80 Minute Maximum

I’m a late-80s model Millennial who grew up with the internet, not on it. My dad obsessively collected scale models of farm equipment to populate an ever-expanding miniature replica of the homestead he lost in the divorce. I’m from a town so small it was only ever one census rounding error away from demotion to a village. If I wanted to exchange a little cash for culture I had to convince someone to drive me 40 minutes to the next town. A rural, pre-digital adolescence and a genetic predisposition to collecting are the perfect foundation for an obsessive music fan.

The foundation of my music collection looks inauspicious in hindsight. NSYNC’s No Strings Attached was the first album I purchased to declare my musical allegiance. Yes, a pop juggernaut engineered to enthral every Lip Smackered teenage girl in the English speaking world was the first entry in my music fandom. I considered it the perfect rebuke to my parents’ insufferable mix of 90s country, church hymns, and Ukrainian heritage folk radio that formed the non-stop soundtrack of my childhood The five part harmony of “That’s When I’ll Stop Loving You” was syrupy enough to sweeten the tinniness of my foam-padded Sony Discman headphones.

That NSYNC album gave me a taste for pop sugar so strong I wanted little else for years. I wandered deep in the wilderness of label-made boybands, buying O-Town albums with glee. When it was my turn to pick music for skating practice I trolled my Shania Twain-loving club-mates by playing “Toxic” at an ear-splitting volume on the arena stereo. My Top 40 habits were reinforced by circumstance, my choices limited to whatever Wal-Mart had in stock. I might never have kicked the addiction were it not for MusicWorld opening a store in the Duggan Village Mall at the edge of Camrose in the summer of 2003, just in time to stock the soundtracks from The OC.

A primetime soap opera about affluent Southern California teenagers and the tough kid they adopt into their world was an unexpected cultural unifier in my school. Everyone from the farm boys to Gustave, our adorably hapless Swedish exchange student, watched that show. We loved melodrama, the endless panning shots of the beach, the will-they-won’t-they romances. I was deeply attached to the character of Seth Cohen, the sweet music nerd whose family quasi-adopts the aforementioned bad boy. Seth was the conduit for the show to introduce over a dozen indie bands directly into the impressionable ears of a generation of North American teenagers.

Of course I bought the soundtracks. My mom objected to my waste of money, indifferent to the appeal of buying CDs when there was a non-stop stream of Allan Jackson and Garth Brooks playing on the radio for free. I drowned out her complaints by turning up the volume on Phantom Planet’s “California,” sighing with the affronted weariness only teenage girls can truly master. She didn’t understand buying those albums was a ticket to taste. Now I had the map to guide me through MusicWorld, right to the shimmering treasure of The Killers, Interpol, and Spoon.

Before I had the music I was shy, acne-splotched, and swaddled in 2XL-sized hoodies to hide the hips and tits puberty granted me well in advance of my classmates. Once word got out that I had the music from The OC—and more!— I was still shy, scarred, and distended, but my social cachet soared. Suddenly I had some authority on what was good and became a source of good music to borrow. In exchange for lending out my precious discs I got ripped album copies and mix CDs in return—music I promptly re-sequenced into custom mix tapes and what I deemed superior track lists from their originals.

My mom griped about my music spending right up until the summer I moved away to university. I’d long since stopped sighing and now only pitied her. She would never appreciate the thrill of Gustave the Swede sitting next to me after English class to ask if he could borrow, “That California thing you have.”