The “post 10 albums in 10 days with no commentary” thing has been going around Facebook again. I was thinking about posting mine, but then, Dylan Lloyd went ahead and nominated me to do it. I am not going to choose anyone, but I will do is share here how the album influenced my life.

This is Album/Day Six

Morella’s Forest: Super Deluxe/Mxpx: Pokinatcha

Two posts ago, I mentioned the Bible Gift Shop in our town where I purchased some of my earliest Christian music (Petra and DeGarmo & Key…and yes, probably Carmen. Sigh). The owners of the store helped with their youth group and attended the Creation Festival in Central Pennsylvania. Each year, they would bring back bands from Creation that they heard to sell in the stores. This was the mid-90’s and while the internet was starting to become a real thing in our area, you didn’t just get online to learn about bands. There was no Spotify or Apple Music. You had to hear of a band from someone else.

I had birthday money to spend. It was burning a hole in my pocket. I wanted some new music.

At this point in time, I had never heard of Mxpx or Morella’s Forest. I don’t remember what directed me to these albums because I don’t believe I had ever heard of either band. Honestly, like my post about The Prayer Chain yesterday, I think I purchased both CDs because of the album art.

Mxpx is (they are still recording) a punk band from the Pacific Northwest. Of course, Green Day was popular at the same time so the natural comparison would be to them. Certainly there were differences. Pokinatcha, I believe, was recorded when the band was still in high school. As excited as I was for Mxpx, I remember some of my friends complaining how it all sounded the same (can’t you make that argument for most bands?) I purchased the next three albums from Mxpx in the ’90s and I continue to listen to Mxpx today.

At that time, Morella’s Forest really caught my attention. While I didn’t know it, they were a shoegaze band filled with distorted guitars juxtaposed against Sydney’s vocals. This is a great kind of chill album. They had songs like Fizzle Kiss, Puppy Love, and Curl that stood out to me at that time. Without the internet, it really took years (until I was in college) to even realize that they had put out additional releases. By then I had moved on to other bands.

Along with the albums, this was my first foray into Tooth and Nail Records. Nearly 25 years later, I would guess that most of my favorite albums are from Tooth and Nail bands and that my taste in music has been highly influenced by Tooth and Nail (Stavesacre, Demon Hunter, Anberlin, The OC Supertones, Project 86, and Jonezetta to name a few).

We live in an age of digital downloads and the disappearance of physical bookstores (Let alone Christian bookstores). How different things were in the 1990s when Tooth and Nail (and other labels) did everything by mail order. I am grateful for our local bookstores and two trips I made that gave me some bands, albums, and labels that have had staying power over the last 25 years!

[Could these videos look any more 90’s?]