In the summer of 1997 when Dan introduced me to The Suicide Machines, I had no idea what to expect. I was a clueless 16-year-old trying to find my way in the world. Dan was my co-worker at Pizza Hut, a skateboarding slacker who made the job more fun.

I thought he was cool. I didn’t know who I was, but as a jock at a new high school, I didn’t really feel like I belonged. “What the hell is this? Some death metal shit?” I asked, because let’s be honest, what else could it be with a name like that? “Just listen to it, it might change your life,” he said.

The first time I heard Destruction by Definition, I was blown away by the fuck you attitude of the singer’s voice and lyrics, the fast guitar riffs and, most of all, the way it all combined into this wonderful melodic rhythm known as ska.

It was nothing like the heavy metal or rap my friends listened to; this made me want to scream and dance at the same time. And, for the first time, I felt like I belonged somewhere other than a basketball court.

The lyrics weren’t profound or anything but they captured that teenage angst perfectly, from the Holden Caulfield-esque Doc Marten-wearing phonies described humorously in “The Vans Song,” to breaking down the walls of teenage insecurities throughout the album.

The lyrics of “Face Values,” for example, made me realize as a confused teenager that it was actually cool to be different: “Alright/ No need to fight/ Because everybody’s different and there’s nothing you can do about it/ Just because I don’t look like you, or act like you/ Doesn’t make me any better or worse.”

Again, it’s not Socrates dropping knowledge, but the words and music just made sense to me, and I had found a new home in the punk scene.

I traded in my gym shorts and Nikes for cargo shorts and Etnies, and I began checking out local music stores for all the punk and ska I could handle.

I started going to shows, where I was introduced to skanking and crowd surfing. I’ve never had so much fun in my life. This album opened my eyes to a world beyond the shell of high school, and it led me to find bands such as Sublime and NOFX, two of my favorites to this day.

I don’t know what happened to Dan, and I rarely listen to The Suicide Machines anymore. I bought their second album, Battle Hymns, and, while it had a few rocking punk riffs, it failed to capture the same spirit of Destruction.

After that, they turned poppy, and I haven’t heard any of their stuff since 2000, when they actually had a minor radio hit with “Sometimes I Don’t Mind,” about loving a dog. However, whenever I throw in Destruction by Definition, it makes me want to jump out of my wheelchair and start skanking again. Not only that, but anytime I feel like I’m not good enough because of my disability, this album simply reinforces that my differences are, in fact, cool.

The first time I got arrested was in 7th grade.

It wasn’t my first brush with injustice, but was my first brush with the [in] justice system and left me with a sense of hostility toward our incredibly inefficient justice system. Shortly after this run-in with the law I found something that would not only comfort me but support my anti-governmental feelings: punk rock.

It was more than an agenda-fueled infatuation with this sort of rampage-charged music. As it turned out to be the start of a sinister love affair.

My initiation into the world of punk rock came from San Francisco-based band The Dead Kennedys. Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, the Dead Kennedys’ debut album, popped my punk cherry and started to nourish the unsympathetic, rabble-rousing side.

The reckless abandonment that the Dead Kennedys offered complimented the lifestyle of a skateboard hooligan growing up in a predominantly conservative small town.

The albums first song, “Kill the Poor,” is a uniquely arousing introduction to the DK’s menacing leader Jello Biafra as he screeches his way into your memory along with his up-beat West coast punk band. The inaugural song of the album related to my situation growing up in a low-income family.

As I further explored the musical exploits featured on Rotting Vegetables I found that we shared common fundamental beliefs.

“Your Emotions” helped to confirm a detest for conventional living and authority in general, while “Forward to Death” accurately portrayed my attitude toward the general societal structure and justice system with lyrics such as, “I don’t need your way of life,” “This world brings me down” and “I’m looking forward to death.”

“Stealing People’s Mail,” a vintage Dead Kennedys track, takes you on an ominous journey through what you think is postal theft, but leaves you with a statement on the social order.

“We better not get caught. We’ll be dumped in institutions, where we’ll be drugged and shocked ‘til we come out born-again Christians.”

Fresh Fruit conjures up an array of memories, from juvenile pranks to back-alley meetings with some guy’s cousin who was 21. The most unforgettable songs from the album, “Kill the Poor,” “California Über Alles” and “Holiday In Cambodia,” are attached to fond memories of skating away from security guards, loud music, beer and general debauchery.

Since its release in 1980, Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables has transcended generational boundary lines and has helped form lasting bonds.

“Live fast, die young” is more than a motto to the real punk rockers, but a way of life that The Dead Kennedys have fully embodied. I found the Dead Kennedys album Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables provocative and deeply terrifying, but at the same time I was comforted by the non-conformist message of the album and thrilled with the effectively appalling message to authority figures.

While I was in Washington, D.C., in 2001 I went to buy a new CD. I wandered over to the Sam Goody and saw the newest Dr. Dre album on sale for $8.99. I snatched the album off the shelf and quickly paid the cashier.

After I left the store — much to my surprise — I realized the sale sticker covered up the “Instrumentals Only” label on the CD cover. I was pretty upset for a while, but I eventually bought the full album a few months later and discovered its greatness.

I still listen to Dr. Dre’s 2001, and it has proven to be one of the greatest rap albums ever created. 2001 features some of the best rappers alive and offers a few skits, making the entire album an easy listen.

The CD released in 1999 and had three singles. Most rap fans know the singles, “Still D.R.E.,” “The Next Episode” and “Forgot About Dre.” The songs received tons of play on the radio, and unlike most albums today, the supporting songs hold up with the singles.

The songs played on the radio today are usually the best songs on the album, with the rest of the CD offering few hits. Dre collaborated with greats such as Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Xzibit, Mary J. Blige, Kurupt and Nate Dogg and received some Ed-Ucation from Eddie Griffin. The collaboration of hip-hop greats creates a sound that is unheard of today.

I enjoy hearing lyrics from rappers that tell a story. In 2001, Dre tells his side of the story, references Tupac and alludes to his former group, N.W.A. The album reminds me of the rapper feuds of the ’90s, including the Tupac-Biggie conflict. While I don’t think conflicts that end in death are something to be missed, the competition between rappers seems lost.

It is difficult to listen to hip-hop on the radio today. The songs usually have a pretty good beat, but the lyrics are absolutely terrible. 2001 offers different sounds, ranging from gangster rap to the West Coast hip-hop sound of gangster-funk.

The number of artists who combined forces with Dre creates a unique sound for each track, but they always seem to flow together. The lyrics usually seem to have meaning to the rappers and they share common stories.

Someone who doesn’t listen to rap may focus on the negative lyrics about drugs, sex and violence, but true fans will look past the obscenities. Rap became mainstream in the ’80s and ’90s, and Dre’s album was fitting to end the era. Gangster rap has gone underground, and it is difficult to find an album that has such a great mix of lyrics and beats.

Synthetic, repetitive, claustrophobic, frozen, repressive, droning, soulless, sterile – In the world of music reviews, these adjectives represent the eight notes in the pejorative scale. But these are also the words I would reach for to describe one of my favorite albums: 100th Window by Massive Attack.

My mother thought of herself as eclectic, with a taste in music ranging from classical to baroque to romantic.  My father was a fan of musicians as diverse as Bob Dylan or Electric Bob “Judas” Dylan.  My open-minded friends in high school felt that the only rock worth discussing was indie and the only hip-hop worth exploring was socially conscious.

Yes, I grew up in the staid realm of High Art; a place Alice might have found in a dusty corner of Wonderland, where through the magic of anti-imagination, a closet could claim to be a cosmos.  Where people are free to tap their toes to an unusual meter in 5/4 time and where everyone is free to run bare without the restriction of rhyming couplets, but where one could never, ever partake in the strange, forbidden notes of the pejorative scale.

Massive Attack will never free any hostages from this musical snobbery (for that, T- Pain is humanity’s last true hope), but the album 100th Window at least cured my Stockholm Syndrome.

Together with the group Portishead, Massive Attack led a stunted little sub-genre in the ‘90s known as trip-hop.  The fans of this style of music were more pretentious than even the punk purists, and trip-hop collapsed before the Y2K bug had a chance to crash their electronic drum loops.

But for me, this is where the story got interesting.  Once trip-hop ceased to be reliably profitable, several of the rotating members of Massive Attack jumped ship, leaving only Robert Del Naja to record any future albums and to turn out the lights when he was done.

The album Del Naja created was 100th Window.  Gone were the world music influences or any of the warm and organic sounds from previous Massive Attack albums.  It was as if Del Naja rolled down a window on the space station Mir before it limped into the Earth’s atmosphere.

The critics were bored and the fans were angry.  Hell, even one of the former members of Massive Attack decided to return because he was unhappy with the “new sound.”

Maybe I’m just naturally attracted to this sort of drama, (I did tune into Jon and Kate only for the last season) but when I heard the pejorative scale rattling through the caverns of tracks like “Futureproof,” “Butterfly Caught” and my favorite, “Antistar”; I immediately and truly fell in love.

Perhaps this sounds like I’m playing devil’s advocate and this is all just the latest extrapolation of hipster madness.  But for nearly a decade, the CD has consistently found its way into my car and my iPod. And if you still don’t believe, consider this: my first draft of this article was on a chick named Miley.

“Naw, man. Sorry,” the record-store guy said. “Great album though.”

Before Kazaa, iTunes, Napster, this is the year 2000, and this is 32nd record store on the list of record stores in the phone book. Alphabetical order. Alphabetical disappointment.

Any ideas?

“The only copy I know where to find is at my house.” A laugh.

Unlike Jawbreaker’s Dear You, even in the year 2000 assholes were easy to find.

But I couldn’t blame him. That was the reaction the album evoked: That rare, attained secret that you held to your chest like a kid on a playground. And it almost never got made.

In 1995, the San Francisco trio had brought themselves, and their integrity, pretty far. A cultish, if fickle, following of DIY punkers, a tour invitation from Kurt Cobain, and three hardcore, punk rock, respectable albums. But Dear You, released that same year, would be their last.

I knew nothing of this. Nick knew this.

In the mid-‘90s I was entering high school and met Nick, who had an unpronounceable last name, a leather jacket, a penchant for belly shirts and great taste in music. Being from Detroit, he, his pink Mohawk and midriff slipped into the North Dakotan locale like a prison shank.

We got along.

He was punk. I was as punk as it really gets in a town of 15,000.

Anyway, he was my introduction to Jawbreaker. Nick wasn’t only good at getting his ass kicked on the day to day from the less “open-minded” of the community — he also could throw one hell of a party.

There was a keg, girls and dozens of people. And I remember red cups, all stacked one and then another into each other on end tables, tables and flat surfaces.

That’s what I got from a night I’ll never forget. Visually anyway.

What stands out isn’t a scene or a moment. It’s a riff.

One that didn’t so much as start playing as stumbled into the room over the speakers.

And that damned voice.

“I couldn’t wait to breathe your breath/ I cut in line/ Now I bled to death”

“Who the hell is this?” to no one, bracing myself in front of the cheap six-disc changer.

“Jawbreaker, man,” Nick, suddenly to my left, said. “Jawbreaker.”

Granted it was the group’s most accessible work, a reaction by the band to avoid their inevitable break up. And producer Rob Cavallo polished up their blue-collar grit, while major-label marketing tried to pimp it to the public.

I didn’t know any of this, but still hadn’t heard anything like it.

Understand, mind you, that this was before any hint or sense of ‘emo’ or whatever the hell you kids call it — cardigans were simply cardigans; horn-rimmed glasses weren’t chic; and journaling in public was still just pretentious.

“This is the part I wouldn’t show you/The part where you say I don’t even know you”

I hadn’t heard anything like it.

On the outside I was Propaghandhi and NoFX. But on the inside I was probably getting into Counting Crows’ August and Everything After waaaay more than anyone should.

But standing in front of a Sanyo CD player. Listening to Blake Schwarzenbach scratch his voice down meaningfully. I really got something.

This was the love child of The Clash and Stiff Little Fingers, who grew up and said, “fuck you” to his parents and then majored in literature.

“A near miss or a close call/I keep a room at the hospital”

It was the most honest thing I’d ever hear put to music.

A few years later, hunched over a phone book, I didn’t give a shit if it took 57 record stores.