Musical Memories

Janis Joplin, photographed in heaven (or so I thought in 1971).

My parents were young when they had me (my mom was 19, my dad 20) and they were children of the 60’s and were big fans of the music of the time.  My mother, like most American teenagers, had been captivated by the Beatles (her father used to tease her about having a crush on Ringo Starr, and even made up a song “Ringo Ringo Little Star” set to the tune of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”, but my mother actually liked Paul).  My dad had his mind blown by Dylan’s mid-60’s albums and also liked Jimi Hendrix.

My biggest “almost” musical moment is that in 1969 my parents ALMOST attended Woodstock.  We lived in upstate New York and it was just a few hours’ drive downstate but for whatever reason my parents decided not to go.   I was two years old at the time and if they’d gone they were probably going to bring me.  Wow, bummer.

I was born in 1967 and one of the first musical memories I can recall is when I was 3 or 4.  When I was 3 we flew from upstate New York where we were lived to visit my dad’s father in Southern California; I have this vague memory of the song “Leaving on a Jet Plane” by Peter, Paul, and Mary; this is my first recollection of any music at all.  I loved jets and was excited about traveling on one for the first time and so this song really resonated with me.

I also remember around the same time my parents owning Janis Joplin’s album Pearl and them telling me she was dead.  I remember this because I vividly remember the picture of her sitting on an old-fashioned love seat in front of a blue backdrop that looked so otherworldly to me that I thought that it was a picture taken of her in heaven.  She died in 1970 and that album was released in January 1971, so this was probably in spring 1971 when I was not quite 4 years old.  I also remember my parents playing “Me and Bobby McGee” and “Mercedes Benz” (the latter particularly sticks out because I can remember asking my mother what a Mercedes Benz was (we were poor, I had no idea).

Another weird memory I have from this time is of my mother and I waiting in the car for my dad outside some bar or restaurant or something and having the radio on, and my mom alternatingly turning the volume up on “Black Dog” by Led Zeppelin to ear-splitting level then back down while I shrieked with laughter (I do the same thing with my own son now and he finds it as hysterically funny as I did).  That album came out in late 1971 so this probably would have been early 1972 (I have a vague recollection that it was cold out, so this sounds right), so I would have been 4 going on 5.

The Panasonic Panapet

Shortly after this my parents moved us from upstate New York to Western Michigan (my dad attended Western Michigan University for his master’s degree).  My biggest musical memory of that time was of my parents buying me a spherical Panasonic Panapet transistor radio that I would use to listen secretively to music after my supposed bedtime.  I can still recall that my favorite song at that time was “Papa Was A Rolling Stone” by the Temptations; I loved all the different movements of this song, the funny voices, and the compelling storyline.  It, in fact, sparked a fascination with so-called “story songs” that has lasted to this day, and which drives my wife nuts since she HATES story songs.  But me, I love just about any story song, everything from “Wildfire” by Michael Martin Murphy, “The Devil Went Down To Georgia” by the Marshall Tucker Band, “Same Auld Lang Syne” by Dan Fogelberg, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" by Gordon Lightfoot, and “Freshmen” by the Verve Pipe are all on my iPod.

(Another weird pop culture memory from about this time was of seeing commercials for the theatrical release of the movie “Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster”; according to Wikipedia, this movie was released in April 1972, which would make me around 4).

In 1973 my family moved from Michigan to California.  My dad had gotten a job with a small geological firm; he and my mother (who worked as a secretary) worked in a small town called Wasco, which is about 20 miles northwest of Bakersfield.  We lived in a crummy apartment in Bakersfield and commuted to Wasco every day, where I went to first grade for part of the year.  I have two musical memories of this time:  The first is I can remember my parents owning the album Where Is the Love by Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway; I can remember this because I recall the album cover, which was black with white handprints all over it, but I don't recall any of the songs on it.  This album was released in summer 1972.  The second memory I have of this time was of driving to Long Beach to visit my grandfather and hearing the song “Ramblin’ Man” by the Allman Brothers; I can remember again feeling that the song was very apropos of my situation, since it seemed like we were constantly “ramblin’” back and forth to Long Beach from Bakersfield to visit my grandfather. 

Soon after this my family moved again, this time to Long Beach, California.  The geological company my parents both worked for opened an office in Long Beach, California, so we moved into an even crummier apartment near my grandfather in the Paramount area.  We only lived there for a few months but any time I tell people I lived in Paramount, however briefly, they are amazed, as this is a very bad part of Long Beach.  Back then it wasn’t quite the blighted ghetto it has since become but it was no prize pig either.  We lived in this area that consisted of block after block of apartment complexes, all two story, all surrounding a courtyard with a pool, all very run down.  However, our apartment building was much crummier than the one my grandfather or my two sets of cousins lived in, and I can never remember the pool being heated or cleaned (and thus I can never remember swimming in it).  The other kids who lived there were juvenile delinquents in training and I remember being VERY afraid of most of them since they were violent bullies.  I can still remember myself, these two older bullies who were twins, and another kid a little younger than us ramming the roads through the garages and back alleys (Christ, I can’t imagine ANYONE letting their kids ram the roads as much as we did back then in a GOOD neighborhood, let alone a soon-to-be ghetto like that), and we came across an unmarked bottle of liquid in some greasy carport.  The twins wanted to know what was in it so they made the younger kid TASTE it; I can remember being terrified that he would drink it and instantly DIE.  Anyway my main (actually only) musical memory from this time was of my dad buying the album War of the Gods by soul artist Billy Paul (most noted for his song “Me and Mrs. Jones”, which was not on this album).  I can remember quite vividly the surrealistic album cover, with its snakes and dragons and masks, and also the gatefold, which showed Billy in a green dashiki photographed against a tall cliff.  I can also remember hearing two songs from this album, “The Whole Town’s Talking” and “War of the Gods” (both of which I have on my iPod).

War of the Gods by Billy Paul

A few months after that we moved to Costa Mesa, California.  This was a HUGE step up in the world, massive, for us; Costa Mesa was and still is a very affluent suburb in Orange County, and we were renting, actually sort of sub-letting, a house from one of my parents’ work colleagues, who was moving his whole family to the isolated island of Catalina 26 miles off the California coast.  Our house was on a cul-de-sac and was HUGE, opulently furnished (it even had a baby grand piano), with a giant back yard and a dog (the first and only time I ever had a dog as a kid).  My main/only musical memory of that time is of the John Denver album Poems, Prayers, and Promises, which had come out a few years earlier; we “inherited” the record along with all the other furnishings in the house.  I can remember liking the album, and listening to the title track, the hits “Sunshine On My Shoulders”, “Take Me Home, Country Roads”, and the Pandora (the mythical goddess, not the music subscription service)-inspired spoken word piece “The Box”.

Finally, in summer 1975 we moved back to Long Beach but to the much nicer area of Belmont Shore.  It is in this house that I spent the biggest chunk of my childhood, and my musical memories and awareness really took off.  My dad was a major record collector type who always had a pretty expensive hi-fi stereo system; for the first 10 years of my life the most expensive thing my family owned besides our car was the speakers for his stereo.  The records I remember him having were Goat’s Head Soup by the Rolling Stones,   Electric Mud by Muddy Waters, and Jethro Tull’s Aqualung (which I bought for him as a birthday present with my mom’s help).

At around this same time I can recall being introduced to the Beatles.  My friend Leslie had the Beatles’ Red Album, which collected all of their singles from 1962-1966.  Many of the songs on this album are still my favorite Beatles songs, including “Please Please Me”, “She Loves You”, “All My Loving”, “Can’t Buy Me Love”, “I Feel Fine”, “We Can Work It Out”, “Day Tripper”, “Norwegian Wood”, and “Paperback Writer”; these were the first songs I bought of theirs on iTunes when the Beatles’ catalog became available there last year.    A year or so later my parents took me to see “Beatlemania”, a theater tribute (well before there were such a thing as tribute bands) up on Los Angeles and I LOVED it.

We didn’t have a ton of money so my parents almost never went to concerts.  The only one I ever remember them attending was a 1975 Rod Stewart and the Faces concert at the Forum, and of course they didn’t take me.  Contrasting with this is the experience of my wife (who is the same age as I am and who had very young parents too); her parents went to all kinds of concerts and took her with them when they went, so she saw the Eagles, Elton John, Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, and others during their mid-70’s heyday.

It was also around this time (circa 1977) that I first got exposed to Kiss.  A cousin of mine had Destroyer and played “Detroit Rock City” for me.  I remember thinking the music was okay but I HATED the concept—I thought Kiss seemed silly and childish.  Which is weird, because literally everything Kiss was inspired by—comic books, Japanese monster movies, science fiction, etc.—was stuff I totally LOVED as a kid.  Still not sure why they never did it for me.  I can still remember just LAUGHING at the 1978 made-for-TV movie “Kiss and the Phantom of the Park” and how stupid and lame it was, and how pathetic it was that Kiss seemed to actually be taking this foolishness seriously. I've come around to Kiss musically and now they're one of my favorite groups.

I can also remember in 1976 seeing a review of an Alice Cooper concert in the LA Times; I was struck by the picture of Alice being carried around by a large furry Cyclops.  This was for his “Welcome To My Nightmare” tour.

Alice Cooper and the Cyclops.

Also in 1976-1977 I can remember “Nadia’s Theme”, the piano composition that became the unofficial theme song of Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci  during the 1976 Montreal Olympics, being played on the radio.   In 1977 or 1978 my friend Jeff had the Beatles Blue album, which compiled all their singles from 1967-1970.  My favorite songs were “Strawberry Fields Forever”, “Penny Lane”, “A Day In the Life”, “Hello Goodbye”, “Here Comes the Sun”, and my favorite was “I Am the Walrus”. 

It was probably in late 1977 or early 1978 that I first remember hearing about new wave music.  A school acquaintance named Tom was telling me about this great new group called Devo who were really outrageous and wild.  Because I had absolutely no conception of punk rock or new wave,  I can remember picturing Devo as being like Kiss or Alice Cooper, with long black hair, campy makeup, stage effects, etc., since that was what was considered "shocking" at that time.  I think I would have been utterly floored if I’d seen a picture of Devo, who looked (and still look) like a bunch of scientists or accountants.  I can also still remember him telling me that he was getting a “Devo beach cruiser” for his birthday; I’ve Googled this endlessly and never found anything on this, not sure if this was something I misheard or am  mis-remembering or if something like this actually existed (perhaps some weird one-off 70’s promotion or something?).

What’s interesting to me about this now is that barely a year or so later, new wave was the biggest thing to me musically and remained the biggest thing for nearly a decade.  By 1979/1980 my aunt Kris (who is only two years older than me and is more like a big sister) had gotten me big-time into Blondie’s second, third and fourth albums (Plastic Letters, Parallel Lines, and Eat to the Beat); she also owned the Knack’s Get the Knack and Gary Numan’s “Cars” on 8-track and I loved those too.  My first year of junior high, 1979-1980, the two biggest songs were “Whip It” by Devo and “Rock Lobster” by the B-52’s.  As mentioned in a previous post, my first two album purchases (on cassette) were Parallel Lines by Blondie and New Clear Days by the Vapors; Plastic Letters and Magnets were probably #’s 3 and 4.

By the time I was in 8^th grade (1980/1981) I totally self-identified as a “new waver”, and was actively searching for radio stations that played new wave music.  I eventually stumbled onto KNAC and KROQ at 105.5 and 106.7 on the FM dial.  KROQ is the now-legendary Los Angeles (actually Pasadena) radio station that pioneered the all new-wave format in the late 70’s and became the standard bearer for alternative music for the next four decades (and counting).  KNAC is the Long Beach station probably better known for its later all-metal format, when it was one of the only stations in the world to play things like Iron Maiden, Metallica, and Megadeth, but before this switchover (which occurred in 1986 and which was a HUGE cultural divide between kids of my year/generation and our younger brothers and sisters) they were an incredibly eclectic station that played a very open format which leaned heavily on punk and new wave but which also included occasional classic rock and even blues songs.  Even KROQ at this period in the very early 80’s played a wider variety of music, particularly since at that time it wasn’t 100% clear what genre some bands fell into; in particular I can remember two very non-new wave songs being played on KROQ:  “Let’s Get It Up” by AC/DC (which was released in 1982 and which I love to this day) and “Destroyer” by the Kinks (which was released in summer of 1981). Everyone listened to KROQ at my high school but everyone claimed to like KNAC better, though it had a much spottier signal.  Later, it became cool to claim to like 91X, KROQ’s sister station that broadcast from Tiajuana Mexico and served the greater San Diego area but which could occasionally be captured in the LA area. 

Another song I recall hearing on KROQ around this time (actually slightly before, in 1981) was “Bang Bang” by Iggy Pop from his Party album (released June 1981) ; this album is now widely considered one of the worst (if not THE worst) album in Iggy’s notably uneven catalog, but this song is still one of my favorites by him and was one of the first I acquired on MP3.  I still find it sad and touching when Iggy says "Lonely?  Ha ha ha!  What does it mean?  Who, me?" toward the end of the song in a very unconvincing way.  Also around this time I remember the song “Red Light” by Wall of Voodoo (which is off their Dark Continent album released in August 1981) and “Lunacy” by the Plasmatics (off Metal Priestess, released in 1981) being very popular and being played on KROQ.  I can still recall being fascinated with the album cover from the Plasmatics’ 1980 album New Hope for the Wretched, which showed lead singer Wendy O. Williams’ bare breasts (with her nipples barely covered by duct tape). 

Iggy Pop's Party Album featuring "Bang Bang".

In 1982 my two most salient musical memories were of Romeo Void and Fay Wray.  Romeo Void released “Never Say Never”, which was hands down the most erotic and arousing piece of music I’d ever heard; Debora Iyala’s raunchy, arousing vocals and the sleazy lyrics absolutely dripped sex.  I can remember hearing this quite often on KROQ.  The other memory I have of this time was seeing the first music videos.  At this time MTV wasn’t available on the west coast (it wouldn’t be until around 1984) and the seminal Southern California video show MV3 hadn’t yet started broadcasting; pretty much the only place you could see music videos was on cable TV, where they would show them after the end of movies to fill out the time before the top of the hour when the next movie started.  My best friend John would tape these videos on videocassette and we would watch them.  My impression is that there wasn’t much in the way of programming being done, it was simply whether or not the cable station had the video and how long it was and how well that filled the time before the next movie.  One of these utterly random videos was for the song “Modern Lovers” by the extremely obscure Welsh new wave group Fay Wray; for literally DECADES I looked endlessly for this album and could never find it; the best I could do was a couple years ago somebody posted the original video on YouTube and I ripped the song from it (it has since been taken down).  There’s nothing particularly good OR bad about this song or its video; the female singer has kind of a high, almost strident voice (she sounded a little like Siouxsie Sioux), the guitar is high and fast and it has a catchy beat but its otherwise not particularly notable, but it was still a happy day when I found it. 

Still from Fay Wray video for "Modern Lovers".

The other songs I remember from 1982 are “Everywhere That I’m Not” by Translator (a great SF group), the first Duran Duran album (“Girls on Film”, “Planet Earth”, and my favorite at the time, “Is There Something I Should Know?”), Men At Work’s ascent (“Who Can It Be Now?”, “Down Under”, and “Be Good Johnny”), “Come On Eileen” by Dexy’s Midnight Runners, “Tainted Love” and “Sex Dwarf” by Soft Cell,  "A Million Miles Away" by the Plimsouls (which was huge during spring break of 1982), “Grey Matter”, “Private Life”,  and “Nothing To Fear” by Oingo Boingo (wow, I just had to go and download these, I can’t believe I didn’t have them; Oingo Boingo were HUGELY popular at my junior high school), “I Melt With You” by Modern English, “Johnny, Are You Queer?” by Josie Cotton, (the latter two songs achieved more widespread popularity following the release of the popular movie “Valley Girl” in 1983 but were being played by KROQ well in advance of this).

The other huge event of 1982 was the premiere of the show MV3.  As mentioned, MTV was not available on the west coast at this time, and MV3 was HUGELY popular and influential.  In addition to showing video clips, the show featured an “American Bandstand” format, with three hosts (including popular KROQ DJ Richard Blade) and a group of teens dancing along to the music.  They also had “live” (usually lip synced) performances by local as well as international bands; I can remember the LA bands the Bangles, X, and the Three O’Clock, and Scottish band Altered Images (I had a crush on lead singer Claire Grogan;  I think their album Pinky Blue was the 5^th album I ever bought, I loved the song “See Those Eyes” and also liked “Happy Birthday” and “I Could Be Happy”) being on the show.  They also occasionally had comedians perform as well as weird games and the like; in addition, local music writer Shredder would often give a run-down of upcoming punk and new wave shows. 

Its hard to over-state the importance of MV3 on youth culture in Southern California and even America.  This was our pipeline to the latest and coolest music and, almost as important, fashion.  The MV3 dancers were a mix of the various post-punk tribes, from mod/ska to goth to surf punk to new wave, and I can remember my friends and I watching religiously, picking up new fashion trends.  These were the coolest of the coolest LA kids and were on top of every trend, and we all idolized them (and occasionally ridiculed them) and noted and copied their fashion styles.  It was required viewing and the ultimate arbiter of what was cool or in.  Several clips of MV3 are uploaded on YouTube; man, seeing them takes me back in a MAJOR way, I can remember vividly watching these videos and performances and just feeling that there was this really cool world out there filled with outrageous fashion and cutting edge music and this was my window into it. 

1983 was the year I finally appreciated punk rock.  Before that I felt that punkers were angry, ugly, unpleasant people (actually, I still think that).  There was a definite socioeconomic divide in my junior high between new wavers (richer, more popular) and punkers (poorer, less popular).  I actually lived in a less-affluent neighborhood that had more punkers than new wavers but I was a new waver.  Metal, of course, was so unpopular that it wasn’t even mentioned in polite society; only the biggest losers, the scum of the earth, the worst kids from the worst neighborhoods, were into metal.  I still remember the first time I heard of Ozzy Ozbourne was when this really big loser kid walked onto school grounds blasting “Blizzard of Oz” on a boom box and was promptly suspended from our junior high.   But in 1983 or early 1984 my friend John and I rented “The Decline of Western Civilization”, Penelope Spheeris’ now-class documentary on the then-almost collapsed LA punk scene filmed in 1979-1980, from the video store.  We thought it was hilarious, and we laughed at a lot of the punkers who were interviewed for the movie.  Shortly thereafter I bought the soundtrack, initially because of our juvenile interest in the cartoon “rebellion” of bands like Fear, but the more I listened to it, the more I found myself liking bands like Black Flag, X, and the Germs.  By 1985 I would say I was equally into punk and new wave music; English new wave bands like OMD, Depeche Mode, and Blancmange were still my favorites but I was also buying (and liking) albums by X, TSOL, and the Germs.  After my first year in college I’d grown tired of new wave for the most part and was pretty obsessed with punk rock and post-punk, specifically Black Flag, X, Husker Du, the Replacements, the Sex Pistols (I think it was around 1984 or so that I first bought Never Mind the Bollocks, though I’d been exposed to it through a friend who loved it as far back as 1981 or 1982), Generation X (an outgrowth of my obsession with Billy Idol), etc. 

The other band I got into in late ‘84/early ’85 was the Smiths.  I bought Hatful of Hollow, the compilation of their early singles, very early on; at that time I was good friends with an older girl who was really up on all the latest English music and who haunted the local independent record store (White Slug Records in Seal Beach, CA; she and I worked at a candy/ice cream store down the street and she lived nearby).  She had gotten me hooked on this compilation cassette put out by Warner Bros. called A Survival Sampler, which came in a camouflaged K rations can, and which contained songs by several then-lesser known English groups, like the Church, Scritti Politti, Aztec Camera, China Crisis, and yes, the Smiths.  So when Hollow came out I was all over it, and MAN, I was OBSESSED with that band/album for several months, but then TOTALLY got bored with them.  By the time I got to college the next year I was so sick of that cassette that I basically gave it to my roommate , who promptly played the shit out of it, making me even MORE bored with it.  By the time Meat is Murder came out in 1986 I was sooooo past the Smiths, and more or less detested them from that point onward, particularly as Morrissey became more and more self-righteous and arrogant.  I’ve only recently gotten beyond this over-exposure to the point where I actually like some of those songs again.

 I was a total late-bloomer with respect to concert attendance.  And I had chances to see three legendary LA acts very early on and didn’t.  The first was X, who played the CSULB music festival in like 1982 or 1983, but I was too lame/lazy to walk a mile or so to see them (pretty ironic since they ended up becoming one of my favorite bands of all time).  In addition, at around this same time my friend John wanted us to attend the CSULB winter concert and he bought tickets and everything and I wussed out at the last minute.  Why?  Because I had it in my head that this was a SCHOOL DANCE (as if large colleges have school dances) like a formal or something and I was afraid to go because I was afraid everyone would see us and know we were still in high school and/or would think we were a couple of homos going to the dance together!!!!  LAME!!!!!  Why was I such a wuss??   But who was playing, you ask?  The Untouchables, the most revered LA mod/ska group of all time (and a hellaciously awesome live act).  And who was opening for them?  A then-totally unknown band called Fishbone (their self-titled EP, released in 1985, was MASSIVELY popular with me and my friends).

So as a consequence of my youthful foolishness, I didn’t attend either of these concerts.  My first concert was Billy Idol on his “Rebel Yell” tour, in summer of 1984; I believe my second concert was Depeche Mode on their “Master and Servant” tour that same year/summer.  In 1985 I saw several concerts, including General Public (Dave Wakeling and Rankin’ Roger’s post-English Beat group; the Three O’Clock opened), Madonna (on her “Like a Virgin” tour; the Beastie Boys opened), and Frankie Goes To Hollywood.  By the next year, my freshman year in college, the concerts I saw were mostly smaller post-punk acts like Husker Du (on their “Flip Your Wig” tour), the Meat Puppets, Redd Kross, Frightwig, John Doe of X, and obscure LA acts like the Super-Heroines, the Fiends, and Bobbi Brat.  However, in the later 80's I saw the Cult, Madonna again (at Anaheim Stadium; the "Who's That Girl" tour I believe; the Breakfast Club opened), R.E.M., and Peter Gabriel.  I also saw Jane's Addiction several times and in the 90's I saw such first wave punk acts as the Dickies and Weirdos and Legal Weapon, I saw Nirvana and Hole (with Sister Double Happiness) just before Nevermind blew up globally, L7 probably a dozen times, and Carla Bozulich's first band Ethyl Meatplow.