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| My younger brother's family gave me an Amazon.com gift certificate for Christmas 2004. After several months of international flying for increasingly frustrating meetings, I finally figured out what I wanted if not needed: a good old wallow in nostalgia. Not just any old memories, I wanted the balls-out All-American rock and roll of the late 70s and very early 80s that served as a soundtrack for my high school days. Pure blind testosterone for the antics of male adolescence, in an innocent age when pregnancy (not AIDS) was the ultimate fear, and when terrorism only happened on TWA to somewhere else very far away. No worries other than what was the new TV lineup, who liked who, and the fear that everyone was having more sex than I was (mainly of course, because they all were). Saving oneself for marriage was reality, not just a quaint concept. Of course that didn't make it any less frustrating... The idea for this disc had been in the back of my mind for some time, but was probably finally set into motion by the visit of my best friend from high school, now a University Chemistry professor who spent the first part of 2005 doing research in the U.K. So many memories of course came flooding back. Back then we could have used a few more doses of self-confidence as we watched our third musketeer mix and match bad aftershaves, talk his way out of incredible traffic violations, use a curling iron on his chest hair and inexplicably...get the girls. |
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| Ah, the joys of fuzzy dice. The only thing on my rearview mirror is that recommended by the Preppy Handbook: "Nothing. Ever." |
| Cruising Bellingham (and "going to England" on Boulevard at 3am) in a Buick. Who could ask for anything more? |
| As usual, I find it interesting to listen to these songs now as an adult. The lyrics are often much more lurid than than even we picked up at the time. But in general they convey working class male angst pretty well - unemployment, jealousy, sexual frustration, humiliation. What I find amazing in retrospect was our absolute detachment from most of the messages expressed in the music. We were all equal, we would all go to college (was there even an alternative?) and one day we would get married to nice Lutheran girls with good senses of family who were almost but not quite as smart as we were. There is remarkable contrast between our innocent certainty to the often angry and frustrated music that composed the soundtrack of our times. |
| Even more surprising is the fact (if I'm honest with myself) that I really disliked many of these songs at the time. I tended to soak up almost in desperation the new music coming out of England and Australia that would finally kick off and change the 1980s in a New Wave of style the year after we graduated from high school. The songs on this disc were more for the popular A-listers of my high school days - the confident guys with little black books. How ironic that so many of them would indeed end up with lives much more similar to the stories in the muscular but frustrated songs we listened to at the time. So my midlife crisis continues? All I know is that after 40, I have a better appreciation of good (and bad) Rock and Roll. |
| Not everyone has a hairy chest. Even fewer use a curling iron on it. |
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