The onset of spring in western Wisconsin offers much to get excited about. Maple syrup. Sidewalk ice, hollow underneath, that you can stomp through. Light jackets. Asparagus. And for me, the most exciting of all: I get to listen to Soundgarden’s legendary 1994 album Superunknown again.

In the early 1990s, when my BMG subscription led to the rapid growth of my CD collection, I quickly learned that some albums are too good to play. Their power must be preserved. So, I developed the listening strategy I still employ, thirty years later: certain records can only be enjoyed at certain times. Weezer’s blue album is for late nights, after parties or school dances (back then) or the ten o’clock news (these days). A current favorite, YACHT’s I Thought the Future Would Be Cooler, is a dog-walking soundtrack, but only if I take a left on Hamilton Avenue. Turning right means Yeasayer. Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago is exclusively a first-snowfall-of-the-year record, and Amateur Love’s It’s All Aquatic is my airplane music.

For no good reason, the first time I popped the Superunknown CD in the tray of my bookshelf stereo system was during 1995’s parent-mandated spring cleaning. My open window delivered the first natural aromas of the season, even though it was still much too cold for fresh air. Like every instance of deep cleaning, most of the time was spent reminiscing over old treasures—elementary school yearbooks, old vacation photos, stacks of forgotten comic books—instead of tackling the thick layers of dust hiding atop the bookshelf and behind the clock radio in my childhood bedroom. Back then I had a waterbed, and my favorite part of the process was wrenching the giant rubber bladder to discover everything that had fallen between it and the bed frame over the course of the year (mostly food wrappers, although the occasional dollar bill made it a game worth playing.)

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THE CONVERSATION TURNED TO MUSIC, AND MY TEENAGE SON AND DAUGHTER WERE EXCITED TO SHARE SOME OF THE GRUNGE GEMS THEY HAD DISCOVERED.

They mentioned Nirvana (nice!), Stone Temple Pilots (good choice!), and Linkin Park (okay! could be worse!), and I was giddy.

ERIC RASMUSSEN

FORMER COOL GUY, CURRENT DAD

I don’t remember proclaiming Superunknown would forever be my spring-cleaning album when I first listened to it on some random March Saturday in 1995, and, of course, I heard several of its most famous songs, including “Black Hole Sun” and “Spoonman,” hundreds of times during the 90s—they were everywhere. Still, the event and the music are inextricably linked. To this day, hearing the open riff of “Let Me Drown” conjures sense-memories of spring, and cracking a window for the first time when it’s fifty-four degrees and sunny leads me to hum “The Day I Tried to Live.” After thirty years, I suspect this link will persist until I no longer do.

A few weeks ago, over dinner, the conversation turned to music, and my teenage son and daughter were excited to share some of the grunge gems they had discovered. They mentioned Nirvana (nice!), Stone Temple Pilots (good choice!), and Linkin Park (okay! could be worse!), and I was giddy. This was one of the rare moments where I could give them a glimpse of how cool and edgy I was (or, used to be). I whipped out my phone to commence their 90’s alternative in-service. Rage Against the Machine and Nine Inch Nails were a little harsh for the dinner table, but my son loved Toadies’ Possum Kingdom, perhaps the most listened-to album of my teenage years. We breezed through Silverchair’s Frogstomp and my wife shared her latent teen angst with a tour of her favorite Everclear songs. Our regular twenty-minute family dinner extended to more than an hour. The dog missed her walk, the food dried on the plates.

However much I wanted the listening session to continue, we eventually pushed back from the table to go about our evenings, and something occurred to me. A little over a decade ago, my wife and I bought the house I grew up in from my parents when they opted for condo life. My daughter sleeps in the very room I used to clean every spring, and my son is just across the hall. I was overcome. The warm spring evening, the echoes of Pearl Jam reverberating through the walls, my original family paving the way for the important moments shared with my own wife and kids…

“Hey, Quinn,” I said. “You wanna hear something cool?”

“Sure,” my daughter said, pausing before climbing the stairs.

“I rocked out to all of this music in the same room you sleep in now.”

“Okay. Weird,” she said before heading to her (my) room.

Maybe the waves of time and memory don’t flow through this house the same for her as they do for me, but the Deftones’ bass lines sure do.