elementary tastes

between late elementary school and early middle school my musical tastes had begun to expand in ways that are considered to be pretty routine for a young male. during phooseball outings at james' house, we bathed in blaring music which just faintly masked our vulgar outbursts. (hey, i couldn't help it if my defenders never had enough pledge to respond in time.) through the aftermath which consisted of my twin and i hurling cheaply molded plastic spheres in our best budding pitcher forms, a slew of bands ravaged our pristine virgin ears.

these bands were formed from what could have been considered the depths of a new social movement which could be defined as "grunge". ah, the mere breath of the word or the bands names (which unwillingly were bound and gagged to the term) caused so much despair in parental units; it was always a favorite sight to behold. james had been enlightened by his older brother to the scene which had just bloomed (or decayed) in Seattle, a town seemingly light years away despite the 2 and a half hour commute, which seems to be nothing now that i'm here.

i still remember more about the first time i uttered the poster band's name than when i first heard them play. when I had mentioned that i listened to a band named nirvana, my mother really didn't understand what that meant, but her friend did. the color fell from my mother's friend's face and my mother looked as though she was trying to think of the solution to solving a calculus problem i wouldn't even fathom until high school. james had given me a rebel's outfit in many parent's eyes with the simple touch of a play button. the screeching guitar wails mimicked the piercing shrills of vocal chords strained past their limit seemed to cast a dark shadow over all the parents and their idea of how a small, isolated town should guide their children from the foul, angst filling which begets youth around middle school days.

my favorite by Nirvana was a song called "heart shaped box" which contained lyrics professing to wish to "eat your cancer, when you turn black". to me, for reasons i will most likely never understand, the song stood for romance. sure, freud could spit out a number of reasons for anyone to stretch a meaning so distant from all reason, but this was the element of music; definitions can vary as much as eskimo words for snow and can be as simple and caustic as "shit". i was shocked when many of my friends didn't know the beatles and equally shocked that every single one of them knew who tlc was. Coming up next: the middle (school) ages...