Though we were the same age, my buddy Vic was like a big brother to me. He was a lot larger than I was, so he looked the “big” part. But he had an older brother, Billy, and it was through Billy that Vic knew shit.
When hanging out at the Park, the local playground at which we congregated on a nightly basis, Vic knew and spoke to all the olderheads—his brother’s friends a few years older than us—whom we alternately feared and admired. Both of us were a long (long) time from getting laid, but the first drink I ever had was at Vic’s house, a shot of warm gin at a party after our eighth-grade graduation dance. I threw up immediately, and then we shaved Vic’s head. Killer party.
Vic, through Billy, was the first of our friends to adopt classic rock. Hip-hop, rap, and R & B was the default music for most of us, presented to us by Power 99 FM or Q102, the two “urban” radio stations in Philly (though the latter was more pop-oriented than the former). We listened to this music because we enjoyed it, but also because it was cool. It was modern, it was edgy, and it was not what our parents listened to. (To this last point, no, it was not quite like the World War II generation who grew up on Fred Astaire spawning hippie children who moved to San Francisco so they could do drugs and sleep with three-fifths of Jefferson Airplane. But this was a white working-class neighborhood in which most of the kids would list EPMD, Pete Rock & CL Smooth, and A Tribe Called Quest as their favorite musicians.)
Vic and I would argue about the merits of classic rock vs. hip-hop. He said that his music, bands like Led Zeppelin and the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, had stood the test of time and would be around forever, unlike the passing-fad crap that I listened to. I countered that if we kept listening to oldies, there would be no oldies in the future. For example, did our parents listen to music from the 40s and 50s when they were kids? No, they listened to the modern stuff. The bands Vic liked were dinosaurs, for old people and parents.
Vic’s family had a house “up the mountains,” Philly-ese for the Poconos. I was invited to the house one winter weekend with Vic and his parents, his sister, and her friend. I had never been to Vic’s place and was happy to go. Of the two vacation options for my family and friends, going “downnashore” to North Wildwood, New Jersey, or “updamountains” to the Poconos, I preferred the latter to the former. I loved going to the Jersey Shore, but the activities up in the mountains—mostly walking around in the woods with BB guns shooting at trees and drinking hot chocolate—were slightly more my speed than those of downnashore, where we sat at the beach or pool, getting sunburned.
No sooner had we reached the mountain house than it started snowing, and it did not stop until a day and a half later. We were snowed in with nothing to do, aside from playing video games and talking. Soon, Vic and I picked up our eternal debate about his music vs. my music. Exasperated and stricken with cabin fever, Vic said, “Look, just do me one favor? I want you to listen to a couple of songs off this CD while I get in the shower. Just the first couple of songs. If you don’t like it, you win and it’s over—your music is better than mine. But you have to give it a listen.” Fine, I said, and he threw me the CD and went down the hall to the bathroom.
It was a Beatles CD. Like I didn’t know the Beatles already. Who didn’t know the Beatles? They were on a regular loop on the oldies station: “Help,” “Ticket to Ride,” “Twist and Shout,” “I Saw Her Standing There,” “She Loves You,” “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” “Can’t Buy Me Love,” “A Hard Day’s Night.” I knew, like, every Beatles song already. The cover was pretty cool, with the Beatles dressed up like rainbow generals with a bunch of cardboard cutouts behind them. But I was sure this CD wouldn’t show me anything I didn’t already know. As he walked out of the room, Vic put the CD on his stereo.
Before long, I was confused. This was not the Beatles. No way. Not the Beatles that I knew. This was like a whole different band, because there was no way that the same guys who wrote “Eight Days a Week” could write this “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” song. Vic came back into the room a few songs later and I waved him off. I sat there listening until the album was over. It was the weirdest and best album I’d ever heard. So I put it on again.
On that snowy weekend in the Poconos, Vic and I listened to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band about four hundred times while we played video games. Vic would sometimes break it up by putting on Revolver or The White Album, but I wasn’t through with Sgt. Pepper. I needed to hear it again and again (and again).
I know that I’m not breaking new ground here, that there are thousands of stories of young people having musical epiphanies because of Sgt. Pepper. I’m guilty, and I wish—for your sake, dear reader—that it was something more original, like Jethro Tull’s A Passion Play or Yes’s Tales from Topographic Oceans that turned me on to rock music for good.
Alas, Sgt. Pepper was my gateway drug. From then on, I worked my way through the rest of the Beatles catalog. On Vic’s suggestion, I started with Rubber Soul, which was the first of the “adult” (Vic’s word) albums. Then I made my way chronologically all the way to Let It Be before getting back to the bubble gum Beatles stuff, their earliest works with which I was already familiar.
I’ve never dedicated myself to something so completely and diligently as I did to the Beatles in the weeks after the Poconos trip with Vic’s family (and yes, I’m including masturbation in this assessment). I don’t think I listened to anything else for the next few months, instead committing myself to learning every nook and cranny in every song on every album. Every drum roll, every harmony, every line, every lyric. I read, too, starting with CD liner notes and then moving on to book after book about the band.
The Beatles crept in to every facet of my life. A few weeks after the Poconos trip, Ms. Flynn asked us to write a paper in English class on a poem or song or short story that included a minimum of five of the things we talked about when we analyzed works of literature, like simile/metaphor, use of imagery, rhyme, alliteration, and the like. I chose “Lovely Rita,” from Sgt. Pepper, which really pulled off alliteration without sounding corny (“sitting on a sofa with a sister or two”) and made use of all the other stuff, too. Freshman year of high school, our history assignment was to write a five-page paper on whatever we wanted, as long as it was “historical” and approved by the teacher, a six-foot-six Jesuit priest in his late fifties named Father Taylor. My paper was on the Beatles’s alleged drug use and its effect on their music, starting with “Tomorrow Never Knows” on Revolver, through Sgt. Pepper (with “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” as the primary example), and on to Magical Mystery Tour, The White Album, and Abbey Road. I don’t recall what grade I got, but it didn’t matter. I would have written that paper in my spare time and fifty times as long.
My Beatlemania extended beyond schoolwork. Inspired by songs like “Helter Skelter” and “I Feel Fine,” I got an electric guitar. It was a cheap model from Kmart, a black guitar with a built-in speaker powered by two 9-volt batteries. I wanted a Rickenbacker, like the one John played during the early years, but the ninety-nine-dollar, 9-volt-powered guitar already stretched my budget, so the Rickenbacker would have to wait for another time. Along with the guitar came an instruction booklet, covering the basics and some chords. And the four of us—me, the guitar, the booklet, and my Discman—spent hour after hour in my bedroom, playing “Revolution” over and over again, trying to get the right rhythm down.
I’m not sure who took this picture, but I am sure it wasn’t my girlfriend. She was busy, um, living in Canada.
Finally, and most disturbingly, my appearance started changing. I’m not talking about normal growing-up stuff, like getting acne or growing bad facial hair. Though Paul was my favorite Beatle—his vocal range was more akin to mine, and he wrote the pop songs I enjoyed—I tried to make myself look like John Lennon. Well, John Lennon if he had let himself go and moved into a Pizza Hut for four years. First, I traded my uncool glasses for the little round ones that John wore. Despite the fact that these glasses were to
o small for my face and made my cheeks look like they were growing around the glasses, I loved them (even though I had to pry them from my head before bed). Then I started growing my hair long. Of all the things I did or did not do as a teenager, it is the long-hair phase that is chief among my regrets. Parted right down the middle, my long hair would naturally flip or curl upward, just below my ears. The flip looked intentional, like I spent the morning drunk in front of a mirror with a curling iron. I don’t remember if I thought my long hair looked cool or if I was trying to be nonconformist. But when I look at the pictures now, the only reasonable explanation for that hair is that though I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to have sex with a girl, I wanted to be absolutely, 100 percent sure that I was not going to have sex with a girl. “Pretty sure” was not good enough. I needed to keep my virginity intact.
But back then, I remained blissfully ignorant of my appearance and unaware of how it might affect my standing with the ladies. The only thing that mattered to me was the music. The Beatles were my idols. If I wanted to spend half my time in high school looking like Fat John Lennon, whatever. It was all about the music, man.
the six most influential songs of my teen years
As much as I loved them, it wasn’t all Beatles, all the time. Here’s a sampling of a few of the most influential songs of my teen years.
“Buddy Holly” Weezer
Nirvana and Pearl Jam were good bands. If my kids, whom I hope will love music as much as I do, ask me what it was like when Nirvana and Pearl Jam burst onto the scene, I’ll tell them all about the flannel and Seattle and how everybody learned how to play “Smells Like Teen Spirit” on their guitar. I’ll say, “Yep. It was really something.” And then I’ll look back at the television and go quiet for a while because there’s a baseball game on that I’m trying to watch and enough with the questions already.
I liked both Nirvana and Pearl Jam because, as a twelve-year-old boy when Nevermind and Ten were released, I was basically required to. But overall, there was a little too much angst in those albums for my taste. All the anger and screaming and unintelligible lyrics wasn’t really my thing. I mean, I knew it rained a lot in Seattle, but—get over it, guys.
This doesn’t mean that I eschewed all modern rock. In my opinion, there was one band that stood head and shoulders above the rest, pioneers of geek rock who could deliver both the crunchy power chords and the lyrics about heartbreak in the same song: Weezer.
Weezer had angst, but they also had cleverness. Weezer had distorted guitars, but they also had harmonies. Weezer could rock, but they also could be quirky and smart and nerdy. I wanted to rock, and I was quirky and smart and nerdy. But I list this song here not only because I loved the band.
Dennis and I as the Pound Patrol, with two very little people (sister Megan, cousin Marisa). I was a big fan of UNLV. And I mean big.
My brother and I were both fat as kids. Our collective chubbiness made us the object of derision for many a neighborhood asshole. To wit, one of the neighborhood nicknames for my brother and me was “The Pound Patrol,” meaning Dennis and I went around (on patrol) searching for hoagies and cakes and whole milk. Kids can be very cruel.
But of all the barbs slung at Dennis and me over the years, none stung as much as the little ditty made up by my “friend” Stephanie, a girl in the grade below and a member of our crew, which was sung to the tune of the popular Weezer song “Buddy Holly.” Imagine the song with me, if you will, and feel free to sing along to Stephanie’s revised chorus:
Woo-ee-oo, I look just like Jason Mulgrew.
Oh-oh, and you’re Dennis Mulgrew, too.
We don’t care what they say about us anyway.
We don’t care about fat.
Woo-ee-oo. We don’t care about fat.
The song took the neighborhood by storm, and soon Dennis and I were greeted with “woo-ee-oo” at every turn. It is a small wonder that neither Dennis nor I is a serial killer targeting clever, somewhat musically inclined fourteen-year-old blond girls who tease fat kids.
But it all worked out in the end. I’m not sure what became of Stephanie—I lost track of her over the years. But I’d say that best-case scenario for her is a cheap motel, various overweight men, and a lot of oral sex in exchange for meatball subs. Dennis is a graduate of a top law school and is all sorts of boss. And, perhaps because of Stephanie’s little song and the resulting torment he endured, Dennis is now such a health and fitness freak that even the veins in his biceps have abs.
And me . . . well, I ain’t doing too shabby. Yes, I’m still a bit chubby, but I’m a writer, so that’s pretty sweet. A writer who may be softly crying as he writes this, but a writer nonetheless.
“Linger” The Cranberries
Though the “Buddy Holly/We Don’t Care about Fat” remix was a big hit in the neighborhood, artistically it had nothing on the parody of the Cranberries’ “Linger,” which became more of an indie or cult hit. Let me explain.
In eighth grade, our friend Josh developed a crush on a girl named Christina. My friends and I, Josh included, did not know much about Christina, who was cool and mysterious because she didn’t go to our junior high and also because she smoked Marlboro Reds.
But Josh was always one for a challenge, and one day he got up his courage and asked Christina out on a date. They went to the local eatery, the Oregon Diner, for a dinner of French onion soup, chicken fingers, and broccoli puffs. After the dinner, he fingered her.
(!!!)
As Josh was the first among our group of friends to confirm that this strange thing called a vagina actually existed, this rocked our social circle. Remember, though we grew up in the city, we were Catholic school kids with very little hands-on knowledge of, or experience with, sex. And here was Josh, one of our own, fingering (!) a girl’s vagina (!!!).
Soon our whole clique of friends knew about Josh’s fingering of Christina. And someone (I’m not sure who—I wish I could take credit) made up a little parody of the Cranberries’ “Linger,” which was very popular at the time:
But I’m in so dee-eep.
You know I’m such a fool for you.
You even took me out to dinner, uh-huh.
Did you have to use your finger?
Did you have to
Did you have to
Did you have to use your finger?
Because she didn’t run with our group and didn’t go to the same school as we did, I’m not sure if Christina ever heard our song. She hadn’t been around much before the Great Fingering Incident of 1993, and she wasn’t around much afterward, either.
I haven’t seen Christina in years; she would now be in her thirties. But every time I hear those first few notes of “Linger” and Dolores O’Riordan humming along, I always—and will always—be reminded of Christina, a true trailblazer in the world of digital penetration.
“Stay” Jodeci
Among the things I knew very little about as a teenager, two at the top of the list were sex and black people. This song explained them both.
“Stay” is about post-breakup sex: I screwed up, and you left. I am sad, but you’re here now, so why don’t you just stay, and we can make love? What do you think?
We don’t know what the female’s response is, but at the end of this song, I certainly feel like staying and having sex, so we can only assume that’s what happened.
This song was one of the mainstays of my favorite radio program, The Quiet Storm, which featured “smooth, slow jams” from the late 70s to the then-present. Even after I converted from hip-hop to rock ’n’ roll, The Quiet Storm was my secret pleasure because I could not find any rock equivalent to the sexy, R & B sound. White people had power ballads—songs about I remember you and every rose has its thorn and you don’t know what you got till it’s gone. Black people had songs that said, baby, I miss you, stay with me and let’s get down, real slow-like, just for one night. When it came down to a soundtrack for lovin’, white songs did not even come close. And though I wasn’t
having any lovin’, it was important to know which music I’d play should that opportunity present itself: “Stay” by Jodeci, one hundred times in a row. (Although, let’s be honest, just the first chorus would probably suffice.)
“Crash into Me” The Dave Matthews Band
Just because a song is included among the most influential of my teen years does not mean that I liked that song. Remember, Adolf Hitler was once Time’s Man of the Year. Being influential is not always a great thing.
I hate this song. And I hate this band. I have nothing against Dave Matthews personally. He and his bandmates seem like lovely guys. And I get the whole scene: the dancing and the fun and the really fit violin guy and the “ants marching” and all that crap. It’s great, it really is. Good for them.
Dave Matthews had already endeared himself to white people everywhere with Under the Table and Dreaming, which, in my circle of high school friends alone, sold approximately forty thousand copies. The girls were especially under the spell of Dave, a safe, sensitive, but fun guy. Following “What Would You Say” and “Ants Marching” with the love song “Satellite” only made him more desirable to this demographic.
Say what you will about “Satellite”: at least it was difficult for high school guitarists to play and sing. When guitars were suddenly broken out at high school parties (“What? Me? Play? I couldn’t. . . . Oh, alright.”), a few would try, knowing that a Dave Matthews love song was the easiest, pre–Miller Lite way into a girl’s heart (and later, her pants), but few had the talent to pull off the song.
The same could not be said for “Crash into Me.” In many ways, it was ideal for the high school guitarist. The riff (and chorus), which is instantly and immediately recognizable, is not so easy that just anyone can play it, but is not difficult to master for anyone who is a capable guitar player. It’s also an easy song to sing—even Dave speak-sings his way through most of the song. (If you could nail the high “Crash into me” during the outro, major bonus points for you.)
236 Pounds of Class Vice President Page 8
