Check out my high school yearbook photo and you’ll find a pimply-faced kid who looks like he was ripped right out of the pages of The Official Preppy Handbook: argyle sweater vest, button-down shirt, Levi’s 501 Jeans and a pair of Sperry Topsiders.
Yeah, back then, you might peg me as a guy who had a collection of Huey Lewis records at home. And I did. But I also had some albums that might surprise you: TSOL, The Dead Kennedys, The Sex Pistols, Stiff Little Fingers, The Damned, The Dickies, Suicidal Tendencies, The Toy Dolls, The Pet Shop Boys… Okay, I never said I was a hardcore punk. I didn’t put glue in my hair or wear a leather jacket with the letters “GBH” painted on the back. I just liked the music.
One time, during a lapse in judgment, I decided to attend a reunion concert for The Damned at the Hollywood Palladium. Not surprisingly, I got a little too close to the mosh pit and almost died. Well, I fell backward, but someone caught me. Had they not, it’s very likely my last vision would’ve been that of the underside of a Doc Marten boot.
So that pretty much ended my punk rock phase. I started listening to jazz fusion for a while (don’t ask), then fell into the Manchester scene with bands like The Smiths, Blur and The Stone Roses. Lately, I’ve been into electronic music, specifically drum n bass. Not that Dieselboy and AK 1200 could ever replace Jello Biafra and Johnny Rotten. But they’re certainly a lot easier to listen to while I’m trying to write my copy.
7 Comments