It's interesting to note that I cannot remember a damn thing about my life.
No, it's not the film "Memento", and I am not "Henry M" (google that sucker), but I literally cannot remember anything from the past 27 years. Sure, I know the edited highlights, like my first kiss or those 8 years that I spent crying, but there are severe blocks missing. I suppose time passes and memory fades, but this is pretty ridiculous.
OK, take for example my high school years; not a thing. The only time a vague memory pops into my head is when I listen to music that I listened to back then. Just for my mental health, I will draw up a list here:
Freshman year (95-96):
Fall: Green River, Mudhoney, Monkeywrench...damn, there's gotta be more...those are all Mark Arm related.
Spring: Beatles (Sgt. Pepper), Led Zepplin, STP (Tiny Music), Elastica's first album.
Sophmore Year (96-97):
Fall: George Harrison (more like summer '96), Rolling Stones (Tatoo You, "Heaven" reminds me of riding NJ Transit back to NYC), Cream, Jimi Hendrix (Axis: Bold As Love), A little Sublime.
Spring: David Bowie (Singles: 69-93), More Rolling Stones (Sticky Fingers taped off the radio, Some Girls!),
Junior Year (97-98):
Here's where it gets a little hazy. I recall downloading pornography online that had a song called "Uncle Remus" over it, in the days before all the lyric engines, it took me a few days to figure out it was Frank Zappa. I fell in love with "Apostrophe" that year. Also my love of David Bowie began to take shape. Love, in a non-gay way, of course. Speaking of gay, I also fell in love with Trex's "The Slider" album. I remember listening to it in physics class and my teacher (who was a former Motley Crue roadie) said "don't you listen to anything that's not from the 70's?"
Now that I'm writing this, I begin to remember the summer of '98 at North Carolina School of The Arts (the story of that summer is best left to another entry), but I do remember going there with an audio cassette of "Piper At The Gates Of Dawn", which blew my mind (especially the first few minutes of "Interstellar Overdrive"), which means I bought it in the spring. So I guess my watershed albums that year were "Piper" "Apstrophe" and...gotta be something by Bowie. I'm trying to go album by album to remember when I bought each. Let me run it down:
Space Oddity: Cassette, summer of '97 (At UMass), CD summer of '99 (off Ebay). I got it (along with "Low", "Heroes" on tape and I think "Aladdin Sane" on CD) at this great record/tape store in Amhurst. I think the tapes were like 3 bucks each and the CD's were 7). I remember listening to this album on my cassette player as I took a camp trip to Boston in a big Greyhound-style bus.
The Man Who Sold The World: CD: Summer of '98 (In North Carolina), I lost it at a screening of the movie "Insomnia", so I think I rebought it in 2003ish, and lost it again. "Black Country Rock" played the first night I ever spent with a woman...although I guess she was a girl then.
Hunky Dory: I believe I bought this in the summer of '97. I know I had it by the summer of '98, because a guy named Dave had it and we debated which version of The Supermen was better. It was probably one of the first Bowie CDs I got because it had so many singles on it and I have a vague memory of listening to it at UMass.
Ziggy: Spring of '97 (during a weekend I spent at school), I got the special edition in 2002 for Christmas or something. It was my first non-compilation Bowie album, and I remember thinking that "Suffragette City" was the only track that was good. By the end of the school year, I put it away, but I probably revisited it after buying a few more Bowie Albums.
Aladin Sane: No memory of buying it. Probably at North Carolina or beginning of my senior year. I remember BLARING the title track all day long my junior year, where I have a vague recollection of pretending I was fronting a band performing this. What a piano solo!
Diamond Dogs: I remember buying this my senior year in NYC, sitting in the bathroom, expecting to hate it (I expected to hate all Bowie albums; that was the joy, I always fell in love with them after the first 3-4 listens). I had "1984" on my dorm answering machine and I know that my good friend Jake was still humming some of these tracks well into college.
Young Americans: I bought this on LP! in the fall of my senior year, which was a better mix then the CD, so I taped it. I think I finally got the CD at the end of my senior year. Listening to this album makes me think about the end of high school and all the things I left behind (pretentious warning): my innocence, youth, dreams, etc. In high school, everything was possible. College was "now make that possible".
Station To Station: Definitely during NCSA in 98. "Stay" was an anthem for me that summer.
Low: Tape in '97, CD all the way in '99. I remember listening to this on the same trip to Boston as Space Oddity, but I didn't get into either album.
Heroes: Exactly the same as Low. I never connected to the instrumentals on these albums, so I never really wanted the CDs. I must say that I sampled some of the instrumentals on this album to create my first song ever (as well as my freshman year of college final project, which got nominated to some NYU festival).
Lodger: Summer of '99. This was my last "classic" David Bowie album that I bought. My CD player got fucked up once, and I remember listening to Bowie's backup vocals only on "African Night Flight". He's just SCREAMING! Also, I remember my friend Freddie thought Bowie was saying "Gotta get a boyfriend". It was weird. Speaking of that, I remember his friend Greg was scared to listen to Marvin Gaye...because he thought he was gay. Oy gavult!
Scary Monsters: I know I was listening to this by my junior year, because I lent it to a kid who left my high school after that year. I remember him saying "I wish he'd sing normal like on the second track". Oddly enough, that was my first reaction after listening to that album, but it's probably my all time favorite Bowie album.
Let's Dance: I held out for that one...I want to say 2002. I know I played it when I worked at my brother's bar sometimes.
Tonight: I think I ended up downloading this in 2004. Pretty shitty album.
Never Let Me Down: I think I downloaded this around 2002. I remember listening to it a lot that summer at my mother's house, while having a long distance relationship with a hell beast (that's also another story).
Black Tie, White Noise: I remember listening to "Miracle Goodnight" a lot in the summer of '99, so I imagine I got it around then, possibly before. I had a big crush on this Korean girl that summer, so I used to watch Korean TV a lot on cable to have something to talk to her about. Of course it was over email, but we went back and forth every day. I think it's because I called her beautiful in her yearbook. Her mother looked younger then she did.
Outside: This was the first album that I downloaded ever. Right when Napster hit in the first few weeks of College in '99. The downfall of CDs. I was in love with track 3...what was that song called? The Heart's Filthy Lesson! I believe this album played the first time I was with this awful college girlfriend.
Earthling: Someone gave this to me during the summer of '98 (she was multi-colored hair and overweight), but the CD was scratched and I couldn't get into it. I believe that I started to fall in love with it around 2000/2001 as I went for long walks around NYC for exercize. Good walking album. I think I've bought it like 3 times, cuz I kept losing it.
hours...God this album sucked. I got it the day it came out in 1999, but I remember streaming the tracks beforehand on MTV.com or something and saying to myself "I usually hate Bowie's albums, but grow to love them. This one isn't like the rest". It reminds me of Freshman year of college and hanging out in 3rd North. I remember everyone calling me in when Bowie presented an award at the MTV music awards in '99. I also remember Guns N Roses' new song premiered that night...it was also their last new song, and crappy.
Heathen: Right when it came out in the summer of '02. This was a great album and I listened to it alot around the same time I listened to "Never Let Me Down". I remember emailing tracks to my awful long distance girlfriend who was awful.
Reality (the only album title I had to look up), came out right after I shot my short in 2003. I remember never getting into this, playing it alot as I showered while living at my mom's house and still dating the long distance girlfriend (who was living in NYC at the time and cheating on me a lot...again, another story). I remember buying it and making her sit down at a Starbucks while I listened to the album over and over again.
OK, well that covers my junior year. Except, well, I did spend one Saturday pacing back and forth listening to "Thuglife", which was sort of a Tupac album. I fell in love with this crazy looking girl and I wanted despirately to ask her out, but I didn't have the balls. So...for some reason that gangsta album spoke to me.
Senior Year (98-99):
Fall: You Are What You Is (Frank Zappa, bought at the wonderous Princeton Record Exchange, a day when I bought like 3-4 Zappa albums..Friday night. Mr. Liwoz surprised me by telling me he loves Zappa), I remember listening to Paul McCartney's greatest hits a bunch and staring at a screen saver, Diamond Dogs (I still think about the first Grand Theft Auto, with me Jesse, Alan and Jake sitting around...we used to leave Alan playing and sometimes he didn't notice we left him; even for hours), Trout Mask Replica (my friend Jesse gave that to me when he didn't understand it. Actually, I think I just stole it from him). Another memory...I traded a bottle of Vodka that my brother gave me to this guy for the 3 CD Lather set from Zappa, which he bought on Amazon.com.
Spring: Jethro Tull (Cross Eyed Mary brings me right back to directing the senior play), Young Americans (Right blew me away, I repeated the middle 8 soooo much), We're Only in it For The Money (which was the first time I ever saw a CD-r, my friend Jake burned it for me!)
That's about all I can remember about music in high school. I'm sure more will come to me.
What does that say about me? Well, first, I had a hopelessly outdated taste in music...barely anything contemporaneous there. Second, well, I remember more about music then I do high school. I guess it's just easier to remember a feeling then anything that actually happens to you. The warmth I feel listening to Diamond Dogs (which is a downer album) is directly related to hazy memories of sitting around playing computer games. Those may very well be some of the happiest times of my life, even if I can't remember them. At least the music still reminds me of what it's like being so happy.
I think about each of those semesters (and summers) and the music really relates to how I was feeling at the time; I was so angry at age 14, that I was listening to screaming grunge. As I got happier, so did my musical taste. Actually, it's probably as I got weirder, so did my musical taste. Which reminds me, I didn't put Syd Barrett on here, because I listened to him almost exclusively over the summer of '98. Which, as I said, is another story onto itself.
I barely remember my life, but I remember the Soundtrack. It's just like the movie "Singles". I AM THE MOVIE SINGLES!
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