
That summer I turned sixteen and along with the right to share a car with my older brother, I also got my first CD player. Taking some birthday cash to the local record store (aka, Wal-Mart), I picked up my first three CDs -- Black Sabbath's Paranoid ($5), The Monkees' Pool It ($5), and the relatively new 3 Years... from Arrested Development. I'm proud to say that two of these three still remain in my CD collection. Unfortunately, the Monkees CD was sacrificed to a game of "let's scratch the crap out of this CD on the wall and see if it'll still play."
It takes a lot in a musical artist for me to keep up with them for more than a short while. Arrested Development, I've stayed with for twenty years. While my music collection has grown by leaps and bounds over the past two decades, the number of Arrested Development CDs found within has multiplied as well. There they are sandwiched between the gospel goodness of Carolyn Arends and the ear-splitting madness of Atari Teenage Riot.


Arrested Development appeals to me on a spiritual level (really) coming from the genre often described as "life music." It's fun and positive hip-hop from a time before that style turned into the garbage that sells today.
With a CD I ordered once, I also received a poster signed by Speech -- signed in a unique way that I think of often.
On a Saturday night back in the fall of 1992, my friends and I were on our way home from a long evening of playing basketball when we were involved in a pretty nasty single-car accident on a rural highway.

Here's the kicker. All these years later, a friend who was in the car that night tells me that the TV was on at my request.
Seriously. I had just been in a car accident. One friend had a broken ankle. We all had a good amount of black eyes, bumps, and bruises. But I wasn't about to miss Arrested Development on SNL.
I can't decide if that's ridiculous or awesome.
So anyway...here's to 20 years.
Stay thirsty, folks. Stay thirsty.
4 comments:
Wow! I haven't heard Tennessee in almost 20 years! I wasn't really into them as I only know Tennessee and Mr. Wendal. I was also in 6th or 7th grade at the time.
And your haircut was awesome btw. :)
Jason -- You wouldn't think my hair cut was awesome if you knew how much hairspray I had caked into it!
I hope Speech gets to read this.
- Kel Arroyo
Kel -- If you've got the means, pass it along...
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