The Bridge

Tonight I was running with the dogs. It has been raining all day long, and it is cool, much like a rainy Midwestern October.  As I was running, I was looking down at my feet, and saw hundreds of little tiny yellow leaves on the pavement. The wet pavement was very shiny and black.  It was early and it was already dark outside.  After an insanely long heat spell this Fall, we finally got cooler weather here in Scottsdale, Arizona. We only experience a few trees in the desert that turn color and die and renew themselves in the Spring. The color change of the leaves doesn't stick around much for anyone here to notice really.  But tonight I noticed and the leaves on the wet pavement really brought me back.

I grew up in Wisconsin, eventually went to college in Illinois, and was surrounded by trees-experiencing the death, birth, and renewal that the four seasons bring.  I remember some years we were lucky, and the Fall leaves with their vivid color would hang around for awhile for us to enjoy before falling off and leaving the trees barren. Other years it seemed like the leaves were there and gone over night, again without anyone even taking notice.

In the Fall of 1993 I was a Freshman in college at the University of Wisconsin-Fox Valley, aka, "the Center" or the local community college. That year the leaves hung around. We had warm days, and cool-rainy nights. I lived with my parents in the next town and had to travel across town, and into the next to get to school.  Everyday I took the Richmond Street Bridge in Appleton, and I would see these amazing colors on the trees, hanging on the slopes going down to the Fox River below. I don't know if there had not been a Fall that beautiful before, or if it was just me starting to awaken to my surroundings. Whatever the case is, it still haunts my memory in a comforting way.

I was listening to Samiam's self titled record a lot at the time. It would loop over and over in my tape deck.  In fact it was a mainstay in my tape deck for several months, even into that winter. There were three songs on the first side that I re-wound and listen to over and over:  "Home Sweet Home," "The Bridge," and "Sympathy." It was "The Bridge" (link to song & lyrics below) however, that really stuck
http://new.music.yahoo.com/samiam/tracks/bridge--793926
in my mind.  It was a weird time for me. I was living at home, while a lot of others went away for college. I wasn't ready to leave my family and the local punk rock scene I was involved in.  Yet I was trying to balance this new sense of independence with still being a kid. The song's meaning varies a bit from this, but I really identified with feeling insecure, and feeling confident about where I was at that point in my life. I guess in a nutshell the song is sort of about that inner child being afraid to stand on his own.

I somehow internalized the literal bridge I crossed every day to go to school with the figurative bridge in my personal life and in the song.  As I crossed the Richmond Street bridge each and every day that fall, listening to Samiam, I saw the leaves changing color. Every day they got more gold, red, brown, and then they started to become more and more sparse. When the leaves were all gone that year, I could actually feel my life changing.  It seems like as fast as the leaves changed, so did my circumstances, friends, independence, etc.  I still listen to this song and get deep. Sometimes it makes me happy and sometimes it makes me cry.  Today it did both. 

http://www.myspace.com/samiam

Answering Machine

"Try and breathe some life into a letter...losin' hope we're never gonna be together....how do you say your ok to an answering machine?"  Or I guess now-a-days voicemail, since who has an answering machine anymore? Interestingly "Answering Machine" came out on the Replacements 1984 "Let It Be" record and Westerberg mumbles something about a cellular phone on a live version posted here ('89 I think), which is not in the lyrics but can be heard by listening intently.  And also who sends actual letters anymore? Emails. Same as Richard Blade, DJ on Sirius radio's 1st Wave said today before he played another one of my favorites, "I laughed about the title of this next song thinking that nobody sends postcards anymore, we just send our pictures via text or email these days...I used to sends postcards all of the time...here is 'Postcards From Paradise' from Flesh for Lulu." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaQAkZ3OoEE

 

Yes times have changed, but my love for The Replacements has never died. I first discovered The Replacements on MTV in early 1989. I was in 8th grade. I was a bit of a late bloomer to discover a band that was at that point just starting their decent into the land of broken up greats.  They just released the "Don't Tell a Soul" record and "I'll Be You" was the MTV single. Loved the song, bought the cassette tape (yes cassette), and saw, in Rolling Stone Magazine, they were playing in Milwaukee at the UW on June 2, 1989. I convinced by parents to take me and 3 other friends (see pic of Leah holding the 'Mats shirt & Jenny, in the back of my parents' '87 black Dodge Caravan) to the show. It was my first "punk" show. I didn't associate the term "punk" with the band until later when I listened to their early stuff. It was also my first "pit" in which we were so innocent and crushed by drunk college guys who knew many more Replacements songs than we did. Our position in front of Paul Westerberg did not last long but my memory of the show and all the memories of times associated with their songs did.

My Replacements fascination faded a bit with the only record I had until, lets call him "T," sat behind me in 10th grade Biology & started talking to me because he noticed I was wearing the very shirt pictured in the above photo.  He said something like "I really love them and have this great bootleg tape I got from Fred & Stan at Record Exchange downtown Appleton." He offered to bring it in the next day, which he did faithfully. That is when I heard THIS http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dr0xyjgHlws  THIS is the live version of "Answering Machine." This is the song that has resonated with me for the past 20 years and has made me cry, and has made me sing at the top of my lungs. I dubbed it from him and I think that live tape must be almost disintegrated during this song for how many times I played it. Alas, the crush I had on "T" never amounted to anything, even though 17 years later when I ran into him at a bar back in Wisconsin, he did leave me to believe was mutual at the time, and we had a good laugh about it. And yes, we talked about The Replacements.  

If someone were to ask me who my favorite band of all time was, I will gladly say The Replacements, aka, the 'Mats. They have consistently been there for me for over 2 decades. This song can be found on the above mentioned Twin Tone Records release "Let It Be." However, it is this live version that just sticks a knife in your gut and makes you ache and get fully immersed in its raw emotion. There are so many great albums by The Replacements and so many songs that suck you into their deepest depths and spit you out only asking for more. So many that I have great memories attached to. Yes Tara, my 2 Buck Chuck buddy, who will be reading this from her now home in Belgium, many of them relate to you good friend and lover of the 'Mats.

Enjoy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Replacements_(band)

http://www.twintone.com/

My Purpose, My Inspiration, My Reverie: Joe Jackson and Roy Lichtenstein

In the early 90s, Trivial Pursuit released an edition called "The Eighties."  Subsequently I could not find this exact edition online to post a picture and since then Hasbro has a "Totally 80s" edition out. However I do still own the edition I am referring to. Anyway, this was the first realization that I was pretty brilliant when it came to useless knowledge about the 80s, particularly when it came to music. Perhaps it was because I was somewhat of a latch-key kid, having been raised on MTV from its toddler days in early 1983 when I first remember seeing Styx "Mr. Roboto" and Toni Basil cheerleading to "Mickey." Yes, I believe my MTV babysitter was part of the reason I have a knack for answering useless 80s trivia, but as I would learn later in my teacher education program that learning and memory are enhanced if attached to a feeling and comforting emotion.  Hmm.  Could this explain why I remember in 1981 my mom and I driving in our late 70s white Ford Grenada, with burgundy interior; on the corner of Spencer & Outagamie Streets; in Appleton, Wisconsin; across from what was then Coney Island & Goodland Field; hearing Joe Jackson's "Is She Really Going Out With Him" on the radio and being haunted.  I was about 6 years old.  I just remember his wonderfully cracked voice crooning "somethin' goin' on 'round here..." playing over and over in my head like a broken record. http://vodpod.com/watch/2160052-joe-jackson-is-she-really-going-out-with-him


I didn't actually know who sang the song until 7 or 8 years later when I got an 80s compilation cassette with this song on it (of course this song was actually released in 1978). I also would hear the song 1 time, to my knowledge, between 1981 and 1988/89. That would be in the summer of 1983. We had just moved into my now Step Father's house in Neenah, Wisconsin. I had a kiddie pool and his old 70s transistor radio tuned to 105.7 WAPL, the Rockin' Apple, and once again heard that magical voice sing "somethin' goin' on 'round here...".  I remembered the Granada, which we still had, and being in the car hearing that song. I tried to catch who sang it, but didn't. Again a mystery. Ironically, I was quite glued into MTV at the time, and remember loving Joe Jackson's "Steppin' Out" video where the maid tried on the rich woman's dress, and thinking it was cool; but not putting it together that he was the mysterious crooner from the Ford Granada. That is until the compilation tape!

Now to Roy Lichtenstein. How does this relate?  Well, I have always been a fan of Andy Warhol and Roy Lictenstein, but was unfamiliar with "The Melody Haunts My Reverie" painting until recently. When I saw it, I said, "this has to be my Facebook profile pic, it describes me to  a T!"  You see, Joe Jackson, was just the first of my attaching a good memory with a song in a given time and place. This painting explains how my brain works. How I remember things. How when I think of certain bands, I think of certain people (which will probably come out as I continue this blog), and how I remember that "True Faith" by New Order came out in 1987 because in the Spring of 1988, I heard it on the radio in Mrs. McClellan's 7th grade math class at Wilson Junior High, and went out and purchased the 45 at K-MART (still have it).  I associate songs with where I was at the time. Sort of a daydream or a reverie, and sort of a history book of my own that I have decided to share with you. So here is to Joe Jackson, Roy Licthenstein, Ford Granadas, and the first of hopefully many posts to come.