browsing all posts in "memories"
my first time
title: My First Time: A Collection of First Punk Show Stories
editor: Chris Duncan
other shit: 181 pages, plus (short) author bios. 2007, AK Press.
rating: 3.5/5 safety pins
I will admit it, guys: There is not a lot I love more in the world than stories about How Punk Rock Saved My Life, and this book has many such stories. Most of them are pretty short, only a page or two, and they’re mostly by people who Do Stuff in punk. They’re in bands (Blag Dalia, John Poddy, Blake Schwarzenbach) or they write books (Michael Azerrad, Chris Walter, George Hurchella), something like that, but some of my favorite ones are by regular joes.
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i have got to leave to find my way
When I found out Bill Berry left REM, I was in my father’s living room. I don’t remember if someone called me, or if I heard it on the radio, or what. It’s even possible I read it online; it was 1997, I had a computer with dial-up and AOL. I stood there and thought about the rumor, the report, the whatever, the thing that told me that one of the band members had said that if one of them ever left the band, REM would break up. And now Bill was leaving, so that was it, right? They were over? I didn’t cry, but only because I was panicking too hard. I got online and refreshed the news obsessively. Were they going to break up? I am pretty sure I did that for three days straight.
I tell that story, such as it is, because Min asked a question on her blog, sort of, about songs and stories and bands. And last week I told her about my sister coming to visit me, and I was wearing an REM t-shirt. My sister laughed because she’d been visiting my mother before she came to Chicago, and my mother has been cleaning out her basement, and had a box of my sister’s old stuff. My sister threw out everything in that box except her REM t-shirt, the one she got in college — she went to UNC in the earlyish 80s, when REM still played the area pretty frequently.
the best game i can name
From the Not A Personal Blog And Yet files, I went to the Winter Olympics earlier this year. I really only remember moments; here are a few of them.
I remember dueling national anthems on the skytrain, being worried the Richmond Olympic Oval was going to come down around me when a Canadian won gold, the crepe stand in Yaletown, the appalled look on Sam’s face whenever I said something so utterly preposterous that the only thing there was to say was “oh my GOD” (I did this often, and mostly on purpose). The dude in line at Ontario house who called a friend and said, “well, there’s an American in this line, but she’s okay.” More cowbell. The kid on his bike with a Canadian flag cape flapping behind him. Looking at my hands, realizing they were swollen and discolored and covered in sores, but twittering something about frostbite before I put on my gloves. The running commentary on the nordic combined team event, provided by American skier Todd Lodwick, standing about six inches away. Being in BC Place for a medal ceremony, thinking it was reasonably loud and awesome when they played the American anthem for Shaun White’s gold, and then standing in awestruck silence as 20,000 people sang ‘O Canada’ and proved me wrong. Wondering how more bobsled people don’t die, because it is fucking terrifying. More cowbell. Sam’s cheerful, “good hustle, team!” as the three of us (her, me, The Dart), hating the world and the mornings in particular, stumbled out of the house at 7am to make it to curling. Freezing once we got there. Feeling like my life depended on how hard I cheered for Canada in the first USA-Canada hockey game, and hoping Gabs did not get us all killed by cheering too loudly for America. Fleeing the premises when the US got that empty-net goal. More cowbell, more cowbell, more cowbell. People on the skytrain platform cheering QUATCHI QUATCHI QUATCHI as I walked by, a giant stuffed Quatchi doll strapped to my back. “Pam, we’re never going to get out of here if you stop to flirt with every Mountie between here and the door.” The sky on that last Sunday, clear blue and beautiful when Canada won that gold in hockey, and there were kids on every street corner draped in maple leaves and cheering; people on their porches waving the flag; cars honking at each other as they passed, cowbells hanging out the windows; pedestrians waving and smiling and dancing; lines of high-fives with strangers as I waded through downtown to get to the airport; the Hip on my ipod playing Fireworks (if there’s a goal that everyone remembers…); grinning at people till my face hurt; laughing, laughing, laughing.
That is all.