In 1994 I was living in a suburb outside of Dallas called Plano. I was 11 years old. I’m not going to spend too much time to describe Plano, it was just another new shitty suburb reminiscent of New Granada in Over the Edge. My best friend at the time was Jon Lawson, and his family was rich as fuck. Once a week I stayed over at his place, far away from the chaos that was my everyday home life. One such weekend his parents took us to the local Blockbuster to pick out a movie for what was sure to be another amazing Friday night filled with prank calls, pizza, and other pre-teen hijinks.

Out of all the movies in the place, there was one that we locked eyes on off the muscle. We had heard about it a little around the playground. We heard someone died while making it and it was supposedly dark as fuck and chock full of tits, explosions, rampant profanity, drug use and other things a couple of 11-year-old boys could really get behind. The Crow went into his family’s VCR later that evening and we prepared for greatness. We got what we asked for.

Later that evening, John and I were picked up by local police for setting the entire field behind his folks house on fire. Initially planned to be a controlled fire, it quickly got away from us once we realized that our idea to duplicate the epic “lighting of the crow symbol” was a far greater undertaking then we had initially imagined. Thankfully nothing that bad got damaged and I’m still here to tell the tale. It was the first all out bad kid thing I have ever done. I was hooked.

Move forward a couple weeks and I’m in a Best Buy. There it is, the soundtrack, sandwiched between Hackers and Pulp Fiction. Chills run down my spine. I needed it, but alas I didn’t have any money and my dad wasn’t trying to buy me a present seeing as I had just burnt down half the neighborhood. SO I STOLE THAT MOTHERFUCKER. Now I’m a ginger and an ugly one at that. You know that awkward phase you had? Well I’m still in mine. I look like Angus’s best friend, thus making it extremely difficult to be sneaky. They always suspect the gingers, but fuck it, I did it anyway.

That CD didn’t leave my discman for six months; cut after cut after cut just BANGERS. Lets take a minute and break it down some of it. This isn’t a comprehensive list, but I’m not made out of time, feel me?

“Burn”- The Cure “Big Empty”- Stone Temple Pilots “Dead Souls” Nine Inch Nails “The Badge”- Pantera Taxi Driver “Snakedriver” – Jesus and Mary Chain “Ghost Rider”- Rollins Band

Honestly, it’s interesting how a soundtrack from almost 20 years ago still has such importance in 2013. Especially one that was just a haphazardly thrown together group of songs; so much resonance still comes from it. People still like Poison Idea and for many, such as myself was their first introduction to them. Would Pharmakon sound how they sound if young Margaret didn’t hear My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult’s “After the Flesh”? Maybe, but I for sure wouldn’t be a hardcore/punk/metal freak without this record. Sad to say, but The Crow soundtrack probably changed my life.