Category Archives: Memory

God Shuffled His iPod

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From a friend:

“Okay no cheating.  You have iTunes?  Great — here’s what I want you to do.  Access the entire music library you have saved, select “SHUFFLE” and press play.  Write down your thoughts on the song while it plays, but don’t write past the point it ends.  And please, no cheating — that N’Sync song pops up in the mix, write it down and say why you have it.”

Ordinarily I’d ignore the request, but as I just returned after a vacation, I really need to jump-start my brain, and this is as good a distraction as any.

Oh, I don’t have any N’Sync, so I’m safe there, but let’s see what happens.

1. Shaking Through – R.E.M.

Why I have it?  Well, because it’s R.E.M. – one of my favorite bands. Shaking Through is off their first album, Murmur, and it’s appropriate that it’s the first to pop up, given that Murmur always makes me think of summer.  Actually, R.E.M. always makes me think of summer – they’re a great summer band. Memories associated with R.E.M., particularly I.R.S. Records era R.E.M., always bring me back to Summer.  There’s even video a friend recorded of us driving around my hometown in my Toyota Camry, just recording the sights in the summer of ’91. Of course, R.E.M. are on the deck.

2. Country House – Blur

What was the greatest “Britpop” song? It’s a question one character in a nifty suspense thriller I recently wrote (and am currently shopping) asks of another. The choices are “Country House” by Blur and “Roll With It” by Oasis. It’s a trick question, really, as everyone knows the greatest Britpop song is “Common People” by Pulp.  I think If I was born two, three years later than I actually was, I’d be a bigger Britpop fan than I am, though The Great Escape, of which this song belongs to, is probably my favorite Britpop album, along with the first Elastica and the first Oasis.

3. Fast Cars – U2

Fast Cars was a bonus track on the Japanese version of U2’s 2004 ‘How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb’ album, but this version is from ‘Medium, Rare and Remastered’, a fan-club CD of b-sides, rare tracks and previously unreleased music spanning the band’s 30 years together.  When I was U2 in 2005 they played this song during the encore and it was the only song they did perform i had never heard. It’s got this weird, almost flamenco feel to it.  Oh, U2 is a winter band for me — unlike R.E.M.  Don’t know why, they just are.

4. Beloved Freak – Garbage

The newest addition to the library as the album came out a month or so ago, and I only got it in the last couple weeks.  I like it — granted I’ve liked all of Garbage’s albums (even Beautiful Garbage and Bleed Like Me — the albums nobody else bought).  For most, Garbage is your quintessential mid-late 90s band, in look and in sound.  It’s weird to think they’ve been around nearly 20 years now, but they have, and I think it’s great they’re still together. Oh, and the album’s a definite grower — not as “single heavy” as their debut album (the one with “Stupid Girl”, “Vow” and “Queer”) — but as catchy as anything they’ve done.

5. Same Boy You’ve Always Known (Live From Manaus, Brazil) – The White Stripes

Another rarity, this from a B-Sides collection only available in Europe.  I think to really appreciate The White Stripes, you have to listen to them performing live. A pity I never got to, but their live album “Under Great White Northern Lights” (or the film itself) is as good as any place to start.  I’m really enjoying Jack White’s solo debut ‘Blunderbuss’ right now, and wonder how Meg is doing in her life out of the spotlight.

6. Staring at the Sun (Monster Truck Remix) – U2

And it’s U2 again, this remix from the ‘Artificial Horizon’ fanclub remix album my sister-in-law gifted me with.  The original is off their much maligned 1997 Pop album, where they rode the Achtung-Zooropa train into a wall.  Revisionists are coming around on it somewhat, but the album still feels half-baked.  FIrst side is pretty solid, but it gets less interesting as it goes forward. That said, some of the tracks I initially hated (“Please”, “Wake Up Dead Man” and this track in its original format) are now some of my favorites on the album. Figure that out.

7.B & I Ferry – Shane MacGowan and the Popes

Anyone else as surprised as me that Shane MacGowan is still alive?  Well, he is.  That’s nbot to say he’s in tip-top shape; when I saw the Pogues at the Roseland Ballroom in 2006 he performed from the seat of his wheelchair (having broken his knee a couple days previous), and his between-song banter was an unintelligible slur.  It was good to see him back with the band where he belongs, but his 90s solo albums, “The Snake” and “Crock of Gold” (of which this song is from) were some of my favourites from the era.  Actually much of the late 90s were a wasteland for me; working a shitty job, making shitty money doing it and wondering if my career would ever get off the ground.  But somehow, listing to Shane belt ’em out made life a little more bearable.

8. Amsterdam – Coldplay

Coldplay get a lot of grief from the hipper-than-thou, but I like ’em and piss on anyone who feels different. I thought once I got out of High School people would stop judging others based on what they like, but if anything it’s gotten worse. Thanks to the Internet, it’s like High School never ended; everyone is ready and willing to share their unwanted opinions with each other, only they’ve removed the usual socual graces of having the stones to utter their opinions to your face. Now they scream it safely from their side of their computer monitor.  Anyway, even Coldplay haters will acknowledge that “A Rush of Blood to the Head” is their best album, and “Amsterdam” one of their best songs.  I know it’s one of my favorite.

9. Making Time – Creation

Off the soundtrack to the Wes Anderson film ‘Rushmore’. Ironically I just had the epiphany that Anderson’s latest “Moonrise Kingdom’ is currently my favorite film of 2012.  It also made me realize how burnt out I am on comic book movies and superhero cinema in general. I’m tired of the CGI overkill, the origin stories, the inevitable set-up for the sequel.  I long for those quiet summer days of childhood where you could just explore your town, your cottage, that island getaway, and find something truly magical.

10. Drunken Butterfly – Sonic Youth

Ah, Sonic Youth.  I think they were my favorite band through 1992, and I couldn’t wait for ‘Dirty’ to come put already.  I saw them  that November, and my ears rang for days afterward.  It was my soundtrack through that summer and autumn when I trekked off to university to begin the next phase of my life; a phase of life that feels like it’s ending only now.  Maybe not ending, but heading in a new direction. Funny thing is at least to my ears, this song feels as fresh now as it did when I first heard it 20 years ago.  And then I realize it’s been 20 years, and I wonder where the time went.  It’s all gone by so fast I worry the next 20 will accelerate even more.  At least I’ll still have the music.

And that’s that. If you chose to do the same as I did, hit shuffle, and write about what comes up, I’d be curious to read what you say, either here or on Facebook.

No Excuses

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Timing is everything.

Like most creatives, I owe my career to it.  A stint volunteering at a film festival turned into the opportunity to pen a TV miniseries, and launched me into the world of being a professional writer.  Had I not volunteered at that festival and ingratiated myself with the producer running it, who knows where I’d be?

Success is predicated on the ability to recognize an opportunity when it presents itself, and acting accordingly.  Being in the right place at the right time is key; being able to recognize when you are in one of those moments is crucial.  If you’re not paying attention to the signals, that ship sails, leaving you standing on the shore and realizing that you just missed the golden opportunity that would have put you on it, rather than looking at it from a distance.

So what does that have to do with Kurt Cobain?

Everything.

Kurt is immortal.  He’s deified and lionized and memorialized every time you hear “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”  He’s a genuine rock icon on the same level as Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin (all of whom, like Kurt, died at 27).  Heck, NECA even released not one but two collectable toys of Kurt:

His journals have been published, a movie is forever in the works, a MUSICAL has been talked about (dear God, please no) books have been written, conspiracy theories about his death abound.  He’s forever trapped in amber, howling like a demon in a fog shrouded high school gymnasium as a pep rally goes out of control.  He’s forever twenty-seven.

Today marks the 20th anniversary of his death on April 5, 1994.  He’d be 47 had he lived, but he didn’t.  And another year comes and goes minus Kurt Cobain. Everyone knows who he was.  But he’s not the reason I’m writing this.

He is:

If you don’t know who that is just by looking at him, chances are you’re one of the ones who forgot that Layne Staley, lead singer of Alice in Chains died 12 years ago, on April 5, 2002.  He died of an overdose.  His body lay for two weeks in his luxury Seattle condo before they found him.  He was 35 — the same age Kurt would have been in 2002 had he lived.

Both deaths were tragic.  Yes, even Kurt, despite suicide being widely regarded as a dick move.  Unless you’ve dealt with crippling depression, or drug addiction, or chronic health problems like Kurt did, you’re in a glass house throwing rocks.  But as years pass on, I find Layne’s passing to be the more tragic.  It’s also hard to remember now just how big Alice in Chains was.  Multiple platinum albums.  Sell-out tours.  A legendary Unplugged performance.  Legions of devoted fans.  And the songs, man the songs still have the power to send chills up one’s spine; The Rooster, Angry Chair, Man in the Box, Them Bones – fantastic.  I saw Nirvana once, in 1993.  But I saw Alice in Chains twice, once in 92 and again in 93 when they co-headlined that year’s Lollapalooza festival and for my money, their work cuts deeper than Nirvana, who had the luxury of releasing three great albums before imploding in such a dramatic fashion.  They never got old or stale.  Neither did Alice, but as each April passes with piles of stories about Kurt, I wonder why Layne isn’t afforded the same.

Why is Kurt commemorated with galleries and books and toys, but not Layne?

Obviously, timing – or as much timing as death  requires.  Kurt died, if not at the height of popularity, then at the height of fame, when he’d shifted from being the indie rock star who broke into the mainstream and heralded a shift in music, to becoming a tabloid train-wreck aided and abetted by his very public marriage to Courtney Love.  His rise into public consciousness was meteoric – roughly 5 years lapsed from Nirvana’s debut Bleach, to the shotgun suicide that ended Nirvana, and alternative nation.  Kurt had timing on his side of going out when Grunge and Alt-Rock were at their peak.  His death triggered their decline.  It was hard to listen to Bleach or Nevermind with the knowledge that the guy singing about angst and loneliness blew his brains out.  Face it, when “the voice of your generation” kills himself, it doesn’t say much about that generation’s prospects does it?

When Layne died in 2002, Grunge had been dead for nearly 8 years.  Generation X had grown up, graduated college, gotten jobs and started families.  I’m sure some people reacted with more surprise that he was still around – heck, I probably reacted the same way.  There were no vigils at the Space Needle in Seattle like there were with Kurt.  Rolling Stone and Spin didn’t publish commemorative issues.  There are no toys of Layne.  The band took time to mourn, and lick their wounds, and eventually reform with a new singer … and as it turns out they’re pretty damn good.  But Layne’s absence is one they’ll never overcome, just like as great a band as Foo Fighters have became, they’ll never be a game-changer like Nirvana.

Now that era is a legend; as mythic to 17-18 year olds as the 60s were to people my age.  People who never experienced it firsthand, and only have the songs in place of firsthand memory.

Kurt is remembered/deified because his death signalled the end of Grunge, and the end of Alternative Rock as a mainstream force.  It was like that moment in high school when a classmate dies sudden and unexpected. It’s that big moment that forces everyone around it to grow up.  I know for my personal experience that Kurt’s death and Nirvana’s break-up marked the beginning of the end of music in my life.  Not that it ended entirely, but its importance in my life began to wane.  School became more important, as did getting my career off the ground.  I gradually stopped going to shows, and while I still bought music, it wasn’t to the degree it had been since 1989.  It took fourteen years, and the beginnings of Mixtape, for me to rekindle that passion for music.  Growing up means letting go of childish things and accepting responsibility.  Not everything ends with a shotgun blast or a lonely overdose.  Life is rarely that dramatic.

But as years go by I think about Layne more than Kurt. In a way Layne’s death shaped my life and career more than Kurt’s death did. We all dream of a blaze of glory but for most of us the end comes when we don’t want it to. When there’s nothing left but darkness. That’s why, as I do get older, I’m more determined than ever to kick at that darkness, to make it bleed, and to not go willingly into it. To burn with a brightness so hot and so brilliant it banishes those shadows entirely.

Someone, and I can’t remember who, said something to the effect that “Foo Fighters are to Nirvana what New Order was to Joy Division”, and that’s as apt a comparison as any.  Nirvana became legends the moment Kurt pulled the trigger.  Alice was wounded the moment Layne OD’d, and while that’s unfair, it’s what it is.

So as the music world prepares to mark another sad anniversary, I encourage everyone to give more than a passing thought to Layne.  He deserves it, because sometimes the worse thing than being trapped in the spotlight is going on after that spotlight has passed you by.

Having An Average Weekend

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It’s March, 1990.

I’m visiting a friend, and we’re embarking on our ritual of heading downtown to cruise the record shops, the comic book shops, the food courts, and to generally goof around.  It’s something we’ve done since grade-school. We are all of driving age now, but due to convenience, we take transit, which involves a walk to the bus stop, a long bus ride to the subway, and a long subway ride downtown.

We don’t mind the length of the ride though.

It’s all part of the ritual.

But this time things are different.  There is ONE THING I’m determined to find.  It’s what took me back to my old stomping grounds (three hours on a train to the city).

We make our first stop, mid-way.  We hit our first comic store and peruse the shelves.  We don’t buy anything – there are more stores to come and our spending money is limited.  We do make sure to pay a visit to a favorite burger joint for lunch.  We eat more than we should, we annoy the other patrons.  We’re teenagers.

Next stop, downtown, the heart of the city.  Two years from now I’ll live here, but this day I’m just another tourist.  Three of the biggest record stores in the city share the same intersection, and I tear through them on the hunt, only to go away unsatisfied.  None of them have the album I’m seeking.  I begin to despair.  If none of THESE stores has it, what are my chances anywhere else?  One of the clerks takes pity on me.

“Try Queen Street” he says.

Queen Street – the hippest, coolest stretch of two lane blacktop in the city.  Home to the coolest comic store anywhere, home to music stores galore, gateway to a much bigger world, and one I’ll be immersed in only short years from the here and now.

We cruise the strip, up one side, down the back.  We hit the comic store.  We hit the record stores.  One by one, I’m disappointed, and this disappointment mounts until we reach the last one.  The last chance.

They don’t have it.  Nothing on the shelves.  Sure, there’s a poster of the band on the wall, mocking me.  I sigh, and resign myself to going home (to my friend’s home first, then to my actual home) empty handed.  As we leave the store and make our way back to the subway for the long ride home, one of my friends says “hey, isn’t that the album you’re looking for?”

I follow his gaze to the record store window, and the cassettes, CDs and vinyl on display.

And I see it:

Since their pilot aired in 1988, The Kids in the Hall has been part of my weekly ritua. I watch every episode, and tape every episode, and on those rare instances I miss it, I set the VCR timer to tape so I can watch it later.  The Kids were my life-line to a world much larger, much weirder and infinitely cooler than my small-town life.  Music was performed by a band called Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet (their theme to Kids, ‘Having an Average Weekend’ has become legend).  It was the show I introduced my friends to, and I simply could not return home without a copy of Savvy Show Stoppers by Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet.

Back inside, I approach the clerk at the cash.  I ask him if he has any copies of it in stock anywhere.  He asks me if I want the album.  I nod.  He reaches over, grabs the copy sitting in the window, and sells it to me.

Mission accomplished.

We listen to it when cruising in my friend’s car later that night.  I listen to it on my walkman on the train ride home.  Word spreads at school that I have a copy of “that Kids in the Hall album”.  I dub many, many copies, ones for friends, ones for complete strangers. For someone used to having to get others to make copies of music for me, I get that one taste of having something everyone wants.

It’s March, 1990

*          *          *

It’s March, 2012.

I still take the subway downtown.  I don’t own a car.  Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet CDs go for big bucks on eBay.  Only two members of the band are alive.  The Kids in the Hall finished their run in 1996 but you can watch episodes on Netflix. Watching them gives me the same feeling I got watching reruns of 20-year old shows in 1990, but its different this time — I was alive in 1990, when Kids in the Hall were fresh and new.  Back then I wasn’t 20 — now I can remember what being 20 felt like, but that was a long time ago.  Years have a funny way of slipping away from you.

I have a lot of tapes from bands you won’t find on iTunes or Amazon or even YouTube.  They may exist on dusty shelves of record stores, but those are disappearing too.  Once the tapes fade or get chewed up, I probably won;t hear that music ever again.

Our lives are made of rituals, but rituals fade, and change; sometimes for the better, sometimes for worse.  Now we wait for the download.  We tweet about it, or post a picture of it.

It makes me wonder.

Do 17 year old kids take the same bus-ride to subway ride downtown with their friends, as part of their ritual?  Do they cruise the comic book stores, the music stores, and the food courts?  Do they goof around?

I don’t know.

But I hope somewhere they still do.

 

And I still have that tape.

Happy Fucking Birthday

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Getting old sucks.  But you know what’s worse?  Not getting old at all.

Yep, it’s my birthday today, and I’ve been dreading it like I’ve been dreading each one since my tenth.  Never been into birthdays — not into celebrating them, not into even acknowledging them, and the older one gets, those well-wishes and the gifts that accompany them feel more like consolation prizes than anything.  For one day of the year you get to be the center of attention which, for a chronic introvert like myself, is a form of slow torture.  I’ve avoided looking at my Facebook page all day, knowing it’s going to be filled with well-wishes from people I barely know.  They mean well, and I appreciate it, but at the end of the day, typing “Happy Birthday!” on a virtual wall seems like a bit of a cheat, when I’d rather people not bring it up at all.

My wife asked if I wanted to do anything special today.  Nope, not really.  It’s Tuesday, and I have too much work to get caught up on after a long weekend of sitting idle.  Plus, I had a shit night of sleep last night, so there’s that too.

But, I really need to get over myself; at least I get to have a birthday, when so many I’ve known have not.  Today I think of my manager Cathryn, who left us a couple years back, and I think of a couple of old high school pals, both of whom were younger than me, and both of whom died within a month of each other.  I even think of  Michael Hein, founder of the New York City Horror Film Festival, who died unexpectedly last year.  He was two years older than me.

I also think of Neil Hope.

I didn’t know Neil, but I knew his work, the same as everyone else who reacted with shock at the news that “Wheels” of Degrassi Junior High and Degrassi High fame had died.  What was shocking wasn’t his age (which, at 35, was shocking), but rather to the fact that he’d died in 2007, and people just found out just last week, some four years and three months after he’d died, of natural causes, supposedly.

Like a lot of the Kids of Degrassi Street, he found his acting work dry up at the conclusion of Degrassi High’s run.  They were typecast as those roles and nobody wanted that Degrassi baggage.  Most managed to get over Degrassi and carve out successful, happy lives.

But Neil didn’t.  He dropped out of the business and found work in general labor.  The son of alcoholics, he battled his own alcoholism through the 1990s, much like his character on Degrassi.  He lived a private life, ad one of self-isolation.  He was dragged reluctantly to appear in a couple “reunion shows” on the new Degrassi series, but he pretty much dropped off the radar, by choice, as all accounts would indicate.

I made mention here and here that Degrassi was an influence on Mixtape, and I watched the entire DJH/DH run on Hulu last year.  Watching those five years over roughly five months was a touching experience really – to see the cast grow before my eyes.  Wheels in particular had a tragic arc — his parents were killed by a drunk driver, he was nearly molested by a creepy guy while hitchhiking, and in the Degrassi finale “School’s Out” got into a drunk driving accident himself, killing a kid and blinding a classmate.  He never got a happy ending in the series, and that happy ending eluded Neil also.

It makes me think, how someone in this day and age of internet everywhere can die, and people can still be clueless about their passing for more than four years after the fact.  You really have to close yourself off from the world for that to happen.  Neil chose to do just that.  He decided to walk away from everything, and while it’s hard to understand, one almost has to respect him for that.

Now, Neil is trapped in amber.  He won’t age beyond that character, that character will define him, and as the years drag on, he’ll only be known as Wheels.  If I go tomorrow or next week or twenty years from now, how will I be remembered? It’s a question I ask myself a lot, with alarming frequency on my birthday.

So today I think of the people no longer with us.  That’s why its time to cut the self-pity crap and enjoy my goddamn birthday.  Because who knows how many more any of us have?

Teenage Riot

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Okay, so it’s MIXTAPE month ‘round these parts, meaning February is the month that Mixtape finally hits finer comic shops everywhere.  We’re also going to have a digital version of the book available through the iTunes store to read on your tablet or other mobile device.  The “digital version” of Mixtape will also include a bonus playlist that you’ll be able to purchase through the iTunes Store.  Both will be available on February 29th.

My preferred version of Mixtape remains the physical book.  It was conceived as a monthly, as something you purchased at your local comic shop (still probably the closest thing you get to a record store these days), and it just feels right that these analog stories are read in an analog format like a comic book.  Most towns have at least one comic book store, so it should be readily available, assuming they ordered copies. Not everyone did, so if your local shop is one of those, let them know you want it, and we’ll get copies out to them.

But, some people don’t have a comic store in their town.  Some people would rather buy and download the book to read right away.  So, we’re aiming for that particular market.  I’ve seen the digital version and it looks amazing on tablets.  You can really appreciate the level of detail in Jok and Gervasio’s art, and you’ll find lots of “easter eggs” scattered throughout.

The playlist was an idea we’d been entertaining for a while.  Originally we wanted to have links embedded in the book that you could click and hear a 30 second clip of the particular song.  This may happen at some point, but for now, the playlist is just a list at the end of the issue.  If you’re reading Mixtape, chances are you have some, if not all of the songs anyway, but they’re a fun addition to the book – and somewhat integral to it.  These are the playlists I listened to when writing, and Jok listened to when illustrating, and is built around the main character featured in that story (in Mixtape #1’s case, Jim).

For non-digital readers the playlist is available on the Mixtape YouTube Channel found here.