The cliché is that people often think the best music of their life came out when they were a teenager and they sort of tune out new songs as they get older. I never really agreed with that idea and wanted to put it to the test. What are the songs that mean the most to me throughout my life? The ones you hear the chorus as soon as you see the title? When did they come out? And did I ever stop listening to new music?
I thought about the music I love. If I included everything I loved, I would never finish. Bands from the sixties and seventies were largely gone before I started buying music, but those albums are in my collection and include some of my all-time favorites. I decided to start with the year my music collection began to take off - 1983. That was the year I was buying albums as they first came out. It probably makes sense that it was the year I became a teenager. Likewise, it was also the year MTV came to my cable system. For me, MTV was like America's own BBC channel. The early years were filled with alternative rock acts that I fell in love with. A few years later, I'd become a die-hard listener of FM 106.3 - a great alternative rock station in my area. Between MTV and 106.3, my musical tastes were defined. Those songs changed my life.
From 1983-1990, I definitely liked more individual songs than in any other time period but I liked more albums decades later when I started my online radio station. My life was like an arc - devouring music as a teenager, listening to less as I entered the workforce, then devouring again with the online radio station and long commutes to work.
In my case, it all came down to time and access to new music. I was part of the generation that went from albums to cassettes to compact discs and finally digital music. When I was young, I’d bring a portable case with 25 cassette tapes to the beach and would listen to music for hours under the sun. My first job had a short commute, so I didn’t have much time to listen to the radio and didn’t go out to clubs that much. But as the 2000s came, I became a full-time music and arts writer.
I got back into music in a big way while writing my book, Beyond the Palace. Shortly after, I launched Upstage Magazine and the online radio station. I soon realized that we were actually in a bit of a golden age for music - anybody that wanted to record and release an album could actually do that now. In the 1980s, indie artists struggled to put out albums and the 1990s were only a little better. But the 2000s were the era of iPods and home studios. Professional recording software was suddenly available to artists in a way it never had before. Songs that would have been lost to history in the past were suddenly able to live forever with recordings.
Going through my music collection, I pulled out the songs and albums that stood out to me. The ones in which you can clearly remember the lyrics decades later - where the choruses are burned into your memory. Those are the songs found in my Hall of Fame. Some became hits, some are obscure, but nearly all were played on my internet radio station for years. There are probably hundreds of albums and songs not found in here that I love, but these are the ones I wanted in my music collection - the ones I needed to own. I figure if it is in my collection, I went the extra step to get it and that makes it special.
I’ve put my favorites online with songs embedded via youtube, bandcamp, and spotify. I tried using the best sound quality I could find for each track. The site can point you to artists, songs, albums, and individual years. It’s got the ability to produce a 10 song playlist for you based on all songs, New Jersey artists, or by decade (80s-90s, 2000-2010, 2011 to today) with choices for popular tracks, adventurous, or a mix of both.
My path is definitely different than most music fans. I’ve been a fan, a music writer, and a DJ. My collection includes a ton of artists from New Jersey, Canada, and songs that I played on my online radio station that most people likely have never heard of. For the past 25 years, much of my life dealt with independent artists so the list doesn’t include many of the artists with best selling albums of the time period. That just wasn’t what I was listening to at the time.
Everybody has their own Hall of Fame whether they go through the process of setting one up or not. These are the songs that form your identity - the ones that make you who you are. As a music writer, I want people to hear these songs and I think they are worth remembering.
This project is my love letter to the musicians who created the music, the DJs and music writers who turned me on to the music, the club owners who brought these artists to town, and to fellow music fans who still have a hunger to hear music they never heard before.
My life was changed by MTV, FM 106.3, Sirius/XM, and 90.5 The Night. I am forever grateful for the DJs at these stations. Likewise, I’m forever grateful for clubs like The Saint and Stone Pony - places where I’ve seen hundreds of shows over the years. This project was for all of them. They all played a role in shaping my musical history.
You can access the Hall of Fame at https://www.newjerseystage.com/hof
In the next few months, parts of the Hall of Fame will be incorporated into New Jersey Stage.
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