In the void of time between blog posts that I have, things happen. I mean, I don’t live underneath a rock. The world never stopped because one person wasn’t around to take part. So, when I say things have happened between this blog post and my last one (wherever it was, be it on LiveJournal or MySpace or Gamingforce) you can probably imagine that there are a lot of things that could happen. This doesn’t make for very exciting reading, sadly. Personally, I end up reading virtually every blog post my girlfriend, Danielle (or Sassafrass, as she’s known to our online friends) because she makes things interesting with pictures and BIG TEXT and humorous subjects. I once had a dream to become, among other things, a journalist. Suffice it to say, while I’m good at English, this does not automatically qualify me for English-related or writing-related occupations.
While I’ve previously had blogs that I could wish I had better maintained in the past, I suppose it’s now or never for me to resolve this quandary of whether I’m a good enough writer for anything writing-related. Otherwise, I’ll be stuck doing pharmacy work or other retail work. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I had delusions of grandeur, of doing something important that affects those around me in a positive way. Not like curing cancer or anything significant, but just being able to live with and know that people appreciate the things I’ve said or done.
I’m sure this sounds kind of sad, if not a little endearing, but I go with the expectation that I will someday find something that both makes me happy and allows me to impress upon the world at large that I have something important to say. I’m egotistical. Moving on.
Danielle is a force, sure enough. If her words don’t scream FORCE, then her actions do. Sometimes you read the things she’s written and it’s as if she’s raped your mind with words, forcing you to accept and believe what she’s just written to the point where you aren’t sure if you were there or not. Pictures have a lot to do with this, too, and I should interject here that while she’s doing, I’m recording, for the most part, photographically our little adventures together. I don’t have a camera myself, but I seem to have an eye for it. And, thankfully, I’ve stopped drinking Pepsi regularly so that caffeine shakiness I once had is now just a slight tremble. I hope to have my own camera sometime in the not-too-distant future, but for now I’ll have to suffer.
So, the title of my blog may sound a little obvious but you’ll have to understand who I am. But I’m not going to give it all to you at once, primarily because there isn’t enough time in the day and I have about fifty minutes before I have to get ready for work, and secondarily because that would make things way too easy for you, dear reader (unless you’re someone who knows me, in which case you don’t have much further to go).
My father has always been a big Pink Floyd fan, but I never really adopted them into my heart. Time, Money, Another Brick in the Wall (Part II). We all know these songs, whether we’re young or old, because the radio plays them all pretty much daily and our parents generally couldn’t avoid buying their albums because the psychadelia of their music (particularly, of course, from Dark Side of the Moon) fit the time so well that it seems the CD was probably handed out to high-schoolers as they came through the front doors in 1973. You had to have that CD, and know the songs by heart, just like teenagers in the fifties needed to know Elvis by heart, or sixties teenagers reciting The Beatles like they were the Apostles. Of course, there were “bigger” bands out in the seventies (The Rolling Stones, for one), but if your impression of the 1970s is one of drug use and misidentification then Pink Floyd’s seventh album are a perfect launching pad for reminiscing about that decade.
So when Danielle professed herself as a big Pink Floyd fan, like most situations where someone I know likes a particular sort of music, I immediately became a fan. I didn’t own a single Pink Floyd album six months ago; I now own four (DSotM, The Wall, Wish You Were Here, and Echoes, which encompasses the rest of the albums quite nicely). Of course, for her, Pink Floyd was her big thing when she was in high school. (I’ll note here that she’s 25. I’m 22. I’ll get to the big subject, which involves this fact, shortly.) So while she was losing interest in Floyd, I had nowhere to go but up.
Music, for me, has been a part of my life for maybe 13 years. Until high school, the majority of the music I had listened to was Michael Jackson, the Lion King soundtrack, and Raffi (no Bananaphone, sadly). Then I came of age where I had to start knowing what music was and I latched onto what was popular at the time (thanks MTV). In no particular order, but based mostly on memory:
- Alanis Morissette - Jagged Little Pill
- the Batman Forever soundtrack
- Boyz II Men – II
- Mariah Carey
- Korn
- Limp Bizkit
- (rap)
- Linkin Park
This leads into when I got out of high school and started attaching myself to whoever my Circuit City buddies were listening to, particularly Disturbed (Believe still sounds awesome to me) and Evanescence (which fell out of favor with their newer album). But then, I regressed, and I landed myself Sounds of Summer: The Very Best of the Beach Boys and that was it. That pretty much set me on the path to listening virtually exclusively to anything classic rock. Then Danielle made it worse.
Now, today, my MP3 collection is heavily fortified by music before my birth in 1984: Floyd, The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Led Zeppelin, The Who, The Doors. (Still only popular music, but that’s what was good then.) It doesn’t show my age, whatsoever. You’d think I was a thirtysomething who loved rock and roll. Which brings me to the story of the title of this blog.
Danielle, her friend Sarah and I went bowling someplace near Auburn, MA a couple of weeks ago. It was Cosmic Bowling, which defaults to being worth twice as much as a normal game of bowling, but we paid like idiots and all had shitty bowling games. But the experience was fun anyway because we ruined everyone else’s experience. See, in case you hadn’t noticed, the majority of music that comes out these days SUCKS. It’s either some bastardized form of alternative rock, pop-dance music, or the shittiest hip-hop/rap ever produced. But, luckily, this particular bowling alley had one of those digital jukeboxes (which look absolutely shitty) and this particular jukebox had more music I had seen in a digital jukebox.
So, with a couple of bucks in hand and the mood to have a good laugh, I interrupted the defaulted Pink, put on Pink Floyd (the Meddle version of Echoes, at 23 minutes and 31 seconds, and the Echoes version of Shine on You Crazy Diamond, which clocks in at 17 minutes and 32 seconds) and hoped no one would notice the subtle artist change laughed my ass off with my two Floyd-loving compatriots.
(At this point, I openly hope you know the two songs I’m referring to, and can maybe guess what kind of music today’s teenagers listen to, and be able to laugh along with us.)
Nothing could’ve made the next 41 minutes any better. Bowling the night away between saxophone and synthesized screaming and, of course, good old seventies rock and roll that no one had heard of, joyous that, at least for those 41 minutes, we would be able to listen to music that we didn’t hate and give those kids an education. (Danielle and Sarah paid for other songs, but the jukebox allows people to pay extra to intercede into the playlist, making their songs next.)
The point? I’m only five years removed from high school, but you can already see the generation gap materializing like the away party returning to the Enterprise. I listen to old music, I play old video games (only Genesis and Super Nintendo, not THAT old…). Pretty soon I’ll be begging for Social Security. Worse yet, I’m out to make young whippersnappers suffer to old crone music while lasers and fog and black lights round out the experience fairly perfectly.
And that’s all I really have the time to talk about today. I’ll do as usual and promise to maintain this blog, but, like I’ve said, I’ve gone through enough blogs that I didn’t maintain so don’t hold your breath. But I’ve got a good feeling about this one.
(edited for paragraphs)
- Money
- Get away
- Get a good job with more pay and you’re OK
(11s;11s)
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