When a 19th-Century Illustration inspired a 20th-Century purchase

In 1991, I wandered into The Wall—maybe it was still called Wall-to-Wall Sound & Video back then. I was 20, maybe 21, and as always, I was searching. Not for anything in particular—just something new. I’ve always loved the act of discovery, especially when it comes to music. It felt like finding secret messages from people I hadn’t met yet.

That day, in the new releases section, a CD caught my eye. I didn’t know the band. I hadn’t heard a single note. But the cover art—an ominous, haunting image—drew me in. I would later learn it was an 1875 Gustave Doré illustration for The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. At the time, I just knew it felt… significant. Mysterious. Heavy. I bought The Ghosts That Haunt Me by Crash Test Dummies based entirely on that cover.

It wasn’t the sound I expected. With a cover like that, I half-expected doom metal. Instead, I got something that leaned oddly toward country—a genre I typically ran from—but this was different. The songwriting was honest, strange, smart. Somehow, it reached me. Perhaps the fact that I could sing Brad Roberts vocals with little effort because we share the same bass vocal range helped.

I fell hard for that album. Learned the songs on guitar. Played them for friends. We’d sit around campfires on camping trips, and someone would always ask for “that one Crash Test Dummies song.” Those songs became part of the fabric of my early 20s—songs tied not just to sound, but to people, to nights under stars, to laughter, and sometimes, to sadness I didn’t yet know how to name.

Just the other day, I found that same CD at a thrift store. My original copy is probably still boxed up in an attic, forgotten but not lost. Still, I bought it again. There was something sacred in the rediscovery.

Driving home, I played it. And just like that, I was back in the early ’90s. Back to that time of complicated friendships and long-lost loves. A time when everything felt like it mattered so much, even when I didn’t know why. I remembered how deeply I was struggling with depression back then—a depression I still carry like background static. And this time, as I listened, another weight made itself known: the ache of aging.

Music is a time machine. But not every trip back is joyful. Some visits bring a kind of mourning—not just for who we were, but for how much we didn’t understand ourselves at the time.

1991 was 34 years ago. That fact lands like a punch. Inside, I still feel like the kid who obsessed over Star Wars, who lived for guitars and mixtapes and late-night diner conversations. But the mirror tells another story. Time, ruthless as it is, doesn’t care about internal clocks.

And yet, maybe this is why I still chase new music with the same hunger. Maybe I’m trying to live in now, trying to create fresh emotional landmarks for the version of me that exists today. Because as much as I miss those years, I don’t miss that version of myself—not entirely. I only wish I could send this version of me back, with my current perspective, to truly savor what I didn’t realize I’d one day lose.

There’s no real resolution here. Just the quiet realization that time will always move us forward, whether we’re ready or not. And somewhere between grief and gratitude, I’m trying—still trying—to make peace with that.

P.S. I was not a fan of their follow-up album with that awful Mm, Mm, Mm song on it. How did that become the hit they are known for is beyond me.

Take it easy,
James