Another morning getting ready for school, in the spring of 1992, I catch a music video and am struck by how different it is; Different sort of song, different sort of video, different sort of girl. Not as conventionally pretty as the usual MTV girl. Pale, with red curly hair and singing a song accompanied only by piano called “Silent all these years.” That was my first taste of Tori Amos.
Soon I picked up the cassette single on an outing with my dad. Oddly enough, I also picked up the single for “hit” by the Sugarcubes that day, my first taste of Björk! I liked Tori more. At the time I probably identified somewhat with the song. I had a stepfather that I didn't like, who could be kind of a dick (I got the antichrist in the kitchen yelling at me again), so in a way I think I spent a lot of my time on tiptoe trying to avoid any interaction with him and keeping my frustrations to myself (my scream got lost in a paper cup/think there's a heaven where some screams have gone?) and so I spent a lot of time writing and discovering ways to express my thoughts on paper rather than out loud (sometimes i hear my voice and it's been here/silent all these years). So one day rode the bus(es) down to South Beach to visit a record store I’d gone to once with Raul and Michelle. It was called Uncle Sam’s Music Café. Music store/café? Cool. I went there hoping to find Little Earthquakes and succeeded.
I remember playing it when I got home. It felt amazing. It felt the way I did when I discovered Sinéad O’Connor and later on, Joni Mitchell’s Blue. It seemed as thought this singer/songwriter had actually gone further than any of the ones I knew, bared even more of her soul. I connected with her music so immediately and became devoted to her at once. Her next two albums, Under the Pink and Boys for Pele are the sort of albums I impatiently rushed out to buy on the days of their release. As time went on, Tori’s music has gotten a bit loopier and I’ve found myself being a fan more of her individual songs than complete albums. However the first three discs are a part of me forever.
On the day I bought the single for "Silent all these years" I also picked up one for a song called "Hit" by Icelandic band The Sugarcubes. I was crazy about the song and played it over and over again. The b-side, called "Thief" not so much. What I didn't know at the time was that it was my first exposure to one of the few contemporary musicians I now consider to be a bona fide genius: Björk.
In the fall of 1991, my mom, Dave and I went to the Miami Seaquarium for a music festival. "Snake" of Skid Row would be there, signing autographs, and Julian Lennon would be there, too. Unfortunately, it wasn't made clear that Julian wasn't performing and there were some pretty pissed off people literally heckling him as he signed.
I don't remember anything much about the musicians who actually played, other than this guy who got up on stage and sang these bluesy rock songs, Chris Whitley.. He was this insanely skinny guy, singing these gorgeous, sort of mournful almost country-ish songs up on stage and I was totally transifxed. I even talked to him after his set and asked to get a picture with him. Dork.
A few months later, for Christmas, I received a copy of his album, Living with the Law. My Favorite song off of the album was "Big sky country." I also loved "Kick the stones" and "Poison girl." His music was more new territory for me. I had never heard of his most likely precursor, Stevie Ray Vaughn, or anything blues related before. My singer/songwriter tastes tended more towards female singers, and it would be another year or so before Jeff Buckley would appear with "Last goodbye" to sweep me off of my feet. Living with the Law is definitely another one of the albums I appreciate more as I grow older. Oddly enough, I never listened to any of his other albums, despite the fact that he continued recording and to great critical acclaim.
Chris Whitley passed away quite unexpectedly in 2005 and I remember finding out when I went to Academy Records on 18th street in Manhattan. They had an article taped to their front door about Chris passing away (and another for someone else who'd recently died). It was hard to believe he could have died- he was only 45 years old. Here's a video of him performing "Big sky country" in 2002:
And then there is this, which is just uncomfortable from start to finish... In 1991, Chris appeared on Arsenio Hall's show to sing the song and was introduced by Sinbad. The introduction is so awkward and Chris looks a bit bewildered to be there at all.
In the fall of 1991, I started going to school at MDCC. I took pretty general classes, with a slight focus on English. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. All I really wanted to do was keep writing. I began to take public transportation for the first time. Unlike New York City's mostly reliable transit system, Miami's was a real mess. The buses were unreliable, few and far between. It was only two to get to MDCC and the timing for the transfer was pretty good, unlike years later, when I worked at Barnes & Noble in Kendall and often got to the first stop five minutes after my second bus left, leaving me stranded for another hour. So in the mornings, after I was all ready and waiting to go out for my bus, I'd often have the TV set on. At some point, it would be on AMC- back when they showed truly classic movies. That was how I discovered one of my favorite movies ever, Private Lives, the film that introduced me to my beloved Norma Shearer. But I think that was a little later and I'm not sure what triggered my desire to watch old movies. At this point, it was still MTV or VH1, which is what I was watching one morning when I caught the video for a new song by my old favorite, Martika.
I guess it was sometime later that week, but I think I had to stop by Kendall Town & Country for something for my stepfather and while I was there went to the music store (Record Bar? Tracks?) and bought the cassette single, since the album, Martika's Kitchen wasn't even out yet. I became utterly addicted to the song. Soon enough, I got the complete album and listened to that all time, too.
The new album was a bit more sophisticated sounding than Martika's debut. There was just as much pop goodness, but it felt a bit less fluffy. Although at the time, I was just like, "More Martika!!" but today I can admire the cleverness of the title track, the call to home of "Mi tierra" and yes, I can even own up to the fact that some of the songs are a little too ambitious and don't exactly work. I love it nonetheless. Several songs on the album were collaborations with Prince, who I had never really been a fan of at that point, despite the fact that one of his proteges, Sheila E had made an album I loved called Romance 1600. However, at the time he had just performed "Gett off" at some MTV awards show and his disc Diamonds and Pearls was out. Encouraged by the music he made with Martika, I picked up the new album and found myself really liking it.
Despite having loved music my whole life, I think it was probably listening to Prince that I started to really pay attention to the way music was produced. Of course Prince adds lots of amazing and interesting layers to his work and I found myself really loving the pop funk of "Thunder" and "Daddy Pop," I still can't say I'm crazy about the title track, despite being able to sing along to every word. While I never became a hardcore Prince fan, this all led to my discovery of some of his older music and for a few years, I followed his career. Meanwhile, Martika never released another solo album. A few years back when vile Eminem sampled her hit "Toy soldiers" for one of his songs, Sony put out a greatest hits compilation (and only Sony could pull of releasing "best of" albums for artists like Martika, Jeff Buckley or The Fugees who only ever had two proper albums!) that features an excellent Prince remix of "Love... thy will be done." Martika spent some years out of the spotlight but has recently gone on to create music with her husband, Michael Mozart, under the name Oppera.
In the late summer of 1991 after my graduation and having healed enough to get off the crutches, I went on vacation with my brother, Dave and our dad. We drove up to Georgia where we visited my Aunt Charlotte and Uncle Bill as well as spending sometime at the home of our friends the Forbes on beautiful Lake Burton. We went whitewater rafting, which was insanely fun. While driving through the Blue Ridge and the Smoky Mountains, we'd take turns playing music. I always had to choose music that I thought my dad wouldn't mind (clearly Madonna was out) that wasn't "too weird" for him. I figured one good choice would be Edie Brickell & New Bohemians. I had their cassette, Shooting Rubberbands at the Stars, which I had gotten because of their single "What I am." I really loved their music, especially "Circle" which is an all-time favorite song. (Blog drinking game, every time you read that something is an "all-time favorite song" take a shot!) It's lyrics are still really personal to me today:
being alone is the best way to be when i'm by myself it's the best way to be when i'm all alone it's the best way to be when i'm by myself nobody else can say Me, i'm a part of your circle of friends and we notice you don't come around...
However, the song that reminds me of this trip is actually "The wheel" with it's chorus that went: the wheel keeps on turning and turning and turning and nothing's disturbing the way it goes around the wheel keeps on turning and turning and turning and nothing's disturbing the way it goes around... It made us all laugh as we rode through the winding and curvy, twisting and turning road through the mountains.
The band's second album, Ghost of a Dog was one of the first albums I bought for myself on CD. I hadn't heard one song from it, but loved their debut so much that I knew I couldn't go wrong. It's true. I enjoyed that album as much as the first, especially the amazing "He said" and "Woyaho," which I remember singing along to as I played the song on my Discman in the back of my stepfather's truck as we were on a trip somewhere with poor Dave forced to listen to me sing along.
Edie's first solo album, Picture Perfect Morning was beautiful and laid back and the title track? Another all-time favorite.
and when my plane flew through the rain it shook the wings and people screamed but i was so sure that i'd see you again i was not afraid of anything
I didn't get into her Volcano album much and still haven't heard her reunion with New Bohemians from a few years back, Stranger Things but the first two discs are always going to be in heavy rotation.
so listening to my ipod today and Bessie Smith is in the rotation- Careless Love Blues? One of the best songs ever. Anyway, I start thinking about this amazing technology that allows me to carry thousands of songs with me, thinking about the fact that I’m listening to a woman singing in 1925. Thinking about the fact that 84 years ago when Bessie sang this song just the invention of the phonograph was audacious and radical. She could never have imagined that what she was doing would one day be... I dunno, digitized, compartmentalized, magically put into something the size of my hand and that someone like me would be walking around listening to it. That's just cool, but what's more interesting is: did she even suspect that 80 years down the line, long after she'd passed on, people would still be listening to her? Or that her songs would have such a powerful affect on us? How could she know that the blues she sang for a phonograph recording would one day be traveling through headphones, giving me words of comfort and understanding? I read this book that Emily Saliers of the Indigo Girls wrote with her father, Don Saliers: A Song to Sing, A Life to Live: Reflections on Music as Spiritual Practice. Granted, I’m a meathead, so for the most part it was too philosophical for me. I’m really no good when it comes to thinking about abstract ideas. But some of it really resonates- Like this quote from Emily: "Anyone who struggles with love and suffering and searches for the mystery ends up singing- or at least listening to music." It's so true for me and I’m so grateful that someone recorded Bessie Smith in 1925 and that when I listen to her, she still exists, singing songs that may have been written before my Granny was born, but still seem as though someone looked into my own soul and wrote about what they saw. To me that's one of the few examples of real magic, the few ways that I can possibly explain what music means to me, why it has always been and will continue to be my one true love. -rick *they published your diary and that's how I got to know you key to the room of your own and a mind without end here's a young girl on a kind of a telephone line through time the voice at the other end comes like a long-lost friend* -Indigo Girls, "Virginia Woolf"
I graduated high school in 1991. After graduation, a group of my family and friends went to Bennigan's for some lunch. I had also had a graduation party at home one day. My mom gave me a word processor as a graduation gift. I had been writing stories since junior high school, taken creative writing classes and planned to major in English. At this point in time, I thought of myself as a poet. Some of my poems had been published in our school's literary magazine, the name of which escapes me. There are two that I remember particularly: One was about civil rights and incorporated lines from Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech. The other was inspired by Neil Gaiman's Sandman comics, which I had recently started to get into, despite having bought the first issue when it came out 3 or 4 years earlier and not liking it. (I was expecting a book about Hector Hall, the character who went from being Silver Scarab to Sandman in Infinity, Inc.) Eventually something I wrote inspired by his Mad Hattie character would actually get published in the letters section of Sandman. My word processor inspired a flurry of activity, short stories and poems by the dozen. Whether or not they were any good remains to be seen. (I just found a bunch. I'll tell you later.) Mostly, I think they would be decent song lyrics, especially since later my writing was influenced by music more than anything. From Hole to Natalie Merchant's lyrics for 10,000 Maniacs and even later to singer/songwriter Dan Bern, I tended to copy the style of others. I tried to find these two poems, but they aren't on my computer. Lots of later stuff about unrequited love and broken hearts, though. The funny thing is that I think I was always writing song lyrics and not poetry. I don't even like poetry!
Anyway, my other graduation gift was a ticket to see Don Henley and more importantly (for me), Susanna Hoffs. She had just released her first solo album, When You're a Boy. Having been a fan of the Bangles, although a casual sort of "I have their greatest hits and A Different Light" kind of fan, I was excited to hear her solo stuff, and in fact liked When You're a Boy better than either of my Bangles albums. For years, I only had the album on cassette, until last Christmas, when my brother tracked down a copy on CD for me. He had actually loved it just as much as I did, and already had it on disc. When I played it, I couldn't believe that I still knew it by heart after all this time. Don Henley was touring for his excellent album The End of the Innocence, which had been a pretty big hit for him at the time. For me it's another one of those albums that I knew was good at the time, but only really understand how fantastic it is as I grow older. It was such an odd pairing, but I guess they were both members of popular bands who had gone solo. And possibly had the same album cover designers?
There were four tickets and I was taking my brother, David, my friend Diana and her sister, Alex. Then on the day after my graduation, I cut open the back of my ankle. With a door. The door to our house was heavy and metal. When you opened it, you took a step up. I had gone outside on a rainy and very windy day. While my right foot was up on the step and my left foot was still on the ground, a gust of wind tried to slam the door shut and succeeded in slicing the back of my ankle open. We called my stepfather's mom, Wilma, who took me to the ER, where I got stitched up.
So on June 20, 1991, when we went to the Miami Arena, with it's insane amount of stairs- stairs to get in to the building and stairs to get to our seats in the stands - I was on crutches. I think my mom must have made a call to the stadium to find out what to do and when we got there, Dave & I were separated from Diana & Alex and went through the handicapped entrance. We then got to sit in the special area full of older guys in wheelchairs. I don't know why, but I always imagined they were Vietnam vets, but more likely, old hippies who loved The Eagles. One guy in a wheelchair next to us was smoking pot and I'm pretty sure he offered some to David. Who was like 12 at the time. The bright side was that we had an excellent view of the show.
While I never listened to much of Don Henley's other stuff, I remember getting Susanna's second solo album, Susanna Hoffs. It didn't grab me as much as her first, but one of the tracks, "Beekeepers blues" is one of my all-time favorite songs; the kind I will play and play again and again and again until I realize that I've been listening to the same song for half an hour. Now she and Matthew Sweet have begun making cover albums of songs from the 60s and 70s. Here are some good CDs. Also check out some of the MP3s, especially Susanna's cover of Cyndi Lauper's "Unconditional love" - a very underrated song!
A few years ago, I decided that I would make an autobiographical mixtape of songs. I love music more than just about anything in the world (except for maybe movies), so many of my memories are connected to songs. Now in the age of itunes, I've turned these songs into the mother of all playlists and thought it might be fun to blog about the songs and the memories that go along with them.
