Confessions of a Dirty 16 Year Old
There are certain things in life I wish I could experience again for the first time. I would hope that everyone feels the same way about something important in his or her own life. Women, of course, are known to have more than one child to relive the whole creating-and-nurturing-life-thing. I am not of the feminine design, so that is something I will never truly realize. Music has always played a huge role in my life, and I guess I can say that I love music like some women love their children. I’ve unwrapped CDs for the first time and felt like I just released a shiny, digitally-encoded baby from my proverbial womb.
Of course I realize I had nothing to do with the conception of 99.9% of the music I listen to, but for some strange reason, I feel like I make very unusual connections to a lot of my favorite groups. Connections that loved ones make with each other. I love my wife and my parents and other relatives as much as anything in my life. But for some odd reason, I will always have certain feelings for a particular song or album that I just don’t have with real, breathing human beings. And yes, you are right, that is more than a little bit sad.
My original point was that there are some things in my life that I wish I could experience again for the first time. If I was walking down the beach one afternoon, and I picked a magic vase from the sand, and a giant blue dude popped out and granted me three wishes, one of those wishes would probably be this: I wish I could listen to Sonic Youth’s Dirty again for the first time.
I will always remember the album not just for its undeniably brilliant sounds, but for what it was to me when it was first released. I’ll always remember the fall of 1992 when Dirty was first released by DGC.
That was a very important time in my life, because my birthday is October 10, 1976. I had just turned sixteen that fall and my parents trusted me enough to take the car out on my own past the small suburb in which we lived. I will always remember my drive to a record store in Downtown Sacramento called the Beat. It was about 20 miles from where I lived at the time. I know, it’s not that far, but it was a huge deal at the time. Come on, you remember what it was like to be sixteen and making one of your first trips “on the road” in your parents’ car.
As you will recall, in 1992 the CD revolution hadn’t quite taken over the world yet, so there will still those things they made called “cassette tapes.” (I bet you were expecting a pretentious ass like me to say “vinyl,” weren’t you? I’ll be the first to admit that I never owned a record player.) I bought the tape and listened to it over and over and over for my entire sixteenth year driving around town, gaining independence from my folks. “100%” is in the top two opening album tracks ever (it’s number two, in my book…“London Calling” is my all-time favorite). I must have listened to that song at least twice a day for over a year of my life. I was growing as a guitar player at that time, also, and hearing those chords in that particular song blasting through car speakers or headphones…It’s an unbelievable song, in my opinion. It’s the perfect Thurston Moore song. His voice gives off that disconnected drawl that makes it sound like he doesn’t care so much about singing but getting across a message. His voice does this in every song he sings on the album.
One of the first real political scandals I was conscious of was the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill sexual harassment allegations in 1991. Dirty makes clear reference to it in Thurston’s lyrics in “Youth Against Fascism” (“I believe Anita Hill/The Judge will rot in Hell”) and the second song of the album (the album’s first track featuring Kim Gordon’s lead vocals)—“Swimsuit Issue”—is about sexual harassment in the work place. As a sixteen-year-old male, I felt like hearing these opinions come from a man’s and a woman’s voice made them matter that much more. And I dare you to listen to “Swimsuit Issue” and not be turned on by Kim’s voice. As a young man, I was a big fan of that sultry, smoky voice of hers placed on top of those heavily distorted and detuned guitars. Usually, the songs that the girl in the band sings are the more melodic, poppier songs. Sonic Youth likes to break expectations. Most of Kim’s songs are ten times dirtier and rougher around the edges than Thurston’s. Other classics from the Kim Gordon song book on Dirty: “Drunken Butterfly,” “Shoot,” and “Orange Rolls, Angels Spit.” When you’re sixteen, and a woman writes, sings, and plays bass on songs like she does, how can you not be in love with her? I always admired the fact that she and Thurston had been married for several years when Dirty came out. So many married couples in bands divorce, but Kim and Thurston are still happily married to this day. That’s unusual in the world of rock’n’roll.
I dug the fact that Ian MacKaye (one of my personal heroes in the music world) did a guest spot on the album. I loved all of Thurston and Lee Renaldo’s discordant guitar noise on every single track. I love the way Steve Shelley’s drums were recorded. People often criticize Dirty for being too slick and overproduced. I love the whole sound of the album. The guitars are loud as hell just like they should be. Almost every song on the album feels like a punch to the gut or a blow to the head. It is truly the kind of album that I can hear something new on every time I listen to it. I still listen to it very regularly. It was one of the first albums I downloaded to my iPod. I only wish I could listen to it again for the first time and hear it (again) with virgin ears.
--Robot's Mother
[Every so often, from its secret base in Sacramento, California, Robot's Mother (www.myspace.com/robotsmother) will beam down to the HMFA a transmission on music related matters.]
Of course I realize I had nothing to do with the conception of 99.9% of the music I listen to, but for some strange reason, I feel like I make very unusual connections to a lot of my favorite groups. Connections that loved ones make with each other. I love my wife and my parents and other relatives as much as anything in my life. But for some odd reason, I will always have certain feelings for a particular song or album that I just don’t have with real, breathing human beings. And yes, you are right, that is more than a little bit sad.
My original point was that there are some things in my life that I wish I could experience again for the first time. If I was walking down the beach one afternoon, and I picked a magic vase from the sand, and a giant blue dude popped out and granted me three wishes, one of those wishes would probably be this: I wish I could listen to Sonic Youth’s Dirty again for the first time.
I will always remember the album not just for its undeniably brilliant sounds, but for what it was to me when it was first released. I’ll always remember the fall of 1992 when Dirty was first released by DGC.
That was a very important time in my life, because my birthday is October 10, 1976. I had just turned sixteen that fall and my parents trusted me enough to take the car out on my own past the small suburb in which we lived. I will always remember my drive to a record store in Downtown Sacramento called the Beat. It was about 20 miles from where I lived at the time. I know, it’s not that far, but it was a huge deal at the time. Come on, you remember what it was like to be sixteen and making one of your first trips “on the road” in your parents’ car.
As you will recall, in 1992 the CD revolution hadn’t quite taken over the world yet, so there will still those things they made called “cassette tapes.” (I bet you were expecting a pretentious ass like me to say “vinyl,” weren’t you? I’ll be the first to admit that I never owned a record player.) I bought the tape and listened to it over and over and over for my entire sixteenth year driving around town, gaining independence from my folks. “100%” is in the top two opening album tracks ever (it’s number two, in my book…“London Calling” is my all-time favorite). I must have listened to that song at least twice a day for over a year of my life. I was growing as a guitar player at that time, also, and hearing those chords in that particular song blasting through car speakers or headphones…It’s an unbelievable song, in my opinion. It’s the perfect Thurston Moore song. His voice gives off that disconnected drawl that makes it sound like he doesn’t care so much about singing but getting across a message. His voice does this in every song he sings on the album.
One of the first real political scandals I was conscious of was the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill sexual harassment allegations in 1991. Dirty makes clear reference to it in Thurston’s lyrics in “Youth Against Fascism” (“I believe Anita Hill/The Judge will rot in Hell”) and the second song of the album (the album’s first track featuring Kim Gordon’s lead vocals)—“Swimsuit Issue”—is about sexual harassment in the work place. As a sixteen-year-old male, I felt like hearing these opinions come from a man’s and a woman’s voice made them matter that much more. And I dare you to listen to “Swimsuit Issue” and not be turned on by Kim’s voice. As a young man, I was a big fan of that sultry, smoky voice of hers placed on top of those heavily distorted and detuned guitars. Usually, the songs that the girl in the band sings are the more melodic, poppier songs. Sonic Youth likes to break expectations. Most of Kim’s songs are ten times dirtier and rougher around the edges than Thurston’s. Other classics from the Kim Gordon song book on Dirty: “Drunken Butterfly,” “Shoot,” and “Orange Rolls, Angels Spit.” When you’re sixteen, and a woman writes, sings, and plays bass on songs like she does, how can you not be in love with her? I always admired the fact that she and Thurston had been married for several years when Dirty came out. So many married couples in bands divorce, but Kim and Thurston are still happily married to this day. That’s unusual in the world of rock’n’roll.
I dug the fact that Ian MacKaye (one of my personal heroes in the music world) did a guest spot on the album. I loved all of Thurston and Lee Renaldo’s discordant guitar noise on every single track. I love the way Steve Shelley’s drums were recorded. People often criticize Dirty for being too slick and overproduced. I love the whole sound of the album. The guitars are loud as hell just like they should be. Almost every song on the album feels like a punch to the gut or a blow to the head. It is truly the kind of album that I can hear something new on every time I listen to it. I still listen to it very regularly. It was one of the first albums I downloaded to my iPod. I only wish I could listen to it again for the first time and hear it (again) with virgin ears.
--Robot's Mother
[Every so often, from its secret base in Sacramento, California, Robot's Mother (www.myspace.com/robotsmother) will beam down to the HMFA a transmission on music related matters.]
posted by Chieh | 3:05 PM
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