Now listening to "London Calling," which I always associate with Christmastime. I realized this morning that I got it as a Christmas gift 25 years ago. The year was 1995, same year as my car accident. I felt disheveled emotionally and wanted to get back to living life asap. Kurt Cobain had been dead for a year and a half, and I feel like we were all extracting what we wanted from Nirvana (and in my case I'll certainly add a major assist from Green Day and Rancid).
So basically that year I had been like, "Yes, punk rock. I'm a punk rocker, and my favorite band is The Clash." My parents have always been historically bad at gift giving, so that December when I was in this long-gone store at Aurora Farms (Aurora Farms, anyone?) called "Music For a Song" and I saw this CD, and I decided to go for it and tell my mom that I wanted it. She then told my sister later that "A little birdy told her I wanted this CD," and my sister bought it for me. We drove to my Grandma's in North Carolina that year for Christmas, and I happily listened to the album on my Discman while wearing my new Ramones shirt that I got when I saw them at the CSU Convocation Center.