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)
