5 Albums I Can’t Live Without: Nick Ghanbarian of Bayside

Name  Nick Ghanbarian, Bassist

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Best known for  Being the tallest member of Bayside standing at 5’9” and liking Star Wars and wrestling way too much.

Current city  Orange County, California.

Really want to be in  Tokyo! I’ve only been once and the band has never performed there. I’d love to add it to the list of places we’ve played. I just want to hear the FamilyMart jingle again.

Excited about  The final leg of our 25th anniversary tour.

My current music collection has a lot of  Alt rock.

And a little bit of  Hardcore.

Preferred format  I’m a streamer for sure these days. I’ll buy vinyl to support, but I don’t even have a record player currently.

5 Albums I Can’t Live Without:

1

Blue Weekend, Wolf Alice

Wolf Alice is my shining example of finding a new band when you’re older, and loving it just as much as something you discovered when you were young. I’ve been listening [to] and seeing this band for a decade at this point and they’re one of my favorite bands ever. They somehow write songs that you needed to hear without you knowing that you even needed them. I can tell that the four of them are still out in the world experiencing life and bringing that experience to their songs. That’s a hard thing to accomplish the older you get.

2

Battle Born, The Killers

The Killers are definitely the one and only arena rock band that I hold dear to my heart. This album has one of my favorite songs ever on it called “Runaways.” This album I think charted their course into becoming a bit more of a Springsteen type of entity and they’ve written so many good songs in that vein since.

3

Stranger Than Fiction, Bad Religion

Of all the bands I listened to growing up, Bad Religion remain such an influence on me. They’ll forever be my favorite band. People ask me all the time which is my favorite record, and I don’t really have an answer so I just make it easy on myself and say Stranger Than Fiction. More so than any of their records, it brings me to a place and time where I was still figuring out who I was going to be and what I stood for.

4

Long Gone Before Daylight, The Cardigans

I’ve spent the last 20 years telling people that the Cardigans wrote one of the most perfect records ever and that it barely even was released in America. Everyone says they like the Cardigans, but they know one song. Very few people know that they followed up “Lovefool” [the single from ‘96’s First Band on the Moon] with three incredible records that have so much heart and artistic merit, while still having songs that you want to sing. I had never seen them until two years ago when they finally played America for the first time in 18 years. It was nothing short of magical.

5

Pinkerton, Weezer

Weezer is probably not even in my top 20 favorite bands, but this record might be the most perfect record out of every one on this list. It’s gotten its praises after it was initially not received well. I remember needing to buy it on cassette because it was the only format I could find it on, it’s most likely the last cassette I ever purchased. To me, Pinkerton is the most emo album of all time.

To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.