I would not recommend reading too much Hunter S. Thompson in one sitting. If you're anything like me, then he fills you with a strong desire to write something. It's not necessarily good if you're trying to get to sleep so you can drive five hours back to your apartment in Blacksburg the next day. But now I'm almost halfway through the biography that I got for Christmas, and I have to type something. It got me thinking about my own biography, and thus, music.
I grew up without music, really. I didn't get into listening to popular music until 1999. That was when I started taking guitar lessons in the summer. My logic, naturally, was that this would make me cool. Only later did I find out that coolness actually came from being in a band. And by then I had become so frustrated by not being in one that I settled for being the bass player. And bass players aren't cool outside of the small circle of sad, pathetic music fans (e.g.,
High Fidelity) that can truly appreciate the rare talented bass player.
Anyway, the reason that I didn't listen to any popular music before 1999 was that my dad's car stereo was stolen when I was a kid. He never did get it replaced, and whoever broke into the car also took the CDs. I had just received my first CD, Ren & Stimpy's seminal 1993 album,
You Eediot!. It was my first exposure to rip-offs of the cover of
Abbey Road.
But what I do remember from the CDs that my dad had, he was into the metal of the late 80's. The very first song I remember vividly was Mötley Crüe's "Dr. Feelgood." The song and the band have become popular again, thanks to that wave of 80's nostalgia that still hasn't evaporated. I guess it's a good thing, though, or else I would have never seen
Scarface. Man, the amount of "f-bombs" that were dropped in that movie somehow gives me hope for the future of humanity.
The only other CD that I remember in my Dad's collection was Warrant's classic debut,
Dirty Rotten Filthy Stinking Rich. I remember absolutely nothing about this album other than its cover. I remember sneaking into my dad's room just so I could look at it. At first, it was really scary to little six-year-old me. I mean, there's a huge Mangino-esque businessman smoking a dollar bill cigar with an evil look on his fat face. Then it became pretty cool, for exactly the same reasons.
Looking back on things, maybe it was a good thing that my music youth was robbed. Now that I'm forced to revisit the 90's
ex post facto, I'm taking a very active role in finding and listening to the music that I missed out on. I just found out about My Bloody Valentine before Christmas break, and they ruled. I imagine that if I had that CD player in dad's car, I would have only been exposed to Smashing Pumpkins, one of the bands they influenced. I probably would have gotten into the whole mainstream alternative scene, and after that dried up in the mid-to-late 90's, I'd end up listening to whatever "hard rock" Creed-esque bullshit the radio continued to feed me.
Thinking back on Hunter, he was a key member of the scene of the 60's, when the addiction of the masses was drugs. From what I'm reading, they were pretty accepted and tolerated, especially around the head honchos of
Rolling Stone magazine. It was mostly harmless, and there wasn't really a firm idea of what their consequences were. For our generation, music is an alternative addiction that's almost a direct parallel. It's pretty well-known that music downloading is fairly widespread. (For the record, I still purchase CDs, and everyone I've talked to does as well. The reason the music industry is truly in decline is because a majority of today's music sucks.) But back to the point of this closing paragraph, I'm sure that a music addiction beats a drug addiction any day of the week. Especially if that day is the day the Columbian cartel comes into your mansion and fills you with lead. Man, I fuckin' need to watch fuckin'
Scarface again. Fuck.
