No Lunch

This kohl-eyed, Jesse Malin–fronted quintet had short hair, big shoes, and fat guitars, and the tunes were loud, fast, and loose. Of the 12 great songs on this Ric Ocasek–produced 1996 album, the best—“She Stands There” and “Capitol Offender”—use outsider themes with hooks obviously made by guys who grew up listening to Cheap Trick, The Clash, The Minutemen, and The New York Dolls. In other words, songs with the kinds of hooks bands couldn’t write anymore. On its second album (its first for Columbia Records), D Generation made rock 'n' roll exciting again: a reminder that we lived in a cheap and brutal world (nailed on “No Way Out”) and that somebody needed to remind the '90s kids that they didn't had to suffer Alanis Morissette and Boyz II Men. No Lunch is like sloganeering graffiti on walls of fading malls, a made-in-lower-Manhattan reaction to the times. It’s everything rock 'n' roll, only magnified. Columbia had high hopes for D Generation conquering America like Guns N’ Roses. It would’ve been a better world for rock 'n' roll had it succeeded.