September 1988:  The beginning of senior year.  All I had to do was get through these nine months of school and I’d be escaping this small town (for good, I’d planned at the time) and moving onto bigger and better things.  The only thing keeping me back was my own damn self.  Which, considering my mindset at the time, was a pretty big fucking obstacle.  Embracing the Creative Moody Bastard was probably not the best of ideas in hindsight.  I worked damn hard on my writing, sure… but at the expense of my own emotional and mental well-being.

Strap in, folks — we have a lot of great tunage to sort through this time!

U2, “Desire” single, released 1 September. The teaser single to their big movie/album project Rattle & Hum, this was a great rock track linking Bo Diddley beats to modern rock. I loved this track when it came out, and I certainly have a soft spot for the album and film.

That Petrol Emotion, The End of the Millennium Psychosis Blues, released ?? September. I finally got into this UK band during this album, and got to see them at UMass Amherst later that year. They had a great mix of Irish folk, funky grooves and loud noise.

Front 242, “Headhunter” single, released ?? September. I became a fan of industrial through this band, specifically this song. This is their best known track, though I’d been familiar with their previous tracks like “Agressiva” and “Quite Unusual”, which got a lot of play on 120 Minutes and WAMH. One of my favorite tracks of 1988.

Laibach, “Sympathy for the Devil” single, released ?? September. I became a fan of Laibach and their brand of industrial right about the same time. I loved the fact that they were both frightening and amazing due to their distinctively Slovenian style of operatic melodies, military beats and guttural singing. You never quite knew if they were serious or merely acting.

Siouxsie & the Banshees, Peepshow, released 5 September. An amazing album of their latter period. They’d gone from twitchy post-punk to proto-dreamwave to neo-psych, and this marked the beginning of their modern rock phase. It’s filled with some of their best tracks and highly recommended.

The Psychedelic Furs, All of This and Nothing, released 6 September. Everyone knew the hits from this band from the early days of MTV, of course, and this was a fantastic collection for anyone who hadn’t gotten around to picking anything up from them. Containing both hits and deep cuts (including the original version of “Pretty in Pink”, not the movie version), it shows just how great Richard Butler and co were as songwriters.

The Feelies, Only Life, released 13 September. This got a ton of play on WMDK and other progressive/AOR stations at the time, partly because it was a welcome return for a band that had been critical darlings at the start of the decade but had remained quiet for a good couple of years. Thanks in part to director Jonathan Demme, who used their music in his movies (and featured them as a party band in 1986’s Something Wild), they remained fan favorites all the way into the early 90s, and have come back strong in the current decade as well.

Cocteau Twins, Blue Bell Knoll, released 19 September. An album that stayed with me for years, and one that influenced my bass playing style early on. I fell in love with this band with this album and went out of my way to find the rest of their discography, even if it was dubbed from someone else’s collection. One of my favorite albums of all time, and highly recommended.

Enya, Watermark, released 19 September. This was an unexpected gem that grabbed my attention, thanks to her first hit. It might have been a big hit with the adults, but I loved its gorgeous, cavernous production. I found myself listening to this one a lot when I needed to chill for a while.

They Might Be Giants, Lincoln, released 25 September, I adored the lo-fi wackiness of their debut album and loved the teaser single for this album. It took me a while to get into it, though… it wasn’t as silly and absurdist, but it was still damn catchy. It was a slow burner for me, but I grew to love it dearly.

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Coming Up: October 1988, a month filled with albums running the gamut from incredibly noisy to quietly brittle.