Before I write this, here's how it all started for me.

Not to over dramatize, but it's pretty rare that a music video really makes a lasting impact on your life. Watching 120 Minutes about midnight some Sunday night in June, 1994, my friend Nick and I first saw the video for These Animal Men's second 7" single, You're Not My Babylon. Considering the last 12 months had seen us absorb Nirvana's In Utero, Sonic Youth's Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star, Oasis' Definitely Maybe, not to mention our first live performance from Radiohead—to make an impact on these two upstarts was an impressive achievement. MTV were playing the video to mark the release of the bands first mini-album, Too Sussed?, the following day. Nick and I were at Our Price records the minute they opened the next day. Okay, there, you're up to speeed. I'll get this started.

#02 / (COME ON, JOIN) THE HIGH SOCIETY, THESE ANIMAL MEN

I think everyone has a band in their favorites list whom they've loved like no other, to the utter confusion of others around you. These Animal Men are mine. To say it was a "you had to be there" time for my 14 year old self and a couple of my friends is as close as I can get to explaining it, and that doesn't really say much.

Released in September, 1994, (Come on, Join) The High Society marked the full-length debut of a Brighton, UK, four-piece who unfortunately got lumped into a manufactured NME "movement" called the "New Wave of New Wave," alongside S*M*A*S*H, Elastica, and for a short time, Oasis. This was a band so small, in that pre-broadband era, for whom being in the NME or Select was a rare treat. And for us, a live performance in the north of England was even rarer.

Looking back I think we were extra excited because we didn't know a soul who'd heard of this band, and wanted to have them to ourselves, rather than share them with the masses the way Oasis had exploded on a tired British music scene. I also loved that we both "got them" with the same enthusiasm, and I trust Nick's music taste implicitly (he introduced us to The Orb's Adventures Beyond The Ultraworldin 1991, the Smashing Pumpkins' Siamese Dream in 1993, and his prized cassette copy of Sonic Youth's 1991 Dirty Boots EP).

Speaking of "soul" though, that word really became the backbone of my love for this band, and their subsequent work. These Animal Men, like Nirvana and Sonic Youth before them, made me need to hear their influences. Without this band, God only knows when I would have discovered The Buzzcocks, Secret Affair, Gang of Four, and the Small Faces. For that, especially the latter, I will always be grateful.

As for the album itself, it's timeless for me. To this day I can't get anyone else interested in it, and I've given up trying to be a one-man street team. It encapsulates a sound of a new Adidas-clad Mod movement in the UK, clubnights at Leeds' Brighton Beach and London's Wag Club over the next couple of years, and far truer than the Britpop mess of mediocrity swelling in Camden pubs. It's still the record which makes me happy I was into interesting music at the age of 14. As clichéd as I know this sounds, but seeing Radiohead perform "The Bends" to a half-empty York Barbican Center in December, 1993, really made me look at everything differently. A total immerision in quantities of music became one of quality instead. And it only makes you prouder when a band you want to call your own are thrust back at you to shouts of "and keep 'em." While my favorite work of their surfaced a few months later ("Wait For It") on their mini-album follow-up Taxi for These Animal Men, this album will always remain the highest of points for me.

Stand Out Track: Ambulance [mp3, right click save]

Footnote: These Animal Men are to be included on a new box-set, entitled The Brit Box: U.K. Indie, Shoegaze, and Brit Pop Gems of the Last Millennium. Members of These Animal Men are currently working on a new project, The Orphans.

@ www.theseanimalmen.co.uk

Make the jump for video references.

Buy (used): Amazon

Speeed King, and Too Sussed? (Live on C4's Naked City), These Animal Men

This is the Sound of the Youth, These Animal Men
(Yes, we wore the t-shirts, but not too much eye makeup—Andy?—and I wanted a scooter._

You're Always Right, These Animal Men

Read more about the records that changed my life here.