#25 Arcade Fire

Another "moment in time" band for me. In late 2003, frustrated with many areas of my life, and about to hit 30, I quit my job without a new one (this is way before it was hip/safe to do so) and spent a year volunteering for John Kerry's presidential campaign. When Kerry lost, and my dreams of moving to the West Wing vanished, I headed to......Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.... for a few months to work in a family restaurant. As I tried to re-engineer what to do with my career, a call came from a recruiter in "Mountain View." A company was looking for someone with skills loosely related to what I'd done for the first 6-7 years of my career, but moving more into digital. A few weeks later, I was boxing up my stuff in Brooklyn and heading to the Bay Area. Upon arrival, I found a place in Sunnyvale and for the next year, prior to moving to SF, spent most of my free time either at the gym, in a Barnes and Noble or buying records. And with the move, I was looking for new music. The buzz around Arcade Fire was massive. But for me, they didn't take. Then one day, I was driving down Wolfe on a beautiful Saturday afternoon and I figured I'd give them one more shot. And they hit. Funeral turned into the record I listened to most that first year here. I'm not sure they've hit that greatness since, but their catalog over the past 14 years is pretty fantastic, and their live shows remain some of the best I've seen in the past two decades. And I almost gave up on them...

Favorite record: Funeral (2004)

Where are they now? Still making records and selling out arenas.