The Taller You Are, by MY DAD IS DEAD is still, after years, one of my favorite albums of all time. I heard Too Far Gone on a college station in the mid 90s and spent the next few years after that trying to find out who did it. then it was another few years before I could find the album, AND, I got it on vinyl. It’s not rare that music moves me, but it’s very rare that it moves me like this album does. Granted it caught me at the right time and that deepened the connection. Let’s just say that my self-awareness and self-honesty were really just opening up and the trajectory of my life was revealed to be headed in a desperate direction. It wasn’t a time of solution, but it was a time of revelation, and no small amount of horror. This is truly one of the most brutally honest albums of all time. I’d say vulnerable but you’re only truly vulnerable if you feel there is anything left to lose. It’s not that you’re oblivious to pain at that point. It’s just you’ve reached a point where you cant hurt any worse.

My relationship to the album has changed as I’ve healed. I listen to it now the way I would read a work of literary genius. I no longer identify with it as how I am, but more a document of where I was in my life.

Hey man, you have to face all your uglies if you’re going to get better.

What can I say? Paul McCartney said he’d have thought we’d all had enough of silly love songs. Well, he was right when it came to me. No silly pop ditties here. Not on my watch.