Time considered as a helix of semi-precious musical storage media

[rezendi]

Spurred by a brief recent return to Ottawa. ("Returning to the scene of the crime is classic criminal behaviour, but fourteen years later I didn't expect the cops to be there.")


The Police, Synchronicity

My parents' basement, 1985. The first music I ever really got into. One of my sisters bought it; they were both huge Police fans, I remember the three of us watching a concert of theirs on an undescrambled pay-per-view TV channel, getting headaches from the warped, flickering, poison-coloured shadow-images. I took possession of the tape and listened to it obsessively.


Dire Straits, Brothers In Arms

Paris, 1987; I was there for a month on some summer-exchange program. (Spoiled childhood? Moi?) I listened to this tape every day. This and Synchronicity were the only albums I'd ever really listened to, and I think on some level I believed all music was that good.


Guns n' Roses, Appetite For Destruction

1989. I was sixteen years old, just finishing high school (when very young I was mistaken for a child prodigy and skipped two grades), angsty and antisocial, angry at the world as only a sixteen-year-old boy can be, with no real idea how to comport myself around other people except my small group of friends. (This was trebly true around girls, whose presence all but paralyzed me - although, come to think of it, this was also the time I went on a couple of dates with the prettiest girl in my high school, though I was so bewildered and stressed out by her interest in me that nothing came of it.) Anyway I listened to Gn'R on endless repeat every single night. It was oddly soothing.


The Doors, Greatest Hits

Oxford, 1990. Another summer thing. (Spoiled? Moi?) In retrospect surprisingly seminal - I have more close friends from this one month than from high school. Perhaps because it was the first time I ever socialized with people who were my age or younger. I had brought a long red ghetto-blaster tape player across the Atlantic, and lots of tapes - I was finally getting really into music. I remember several times sitting in a small crowd in the gardens of New College and listening to Floyd and Zeppelin and most of all Jim Morrison and Co., my favourite band at the time.


U2, Achtung Baby, Nirvana, Nevermind

1991, second year of university. One reason I was so into classic rock until then was that the music of the late eighties sucked; I can't think of a single '88, '89, or '90 release that I actually liked except Tom Petty's Full Moon Fever (which I still adore but never became personally significant.) I had pretty much given up on present-day music. And then one day I happened to be watching MuchMusic, saw Bono's face, was about to reflexively change the channel - I thought (and still think) that The Joshua Tree is among the most overrated albums of all time - and then this weird, chunking, metallic guitar riff emanated from the TV, and I stayed my finger and listened with full, overwhelmed attention to "The Fly," still my favourite song on an album without a single dud track.

That same week, at least in my memory, I was working part-time in the used-CD store my parents owned and my sister ran (Spoiled? Moi?), when a girl came in and said "I heard this amazing song last night, I have to buy it, do you know it?" and tried to half-hum/half-sing it. This had never happened before. I just kind of stared at her as she croaked "It's less dangerous, here we are now, entertain us, something something, contagious." I shook my head, bemused.

The next day a guy we called Don Disc (he supplied the store with high-quality, recent-issue CDs, which we were pretty sure he was getting illegally even before the cops came to ask us about him) brought in a bunch of CDs, and as usual we bought them all, and there was this one with an album cover of a naked baby in a pool reaching for a dollar bill on a hook. My interest piqued, I put it in and hit PLAY. About fifteen seconds into track 2 a customer came over and asked to buy whatever this album was. That had never happened before either.

It was kind of amazing watching "Smells Like Teen Spirit" conquer the world, although in fact it's one of my least favourite songs on Nevermind, and I was kind of pleased they didn't play it when I saw them live. They were the only band that Really Mattered to me, excepting only maybe the next entry, until the day Kurdt swallowed that shotgun.


The Tragically Hip, Fully Completely and Day For Night

I remember rushing out with my sister to buy Fully Completely the day it came out. I've listened to it so many times I hardly need to own a copy any more (in fact I own two); I can almost play it note-for-note in my head. They don't know how old I am, they found armour in my belly, from the sixteenth century, conquistador I think ... lashing out at machine-revving tension... When Day for Night came out - autumn 1992? - I was living in a room in a student house with no phone, hardly going to classes or seeing anyone at all; I spent the better part of three weeks in the basement of that house, reading books and listening to DfN.


Nirvana, Bleach and In Utero

Autumn 1993. A cramped basement apartment, its ceiling decorated with an inventive star map, in Vanier, Ottawa's ghetto. (OK, ghetto in the Canadian-outside-of-East-Hastings sense not the 1970s South Bronx sense, but it was in Vanier that I first had a gun pointed at me, and I remember sitting frozen in the corner of a nearby doner shop while an amazing eight-man rumble raged all around me, shattering chairs and windows.) I was working on Ottawa on a co-op term and living in that basement when In Utero came out, and even today that shattering opening chord of "Serve The Servants" immediately takes me right back there. And even today listening to Bleach makes me feel trapped in a lightless, doorless, windowless room. But, like, in a good way.


Soundgarden, Superunknown

Summer 1994. I was back in Ottawa, living on a horse ranch just outside the city and commuting to my dreary Northern Telecom job by bicycle. I got free long-distance so every day I talked to el_christador for an hour-plus at his similarly dull job in St. Louis. This was the summer I discovered I could enjoy physical exercise; it was an hour by bicycle to central Ottawa, and I shed probably fifteen pounds from my (still-pudgy) frame. My socializing consisted largely of my weekly D&D game. The rest of the time I watched movies; wrote songs, bad short stories, and worse poetry; and listened, almost every night, to Chris Cornell and Co. One night near the end of the term my landlady woke me up because my drunk fellow-lodger was threatening her with a knife. The cops came and took him away. A week later she was involved in a massive car crash just outside the ranch, and I never saw her again.


Radiohead, The Bends

Autumn 1995. I and three other co-op students were in New York City, working for The Evil Company who would soon fire me and threaten me with a libel suit, living on futons on the floor of their office in a now-demolished building at Sixth and 37th. Kenley, one of my compatriots, had this album he kept listening to in an obsessive manner, but I didn't actually notice it until he and I were eating at Dojo on St. Mark's one evening and his music came on. "Hey," I said, "what is this?" "Radiohead." "Oh, those guys who did 'Creep'?" "Yeah." I listened a little longer. The next day I borrowed his CD so I could take it to NBC (an Evil Company client) and listen to it. The day after that I bought my own.


(sister's name), Feed Your Head

Winter 1996, my last winter in Waterloo. It didn't really have a name, but the short note that came with the mix tape my sister sent me from Tokyo ended with the phrase "in the words of a certain self-indulgent sixties band, FEED YOUR HEAD."

I listened to this tape until it literally wore out. Tracks I remember: Liz Phair (of whom more later), "Six Foot One" and "Never Said Nothing." Dinosaur Jr. "Out There." Stevie Wonder, "Superstitious." Toad the Wed Sprocket, "Rock N' Roll All Night." American Music Club, "How Many 6 Packs Does It Take To Screw In A Light." (Which, no joke, may sort of have subconsciously been a reason I soon moved to San Francisco.) Garth Brooks, "Hard Luck Woman." The Replacements, "I'll Be You." Pavement, "Range Life." I was so sick of my hometown by then, I'd go take my parents' car and go driving for hours just to be moving, just to be going anywhere, even in endless retracings of the same routes around our bland minimetropolis, while this tape played and played and played and played.



To be continued. Or maybe deleted, I dunno. Nostalgia as a heresy and all that.

Comments

[collisionwork]

Please continue, don't delete.

[abigor.livejournal.com]

I don't know what it is, but reading others' memories related to music is always nostalgic and interesting to me. It gives me insight into people, because sharing music that you like or have a connection to with someone else is very intimate to me. I'm also really grateful when someone can introduce me to a song or a band that I've never heard of or never listened to, and it grabs me.

'Whole of the Moon' by The Waterboys is a song that rdi introduced to me when we were first dating, and it didn't stick, but when I heard it a second time at school (where I was feeling very stressed and alone and overwhelmed) it was something that I recognized on some streaming internet radio site from all the rest of the chaff that had been playing, and it immediately grabbed me and spoke to me. It ended up becoming one of my favourite songs by that band, and I'm ever-grateful to rdi for showing it to me that first time, or the second time it mayn't have caught my ear.

[foms.livejournal.com]

That set something off. I bracketed you.

The woman who introduced my parents to each other lived on St. Mark's Place during most of my early childhood. I was there often.

In April of 2000, I was in NYC, tagging along on my soon-to-be-post-fiancee's conference trip. Walking down Broadway, after a long (but fun) day at the Cloisters, just as we were starting to think about where to eat, we heard a strange but familiar sound. It was the sound of rattan sword on armour. The local SCA folks were having a heavy weapons practice in Union Square. The perfect opportunity for native guides. They suggested Dojo, on St. Mark's and that is where we supped.

[ladyeuthanasia.livejournal.com]

Cool. I'm going to riff on this based on what I'm finding as I'm clearing my apartment. Musical memories are very intense for me. Nostalgia isn't as much heresay as it is blackmail material.

[blueelf13.livejournal.com]

Please continue... I, at least, enjoy reading this very much. For someone who wasn't allowed to have their own radio until they were 16, and listened to CBC, and my dad's country tapes while he drove around with us, and his stolen Simon & Garfunkle tape he still doesn't know what happened to, hearing ANYTHING about groups that people I know like inspires me. Of course the irony is that during all of this, I was performing and singing in more choirs than I could keep up with...

[el-christador.livejournal.com]

every day I talked to el_christador for an hour-plus at his similarly dull job in St. Louis

Yikes...and yet my employers seemed relatively pleased with me that term.

My job wasn't really that dull. Compared to most jobs, I mean, not on an absolute scale, of course.

You got fired by TEC?

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

Well, sort of. They fired me on a Friday, I went away to Boston for the weekend, and when I came back on Monday they'd seen the error of their ways and offered to unfire me. I pondered overnight and on Tuesday accepted the unfiring.

[el-christador.livejournal.com]

Being fired (w/o the unfiring) from a co-op job would be an interesting accomplishment. Even with the unfiring it's still noteworthy.

[scanner-darkly.livejournal.com]

This was awesome, and I can't wait to see what else you do. I have half a mind to do something about albums myself: it's odd to see how times change and where people were at times in their lives, and having the music is a way to anchor it to you (the reader), somehow.

[whynotsteve.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I own and/or am a big fan of just about everything on your list, save U2 (and I completely agree with you about The Joshua Tree *g*). I had a reaction to Nirvana similar to the ones that you witnessed; I saw the video for "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on MuchMusic and went out to buy the CD the next day. After listening to it I was completely blown away, and went out looking for reviews in music magazines to see if anyone else felt the same way.

[anthologie.livejournal.com]

You and I could be taken to the same nostalgia-places with a mix of the same music. That's kinda awesome.

[whythawk.livejournal.com]

You've read Nick Hornby, 31 Songs? Nostalgia is good, and music has a way of capturing the spirit of our feelings at the time. Largely it's self-selective - we do choose what we listen to. But that's what brings back all that nostalgia. And yes, I have experienced nostalgia while something I realised was important was happening. I knew I would remember that moment. And that what makes music so cool.

[rednikki.livejournal.com]

This is really interesting. And very different from what's on my list, save maybe for the Liz Phair. I would love to see more.

[stylishbastard.livejournal.com]

You're so Generation X.

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

I blame my parents.

[rdi.livejournal.com]

Muy cool. Please continue, as and when.

[ilcylic.livejournal.com]

Winter, 1995: Walking around downtown Albuquerque with a boombox slung over one shoulder and a jacket full of mix tapes I had made while spinning the night shift at the college radio station, playing the most obscure and unintelligible industrial music I could find. Myself and 4 or 5 other people stomping down alleys, looking at phone boxes, and generally being invincible.

-Ogre

[cipherpunk.livejournal.com]

A magnificent album of 1989: Leonard Cohen and I'm Your Man.

That album, plus the Dire Straits and Brothers in Arms (the song, mostly, the album only secondarily) kept me from blowing my head off in high school. Right when I was at the brink of giving up, giving in, surrendering to the crushing tide of banality and checking out of life, Cohen came to me like a mad prophet preaching a gospel of wrath.

Not hatred, no. Nor just anger. But wrath--a sense that what was happening to me was morally wrong and it would be just as morally wrong to allow it to win over me. I had to survive, I had to prevail, I had to substitute absolute transcendent wrath for my sense of passive helplessness. That substitution saved my life, kept me from going off the deep end.

Brothers in Arms was its own promise--that someday the war would end. Someday I wouldn't have to be as angry anymore, someday I wouldn't have to fight tooth and nail just to find a place in which I could exist.

I am grateful beyond the words to express that I have lived long enough to have seen the end of that war, and have had an enjoyable life after it.