This morning I was waiting for some packages to be delivered and idly flicking through my ipod, looking for music I haven’t heard a million times. Much to my surprise I happened upon the soundtrack to Valley Girl.
I have no idea how it got there – not exactly a film I liked, let alone a cultural trend I embraced. Nicholas Coppola aka Cage as a punk? Even in my rural Northwestern adolescence, I knew better.
Plus listening to Johnny Are You Queer? did not prove at all illuminating, let alone fun. Oh, the eighties!
Though I do have this side question after reading the wiki: E.G. Daily was married to Rick Salomon for five years? Huh? Not exactly what I had imagined from the love interest in Pee-Wee. Let alone the voice of Tommy Pickles. But I digress.
The interesting thing about soundtracks is of course whatever memory or emotion they can bring back unexpectedly. This particular album has zero resonance (nope, no tender memories of (I Melt with You), but others can take me straight back to times and places I sometimes wish to forget.
The very earliest illuminating musical moment I remember was provided by a scratchy cassette playing a version of Rock Lobster recorded off a weak radio channel. That song rocked my world profoundly – when? Not as early as 1978 (I was only seven years old!) but probably somewhere around 1981, when my musical tastes diverged from that of my family.
You can’t listen to Neil Diamond your whole life, after all.
Other early sources included Joan Jett (obviously) and the Go-Gos, still arguably my first exposure to real punk music, regardless of what the boys in the audience might mumble.
My first concert was the first night of the first ever Madonna Virgin Tour, in 1984, when I was in the midst of cancer treatments and about to drop out of school. I mostly sat with my forehead pressed to the guard rail, too sick to care, but I remember the opening act quite clearly: the Beastie Boys, booed off the stage, screaming Fuck you, Seattle! That was way more my speed than Holiday.
When you live in the back of beyond it is impossible to be all that picky; we took what we could scavenge from older kids, random trips to the big city, Bombshelter Videos, the flickering yet merciful offerings of KJET, bits of good stuff on 120 Minutes.
In the summer of 1986 all my friends were into The Cure, and since I was one of the few kids with a car and license (but no curfew) I dutifully listened while ferrying people back and forth. I had no particular opinion, but a couple of those albums became entwined with the experience of falling in love for the first time.
We went on a maybe-date to see Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me at the Coliseum. So: the first time a boy held my hand I was staring at Robert Smith shambling around drunk (we presume) singing dark and alarming love ballads. How prophetic. That particular relationship ended in bitter recriminations and death threats but I can still listen to The Cure with fond regard.
Recently I commented over dinner that I am relieved no albums remind me of the breakup and Byron said Oh no – there is one, and I can tell you exactly what it is! You’ve never once let me play it!
–What?
I shuddered. Oh, indeed. Except in my mind that particular sonic experience is more connected to waking up to the sight of blood smeared everywhere: the car accident that destroyed everything.
Even though Laibach was actually playing; for whatever reason, the Laibach album was not writ upon my scars.
Later that year, driving around endlessly with thoughts of suicide ruling my every waking moment, I know that I was listening to The Pixies because I lost custody of the music collection and I was down to exactly one tape.
Why then is my number one musical memory of that era the fact that the Eagles song Take it Easy seemed to persecute me at every turn? Hard to say, but one thing is clear – the music I actually remember most is the stuff I can still hear on the radio.
That fact does not reflect my actual musical taste; I was at most of the seminal NW shows between 1985 and 1990, though I have zero memory of them: I have efficiently erased the songs from my brain. Given the chance someone with a similar background could probably assemble a mix tape that would put me in a hyperventilating panic (this is not a challenge).
Nickle, for instance, is prone to asking clever questions like Do you remember the night the punks rioted on the Bremerton ferry?
Well, yes. That happened when a bunch of Seattle kids came over to Bremerton for a show at Natacha’s. All of which I will forget as soon as I finish typing this sentence. I do not wish to open the cupboard of my mind that contains the details of the show in question.
The Violent Femmes were the soundtrack of next falling in, if not love, then impossible romantic illusions leading onward to becoming a mother. Not because I picked em (either love object or album), but because someone else did – along with Metallica, Guns N Roses, all the usual suspects who come back and taunt me when I go to karaoke.
Sheela Na Gig calls up a crisp memory of standing in the pantry at my parents house talking to Byron, calling from sixty miles away to ask if I wanted to go to a PJ Harvey show. That night. Somewhere in Seattle (we could meet mebbe, or something, voice trails off…) To which I sighed in exasperation and pointed out that as the parent of a two year old I could hardly go to a show without advance warning to arrange childcare, now could I?
Byron was supposed to be a passing fancy; who would have guessed at the complications? And what was I listening to? Sonic Youth. I don’t wanna, I don’t think so, I don’t wanna, I don’t think so……
That, of course, also covers my early career in government and abrupt decision to vanish for awhile. During the early Portland years I was so poor I could not get a needle for the stereo, or buy new music at all. Mostly I listened to stuff that Kim Singer sent from Pittsburgh – the first couple of Belle & Sebastian albums – or random review copies – including lots of Elliot Smith – and tapes of Beth’s radio show in Madison.
After that there was the Chorus, and singing, and all the amazing musicians who treated my house like a community center. When I left Portland it felt like losing a limb, and I reverted to Elliot Smith, this time albums bought from a store. His albums are a perfect companion for extended mourning; if only there were more of them.
I’m not going to list the various friends who make music I listened to over the years, for the expedient reason I might forget to put someone in this paragraph who would then have their feelings hurt. Quite frequently when my grown-up daughter has discovered a new music sensation she calls me up asks if I know them and I reply something like Oh, that is Pam’s best friend, and I think we had seminar together in 1990….
But she cuts me off and exclaims I don’t care about that! I want to know if you like the music!
No comment.
Though in a similar vein, I find it strange and alarming to hear what I think of as friends from the neighborhood, or people I knew in college, or people I would commonly see flopping about in other modes in my environment, playing from jukeboxes across the world.
One specific song has leapt out and made me cry in Madrid, Paris, Rome, London…. and no, I will not specify which song or band.