Garage Rock Revival, or the Freshman

High school memories pretty much consist of writing in a journal late at night while listening to The Spy. The Spy was a radio station called KINB. KINB started off as a contemporary Christian station based in a little town called Kingfisher. It died and was resurrected as a talk station called The Sports Animal. Gradually and very late at night, The Sports Animal began playing alternative rock on its program K-Spy. By the time I started listening to it, it was just The Spy. The reception was so spotty that I could only listen to it at night in the car, but they streamed it on the internet long after it was off the air. One night I was listening to the The Cure, and the next morning it was some kind of Ranchera music. I was pretty pissed.

Years later, I flipped channels again and heard my beloved Spy. It was back, and back with a vengeance. Too bad the reception still sucked, and the internet stream didn't work on my computer. I ignored it until it came back in another life as The Martini, which plays pretty much anybody who was in the Rat Pack.

The moral of the story is that good radio stations are bought and sold every day by major broadcast holders like Citadel, Cumulus and Clear Channel. That is why the music on the radio generally sucks, and a guy named Ferris O'Brien is my hero. These days, you can still listen to The Spy as it streams live on the internet, thanks to Ferris O'Brien.

It was through The Spy that I discovered my love for all things music-related. I became completely obsessed with garage rock revival (post-punk revival, New Wave revival, or new rock revolution). At one point, I wanted to be a music journalist. It was mostly so I could get albums for free and be the first to listen to them.

Dad, ca. 1960's-1980's

Dad's music was about as different from Mom's as it could possibly be. They found common ground in The Beatles, and maybe Van Morrison, but that was about it. Mom quit listening to The Beatles somewhere around Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band or Yellow Submarine. While she didn't find the psychedelic sound of the late 60's very appealing, my dad wholly embraced it. The local radio station was one of the best in the country, and the only one that played Rock N' Roll in the region at the time.

Some of my earlier memories are of Dad driving me along the backroads in the green Ford, listening to The Doors and Jefferson Airplane. Later, after my parents divorced, he moved a photo of Stevie Nicks from our garage to his house. Years later I would recognize her from the cover of Bella Donna. I swear, someday I will take my dad to see Stevie Nicks in concert.

In high school, he gave me several classic rock albums, including Dark Side of the Moon, The Best of Bowie, and The Best of Van Halen. When thumbed through the CDs at the store, he picked up a copy of Back in Black and said, "This is the album that killed disco." I walked out of the store with it and played it over and over.

Dad is still around, playing his Gibson, listening to his vast music collection, laughing at Coast to Coast, and watching sci-fi. But that's a story for another day, and several David Bowie albums. 

Mom, ca. 1970's

About ten years ago, I found the remnants of my Mom's record collection. It contained about a dozen or so worn sleeves containing scratched and even warped vinyls. These had been out in the garage, and in the same box was an album containing photos of my mother that I had never seen before. She had long hair and somewhat folksy seventies clothing. I never knew buttercup looked good on her, as all I had seen her wear were the jewel tones and neons from the eighties.

She was kind of a misfit from her generation. Her senior prom theme was Purple Haze in '69, but she wasn't a member of the counterculture. She embodied the spirit of rebellion without ever actually rebelling against the establishment. Her rebellion consisted of wearing jeans in college, and drinking sloe gin fizzes with her Massachusetts roommate and dropping a bottle of JD at her first party. By dropping it, I don't mean throwing it back. I mean she was so nervous that it slipped from her hand and shattered on the ground.

But her music collection has always been fascinating to me. It contains some of the most poignant songs on heartbreak ever written, as well as some of the greatest female singer-songwriters ever to live. The piano also played a prominent role in her music collection, which wasn't very surprising. She had played piano since she was a very young girl, but she quit when she left home. I once asked her about playing the piano, and all she really mentioned that the music teacher would cut her nails to the quick so she couldn't hear them clicking on the keys. I never played the piano.

But she sang, and so did I. She sang to me as a child in her mezzo-soprano voice, and in church. Mostly she sang songs from the hymnal. She also listened to the sappy soft rock station in the car as background noise turned at the lowest volume audibly possible. It drove me nuts, listening to the gentle hums and whines of 1980's pop singers and never audibly recognizing them.

I think the 1970's were her decade.

Week in Review

Axl Rose is still up to his old shenanigans, but the RRHOF is going to induct him anyway.

Read the moment Keith Richards met Mick Jagger, and some accommodation requirements for the Rolling Stones' 1976 European Tour.

I'm starting to scheme about how to get to SXSW 2013. I think I'll see if any film students want to come with me, because I'm planning to attend. Start saving now.

I'm watching Coachella because it's live on YouTube.

I'm still working on this blog by planning its layout and future content, as well as the direction that I want to take it.

I went to Thursday night karaoke at the new location of our favorite seedy bar. The class factor somehow increased when it moved from a college town up to the big city. I became self-conscious over the newfound classiness of the clientele and stumbled over the "seemed a harmless little..." line from "Jeremy" when they changed the lyrics to a more family-friendly "kid".

I nursed a hangover the next day while avoiding tornados. My friend's apartments wasn't so lucky.

Mix CD

"Here," she said as she handed me a burned CD covered in black Sharpie. I read the title quickly, and read the track list, and decided it wasn't my thing. It was titled, Love is... in the Air. Of course, the whole mixed CD wasn't really dedicated to me. I wasn't the subject of her affections, but rather an outsider looking in on a preview of a mix with all the wisdom of a 15 year-old music aficionado.

The mix didn't suck, at least for its purpose. It was a collection of semi-indie love songs with a few 90's female power ballads thrown in. I easily dismissed it as wildly trite and twee. However, a few songs stuck out from the track list and I replayed them over and over throughout my own teenage heartbreak.

And a very intriguing cover of "Wonderwall" was among them. It's possibly my favorite cover ever, and I generally hate covers.