I may or may not be high in this photo. But I am definitely ROCKIN’!
The first pop music I can remember is Men At Work*. I had a recording of Business As Usual on audio tape, which I played on a tape recorder*. The tape: probably something inherited from my sister, the last sibling to leave the house. The tape deck: appropriated from my father. This was not a stereo or boom box*, but a tape deck made mostly for recording meetings or interviews, complete with a cheap-ass Radio Shack mic.
(*ask your parents. Or possibly grandparents.)
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In 1973, a British band called Pink Floyd released a little-known work called Dark Side of the Moon. Maybe some of you have heard of it. (I wasn’t born yet.)
In 1983, a little college band which had nearly named itself “Cans of Piss” debuted their first album, Murmur. Apt, because most people couldn’t make out a word being sung. This was clearly a band destined to have little impact on the world of pop music.
And also in 1983, to, I’m guessing, zero national fanfare at all, a bunch of Orange County punks released a record called Mommy’s Little Monster. I didn’t care. I was in second grade, writing my first short story.
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These days, the truth is, I just don’t listen to full albums anymore. Not of new bands, anyway. There’s a few old standbys I can tolerate, but by the time I learned how to make mix tapes my freshman year of high school with a side-by-side tape-deck stereo, the idea of absorbing entire albums at once started waning. It wasn’t a quick death, but the most recently released full album I’ve listened to is Lindi Ortega’s Little Red Boots. (That was 2011.) Prior to that, it was probably 2004, with Social D’s Sex, Love, and Rock n’ Roll.
Sidebar: If you have anything besides your ears pierced, put any color in your hair that is not blonde or brown, wear anything resembling combat boots, have a mohawk…thank a punk. Those guys and gals got their literal asses literally kicked so you could one day watch Cadillac (!) commercials (among others) backed with music by the Ramones.
“You couldn’t walk into a mall get your little […..] pierced, and your little Doc Marten boots, and your crazy color for your hair. You walked down the street with blue hair, you was gonna get in a fight with about five angry construction workers, or the local college football team, rednecks, or cops.” ~ Mike Ness, Social Distortion: Live At The Roxy
The truth is, I didn’t discover Pink Floyd until at least 1988. Or R.E.M. until 1990. Or Social Distortion until about the same time. Just putting those three bands in a sentence will likely make at least a few of my few readers recoil in terror. I understand. It makes me feel that way, too.
The other truth is, I don’t much care. These are my people, for better or worse. The three bands that made the biggest impact on me. They – and many, many others of course – formed the soundtrack to a life later spent reliving it and retelling it in the form of novels. Without these bands, I’m not me, and in many ways, I don’t end up doing what I do now.
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So what follows will be a meandering look at my own musical history, from the Transformers: The Movie soundtrack (1986, thank you very much) to Tanya Donelly (the only musician to actually feature in the art in my office today), what was happening when I heard the music, where it takes me now, and whatever the hell else happens to pop up. This is a little side non-fiction project I’ve wanted to do for awhile, so it’ll likely be sporadic at best. But I need some journaling time, and kids, this is it.
Men At Work put out some great music. I’ve got a recording, don’t know from where, of Colin Hay doing a mellow acoustic version of Down Under that I rather enjoy. But Men At Work didn’t change my life. Being first doesn’t equate to being best, or favorite, or life-altering. I’m sure as I keep writing this series, I’ll find that many life-changing bands and songs, I don’t much care for anymore. That will be interesting to see. And some bands I won’t even admit to listening to. Unless two shits are truly not given at the time of the writing.
I’ll be using album release years to sort of anchor the stories, although as I mentioned above, actual release years may have nothing at all to do with who or where I was at the time (i.e., Dark Side of the Moon = unborn.) A lot of it will be about high school, as is appropos of my career path at the moment. We’ll see.
Anyway. Enough for now. I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon.
There is no dark side of the moon, really.
Matter of fact…
it’s all dark…
