I'll admit it, I'm a thief. The idea for this particular late Saturday night diary has been stolen from deepsouthdoug's diary on what music we each hate the most.
Well, perhaps I should say it has been inspired by that diary, in reverse. That sounds a little nice.
I sit here typing, after a particularly tough week in what has been a very bad year on the personal front. I had a bit of a tough time as a teenager as well, for a similar family reason.
In order to keep my house in order and a bit of a sense of humor as well, I have sometimes had to find a way to sort of artificially put me in a good mood. A quick fix, if you will. As my Massachusetts suburb did not have any heroin dealers of which I was aware, and being the music nerd that I truly am, there have instead always been some go-to songs that never failed, and still never fail, to put me in a chipper mood. (more)
The first song that ever filled the function for me was most definitely "Daydream Believer" by the Monkees. It still makes me happy to hear it. I especially enjoy it if I get to hear it from the beginning, when Davy Jones says "What number is this Jim?" Numerous voices yell back "7 A!" to which Davy replies, "Ok. No need to get excited, man. Just cuz I'm short, I know."
I got a bit older, started to listen to punk music in middle and high school. Ska never really did it for me, but there were exceptions. One of these was the song "Little Bitch" by The Specials. To say I love this song, and that it can lift me from a self-pity party in as little time as it takes the kick off "One, Two!" would be putting it lightly. It's also one of the few songs that always makes me want to drink. Even sans several cocktails.
One, two
If you ever hear a noise in the night your body starts to sweat
It shakes and shivers in fright
You go and sleep with your mother, she hates your guts
She knows that you love her so she holds you tight
All through the night, until the broad daylight
And when she doesn't come home you have to sleep alone
Then you wet your bed, and I think that's sad
For a girl of nineteen it's more than sad, it's obscene
One, two
And your girlfriend sweet little seventeen
She's got her layered hair, and her flared jeans
You know what that means? She's just a little queen
She shares your London flat, she thinks that London's where it's at, although it stinks
And when it rains you wear your hat, and your plum coloured PVC wet look maxi-mac
You tie your ginger hair back in a bun
You're the ugliest creature under the sun
one, two, go
And you think it's about time that you died, and I agree, so you decide on suicide
You tried but you never quite carried it off
Lyrics
You only wanted to die in order to show off
And if you think you're gonna bleed all over me, you're even wronger than you'd normally be
And the only things you want to see are kitsch
The only thing you want to be is rich
Your little pink up-pointed nose begins to twitch
I know, you know, you're just a little bitch
One, two
Punk music continued to provide my bits of guaranteed musical uplifts. I still remember on the day of my biological mother's most, er, significant suicide attempt when I was in high school, after the cops and ambulance left and the house was empty, I went into the library room where my CD and record player were and played "My Brain Hurts" by Screeching Weasel.
time gets wasted every day i watch the minutes tick away my brain is melting like a chocolate ice cream bar like characters on tv these people look like maggots to me and i wonder what the hell is wrong with me milk fed little beauty queen she's straight out of a magazine she sits beside me breathing different air than me the perfect generation sees that i'm infected with disease and everything just crumbles and there's nothing left if i wanna do something right i gotta do it myself or someone else will fuck it up it isn't all black and white and now it's time to stop and figure out reality no one knows what they're talking about if what they're talking about don't making any sense to me i gotta figure it out cause i don't want something to believe in
And, despite what the lyrics "look like" from the outside, it made me feel a lot better.
There were plenty of droll little numbers of the punk sort. "Bob Barker Is Innocent," "Millard Fillmore, Last of the Whigs," and "Fuck You, Norway" by local Boston legends the Showcase Showdown were songs that put me in a tremendously good mood, even if at this point no one has ever heard of them. I remember getting a kick out of how punk rock kids woud raise their fist and shout along to "Millard Fillmore! Last of the Whigs!" as if they were the powerful political lyrics of somebody like Crass.
I had my moments as a whiny little suburban boy, as the girl I "loved" didn't love me back. The pop punk of that era (mid-90s) always had the answer. There's really nothing like a good anti-love song when things aren't going well on the teenage crush scene. Exeter, New Hampshire's own The Queers cornered the market in that department...heavily ripping off the Ramones all the while.
"Teenage Bonehead": "My folks had me committed just two weeks ago/my best friend ran off with my girl, those two damn bozos/oh, don't you know it hurts/but hey she ain't the first, she ain't the first."
Or "Love Love Love": "I'm shattered, yeah/I'm cracked up, yeah/and I'm never ever smiling again./I didn't like her anyway/she talked all night and talked all day/I didn't like her anyway she talked all night and talked the day away/Trouble, trouble! It was all she was looking for./So I look at the girls who pass me by/and all the jerks who catch their eye/you know it makes me so sick, yeah!/Here I sit with no one near, cryin' in my beer/love, love, love just ain't a game I play, oh no! Love, love, love ain't just a game I play."
Queers songs such as "I Hate Everything," "Teenage Gluesniffer," and "Born To Do Dishes" perhaps speak for themselves.
The Ramones provided their fare share of songs to make me want to skip around. Some were good, or "classic" Ramones..."Pinhead," "Blitzkrieg Bop," "Oh Oh, I Love Her So," "Rockaway Beach," "Do You Remember Rock 'n Roll Radio?" Some were crappy, hilarious Ramones. "Pet Cemetary," I'm looking in your general direction.
I moved on from punk at the end of high school. I was lucky enough to have shared a high school with the greatest of all nerd bands, They Might Be Giants. Of course, the Johns went to my high school about 20 years before I did, but no matter. They once played in our school assembly when I was in middle school. Clever, a bit funny, and poppy...a great combination to find those happy feelings, to remind you that life is absurd and ocassionally amusing, and that even nasty moments can't take that away.
Make a hole with a gun perpendicular
To the name of this town in a desk-top globe
Exit wound in a foreign nation
Showing the home of the one this was written for
My apartment looks upside down from there
Water spirals the wrong way out the sink
And her voice is a backwards record
It's like a whirlpool and it never ends
Ana Ng and I are getting old
And we still haven't walked in the glow of each other's majestic presence
Listen Ana hear my words
They're the ones you would think I would say if there was a me for you
All alone at the '64 World's Fair
Eighty dolls yelling "Small girl after all"
Who was at the Dupont Pavilion?
Why was the bench still warm? Who had been there?
Or the time when the storm tangled up the wire
To the horn on the pole at the bus depot
And in the back of the edge of hearing
These are the words the voice was repeating:
Ana Ng and I are getting old
And we still haven't walked in the glow of each other's majestic presence
Listen Ana hear my words
They're the ones you would think I would say if there was a me for you
When I was driving once I saw this painted on a bridge:
"I don't want the world, I just want your half"
They don't need me here, and I know you're there (don't need me)
Where the world goes by like the humid air (world goes by)
And it sticks like a broken record
Everything sticks like a broken record
Everything sticks until it goes away (it goes home)
And the truth is, we don't know anything (don't know)
Ana Ng and I are getting old
And we still haven't walked in the glow of each other's majestic presence
Listen Ana hear my words
They're the ones you would think I would say if there was a me for you
Ana Ng and I are getting old
And we still haven't walked in the glow of each other's majestic presence
Listen Ana hear my words
They're the ones you would think I would say if there was a me for you
Ana Ng and I are getting old
And we still haven't walked in the glow of each other's majestic presence
Listen Ana hear my words
They're the ones you would think I would say if there was a me for you
There were others. Some always worked like a charm, some came on strong and faded with time. "Sunnyside of the Street," by the Pogues. "Pump It Up" by Elvis Costello. "Magnificent Seven" by The Clash. "Dancing With Myself" by Billy Idol.
Then, there's this one. A semi-obscure New Wave group from California, The Little Girls, wrote a song called "The Earthquake Song." It never fails me. If a song is--at it's very essense--non-ironically stupid enough, while having a great melody, I'm sold.
Flash!
There's gonna be an earthquake in this town
There will be houses falling down
The fire hydrants will blow up
The streets will crack, the pipes will pop
It's gonna kill my mom and dad
They are the only folks I have
But they better not blame me cuz it's not my fault!
It's always fun livin' in L.A.
Always a good show on somewhere
But what can I say?
There's gonna be an earthquake I can't miss it no way
I'm gonna run, run, run
We're havin' so much fun
Cuz there's a building chasing me
Sucks mack! I just fell in a crack!
And now I'm part of the debris!
"The Earthquake Song" not only makes me tremendously happy, but proud to be an American. I may be wrong, but I doubt there's a country on G-d's green earth, or any life form on any other planet, that could come up with something as wonderfully stupid as that.
Any ideas? What works for you? Builds up your spirits? Makes you want to dance? Makes you realize life ain't half bad as long as your breathing and the healing power of music--even stupid, silly music--can still do the trick?