Agent Palmer

Released on March 18, 1997 Nine Lives was the first studio album released by Aerosmith since 1993’s Get a Grip and the first on Columbia Records since 1982. Since that time, Aerosmith had revived their career on Geffen, and this four-year period was their longest album drought since the creation of the band at that point.

Two years after the 1999 release of Guster’s Lost and Gone Forever, my friend Josh handed me a mixed CD full of Guster songs. It was mainly centered around this album but also featured songs from the band’s two previous studio albums and some live bootlegs. I have been a fan of Guster ever since.

I was very lucky to have parents with good taste in music, so when I tell you that I have revisited an album from my childhood that I still love to this day, it could be any number of genres, bands, or artists, but in this instance, it is Harry Chapin Greatest Stories Live.

If you could get in a time machine and ask me in my 7-year old wisdom, what the best album of all time was, I would have easily answered Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles “Coming Out of Our Shells,” without hesitation. Seriously, the album was my jam back in the day.

Though much lamented on the internet with any google search for “Coming Out of Our Shells” now, I view this gem very differently. Let’s be honest here, I was 7 when this was released and it was my jam!

I have a November album. I’m not ashamed of this. It’s kind of an autumn or fall album, but I always feel the urge or need to listen to this album in and around November. For the record, before I continue, I do not, for my recollection, have an album for any other month, but every November like clockwork, I listen to John Henry by They Might Be Giants.

No, not just a song, the whole album. No, not on shuffle, maybe “album repeat” but never shuffle, and I listen to it throughout the entire month, every year for more than the past decade.