Domingo 15 Jul 2007, 11:32
Let's skip all that music is my life crap, shall we? We all know the clichés, so there's really no point. If you don't like music, you have no soul. I don't care who you are, but everyone has at least one song that moves them in a way they can't explain. Or that signposts a significant moment in their life. If you say no, you must be lying and I don't want to hear any more of your rubbish, so sit down and pay attention. Or better still, turn on the radio or the TV or your computer or leave your house and go to a record store and just look and listen and find that song. Cause until you do, your life is nothing but an empty, meaningless existence. Ok?
Ok.
1987 was when I first started to notice music. Or at least, when I first started to notice its affect on me. So, we're gonna start there. Let the record show, I would've been eight at the time. For Christmas that year, I was given Smash Hits '87 on cassette. Sure, you'd probably call it an embarrassing collection today, but I remember at the time being in love with most of the songs on it.
Here I present a list of songs that, at some time have meant something to me. Or at least, that somehow represent a particular period in my life. The first list covers the years '87 through till '96. It's kind of chronological, in the vague order of how I remember them entering my life.
The second list is a little more - and I hate using the word, but - eclectic. Less chronological and more about the bands and songs that I carry with me day to day, whether it be on my iPod, or in my heart.
Three, two, one … awww.
Anyway that list will come later. For now, I present:
The Musical Awakening of Tobias Ampersand: An Autobiography told in Song.
Part 1: 1987 to 1996 (The School Years)
Stutter Rap by Morris Minor and the Majors
One of the first songs I remember actually learning the words to. Not through sitting down and actually reading them, but more through osmosis. I'm almost sure my parents may know the words too, on account of I used to listen to it … lots.
I think most of the appeal came from the fact that it took my somewhat warped childhood sense of humour and put it to the tune of a pretty cool song. I don't even think I knew who the Beastie Boys even were. But Stutter Rap made me wanna dance and it was funny - I just wasn't sure why.
Hear also: Anything by Weird Al Yankovic, although he came a little later.
Heaven is a Place on Earth by Belinda Carlisle
There comes a time in a young boys' life when he realises that girls aren't perhaps as yucky as he first thought. In fact, they're actually kind of nice to look at, and some of them make you feel funny in the pants area. If you ask, I'm sure most boys would remember the girl that brought upon this realisation. For me, it was Belinda Carlisle.
Hear also: Leave a Light on for Me and Live Your Life, Be Free
Electric Blue by Ice House
Specifically, the album Man of Colours. Until this point I was pretty much a singles boy. Man of Colours was one of the first ever albums I sat down and listened to all the way through that wasn't a compilation. Being a car-sick kid, it was a favourite on long car rides - of which there were many, living in Bunbury. Something about the song writing of Mr. Iva Davis really calms an upset tummy.
Hear also: Invisible Touch by Genesis.
Lullaby by The Cure
This probably seems like an odd choice at this point, so I'll explain. I knew very little about the Cure at the time, except for the fact that my best friend's kinda hot sister was really into them. Anyway, from what I'd heard they weren't really my thing so I paid very little attention. That is until …
I remember when I was about nine or ten, one Saturday morning I'd woken stupidly early. I remember it still being dark outside, so it probably would've been around 6 am. Maybe earlier. I remember making my way into the lounge room and turning on the TV, thinking I'd probably just sit on the beanbag and watch some Rage. What greeted me will stick with me for as long as I live.
A man, fixed to a bed by thick spider-webs. On the ceiling another man - the same man - trapped, also in webs. Shapes in the window. Spiders. Cobwebs everywhere. The man then being devoured by something large and black.
And the lyric, "The spider-man is having me for dinner tonight".
When you talk about the affect music has on people, I think fear is an often overlooked emotion. The Cure didn't actually become one of my favourite bands until well after this, but in a lot of ways, they've always been with me.
Falling to Pieces by Faith No More
Insert love of Mike Patton here. I have nothing else to say. If you have to ask, you'll never know.
The Fly by U2
Ok, say what you will about Bono what he and his band of do-gooders have become now, but Atchung Baby was an awesome album. And this was a great song.
What? It was!
Wave of Mutilation (UK Surf) by The Pixies
For the record, I had no idea who The Pixies were at age twelve. There was no way that I was that cool. No, instead I was a twelve year old film nerd with a penchant for collecting soundtracks. Amongst my collection are the soundtrack to some of my favourite films at the time, including Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, Wayne's World, and due mostly to an adolescent boy crush on Christian Slater, Pump Up the Volume.
I used to listen to my cassette copy of the Pump up the Volume soundtrack as I worked Saturdays in my father's workshop. He owned a business making skin and haircare products, which is a much longer story than I'd like to go into now. My job usually either entailed sweeping or mopping floors, or labelling bottles. I'd spend most of my day on my feet, being paid a wage I'm sure would get my dad into trouble if I told anyone, so I could earn money to buy cassettes and Gameboy Games. It was a hard-luck life, but thankfully I had my walkman to drown my sorrows. Wave of Mutilation (specifically the UK Surf Version) was a perfect soundtrack to my slave-wage existence.
Looking at the track lists for those soundtracks now, it's funny how the bands I knew nothing about then would re-appear in my life somewhere later down the track. And how early in my life I'd exposed myself to Henry Rollins, Soundgarden, Sonic Youth, Primus, and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers without even realising it.
Welcome to the Jungle by Guns and Roses
The soundtrack to my angsty adolescence. Specifically, the six weeks my family and I spent in the UK between 1991 and '92. I'd discovered Guns n' Roses, like most of my peers, in '91 when Use Your Illusion I and II were released. Y'know, before we'd ever even heard the term 'marketing ploy'. Thinking about it now, cross promoting your lead single with a blockbuster Schwarzenegger film should've been a huge give-away. Anyway, much like pot leads to the harder drugs, we took the Illusion and worked backwards to Lies and of course Appetite for Destruction.
Listening suggestion: Best played on your walkman, headphones so loud the rest of the car can hear ever single word.
Even Flow by Pearl Jam
If Guns and Roses was were to represent the awkward, lanky, long haired American-metal-head part of my teenage-hood, the Pearl Jam would represent the awkward, lanky, long haired grunge-head part. Pearl Jam always seemed so much more grown-up than the gunners. The lack of bad language an insistence in being obnoxious was almost refreshing coming off my Gunners' bender.
Pearl Jam was also the first ever concert I attended. Well, that I admit to. The actual first is far less interesting and no one probably remembers them anyway. So we're going to call it Pearl Jam. And to be honest, I don't remember the first time I ever heard Pearl Jam. Somehow, they've always just been there. Along with my impossible man-crush on Eddie Vedder.
March 6th, 1995. The night I knew what it was to be one of those screaming girls they used to show in footage from Beatle's concerts. And for the record, I still have - and occasionally wear - my army boots from the period. Gone however are the flannel shirts and long, cut off shorts converted from army surplus store pants.
Hear also: Jeremy if the mood is more awesome songs about teenage suicide.
Jesus Christ Pose by Soundgarden / Today by The Smashing Pumpkins.
File under: Blown away then, still waiting to be remotely impressed again now.
Yeah Chris and Billy, I'm talking to you.
Pointless aside: If you were to ask my friend Quinn - who is a gigantic Smashing Pumpkins fan - how he first got into them, even to this day he'd reply, "Mark came to school and said 'Quinn, Smashing Pumpkins'. So I went out and bought Siamese Dream."
They used to call me Molly.
The Downward Spiral (yes the whole fucking thing counts) by Nine Inch Nails
My favourite NIN memory: Watching TV over dinner with my folks, and the 7:30 report was doing an expose on violent and offensive lyrics. Cut to some old church lady, standing in a record store reading the lyrics to Big Man With a Gun from the Downward Spiral. She finishes, and I turn to Mum and say, "Hey, you got that album for me for my birthday." I'm beaming. She's not.
Second favourite NIN memory: sitting in the dark and loosing my teenage mind to A Warm Place and Eraser.
My Iron Lung by Radiohead
I was never a fan of Creep and had until this point never really paid Radiohead much mind. I remember having a copy of My Iron Lung on a Rage video I'd taped one night, and always thinking of it as that song after that new Faith no More song - which I believe at the time would've been Digging a Grave, but Mike Patton got his mention, so we'll leave it at that. Anyway one day, while on a Faith No More binge, I left the room for a moment and left the tape playing. On my return I was greeted with the sound of My Iron Lung. That's around the time I started paying attention.
Next weekend I bought The Bends with a Brax voucher my Mum and Dad won at a raffle. Same voucher also bought Post by Bjork for my sister. Which I still regret to this day. Words cannot express how much I hate It's So Quiet. I am convinced that hearing blasting away on a loop from my sister's bedroom was a contributing cause to my current, unstable mental state. I'm also petitioning having it listed as a form of torture with the UN, or whoever does that stuff.
Oh, and for the record, I love Bjork. Like love, love Bjork. But I can never listen to that song again.
So Real by Jeff Buckley
One of those songs that I can still remember vividly the first time I ever heard it. The short version - me at home, sick with fever. My pen-friend-slash-crush-object at the time and I used to send each other mixed tapes, and that day I'd just received her new compilation. I put the tape on, turned the lights out, and curled up in bed, shivering in sweat.
And over the stereo, the voice of an angel fills the room, and I don't know if it was the music or the fever, but I seem to remember being transported to another place.
Probably the fever.
As an aside, pen-friend-slash-crush-object at the time was also reason for me calling Triple J's Request Fest to request Popular by Nada Surf. I got to talk to Michael Tunn on the radio, but never did end up getting the girl. We did however make-out during Hackers. This is a longer story that may or may not be told another time.
Ænima by Tool
Ok, I have a confession to make. I didn't really ever think much of Undertow when it came out. My friend Ben picked it up and raved about it for weeks, and by the time I got a copy of it, I really couldn't see what the big deal was. There were some pretty cool songs on there, but the album as a whole really failed to grab me. Besides, I already had a Dark Prince in Trent. There really wasn't room in my life for another one.
Cut to a few years later and everyone is excited about the release of Ænima except me. That was until I saw the lead off single, Stinkfist on Rage and something clicked inside of me. I still can't explain it, but to me it was if I was hearing a completely different band.
Cut to a few years after this - May 4th 2002 to be precise - and I'm standing in the Entertainment Centre, tears streaming down my face as Maynard sings "Mama's gonna fix it all soon, Mama's coming 'round to put it back the way it oughta be" and the sound of Adam's guitar picks up and fills the room.
I still get goose-bumps just thinking about it.
Pointless aside: I actually had a ticket to see Tool when they toured in '97 on the back of Ænima. Unfortunately it was in April - 2 months before my 18th birthday - and they were playing an over 18s show. We checked if there was any way I'd be able to get in, but to no avail. I ended up selling my ticket to an overseas student I knew.
That night, R- and my high school friends met Maynard after the show. I still sometimes resent my birthday being in June because of this.
1979 by The Smashing Pumpkins.
Yeah, I know I've done the Pumpkins, but this is more about the song - or more accurately, the video clip. Mellon Collie came out in '95 and 1979 was released as a single in '96. 1996 also happened to be my final year of high school, and 1979 was the year in which most of my graduating class were born. At the time I used to spend my lunch breaks playing guitar with my friends in the music room. I remember wanting desperately for us to all learn 1979 so we could play it at graduation.
Needless to say, it never happened. Instead we got a crappy photo montage played to My Way by Frank Sinatra.
Never before - or since - have I seen a music video so accurately represent this or any part of my life (see also: Television show Freaks and Geeks) Sure, we were a decade or so late, but the random driving around, hanging out in convenience stores and service stations, and house parties featured in the video may as well have been a documentary for all we were concerned.
Well, maybe not a documentary, but it gave us something to aspire to.
Be Sweet by The Afghan Whigs
Ok, chronologically this doesn't really go last. If you're a stickler for order, this will fit in somewhere between Soundgarden and Radiohead. But as far as importance is concerned, no other band has had as much of a lasting impact on my life as The Afghan Whigs.
I've told this story before so I'll give you the short version: I saw Gentlemen on Rage and took the $50 I wasn't supposed to be paid for work experience and raced out and bought the album and was subsequently blown away.
Pointless aside: In the same visit to the record store, I also purchased Veruca Salt's American Thighs, which was recommended to me after I asked about The Last Splash by The Breeders. Said copy of American Thighs was signed by the band a few years later at a meet and greet, upstairs at 78 Records.
… aaanyway.
I really wish I was able to explain why The Afghan Whigs are so important, or the effect that their music continues to have on me. I can't help but think that, if I were a better writer, I'd be able to. And I know we've done this I'm no good at this - don't be stupid, yes you are back and forth before, but, well here's the thing …
If I had a dream in life, it would be to be to be able to take these words that I make and put them down in a way that somehow captures how I feel when I hear a song like Be Sweet or Crime Scene, Pt. One or You My Flower or any number of Whigs' songs that make my heart skip a beat and the hair on my neck stand on end and my skin become goose-bumps all over. If the devil were offering, I'd sell my soul - there's that word again - to be able to write a lyric or a poem or a story that tells a tale like Gentlemen or My Curse or What Jail is Like. Even if I could just translate these feelings that I have when I heard them into something more than fan-boy gushing, I'd be happy.
And sure, every now and then I come up with something I'm pretty happy with, or that strikes a chord with one of you, but if we're talking about capturing how I felt when I first heard the album Gentlemen or Black Love from start to end, then I've got a long way to go.
To be continued…