Heading back to reflect on 2003 is going to be a difficult one.

It’s arguably one of the most critical years in my musical journey, but that comes with some scars. This week we continue the trek by exploring the end of my sophomore year of college, that summer, and into the start of my junior year. AbsolutePunk has shed its fan-page skin and become a website for all the music I want to talk about, and it’s starting to see traffic on levels I never expected. I’m running it from my dorm room; I’m getting so much mail I get banned from the college post office, in class I’m sketching new ideas for what I want to do next with the website, between classes I’m updating it from the computer lab with news.

Things are getting a little wild.

And then, in the span of these next couple of years, the scene explodes like a thunderclap.

It’s difficult to properly put this year in context because the albums coming out feel like rapid fire on reflection. There’s so many. And so many of them that had a massive influence on the music scene, and me personally, that it’s virtually impossible to talk about all of them. Albums like Thursday’s War All The Time and Further Seems Forever’s How to Start a Fire could be deconstructed in entire articles. I could tell stories about how I was convinced Matchbook Romance was about to blow up and late-night AIM chats with the band about signing to Epitaph and coming up with their new band name. This is the year of AFI’s Sing the Sorrow and The Ataris’ one dance in the spotlight with So Long, Astoria. It’s the year of Rufio’s inexplicably recorded vocals and MCMLXXV. And it’s the year of Ben Gibbard flexing with Death Cab for Cutie’s Transatlanticism and The Postal Service’s Give Up. I mean, get the fuck out of here with that Ben!

I could write treatises about all of those albums and more. They all had an outsized impact on my life, who I became, and the kind of music I enjoy. But to really deconstruct my musical taste and the music scene’s trajectory as a whole, I need to focus on a specific five.

Last week’s article in this series felt like a turning point. 2001 was the year I left home, went off to college, experienced 9/11, and turned AbsolutePunk into a website about more than just two bands. And now, looking at 2002, the years start to blend into a period that’s less defined by where I was in school. Previously, each year correlated well with each grade of school, but now in college, things are more mixed. 2002 is roughly sophomore year of college, but there are parts of it anchored to the surrounding grades as well. This leads to my memory being slightly blurred when trying to pull what exactly happened when together; however, one thing is crystal clear. 2002 is a year when pop-punk and our scene absolutely exploded1 in popularity.

It’s 2002. I’m 19. I’m now in my second year in sunny southern California, and I am playing a part in all its stereotypes. Bleached blonde tips, puka shells, hoop earrings, Atticus, Rip Curl, and Macbeth clothing pouring off me like surfer wannabe syrup. I’ve been indoctrinated into the slang. I now know it’s “soda” and not “pop.” The previous summer back home was one of the most interesting in my life. Everyone coming back from their first year of college and meeting up, almost itching to show off the changes. The shy kids who are now the life of the party. The previously unpopular groups are bursting with confidence after a year away from the chains of high school labels. The roles and friendships rekindled. And everyone wants to share their drinking/smoking weed stories. Everyone has become a mini-mixologist in their first year away and is dying to tell you about it. It’s glorious; it’s hilarious; it’s summer.

And now, as I start the new school year, I feel like I’m settling into college life. My college roommate and I install an air conditioning unit in our dorm room that is so old it looks like it’s part of the building. While everyone else gets in trouble for their new, modern units, we go unnoticed and spend the year with the only air-conditioned room in the entire hall. I also discover that the cable TV that runs through the dorm (that we’re supposed to pay for) is simply a box in the ceiling that you can just plug right in if you have the right cables and adapters. So we do. And we now have free cable. It’s a year of immaturity, hijinks, and tales that we re-tell time and time again while laughing at the absurdity of our youth. I honestly can’t believe some of the stuff we got away with. And around us, there’s a pop-punk utopia blossoming. Not that far away, Drive-Thru Records is pumping out the height of their catalog (teamed with MCA Records). [deep breath] The Starting Line release their debut album, Midtown release Living Well is the Best Revenge, New Found Glory release Sticks & Stones, Home Grown release Kings of Pop, Allister releases Last Stop, Suburbia, Something Corporate drops Leaving Through the Window, Finch releases What it is to Burn, and The Early November release their EPs. [exhale]

Holy. Shit.

And that’s just the stuff related to that label.

The cliché goes that the music you listen to in your most formative years is the music that will stay with you forever. And, while the past couple of weeks have touched on some of the most important years of my life, nothing comes close to 2001 in terms of “formative.”

It’s 2001. I’m 18. At the beginning of the year I’m completing my senior year of high school. At this age, I’m well aware it’s always been expected of me to go to college; that’s just what you do after high school. But it was never a huge draw or goal for me. School felt like such a waste of time. I felt like I was on the frontlines of technology, the internet, and all I wanted to do was spend hours online exploring and learning about computers and programming while listening to pop-punk music and eating Red Vines. The idea of four more years of sitting in class felt positively soul-sucking, but there was no way in hell I wanted to stay and live at home with my parents either. I wanted out. And I wanted to go to sunny California, somewhere the polar opposite of the rain-soaked Oregon I had known my entire life. Somewhere I associated with all these punk bands in my CD collection. So I applied only to colleges in California and one of the Oregon schools as a back-up. The University of Redlands offered me the most money. The campus was gorgeous, it was in southern California, and that was good enough for me. I knew I would be leaving my childhood friends behind, they’d scatter to other schools across the country, and I’d be leaving my girlfriend.1 But I needed to get out. Desperately.

In hindsight, the year 2000 is the last year I lived without an overarching feeling of cynicism toward the world. The year 2000 is also where my musical collection exploded to multiple giant binders of CDs filled with youth-defining pop-punk albums. And the year 2000 is when I first registered the AbsolutePunk.net domain name.

It’s the year 2000. We just survived the hype of Y2K and all the fears of computers crashing and arguments about if the millennium starts now or next year. I’m 17. I’m a junior in high school and obsessed with Blink-182 and MxPx. Blink-182 had released Enema of the State the previous year and would drop their monster single, “All the Small Things,” in January. Their popularity and fame would skyrocket as a result. My online life had just begun; I’m playing around with a hilariously ugly website that I have called “Absolute Punk,” and spending most of my evenings on AIM talking with friends and making new ones to share music with. And this is where I start to see my musical tastes coalesce around a few new themes.

First, because of MxPx, I’m getting really into various bands on Tooth & Nail and adjacent labels — the so-called “Christian bands.” This includes Slick Shoes with Wake Up Screaming, Craig’s Brother’s Homecoming, and a new online friend really into this music telling me about this album from a band called Relient K that, in their words, “are like if Blink-182 didn’t sing about dicks and cuss and had way more harmonies.” I ended up finding the album in a Christian bookstore and was immediately annoyed at it coming in this weird nonstandard plastic case that didn’t fit on my shelves. However, I was hooked moments later as the music blared from my car as I sped down the highway playing it through one of those CD to cassette audio adapters. Many of my musical memories from this era are tied to that car, that hilarious CD player jammed between the seats, and colossal CD binders shoved underneath them. From picking up my two friends on the way to school each morning, to making lunch dashes, to cruising around the town after school, or on weekends, trying to find any excuse for us not to go home quite yet. Homecomings, a prom, basement video game marathons of Perfect Dark with friends, and all kinds of teenage “firsts.” It’s all soundtracked in my head by the albums of this era. These memories all go hand-in-hand with the albums I was drawn to at the time. I wanted something bouncy, loud, fast, and fun. Something with some energy. Probably something talking about teenage life and heartbreak. And 2000 delivered music of that variety, in spades.