I left all of my LPs in Chicago, stored (hopefully) safely at Andy’s place, in an apartment equipped with two hyperactive pit-bulls to ward off thieves with a taste for 80’s hardcore and/or Reckless records’ $3-and-under selections circa 2000-2008. I did, however, bring one handful of records, using no particular selection process, merely grabbing the top of the pile of recently listened-to discs. A few months later, in the here and now, that selection process has proven itself an interesting psychological experiment. Like all civilized humans, I possess more MP3s than I will possibly ever be able to listen to in my lifetime, and yet I find myself, more often than not, turning to those 20 or so randomly selected LPs for musical solace and listening pleasure. It might be the physicality of the objects which makes them appealing, or it might simply be that while sitting at the computer typing it is more pleasant to have sounds coming from elsewhere in the room than from the tiny, tinny speakers directly below my face. And there is something cool about having such a limited musical palette: it reminds me of being a teenager, back when I actually only owned about twenty or thirty records, and each new purchase was like opening up a new world. When I got my first punk record, around 13, I hated it, but what could I do? I only had about six other ones. So I was forced to listen to it, to try to figure it out and understand it, and when I eventually did, the moment of illumination was amazing, one of the watershed experiences of my life. The records that ingrained themselves in my soul the most deeply, in retrospect, were the ones that I listened to because I had no other choice.
So here I am, once again unable to discern whether I am the victim or the beneficiary of my own impulsive actions. Should I really be listening to Poison Idea’s “Feel the Darkness” this often? How about Kool Keith’s “Sex Styles”?
A good number of these records turn out to be my friends’ bands. Mike Taylor’s new project, Flaws, make a showing at the top of the pile, not only because it’s an awesome LP, but also because this was the last record I got in Chicago, received in the mail only days before I split town. The Rights Reserved LP, on the other hand, has been in regular rotation since I got it in the mid-90’s; listening to it evokes countless great times with those boys in North Carolina, and the silk-screened cover gives it a personal touch that makes me understand, in a literal sense, why they call these objects records. Sweet Cobra’s “Forever” is both very sad - guitarist Matt Arluck passed away just a few months ago - and very funny, since singer Botchy Vasquez’s primal bellowing is offset for me by the memory of Botchy watching Sesame Street with his son and singing along (in a tender falsetto) to “everybody poops.”
The strangest record in my small collection, though, would have to be Canadian Rifle’s “Visibility Zero.” Listening to this never fails to conjure odd feelings and memories. In 2006, I was living in squalor on the south side of Chicago, having grown a long and tangled beard, as well as an unhealthy fixation on the Unabomber manifesto and the idea of “going off the grid.” I was playing no music, doing no writing, making no art. I had given up. Then, one afternoon, Jake and Tim stopped by the house with a demo of their band in tow. They played it for me and asked if I’d like to join as second guitarist. “This was demo of the month in last month’s MRR,” Tim assured me, as if I needed those credentials of quality in order to make my decision. The music was not really my thing at the time (I was in a heavy Stevie Wonder phase, incongruously enough), but still: upbeat, melodic, gruff punk rock– why not? That affirmative decision led me to a year and a half of unbridled, debaucherous fun with the Rifle, who turned out to be basically my dream band. I accompanied them on a few short and entertaining tours in vans of rapidly descending vehicular soundness: off to the east coast in Tim’s mom’s mini-van, then back around again in a clattering econoline borrowed from friends of Felix von Havok in Minneapolis. My official contributions to the band include playing on the second Canadian Rifle 7”, and on the purely brilliant “Live in Elgin” tape, which contains, between the out-of-tune musical mayhem of its songs, hands down the finest between-song banter in the history of recorded music.
However, even the good vibes of these stalwart young men could not prevent my downward slide back into comatose depression, and I quit the band melodramatically one morning in November 2007, as they were on their way to pick me up for a short weekend trip to, of all places, Canada. The band immediately reformulated and soldiered on as a three piece. They recorded this LP sometime in early 2009. I’ve regretted my decision to bail out quite a bit in the ensuing time, and it was only upon hearing the record that I realized what a good idea quitting had been: no longer required to actually participate, I am now free to like this band. And like it I do: upbeat, melodic, gruff punk rock– why not? My one complaint would be the last song on side A, which doesn’t do much for me; but even that has an upside. Now, instead of having to have long, convoluted arguments about it in an unheated practice space, I can just skip that one.
