I had a unique experience growing up, I was lucky. I was born to two goths (well, technically one goth & one punk rocker) & they raised me on a variety of artists I otherwise may have never found if not for them. I couldn't be who I am today if it weren't for those early glimpses of sharp-faced, skinny pale goths. I was raised primarily on whatever you'd categorise as "New Wave," but the older I get the more I seem to drift away from my roots.
As a child I was obsessed with the Sex Pistols, I had a cute little long sleeve shirt with red fishnet sleeves I used to wear religiously & admired the concept of whatever "anarchy" was. I thrived off of the perceived obscurity of bands like Joy Division, The Cure, & Bauhaus & thought very seldom of the how's or the why's of these artists. Furthermore, I never - not once - ever thought about American bands. I was a full fledged anglophile as a child. I thought every person in England must look like Peter Murphy or Daniel Ash, I wanted to be from London, owned a large collection of Union Jack paraphernalia, y'know, the whole thing.
There's a certain arrogance to being a child, especially a child under the impression that you're rebelling. I knew what I was talking about because I had Alien Sex Fiend on my MP3 player & you didn't. It was a coagulation of a lot of things that simmered me down from my childhood pedestal of superiority; my discovering of no-wave & subsequently the New York punk scene, my thirteen-year-old obsession with shoegaze, my realisation that the Velvet Underground were perhaps the only band that mattered, my love for Factory Records, whatever. But one of the best things that's ever happened to me was the revelation that my country gave the world a much more substantial amount of amazing music than I'd previously thought. I can't remember exactly how it happened. Maybe it was that first crashing of "All Tomorrow's Parties" or the thunderous roar of Patti Smith's "Gloria," the sudden impact of "Blank Generation," or the spit-fire full frontal assault on the Sex Pistols Johnny Thunders' gives on "London Boys." I don't know, it could be anything. But I do know one thing: When I heard The Replacements for the first time my entire world changed.
I was sitting in the passengers seat of my father's faulty compact car, one headphone in as Spotify worked it's tedious auto-play magic & he was telling me about something that was probably important, but would soon matter none. To my right I heard a striking guitar bit, rising & falling out of step with itself, hesitating to deliver it's weight. My mind began to slip more into the music. The singers voice is exasperated, as though he was telling a joke that was little too close for comfort. Like feigned confidence beginning to break, fall apart at the punchline.
Then it hit, that one fucking lyric. "Jesus rides beside me, he never buys any smokes." It shot the breath right out my lungs. I told my father to give me some time, that something was happening, and after rewinding the track I waited in near anxiety. I heard it again. 'Jesus rides besides me, he never buys any smokes.' I thought more with an all-encompassing heart than mind, as the best decisions are made; "This is the most important thing that I will ever hear."
The fast paced desperation, the anxiety of confession. I can't hardly wait. I can't wait. Hardly wait. It would be months till I discovered the original hidden gem in the bonus sections of 'Tim,' which revealed the thinly veiled desires hinted in the 'Pleased to Meet Me' version. All of the secret horrors which filled the track with blood rise to the surface of the pool in the pulled back, vicious original cut. The experience was shocking.
When I informed my dad of what was so important he said: "Oh, The Replacements ? Yeah, they're cool. I never got into them, though."
Sometimes I get this overwhelming feeling of dread, a hunch that something horrible is about to happen. I begin to feel like a shed standing on its last leg, watching a rabid tornado approach on the horizon. I was on the verge of collapse, but I knew that the Replacements were something I wouldn't be ready for until the drop. So I sat & I waited for the moment the winds hit, & then one day, it hit. I was thrown into a whirl of eviction scares, familial tension, loneliness, crippling uncertainty, the feeling that I was doing everything I possibly could wrong, & again, god damn, that lonely. I remember thinking: "God, what do other eighteen-year-old's do ? What is everyone else I used to know doing ? Should I be getting a job ? Starting a career ? Going to university ? What the hell should I be doing ?" I'd always been a fairly easy child, deliberately convenient for the sake of my family & friends. I thought to myself: 'I've always tried my best to be good. What if the time to disappoint is now ?'
I needed support, I needed someone to tell me that all of my mistakes were going to be relieved in the future, that I'd gone through this and I'd come out the other end alive. I needed someone to be a friend to me, someone I could run to as soon as disaster struck & would reliably be there for me.
Sitting down with The Replacements for the first time, I found that. A lifetime of desiring a sense of community, of love, of care & hope & misery & pride all wrapped in one had finally come through. Holding the first Mats CD I ever owned, Sorry Ma, I looked at the photos of them dressing the front cover & thought: "Hey, my friends look pretty great here." I'd found my lifelong companions, my own little tribe who I knew looked out for me regardless.
Our wedding was miraculous success, none of us remembered it come morning time but we had all the battle scars to prove it happened. And looking around me in the part debris, I realised there were many curious faces. It seems like the boys came with friends.
To me it seemed like the Replacements existed neither here, nor there, but now. Eternally existing in my life but never seeming all too known, unconventional legends. Yet when I stopped to truly consider the composition & overall sound of the band, I realised they were very much a consequence of some pre-existing condition. But what condition ?
Our marriage took me down the rabbit hole of American alternative music where I discovered that bands like Husker Du, R.E.M, Sonic Youth, & Violent Femmes had answers to questions I had always had, but never knew who to ask. It was a beautiful time in my recent life, one that electrocuted hope into me.
Through all this, one thing that became glaringly apparent to me was the importance of .something called college radio. A concept I was certainly aware of, but definitely didn't care about.
With my formative years lying in the 2010's, college radio, to me, was a place where I could heard a million bands who all sound alike & are all making the same synth-oriented Mac Demarco or Crystal Castles rip off songs. Frankly, I didn't ever much enjoy college radio but I realised that this was a product of my time. It hadn't always been the case, it seemed, that the alternative & the mainstream were indistinguishable from one another. Today when I look around at youth culture as it stands, I can't see much of a difference between those who are 'different' & those who are 'normal.' Alternative culture has begun to integrate rapidly into it's counterpart, rendering the two terms basically synonymous. I could brush this off as a symptom of the modern age, say something about how "the youth of today doesn't know what real music is" or something, but I would be lying to you if I told you that this hadn't been developing for almost thirty years now. When New Wave joined Michael Jackson on the pop charts in the 80s, it was a clear sign that something was happening. Maybe we didn't think about it until Nirvanna became #1 in the 90's, but it's a change that's been brewing for quite some time.
What startled me about the idea of college radio was the image of this separation. I began to sit & daydream about fiddling with receivers to catch the new Pixies single, about lying in my bedroom as the world completely fell away in favour of this new universe inside of a speaker, controlled by somebody who thinks of their audience more as a friend, listening to music made by people who probably needed more friends. In my daydreams, college radio was like a social media platform for those who were particularly displaced. In my daydreams, just like I do now (only not half as privately), I make friends in the playgrounds of the world left of the dial. & maybe I'm a little jaded despite my efforts to tear down all my pretensions, but I am quite painfully nostalgic for the days of bedroom radio time spend waiting for something to blow your mind.
I never lived this life, I never experienced this, but like anyone who's a little confused & alone I often look over my shoulder at what once was & get a little sad. These bands that were exposed to me through Spotify's knowing what to play me based off statistics & analytics, could have instead been exposed to me by someone who was taking the time out of their day to keep their ear to the ground.
I may be purely upset that I hadn't been exposed to this music when I was untouched.
The internet age moves at a pace a little ahead of itself. I grew up learning about mental illness, social issues, gender politics, the whole lot from social media where I was fed many different versions of what I should be. I forced myself into these tiny niches of identity without much help, just peer pressure, & sure this has always happened. People have always tried to be something else, people have always tried to do what they're told or be what makes the accepted. But the long & winding road to realising you don't mesh even with the outcasts is one I would have much rather made with solely the aid of bands like the Replacements or Sonic Youth.
I am perhaps purely longing for a time where I only felt before I knew, & I only knew because of chance. I must admit to a desire to know nothing. I must admit that I often dream that I was oblivious. I think the appeal of college radio stations in the 1980's is that whatever lies there, lied there for those who needed it. I would have much rather heard "Androgynous" because I bought the record after hearing a single left of dial, & realised then the future & the truth of myself & accepted me instead of feeling ostracized by toxic influences pointing me to models of expression I must adhere by. I wish that I didn't know anything before it was my time to know it.
When I think of the glory days of college radio, I think of the beauty of discovery & the amazing rush of hope you experience when something truly meant for you falls into your lap. The journey of fate, of arming yourself with a shield designed specifically for you, & the comradery of other unknowns.
I love you.
As a child I was obsessed with the Sex Pistols, I had a cute little long sleeve shirt with red fishnet sleeves I used to wear religiously & admired the concept of whatever "anarchy" was. I thrived off of the perceived obscurity of bands like Joy Division, The Cure, & Bauhaus & thought very seldom of the how's or the why's of these artists. Furthermore, I never - not once - ever thought about American bands. I was a full fledged anglophile as a child. I thought every person in England must look like Peter Murphy or Daniel Ash, I wanted to be from London, owned a large collection of Union Jack paraphernalia, y'know, the whole thing.
There's a certain arrogance to being a child, especially a child under the impression that you're rebelling. I knew what I was talking about because I had Alien Sex Fiend on my MP3 player & you didn't. It was a coagulation of a lot of things that simmered me down from my childhood pedestal of superiority; my discovering of no-wave & subsequently the New York punk scene, my thirteen-year-old obsession with shoegaze, my realisation that the Velvet Underground were perhaps the only band that mattered, my love for Factory Records, whatever. But one of the best things that's ever happened to me was the revelation that my country gave the world a much more substantial amount of amazing music than I'd previously thought. I can't remember exactly how it happened. Maybe it was that first crashing of "All Tomorrow's Parties" or the thunderous roar of Patti Smith's "Gloria," the sudden impact of "Blank Generation," or the spit-fire full frontal assault on the Sex Pistols Johnny Thunders' gives on "London Boys." I don't know, it could be anything. But I do know one thing: When I heard The Replacements for the first time my entire world changed.
I was sitting in the passengers seat of my father's faulty compact car, one headphone in as Spotify worked it's tedious auto-play magic & he was telling me about something that was probably important, but would soon matter none. To my right I heard a striking guitar bit, rising & falling out of step with itself, hesitating to deliver it's weight. My mind began to slip more into the music. The singers voice is exasperated, as though he was telling a joke that was little too close for comfort. Like feigned confidence beginning to break, fall apart at the punchline.
Then it hit, that one fucking lyric. "Jesus rides beside me, he never buys any smokes." It shot the breath right out my lungs. I told my father to give me some time, that something was happening, and after rewinding the track I waited in near anxiety. I heard it again. 'Jesus rides besides me, he never buys any smokes.' I thought more with an all-encompassing heart than mind, as the best decisions are made; "This is the most important thing that I will ever hear."
The fast paced desperation, the anxiety of confession. I can't hardly wait. I can't wait. Hardly wait. It would be months till I discovered the original hidden gem in the bonus sections of 'Tim,' which revealed the thinly veiled desires hinted in the 'Pleased to Meet Me' version. All of the secret horrors which filled the track with blood rise to the surface of the pool in the pulled back, vicious original cut. The experience was shocking.
When I informed my dad of what was so important he said: "Oh, The Replacements ? Yeah, they're cool. I never got into them, though."
Sometimes I get this overwhelming feeling of dread, a hunch that something horrible is about to happen. I begin to feel like a shed standing on its last leg, watching a rabid tornado approach on the horizon. I was on the verge of collapse, but I knew that the Replacements were something I wouldn't be ready for until the drop. So I sat & I waited for the moment the winds hit, & then one day, it hit. I was thrown into a whirl of eviction scares, familial tension, loneliness, crippling uncertainty, the feeling that I was doing everything I possibly could wrong, & again, god damn, that lonely. I remember thinking: "God, what do other eighteen-year-old's do ? What is everyone else I used to know doing ? Should I be getting a job ? Starting a career ? Going to university ? What the hell should I be doing ?" I'd always been a fairly easy child, deliberately convenient for the sake of my family & friends. I thought to myself: 'I've always tried my best to be good. What if the time to disappoint is now ?'
I needed support, I needed someone to tell me that all of my mistakes were going to be relieved in the future, that I'd gone through this and I'd come out the other end alive. I needed someone to be a friend to me, someone I could run to as soon as disaster struck & would reliably be there for me.
Sitting down with The Replacements for the first time, I found that. A lifetime of desiring a sense of community, of love, of care & hope & misery & pride all wrapped in one had finally come through. Holding the first Mats CD I ever owned, Sorry Ma, I looked at the photos of them dressing the front cover & thought: "Hey, my friends look pretty great here." I'd found my lifelong companions, my own little tribe who I knew looked out for me regardless.
Our wedding was miraculous success, none of us remembered it come morning time but we had all the battle scars to prove it happened. And looking around me in the part debris, I realised there were many curious faces. It seems like the boys came with friends.
To me it seemed like the Replacements existed neither here, nor there, but now. Eternally existing in my life but never seeming all too known, unconventional legends. Yet when I stopped to truly consider the composition & overall sound of the band, I realised they were very much a consequence of some pre-existing condition. But what condition ?
Our marriage took me down the rabbit hole of American alternative music where I discovered that bands like Husker Du, R.E.M, Sonic Youth, & Violent Femmes had answers to questions I had always had, but never knew who to ask. It was a beautiful time in my recent life, one that electrocuted hope into me.
Through all this, one thing that became glaringly apparent to me was the importance of .something called college radio. A concept I was certainly aware of, but definitely didn't care about.
With my formative years lying in the 2010's, college radio, to me, was a place where I could heard a million bands who all sound alike & are all making the same synth-oriented Mac Demarco or Crystal Castles rip off songs. Frankly, I didn't ever much enjoy college radio but I realised that this was a product of my time. It hadn't always been the case, it seemed, that the alternative & the mainstream were indistinguishable from one another. Today when I look around at youth culture as it stands, I can't see much of a difference between those who are 'different' & those who are 'normal.' Alternative culture has begun to integrate rapidly into it's counterpart, rendering the two terms basically synonymous. I could brush this off as a symptom of the modern age, say something about how "the youth of today doesn't know what real music is" or something, but I would be lying to you if I told you that this hadn't been developing for almost thirty years now. When New Wave joined Michael Jackson on the pop charts in the 80s, it was a clear sign that something was happening. Maybe we didn't think about it until Nirvanna became #1 in the 90's, but it's a change that's been brewing for quite some time.
What startled me about the idea of college radio was the image of this separation. I began to sit & daydream about fiddling with receivers to catch the new Pixies single, about lying in my bedroom as the world completely fell away in favour of this new universe inside of a speaker, controlled by somebody who thinks of their audience more as a friend, listening to music made by people who probably needed more friends. In my daydreams, college radio was like a social media platform for those who were particularly displaced. In my daydreams, just like I do now (only not half as privately), I make friends in the playgrounds of the world left of the dial. & maybe I'm a little jaded despite my efforts to tear down all my pretensions, but I am quite painfully nostalgic for the days of bedroom radio time spend waiting for something to blow your mind.
I never lived this life, I never experienced this, but like anyone who's a little confused & alone I often look over my shoulder at what once was & get a little sad. These bands that were exposed to me through Spotify's knowing what to play me based off statistics & analytics, could have instead been exposed to me by someone who was taking the time out of their day to keep their ear to the ground.
I may be purely upset that I hadn't been exposed to this music when I was untouched.
The internet age moves at a pace a little ahead of itself. I grew up learning about mental illness, social issues, gender politics, the whole lot from social media where I was fed many different versions of what I should be. I forced myself into these tiny niches of identity without much help, just peer pressure, & sure this has always happened. People have always tried to be something else, people have always tried to do what they're told or be what makes the accepted. But the long & winding road to realising you don't mesh even with the outcasts is one I would have much rather made with solely the aid of bands like the Replacements or Sonic Youth.
I am perhaps purely longing for a time where I only felt before I knew, & I only knew because of chance. I must admit to a desire to know nothing. I must admit that I often dream that I was oblivious. I think the appeal of college radio stations in the 1980's is that whatever lies there, lied there for those who needed it. I would have much rather heard "Androgynous" because I bought the record after hearing a single left of dial, & realised then the future & the truth of myself & accepted me instead of feeling ostracized by toxic influences pointing me to models of expression I must adhere by. I wish that I didn't know anything before it was my time to know it.
When I think of the glory days of college radio, I think of the beauty of discovery & the amazing rush of hope you experience when something truly meant for you falls into your lap. The journey of fate, of arming yourself with a shield designed specifically for you, & the comradery of other unknowns.
I love you.
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