9. MetallicaThe $5.98 E.P.: Garage Days Re-Revisited

I was into Metallica in the eighth grade but I really got into them after Master Of Puppets. That was a record that was undeniably good and I almost shit a brick when I first heard it. Then when Cliff [Burton, late Metallica bassist] sadly passed and Jason [Newsted, former Metallica bassist] came into the band, this was his first recording. Well, they had me at ‘Green Hell’… When I first heard it on the radio I thought: "What the fuck is this? Who’s covering ‘Green Hell’?" When I heard it was Metallica, I went straight out and bought it. It was badass and saying ‘fuck you’ to authority. The attitude, the feel… the emotion, the attack – it took me somewhere. It got me somewhere. I was building half-pipes in the middle of the desert with my friend John Moreno and skating to this stuff. I remember that and it takes me there now. That’s what I mean when I say that. Equally, when I hear ‘September’ by Earth, Wind & Fire, it reminds me of kissing my Mexican girlfriend under a grapefruit tree in my backyard in Indio when I was twelve years old. It takes me some place.