”Ain’t it funny how a melody
Can bring back a memory
Take you to another place in time
Completely change your state of mind….”
-- Clint Black
I’m not a fan of country music, and Clint Black’s “State of Mind” isn’t even one of my favorite country songs. That chorus, however, speaks eloquently to how music can define a moment, or a time in our lives. Being who I was, and coming of age when I did, music is even more of a memory-marker for me than for most people.
The twelve months preceding my high-school graduation were an amazing time in popular music. Nirvana debuted. If you’re too young to remember, I don’t know how to describe how “Smells Like Teen Spirit” sent a gust of fresh air through the music world. Nirvana’s success gave Pearl Jam’s forgotten debut a new lease on life; within weeks, the brooding “Jeremy” was on MTV, and on pop radio also. My musician friends and I all agreed that an independent-label record named “gish,” by a band curiously called Smashing Pumpkins, blew them both away.
By the spring of 1992, the Red Hot Chili Peppers were all over pop radio with “Under the Bridge.” Whenever I saw a young girl singing along, I pointed out she was singing about a heroin addict hitting bottom. If teenyboppers singing the Chili Peppers wasn’t enough, they could also be caught grooving to Jane’s Addiction – Jane’s last album and most memorable song (“Been Caught Stealing”) dropped at about this time.
As someone who swung socially between the athletic and art/theature/music cliques, it was a strange time – what George Costanza, years later, would describe as “worlds colliding.” It was jarring to be pumping iron with my football-playing friends and hear the same tune that had played at the theatre-wrap party the prior weekend.
It’s odd to sit here nineteen years later and reminisce about those days, not least because if you’d asked then where I’d be now, I would’ve said “dead.” Of course, I’m still alive, and I’ve become the sort of nostalgic old bore I would’ve hated then. Unlike most people in those optimistic times, I held little hope for the future of civilization, and my personal life was pure nihilism-- partying like a rock star, hammering like a porn star*, and believing that planning for the future meant knowing on Thursday where I’d be drinking Saturday. I lived only for the moment. I never thought I’d wax nostalgic for those days to a generation too young to remember them. My lack of foresight made this column hard to write, and probably harder to read. I would ask my younger self to apologize humbly for his failure, but he never did anything humbly.
I just downloaded “Under the Bridge.” Excuse me while I slip into a different state of mind.
*-This is absurdly untrue – like most teenagers, I was an awkward lover -- but I could persist in my delusion because the girls I was with didn’t know better. The point isn’t history; it’s that I thought I was God’s gift to women.
Can bring back a memory
Take you to another place in time
Completely change your state of mind….”
-- Clint Black
I’m not a fan of country music, and Clint Black’s “State of Mind” isn’t even one of my favorite country songs. That chorus, however, speaks eloquently to how music can define a moment, or a time in our lives. Being who I was, and coming of age when I did, music is even more of a memory-marker for me than for most people.
The twelve months preceding my high-school graduation were an amazing time in popular music. Nirvana debuted. If you’re too young to remember, I don’t know how to describe how “Smells Like Teen Spirit” sent a gust of fresh air through the music world. Nirvana’s success gave Pearl Jam’s forgotten debut a new lease on life; within weeks, the brooding “Jeremy” was on MTV, and on pop radio also. My musician friends and I all agreed that an independent-label record named “gish,” by a band curiously called Smashing Pumpkins, blew them both away.
By the spring of 1992, the Red Hot Chili Peppers were all over pop radio with “Under the Bridge.” Whenever I saw a young girl singing along, I pointed out she was singing about a heroin addict hitting bottom. If teenyboppers singing the Chili Peppers wasn’t enough, they could also be caught grooving to Jane’s Addiction – Jane’s last album and most memorable song (“Been Caught Stealing”) dropped at about this time.
As someone who swung socially between the athletic and art/theature/music cliques, it was a strange time – what George Costanza, years later, would describe as “worlds colliding.” It was jarring to be pumping iron with my football-playing friends and hear the same tune that had played at the theatre-wrap party the prior weekend.
It’s odd to sit here nineteen years later and reminisce about those days, not least because if you’d asked then where I’d be now, I would’ve said “dead.” Of course, I’m still alive, and I’ve become the sort of nostalgic old bore I would’ve hated then. Unlike most people in those optimistic times, I held little hope for the future of civilization, and my personal life was pure nihilism-- partying like a rock star, hammering like a porn star*, and believing that planning for the future meant knowing on Thursday where I’d be drinking Saturday. I lived only for the moment. I never thought I’d wax nostalgic for those days to a generation too young to remember them. My lack of foresight made this column hard to write, and probably harder to read. I would ask my younger self to apologize humbly for his failure, but he never did anything humbly.
I just downloaded “Under the Bridge.” Excuse me while I slip into a different state of mind.
*-This is absurdly untrue – like most teenagers, I was an awkward lover -- but I could persist in my delusion because the girls I was with didn’t know better. The point isn’t history; it’s that I thought I was God’s gift to women.
