Some Times I Remember My Youth, My Real Youth

I spend so much of my time trying to find music. Music that will move and shake me. Music that will define moments and era's. I am finding that I prefer to buy and listen to music on vinyl above all else. Over the last 5 years or so I have compiled a huge collection of computer based music. Mainly part to stealing it from friends who are just as obsessed with music. I enjoy finding new bands that push the limits of my senses. Bands and songs that allow you to have space with the music. Allowing you to journey where ever it takes you. Recently I've gone back to some of the music of my youth. The result has been a memorable flight that I thought I'd never take again. A fresh look back on a time that I used to try to forget. A realization of the time and moments that I'll never have back again. Though some of the music of 90s has left my bones. I still hold on to a handful of bands that will always stand the test of time for me. Lately I've been giving them another spin, the result has done my mind much good.

In the 1990's, I was only a kid. Living in a small town that kept a conservative lablel on it's city limit sign. That's actually an understatement. For a teenager trapped in a small town surrounded by people with small ideas. Well, it was easy to feel held back and held down. Back then we had not much else to do but play sports or play music. I won't talk about the days of sports. I will talk about the real thing that got us through. Music. The early part of the decade was giving way to Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Guns n Roses, Rage Against the Machine. These bands were becoming the biggest bands in the world. If you were walking around a high school in that time period you were wearing a tee shirt from one of these bands. At that point in my life my dad would only listen to the Beatles or America. Later I would find out he loved Zepplin and many other classic rock bands. At that time though Mtv was taking over our brains and my mom and dad were nervous about what their two sons were listening to. Well have no fear mom and dad. We were listening to everything you didn't want us to listen to. Just as you disobeyed your parents by listening to the rock n roll of the 70s. Here we were 20 years later doing the same thing. At the age of 15 I was already listening to so much music, music I couldn't even understand at the time. I just new it was taking me to a place I'd never been. Far away from the endless church gatherings I was forced to endure. Far away from the ultra competitive sports teams I used to run with. I can remember being on a school bus with my basketball/baseball team. I was 16 and as we traveled to the game I was listening to my walkman. I had it cranked up of course. Guys on the team would make fun of me for blaring music, go figure. They would look through my cd booklet and laugh at the fact that I had 100 cd's. If you were to flip through that book today here is what you'd find. Guns N Roses, Stone Temple Pilots, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Foo Fighters, Metallica, Megadeth, Oasis, Rage Against the Machine, Alice N Chains, Silverchair, Dr. Dre, Tupac, Snoop doggy dog. Remember, I was a son of a preacher man. Living in a small farm town. This music was my ticket out of town. The sounds, the ideas, the anger, the beauty. It was all right there in my headphones. In my mind. Looking out the window driving through all that farm land. Dreaming of traveling the world.

With all of these bands shaping my youth. I can remember a band that came a long and really changed things for me. One night I was in my room with my brother. We shared a room. Band posters on the wall, super nintendo, big bean bags, fish tank, model air planes hanging from the ceiling. Drums and guitars in the corner. We were watching mtv one night, like most nights. 120 minutes was on. I was 16 and he 17. The new Smashing Pumpkins video for their new album was to premiere. This was a big deal. I'll never forget seeing the Bullet with butterfly wings video. Seeing Billy Corgan down in that hole screaming with all those kids around. The kids trying to get out of the hole. I remember thinking, yeah! that's how I feel right now. And so it began. That album came out and everything changed. It became the sound track to our youth. It seemed to span the whole high school experience for me. Every one I knew was playing that album. It had a feeling to it that you couldn't explain. You just knew it meant some thing to you at the time. If you saw a girl wearing a band tee shirt from that era, it took about 2 seconds to develop a crush on her. I remember the pumpkins came to pensacola that year. I wanted to go more than anything but my dad wouldn't let me go. All of my friends went and I always felt like I missed out on a big part of my youth by not going to that show. Funny thing is I used to play my drums to all these albums that my dad disapproved of. I would put headphones on and play along to them in the same room that he would write his sermons in. Only a few years later my dad really started to be cool about all the music my brother and I listened to. He would even jam songs with us on his guitar. That was a beautiful thing to see my dad jamming Oasis songs with us on his Les Paul. My brother was in a band at that point. They had a practice space near the drummers house. It was an old abandoned house. Called the blue house. They would go and practice there for hours. I would go and sit and listen all day. I would request songs and they would play them. It was insane, being 15 and asking your friends to play your favorite alternative jam and then having them play it exactly as it sounded on the cd. Incerdible. Back then they had big dreams, like most bands do. They definitely had the talent. That's not what matters anymore. No one ever really makes it, it's more about the time that we all shared with that music. We were just kids trying to figure out how to survive in a small town in the middle of nowhere. We would watch horror movies and jam music louder than any one on the block. Like it was yesterday I remember being offered a cigarette for the first time. My brothers band was taking a short break at practice. Mellon Collie playing in the back ground. I went behind the house and coughed my way through my first smoke. What a rebellious act that was for me at the time.

Although I played many sports and went to many a church meeting back then. Those were never really my people. I'm realizing more and more now, the moments of my youth that will always stand out. Those were the moments with all the outcasts, musicians, geeks, playing music, listening to music, wearing flannel haha, driving around in a 87 firebird with the windows down and the tunes up. Those guys were some of the best people I could imagine going with on that journey. When I hear a favorite record from the 90s, from my youth. I will always be transported to those times we had, losing our innocence. Shooting water bottles in the woods. Riding around in the back of a truck. Nights at coon hill. Halloween parties. Camping on the creek bank. Putting band stickers on our lockers. Making fake music videos to our favorite songs(they still exist in an old box in an attic). Lying to my folks about where I'd been all night. Those were some of the best times of my life, and some how with that music playing then and it playing now, I feel it all the way to the bone. We made it out of that town. We made it to a better place for our minds. But while we were in it. Oh how we lived. Not to be forgotten, and not to be replaced, our youth will always be alive in those songs and in those moments.

I'll close with some of my favorite lyrics from one of my favorite albums of the 90s.

And for a moment I lose myself wrapped up in the pleasures of the world. I've journeyed here and there and back again.
But in the same old haunts I still find my friends. Mysteries not ready to reveal. Sympathies I'm ready to return. I'll make the effort, love can last forever. Graceful swans have never toppled to the earth. Tomorrow's just an excuse and you can make it last, forever you. You can make it last, forever you.