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my highschool years was spent inside a convent, no i was not pregnant nor was i a troubled teen, i went to school there because it was written in the stars, it's all about keeping up with the legacy of my ancestors, you know tradition and all that crap. so anyway, in my first year of highschool, the whole grunge movement suddenly arrived to our tiny island of iloilo (it was in 1992), we embraced it with open arms, suddenly our nkotb records were replaced by pearl jam and nirvana, for the "less angry" alternative (more acoustic guitar based songs) was the way to go, suddenly we were not kids anymore, we became more aware of our surroundings not just involved with ourselves, there is a big world outside and we were stuck inside the four corners of the convent and conform to the principles of the nuns that run our school. we began to bring walkmans to school and our allowance was spent on tapes i met my close friend for almost 10 years because of our common love for East 17 and vanessa paradis (i still cringe everytime i remember this) , music was the only way for us to express what we truly feel inside, for a generation brought up by tv we were enthralled by the introduction of cable tv and would watch mtv 24/7. for some people highschool is a period in their lives that they would want to erase, for me highschool molded me into the person i am today, all my quirks, my insecurities and my hang ups without all of these my life wouldn't have been such an interesting journey.

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it's very hard to choose which ones should be in the list, it should be more than 5 however, these albums below really stand out, because when i put these records on i usually have this weird feeling that i am still wearing my plaid skirt and necktie eating banacue and drinking funchum while waiting for the bell to ring. anyhoo here are the 5 albums (and songs) that accompanied me throughout my highschool years.

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Gin Blossoms - New Miserable Experience
i first heard about the gin blossoms while i was watching mtv, adam curry was the vj for the us top 20, it was 6 in the evening on a saturday and i was home alone. "hey jealousy" was in the countdown i think it was number 12, it was 1993, i was growing my hair and had attitude problems. religion class was kicking my ass my grades were pretty bad but i didn't care, highschool's fun i said to myself. the following week when i got my allowance of 100 pesos (about $2) i immediately purchased their record a cassette tapes costs 90 pesos at that time so i had make do with 10 pesos for the whole week. a friend of mine thought that the song was titled "hey chelsea" laughed at her behind her back and didn't even have the decency to correct her, god i was such an immature snob .

Nirvana- Unplugged
learning to play the guitar was the biggest thing to hit our class, everybody lugged around their acoustic guitars and would play during recess and lunch time. instead i opted to learn the piano. nirvana's unplugged album came out around that time, everybody knew the opening chords for "come as you are" but fumbled with the rest of the songs. i learned a new word that year "horny", we had an assignment for our media class to play your favorite song and analyze its lyrics, my friend chose lithium, we started singing then the line "i'm so horny" came up, our teacher was peeved, we had no idea why, until an exchange student from canada told us what it meant, that made us shut up.

Weezer- blue album
undone the sweater song was on constant rotation. i was 13 going on 14, my grades were improving and i was suddenly hanging out with the "popular" crowd yet i still felt like an outsider, they liked boys and the boys liked them back, i on the other hand was too fat, too shy and too ugly for them, i started to smoke, my religion teacher accused me of cheating. i was sad but rivers cuomo made me laugh, weezer was different, it was okay to be different, but i didn't know it back then.

eraserheads- ultraelectromagneticpop
the eraserheads changed the perception of OPM (original pilipino music) tagalog songs were suddenly cool and so was chuck taylors. "pare ko" became an anthem for the brokenhearted, kolehiyalas started listening to their songs. we were juniors in highschool and our chemistry teacher was terrorizing us, i had to make a compost pit to pull up my grade. i was excited for summer to come because i was going to the states, i shaved my legs in preparation for the trip and did not regret the decision. got drunk for the first time had 8 shot of tequila and couple of shots of vodka. friendships were broken, new ones were formed. being 15 made me crazy.

smashing pumpkins- siamese dreams
almost everybody in my batch was born on 1979, i was born on 1980 but it didn't matter, "1979" became our song, it became our generation's song. graduation was fast approaching, our class had a lot of problems, a few of my classmates were kicked out, some got pregnant. college applications were filled out, i only took 2 entrance exams and got accepted to both,made up my mind to take up marketing because suddenly i just had to be practical, up to now i still regret that decision. i turned 16 two days before graduation and lost weight. i met a boy and fell for him hard...unrequited love sucks.

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