I'll be house/pet-sitting for a friend for a couple of weeks while she recovers from gastric bypass surgery. I brought plenty of music and DVDs to keep me occupied. When my friend and her mom left here, her mom told me, "No wild parties!" :) The wildest thing I intend to do is to watch Videodrome. You can read my friend's story here:
http://bugs-blahghh.blogspot.com/
Tomorrow, I'm hoping to do a project that I've been wanting to do for a couple of years. I should have that up tomorrow.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Friday, January 14, 2011
Remembering a failed temp job...and the Haiti earthquake.
When Main ex-Employer was hiring for Christmas Peak Season 2009, they used a temp agency to employ the seasonal workers. Most of the people on my shift and department were let go on December 30th. One of the guys from the temp agency talked to us individually, and told me that I was on a list for a special project coming up. I can't remember when I got the call, but I do remember starting on the 12th. My job was working night shift in the Returns department for Main ex-Employer for the Returns peak season. The Haiti earthquake also happened on the 12th. I can't remember when I first heard about the earthquake, it might have been that night after I got off work, or it might have been the following afternoon before I went in to work. I didn't think much of it at the time, probably because I was too concerned about getting used to the new job and making this money, after all, Returns was one of the few things I hadn't done when I worked there previously. It might have been around that time that I decided to look to see when the manager and lead person were hired on, since neither of them were familiar to me. Turns out that the manager just started at the end of the previous August, and the lead person was hired on just barely over a month before, at the end of November.
On the second night, me and three other guys were sent home since the manager felt that we weren't a good fit for the department. In other words, we were too slow for his liking. It really didn't help that the training we were given for the job, basically a five to ten minute tutorial, was inadequate. I went home that night feeling a sense of defeat. I sat down to watch The Rachel Maddow Show, which dealt entirely with the destruction in Haiti. I was horrified. While I had seen bits and pieces about it before, I didn't get a sense of how bad it really was until then. Since there were no job prospects, I would have totally went to Haiti to help with the relief effort given the chance. At the end of the show, Rachel said that if you want to help, the last thing you should do is hop on the first plane to Haiti since it's too dangerous, and that what you SHOULD do is give money to the organizations that are already over there helping out. I thought, "Well, I can't go over there, and I have no money to give. Poop."
It's been just over a year since the earthquake and my failed mission in Returns. Haiti still seems to be a hot mess. As for that Returns manager, numerous people that I talked to from work after he let us go said that that manager was a jerk, so I wasn't surprised to find out that he got canned. The girl who was the lead person is now an "intern" in the training department, or at least I believe it's the training department, they gave it some other goofy name. Weird.
On the second night, me and three other guys were sent home since the manager felt that we weren't a good fit for the department. In other words, we were too slow for his liking. It really didn't help that the training we were given for the job, basically a five to ten minute tutorial, was inadequate. I went home that night feeling a sense of defeat. I sat down to watch The Rachel Maddow Show, which dealt entirely with the destruction in Haiti. I was horrified. While I had seen bits and pieces about it before, I didn't get a sense of how bad it really was until then. Since there were no job prospects, I would have totally went to Haiti to help with the relief effort given the chance. At the end of the show, Rachel said that if you want to help, the last thing you should do is hop on the first plane to Haiti since it's too dangerous, and that what you SHOULD do is give money to the organizations that are already over there helping out. I thought, "Well, I can't go over there, and I have no money to give. Poop."
It's been just over a year since the earthquake and my failed mission in Returns. Haiti still seems to be a hot mess. As for that Returns manager, numerous people that I talked to from work after he let us go said that that manager was a jerk, so I wasn't surprised to find out that he got canned. The girl who was the lead person is now an "intern" in the training department, or at least I believe it's the training department, they gave it some other goofy name. Weird.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Work vs. School
I got to thinking recently that I wish I had made use of the guidance counselors at my high school, whether it was for dealing with depression and all the bullshit I was going through, which I was kind of in denial about, or trying to work on getting into a college. (Then again, maybe they were as useless as Randal in the movie "Clerks" said they were?) Back in the Spring of 1993, when I was a Sophomore in high school, I spent part of my Spring Break with my brother at his college. I felt more at home there than I did at my own school with people my own age. I didn't really know what I wanted to study in college, maybe Psychology, but I knew that I wanted to go right out of high school, mostly due to my previous experience, but also so I could get out of the house. But I ultimately didn't go because I couldn't get the financial aid I was hoping for since my family wasn't poor enough to qualify, but they also weren't rich enough to help pay for it. I didn't really entertain the notion of going to school again until about 2003. Had I been able to tough it out in Austin a few more months, I probably would've been going to Austin Community College at the end of Summer/beginning of Fall that year. But instead, I moved back to Kentucky, worked pizza delivery for about a year and a half, and then worked at Main ex-Employer from November 2004 until I got laid off in November 2008.
Most of the jobs I've worked have been warehouse or factory type work, usually not involving forklifts*, and not having to deal directly with the public. Basically, stuff that a trained monkey could do. While some people might consider me intelligent, I always felt like a dumbass at these jobs because I was merely adequate at best. The main thing is that they want you to work FAST, and for some reason I'm unable to move my arms/hands/fingers at a constant rate as fast as most people. Thus, I don't deal well with quotas. One of the nice things about moving into the Photo department at Main ex-Employer was that I discovered talents that weren't of much use when working in the warehouse. In fact, my talents got me a promotion. The fact that I was able to work my way up in the company made getting laid off that much harder on my self esteem, because no matter where I went I was going to have start back from the bottom, and wasn't likely to work my way up into a position like the one I had.
One career that I've had some interest in is being a sound engineer for a recording studio. But since it's not an "in demand" job, government money isn't going to help pay for it. Most people who know better say that going to school for it is a waste of time, and you're better off getting started in that field by being an intern or apprentice. Some people tell me that to be an intern or apprentice somewhere, you have to be going to school. So, I guess that leaves me with having to go to a "real school". Of the programs that most schools have, I figure my best bet would be something nerd-ish, like IT, or some kind of programming. But I'd hate to spend thousands of dollars just to find out that I suck in my then-chosen profession, to which I'd probably have to spend thousands more dollars on a profession that I might also possibly suck at. I'm pretty sure I don't want to get into the medical field because I'm afraid that I'd end up killing someone by accident. All I know is that this general labor thing isn't working out.
As you can probably tell, I have a lot of anxiety issues. Looking at college programs is pretty overwhelming. But do you know what else overwhelms me? Looking at job ads. Doing either one makes me want to curl up into a fetal position. Most of the jobs that I know I'm qualified for are temp or seasonal, so the likelihood of getting hired on at one of these places is pretty low. I seem to be overqualified for restaurant jobs, or underqualified for any job that requires education beyond a high school diploma or a couple of years previous experience in some particular field. As if I don't have enough to worry about, I have my dad riding my ass to find a job. He's under the impression that I don't want to work, and doesn't seem to understand that I think working is preferable to being pestered by him. When I'm working, I really do fear getting let go because I don't want to deal with him. My mom isn't usually much help either. Seriously, if I'm not looking for work or doing some work around the house, my main goals are to (1)entertain myself in order to retain my sanity, and (2)try not to piss off my dad. Unfortunately, doing #1 tends to lead to #2. One thing that my dad has a problem with is that I'm not out "pounding the pavement". In this day and age, that's seriously a waste of time and gas since most places are just going to tell you to apply online. And this isn't just me saying that, I've talked to or read about all kinds of people with the same experience. But does my dad believe me? No. He hasn't had to look for work since the mid to late 1970s, so what does he know? Hell, he was lucky that he was Union, most of the places I've worked at wouldn't have let him get away with some of the shit he pulled off at his old job.
In conclusion, I could really use some help on this school thing, but don't know where to start. I could also use some good therapy, but can't afford it. I've tried Vocational Rehab, but they haven't been as much help as I was hoping. My own place would be nice too, but I can't afford that, either. If I do go to school, I figure having a place of my own would be good, because I can't really study at my mom and dad's place.
*I HATE FORKLIFTS! For some reason, I can't get a hang of them as fast as the average person. The bigger ones I've been on steer from the rear wheels, it's like trying to operate a pallet jack using a steering wheel. They're much easier to drive in reverse! Then there's the forks, I have a lot of trouble trying to tell where they're at, so I'm liable to put the forks in a place where I didn't intend them. And I can't seem to drive them at an adequate speed, I either drive them too fast or too slow. The only forklift type device I've ever used that I liked using was basically a motorized pallet jack, because, you know, it's basically a glorified pallet jack.
Most of the jobs I've worked have been warehouse or factory type work, usually not involving forklifts*, and not having to deal directly with the public. Basically, stuff that a trained monkey could do. While some people might consider me intelligent, I always felt like a dumbass at these jobs because I was merely adequate at best. The main thing is that they want you to work FAST, and for some reason I'm unable to move my arms/hands/fingers at a constant rate as fast as most people. Thus, I don't deal well with quotas. One of the nice things about moving into the Photo department at Main ex-Employer was that I discovered talents that weren't of much use when working in the warehouse. In fact, my talents got me a promotion. The fact that I was able to work my way up in the company made getting laid off that much harder on my self esteem, because no matter where I went I was going to have start back from the bottom, and wasn't likely to work my way up into a position like the one I had.
One career that I've had some interest in is being a sound engineer for a recording studio. But since it's not an "in demand" job, government money isn't going to help pay for it. Most people who know better say that going to school for it is a waste of time, and you're better off getting started in that field by being an intern or apprentice. Some people tell me that to be an intern or apprentice somewhere, you have to be going to school. So, I guess that leaves me with having to go to a "real school". Of the programs that most schools have, I figure my best bet would be something nerd-ish, like IT, or some kind of programming. But I'd hate to spend thousands of dollars just to find out that I suck in my then-chosen profession, to which I'd probably have to spend thousands more dollars on a profession that I might also possibly suck at. I'm pretty sure I don't want to get into the medical field because I'm afraid that I'd end up killing someone by accident. All I know is that this general labor thing isn't working out.
As you can probably tell, I have a lot of anxiety issues. Looking at college programs is pretty overwhelming. But do you know what else overwhelms me? Looking at job ads. Doing either one makes me want to curl up into a fetal position. Most of the jobs that I know I'm qualified for are temp or seasonal, so the likelihood of getting hired on at one of these places is pretty low. I seem to be overqualified for restaurant jobs, or underqualified for any job that requires education beyond a high school diploma or a couple of years previous experience in some particular field. As if I don't have enough to worry about, I have my dad riding my ass to find a job. He's under the impression that I don't want to work, and doesn't seem to understand that I think working is preferable to being pestered by him. When I'm working, I really do fear getting let go because I don't want to deal with him. My mom isn't usually much help either. Seriously, if I'm not looking for work or doing some work around the house, my main goals are to (1)entertain myself in order to retain my sanity, and (2)try not to piss off my dad. Unfortunately, doing #1 tends to lead to #2. One thing that my dad has a problem with is that I'm not out "pounding the pavement". In this day and age, that's seriously a waste of time and gas since most places are just going to tell you to apply online. And this isn't just me saying that, I've talked to or read about all kinds of people with the same experience. But does my dad believe me? No. He hasn't had to look for work since the mid to late 1970s, so what does he know? Hell, he was lucky that he was Union, most of the places I've worked at wouldn't have let him get away with some of the shit he pulled off at his old job.
In conclusion, I could really use some help on this school thing, but don't know where to start. I could also use some good therapy, but can't afford it. I've tried Vocational Rehab, but they haven't been as much help as I was hoping. My own place would be nice too, but I can't afford that, either. If I do go to school, I figure having a place of my own would be good, because I can't really study at my mom and dad's place.
*I HATE FORKLIFTS! For some reason, I can't get a hang of them as fast as the average person. The bigger ones I've been on steer from the rear wheels, it's like trying to operate a pallet jack using a steering wheel. They're much easier to drive in reverse! Then there's the forks, I have a lot of trouble trying to tell where they're at, so I'm liable to put the forks in a place where I didn't intend them. And I can't seem to drive them at an adequate speed, I either drive them too fast or too slow. The only forklift type device I've ever used that I liked using was basically a motorized pallet jack, because, you know, it's basically a glorified pallet jack.
Monday, January 10, 2011
The Saga Of The Past 3+ Years, Part 1
Ever since I got laid off in November 2008, my life has been going on a downward spiral. But in order to tell the story of the past two years or so since then, I really have to start a year earlier in November 2007. On the 29th of that month, my sister had a massive seizure. She had Multiple Sclerosis, and the seizure was a complication from it. They eventually got the seizing to stop entirely. By Christmas, she was pretty well alert. They thought she would probably make a recovery of some sort, but in January she had another massive seizure. Eventually, she had another one. And another one. They kept getting more frequent. In late February, it was decided that she would be moved to a skilled nursing home. She was back in the hospital not long after that. After a couple of weeks, they put her back in the nursing home. By the end of June/beginning of July, she was considered terminal. In October, her body finally started showing signs of shutting down. She died on January 1st, 2009.
During that time, I had a cool job that paid pretty decently. In March '08, I decided to move into my sister and brother-in-law's place, mostly to help out with things, and to keep the kitties company, but also because I really wanted to move out of the parents' place in B.F.E.. My sister and brother-in-law lived in Louisville, and their place was kind of like my home away from home anyway. I'd spend entire weekends there so I wouldn't have to drive all the way home and back the next day if I wanted to do something in Louisville. Living there full time was pretty nice.
As I mentioned in the beginning, I got laid off in November 2008. I really needed a long break from work considering that my sister was dying, seasonal depression was starting to kick in, and a combination of other things was starting to drive me nuts, but that's not exactly how I wanted to go about it. After my sister died, I found out that my brother-in-law was hoping to get a smaller place, which pretty much meant I'd have to move out, at least for a while. While I transitioned out of the place, I still stayed over fairly often. On Valentine's Day, my bro-in-law revealed that he was dating somebody, a nurse who worked at the nursing home. Instead of moving out, the gf and her kids moved in at the end of March since her lease was up. Around late May, they got rid of the cats, which gave me less reason to stop by. I tried spending a night there a couple of times, but it just didn't work out, so I essentially lost my "home away from home". They ended up getting married in October. They finally moved into a new place at the end of 2010.
After my severance money ran out in February 2009, I went on unemployment. It was a pretty big hassle, the biggest of which was when I found out in 2010 that I owed Kentucky almost $400 in taxes all because I didn't have the option of having state taxes withheld from my unemployment checks. That was something that I didn't have to worry about when I was unemployed in Texas, since they don't have state taxes. As much as people bitch and moan about Federal taxes, they've been pretty sweet to me, it's Kentucky that tends to rape me.
I've went back to work at the place that laid me off (who'll be known from here on out as Main ex-Employer) a couple of times. Why? Because most of the other places I've worked at sucked out loud. Hell, one place (a company that has been featured onBig Brother Undercover Boss) fired me after a month over something really stupid. There was one place I worked that I liked as much as, if not more than, Main ex-Employer, but they don't keep many people around beyond the peak seasons. I had the opportunity to return for their current peak season, but I was already working Main ex-Employer's peak season. BTW, Main ex-Employer let me go again just before the end of 2010, but I'm eligible for re-hire. :-/ Getting to see the pics from their holiday party was marginally depressing.
To be continued...
During that time, I had a cool job that paid pretty decently. In March '08, I decided to move into my sister and brother-in-law's place, mostly to help out with things, and to keep the kitties company, but also because I really wanted to move out of the parents' place in B.F.E.. My sister and brother-in-law lived in Louisville, and their place was kind of like my home away from home anyway. I'd spend entire weekends there so I wouldn't have to drive all the way home and back the next day if I wanted to do something in Louisville. Living there full time was pretty nice.
As I mentioned in the beginning, I got laid off in November 2008. I really needed a long break from work considering that my sister was dying, seasonal depression was starting to kick in, and a combination of other things was starting to drive me nuts, but that's not exactly how I wanted to go about it. After my sister died, I found out that my brother-in-law was hoping to get a smaller place, which pretty much meant I'd have to move out, at least for a while. While I transitioned out of the place, I still stayed over fairly often. On Valentine's Day, my bro-in-law revealed that he was dating somebody, a nurse who worked at the nursing home. Instead of moving out, the gf and her kids moved in at the end of March since her lease was up. Around late May, they got rid of the cats, which gave me less reason to stop by. I tried spending a night there a couple of times, but it just didn't work out, so I essentially lost my "home away from home". They ended up getting married in October. They finally moved into a new place at the end of 2010.
After my severance money ran out in February 2009, I went on unemployment. It was a pretty big hassle, the biggest of which was when I found out in 2010 that I owed Kentucky almost $400 in taxes all because I didn't have the option of having state taxes withheld from my unemployment checks. That was something that I didn't have to worry about when I was unemployed in Texas, since they don't have state taxes. As much as people bitch and moan about Federal taxes, they've been pretty sweet to me, it's Kentucky that tends to rape me.
I've went back to work at the place that laid me off (who'll be known from here on out as Main ex-Employer) a couple of times. Why? Because most of the other places I've worked at sucked out loud. Hell, one place (a company that has been featured on
To be continued...
Cheap an' Nasty Uber-Sluts (an oldie)
I first posted this as a Note on my Facebook page on November 16, 2009.
I'd probably do a lot more writing if I could just dictate my thoughts out onto a text document from anywhere in the world, and edit them into something cohesive later on. This is especially true while I'm at work. With my current job, I'm able to do my job while thinking about lots of other crap. The worst is when I get a bad song stuck in my head. One of these songs has been “Cheap an' Nasty” by Whitesnake, from their 1989 album “Slip Of The Tongue”. The chorus goes:
“You're cheap an' nasty,
All you want to do is give it up, give it up,
Cheap an' nasty,
Come on and do the dirty with me.”
As you can probably tell just from reading the chorus, it's just one of many Hair Metal songs about some uber-slut who is going to rock your world. You know, some girl who probably had her hair teased out to high Heaven, wore a tight mini-skirt and high heels, and probably had every STD known to man by the time she was 21. And she was probably so loose by the time she had her first kid that childbirth didn't even hurt.
When I think back about how my taste in music has evolved over the years, I try to sort things out so that I'm as honest as possible, trying not to seem “cooler” than I actually was, because somebody who knew me back then would probably try to call me out on it. Believe it or not, there was a time when I wasn't all that into music. Before middle school, I did enjoy listening to music, but didn't go out of my way to learn much about it or even collect it. We, in this case meaning my brother and sister and I, basically just listened to whatever was popular during most of the '80s, whether it was Pop, Butt Rock, or New Wave. My brother started to branch off when they got U2's “The Joshua Tree” in the mail from Columbia House. If I remember correctly, the story goes that my sister wanted to send the tape back because she didn't want it in the first place, but my brother convinced her to keep it. Before then, we had a tendency to just listen to the hits and skip the deeper cuts because we saw them as filler. “The Joshua Tree” was the first album my brother could enjoy all the way through.
I entered middle school in 1988. Sometime that Fall, WLRS 102.3 became “The new Rock 102”. Hair bands were the big thing going on in Rock around that time, so there was a heavy emphasis on them. I dug some of them, but my brother and I, through friends of his at school, were also getting into Classic Rock and Alternative. We really got into reading Rolling Stone, which is where I started learning about a lot of bands and history. And since we lived out in the sticks, we would have people tape hours of MTV for us, which sometimes included episodes of 120 Minutes. By the end of 1989, my taste was probably to the left of most of the kids I went to school with, but I was also listening to Winger. The tapes we got for Christmas in '89 probably tells you where we were heading.
My sister:
Whitesnake - “Slip Of The Tongue”
Great White - “Twice Shy”
Skid Row – (self titled)
Aerosmith - “Pump” (Can't remember if that was technically my brother's or sister's.)
My brother:
Lou Reed - “New York”
The Cult - “Sonic Temple”
The Who - “Who's Better, Who's Best”
Me:
Guns n' Roses - “Gn'R Lies”
De La Soul - “3 Feet High and Rising”
I also wanted to get Public Image Ltd.'s “9” and Red Hot Chili Peppers' “Mother's Milk”, but Santa's search seemed to be limited to Wal-Mart and Target.
Anyway, I was listening to Whitesnake's self titled album a lot in the Fall of '89, so I eventually got into “Slip Of The Tongue”. At that time, the future looked bright, and I thought there was someone for everyone, so I enjoyed listening to songs about uber-sluts who were going to rock my world. But in the Fall of 1990, there were a series of events that caused me to turn cynical, and it seemed to coincide with my brother and I's discovery of The Smiths that year. I'm definitely not blaming The Smiths for my downward spiral into teen angst, I'm just saying that they reflected my reality more than the songs about, as Henry Rollins once put it, “chicks” and “rocking”. I still enjoyed some hair bands, but couldn't listen to LRS a lot because there were so many of them, most of whom were nothing special. I was a QMF man, and was listening to a lot of Classic Rock because it was new to me, and most of the “kids” weren't listening to it yet, so it was still an “alternative” to hair bands. While I did get into my brother's Smiths and Pixies tapes, the tapes I got for Christmas '90 were:
The Black Crowes - “Shake Your Moneymaker”
Eric Clapton - “Journeyman”
Don Henley - “The End Of The Innocence”
Rush - “Presto”
Winger - “Winger II: In The Heart Of The Young”
Before 2008/2009, I considered 8th Grade to be my “Worst Year Ever”. I know lots of people, even some R.E.M. fans, really hate “Shiny Happy People”, but I love it because to me it represents the death of my first “Worst Year Ever”.
In 1991, the whole Madchester dance rock thing was at it's most publicly visible in the U.S., and Funk-Metal/Punk-Funk was also going on. Summer of '91 brought the first Lollapalooza tour and The Clash Of The Titans tour. A friend taped an episode of 120 Minutes that was done at the very first Lollapalooza show, and heard lots of bands for the first time that I had only been reading about before (Nine Inch Nails, Charlatans UK, My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult, Butthole Surfers, etc.). My taste in music was taking a pretty big left turn before Nirvana even became huge. Winger at Cardinal Stadium during the Kentucky State Fair was my first ever concert, but I listened to them less and less as I was buying more music. In fact, I didn't listen to them much at all until Election Night in November 1992. I remember that I couldn't get to sleep around my normal bed time because I was so anxious about the election results, so I decided to listen to some music. I popped in the first Winger tape since it had been a while since I had listened to it, and thought, “God, this is horrible!” I had the same reaction when I heard “Slip Of The Tongue” for the first time after years of not listening to it.
I still bust out some Winger or Whitesnake every once in a while, but it's a weird, icky sort of nostalgia. The best way I've found to describe it is that it's like an ex-con having fond memories of being raped in prison.
I was pretty happy when Grunge killed the hair bands. What Grunge was was a post-Punk/Hardcore take on early '70s Heavy Metal, namely Zeppelin and Sabbath. While they aren't known for “flashy” solos and shit, there was still quite a bit of musicianship involved, just more in the way of using odd
tunings or time signatures than “shredding” solos. A lot of today's Hard Rock bands* sound sort of like Grunge put through a Butt Rock filter. They were people who listened to Mainstream/Active Rock during the '90s instead of Modern Rock, so instead of hearing Grunge alongside bands like The Pixies, Husker Du, Dinosaur Jr, or The Replacements, they heard them alongside Foreigner, Bad Company, Journey, or (insert hair band here). They are to real Grunge what bands like Nelson and Firehouse were to Motley Crue or Hanoi Rocks. They have absolutely nothing that made the original Grunge bands interesting. The drummers play in half time, the guitarists just crank out a few chords, and they use that boring ass quiet verse/loud chorus thing that should have died with Kurt Cobain (R.I.P.). And the worst part? The singer sings about how much he hates his uber-slut girlfriend. Yes, the uber-sluts have returned. It's like these bands are what happened to the hair bands after they tried settling down with that uber-slut that they knocked up so many years ago, and picked up a guitar for the first time after years of not practicing.
(*BTW, what I'm referring to are bands such as Nickelback, Staind, Creed, Puddle Of Mudd, Shinedown, Seether, Three Days Grace, Breaking Benjamin, Theory Of A Deadman, and most of those other newer bands you either hear or used to hear on The Fox.)
If I HAD to choose between listening to bad Hair Metal or bad post-Grunge, I would choose bad Hair Metal since the music is way more interesting, and it lacks most of the faux-negativity of post-Grunge. You wrote the “Sound Of Madness”? Please, get over yourself and listen to some Black Flag.
I'd probably do a lot more writing if I could just dictate my thoughts out onto a text document from anywhere in the world, and edit them into something cohesive later on. This is especially true while I'm at work. With my current job, I'm able to do my job while thinking about lots of other crap. The worst is when I get a bad song stuck in my head. One of these songs has been “Cheap an' Nasty” by Whitesnake, from their 1989 album “Slip Of The Tongue”. The chorus goes:
“You're cheap an' nasty,
All you want to do is give it up, give it up,
Cheap an' nasty,
Come on and do the dirty with me.”
As you can probably tell just from reading the chorus, it's just one of many Hair Metal songs about some uber-slut who is going to rock your world. You know, some girl who probably had her hair teased out to high Heaven, wore a tight mini-skirt and high heels, and probably had every STD known to man by the time she was 21. And she was probably so loose by the time she had her first kid that childbirth didn't even hurt.
When I think back about how my taste in music has evolved over the years, I try to sort things out so that I'm as honest as possible, trying not to seem “cooler” than I actually was, because somebody who knew me back then would probably try to call me out on it. Believe it or not, there was a time when I wasn't all that into music. Before middle school, I did enjoy listening to music, but didn't go out of my way to learn much about it or even collect it. We, in this case meaning my brother and sister and I, basically just listened to whatever was popular during most of the '80s, whether it was Pop, Butt Rock, or New Wave. My brother started to branch off when they got U2's “The Joshua Tree” in the mail from Columbia House. If I remember correctly, the story goes that my sister wanted to send the tape back because she didn't want it in the first place, but my brother convinced her to keep it. Before then, we had a tendency to just listen to the hits and skip the deeper cuts because we saw them as filler. “The Joshua Tree” was the first album my brother could enjoy all the way through.
I entered middle school in 1988. Sometime that Fall, WLRS 102.3 became “The new Rock 102”. Hair bands were the big thing going on in Rock around that time, so there was a heavy emphasis on them. I dug some of them, but my brother and I, through friends of his at school, were also getting into Classic Rock and Alternative. We really got into reading Rolling Stone, which is where I started learning about a lot of bands and history. And since we lived out in the sticks, we would have people tape hours of MTV for us, which sometimes included episodes of 120 Minutes. By the end of 1989, my taste was probably to the left of most of the kids I went to school with, but I was also listening to Winger. The tapes we got for Christmas in '89 probably tells you where we were heading.
My sister:
Whitesnake - “Slip Of The Tongue”
Great White - “Twice Shy”
Skid Row – (self titled)
Aerosmith - “Pump” (Can't remember if that was technically my brother's or sister's.)
My brother:
Lou Reed - “New York”
The Cult - “Sonic Temple”
The Who - “Who's Better, Who's Best”
Me:
Guns n' Roses - “Gn'R Lies”
De La Soul - “3 Feet High and Rising”
I also wanted to get Public Image Ltd.'s “9” and Red Hot Chili Peppers' “Mother's Milk”, but Santa's search seemed to be limited to Wal-Mart and Target.
Anyway, I was listening to Whitesnake's self titled album a lot in the Fall of '89, so I eventually got into “Slip Of The Tongue”. At that time, the future looked bright, and I thought there was someone for everyone, so I enjoyed listening to songs about uber-sluts who were going to rock my world. But in the Fall of 1990, there were a series of events that caused me to turn cynical, and it seemed to coincide with my brother and I's discovery of The Smiths that year. I'm definitely not blaming The Smiths for my downward spiral into teen angst, I'm just saying that they reflected my reality more than the songs about, as Henry Rollins once put it, “chicks” and “rocking”. I still enjoyed some hair bands, but couldn't listen to LRS a lot because there were so many of them, most of whom were nothing special. I was a QMF man, and was listening to a lot of Classic Rock because it was new to me, and most of the “kids” weren't listening to it yet, so it was still an “alternative” to hair bands. While I did get into my brother's Smiths and Pixies tapes, the tapes I got for Christmas '90 were:
The Black Crowes - “Shake Your Moneymaker”
Eric Clapton - “Journeyman”
Don Henley - “The End Of The Innocence”
Rush - “Presto”
Winger - “Winger II: In The Heart Of The Young”
Before 2008/2009, I considered 8th Grade to be my “Worst Year Ever”. I know lots of people, even some R.E.M. fans, really hate “Shiny Happy People”, but I love it because to me it represents the death of my first “Worst Year Ever”.
In 1991, the whole Madchester dance rock thing was at it's most publicly visible in the U.S., and Funk-Metal/Punk-Funk was also going on. Summer of '91 brought the first Lollapalooza tour and The Clash Of The Titans tour. A friend taped an episode of 120 Minutes that was done at the very first Lollapalooza show, and heard lots of bands for the first time that I had only been reading about before (Nine Inch Nails, Charlatans UK, My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult, Butthole Surfers, etc.). My taste in music was taking a pretty big left turn before Nirvana even became huge. Winger at Cardinal Stadium during the Kentucky State Fair was my first ever concert, but I listened to them less and less as I was buying more music. In fact, I didn't listen to them much at all until Election Night in November 1992. I remember that I couldn't get to sleep around my normal bed time because I was so anxious about the election results, so I decided to listen to some music. I popped in the first Winger tape since it had been a while since I had listened to it, and thought, “God, this is horrible!” I had the same reaction when I heard “Slip Of The Tongue” for the first time after years of not listening to it.
I still bust out some Winger or Whitesnake every once in a while, but it's a weird, icky sort of nostalgia. The best way I've found to describe it is that it's like an ex-con having fond memories of being raped in prison.
I was pretty happy when Grunge killed the hair bands. What Grunge was was a post-Punk/Hardcore take on early '70s Heavy Metal, namely Zeppelin and Sabbath. While they aren't known for “flashy” solos and shit, there was still quite a bit of musicianship involved, just more in the way of using odd
tunings or time signatures than “shredding” solos. A lot of today's Hard Rock bands* sound sort of like Grunge put through a Butt Rock filter. They were people who listened to Mainstream/Active Rock during the '90s instead of Modern Rock, so instead of hearing Grunge alongside bands like The Pixies, Husker Du, Dinosaur Jr, or The Replacements, they heard them alongside Foreigner, Bad Company, Journey, or (insert hair band here). They are to real Grunge what bands like Nelson and Firehouse were to Motley Crue or Hanoi Rocks. They have absolutely nothing that made the original Grunge bands interesting. The drummers play in half time, the guitarists just crank out a few chords, and they use that boring ass quiet verse/loud chorus thing that should have died with Kurt Cobain (R.I.P.). And the worst part? The singer sings about how much he hates his uber-slut girlfriend. Yes, the uber-sluts have returned. It's like these bands are what happened to the hair bands after they tried settling down with that uber-slut that they knocked up so many years ago, and picked up a guitar for the first time after years of not practicing.
(*BTW, what I'm referring to are bands such as Nickelback, Staind, Creed, Puddle Of Mudd, Shinedown, Seether, Three Days Grace, Breaking Benjamin, Theory Of A Deadman, and most of those other newer bands you either hear or used to hear on The Fox.)
If I HAD to choose between listening to bad Hair Metal or bad post-Grunge, I would choose bad Hair Metal since the music is way more interesting, and it lacks most of the faux-negativity of post-Grunge. You wrote the “Sound Of Madness”? Please, get over yourself and listen to some Black Flag.
First post
I used to have a blog on Louisville Mojo.com, but deleted it when it turned into a dating site. I kind of missed doing it, and wanted another venue for my writing besides the Notes section of my Facebook page, so I've decided to start a new blog up here. The blog title was inspired by the Nirvana song of the same name, it was going through my head earlier today, namely this part, "If you need anything please don't hesitate to ask someone else first."
What do I like to write about? Usually whatever is going on with my life. I especially figure it would be a good way to sort out some of my thoughts. I also love talking about music, especially the Loudness War, more on that later. I'm probably liking movies more than music these days, but for some reason I just can't get all in-depth when talking about movies like I can when talking about music. And I may end up talking occasionally about politics.
I apologize for the bland look of my page, but I'm kind of no-frills when it comes to this type of thing. I might pretty it up at a later date.
What do I like to write about? Usually whatever is going on with my life. I especially figure it would be a good way to sort out some of my thoughts. I also love talking about music, especially the Loudness War, more on that later. I'm probably liking movies more than music these days, but for some reason I just can't get all in-depth when talking about movies like I can when talking about music. And I may end up talking occasionally about politics.
I apologize for the bland look of my page, but I'm kind of no-frills when it comes to this type of thing. I might pretty it up at a later date.
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