Enema Of The State genuinely changed my life. I remember being 11 years old when it came out, being in my 6th year of school, and finally realising that all I wanted to do was wear baggy jeans with chains on them, listen to pop-punk and skateboard! Much to my mother's dismay, I was the biggest tomboy of all time, I remember not washing my NFG hoody for about 3 months, it smelt so bad and it had the crudest thumb holes in it, it was such a mess but I thought I looked so fucking cool!
So that led to me getting into more of the older Drive-Thru bands - Movielife, The Benjamins, The Starting Line, Midtown, Homegrown - these are all bands that provided the soundtrack to the happiest years of my life so far. This was at a time when it really was all about the music, and there was none of the pretentious bullshit that governs all that shit now. There was no "scene", everybody just did their own thing, wore what the fuck they wanted, everybody got along and everybody was united by love of the same bands, and nothing else mattered!

The crowd-participation at shows was unreal. Bands like NFG and TSL and Allister playing the tiniest box-room shows, underage drinking, crowd-surfing in my Dickies and Chucks, coming out covered in bruises and cuts, not being able to talk for the next three days from screaming, having an amazing time with all my friends, and feeling a connection with every single person in the room! This is what I miss about live music, I definitely think a huge part of it was due to being so young, and genuinely not giving a fuck about anything except having fun!

Enema Of The State kick-started all of this for me, without that record I genuinely wouldn't be who I am today, I'm sure of it!

So this is a toast to my greatest album of all time, and to everyone else who rocked that shit growing up! Amen.