Tubthumper.
Every single moment in my life can be brought up by a few chords of a song. Even songs I hate, performers that I despise could still bring me back to my childhood, or my teenaged years. They make me remember simple time, sad times, happy times.
If I hear Steely Dan's "No Static at All", a song that I hate, I think about my parents when they were still married. My dad and mom sitting on the couch in the living room with their friends, passing a joint around. My mom wearing blue eye shadow and her patent leather stiletto heals with a stainless steel 4 inch heel on it. Hilarious, because if you've met my mother in the past 20 years, this woman would be alien to you.
When I hear the album “Double Fantasy” by John Lennon & Yoko Ono, I think about driving in my Mom's Toyota Celica singing along with her when I was about 6 years old, "I'm just sittin' here watching the wheels go 'round and 'round".
And I was just listening to "The Rain Song" by Led Zeppelin, and that always makes me think of my oldest brother T. He used to tuck me in every single night as a kid. I'd lay completely flat on the bed and he'd go "tuck, tuck, tuck, tuck" and in seconds I'd be mummified in my sheets. He'd sometimes, after much begging on my part, play "The Rain Song" for me on his guitar before bed. Thankfully, he didn't sing it (our family has not been blessed with the gift of song, though many are quite good musicians), but I used to sing the words in my head...
"It is the springtime of my loving - the second season I am to know
You are the sunlight in my growing - so little warmth I've felt before.
It isn't hard to feel me glowing - I watched the fire that grew so low."
I thought I would marry Robert Plant one day. The fact that I was 7 and he was 40 made no difference in my eyes. I miss T. I miss the closeness I once felt with him. That's been swallowed up and chewed up and spit out by hate and fear and misguided anger and hostility. My heart literally hurts when I think about that.
When I hear Eric Clapton’s "Promises", I remember Kim. Kim was my very close friend in high school. She had a fantastic voice, and would always sing it, every day, play it on her dad's stereo at full blast. Her dad had this drum set in his room, and Kim and I would go up there with our friend Eric, and Kim would blast .38 Special's "Caught up in You" and Eric would play along on the drums. We thought her dad was awesome. He'd always let us hang out at the house, because he was never home. Kim had 2 younger sisters who'd hang with us, a huge pool, and her dad would hand out money left and right. Kim's mom left her dad for the next door neighbor, moved across town and left her girls to fend for themselves. As cool as hanging at Kim's was, the place was gross. Dirty, there was never any food there, the kids ran the place. It was sad, really. Kim liked the drink, too. One night we were hanging out at "The Trails", a wooded area by her house, drinking 40's of Crazy Horse (we thought we were so cool, blasting Slayer and drinking the liquid crack") and Kim left early, saying she was too drunk and just needed to go home. About an hour later, one of our friends ran up to the trails saying that there were ambulances outside of Kim's house.
Kim had gone home and went up to her father's bedroom and got his unlicensed .38 Special revolver out of his bathroom drawer, went back downstairs to the living room and shot herself in the head. Her 13 year old sister found her. We spent the entire night at the hospital, hoping that she'd wake up, but she never did. Her family was ruined. We were ruined. That started my long association with dead people. I've lost a number of friends and loved ones since then, but never like that first, best friend. Who has been long forgotten by her family. Her grave still doesn't have a headstone on it. It will be 13 years ago on July 18th that she died. At her funeral, “Promises” was played on a loop in the background.
When I hear "Betray" by Minor Threat, I think of P. He got me into them, and said that's the most "listener friendly" song to start off with. Actually, when I hear any sort of poppy punk, like Screeching Weasel, The Queers, Sweet Baby, The Vindictive’s I think of him. We started listening to all that shit together, him making the transition from hardcore and me from metal. I was a senior in high school. When we moved to Oakland, then Berkeley, we were so proud to be in the land of punk. Going to 924 Gilman Street to see shows was like our Mecca. It was the *most* important thing.
I'm one of those annoying people who will listen to the radio and hear anything, like, say, Blondie's "Heart of Glass" and say "Oh my god! This TOTALLY reminds me of me and Astrid at The Mailroom in East Northport!", or if "Tubthumper" by Chumbawamba comes on ("I get knocked down! But I get up again!") I have to go into the story of my brother and his wife's New Year's party in 1999 (I think) and how wasted everyone was.
Music is so important to me. It can tell your story. I can remember dates and people by the music I listened to at the time (I dated that guy Chris in 1990, because at the time I was obsessed with the song "You Can't Bring me Down", by Suicidal Tendencies, and would play it over and over, and it drove him insane. It came out in 1990.). I was definitely the friend who would make you mixed tapes, or the girl who would make you one, and each song would have a special meaning to me, but it would take a million code breakers to figure out what and why.
Anyway, I don't know why I thought about this today. I was originally going to write about population control, and whether vaccinations aren't being given to children in undeveloped areas because we're subconsciously trying to control the population by ridding the world of the sick and uneducated? That's for next time, folks.