Music from my past

I explicitly remember the first time I ever heard this song. I went to Newbury Comics and bought the three part CD single the day it came out on import. I went back to my house in Allston, where I lived with Craig and Keith and Jussi, and put it on the speakers at full volume - no one else was home. It was totally unexpected and wonderful, unlike any Spiritualized I had hear yet up to that point.  And when the bass kicks in, the music kicks in… “here it comes and then it goes…” I completely lost it. 

I mean, I’m not a junkie or anything, but the genius about Jason Pierce’s angst is that it can apply to any jones. It can apply to any confusion, addiction, or obsession. 

I also somehow obtained, at the time, a VHS promo tape of the music video for this song. I was sort of a burgeoning audiophile then - a habit I quickly kicked - and me and my friend Annie would listen to the song on my giant Klipsch speakers and Carver amps (ha. a poor audiophile, no less). We’d just crank it and let the giant bass wash over us when it kicked in.

People talk about Ladies and Gentlemen all the time - Spin magazine’s best albums of the last 25 years, NME’s album of the year. But Pure Phase was Spiritualized at perfection, at least on tour. They played Boston three times for this album, and I made them all. Kate was still in the band. Sean Cook. His amazing harmonica playing on “These Blues” at the Orpheum was something to remember. The one-off show at Axis they did in prep for their tour with Neil Young. The first Paradise show where they’d been playing this album for almost a year and had most of Ladies and Gentlemen written by then and debuted “Come Together,” “Electricity” and “Cop Shoot Cop.”  

Oh man. I wouldn’t go back to those days, working the night shift at Copy Cop, but I sure do miss them sometimes. 

(Source: Spotify)

After my freshman year in college, in 1991, I went back to Alaska for the summer and, as the White Stripes say, fell in love with a girl. I neglected to tell said girl of my affection, but rather decided I would just stay in Alaska for her, so I took my fall semester of 1991 at University of Alaska rather than Boston University. I figured there were a few required classes I needed to get out of the way, so I would do them at UAF and save some money. 

One of my required clases was some english composition class. The prof, who was, of course, a grad student, made us keep a journal for the class. Of course by this point i had already been journaling for.. five years? So I kept at it in the form that I had been before. I bought a lovely hard bound notebook and scrawled something like 300 pages of journals about my life and hopes and fears into that book. Each week we’d turn the book in on friday and she’d give it back to us on Monday with a little note. My journal was by far the most intimate and over time, the notes from my teacher grew more intimate too. it was great. It was also sad when the class ended. I kept journaling, but I missed the reader, the outside reader, who could leave little comments on my journal.  It was absolutely this relationship that made me take to Livejournal like a fish to water when I discovered it. Anonymous and safe, but with an outside readership. 

The next summer, I was working at the state fair, and my professor Robin came by. She was with her husband. She was genuinely excited to see me, and I was happy to see her. But i felt raw and vulnerable and scared and confused, with someone knowing so much about me, and doubly so because her ultra manly husband was there. I remember her leaving and me feeling shame at my shyness. Now I sort of look back at it and laugh. It’s a talisman and reminder of how bookish and withdrawn I was when I was younger. Hard to imagine today. 

Inside the front cover of the first journal, I had transcribed the lyrics to this song. I felt it was some great symbolic song about me missing Boston, and having missed Fairbanks so much when I was in Boston. I discovered This Mortal Coil in high school. The comic shop in Fairbanks (logically called The Comic Shop) had a small record shop in it, where we’d browse through the enigmatic covers of various 4AD artists. I didn’t even know who these bands were, but their covers drew me in. For my 17th birthday I insisted to my mother she buy me both “It’ll End in Tears” and “Filligree & Shadow,” without ever having heard them. Despite some reservations, she complied. I loved those records. 

Later, thanks to the indespensible pre-internet Trouser Press, I learned all about how This Mortal Coil was the project of Ivo Watts Russell, the founder of 4AD records, home to so many bands I loved - Dead Can Dance, This Mortal Coil, Pixies, Ultra Vivid Scene, Throwing Muses, Wolfgang Press. It was also through TMC and Trouser Press that I learned about Breathless and Cindytalk, two bands whose lead singers appeared on the TMC albums and with which I would later become friends (stories for another day). 

While at Boston University, the third and final TMC album came out, entitled “Blood.” It’s probably best known for Kim Deal’s cover of Chris Bell’s “You and Your Sister”. But I really loved “Mr Somewhere.” I don’t listen to it much anymore, but when I do, it reminds me of Alaska, of my professor Robin, Alaska, the love I forgot to tell I was in love with, the cold winter, driving around aimlessly in the snow, answering machines, desk pads, long letters back to friends in Boston and how going to college in your home town can make you feel like High School kept on going. 

(Source: Spotify)

We loved whale. Well, Craig and I did. They opened for Blur at Axis. They had that semi-hit with “Hobo Humpin Slobo Babe,” but in 1994, we really loved “Pay for me.” We loved the video, we loved the lead singer’s braces, their strange scandanavian mix of metal and rap and britpop. Craig, Keith, Jussi and I all lived together on Higgins street in Allston, by the Burger King. We’d have picnics on the porch. We’d go look at the hogs that our neighbor kept in his or her yard. We’d eat at the Big Burrito every day. Ah, post college life. All these can-do kids scurrying to get jobs at startups or ad agencies don’t know the joys of $200 a month rent, being in a band, working at a copy shop and doing fuck all with your time. Truck time. Bacon bacon bacon bacon. Man Ray. Jussi as a designated driver. It was lovely. 

Whale shouldn’t be a good band. I often wonder what it is I like about them, but I am still happy when they come on. 

(Source: Spotify)

Let’s go for the long version here. PAM EVERHART. Oh, the Everhart sisters. The love of my high school life. They probably had more of a hand than anyone making me even remotely “cool.” They taught me so much. They taught me about Nick Cave. The Wolfgang Press. How to dress. Haha. I was so smitten. I loved their dad too. He was hilarious. Sorta a mix between Daddy Drinkwater and Daddy Taylor. The manly man dad, taciturn and fond of screwing around with his kids friends. A tinkerer. He had a wire recorder! They lived in this big weird house up off of Rosie Creek road. There were parts of the road that had been dug out of a hill using that step technique, so there were these big three foot high steps going up the side of the hill that the house was dug out of. We’d sit up on those steps with some food and a boombox and listen to music. Love and Rockets. Bauhaus. Nick Cave. Wolfgang Press. The Jesus and Mary Chain. Those two loved Barbed Wire Kisses. Everyone else just liked Darklands. They liked the noise, they taught me about the noise. 

Moev stayed with me - especially this song - as I went to Boston. Chris would play it at Man Ray, and when I met Megan, she was a fan of it too. I used to listen to it all the time. Chris still occasionally plays it. I love the endless weird drums, the haunting chorus, the vague dystopian samples, a perfect synthesis of late 80’s, early 90’s industrial dance. 

(Source: Spotify)

LILY ANDERSON. A year older than me in high school. One of my best friends. I loved her so much. She listened to such cool music. I had the goths and the industrial kids and the punk and the metal kids teaching me about all of that, but Lily liked the pop. She taught me about the Stone Roses when they came out, and she taught me about Loyd Cole. 

I thought so much of Lily I went straight out to Hoytt’s records on Airport Way. Of course, this was a piddly little record store in Fairbanks, AK, so you had to special order everything, and so I special ordered this album. Just seeing the cover there in the spotify widget brings back memories. Loyd Cole and the Commotions, RIP. They were broken up already before I discovered them. Of course I’ve seen Loyd solo many times, and he still plays Commotions songs, but I never got to see the Commotions. 

“Forest Fire” was probably the song I liked the best. All Simply Red meets Bob Dylan and northern english soul. It’s a weird song. But “Perfect Skin” I felt more emotionally. I loved songs about weird quirky Holly Golightly unpredictable girl types even then - the type we’d call the manic pixie dream girl now. I am over them now, but you know, any song about a weird girl I was a sucker for then.

“She’s got cheekbones like geometry eyes like sin, and she’s sexually enlightened by Cosmopolitan.” 

(Source: Spotify)

Since we’re on this kick let’s talk about Single Gun Theory for a moment. I bought their first album purely based on being on Nettwerk records. This is the Nettwerk before their pro Napster stance and Sarah McLachlan, Junkie XL and the Submarines. This was the Nettwerk of Skinny Puppy, Moev, Severed Heads and The Tear Garden. I figured it’d be another industrial barn burner. Nettwerk was like 4AD and Factory in that most of the album covers had a house style - newfangled fonts, full bleed zoomed in video stills and some geometric shapes. It was safe to assume that the music was all pretty similar too. Not sure why I thought that, given that the same wasn’t true of 4AD and Factory.

And it wasn’t true here. Imagine my surprise when I found a sensitive, sorta dubby, melodic album of slightly dark pop. Nostalgic and brooding and regretful, but with a sense of wistfulness.

It was really up my alley. Most of the noisy stuff i was listening to then I think I was listening to mainly because it was what was cool. When I go listen to Skinny Puppy, I think I actually like them more NOW than I did then. I was a sensitive child. So Nettwerk provided me cover to like this record. 

And I still listen to them with some regularity. This entire album is in my “ALL MY FAVORITES” playlist, some 10,000 songs with which I fill up my iPod with a random selection every month or so before resetting and doing it again with a new batch. So they never really leave rotation. 

OH ALSO, Splendor in the Grass. I had to watch the movie in AP English, and that was about the same year that this album came out. The movie is dripping with sensuality. Our english teacher, Mrs. Mears, tried to tell us that, but she was a grown up. When Single Gun Theory told me, though, I listened. It’s one of my favorite movies to this day. 

(Source: Spotify)

High school. 1989. Driving around in Davey’s 1967 Barracuda. Olive green. Forty below. Nowhere to go. Where do you go when you’re a kid in a town of 30,000 people just below the Arctic Circle? There are no malls, really. You can’t go outside and have a party, except in the all too brief summer. You go to Denny’s. To Jeffery’s. The 24 hour restaurants, not the kids houses. Once in a while, you were lucky, and someone’s parents were out of town, but most of the time, you just drove around. You’d meet up, park your cars, and everyone would pile into one car. My parents minivan was a popular option, but since I had the 79 Dart instead, it didn’t fit as many people. Though the 79 Dart was a damn cool car. Gold metallic with a black hard top, bench seats, slant 6. You could fit 11 people in it if you tried. And we did. 

But most of the time it was Davey’s car, because Davey was good with electronics and his Barracuda had a CD player in it, and my Dart did not (though it had a slammin’ 8-track, and in hindsight it would have been cake to swap it out.) 

I learned about Wax Trax and Nettwerk in that car. The first time I heard My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult (Do You Fear for your Child?), Skinny Pubby (Bites and Remission), Ministry (god, maybe Everyday is Halloween? Twitch?), Moev (Crucify Me), Greater Than One, PTP, RevCo, Single Gun Theory. Mussolini Headkick (Ha! Forgot about them). Divine. Ajax. Meat Beat Manifesto. Front 242. Luc Van Acker. KMFDM. All bands for another day. 

Severed Heads were a little different though. More melodic. Less outwardly evil. This was the song I loved. And, weirdly, of all the Nettwerk stuff, this is one of the few that has stayed with me through all genres. Single Gun Theory is the other. Again, for another day.

I never got tired of it, I still listen to it all the time. It came on the iPod today, actually. I remember at one point looking up the samples, but i don’t remember what I found. A quick Google search confirms my suspicion that they’re not samples at all, but actually weirdly recorded dialog.  

(Source: Spotify)

This song just came on my iPod while cooking breakfast. Takes me back to a specific time, doesn’t it? 1992, the love album. The European Union was being formed, as given hommage right on the cover of the album. I was an international economics major at the time, so this was all very exciting to me. 

And BritPop, of course. The production on this song sounds almost hilariously dated now, but the song itself stands up, I think. Most of the references are utterly english so unless you are a committed early-90’s era Anglophile, they are going to be lost on you. 

But New Cross is a poor neighborhood in london that was stricken heavily by AIDS, hence the bridge to the song chronicling the devastation, and the title, a play the Simon and Garfunkel song.

Me and my college britpop friends loved these guys, especially Daniella and Beth, who got me into them. We saw them a few times, it was always slightly less than you wanted, because it was just the two main dudes, Jim Bob and Fruitbat, running around like freaks to a backing track. Ironically I suppose it would work just great in 2012. You see that sort of thing all the time these days. But the two reigning genres of the day were shoegaze and grunge, and so it seemed a little weird to us.

Still, though, they were great, and hearing this song today brought me right back to college, to Comm Ave and Deli Haus and Man Ray and the Star Market in the Fenway, and running around in the abandoned building that would become the landmark center and theaters in the Fens now. Setting Beth’s chinchilla free in the Fens. Mark and Hugh and paper mache pterodactyls and brontosauruses. Baggy pants and stripey shirts. Bleach blonde hair and no gut. Ahh youth.    

(Source: Spotify)

Two years later. Back in Boston after a surreal, strange year and a half in Fairbanks, Alaska. Thanks to my sister, who snapped me out of it and got me back to Boston and back on track. To this day, I owe her my life. 

The Verve, as they were now called, were coming out with a new album, and prior to its release were doing a short introductory tour of America. There was no Napster back then, no album leaks, so we didn’t know what to expect. There was a 7” single out in advance of the album, called “This is Music,” but that was all we knew. 

We got to the Paradise and eventually The Verve ambled on stage. The slow, low rumblings of “A New Decade” kicked in and then, out of the blue, Richard Ashcroft rushed to the front of the stage, did his signature pose and bellowed out the lyrics in a frightening crescendo: A new decade. The Radio plays the sounds we made. And everything seems to feel all right. And a few bars later: How long will I run for? Who am I running from?

And it all just hits me. The guilt I have from the unresolved incident in St. Louis. Growing up. My shitty job. Being back in Boston. Out of college. The guilt, the guilt. Let it go, let it go. Back in boston. A new start. A new decade.  

Richard Ashcroft knew. 

Two years later, the world would realize that when “Bittersweet Symphony” hit the top 40 in 20 countries and broke the top 10 in the US. 

(Source: Spotify)

1994. I was done with college. I had killed six months and in May, me, my sister and my friend Mike left Boston on a 6 week, 18,000 mile road trip from Boston to Alaska, hitting 25 states, 2 Canadian provinces and the Yukon territories. We were broke before we hit Chicago. 

When we got to St Louis, I met up with my most recent girlfriend. We were a terrible couple, and she had left Boston and moved back to St. Louis a few months earlier because she, unlike me, could see we were bad news. We loved each other, but were too young, and I was too dramatic and histrionic. We stayed in touch, and while we weren’t dating were still keen on each other. Me, Mike and my sister stayed at her house with her new roommate Erica. This album was the soundtrack to the visit. Actually, we were listening to the peel sessions version too, but that spring was definitely the spring of this great new space rock band called Verve (before they changed their name to The Verve due to a lawsuit. It’s weird. I remember having a hard time switching to calling them “The Verve” but now it’s weird to call them Verve) that were going to be the new savior of Space Rock. The album had come out the year before, but the Peel Sessions made them fresh again. 

The trip started off great, but slowly it deteriorated. My girlfriend knew she was ill equipped to deal with me, and needed us to leave. I should have seen the writing on the wall, but insisted we try and talk it out. She didn’t want to. She ran inside, and said some words, and with those words my heart was broken, and my sister and mike dragged me out of the house, back into the car, and off to a Red Roof Inn. I listened to this album on repeat the whole time, didn’t speak for three days, and it took years to repair my relationships with all three people involved. I am blessed I ever had the chance. 

This album was the soundtrack to my first big heartbreak. 

(Source: Spotify)