My Ultimate Lawnmower Album: Lanemeyer’s 1999 EP STORIES FOR THE BIG SCREEN
Before I even begin, I want to introduce this new column – My Ultimate Album. Beginning with my “Ultimate Lawnmower Album”, I plan to highlight some of my all time favorite albums for different days and moods. Other writers may join in the fun, as well. I won’t promise it’ll be weekly, monthly, or anything like that… but sometimes I really need to spend some time writing about something I truly love. While I love introducing our readers to a variety of new indie art, I decided that sometimes I just need to highlight something I’ve loved for a long time… and with that, this column is born. I hope you enjoy it and I thank you all for indulging me.
Today, I’m going to highlight my “Ultimate Lawnmower Album”. This, of course, means that I first should explain what that means. I’ve reviewed a variety of albums over the years by putting them up to “The Lawnmower Test” – which is, simply, listening to them while I mow my lawn and seeing if they bring the vibe I need when pushing my mower through my half acre patch of grass, weeds, and dog crap. It’s a simple test, but it’s not genre specific at all. When I mow, sometimes it’s hip hop, sometimes it’s hardcore, sometimes it’s ska, and sometimes it’s pure unadulterated punk rock… but there’s one album I spin for a portion of the process nearly every single time I mow.
These days, more folks probably know Mike Doyle from his incredible podcast This Was the Scene, a chronicling of the punk rock scene in the 90s and beyond. Born in bred in the same scene that Mike was, I listen to this oral history with adoration on the regular – partly because he’s a great interviewer, but mostly because of the nostalgic love I hold in my heart for the scene which we both grew up in. Mike and his bandmates in Lanemeyer always struck me as great dudes. I wasn’t friends with any of them growing up, but we had tons of mutual friends and acquaintances. I saw them at their shows and the shows of our friends all over Jersey and the surrounding area. From the moment my friend made me a tape of this EP, I was hooked… I grabbed a copy of the CD at one of their shows soon thereafter (that barely plays anymore) and ran it into the ground, while also continuing to listen to my dubbed copy while driving around in my 1987 Mazda 626 covered front to back in bumper stickers.
Named after the lead character in one of my all time favorite comedies, Better Off Dead (a movie that my wife and I were rewatching for the umpteenth time in bed when her water broke just before we reuashed to the hospital to have our first son), the original version of this EP had a variety of fantastic film clips woven in before and after the tracks. Of course, those clips aren’t able to live on Spotify with the EP – where I generally listen to it most these days – but they’ll always live in my head.
So, by now it’s clear that one of the things that makes this album a perfect one for me when I mow the lawn is the nostalgia. It brings me joy, transports me to a simpler time, and reminds me of the scene that was largely responsible for shaping much of my love for independent art and everpresent fight for the underdog. But, the music itself is a huge part of it too.
If you’re not too familiar with Lanemeyer, I urge you to press play on the embedded Spotify playlist above, but I’ll also explain my love for them and for this album a bit more. In some sense, it’s standard pop punk… which for me, is a good thing. I love pop punk music and have been drawn to it for a long, long time. This particular brand of pop punk is among my favorite. There’s a lo-fi aesthetic, generated from a DIY style recording and a lack of budget. In today’s world, any kid in their bedroom can record an album and, with just a bit of technical savvy, make it sound cleaner than so much of the music I grew up with. There’s something about a lo-fi recording sound that will always appeal to me, even if it’s becoming a lost art in much of the music world.
So, besides sounding DIY, the vocals aren’t of the more “pretty” pop punk variety that became more popular. They are gruff and gritty. This makes the album feel more punk… and, frankly, I like music I can sing along to better than music I can’t. This isn’t to insult the vocalists at all, it’s simply to note that we’re not talking about Panic! at the Disco or Fallout Boy here. Those bands are great, but they lack the grit that makes me want to listen to them over and over.
Throw in the right amount of angst, catchy lyrics that get stuck in my head, and a driving rhythm section that fuels me while I fight my battle against my yard with my often struggling lawnmower… and I love this album. It’s not only the ultimate album for mowing, but one I regular blast while driving and cleaning the house, as well.
So, for that, I want to thank Lanemeyer for releasing an EP in 1999 that will forever live on for me… until the very day I die.
