Going to California

When I was about to go into high school, my family decided to move to California.  Many things played into this decision, but suffice it to say that just as with every other move we made during my youth, my dad felt he had burned his final bridge in Phoenix and so California was the next step.  He had regaled us all with stories throughout my childhood of his Happy Days and Beach Boys-like time in Southern California during his own high school years, much of which had a good chance of being made up for storytelling effect, but either way this was a move given a bit more grandeur and mystery because of built up expectations.

We broke our lease in Phoenix, we filled a moving truck with all of our worldly possessions in the thick of the August desert heat, and set off for the west coast and the unknown.  I’d had mixed feelings about this, mostly because middle school had been such a difficult time for me socially.  I found out years later that it is a difficult time for most people socially, but as attached as I had become to Phoenix during my five years there, the most time I had spent living anywhere besides the city of my birth, I had some part of me that felt it was time for a change.  So when the “big family discussion” about the move came up, as we all floated in our backyard pool one evening trying to cool off, I did not exactly say no, even if I also did not emphatically say yes.  My mom got a job though, so it was decided.  We would go west.

The drive from Phoenix to San Diego is one I have repeated more times than I can count in my adult life, but this first time it held wonder, mystery, and the unknown.  We had travelled to California as a family by car before, more than once in fact, but just on I-10.  The only thing notable about that drive was the windmills out near Palm Springs.  The drive on I-8 was more desolate in those days, complete with the rotting husks of decades-old abandoned service stations and stores by the side of the highway.  I only remember staring out at the distant mountain vistas that whizzed by, crossing each line of bigger and bigger mountains until finally the biggest one of all loomed in the distance.

The truck struggled along with the other trucks in the right lane to scale this mountainside highway.  We were under 20 miles per hour the whole way.  But once we reached the summit, we must have gone a full half hour before the accelerator was needed again.  We were on a downhill trek all the way to the coast.  San Diego loomed somewhere in the distance past these black mountain peaks.  Once we got to the top, all the local radio stations started to tune in, and my one sticky memory from the final leg of this drive was my normally gruff and intimidating father driving blissfully downhill in our moving truck, singing along with the songs on the radio.  You could tell, in that moment, the lure of California had grabbed hold of him once again.

Our house in California was much smaller than the one in Arizona, even though it was somewhat more expensive to rent.  My room was much smaller too, and felt cramped.  The house was odd, the non-master bathroom had no shower so we all had to share the master shower in the morning.  The back of the house, the dining room and den area, was added on as a custom project by the house’s owners, who now lived out of state.  It had a Jacuzzi in the back, but no pool.  It felt different, it was an adjustment.  But mostly, I remember venturing outside and just standing at the driveway, which sat uphill relative to the other houses on our street.  It was foggy that morning, and the lingering smell of a distant skunk hung in the air.  I stood silently and surveyed my new surroundings, breathing the mix of thick moisture, distant salt air and skunk.  It felt different, it smelled different, and it looked different.  The word weighed on me: California.  A place you heard about on TV, in movies, in music.  I was here now.

I don’t live there anymore.  But my family still does.  Many people I care about are there and have absolutely no plans to leave.  At least one of them never will (see below), but it’s likely that’s true of the living ones too.  I spent far, far more time there than anywhere else, including the city and state of my birth.  Despite my misgivings, despite my apprehension and despite the discomfort I always felt living there, at least to some degree feeling like I did not quite belong there, it was home for a very long time.  In a way it always will be, and it remains an indelible part of the person I am today.  Right as I sit here, the spell of the mysterious California broken by years and years of familiarity and experience, I marvel that I experienced living in such a place, that such a place was able to become part of my personal story and makeup.  And when I “go home” to see my family, it will still be in California, the mysterious land on the coast just over the mountains.

-Joe

Lost Summer

I welcome the end of the Summer of 2015.  I welcome it enthusiastically, even.  My summer never really got started.  I consider it the Lost Summer of 2015, and I welcome moving on from it gratefully.  I haven’t been able to write the words I’m about to below until now for some reason, but I figured this was as good an occasion as any to try.  I only hope I do not offend any affected party with my candidness.

Near the beginning of summer, on June 26th, my 19 year old step brother committed suicide.  Those words are still agony to type.  I still have a lot of trouble saying the word, “suicide.”  It’s getting easier with time, or maybe I’m just developing a sort of emotional callous to the whole thing.  You click into survival mode.  People that are not in a suicidal state can click into such a mode.  More on this later.  It has been hard for me to watch television shows or films having to do with suicide.  I’ve shied away from the subject, and stayed away from shows, movies, or even songs or stand-up comedy that deals with the subject.  Some in my orbit, some touched by this event directly even, do not seem to have this problem.  I guess I do.

A few posts down I pontificated on the suicide of Robin Williams.  It’s a post I almost took down and deleted out of sheer embarrassment.  I knew nothing when I wrote that post, absolutely nothing.  I hit a low point in my life emotionally, a time when I was still struggling to find my place in the world, and during that time I thought I had gained an understanding of suicidality and depression.  I then thought I was smart enough to share it with whoever happened to stumble onto this page and read it.  I was a fool, and I didn’t know shit.  I know now that many depressed people never get to that suicidal place.  I wish I knew the difference earlier.

And I want to correct one specific thing I said below: suicide does not bring peace or comfort, to anyone.  It brings only death, and mourning, and pain.  It’s a lie.  Dying doesn’t release you from anything.  It simply makes you not exist anymore, and it leaves everyone else here to deal with what comes next because you couldn’t.  It’s not a character flaw to ask for help.  It’s not a death sentence to feel lost in life, or to have a medical condition.  Life’s meaning is to be alive.  This is not to condemn, or minimize.  After all, suicidal depression is a disease that eats away at a person's ability to see rationally.  But I was not aware then of many things I know now.  I wish I knew then what I know now, and I wish I had leaned on my stepbrother harder to get help.  I didn’t know how.  No one did.  He wouldn’t accept help.  If you’re feeling lost, get help.  There IS help available.  Go here:   http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org/

When someone you knew takes their own life, particularly a family member, and especially a young family member, it quite literally shakes your whole life to its very core.  They gave up, you think, and how could they when they’re so much younger and so much more able to do anything, go anywhere, and be anyone they want?  When you get to be in your 30s and 40s you find yourself anchored to the life you’ve chosen, and at times you look back and wonder if things had gone differently where you’d be.  You start questioning your own direction in life.  You become preoccupied with death, especially early, tragic death.  You become afraid of your own mortality.  And on some level you still cannot accept that they actually went through with it, even though you never really thought they would, while freely ignoring ample evidence along the way.  Or maybe that’s just me.  Some people look at it as an example they’d rather not emulate.  And then they move on agreeing that it was sad, tragic, and unfortunate.  For me though, I cannot help but re-hash the events over and over in my head, wishing I had done this or that differently.  But it won’t make a difference now.

So the summer of 2015 is lost to me.  My stepbrother is lost to me.  My only hope at this point is to try and pick up the pieces left behind, and try to forget in time that which is etched in my memory: a phone call, everyone in 2 states collapsing onto the floor in shock that the unthinkable did happen despite everyone’s efforts to stop it, the pure and horrible chaos that followed, and the cold, hard reality and finality of it all.

Suicide is not the answer.

Go hug a loved one.

--Joe

The New Kid

I moved a lot as a kid.  People often ask me if that was because one of my parents was in the military and the answer is no, even though my dad did spend a few years in the Navy before I was born.  No, we just moved a lot.  Honestly the reasons are numerous, some are fairly personal, and frankly none of them involve me specifically so I don't care to detail them here.  Let's just say my dad always had his eye out for the next place he could live, the next place we could all start over again, and later again.

I've been the "New Kid" many times in my life.  By the time I hit high school, including the move from elementary to middle and from middle school to high school, I had attended seven different schools, which made high school my eighth.  In fact I never attended the same school twice from Kindergarten all the way until 4th and 5th grades, the first time I stayed in one school for more than one year.  So each year was new, with new kids, new teachers, a new school to learn and many times a slightly new me for people to get to know.

I've noticed some people in my life that have trouble talking to strangers in public, especially in California where I spent the majority of my life since high school.  They feel distance, they feel tension or awkwardness, and in short they have a resistance to getting to know a stranger they may never see again.  I guess it doesn't seem worth the effort to them, the "single serving friend" effect, to borrow a term from the film Fight Club.  But I guess I've looked at the world a bit differently after a childhood full of strangers who were often recycled year after year.  After all, whatever friends I made in first grade were gone by second, and my second grade friends were gone by third and so on.  One might think if I didn't learn to simply make do with the friends I had while I had them, I may have gone through school as some sort of friendless stranger who was there for a while and then left at some point.

I suppose circumstance combines with personality, and I'm a natural extrovert so I guess it's no surprise that I have an ability, and at times a desire, to strike up conversations with random people in public.  Sometimes it comes in handy or allows you to meet interesting folks.  I sat next to director Gregory Nava on a plane once, and we discussed the movie Selena for a little while.  How did I find out he was a film director even though I had no idea what he looked like or who he was when I sat down?  I talked to him.  A quieter person may never have been able to say they discussed a major motion picture and its ending with its director off the cuff like that but I guess I can.  I like memories like that.

So what is "the new kid" like, you may ask?  Well, maybe you lived the same place for most of your life like some people I know.  Maybe you still have friends you made in the first grade.  I don't know what that's like.  But, anyway, being the "new kid" basically means you're a blank slate.  No one knows you.  In theory, you could put on a different "act" at each school, being the jock in one school, a brainy nerd in the next, a crazy spaz in the next and so on.  Perhaps it makes me boring that I was mostly just "me" in every school, but I was always just me, to varying degrees of success.  I remember fitting in better in some places than I did others, too.  The redneck school I attended in Georgia didn't suit me well and I don't remember enjoying my time there much, but the private Baptist school I attended the year after that suited me much better.  I'm not even a Baptist.

I was always the brainy type.  I'm sorry if this sounds like bragging, but it's true.  I got bored in class a lot, even at a young age, because I seemed to absorb and retain information quicker than most.  I would often finish my work in class, or my tests, quicker than most people and would sit idly and draw, or read, or write nonsense (sort of like now, right?) to pass the time.  As I got older I started to be pulled out of "regular" class to "advanced" classes in the center of school with the other brains they cobbled together from the other classes.  This was in the sixth grade, which in Arizona was still grade school for some reason.  So since I was placed in my school's "Mensa" I was labelled as different, like the opposite of a "special education" kid.  I was branded, and normal kids never looked at me the same again.  But then again, I had a ditzy, goofy side that didn't sit well with some of the other brains, even though I could usually go tit for tat with them on raw academics.  Besides, in the sixth grade I was the "new kid" again so people were still sizing me up, still judging my every move so they could form an opinion.  I spent two more years with many of these people in middle school, and of course they were in all my honors classes there too.  Maybe that's why most of my better friends in that school were either normal kids or the types of kids who took remedial math.  Sometimes kids can be so smart they're assholes to be around, you know?  Besides, "smart" isn't just being able to solve algebra equations.  I had a friend who could rebuild engines in sixth grade, something I still can't do to this day.  Maybe he's really the smart one?

"New Kid" means you always have something to prove.  It means you learn to be comfortable being alone, it means you hang by the periphery in big groups, but approach people that are nearby one at a time to see if they'd make good friends.  In high school I knew nobody, and by my third week there a girl I knew from some honors classes walked by and saw me eating by myself, again, sitting on a bench near the quad.  You'll note I was alone, but right in close proximity to the most crowded lunch spot on campus.  Anyway, she forced me to get up and join her, declaring, "I won't look at you eating by yourself anymore."  I ate with her group of theater techie types and band geeks that afternoon, and these folks formed my general nucleus of friends for most of my time in high school.  All of my friends were sophomores to boot, so for most of my time in high school people thought I was a year older than I was.  As a bonus, I skipped a lot of that "Freshman" bullshit too.

That's a funny thing, how some folks are compelled to seek out the certain kind of loner, that's either so pathetic looking or so unjustly alone in that person's mind that they feel compelled to take them into their group.  I've even been pulled into random groups of folks at rock concerts before.  Yeah, sometimes I'm the "new kid" at a concert just by being there by myself.  I've taken whole vacations by myself.  I don't mind it.  Sometimes I like to just explore a city by myself, to see a show by myself, to sit and hear my own thoughts.  It's my "new kid" side, and sometimes it needs to express itself.

So if you know a "new kid," if you see him by himself, don't feel sad.  But if you want to talk or hang out, come on over.  We're always game to meet some new folks.  We know, sometimes the best friends you make are the ones you make by accident.

-Joe

Farewell Robin Williams

It’s still difficult to believe Robin Williams took his own life.  Most people were aware of his struggles with substance abuse, and with depression, but even if it was plausible no one ever truly thought he would take his own life in such a way.  But now we deal with this reality.  I want to expand on my thoughts below but first, I wanted to share a list of Robin Williams’ movies that I have enjoyed over the years:

Death To Smoochy

This is a movie that gets far too little attention in my opinion, and a movie that captured Robin’s madcap comic intensity in a way that truly fit the character while not coming off as a stand-up bit masquerading as a movie character.  Rainbow Randolph was demented, unhinged, somewhat psychotic, but somehow comically talented beneath all of his bluster, so it can be easy to see how Robin Williams could play a part like that so well, and so convincingly.  He owns the screen in every scene he’s in and provides nearly all of the funniest lines of the film.  Simply put, this movie does not happen without Robin Williams, and I do not think someone who is compared to Robin like Jim Carrey pulling off the same role quite so well.  His character begins the film as a star on top that quickly becomes a pariah, spending the rest of the film in a manic, vengeful daze so it is endlessly entertaining to see Robin navigate the psyche of an entitled and disturbed man who was once on top but is now broke, homeless and alone.

Mrs. Doubtfire

What can I say?  Everyone knows this movie.  Most people like this movie.  It can be easy to peg this movie as a 1990s version of Tootsie, a predictable “guy in drag” comic role for a familiar and popular actor.  But there’s an earnestness lurking below the entire film, and a genuine quality to the character that Williams portrays in a very unique way.  Simply put, you feel for him, and you root for him, even when he’s engaging in silly slapstick just to spend extra time with his kids and somehow repair his broken family.  And the end is a heart-lifting closure that is admittedly schmaltzy, but somehow inoffensively so.  For a major “family comedy,” I believe this also happens to be a very good movie that encompasses the ability of Robin Williams to be a talented impressionist, a humorous comedian and a genuine dramatic actor all at the same time.

Hook

Who else could have convincingly played a grown up Peter Pan?  What’s remarkable about this is how well Robin Williams could play a cold hearted cynical businessman at the beginning of the film, a person whose entire soul seemed to be sucked out and replaced with a bottom line, a person who had no time for family and children when there was business to attend to.  As a child I enjoyed this movie, and felt the heart and sentiment thrown into the character of Peter Banning.  Not many actors could have played it quite so well.

Good Morning Vietnam

This was the first movie that dared to marry Robin Williams the stand-up comic with Robin Williams the actor, and the result is a hilarious, but also touching period piece about a country on the brink, and one man’s attempt to bring some bit of joy and humor to an otherwise dire situation.  A highlight of the movie is when Williams’ Adrian Cronauer is stuck in an open Jeep behind a convoy of trucks filled with soldiers bound for the front lines and is goaded into performing his radio schtick for them as a testament to their reliance on his antics for joy amidst the horrors of combat.  A humbled Cronauer soon abandons his pity party and returns to the air to do his part by entertaining the masses.

Dead Poets Society

This movie has become something of a cliché and maybe in some ways it is, but there seems to be something unflinchingly genuine, and pure, with the way Robin carries himself as a teach raging against a stuffy establishment, and encouraging his students to not be bound by the rules of conformity but to allow their souls to reach out and dare to set their own path and seek their own destiny.  Yes, it can be easy to relegate such sentiments to the list of “things that have been said a thousand times” but there may be something to the fact that this movie continues to be cited today, and continues to be noted as a source of inspiration to people.  It dares you to dream, and that can be irresistible.

Jumanji

File this under “silly kids’ movie” all you like but I like it, and I think Robin did a fantastic job as “grown up lost kid” Alan Parrish.  It’s only too bad the Hollywood remake machine has set its sights on this franchise, so it will fall to those of my generation to extoll the virtues of this film.  Just don’t go in expecting art, go in expecting a fun little ride of a movie with a nice, happy ending.  What’s wrong with that?

One Hour Photo

Check Robin Williams’ filmography for the year 2002 on IMDB: Insomnia, Death To Smoochy, and this movie.  Sy Parrish is by far the darkest character Robin Williams ever played, but he begins the film as a quiet, private, solitary and (when in front of customers) genial man who obviously needs as much attention from the outside world as he can get.  It’s obvious to the viewer that his solitary lifestyle is not self-imposed, but he lacks the social skills necessary to draw in friends and outsiders.  He instead lives vicariously through people’s photos, many of which he has duplicated and turned into a mural on one wall of his lonely apartment.  When Sy’s obsession with a young family begins to take over his life however, we see the character’s true darkness emerge and Robin’s acting in portraying a disturbed, but reserved man whose mask of sanity begins to slip is truly something amazing.  Watch this movie, but be prepared to be creeped out by it.

 

I was surprised at how affected I was by the death of Robin Williams.  Sudden suicides are not completely unknown in Hollywood, an example would be Tony Scott jumping off a bridge in the middle of the day.  But something about the death of Robin Williams, a man who wrestled with the demons of depression and addiction, really hit me emotionally.  And I think the reason is because I also know how depression places a filter between a person and the world around them.  I too have seen negative where I should see positive, I too have thoughts in the back of my head during the good times of my life that tell me “enjoy it while you can, it won’t last.”  Yes, I too have had suicidal thoughts, and at the time it had nothing to do with being outwardly “depressed” or miserable.  I know I could never do that, but I think people applying logic to such thoughts, asking why would someone like Robin Williams would do such a thing when he was so successful and beloved, or even people who dismiss such acts as selfish and such people as cowards, they display their ignorance in doing so.  Depression clouds your thinking, and in fact when he took his own life, it is possible he thought he was doing the world a favor.  We can’t know definitively what his last thoughts were, obviously, so it’s foolish to hazard guesses either way, but I do want to demonstrate that depression is not as cut and dry as people try to make it seem.  It’s an insidious disease that eats at everything positive, and magnifies everything negative.  It clouds your perceptions of relationships, of life circumstance, and can affect your job performance.  Basically it can tell you that you’re a worthless fraud, and that the world exists to deny you the chance to be happy.  It tells you that no matter what you do, nothing will ever work out.  So bear this all in mind when you try to ponder why one of America’s great comic treasures, an icon of his time, would be compelled to take himself out of the game.  I think after 63 years of fighting against himself, he simply lost the will to continue the struggle.  That’s just my opinion, and worth only as much as that.  But I feel like I identify with and understand what happened, even if I too regret that it ended up this way for Robin Williams.  Rest in peace, you will be greatly missed.

--Joe


UPDATE: Since I posted this it has been revealed, by Robin Williams' wife, that he was battling the early stages of Parkinson's Disease.  This certainly answers a lot of previously unanswered questions about his suicide and his possible motivations, and really makes this story even sadder.  I at least take comfort that he is at peace now and did truly go out on his own terms, though I'm sure his friend Michael J Fox may have a thing or two to say on the subject.  --Joe

Touching Home Again

The same house on the same street.  The same people come over to visit, greet you warmly, ask how you are.  You tell stories and you catch up.  You share moments.  You remember good times.  You remember bad times, but you always try to remember the good times more.  You promise to stay in touch and try to keep the promise this time.

Comfort is drawn from the old haunts, and sometimes memories are made in new ones.  Sometimes you just break away and savor the moment of savoring a moment.  Sometimes you gaze toward the crashing waves and wonder what it’s all about, wonder how long you have left, wonder how many more times you can come back, gaze lazily and just wonder.

Time is a thief and as the years roll by you marvel at the continual defiance we all display in the face of it.  You pray that everyone’s run is as long as yours of course but you know that’s impossible.  Some are ahead, some are further behind and some just started the race themselves.  They can do nothing but sit and regard the circus, the cacophony around them.  You wonder what they think of it all.  And others are near the end of their time, and they similarly lie back and regard the commotion surrounding them.  They remember years of commotions’ past and marvel at how little things have changed even though everything is different now.  We begin again.

If you can’t truly go home again you can at least reach out and touch home, if only for a fleeting moment.  Even if the time flies by in a busy blur and you’ve but a moment to sit and remember when, but a moment with a loved one to remember, you become that person you were then for that moment.  You may have changed, they may have changed, where you are may have changed, but in that moment you’re who you were then, you remember.

You remember.

Try to remember.

--Joe

Life Itself, A Small Review

I saw the matinee premiere of Life Itself, the Roger Ebert documentary today and it inspired me to write a little review of my own.  Please humour me in this bit of homage to one of the greats:

Life Itself is an unflinching, wonderful, occasionally graphic, but honest and triumphant tribute to one of the all-time great movie critics, Roger Ebert.  The movie itself, filmed over the last few months of Ebert’s life and directed by Steve James of Hoop Dreams fame, hits many of the same notes as Ebert’s memoir of the same name, and indeed felt imbued with the same spirit of a life having been well lived, of memories having been not only accumulated but treasured and revisited, and of streets that were walked down again and again.  Ebert was a man that seemed to know his exact place in the world, and marked the time with regularity through a string of familiar haunts, and familiar people.  It is a trait I feel I identify with.

We see his past through the eyes of those who knew him; among them his on-air sparring partner Gene Siskel’s widow Marlene, his own widow Chaz, Bill Nack, Martin Scorcese, Werner Herzog and the various producers, drinking buddies and other newspapermen Ebert knew throughout his life.  In the interests of time and for purposes of focus, periods of Ebert’s life such as his time in South Africa as a young man, and his various encounters with cinema legends like Robert Altman, Russ Meyer, John Wayne and Lee Marvin, as well as many others are either glossed over or left out entirely, but the essence of this newspaperman, this last link to a bygone era of large two-story printing presses that shook buildings, and the smell of ink and the clacking of typewriters in a real newsroom, is very much intact.  You can almost feel the Daily Illini newsprint on your fingers.

Heartwarming, occasionally unflattering, funny and interesting stories and moments from Roger’s past, including a treasure trove of old footage from throughout Ebert’s television career, is juxtaposed with what was Ebert’s present during filming in 2013.  We are treated to arduous physical therapy sessions, torturous “suctioning” sessions where Ebert’s exposed throat is literally flushed out by a nurse with a long, thin tube, moments of frustration and immobility imposed on Ebert by his failing health; in short a portrait of a man at the end of the road of his life.  In these moments everyone in the room is aware of life’s frailty, acutely presented with its finality, but defiant to press on for however long they can press on.  Ebert answers questions posed by James between therapy sessions.  He worked on his blog and completed reviews of movies right up until his last few weeks.  His relentlessness at a time in which most people would give up on their work is amazing to see up close.

Gene Siskel, for many Americans, helped to define Roger Ebert and his career.  Despite the fact that Ebert had won a Pulitzer Prize, and had written film reviews for a decade before he and Siskel first teamed up on screen, he was not known to many of my own generation until he became one half of “Siskel and Ebert.”  So naturally, Siskel is a dominating character in Life Itself in a way he was not in Ebert’s book.  His death at age 53 is juxtaposed with Ebert’s, and the relationship the two men shared is traced through the years as one that was defined by rancor and competition in the beginning, by debate and one-liners in the middle, by professional success and mutual respect at the end, and by reminiscence and re-analysis as Ebert entered into the twilight of his life.  These scenes are easily the film’s most touching ones.  The movie reminds us that this was a relationship that transcended professional rivalry and one that came to define both men in a way they did not expect.  It was also the reason Ebert was so frank and so candid about his own health as it began to take a turn for the worse.  He respected Siskel’s right to keep his own illness close to his chest, but decided he would do the opposite in true contrarian “At The Movies” fashion and spare us no details.  This very film is an extension of that, it forces us to confront both Ebert’s mortality and our own as well.

In the end, of course, James has to inform us of the last few weeks of filming when Ebert, quickly fading as cancer and pneumonia ravaged his already weakened body, could no longer take and answer questions or visit with him.  We had, throughout the film, been treated to stark and unblinking shots of Ebert’s face hanging slack where his lower jaw used to be, of Ebert struggling to stand and walk, and of Ebert smacking the arm of a wheelchair in frustration when he is without his notepad at a time when he urgently wants to communicate.  In a way the audience is already preparing itself for what they know comes next.  The details of Ebert’s passing are revealed by Chaz.  Hands were held and serene music played.  Ebert had said “I’ve lived a wonderful life, you must let me go” and indeed that is what happened.  But it is not a reason to be sad.  It is a reason to celebrate, a reason to look back with wonder at a life truly well lived, and at a man who will truly be well missed.  I for one was glad to have taken part in the final act, even if only as a member of the audience much like Ebert often was.

--Joe

1994, A Musical History Of Me

Most people who know me would agree: I am obsessed with the popular music of 1994.  In truth, if one were to make a graphical representation of my musical tastes, it would resemble an unevenly drawn target, with 1994 as the bulls-eye in dead center, with 1993 and 1995 being right beside it on both sides as runners-up, and other years radiating out in thinner and thinner circles, but more to the left (or pre-1994) and to the right (after 1994).  It is the benchmark by which other music I hear is judged and evaluated against.  I have affinities for other eras, notably the early roots of rock from the 1950s and 1960s, and the emerging heavy rock of the early 1970s, as well as New Wave of the 1980s, but for me 1994 remains a touchstone, and likely will until the day I cease to be.  The 20^th anniversary of that year compelled me to make this, mostly because I figured if I lived another 20 years I might not remember some of the details of how I came to like or discover certain things, and I suppose 20 years is significant enough to warrant an effort like this one.

The list of albums from that time is a long one indeed, even when one focuses on just the most popular releases from the most famous bands.  Indeed much of the music from then is woven into my memories of that time, even if it is music I didn’t like at the time and still do not like now.  But there are several albums that I feel like I need to share and discuss here, if only to further cement and explain my particular affection for the year 1994 and its music.  Presented here, in no order except for a “top three” that I will save for the end, is my list:

Honorable mention: Dumb and Dumber: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

I know, I know, this is not actually “an album” per se.  But I have to at least mention it here because it is a particularly good soundtrack, which in turn spun more than one song into poplar radio singles.  I cannot think of the year 1994 or this era of music without such songs as “The Bear Song” by Green Jelly, or “New Age Girl” by Deadeye Dick, or even “If You Don’t Love Me (I’ll Kill Myself)” by Pete Droge being a part of my memories.  And those are just the best of the songs on here.  There are about two or three dud songs to skip but as a soundtrack, this might be one of the best ones out there.  Fact: in the 90s the Farrelly Brothers movies always had good soundtracks (see also: Kingpin, There’s Something About Mary).

Live – Throwing Copper

I first heard this album at my friend Bryan’s house.  His older brother played it on the family stereo system on the good speakers and I was hooked instantly to the hard edged riffs and groovy rhythms.  It would be many years before I actually paid enough attention to some of the lyrics to see how infatuated they were with Jesus, but that didn’t matter to twelve-year-old me.  All I knew was that this album rocked, especially considering tracks like “All Over You,” “I Alone,” “Top” and “Selling the Drama.”  Really there are no bad songs on the entire album, from the slow building to a hard rocking “The Dam at Otter Creek” to the slow and slightly dreamy “Horse” which is a hidden track at the end.  This album, needless to say, was in heavy rotation in my stereo system.

Offspring – Smash

This album, silly as it may sound, was extremely formative for me!  This was, you guessed it, my first ever “bad” CD.  I mean it had a picture of a skeleton on the front with the word SMASH emblazoned across in big, red letters.  It looked and sounded like it was written, recorded and packaged in someone’s garage.  One of the songs (“Bad Habit”) talked about “wrecking this fucker’s ride” and “Stupid, dumbshit goddamn motherfuckers” really loudly.  The band itself seemed, at times, to be louder than the recording equipment could handle.  The entire album rocked with a punk-like intensity (appropriate for a nominal punk band from Los Angeles) but showed some rock and grungy tendencies typical of the era also, which may explain why it was hugely successful and went on to sell 11 million copies, making it one of the most successful independent releases of all time.  But for me, songs like “Gotta Get Away,” “Come Out and Play” and especially “Self Esteem” remain as an integral part of me and one of the main strings attaching me still to 1994 and that summer.  “Self Esteem” in particular was a sort of theme song for me all through seventh grade, and the entire album was so unlike anything else I had listened to before, it opened my mind even more to other types of music and served to rock the Genesis/Phil Collins stuff out of my head (although not completely).  There is plenty of substance to be found, even if it is a bit obvious at times.  “Come Out And Play” was a screed against school violence and “Not the One” was a declaration that Gen-X’ers did not create all the problems of the world and served as a sort of “fuck you” to those who would hurl the word “slackers” them.  “Genocide,” and “It’ll Be a Long Time” were written as indictments of the military industrial complex.  “What Happened to You?” was a warning about overindulgence in drugs.  It just goes to show that not all punk music is just about sex and rock’n’roll.

The Cranberries – No Need to Argue

This album really is amazing, and it stretched my musical tastes out a bit also, as it was one of the first albums I did not totally like at first listen, but grew to like more and more over time.  I bought this album for the same reason most people did in 1994: the smash lead single “Zombie” which paints a somber picture of “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland and howls with a certain confrontational heaviness, especially in light of Dolores O’Riordan’s fairly unique vocals.  It’s meant to be a sad song, but it’s both so well written and so catchy that it became a hit and made girls everywhere wish they could sing like Dolores.  But this album is no one trick pony, with other very excellent tracks like “Ridiculous Thoughts,” “Daffodil Lament,” “The Icicle Melts” and the opener “Ode to My Family.”  The craft and skill of the band, and especially the vocals, are evident throughout and there are really no bad songs to be found.  I found I was more into each song the more times I heard it, and after a while I could be found playing this album front to back in my room if I felt like sitting and reading, getting work done or just thinking and contemplating life.  This is definitely a good all-purpose album and a fine addition to anyone’s collection. 

Hole – Live Through This

I’ll be honest and say I never owned this album, and indeed have never owned any Hole album in my life.  But I remember the first time I heard “Violet” crash through my speakers extremely well.  It fit right into what was going on musically at the time, which is probably why allegations that Courtney Love’s famous husband (Kurt Cobain if you need him) ghostwrote some or all of the album dog her to this day.  But it was definitely a statement album, and “Violet” was the perfect, screaming, angst-filled anthem for its time.  “Doll Parts,” while a slower song, is in the same sonic space as “Violet” but is a slower, sadder contemplation also worthy of mention here.

Beck – Mellow Gold

I also have to confess that I never actually owned this album either, mostly because aside from its ultra-famous slacker-anthem single “Loser,” I did not really know any of the songs. Quick history lesson: in 1994 if you knew of, and liked, only ONE song on an album of twelve other songs you had a few choices: 1) buy the album and hope you grew to like the rest of the songs, 2) try to find a CD single of the song you liked and buy that, 3) wait until a second single came out that you also liked (and then repeat the rest of choice #1) or 4) just not buy the album at all and end up borrowing it from a friend (and subsequently adding the one song you liked to a mix tape of other “one hit wonders” whose albums you never bought).  Hey, it was 1994 technology, what can I say?  And my stereo’s tape recorder was very busy in those days.  But I digress.  Anyway, I dare you to play the opening riff of “Loser” for anyone my age and not have them start bobbing their head on cue, whether they like the song or not.  It’s catchy as hell, and it became an anthem for slackers anywhere to sing at the top of their lungs, even if their Spanish was bad enough that they had no idea what a “perdidor” is.

Oasis – Definitely Maybe

Yet another album I never bought.  Actually the single “Live Forever” is the one I remember most, and indeed it was the band’s best-selling single from that album, reaching the top 10 in both the US and UK.  Oasis stood out from the other grunge music on the radio, but in a way that also made it fit in alongside the likes of the Cranberries and the Counting Crows.  The album after this, (What’s The Story) Morning Glory?, stuck with me more, but this first album opened the door, so to speak, and since it also kicked off Oasis’ long career, it bears mention here. 

Madonna – Bedtime Stories

This was Madonna’s “fuck you” album, and served as her response to the condemnation and ridicule she received for her “Sex” book.  Not all of the tracks were confrontational of course, and indeed the first two singles, “Secret” and “Take a Bow” respectively, seemed to point to a low-key album.  But the first track “Survival” charted her navigation through the difficult waters of the “Sex” book controversy and fourth single “Human Nature,” which hooked me instantly with a really hard, intense and groovy beat, was basically her shoving everyone’s moral outrage right back into their face.  Being ignorant of this controversy at the time, the song’s meaning was lost on me at first, but its passion hooked me then, and over time its message has continued to resonate.  How could it not with lines like “Oops, I didn’t know I couldn’t talk about sex” and “Oops, I didn’t know I couldn’t speak my mind”?  She was saying, in short, “fuck you hypocrites AND your moral outrage,” and good for her for doing it.

Hootie and the Blowfish – Cracked Rear View

Yeah, I know.  These guys went from being really successful to being something of a punch line later on, mostly because of how inoffensive and “simple” their songs supposedly were.  But you know, to me this album did not become the 16^th best-selling US album of all time for nothing, and while you might say Hootie doesn’t necessarily rock like some of the other albums of this list, you have to admit a lot of the songs you know from this album (and I bet there are a few) are damn catchy, and do show a certain amount of song craft.  Hootie was “golf rock” as they put it, and it was occasionally dramatic and occasionally mellow, but seemed hooky enough to get in your head and force your feet to tap along to the beat.  Darius Rucker’s second career as a country crooner indicates he has at least SOME level of talent, right?  I think so.  Don’t listen to the movie Ted when it talks about this album!

Blues Traveler – Four

If you talk to most people who came of age in the 90s, I bet a lot of them would remember the first time they heard the irresistibly catchy “Run-Around” and its harmonica-shredding front man’s voice (and harmonica!) come across their radio’s speakers for the first time.  For me I was in the front seat of the Cadillac that would one day become my first car and my first thought was, “where in the hell did this guy learn to play a harmonica like THAT?”  To say that song, and this album, were unlike a lot of music on the radio at the time is an understatement but I’ll be damned if it was not hugely successful anyway.  Follow-up singles “Hook” and the moody “The Mountains Win Again” were also hits, but Run-Around is still, to this day, the band’s defining song, and their greatest accomplishment.  Run-Around is tattooed on the year 1994 and I think for most people my age it always will be.  To me, it’s also still as good today as it was back then and I can’t resist putting it on every now and then.

Nine Inch Nails – The Downward Spiral

Ah, yes, Nine Inch Nails.  By the time this album had come out I was already a fan of songs like “Head Like a Hole” from the previous album Pretty Hate Machine, but nothing could prepare me for the song “Closer,” which to me is mostly what this album represents to me.  I did not own the album at the time but I could not get enough of “Closer” and its chorus which contained the word “fuck” in a very prominent way.  Keep in mind I was in 7^th grade at the time before you judge me too hardly for partially liking the song for such a “naughty” indiscretion.  In the years since I have grown to know this album much better but at the time the song “Closer” served as an eye-opener for me and a segue into different types of music, especially types that challenged the establishment as much as Trent Reznor did at the time, so I find it valuable in that sense as well.

Weezer – Weezer (aka The Blue Album)

Apparently this album would not have existed without Kurt Cobain, or at least that is what Rivers Cuomo has recently been quoted as saying ahead of this album’s upcoming 20^th anniversary.  Obviously songs like “Buddy Holly” and “Say It Ain’t So” are not exactly Nirvana tunes, they do show a certain catchiness and a level of craftsmanship that Cuomo credits Kurt Cobain with inspiring him to.  This album is also inexorably tied with the extremely popular music videos that were made for their best-known singles, including a “Happy Days” parody video for “Buddy Holly” which was extremely popular.  Weezer (and Cuomo) became so famous after this it nearly destroyed them, but the album has survived to become one of the best-regarded albums of the 90s, and one that stands apart from other albums of the day mostly due to its relative uniqueness.  To me this is the Weezer I prefer to remember best.

Bush – Sixteen Stone

I was actually surprised that this album came out in 1994, because to me it was still releasing hit singles in 1995 and into 1996, but upon looking it up I discovered it came out toward the end of 1994 and was slow to generate a lot of attention.  What it lacked in immediacy it made up for in staying power, with songs like “Everything Zen,” “Machinehead” and “Comedown” becoming rock radio staples, and to date the biggest (and most grunge-like) hits of the band’s career.  To me this album is a fairly good and consistent listen, with no really bad tracks to put you off putting it in the stereo (or queuing it up digitally) and listening to it front to back.  Bush started changing their sound quite a bit after this, and to me the follow-up album Razorblade Suitcase is the only one worth listening to.

Toadies – Rubberneck

This is yet another album that I never owned when it was popular, and indeed much of it I recognized only years later when I finally bought the entire album and listened to it all the way through.  The elephant in this room, obviously, is “Possum Kingdom,” which is a splendidly swampy, muddy, dirty track with vaguely vampiric lyrics and an off-time beat, a song that never fails to produce a positive (and vocal) reaction from audience members every time I have played the song live in the various bands I have been in.  Other hits included the similarly grungy “I Come From The Water,” and “Backslider,” both of which are also vaguely off-time and very catchy.  Toadies are a band that has endured, after only one break-up, until today and a lot of that underlying talent is obvious on this album.

Collective Soul - Hints, Allegations & Things Left Unsaid

Oh look, another album I didn’t own when it was out!  But I do remember the song “Shine” from the album very, very well, as do the band’s fans.  This band never really stopped once it started, and still releases music pretty regularly.  At the time this album came out, I always confused the singles from it and its follow-up and it took me re-discovering the music years later to untangle them.  The album itself shares one trait with the debut album by Foo Fighters: the fact that it began as just a demo by the lead singer and became and “album” by a “band” only after “Shine” became a smash and Ed Roland figured he should create an actual band to tour and record more music with.  This album, to me, is trumped by its follow-up but songs like “Goodnight, Good Guy” and “Breathe” are worth listening to anyway.

Stone Temple Pilots – Purple

Stone Temple Pilots brought blends of 60s psychedelia and 70s rock to 90s alternative music, and came out of Southern California (after gaining a following in San Diego) with a different musical flavor that, while it didn’t exactly blend in with the Seattle grunge stuff on the radio, it certainly stood beside it as something equally meaningful and pretty damned talented also.  Purple was STP’s second album and produced hits such as “Vasoline,” “Interstate Love Song” and “Big Empty” but album tracks such as “Still Remains” and “Unglued” are very good listens also.  The whole album is another one that’s great to just put on and listen to all the way through, but this is something I only did years later when I actually owned the album.

Alice in Chains – Jar of Flies

This is the first and only EP on this list, but then this was no simple EP, and indeed it set a record by being the first EP in music history to debut at number one on the Billboard 200 chart, and is the best-selling of Alice in Chains’ other albums and EPs.  I’ll be honest: I never owned this when it came out, but its tracks were on the radio so much at the time I didn’t need to.  And as a single body of work, it makes a melancholy listen with very dark, brooding songs set to a very slow, plodding tempo.  But one cannot deny the craftsmanship and raw talent of the songs themselves, and with the exception of the last track which is very unlike the other six, there isn’t a bad song on this album.  “Rotten Apple,” “Nutshell,” and “I Stay Away” are all classics, but “No Excuses” is a track that belongs in the 1990s Grunge Music Hall of Fame for how good it is.  The song itself is a prophetic track about the band’s ups-and-downs, past, present and future, due to Layne Staley’s battles with heroin, and to this day it remains hauntingly prophetic but undeniably good and well-written.  It also remains one of the few songs from this era that I cannot even attempt to play well on the drums.

R.E.M. – Monster

Monster was the album that nearly killed R.E.M., both during its recording (the band nearly broke up recording the album) and its subsequent nearly two-year tour, during which three members of the band had serious health problems needing immediate surgery (Bill Berry had a brain aneurysm, Michael Stipe had a hernia and Mike Mills had an intestinal adhesion removed).  It was also unlike most other R.E.M. albums in that it was more titled towards rock and grunge, and contained textured, distorted guitars instead of acoustic guitars and mandolins like previous albums.  It also was written “in character,” as Michael Stipe adopted a “Which one’s Pink?” type of detachment from his own fame and questioned the nature of fandom and band worship.  The songs themselves are groovy, occasionally trippy sounding, and very moody.  The first track is the most accessible, the enjoyable “What’s The Frequency, Kenneth?” and other gems include “Bang and Blame,” “Circus Envy” and the slower, “Strange Currencies.”  I like this album well enough as a body of work attached to the time in which it was released, but sonically it stands apart from other R.E.M. albums in a way that ties it more to other things released in or near 1994 more so than other R.E.M. albums.  For me this album sets the stage for its follow-up, an excellent release which was comprised of Monster tracks that never made it onto Monster, and other things they wrote during Monster’s long and arduous tour.  But Monster still deserves to be considered a classic, even if it is a classic tied inexorably to its era.

And now, our Top Three:

Green Day – Dookie

OK, fine, yes, laugh at the fact that an album named after shit, made by a band named after marijuana, made my Top 3.  But it cannot be denied that this is an album that was hugely popular upon its release, and is still popular today.  It produced multiple hit singles and sold 10 million units in the US alone.  But more than that, it put Green Day itself on the map, which to this point was a small band no one had ever heard of up in Berkeley.  A major label record contract cost them their longtime friends up in Berkeley but introduced them to America, and more importantly they managed to capture the slacker generation in a way that was punk, was rock, and also managed to stand beside the angst of grunge rock and be counted as an equal.  Songs about masturbation, and break-ups, and sexual experimentation, and most importantly getting high, are not exactly mature subjects, but then maybe there was a certain maturity about broaching such subjects in popular music anyway.  It certainly spoke to people around my age and a bit older, and gave voice to the general feeling of disaffection one can feel growing up in suburbia.  The sameness of your surroundings becomes a sort of calling card, and an identity.  Purpose is always something that is sought in such surroundings, and it can be said that the music itself gave voice to these feelings of angst and the desire to indulge in drugs or sex to escape them.  OK, it might not be high-brow art to most people.  But to me this music and the time of its release are inseparable, and listening to this album today still makes me recall buying it off of my childhood friend Bryan, taking it home and listening to it for the first time like it all happened yesterday.  For better or for worse, the album named after shit will always be a special part of my past.

Nirvana – Unplugged In New York

I love this album.  I LOVE this album.  I’m not sure you understand when I say I honestly love every single nanosecond of this album, and this remains one of my all-time favorite albums of not just this era, but any era of music.  Over the years I have proclaimed its greatness, defended it to skeptical people, and engaged in arguments with people who doubt whether it should be called “an album” since it’s really a compilation and a live concert recording, much of which does not even include songs by Nirvana, but rather such luminaries as the Meat Puppets, the Vaselines, David Bowie, and Lead Belly.  But I care not for such doubts and petty criticisms because the simple fact is: this album is amazing, was amazing, and will always be amazing.  Part of its fame comes from the fact that it was released after, and for many reasons because of the recent death of Kurt Cobain, a scant six months after the show was recorded and only four months after it first aired on MTV.  The special aired on a virtual loop on MTV after Cobain’s suicide, and it was felt that demand was sufficient for the material to find release on an album, first as part of a box set that was scrapped due to emotional pain preventing Dave Grohl and Krist Novaselic from picking appropriate material, and then finally as a standalone album, released almost one year after the show originally took place. 

But its troubled history aside, this show was unique in the same way Nirvana itself was unique.  Instead of playing high-water hits and treating the show like any old concert, Cobain insisted on a laid back feel with everyone sitting, surrounded in black candles and lilies, and playing a set filled with more esoteric tracks that more resembled music Cobain himself liked rather than what MTV felt the audience wanted to hear.  Hell, it was not even truly “Unplugged” since Cobain’s guitar was plugged into an amp and effect pedals.  But the unusual nature of the show worked, despite Cobain suffering from heroin withdrawal symptoms the whole time and rehearsals not going particularly well beforehand.  The whole concert was taped in one take, making the show even more distinct from others like it.  The Meat Puppets set of three songs is a particular high point that I must mention, with the song “Lake of Fire” being a particular favorite of mine to this day.  But all the songs work, in their own way, and fit together in a somewhat unexplainable way, from “About A Girl” at the beginning and all the way to “Where Did You Sleep Last Night” at the end.  It is rightly regarded as a musical high point for the band itself, and a statement by Cobain himself affirming his intrinsic talent and genuine love for performing.  During the show you see all the trouble surrounding it, whether it be drug issues, pissed off MTV producers or bad rehearsals, melt away amidst a sonic backdrop that moves you, and that transports you somewhere else entirely.  It all fades away, leaving only the music.  As it should be.

Soundgarden – Superunknown

It was tough picking any album over Unplugged In New York, but if any album was up to the task, it’s this one.  I actually have to admit that, while shorter, I actually think Unplugged In New York has is a more solid album all the way through, but Superunknown was an amazing achievement, and is still regarded today as one of the most essential and important albums of the “grunge” era, possibly second only to such albums as Nevermind or Ten, or some would say, Badmotorfinger.  To me though, Badmotorfinger was where Soundgarden broke through, but Superunknown was when they truly arrived, as a band and as a musical force to be reckoned with.  The history of the band until a few years ago was that this album was their high water mark, unequaled by Down On The Upside, the much-awaited follow-up two years later, after which the band broke up for over a decade amid creative tensions.  Because of this, for many years, this album was my touchstone, my historical relic and the proof, in disc form, that this band did indeed once rule the musical world, if only for a little while.  Much in the “grunge era” was fleeting, but many different bands had their moment.  This album was Soundgarden’s moment at the very top of the heap, basically.

And what can I say about the tracks themselves?  Mostly they speak for themselves, whether we’re talking about “Let Me Drown” or “My Wave” which both open up the album in thundering fashion, or the darker and more brooding angst-filled anthems like “Fell On Black Days” or “The Day I Tried To Live” which both capture the general disaffected anger at the establishment prevalent in much of grunge’s musical catalog.  Songs like “4^th of July” and “Mailman” and “Limo Wreck” all take the listener on moody musical journeys, and songs like “Kickstand” and “Like Suicide” rock like any band rooted in 70s rock and punk influences should.  But the all-time classics here can be summed up thusly: “Spoonman” and “Black Hole Sun.”  “Spoonman,” besides being the only song I know with a goddamn spoon solo in the middle of it, is just an amazing rock song that is irresistible and impossible to not rock out to anytime you hear it.  But for me the biggest impression is made by “Black Hole Sun,” a creepy sonic journey that is one of the few songs that I still associate, at least somewhat, with its famous and oft repeated music video which included comically distorted, amused-looking and vacantly staring people whose fake smiles twisted into an unrecognizable rictus as the camera zoomed in.  It was enough to give a younger viewer nightmares, but the twisted visuals seemed to actually fit the song.  The biggest memory I have though is something I’ll admit is a bit silly: a kid I knew in 7^th grade once asked me to stop talking to him, Seinfeld episode style (the one where Elaine’s boyfriend cannot speak to anyone or be distracted every time “Desperado” plays on the radio), as he closed his eyes and got lost in the song, mouthing the words as he walked away.  It made an impression, I must say, stupid as that may sound.  Over the years my love for the song, and this album, have only grown, matured, and deepened.  And I finally did hear this music played live during a reunion show in 2011 at The Forum in Los Angeles.  It was just as amazing live.  What better proof did I need to keep liking it?

So that’s me.  Anyone seeking to understand where my music history, and where the very bedrock foundation of what I like came from, that’s a large part of it right there.  To close this rumination out I want to try a bit of lyrical craftsmanship of my own, and I hope you’ll pardon my indulgence after so many words.  If you made it this far, kudos to you, and enjoy.


Sonic backdrop of a youth so long ago
Memories to the tune of a dropped D
Each time hearing it again takes me back
Somewhere wandering a desert in my mind


Moments recalled by strumming of notes
The scene is crafted by grooves and chords
Jangling, they speak of angst and disaffection
The one on the outside is now in


The slackers and the X’ers, ones who don’t belong
Voices screaming and now are finally heard
I join their crusade each night from my room
I fight a sonic war with discs and tapes


All that begins is also destined to end
The message is wrapped in corporate paper
Soon what’s in is out once again
Rock and grunge soon become Third Eye Blind


Those days are gone never to return again
Many of the windows long boarded and doors locked
The Wherehouse now an empty pad, Tower an empty lot
But the music is one thing I’ve still got


--Joe