Happy Birthday Album I Love

Apparently Pleased to Meet Me came out 27 years ago today.  I bought it a few weeks after that; I can still picture riding in Brothatime!!'s Shitvette to Doc's and finding the cassette among the unalphabetized stacks (thanks, Doc.)

Mostly, I remember how I got the $crillah to buy it.  The summer after 9th grade I got a job cutting the grass at the DMV, which was a TINY square of grass that took maybe 15 minutes to cut.  I got $10 to cut it every Saturday, and of course after about one Saturday the scorching heat completely killed the grass, so there was no reason to cut it.  But I'd still show up every week, go through the motions and then walk in to collect my ten fat ones (that's cash money, ladies; from Day 1 I demanded "folding money only, please.") The lady would always be a little confused, "gee, did it really need it this week?" to which I'd look like she was ridiculous "oh yeah, yeah it really did" and then take my ten bucks to invest in some little-known company at the time called "Google."

I will now rank the songs:

IOU
Can't Hardly Wait
Valentine
Never Mind
The Ledge
Alex Chilton
Red Red Wine
Skyway
I Don't Know
Nightclub Jitters
Shooting Dirty Pool

That's a pretty fucking solid track list.  Meanwhile, here's Paul Westerberg inexplicably wearing shorts.