Seventeen In ’88 – A story
of teen angst, long walks, dirty jokes, haunted rooms, haunted psyches, records
as refuge, roads like mazes, young love, bonding and unbonding, deep
foreboding, senseless death, and innocence peeled away slowly, layer by layer.
Spring 1988 Recalled As A Series Of Random Glimpses, With Music
Emily and I are walking around
her neighborhood. We stop a
few doors down to visit her friend Kathy. We’re standing in front of Kathy's house
and I feel as though I’m floating. I wander out of body to the other side of
the street so I can see what we look like from over there. What I see, the stiff body language, the
stilted conversation, reminds me of Grady telling Jack to “correct” his family
in The Shining. I tell Emily later that we looked like a scene from a Kubrick
movie. I’m not sure why on earth I made that connection, nothing in the feeling
of the day, or that moment, resembles a Kubrick movie, especially not that one.
But I’m a seventeen year-old pop culture geek, and I’m always looking for excuses to
talk about Stanley Kubrick, whether the situation calls for it or not.
The Minutemen’s Double Nickels
On The Dime has become the soundtrack for every day. Every single day. Put the
needle down on any of its four sides and the sound of a car engine revving
gives way to a messy tumult of fat basslines, roiling rhythms, shouted
socio-political diatribes, inscrutable jokes. So much stuff in 45 songs, and it
sounds so fresh, so new, in keeping with the feel of springtime. Probably due
to repeated use of the f-word, my mother refers to it as “That awful
record with the car engine starting.”
Walking, walking, always
walking. I’ve taken to avoiding the school bus in the afternoons after school,
instead relying on friends, wits, and dumb luck to get home. The act becomes an
adventure, a bold stand against the tyranny of not only the wretched school
bus, but the safety, the horrible dependability that it represents. This bit of
time between the last school bell and the determination of how I’m going to get
home turns into an excitement that I thrive on. More than once I end up walking
the long miles home. But I enjoy the hell out of it.
The Modern Lovers. The whole
first album is great, but my favorite in 1988 is “I’m Straight”, a cool,
simmering plea to the object of Jonathan Richman’s affections to give up on her
always stoned love interest and turn instead to straight-edge Jonathon. Jerry
Harrison’s ominous keyboard playing is the key, but the way Richman derisively
drawls the name ‘Hippie Johnny’ as if he’s half-congested is the clincher. I
want the song to be playing all the time, the soundtrack to everything. For a
time, it is.
In May Lisa Bonet appears nearly
naked on the cover of Rolling Stone. This was a pivotal event in my life at the time, and I do not believe I am anywhere near alone in this among my age group.
Talking Heads’ Naked. In the grand scheme of the Talking Heads’ recorded
oeuvre, their final album has become an afterthought when it’s thought of at all,
but in the spring of ’88 it was an event record. It was the home of at least
one of their great songs – “(Nothing But) Flowers”, and it contained the first
flowering of David Byrne’s Brazilian influences. Oddly,
the song we liked best was the austere folk-funk “Democratic Circus”.
Still, for all that, the feeling was that the curtain was closing on
Max’s favorite band. Another in a series of endings.
In English class we are reading
the Grapes Of Wrath. The book is a
classic, a must-read, especially if you want to have any kind of grasp on
American literature or America itself. I understood that then (kind of) and I
understand it now (slightly more so). But, man, in 1988 I just don’t have time for it. Our teacher insists we will not be able to
pass if we only read the CliffsNotes. I only read the CliffsNotes. I pass, though only with a (charitable) B. During this time I read Catcher In The Rye and On The Road instead. I’ve never regretted this choice. Got to Steinbeck later. Read what you want when you want!
At Raven Records, which is a
kind of Paradise on Earth, I purchase Graham Parker’s Squeezing Out Sparks on vinyl. I love all ten of its compact, fiery,
hook-driven little tunes, but my favorite is “Saturday Night Is Dead”. Because
Saturday night is dead. Saturday
night is the night that things are supposed to happen. But on our Saturday
nights nothing ever happens. And you know what? Good. Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens.
More Kubrick. One Sunday afternoon
Max, Emily and I watch 2001: A Space Odyssey. Emily and I are full of romance and passion and we’re desperate to
demonstrate these qualities. During the climactic Star-child sequence we clench
one another’s hands tightly enough to cut off circulation. Even though
truthfully we do not actually understand what’s going on in the movie. I
pretend that I do, offering a silly explanation involving nuclear war. Max says
he thinks I’m full of it. He is correct.
Every Monday night a group of
us goes to see a movie. Movie Monday we call it, ‘cos we’re fond of
alliteration. On one of these occasions we go see The Last Emperor. It is the big winner at the Oscars that year. It is
a grand, sprawling epic of a film, full of magnificent colors and intrigue and
historical significance. But afterwards all any of us can talk about is the
scene with the threesome.
The Meat Puppets’ “Up On The
Sun”. A seamless melding of endless-sky Beach Boys luminosity, R.E.M. jangle
& chime, and inscrutable Butthole Surfers weirdness. I wanna hear it right now.
Well before the name was associated with a burger chain, Max, Elliot and two friends put together a band called The Five Guys (the joke being that there were only four guys in the band) to do a one-off show at a Spring benefit. They play covers of The Clash, Talking Heads, and "Can't Get Enough Of Your Love". They have fun with it, and so does everyone in attendance. Watching them, I feel a weird mixture of excitement and jealousy. This doesn't seem so hard. Maybe I could be in a band...
