during my high school years. Heavy metal is a notable exception here: that might have to be another playlist altogether, but I was listening to a lot of it in between all the grunge.

Enjoy, and please tell me in the comments what you used to listen to way back when.