So I thought this list would be fun, I had a pretty good idea what most of the list would be and I just had to add a little intro making fun of people who act like they are above small details like the chronology of their own life. But I almost did the same thing. Gone through several rewrites. I was reading articles all year about the 20th anniversary of Nevermind and thinking about when I first heard it as a freshman in high school and I’ve gotten so over-plugged in that I started thinking that year was actually 91. I was only entering 8th grade when Nevermind was released. This has been an interesting experiment in my own jumbled memories (a real thing that only I have access to) vs. whatever narrative I’m trying construct about myself (possibly bullshit) vs. what narrative I would want to present to people (edited bullshit) vs. real facts that can be looked up (“objective reality”).

I start writing it and I start with the bullshit, and it goes off track, I decide the whole thing is stupid, etc. Then I’m looking at it and then, unexpectedly, my brain starts working. And that’s what this is about. Maybe in the future I could be a music writer. Whatever I do, it’s going to require a consistently functioning brain. I used to have one of these, and I think I’m almost back up to speed. I’m not sure when things started to go wrong exactly, but I recall shifting my role models to individuals who were able to produce while being severely malfunctioning in every other way. Why fix the problem? The work is all that matters. Then things went a little more wrong than I anticipated. My brain didn’t handle it so well. I figured, why don’t I just shut this thing off for while? So I did. That works for a lot of people too. It’s the best state to make friends in. It’s nice to have friends, in real life. But circumstances have given me some alone time, and the situation is a lot like when things were working out between me and Mr. B. We had some problems, but we worked them out together. What if this could work again? Easier rhetorically setup than done. But things are at the point now where I can look at a year and accurately tell you what grade I was in.

What I’m trying to do here…I don’t know if I could ever do this full-time, but music is the biggest constant in my life. I’ve gone years sometimes without seeing a movie, watching tv, or reading a book. Stupid but true. I’m fine with being the outsider-y type, but my life stopped making sense even to myself. I’m trying to make the bullshit less bullshit. Using music writing to do this is the best way for me to go about it, and it’s something other people can get something out of. Otherwise I just sound like a teenage goth girl or a self-help book. And no one wants to read that (or the wrong people want to read that, and it’s not teenage goth girls, who I have total respect for—I’m just not of you…physically. I need to be less one of you. That time is over. But it’s nothing to ashamed of. It’s a fine thing to be. The best? Sure, maybe.).

Oh, right. 1991. So we’ve established that Nirvana did not hit until late 91, and they didn’t hit for me right away. (Well into 92 before I got a copy of the record.) I just wasn’t that into new music before that. I was trying to listen to everything, and when you try to absorb the entire history of music you can only devote a small part to new stuff, it’s just math. And I didn’t get much into record collecting yet; I was more into radio and tape trading. (Didn’t get a CD player until Xmas ’93.) I was also still into comic books. I hadn’t even been into them that long. Comicbooks were the road to relative hipness and social stability for me, before that I was into science fiction, science magazines, and setting things on fire (a type of applied science). Probably some other bad shit. There’s a few directions that could have gone in ranging from well-paid job/boring life to jail time. I fell in love with comics but what helped me was spending time in the store and getting to know the guys that worked there. All adults to that point seemed like they were trapped in something they hated or I hated or both. These were dudes in their late 20s or 30s, not intimidatingly cool cause they read the same dumb superhero books as you, but they knew the cool stuff and would steer you towards that as much as possible. And they liked the classic rock. Me and my friends biked there every day we could to talk comics and music, and maybe even buy something. (It became more and more about the talking. I think they eventually got fired.)

I was also getting into writing myself, I really liked English classes more than anything else. Either I liked the idea of science more than science itself or I got progressively dumber through life. I did worse and worse in anything left-brained. Got through but it was a struggle. I shoulda been in da advanced class I tells ya. But forget about that, we only cared what I was listening to. The years are a little fuzzy but I’m giving my best guess:

1. Led Zeppelin – (Most of) IV
   

   The tape ran out 3/4 of the way into “When the Levee Breaks”. I still half-expect it to cutoff whenever I hear it. Trying to think of the year of the year chronologically. Zep was huge for me in middle school. It’s like grandad rock now, I guess; my father hates the stuff. He’s way more into Jazz. Took me another year or two to really get into that. I’ve gone through several periods of listening to this so much I never want to hear it again to really needing to hear it again. The tape eventually broke and I got it on CD, sold it a year later, bought it again, sold it again, got it on vinyl, gave it away (I think). I have it mp3 now but I deleted Stairway. Try listening to it without Stairway.

2. Pink Floyd – Dark Side of the Moon
   

   My dad does make an exception for Pink Floyd, but he probably thinks it’s the name of the singer. Just never got into the concept of Rock itself. This is barely a Rock album when you think about it. There was also The Wall, but that was way better as a movie than an album. This still sounded good on a 20-year-old attic-heat damaged cassette taped of an 8-track with shitty fadeouts. One day that tape broke and I moved on.

3. John Coltrane – My Favorite Things
   

   Remember finding this with the Pink Floyd tape so I’m including it even if I didn’t “get” it yet. This was not a dub but an original cassette, must’ve been one of the first made. Lost it after I got the album on CD. It had a big funky slide-in box that didn’t fit with other tapes, the cover was glued right on like an 8-track. Wish I still had that. It didn’t play great, but this album works better in two sides.

4. Scofflaws – S/T
   

   Got this on tape from one of the guys at the local comic store. It might have started from me mentioning I played in the school band or from the song where they shout “Godzilla!” (we were trading MST3K tapes.) But one day one of the guys was very excited that I check this band out. This was the first trading of music I would not have heard anywhere else. Yeah, ska got big later but most 3rd-wave bands were just pop-punk with a horn section. (Which can be fine. This is not that.) I don’t know how many years before a got that song was about sushi.

5. Specials – The Singles Collection
   

   This was this flip side of the Scofflaws tape and maybe what the guy was really trying to give me. It was more of a mixtape than strictly the official collection, it was sequenced different at least and had some tracks from the first album. Really blew me away. Nothing sounded like this. There was also the political element. I was really into rock radio but a lot the message in rock wasn’t relevant any more (the only Clash heard at the time was Rock the Casbah). Howard Stern was on then and I was really getting into it. This guy used to argue that Stern was racist. I wasn’t sure. I said he wasn’t but hadn’t really thought about it from his perspective. That summer I started my days with this tape instead of the morning show. Left it on repeat auto-reverse.

6. Toasters – Thrill Me Up
   /Bim Ska La Bim – Tuba City

   Hard for me to separate these two. Had them on an unlabeled tape for the longest time without knowing which was which. Can’t call them “classics” like these other albums maybe, but classic to me. Toasters were my first show around this time at the long gone Chestnut Cabaret. A few inexplicable Pat Metheny songs at the ends of the tape. *nod* (This tape trader also got me into P-Funk right before Dre Day hit and I felt like the smartest kid alive. But that was 92.)

7. Douglas Adams, et al. – Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy/Restaurant at the End of the Universe (LP Versions)

   Another cheat, it was two separate tapes. Also from the one of the comic book guys. Lost this tape and I now have the original radio tapes, but the readings are better on these and the music and general sound of it is great. I even think this version of the story is better than the first books (or the many other versions). Is it worth it for you to get it on vinyl? Probably not. (That might even be another version than what I had.) But I’m putting on my wish list. Which I should have done before now but what can you do.

8. Faith No More – The Real Thing
   

   Needs no explanation. Should get more credit for starting the wave against hair metal.

9. Metallica – Black Album
   

   I was obsessed with the song One since the video came out but didn’t have a chance to get the album. (I was 10; no older brother, mom would not buy this stuff.) So this is this first album I was really waiting for. It should have seemed obvious that that Enter Sandman, a song literally about a scawy dream is a considerable step down in heaviness of subject matter from a man getting his limbs and face blown off and trying to kill himself. But I was just getting into the DC Sandman comicbook, and it almost seemed related if you didn’t pay attention to what the lyrics really were. (One is based on a book, why not.) Still, the music’s pretty good and they still looked like Metallica at this point. And it’s better than Use Your Illusion, which I remember trying to like.

10. Grateful Dead – Workingman’s Dead

    I had a brief Dead period. I think I just really liked their logo and needed at least one album in rotation to justify the poster. [For some reason I thought this album was a best-of that also included the songs on American Beauty.] There’s some good non-hits on this thing but it was not my scene. After that I got more into Metal, but some of the metalheads I met were also Deadheads and none of them felt the need to explain it.

But the hippy metalheads also shunned Nirvana. The thing that did it for me was their performance on Saturday Night Live. Smells Like Teen Spirit was whatever, a good song (I preferred the Weird Al cover when it first came out). But the song Territorial Pissings is clearly mocking classic rock. And then they smash their instruments at the end. It just made every other band look like poseurs. I did not make a conscious decision to stop hanging around these people, because the hippy metalheads graduated that year and once you start buying records, there’s less for comics. I spent more time at the local record store which all too conveniently sold some comics. (Altho I did buy my cassette of Fugazi’s Margin Walker at the very small tape section at the comic store.) Lotta painful decisions made at these stores. Got into punk, extreme metal, hip-hop and experimental music all at once from 92 on. (Also, not gonna lie, Smashing Pumpkins.) Tried sharing some of my new discoveries back with the comic book guys but they weren’t having it.

——————–

Bonus: Pre-91 tapes

6th-7th grade
• ZZ Top – Best Of (some songs taped off WDRE at the end of this)
• Doors – Best Of (later added to this tape, the essential “Soft Parade”)
• Jim Morrison – American Prayer b/w Inna Gadda Da Vida (long version); Revolution 9/Good Night (random uncle dub tape)
• Yes – Fragile/Jethro Tull – Aqualung (dub from friend’s dad’s vinyl)
• Beatles – aforementioned bootleg (very early stuff/outtakes/”Get Back” sessions)
• Dr. Demento-type radio mix

  4th-5th grade

• Bon Jovi – New Jersey
• Poison – Open Up and Say Ahh
• Weird Al – Best Of
• Radio mixtape w/ Guns n’ Roses, INXS, Stones, some classic rock one-hit wonders, like Three Dog Night and Santana, and possibly Salt-n-Pepa’s “Push It”. Oh, and “My Prerogative”.

Before that was strictly Muppets vinyl.

And the Ghostbusters soundtrack.

But I’ve gone too far.%