June 2026

I remember raiding my older brother’s CD rack when I was ten years old and finding a copy of Blink-182’s Take Off Your Pants and Jacket. My innocent little mind went, “What kind of a name for an album is that?” My older brother certainly wouldn’t tell me.

Load came out the summer between my freshman and sophomore years of high school. I remember when the first single, “Until It Sleeps,” came out a few months before, and I really liked it, but I did notice how different it sounded from the previous five albums that were seared into my brain. That didn’t jump out to me as a bad thing, but my friend group certainly hated the song and hated the album before it even came out.

Q&A is a sometimes feature here at IHTOV, where a person (or persons) is given a set of questions about their record collection. Today’s guest is musician Darren Hayman

I have a lot of friends who love vinyl, but few who embrace the humble 7” 45-RPM single. The frequent complaint is brevity: You can’t do anything while you’re playing singles, because you have to change or flip the record every few minutes. That’s true, but I see it as a “feature not a bug”: the single enforces focused listening. And that handful (or less!) of minutes can be the perfect amount time to sit and appreciate an appealing or unusual sleeve