The Best Songs Ever: Pegboy - My Youth

In high school in the early nineties I had a buddy named Aaron. When it came to book smarts, the kid had none, but he was funny as hell, the life of any party and generally fun to be around.

And he had killer taste in music. He introduced me to diverse stuff I continue to love like Bad Religion, Dr. Dre, and Dinosaur, Jr. He knew that it was equally OK to like The Cure, Slayer, and Eazy-E

Aaron was a little mischievous. Our little town didn't even have a record store, and even if it had, he didn't have his act together enough to hold a job. So, when Aaron saw a mail order CD catalog stuffed in Alternative Press magazine, he proceeded to steal his mom's credit card and order a couple hundred bucks worth of CD's and t-shirts to his house. The order came, and for awhile she didn't even notice. So he did it again. When she finally caught on, she collected all the stuff and hid it in her room. Slowly over time, Aaron simply took all the stuff back.

While this was downright criminal, Aaron got some great stuff through his exploits. His mom, who was a saint, didn't even freak out too much. Most of the music was stuff we'd never heard of before. The best of the bunch was a CD by the Chicago punk band Pegboy called Strong Reaction/Three Chord Monte. He might have even picked me up an extra copy for a certain fan.

I lost touch with Aaron long ago. I eventually got out of high school (by the skin of my teeth) and went on to college. He started running with a wilder crowd. Unfortunately, awhile back I stumbled upon his obituary. It said he'd died in his home and was short on details. I can only wonder what became of his life in the years we lost touch, but I'll never lose touch of the person he was in my youth.

The Best Songs Ever: Twisted Sister - We're Not Gonna Take It

When I was in the fourth grade in 1984 I had my first exposure to one of the great loves of my life - cable television. We had 12, count 'em, 12 channels that filled the dial. While the Cartoon Express and WWF wrestling were great, they were far from being the best thing on cable. That honor went to music videos. This was before MTV had even been granted a spot on the local dial, but shows like Night Tracks and Night Flight filled the void when they weren't showing B-movies.

The holy grail of a viewing of one of these shows was an airing of Twisted Sister's We're Not Gonna Take It. I thought Dee Snider was the shit. I remember a dream where Dee hung out with my buddy Jamie, his ever-present unemployed mom Carol,and myself. Of course, in this dream he was in his linebacker-meets-drag queen geer, and we we were engaging in my favorite hobby - watching television.

Twisted Sister never did anything else that grabbed my childhood attention like We're Not Gonna Take It. Heck, I never even owned the album Stay Hungry. It was all about that song. And that video.