2011.02.09 Text 5 notes

  1. Jams for a Juvenile (Complete)

    I had spare time, and I needed to pick up some papers and drop off a few books at my dorm. It had already been a long day, but the songs I plugged into my ears were pushing me through it. The bus came to my stop just as Jawbreaker’s Dear You had finished. I stepped off and hit shuffle on my iPod, because I wasn’t quite sure what I was in the mood to hear next.

    I stopped right in my place, a few steps away from the bus stop, in the shadow of the tower that I currently live within, and looked at the small illuminated screen, which showed: “Gimme, Gimme Your Heart,” The Cryptkeeper Five, Trenton Makes..., and a little purple album cover. Three chords, crooning, choruses with gang vocals, a little guitar solo, and it all clocks in at about two minutes. To some, this is noise. But to me, this is a part of me, not unlike a limb, keeping me balanced, cohesive.

    Back in my early teenage years, when college was nothing but a dream, I felt a little out of place in the world. I was still reeling from my parent’s not-so-smooth separation, and I had developed much more quickly than my friends, still growing used to my newly found lankiness. My pants were a little too short, and I was the dorkiest almost-straight-A student at Panorama Middle School. I was just immature enough to laugh at the fact that our school’s initials were PMS. I played the euphonium in the school band—an instrument that I had to explain to curious adults so often that “It’s kinda like a tuba, but smaller and not as low” started to sound like my personal mantra. I enjoyed the classical music we played every day, but an interest in a completely different kind of music dawned somewhere along the way once I actually started to pay attention to what my mom played in the car. I started to dip my feet into the sloppy, sometimes gross pond that is punk rock, and I became obsessed with Green Day’s Dookie, cutting my teeth with The Clash.

    My inevitable musical snobbery began once I postulated that “the older stuff” is always better. The more popular the band became, the music grew “cruddier.”-I didn’t grasp the weakness in that ideological stance when I first freaked out about Combat Rock. Even so, this was the music that appealed to the frustrated and the awkward, and thus it was for me. I learned more, refined my tastes, became much pickier, scouring the internet every chance I could to check out something new.

    Sometimes, something new happens in the strangest of places. During one summer vacation, I was visiting my dad who had moved out to Ohio, a mostly miserable state. I don’t remember how many years ago it was, because those visits sort of blur together in my memory now—with the exception of this particular night. My dad was dating a punky-gothy-rockabilly girl named Stephanie, who liked bands like The Queers, who I didn’t quite “get” at the time. She wanted to go to a club nearby and see some bands play, but at thirteen (or something) my dad couldn’t leave me alone. Either I came along, or he and I stayed at home. I don’t remember exactly how I reacted to the prospect of going out to a concert, but I wanted nothing more than to be out of that house. I tossed on my black button-up shirt that I got at the thrift store, and my glasses—scratched lenses, the frames taped together. I had long, greasy hair, an acne-ridden face, and a sad whisper of a mustache. Despite all of that, I thought I looked pretty damned cool. In that moment, I was punk rock personified–I was the spiritual descendent of Milo Auckerman, just as nerdy and awkward and disillusioned and angry. Damn it, the world would pay attention to me even if I had to yell in their stupid conformist faces!

    Once we walked into that smoky, hole-in-the-wall bar somewhere in Ohio, I could barely whisper, let alone yell into any faces. I was intimidated by the patched-up leather jackets and the midget lady walking around wearing what could only be very loosely described as a shirt. At school I was a strange, freakish giant, but here I felt as small as the midget lady, only much less comfortable with my body and my surroundings.

    I already detested smoking and drinking, so I turned my nose up at the alcohol and faced the stage. I wanted to hear the music, and the anticipation killed me. I stood with my hands in my pockets, trying not to stare at the cleavage of the combat boot-wearing women standing right in front of the stage. Instead I was trying to focus on that one guy’s green mohawk, of which I was intensely jealous. All the while I was trying to ignore the fact that I was standing next to my incredibly square father, but I calmed once I realized that he was covered in tattoos and piercings, and thus fit right in.

    I vaguely recall a band that had a singer who spilled his beer onto the crowd beneath the stage in some sort of bizarre, drunken trance. I found that to be pretty rude. Plus they sounded bad. I didn’t think they were very good at all, so I crossed my little arms in a show of apathy and ennui. That was the coolest thing I could think of to do. There may have been another band that played between these people and the aforementioned Cryptkeeper Five, but if they existed, they do not serve any purpose in my story. So far, the night was a disappointment, none of the bands sparking anything in me, a delusional and self-proclaimed connoisseur of the highest quality punk music. But soon thereafter I had a reason to uncross those scrawny arms.

    Six black-haired men—some with pompadours, some with hair slicked back with a heavy dosage of pomade—came onto the stage. They all wore denim vests with their names patched onto them, like mechanics in car garages. They set up the stage with three guitars, a drum set, and six microphone stands. One guy opened up a case similar to one I saw every day in band class, and pulled out a tenor saxophone. I was absolutely fascinated by the prospect of utilizing a woodwind instrument in a punk band.

    They said they were from New Jersey, my place of birth. They were known as The Cryptkeeper Five. They were well aware they had six members, they just didn’t want to change the name. Then, 1-2-3-4, they started into their first song.

    It wasn’t like anything I ever had heard before. The singer had a croon that had a dark quality like Glenn Danzig from The Misfits, but this guy was channeling Elvis. He moved just like him. The guitarists played fast and loud like good punks do, but they also sounded a little more “old school.” The lead guitarist had solos, and they were skillful, unlike most in the genre. The bass player effortlessly held the band together at the low end, and I appreciated that as one who played a bass clef instrument. The saxophone player soloed as well, and I remember my eyes widening as the saxophonist intentionally squeaked into the microphone, the way players back in school got in trouble for doing. It sounded more beautiful to my young ears than anything I had ever heard before. Other members of the band shouted along during the choruses, and the crowd danced and moshed all the while. Green mohawk guy ate it up. Even my dad looked over to me and yelled into my ear, saying “These guys are good!”

    Afterwards, a band called The Epidemic came up. They had a cool banner behind them of a zombie’s head with an exposed brain above their name. They were okay. But I paid little attention to the twenty-somethings that stood around and yelled about consumerism. I just wanted one of the CK5’s CDs, but I forgot my wallet. I looked at my dad and repeatedly praised the band and hoped he would understand.

    We walked away from that club in the middle of The Epidemic’s set, since my dad had work in the morning. Heavy with the smell of cigarette smoke, I clutched a copy of Pomade, Switchblades, and Their God-Damn Rock and Roll: A Creature Triple Feature, something of a greatest hits album. The CD was made to look like a vinyl record, and I find it shocking that it didn’t become a permanent piece of my sticker-laden Walkman. It soundtracked the Razor Scooter rides to the record shop nearby where I bought I Am the Movie by Motion City Soundtrack and At The Drive-In’s Relationship of Command, both vastly influential albums to me, on the fringes of what could be considered punk.

    I brought those CDs back to Colorado and tried to tell everyone how excellent they were. No one was really interested. I further realized I couldn’t really share my affinities for this sort of music with most others. However, I also became even more aware that there were people out there who liked the same kinds of sounds that I liked. Green mohawk guy and midget lady probably felt weird and out of place in the world like I did, but they took that chance at the show to enjoy themselves amongst similarly minded people. It was a comforting thought, even though the music wasn’t, in an aural sense. In a physical sense, I fell asleep with my anthems clutched in my hands, my copy of Answer That And Stay Fashionable spinning around and around until the secret track ended.

    I learned about more bands that sounded like The Cryptkeeper Five, and then I learned about ska, which has saxophones and brass instruments playing alongside the guitars. That was pretty much the coolest-sounding thing in the world to a band geek like me. I branched out and now I find myself listening to hip-hop, jazz, electronic music, reggae, folk, country…and I still cherish “the old stuff,” but don’t damn the more popular albums as severely as I once had. I don’t listen to The Cryptkeeper Five as much as I did way back when, but when they popped up on my iPod today, I was sure to listen to “Just Because” to remember the way I worried about my innocent crushes, and “Suicide King” when those crushes turned me down. Then “Midnight on Lovers Lane” just for fun. By then, I was in my dorm, grabbing books, and then I fell down onto my bed and l listened to the rest of Trenton Makes… My eyes were closed, and I was grinning. The rest of the day wasn’t nearly as bad.

    I love what just a single song can do.

    This is the third time I’ve posted this, but this is the complete and best version. Many thanks to Professor Adam Bradley for editing this essay and being a generally excellent guy.