(I opted to post just one more excerpt from the book. I took a break from writing it this summer to focus on other projects, but deadlines are killer, so I had to get back on it. Which is good, I'll never complain.)This piece, while a funny, heartfelt nod to my sister's influence on me musically, and socially, is something I'd like to dedicate to my dear friend Randy Olverson who was killed in June. I think the push to keep writing comes hardest from those who are no longer with me.
Have you ever seen the movie 'Almost Famous'? there's that scene, right before the Sister leaves, seemingly forever, where she whispers to the kid, this budding, creative, promising child, that she left her record collection under his bed....and that one day, ONE day....he'll be cool.
In a weird way, that's similar to the relationship that my Sister and I shared, except for the fact that my potential to be cool remains in question. She was just from a better generation, in my eyes. Yeah, I was born in the 80's, but she was really ALIVE in the 80's. Which now, of course is painted as this culturally, politically, and artistically dead time, but my Sister will argue that any generation that produced Devo, Cyndi Lauper, AND Talking Heads couldn't be dead in any of those ways at all. For my 10th birthday, she got me a vinyl copy of Lauper's "She's So Unusual" with the words 'Don't believe in anything, except that next to you, this was the best thing to come out of 1983' scrawled on the back cover...how fucking cool is that? I carried it everywhere with me over that winter break, still in the plastic, since I didn't have a record player, and I learned from the cool older kids that you don't break the seal on vinyl until you're ready to get down to business and actually play it.
I was 11 when I first heard Nirvana in Ariel Lewis' basement. I was coming off of the realization that I would NEVER impress girls through sports, after racking up another multi-interception day as quite possibly the worst little league quarterback in the history of Columbus' rec system, and laying deflated on the floor of a girl who would have registered as my first crush if she wasn't just so much damn cooler than I was (even at 11, I had a fair grasp of my league.)...yet, when I heard the now familiar messy, sloppy, beautiful first notes of "Smells Like Teen Spirit", I was uplifted. Ariel just rolled her eyes at me, with the comment "It's Nirvana, duh. My brother said this guy's a shitty guitar player or something".* But, I was hooked. It was my first 'I've heard the music that will change the world' moment. As I sprinted to my house next door (I also knew at an early age: never get a crush on the neighbor chick.), I knew my sister would have the buzz. Halfway through my explanation, I got the new familiar response of, "It's Nirvana, duh...", I was given my first copy of Nevermind, and ushered promptly out of her room. It goes hand in hand with the best advice that I never followed under my sister's strict tutelage. At 11, she told me, "Look, man. Don't ever...EVER try to impress a girl with music, in any way at all. You're either going to insult them, or make a fool out of yourself". My flaunting of that rule began shortly thereafter, whenever her friends, who were obviously cooler, older, prettier girls than the ones I was in 6th grade with, filtered in to do some kind of school project, I would play the adorable little brother role, yet thinking I had a chance with all of them, I would discuss the latest Public Enemy, Smiths, and Cure records (Due to my current disdain for Morrissey and the Smiths, this shows nothing more than how much of an ultimate sellout I was as a pre-pubescent boy), with enthusiasm, but not much knowledge. I was 17 when I finally found out what the song "Fascination Street" was about, and why these then-18 year old girls would laugh when I would blindly proclaim it as my favorite Cure song.
I was taught the proper way to make a mix CD at 13, right when she came home from college for the first summer. Not just song choices, but proper song placing, song transition... look, you can't just put a Jay-Z song next to a Joni Mitchell song with no middle song as a transition choice. It's not a random collection of songs once you decide to undertake it with someone else in mind, it's an artform. I keep that in mind to this day whenever someone laughs as I take 5-10 days on a mix CD project. She would always slide me mixes with the coolest, shit written on them. I've got a mix from her that simply has "How Soon Is Now?" written on the cover. So, in an odd way, while encouraging me to never use music to impress girls, she carved out a pattern of me doing exactly that. Even now, when I get the occasional, "Hey, Hanif....will you write me some lyrics or something?...", I can't help but chuckle.
I was trying to explain that "Nirvana" moment to my niece last year. You know, the moment where you hear a musician that you KNOW off of the first 30 seconds of their song, is going to change the face of music? I was trying to get across the first time I heard Kanye West, who could be the last emotionally honest musician we'll ever see in this lifetime. But she didn't get it. I was in my then-college dorm room, when I popped in a one-off mix CD that I had gotten like a week earlier, heard that sped up Chaka Khan sample, and by the time I heard the first 4 bars of "Through The Wire" ('I feel like God wrote this'...), I could care less that it was February in Columbus, I had the windows open, and the volume up as loud as it could go. I burned 20 copies of that CD, and passed it out. My brother called me the next day, and shared my excitement...( "Bro!! this dude is rhymin' wit his DAMN MOUTH WIRED SHUT!!!!!")...but still, my Niece remained unmoved, which I think speaks to the excitement going out of new music as generations get older. It's funny when now, in my ever aging state, I think about the joy that Nirvana gave me upon first hearing them. My friend, Nick, reminds me constantly that this is the music of a guy who killed himself ("Nif....I can't listen to this and be happy, this guy. Put a shotgun. In his MOUTH. And pulled the trigger! I can't feel good about listening to this!), and he's right. What does that say about me? about us, as a generation? Here's our Beatles, here's our Dylan, and there's heroin and blood everywhere.
My Sister and I now share a tradition. She calls me every April 8th, and simply sighs into the phone before saying, "Today's the day they found Kurt's body, you know.", and I always acknowledge it with a light laugh. He's simply "Kurt" to her. It's such a radical change. People that grew up in the 60's and 70's were so hell bent on killing their idols, but her generation was so attached to their idols...Yet not in the shameful way that girls today clamor after Paris Hilton, it was different. Kids like her are the best ones. The ones that feel like every song is written to them, or about them. That might seem delusional, or unhealthy.... maybe, but it's the kind of delusion that also goes with maintaining the hope that one day...ONE day...I'll be cool. So, I'll take it.
*(Kurt Cobain was a shitty guitar player in the same way that Lou Reed, Josh Homme, and Thurston Moore are shitty guitar players. So bad that at times, they're the only thing you want to hear.)
("Vanity, Heartbreak, And Six Hundred And Fourteen Ways To Commit Emotional Suicide" will, with any luck, be finished by December. Thank you guys that keep RHT alive.)
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