When I was 13 (1995), I went to my sister's house for New Years Eve. Two important things happened on that trip:
* I was allowed to try wine, and got an alcohol buzz for the first time in my life
* Her boyfriend (now her husband) said "I think you might dig this" and put on Thunder and Consolation. I sat in rapt attention through the first several tracks, and when I left I had made a tape cassette copy of album.
A little while later, my brother gave me a tape with No Rest for the Wicked on one side, and The Ghost of Cain on the other. I listened to all of these albums obsessively. Every difficult emotion I experienced as a teenager seemed to have a parallel in a NMA song; "Green & Gray" and "Nothing Touches" were early favorites.
As the years went on, I started buying CDs to backfill my collection. When I was 17, I remember walking across the town I lived in with headphones on, listening to "Family Life" and thinking that this was the best band I had been turned on to in years, and feeling sad that they hadn't toured the US in a while and that I'd probably never get to see them.
I've now seen them live three times in three different US cities, and Justin was even kind enough to sign my copy of High, which is the only time in a long career of concerts that I've even considered trying to get something autographed.
What I'm saying is, this band has made my life better and is one of only about four bands for whom I will automatically pre-order anything I get wind of without knowing anything else about it (and one of only two bands that I have bothered to import merch from overseas for). It was definitely an immediate thing for me. "The roll of thunder from the pike..." and I was hooked.
