Revolutions Per Minute (RPM from here on out) by Rise Against is turning 10 years old on Tuesday and this is just absolutely insane to me. This is one of the first records where I'm like "man I remember the exact place I was when someone played this for me".
I was standing in the television studio, my first day there, and all the "cool" guys were crowded around the sound board and this loud noise just spit out from the speakers. I was taken aback honestly. Having no idea this is what "modern" punk sounded like, I needed to learn more. I was stuck in this state of 90s grunge and exploring roots of both punk and rock (think Vivienne Westwood and Robert Johnson) and Rise Against was this alien language. Through the years, those guys and the studio introduced me to a lot of music, from "Sandstorm" to Alexisonfire to the effects of Neil Diamond on repeat for 45 minutes, but RPM was really the one that stands out the most from my time there.
Was RPM the album that got me further into punk? Sadly, no.
It's taken these 10 years to really appreciate what Rise Against did back in 2003. I didn't understand what a benchmark album it was for the band, for Fat Wreck, and for the genre of punk. I was some snot nose kid who's ears were being assailed by what I thought was a "hard" song, for the record it was "Like The Angel", one of the prettiest songs I think the band has put out.
This was the last album Rise Against released with Fat Wreck (the moved to Geffen later that year) and now Fat Wreck is releasing RPM under the name RPM10 with all new packaging and a ton of demos. I will be plunking down my cash for this album (my version of RPM is a rip of a rip so the quality is terrible) and I'm pretty sure you will too.
It may have taken me almost 10 years to appreciate the work Rise Against put into RPM, really all you had to do was pry my copy of The Sufferer & The Witness out of my hands, but I'm standing atop of my bed, shouting for you to take a listen to RPM10. From demo to the actual tracks, it's an amazing journey that takes me back to the studio, back to a time where I was confused and less than eager to learn about the wonders of Rise Against.
Where were you when you first got your hands on RPM?