Unfortunately for me, Protection has been burned into my head as an album that reminds of a girl I used to love, and am still in love with. So perhaps unfairly, it has been tarnished.
But as a testament to how incredible Blue Lines is, I was playing it last night when a friend that was riding with me to a concert asked me to dial up some reggae on my mp3 player. I didn't have any reggae, so I put on Five Man Army, followed by the title track of Blue Lines... he's sitting there, checking it out... then he starts bobbing his head... and then he says to me, "Who the fuck is this? This is fresh as hell, WAY ahead of the times..." And I replied back, "This is Massive Attack, their first album... which came out in 1990."
He spent the whole night tripping out on the fact that the album came out 15 years ago, and bought it today.
