Jeffrey Tucholski (Gentle Leader XIV)
SPB: What was your favorite band in high school? Do they influence your songwriting or ethics in any measurable way today?
The three of us all went to high school in the mid to late ‘90s so, as one might guess, there was no shortage of legit terrible music to listen in that era that has since fallen through the cracks of time into irrelevancy. We recently just unloaded all our old CDs in a move and the vast majority from that timeframe are literally worthless* (I know because we tried to trade them in, ha!). People in college around that same time with more discerning ears had better options as the whole indie / college rock scene was really taking off. GBV, Pixies, Sonic Youth, etc were all major label bands at that point but you needed some semblance of an attention span to listen to them. Those all would have been better influential options but my 16 year-old skate-punk self skipped straight from grade school grunge to the endless cacophony of west coast "punk" and fake ass rude boy nine-piece ska bands. Music that truly has not stood the test of time. The only take away for me at this point is an acute awareness that tastes change through time for the artist and the listener and that good music stays good and bad music stays bad, whether you liked it or not.
