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Eight Moments, Played Off Beat

Or: What I thought was great c. 2000-2004

By Andrew JohnstonPublished 3 years ago 8 min read
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When we were finally graced with a decent internet connection back in my rural Kansas town, one of the first things I did was find an MP3 site and start looking up tracks. I didn't get too far, instead spending the better part of an hour listening to the same two songs over and over again: "Points of Authority" by Linkin Park and "Running Away" by Hoobastank.

My guess is that, on the basis of that alone, you're already forming an image of what I was like at thirteen. Americans attribute a lot of importance to one's taste in music - we believe that one can infer personality, character and upbringing by the artists on one's playlist. Yet while I may have frittered away one summer morning on those two tracks, I never listened to either again and I've never had much interest in either band. Really, my musical taste back then was significantly messier, and I chalk a lot of that up to experience.

So let's dig into that experience. Below are eight songs representing four years of my life, each one tied to something from that time - a single event or a regular ritual, a life-changing moment or a curious aside. If there's any further information to be gleaned about this sequence of songs, I leave it as an exercise for you, the reader.

"In the Garage" - Weezer, The Blue Album

I don't remember who recommended Weezer to me, but it was a pretty easy sell - Weezer being a band designed to appeal to a frustrated, overly romantic youth. There might not be another act that defines the era quite as much as this one, especially with songs that really do speak to being an outcast.

Weezer would eventually become one of the first bands I saw live. I'm surprised the show went off - the weather was terrible that evening, even by Kansas standards. Owing to the weather, attendance was sparse, but the show went off without a hitch. The return trip was, to say the least, a lot harrier. That bad weather had turned into a tornado, and the highway leading home passed perilously close to the thing - near enough that the car was rocking back and forth. The next morning, I learned that I'd been out of town for a storm that wrecked several houses in and around my town. To this day, I'm not sure if this was good luck or bad.

"Punk Rock Princess" - Something Corporate, Leaving Through the Window

Americans love to talk about our childhoods, and over the years I've noticed that nearly every high school story I have involves one person - we'll call him Terry, because that's his name. He was with me on the first day of class, when our Dickensian principal yanked us out of class to lecture us for several minutes because we entered a room just as the bell was ringing; he was the one who backed my play when I decided to botch a state assessment on purpose as an act of protest.

One thing Terry knew was music - mainstream or indie, obscure or about to break out. He recommended a lot of music to me over the years, and while I didn't like all of it, I had tremendous respect for his taste. "Punk Rock Princess" was just one of dozens of songs from a litany of bands which he suggested over the years, but it's still in my master playlist to this day.

"If You Must" - Del the Funky Homosapien, Both Sides of the Brain

The Tony Hawk's Pro Skater video game series probably influenced my musical tastes more than I care to admit, though I wasn't alone in that. For a certain type of band operating in that time frame, being featured in an extreme sports video game was about the best type of exposure you were going to get, guaranteeing that your target audience would hear your music several times a day for potentially weeks on end.

Since those days, I've seen Del live twice and have followed his career across various projects to this day. Now, how much of this was attributable to that one summer when, thanks to THPS, I heard this track eight or ten times every night before I went to bed? Was there some subliminal, conditioned effect that never quite wore off? Probably not, but they were very good games.

"Tearing Down the Borders" - Anti-Flag, The Terror State

For many people, their teenage years are defined by anger, self-righteousness and a general feeling of intellectual superiority. In short: It's a good time to obsess over politics. I came of age during the War on Terror period, when politics was a risky game. Nationwide, people were losing their jobs or getting death threats over their opinions; locally, it was worse. After a student was cornered by three people who didn't appreciate a pretty anodyne cartoon he'd drawn, someone had to write an op-ed in the school paper reminding everyone that you're not allowed to beat someone up just because you think they're unpatriotic.

Incidents like this taught me to keep my mouth shut, be diplomatic, nod politely at the offensive jokes and comments and just generally avoid conflict. Leaving my car strewn with CDs by a band called "Anti-Flag" probably wasn't keeping with this philosophy, but I survived.

"The National Anthem" - Radiohead, Kid A

In retrospect, I'm not sure if I was really a fan of Radiohead or if I just liked the idea of being a Radiohead fan. The first issue of the student newspaper I ever read contained a glowing review of Kid A, so - like the follower I was trying not to be - I picked it up. Hey, as long as it gave me something to talk about with the trendy kids, right?

The truth is that I had no respect at all for the tastes of most of my peers. The TV shows they watched, the music they listened to - I hated all of it, and it made school a bigger grind than it needed to be. At the end of the day, all I wanted was to pretend that none of it existed for a while. Shut the door, close the blinds, kill the lights, and play something less terrible. "The National Anthem," with its weird, dense, ever-evolving soundscape, was a good palate cleanser - almost meditative.

"Commissioning a Symphony in C" - CAKE, Comfort Eagle

Weekends in a small town can be pretty dull. For a group of youths with nothing notable to do, one option is what we called "dragging Main" - driving up and down random streets with no particular intent, which is more interesting than sitting in someone's basement only because there's some amount of movement. My friends hated dragging Main, but we still ended up doing it from time to time. The long drives were good for two things: Listening to music and talking over issues too sensitive to discuss in a fixed place.

I always paid attention to the music we were listening to. One expects that dark, angst-ridden conversations will be accompanied by dark, angst-ridden music - and usually that was true. However, I also recall some seriously dark conversations that were accompanied by this whimsical indie-pop tune. Sometimes, the right song for the moment is just whatever you wanted to listen to anyway.

"John Walker's Blues" - Steve Earle, Jerusalem

I listened to a lot of country when I was a kid, but it wasn't by choice. I couldn't fall asleep in a totally quiet place, so I had a radio playing all night. As it was a poor reception area, I had few options as to the music. On any but a totally clear night, my choice was between a country station that must have been right down the road or, inexplicably, a Spanish-language station that played mostly mariachi music and was clear as a bell through the worst storm.

Needless to say, this midwestern country station wasn't playing the likes of Steve Earle, especially not after songs like "John Walker's Blues" which clashed with the sensibilities of their typical audience. There was no small amount of controversy over the song, which many saw as being overly sympathetic to an aspiring terrorist. I think it was the controversy that made it so appealing to me. If you want a teenager to listen to something, telling him it would be bad if he heard it is wonderful encouragement.

"Walk Unafraid" - R.E.M., Up

There's something invigorating about discovering a new band, especially when it's a band that's been around for a while and has an extensive backlog of material you've never heard. Living in a small town can impair that discovery process, though, leaving one to dig through obsolete media in search for a track or two. R.E.M. taught me to appreciate vinyl, if only out of necessity.

I was lucky enough to see R.E.M. live, though I had to skip class to do so - the first and only time I ever did that. A clever schemer would lie about that, but by this point I was beyond caring about my school or anyone in it. Not only did I tell people why I skipped class, I ended up singing R.E.M. songs for a bunch of teenagers who'd never heard of the band. To a man, the response to this was "Wow, you should try out for the pep assembly."

So I did, and I must impressed someone because a few weeks later I found myself in front of the student body, performing this very song. There's poetry in that, doing a song about nonconformity at a pep rally. It's always good to leave on a high note.

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About the Creator

Andrew Johnston

Educator, writer and documentarian based out of central China. Catch the full story at www.findthefabulist.com.

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