Vacation II: Day 1 – Lazy Saturday Afternoon

My second scheduled vacation for 2007 has begun with the roar of a cantankerous lawn mower and the rumbling of thunderstorms headed this way. As the morning’s yardwork has left me feeling completely thrashed and the potential for nasty motherboard-frying surges is limiting the time spent on the computer today, I figured I’d use this opportunity to give my answers to the “Name five to ten songs that have impacted your life” meme AC tagged me with.

This was harder to compile than expected, as “significant” is a much different creature than “favorite.” Most of my favorite songs have had little impact on my life outside the enjoyment they have brought to me, whereas the songs that I can recall making an impact aren’t what one would necessarily expect, given the impression of my tastes inferred from my various posts.

First up in this roughly chronological list is a tie:

Dexy’s Midnight Runners – Come on Eileen (from Too-Rye-Ay, 1982)

…and…

Styx – Mr. Roboto (from Kilroy Was Here, 1983)

The awakening of my individual tastes in pop music came occurred somewhere between my tenth and eleventh birthdays. It’s not that I was unaware of pop music or didn’t have favorite artists prior to that, but my preferences were shaped by received wisdom, handed down by or picked up from my parents, my teenage aunt, or the older kids in the neighborhood.

Then, in 1982-1983, I made the evolutionary leap to an independent consumer of pop, aided by the plethora of local music video programs put together to cash in on MTV’s success as well as the debut of WHTT, “Boston Hit Radio,” which played the “hottest Top 40 songs” every hour on the hour. The goofy concept rock of “Mr. Roboto” and the faux Celtic soul of “Come on Eileen” struck a chord with young Andrew, and I would camp out next to the boombox waiting for both songs to crop up on ‘HTT’s extremely tight rotation cycle.

(Thank Providence I came of age when I did, while new wave pop was still in full swing. If I was born a few years later, I might have been scarred for life.)

Jumping ahead a couple of years:

Sam & Dave – Soothe Me (from The Best of Sam & Dave, 1969) – The better part of my junior high and high school years were spent as a soul boy, with a look and musical tastes akin to an independently invented version of mod revivalism. It was this track, discovered through The Blues Brothers (where it plays on the Bluesmobile’s 8-track during the fateful traffic stop), that ignited my burning passion for sweet Memphis soul and opened my eyes to a musical world outside the classic rock and heavy metal ghetto of my immediate circle of friends.

Circle Jerks – When the Shit Hits the Fan (from Golden Shower of Hits, 1983) – The first punk album I purchased was the Repo Man soundtrack, and so impressed was I by the Circle Jerks’ tracks on that LP, the second punk album I purchased was Golden Shower of Hits. My affection for California-brand hardcore (and hardcore in general) has waned over the years, but upon listening to this track again I found myself flashing back to junior year, staring into the bathroom mirror, preparing to make a personal paradigm shift by spiking my hair up with glob of petroleum jelly.

Crass – Sheep Farming in the Falklands (from a 1983 single, collected on Best Before...1984, 1986) – I came to the anarchopunk party late in my punk career. (Indeed, the music and message played a big part in my ditching the rigid fashion-punk template and making the Great Leap Forward.) More than anything else the band ever recorded, this blistering howl of righteous indignation and anger (for a war that had been over for nearly a decade at the time I first listened to the song) struck a chord with me, and echoes of the profanity-laced rant that closes out the piece can be observed in many of my political posts at Armagideon Time.

…and finally:

Rubber City Rebels – Brainwave (from a 1979 single) – In the spring of 2006, I was reading the copy of Simon Reynolds’s Rip It Up and Start Again that Maura had given me for my birthday. I got to the bit about Cleveland/Akron scenes of the late 1970’s, which provided a list of some of the lesser known participants. Most of the acts were known to me, if only through individual tracks on obscure punk and new wave compilations, but one act, the Rubber City Rebels, I’d never heard of before.

My curiosity led to a Google search, which in turn led me to this post at Something I Learned Today featuring a representative selection of the band’s material. Prior to my stumbling across the site, I was almost completely ignorant of the concept of mp3 blogs apart from Fluxblog and a couple others dedicated to more recent material (which really didn’t interest me that much). I spent the better part of a weekend exploring all Something I Learned Today had to offer, then embarking on a whirlwind linkjumping tour of similar sites.

At the time, I had been mulling over the idea of starting a blog, but my initial choice of focus -- comic books -- was already overserved with clever folks doing what I was thinking of doing, and better than I ever could. The discovery of the mp3 blog scene was a major revelation to me, and I discovered what my true calling was. Thus was Armagideon Time born.

I'm not big on tagging folks, so anyone who wants to take up the meme-baton and run with should feel free to do so.