My friend Ryan gave me a book a couple of years ago called Several Short Sentences About Writing, by a dude named Verlyn Klinkenborg. I may’ve mentioned it on this blog before, but that was maybe on Facebook instead, or maybe it was just in my head. The book discusses the importance of the humble sentence. It aims to get the reader/writer to think about each sentence as almost an entity unto itself. No sentence is any more important than the other, because the sentence really is all there is. Without the sentence, there would be no paragraph. There would be no literature. It’s an interesting book, and it’s helped me become more confident in my writing. I remain a bit embarrassed about making it public, yet I persist in the practice.
Before I go on, I gotta get this outta the way: Verlyn Klinkenborg! Whatta name! I recommend shouting “Klinkenbooooooooorg!” as you shake your fist angrily at a cold, empty, uncaring sky. It’s fun.
So anyway, I was showering earlier, listening to Drug Church and shaving my head, as I often do after work, and I started thinking about the fact that I practically never sit down and write, even though I love to write, and even though I know that writing makes me feel better. Writing has always made me feel better, so why don’t I do it more often? Like for real?
When tired is the entire sum, that shit just makes you tiresome.
But I was talking about Several Short Sentences About Writing, by Verlyn Klinkenborg. I noticed the book on the shelf while I was getting dressed after my shower, and I was reminded of the humble sentence, and I crammed that memory together with my shower quandary and made a regular ol Frankenstein’s monster of a realization that I should sit down and write a few sentences, and see where it goes.
So far, right here.
I’ve been working in foodservice for almost 32 years now. (For the record, that’s 66.6% of my life so far spent preparing and/or delivering food to people. That’s both metal as fuck and a stone cold bummer.) For almost the entirety of my history as an employed human being, I’ve been keeping a journal in some form or another. I am in possession of dozens of my journals from as far back as late high school/early college. Sometimes I look through them. The reasons vary. One time I’ll be moved by nostalgia, one of my greatest enemies. The next, I’ll be in search of something hilarious I remember writing down, or the date of a concert. Maybe I can’t figure out what to write about, and I need some inspiration. It’s happened before.
Sometimes I’ll find a cool doodle I made, complete with song lyrics. I’m not sure what’s goin on here, other than a self-portrait of sorts, but I like it.
In this case, the song is “Disbelieve” by Drag the River.
Goddamn, whatta band!
A common subject in so very many of those journal entries is the fact that I don’t write often enough, and that I don’t wanna be working in foodservice when I’m 50. It’s recently come to my attention that I’m almost fifty years old. The way I figure it, in today’s economy, and going off the premise that we have at least two years left as a civilization, I’ve got maybe three options for not working in foodservice when I’m fifty goddamn years old. Here they are forthwith, in no particular order:
Become dead.
Become rich (preferably as fuck).
Get into management (likely still foodservice, less standing, more meetings).
Thing is, as much as I dislike the foodservice industry, I’ve disliked every other industry I’ve worked in more. Retail, construction…I guess that’s pretty much it. I did some screen printing work for about a month in my early twenties. I enjoyed it, and my boss was cool, but I quit, on account of I didn’t like having to drive 30 minutes each way to work a second part-time job when my primary part-time job was driving around delivering pizza all night. What I’m saying is that where employment is involved, my current situation could be worse. It has been worse, even in the last couple of years.
So the new life plan I came up with in the shower is to keep workin for The Man and payin the bills until I can figure out how to get rich as fuck, and meanwhile to stop thinkin and talkin about writing, and sit the fuck down and write as much as I can, every chance I get, whether I show it to anyone else or not, just like I used to do all the time. Because I’m a writer, goddamnit, and I always have been. At best, I’ll write something I can feel comfortable sharing. At worst, I’ll feel better afterward.
“Remember, a writer writes, always.” – Larry Donner
That’s all I got for now. Thanks for reading. Tell your friends. And listen to Drag the River. You’re welcome.
I’ve mentioned this many times over the past few months, both on this “esteemed” blog and out loud, with my mouth, but I am currently in the throes of a full-bodied, months-long obsession with a band called Drug Church. I’m gonna mention it again right now. As of this moment, I’m also planning to write a little bit about a TV show called Corner Gas, which I’ve also mentioned here and IRL before, but not nearly as much as I’ve mentioned Drug Church. I also wanna maybe talk about the bizarre nature of existence, but I might not be ready for that yet. Anyway, here’s a Drug Church song.
Take advice from a pro: nothing works.
I’m gonna start here: the way I make a living is, I help run a pretty large operation in my field of expertise. It is far from the worst job I’ve ever had. The benefits are practically unmatched in my industry, and the pay, while absolutely not as much as it should be, is decent for this town. Several days a year, I don’t have to work very hard at all, and I get a shitload of PTO. I work with several friends (including two of my best ones), and many of my workplace proximity associates are fun and/or pleasant to be around for 4-10 hours a day, 4-5 days a week. Jobwise, it’s about the best I can hope for at this point in my life.
The Problem is this: several of my workplace proximity associates are significantly less fun and/or more unpleasant to be around for even 4-10 minutes a day, yet I continue to find myself having to be around them for 4-10 hours a day, 4-5 days a week. I’m talking fuckwits of the highest order. Complete baked potatoes when it comes to personality and/or work ethic and/or basic intelligence and/or the ability to carry on a conversation without complaining about some goddamn thing or another.
No offense to baked potatoes. If I am one thing, it’s a man who loves baked potatoes. About once a week we’ll have baked potatoes (aka Big Ol Taters) for dinner, and they’re fuckin delicious. What you do, see, is you get one Big Ol Tater per person (approximately 1 pound each)(to be clear, the potatoes should be approximately 1 pound each, not the people). Scrub em up real nice and either pat em dry or let em air dry for a bit. Approximately one hour before dinner time, preheat your oven to 425°, then rub each potato with some cooking oil, then rub some kosher salt and cracked black pepper on each one. Pop em directly on the middle rack of your very hot oven and bake for 1 hour. I put a small baking pan lined with parchment paper and aluminum foil directly under the potatoes to catch the dripping oil. After an hour, check for doneness by jabbing a toothpick into the fattest part of each potato. If the toothpick goes all the way in with minimal resistance, your delicious baked potato is ready to spruce up. I like to top mine with butter, more cracked black pepper, shredded cheddar cheese, steamed broccoli, more shredded cheddar cheese, sour cream, and salsa, but really your imagination is the only limit when it comes to toppings. You could plop some chili on there, or some cheese sauce, or pretty much anything you can think of. It’s a hearty, satisfying, super-easy meal, and it’s cheap as hell to boot.
But I was talking about my shitty co-workers. I know that shitty co-workers aren’t a new thing. If I am one thing, other than a man who loves baked potatoes, it’s a man who has had his fair share of jobs.1 As such, I’ve also had had my fair share of un-fun/unpleasant co-workers, but here’s the thing about my current “un-” situation (situat-un?): this is by far the largest place I’ve ever worked, both in terms of size of the company, and in terms of sheer number of coworkers. I’m no mathematician, and I admittedly have always had difficulty understanding fractions and decimals, but I know enough to know that that’s gonna result in the largest percentage of coworkers being absolute chucklefucks that I’ve ever experienced before, and friends, I’m here to tell you that it is dumb.
The company being as big as it is means, among other things, that getting rid of incompetent and/or inept and/or entitled and/or lazy and/or combative dickheads can be a months-to-years long process which requires an endless stream of “Conversations” and “Coaching Sessions” and written documentation, even when every single person around them can see that those incompetent and/or inept and/or entitled and/or lazy and/or combative dickheads should never have even made it past their probationary employment, let alone still be employed some 5, 10, 15, or more years later, constantly crying victim when their incompetence and/or ineptitude and/or entitlement and/or laziness and/or combativeness is called to task.
Just some all-around contemptible people.
I also work with the largest quantity of Loud Talkers per capita to be found in the entirety of my employment history. And if I am one thing, other than a man who loves baked potatoes and has had his fair share of jobs, it’s a man with sensory issues who has a real hard time with loud talking, especially when it involves more than two people at a time, which it almost always does when I’m at work.
The lazy asshole thing combined with the loud talking thing means that, among other things, I lose a little bit more of my already fragile mind every single day I work. I don’t like losing my mind. It’s the second healthiest thing about me, after my beard.
Here’s what I’m getting at: Drug Church helps me deal with all that shit. I listen to them on the way to work, and I listen to them in my mind while I’m at work, and I listen to them on the way home from work, and most days I listen to them at home after work, too, except when I’m watching Corner Gas, but sometimes during commercials, and so very many of their songs speak to the way I feel 90% of the time.
They are one of five things keeping me sane right now, the other four being my amazing wife, my amazing friends, Corner Gas, and Ginger, the groundhog who hangs out in our backyard and eats clover. Here’s another one of their songs.
I hear your story, those bitter thoughts invading.
Corner Gas is a Canadian sitcom that originally aired from 2004-2009 on CTV. It takes place in the fictional town of Dog River, Saskatchewan, where Brent (played by comedian Brent Butt2, who also created the series) is the proprietor of Corner Gas, which sits at the intersection of two roads in the middle of the prairie. Lacey runs The Ruby, a cafe/diner that shares a wall with Corner Gas. Hilarity ensues. All the people in town are either kinda dumb in an endearing way, or too smart for their own good (also in an endearing way). It’s very cleverly written, the cast is great, and the show is just hilarious. You can watch the whole series for free with ads on YouTube. You might be able to stream the whole thing without commercials somewhere as well, but not on any of my services.
Oscar is a strong contender for my favorite character. He reminds me of my dear, departed dad, if my dear, departed dad had been an idiot.
I got tickets yesterday to see Drug Church live in May. It’s a headlining show, and I’m not sure I could possibly be more excited. Well, if they were playing here so I wouldn’t have to drive to Indianapolis, I would be more excited, but I’m still so fucking pumped. It’s a newer venue called Turntable in the Broad Ripple neighborhood, located in the space where Cracker’s Comedy Club used to be. My friend Lori saw a show there a while back and said it was a cool space, and I trust her judgement.
This is gonna be one for the history books.
Here’s another one of their songs.
One man per crucifix, form a line, your turn is coming, just give it time.
I gotta wrap this up for now. Don’t worry, I still have plenty more to write about Drug Church. Probably about Corner Gas, too. Heck, I have almost three full seasons to go still, plus there’s a feature-length follow-up film (Corner Gas: The Movie) and an animated series (Corner Gas Animated)! I still wanna talk about the bizarre nature of existence at some point too, but I guess I’m not quite ready for that, other than to say that the nature of existence is completely fucking bizarre.
Here’s one final Drug Church song for this outing. It’s the first one I ever heard, and it’s still one of my very favorites. There’s a 92% chance that the opening guitar lick is in my head at any given moment.
Ever been to a county fair Where all the games are scams Now apply what you know To all the things you don’t Politics and business Most love many friendships Throw until your tendons tear But those bottles stay weighted
Goodwill then hard stops Slow learner gets taught My teachers tried, my teachers lost (There were principals involved)
Mishandled, and robbed They rubbed my feelings raw But now I’ve put my glasses on
Brings it all into focus Slow to hear, late to notice But now I’m on a constant watch Cynical not bitterness Love my girl and friendships I forgive all of life’s hassles Flat tires to thieving bosses Overdrafts to cheating exes
But don’t make me remember If I don’t have to
Goodwill then hard stops Slow learner gets taught My teachers tried, my teachers lost (There were principles involved)
Mishandled, and robbed They rubbed my feelings raw But now I’ve put my glasses on
Apologies Are a wedding night fling Sometimes it’s best to exit quietly
Apologies Doesn’t quite wash it clean Sorry is a sad and sorry thing
Thanks for reading. It means a lot.
A quick count indicates I’m currently on my 21st job, with a strong possibility that I’m forgetting at least one. In addition to Drug Church and Corner Gas, I’ve also talked a lot hither and thither about my absolute disdain for the entire concept “working for a living”, especially when the purpose of that work is to make more money for someone who already has more money than me. That’s a topic for another post(s), though. ↩︎
If that’s not a name destined for a life in comedy, then I don’t even know what’s real. ↩︎
Coffee poured, water refreshed, bladder emptied, I was seconds away from putting on my Drug Church playlist and opening up my laptop to see what came out of me. Business as usual many a solo day off. And then I noticed the birds. And I don’t mean in a “look at those fat ol’ mourning doves!” kind of way, I notice birds all the time, I fucking love birds. To use the parlance of our times, I fw birds hard.
Frfr.
When I say I noticed the birds, what I mean is I noticed the birds, like in a profound way. I was absolutely enraptured by the tweets and twits and coos and chirps. I even started picking out specific conversations between some birds. I can’t understand exactly what they’re saying, of course, but I assure you, they’re all very horny right now.
What I’m saying is that for the first time in a while, I am fully listening to the sounds coming from outside my windows. Also, I can’t remember the last time I wrote without music.
The thing is that most days when I open the house up, I’ve already got music playing, so I don’t notice the sounds from outside as much. And up until recently, I haven’t much felt like getting outside. I like what cold weather does for my allergies, but I don’t care so much for the seasonal depression. I might choose both over summer, though. If I am one thing, I am a sweaty man. I come from a long line of sweaters, and I’ve come to accept it, but I refuse to like it. Going outside during the dog days is a waking nightmare for me.
I digress. For now, I’m sitting and writing, as I often do on my solo day off, and as usual, I’m not sure where this is gonna end up. The possibility of me not finishing it will persist until I’ve finished it. Who knows whether I’ll share it.
As I said, my writing routine was broken because I noticed nature for the first time in a while, which in turn was brought about by me not playing music, which is a rarity for me. I wasn’t playing music because I’d just finished an episode of Corner Gas, which is a very funny Canadian sitcom that you can watch for free with extremely loud commercials on YouTube.
Seriously, I remain anxious throughout every episode, because the commercials are jarringly loud. The show is totally worth it though.
That’s like 7,000 metric.
Anyway, I was opening the windows, and was starting to consider what I might write about. I figured I’d probably watch another episode of Corner Gas before I got down to the actual writing, but then I got a text from a friend, asking if I had time to talk, which meant talking on the phone, which is even more of a rarity for me than not playing music in the house, but…
When a friend asks for help, you help em.
We talked about grief and depression and anger and fear and anxiety, and we laughed, and we cried, I needed it just as much as she did. When we finished talking was just before I started my writing ritual, which you may recall from the beginning of this thing is when I noticed the sexy avian drama going on outside my house, which led to my decision to sit down and write without music for the first time in over 20 years. Because the sounds of nature are the music, man!
Sounds like somebody’s livin for his car!
I don’t know what I’m hoping to accomplish here, but I do know I’ve also heard two light rain showers start and stop since I started writing, and that’s been pretty cool. The light of the overcast day is perfect in my house right now, and even the gigantic roll-off dumpster parked across the cul-de-sac in front of the Trash Neighbors’ yard can’t ruin my day. At least it’s blocking the view of their shitty wooden fence. God I hope this means they’re moving out. I’m meandering all over the place here. Focus!
After the phone call, I sat down with the intention of writing a thing about grief and depression and anger and fear and anxiety (which would hopefully make you laugh, and maybe even cry), and then I was gonna use some kind of as-yet discovered writerly skill to deftly weave that together with a thing I’ve had brewing for awhile about a band called Drug Church, but I’ve clearly let the whole thing get away from me, and I haven’t even started talking about Drug Church yet. I’ve gone off the rails on my crazy train of thought, if you will, and as a result, I plumb forgot every single remotely humorous thing I’ve ever had to say about grief, depression, anger, fear, and anxiety. Whatever it was, I like to think it was profound. I’m certain it would’ve been long-winded as hell.
I guess I’ll talk about Drug Church, then. I’ve mentioned them on this blog before, and I’m not gonna get into the band’s backstory today, because this chair is starting to become uncomfortable, and I’ve already spent a pretty stupid amount of time not saying anything, but here are some facts about Drug Church:
They’ve been a band for approximately 15 years now, and they’ve released 5 full-length albums, three EPs, a demo, some singles, and a really fun cover of “Someday I Suppose” by The Mighty Mighty Bosstones.
They have a shitload of live performances available on YouTube, and they range from amazing to incredible.
Their live set from Louder Than Life 2024 was an all-timer for me. I’ve seen hundreds and hundreds of bands live over the past 30-odd years, and I’ve forgotten way more bands than I remember, but that Drug Church set was one of the very best.
There is plenty of precedent for me becoming completely enamored with a band, album, and/or song to the point of annoyance. A less polite person might call it an obsession. I certainly would. Drug Church has grabbed me and held on like few others before them. The sounds they make are so unique, the lyrics are really excellent, and I simply cannot get enough of it. Every member of the band is doing what they do perfectly.
With most of my prior obsessions, I managed to start balancing my listening out with other bands, albums, and songs after a month or so, but I’ve been listening to Drug Church almost exclusively for like nine or ten months now. I try to listen to other things, and I have succeeded for up to two days in a couple of instances, but those other bands, albums, and songs are just visitors. Drug Church is currently the sole occupant of my musical bandwidth. To quote the t-shirt I wish someone would make for me…
Looks like a Gildan.
I’ve said it before (even somewhere on this blog once, I think), but they’re the very best nineties hardcore/post-hardcore band that never existed in the nineties, and if I am one thing (other than a sweaty man), I am a man who loves nineties hardcore and post-hardcore bands. “Unlicensed Guidance Counselor”, from their superlative 2018 album Cheer, is an excellent example of why Drug Church, to paraphrase a t-shirt that currently exists, is already number one, and why you shouldn’t bother to try harder:
A petty grievance pushed you to violence Tough break and now you’re facing some charges
If you live long enough you’ll do something wrong enough that you feel shame enough to say enough’s enough
Push your sister’s boyfriend down the stairs Steal forty dollars from the till There’s a learning process here
Something often lost: life is process not product Gotta break some bones to have them set proper Small money fight so you set a fire Space was occupied so man dies there
If you live long enough you’ll do something wrong enough that you feel shame enough to say enough’s enough
Push yourself down the stairs Steal tens of thousands from your band God he’s indifferent and nobody cares
Here’s your life advice
The shirt makes an excellent point.
Here’s a live performance of the song, so you can get an idea how entertaining their live shows are. Don’t worry, I queued the video up so you don’t have to. You really should just watch the whole thing, though, and you undoubtedly should catch them live in person if you get the chance.
Everybody looks fuckin stupid doin a stupid thing.
I gotta wrap this up. Sheila just pulled in the garage, which made me realize I forgot to take a shower. I’ll write more about Drug Church again soon. I might even share it here. Thanks for reading.
Note: I wrote this on June 17, 2013, and originally posted it on an old music-related blog that I kept with my homeboy Travis (from back in the day). Neither of us posted anything else on that blog after this, for whatever reason. Probably because we knew there was no way we could top this brilliant piece of music commentary (ha!).
On January 11, 2014, I started my heavy music-themed blog Stay Heavy, and on August 8, 2016, in a severe fit of misguided ambition, I decided to start another blog calledTV Party Tonight, wherein I was gonna write exclusively about TV theme songs. I edited this thing and posted it there, and then never even started to write anything else for that blog.Probably because I knew there was no way I could top this brilliant piece of music commentary (ha!).
Last night I remembered that it exists, and I decided to plop it up here as well. It has been, once again, slightly edited for coherence, grammar, and style.
It is my belief that television theme songs are a vastly under-appreciated genre of music. The very best TV theme songs set the tone for the program you’re about to watch, and often they set up the basic premise of the show. Several of my all-time favorite songs are actually TV theme songs, and I thought I’d take a moment to lay out my All-Time Top Ten Television Theme Songs (Sitcom Edition), for your perusal. Now, without further ado…
10. “As Long As We Got Each Other” (Growing Pains – 1985-1992) – This is a fine example of a theme song being superior to its show. If I never saw Growing Pains again, I’d be fine with that, but I sincerely love the sappy sentimentality of this theme, sung by pop singers B.J. “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head” Thomas and Jennifer “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” Warnes.
The best is ready to begin.
9. “Without Us” (Family Ties – 1982-1989) – I kind of enjoyed Family Ties when I was a kid, mostly because I thought Nick was funny, and because I thought Mallory was foxy, but it was a little bit over my head with the political and social themes. My sisters watched it pretty often (I suspect they were at least a little bit interested in watching that dreamboat Michael J. Fox). The theme song , sung by Johnny Mathis and Deniece “Let’s Hear It For the Boy” Williams, has resonated with me since the first time I heard it, and it has a sappiness similar to the Growing Pains theme, but it also feels more sincere than the Growing Pains theme.
Sha-la-la-laaaaaaaaaaaaaa.
8. “Night Court” (Night Court – 1984-1992) This instantly recognizable instrumental is pretty much always on repeat somewhere in my brain. I still find the show to be immensely enjoyable too, though it is a bit dated (existing from 1984 to 1992 will do that to you, I suppose). I love that the first 8 seconds kinda make you think you might be about to watch a gritty cop drama, then the title screen appears, and the song takes off, and by the end, you’re ready for some laughs, by golly.
Man, whatta show!
7. “Yo! Home to Bel-Air” (The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air – 1990-1996) – This show is something of an anomaly in my life, because it was one of only two TV shows starring a rapper that my dad and I enjoyed together (the other one was Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, obviously). We didn’t have cable television when I was growing up, so our programming choices were more limited than many families’ at the time, but I really think my dad would’ve watched this show even if we’d had cable, just because he thought it was funny. He didn’t laugh often, but when he did, it was genuine. This lesser-known, longer version of the theme song was used in the first three episodes, and is a good bit more awesome. The song was co-written by Will Smith and Quincy Jones. Spoiler alert: this is not Mr. Jones’ only appearance on this list.
On the playground is where I spent most of my days.
6. “WKRP in Cincinnati” (WKRP in Cincinatti – 1978-1982) – I think this show is funny, but as it went off the air when I was five years old, I’ve only ever really seen it in syndication. My cousin Jason, who is two years older than me, had a major thing for Loni Anderson when we were kids, so I watched it with him occasionally, and it’s one of the first TV theme songs that I can remember loving. It’s very much a product of its time.
Just maybe think of me once in a while.
5. “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Me Now” (Perfect Strangers – 1986-1993) – This is another show that my cousin liked more than I did, and another example of a theme song being better than its source program. I certainly enjoy Perfect Strangers much more than I enjoy Growing Pains, but I still can’t watch more than a couple of episodes without getting bored. The theme song, however, is uplifting and inspiring, and it’s a lot of fun to sing along with.
It’s my life and my dream.
4. “Where Everybody Knows Your Name” (Cheers – 1981-1993) – There’s very little I can say about this song or the show. Both are absolutely classic, and if you disagree, well I hope you enjoy being wrong. It was co-written (with Judy Hart Angelo) and sung by Gary Portnoy, who also co-wrote the theme from Mr. Belvedere (“According to Our New Arrival”) and the theme from Punky Brewster (“Every Time I Turn Around”), both of which are in my All-Time Top Twenty-Five Television Theme Songs (Sitcom Edition).
Wouldn’t you like to get away?
3. “It Takes Diff’rent Strokes” (Diff’rent Strokes – 1978-1986) – Before Thicke of the Night and Growing Pains, TV’s Alan Thicke co-wrote TV theme songs. I really enjoy singing this one in the shower, and sometimes the missus and I will spontaneously break out in a stirring duet. This show is probably one of my earliest comedic influences; I thought Arnold Jackson was the absolute height of comedy when I was 5 years old.
Everybody’s got a special kind of story.
2. “The Simpsons Main Title Theme” (The Simpsons – 1989 – ∞) – “I gave [Danny] Elfman what I called a ‘flavors’ tape, featuring the kind of sound I wanted for The Simpsons theme. The tape included The Jetsons theme, selections from Nino Rota’s Juliet of the Spirits, a Remington electric shaver jingle by Frank Zappa, some easy-listening music by Esquivel, and a teach-your-parrot-to-talk record. Elfman gave it a listen and said ‘I know exactly what you’re looking for.’ A month later we were recording the now-famous Simpsons theme on the 20th Century Fox lot with a huge orchestra.” – Matt Groening [from the liner notes to The Simpsons: Songs in the Key of Springfield (1997)]
You can really hear the teach-your-parrot-to-talk record in the bones of this song.
1. “The Streetbeater” (Sanford and Son – 1972-1977) – If Quincy Jones had never written another song in his life, he would still be one of the greatest songwriters of all time, because he wrote the theme from Sanford and Son. This show went off the air just under one month before I was born, but my older brother watched it all time in late-night syndication, and I watched it with him, at first because I thought he was cool, and I wanted to do whatever he was doing, but eventually I realized how fucking hilarious the show is, and it became an all-timer. I instantly loved the theme song, and I still love both the song and the show just as much as I ever did. This is, without a doubt, one of my All-Time Top Twenty Favorite Songs (Any Genre), and I could listen to it for days. My super-awesome wife and I were introduced at our wedding reception to this song.
Almost certainly the most perfect 50 seconds you’ll ever experience.
And here’s the full-length version, because you can literally never hear “The Streetbeater” enough times, even if you lived to be 382 years old.
Certainly among the most perfect 3 minutes and 5 seconds you’ll ever experience.
So that’s it – my personal All-Time Top Ten Television Theme Songs (Sitcom Edition). The themes from BarneyMiller, Fish (both of which were co-written by Jack Elliot, who also wrote the theme from Night Court), The Jeffersons, Good Times, Three’s Company, and M*A*S*H all fought valiantly for a slot in the Top Ten, but were ultimately bested by the rock-solid lineup you see above. I’d be interested to know your thoughts on my picks, and on TV theme songs in general. Leave a comment, why don’t you?
This brings us to the end of the original piece. Thanks for reading. For the record, I’m still interested in your favorite TV theme songs.
NOTE: I started writing this on my old heavy-music-themed blog, Stay Heavy, back in 2018. I abandoned it for reasons unknown, and today I was reminded of its existence. I sat down to tackle Volume 5 of my “Old-Ass Mix Tape” series, but I wasn’t feeling it, so I poked around a few folders marked “Drafts” in search of some “inspiration” when I happened upon this. I copied and pasted it here as I left it, and then I added an ending of sorts, and made a few slight revisions (more specifically, I fixed some links and cleaned up some questionable stylistic choices).
Speaking of questionable stylistic choices.
_______________________________
Regular readers of this blog may be familiar with a few of the things that, in the words of the late Laura Palmer, really light my F-I-R-E when it comes to heavy music. Those things, in no particular order, are:
Riffs – It doesn’t have to be metal to be heavy, but the heavier it is, the more I love it. Fat-bottomed riffs, you my rockin’ world go ’round.
Unconventional vocals – This one isn’t as easy to define, but I know it when I hear it. Sean Killian of legendary Bay Area thrash metal band Vio-Lence is perhaps my most often cited example of a completely unique vocalist with a weirdo style that I just can’t goddamn get enough of.
Emotion – I’m a sucker for a band (metal or otherwise) that isn’t afraid to wear its collective heart on its figurative sleeve. If showing emotion is metal enough for Ronnie James Dio (RIP), it’s metal enough for me.
[horrifying shrieking intensifies]
Regular readers may also know that I’m a fan of punk rock and hardcore (especially 1990’s hardcore), and very careful readers may even know that I dipped my toes into the emo waters of the mid-to-late 1990’s. I don’t swing in the direction of the latter quite so much anymore, but sometimes nothing will soothe my restless brain or my jangled nerves quite like The Promise Ring.
All of this jibber-jabber leads me to the focus of today’s post: a melodic hardcore-ish/pop-punk-ish/emo-ish band called Boxer. They released a single full-length album 27 years ago and broke up one year later. Practically no one has ever heard of them, but they left an indelible mark on the heart and mind of this guy right here, and I’m here to talk about them.
Available information regarding the band is scant at best (they don’t even have a Wikipedia page), but here are the facts that I was able to cobble together via some internet research:
Boxer formed in Boston in October 1995. The original line-up consisted of David Vicini on vocals, William Kerr on bass, Jeremy McDowell on guitar, and Chris Pennie on drums.
McDowell and Pennie met while enrolled at the Berklee College of Music, and both of them dropped out of school in order to commit 100% to Boxer.
Boxer were the first band signed to then-new punk label Vagrant Records, and their sole recorded output, 1998’s The Hurt Process, was the first full-length album released by Vagrant. According to an interview with Vicini, the band “wanted to sign to a punk label and not a hardcore label, because hardcore kids don’t seem to listen to punk rock, but punk rock kids’ll listen to hardcore.”
Pennie soon began playing drums with The Dillinger Escape Plan, and left Boxer after the release of The Hurt Process. He was replaced by Nathan Shay, who previously played with emo legends The Get-Up Kids.
The band also added a second guitarist (I was unable to find a name), went on tour, worked on some new songs, and had plans for a second album, but then everything seemingly went to shit for some reason.
I suppose you’re wondering about the album itself. If you’re familiar with the defunct New Jersey melodic hardcore band Lifetime (and you should be), you’re headed in the right direction, especially with regard to Vicini’s vocals. However, Boxer is very much its own animal.
The band is tight as hell, and they sound like they’ve been playing together for a lifetime (no pun intended). The riffs are big and metallic, at times cascading over each other like there’s just not enough room for all of them in the song, or even in the world. The bass is bouncy and urgent and will (seemingly) randomly explode above the bedlam like some sort of crazy-ass 1952 jazz trumpet solo. As for the drumming, I’m out of adjectives, but the drumming is fucking outstanding. Musically, this is very much what would happen if a hardcore band played punk rock songs.
But what about the vocals?
I’m gettin to it, settle down. Vicini’s vocals are borderline insane, and insanely inventive. To quote a blog entry I found on a site called Theme Park Experience “the wavering vocals sounded like frontman Dave Vicini was having a panic-fueled freakout”. That’s a pretty perfect way to describe it (although I would put it in the present tense, since they still sound like that).
Example: the song “By the Way…” finishes with Vicini stretching the word “crazy” out into no less than seven goddamn syllables. I’m not saying no one else has ever done that, but if they have, I’ve never heard it. Plus I don’t think anyone else has ever done that.
The lyrics are what got this band labelled as “emo”, back when they were still a band. Vicini’s heart is shamelessly splattered open on his sleeve for everyone to examine, and like many of the band’s contemporaries, that’s what initially drew me to them. Short tales of love both lost and found, sprinkled with some inspirational lines (personal inspiration, not the religious type) and a bit of wistful nostalgia.
My personal favorite song on the album is also the longest song on the album. “Georgia” manages to kind of fit three separate songs into its almost 4 minute runtime.
And there’s been too many nights I’ve talked and tried, so many nights I’ve sat and cried.
I’m a big fan of penultimate track “Do the Math”, as well.
The cracks in the concrete just remind me that no matter how strong you are, you’ll just fall apart anyway.
Album opener “We Don’t Like Them Girls” is a heartfelt, uptempo breakup song that happens to be the perfect song to kick things off.
I’m laughing on the outside, but I’m dying on the inside.
It leads directly into another favorite of mine, “Blame it On the Weather”. Parts of this one still feel like they were written specifically for me (“Sitting in my ditch of self-loathing, and of course my mind is roaming, thinking things are always worse than they appear to be, just because I’m sick of talking doesn’t mean I’m not happy…”).
But tonight I’m really not, tonight nothing has changed.
Album closer “You and Me” finishes things off on an uplifting and defiant note (“I can’t be living my life for them, I’m living my life for me, and you can never see it coming and we won’t stop for anything”), and contains a chorus that’ll live in your head forever after one listen.
It was always just you and me saying “fuck you” to everybody.
If you like loud, agressive music and melodic, agressive hollering, you can’t go wrong with any of the songs on one of the finest post-hardcore albums of the 1990’s, The Hurt Process by Boxer. ________________________________
That concludes the original section. Can you believe I waited seven years to give that thing an ending, and that‘s the best I could come up with?
Anyway, I can still clearly remember when I stopped listening to Boxer, circa autumn 2002. I was delivering pizza, cruising down Moffett Lane, and I was blasting my dubbed cassette that had The Hurt Process on one side and FYULABA by Canadian hardcore punk weirdos SNFU on the other. I was halfway through the song “Child Labor Laws”, and for some reason, I just wasn’t feeling it anymore. It was a weird feeling, and I didn’t like it, but I was in no position to argue. I hit eject, popped in Side A of my AVAIL double-feature (Over the James b/w One Wrench), and started hollerin along with “Scuffle Town”. Before the Big Move to Austin, Texas in May 2003, I sold a bunch of CDs and books and whatnot, and The Hurt Process was one of those CDs.
Fast-forward to 2017. I’m sitting in the old townhouse on Adams, reading something or other, and out of nowhere the line “sometimes I catch your scent in the breeze, but it’s a little bit salty” popped in my head. I knew it was from Boxer, but that’s all I could remember. After finally figuring out the proper way to search (“boxer band hurt process”), I was able to discern that the line came from the song “Shorepoints”, which is every bit as perfectly suited for the Side Two, Track One slot as “We Don’t Like Them Girls” is for the Side One, Track One slot. If only the album had been released on vinyl or cassette.
The wind that hits you now hits me a day later.
I went to the local Half Price Books Outlet a few days later, and there was a copy on CD for the low, low price of 2 American dollars. I snatched it up quick, and I haven’t looked back. I picked up right where I left off in 2002, listening to the album several times in a row, and doing that several times a year. Some of the lyrics come off a bit angsty and childish to my 47-year-old ears, but the sincerity of them makes them feel timeless.
That’s all I’ve got for today. You should listen to The Hurt Process. It just might make you feel young again. Thanks for reading.
I think pretty often about the two times in elementary school when I allegedly peed my pants. Here’s more information about those incidents.
I went out for the basketball team in fifth grade, and (spoiler alert) I failed extra fuckin hard. Here are the facts about that night:
We barely even played basketball. The majority of the tryout was drill exercises. I was a pretty decent shooter, but I never cared much for running. I was out of breath and sweatin my nards off within minutes. I’ve always been a sweater. I don’t like it, but I’ve learned to live with it.
My sweatpants were completely wet in the entire area where a whole lot of pee would also fit, if I were to pee myself.
I have no recollection of peeing my pants that night, nor did I ever have any awareness of peeing my pants that night. I am 100% percent sure I didn’t pee my pants that night. Like, how could I not know, y’know? I was very sweaty, and gray sweatpants are, by their very nature, an extremely high-contrast article of clothing, and I believe that combination led my chums to believe that I peed my pants that night. In hindsight, I can see how they might think that. After all, I didpoop my pants when I was in kindergarten.
I was sad when Mom and Dad picked me up. My dad played basketball in elementary school and high school, and my brother and both sisters played basketball in elementary school, plus I grew up in southern Indiana. I didn’t make the team that night, and pretty much all the other boys in my class thought I’d peed myself, so you can maybe imagine why I was sad when Mom and Dad picked me up.
Mom (and possibly, but certainly to lesser extent, Dad) felt bad for me, and they took me to Big Lots to pick out Something for Myself, and we maybe went out for supper, too, possibly even to Rax Roast Beef, but all I remember from that night other than a big ol’ pee-shaped wet spot on my crotch is my Big Lots score: a motherfuckin Hillbilly Jim bendy.
In the back seat of the car, on the way home from “town”, I realized I’d chosen a dud of an action figure. I mean, I fuckin loved Hillbilly Jim, but just look at that big ol’ beefer! There’s no way he’s gonna bend worth a shit.
Fuckin Hillbilly Jim, he’s the coolest!
I’ve always been a collector/pack rat, and most of the stuff I own is sentimental and useless and irrelevant, but there are a few things that I’m very glad I still own, and this WW(F)® Wrestling Superstars™ Bendies™ Hillbilly Jim™ “action” figure is one of them. It lifted my spirits on what was probably one of the saddest, most embarrassing days of my life up to that point.
Don’t go messin with a country boy.
That’s the most my Hillbilly Jim ever bent, and coincidentally, it’s about as much as I’ve ever bent as well. I’ll tell you about the time I got stuck in the upstairs hallway trying to stretch out my hamstrings some other time.
The other alleged pee-pants incident came in sixth grade. Here are the things I remember most about that day:
We were in the library watching a movie, and we were seated on both sides of two large tables. The teacher and/or the librarian eventually called on me during the post-film discussion, and I stood to answer. I noticed some snickering coming from the shitheads on the other side of the table as I spoke, and I didn’t much care for it.
When I sat back down, one of the assbutts from across the table whispered “[you] peed your pants” and I looked down, and sure enough, there was a wetness that appeared to have been made by urine in my pants.
I am 100% sure I did not pee my pants that day. How would I not fuckin know, y’know?
I’ve long since assumed someone shot my crotchal area with a squirt gun while we were watching the movie. You have to understand, baggy pants were coming into style (we were less than one year away from MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice), so it’s likely that my pants weren’t actually touching my sensitive areas, meaning I probably wouldn’t have noticed being shot in the junk with a water gun, and besides, my attention was elsewhere. I just know I was into the movie, and I didn’t feel anything hit my pants, but I also didn’t feel myself pee my pants, so I have to lean toward Squirtgate for a suitable explanation. Their diabolical plan to humiliate me failed on account of no one else could see it, on account of the lights being dimmed due to movie-watching. Checkmate, assholes.
The weird thing is that it never became a “thing”. Like, no one ever even tried to make fun of me outside of either incident, and that seems weird to me, given the nature of 11-year-old boys, at least back when I was one. All I know for sure is that I am totally confident that I did not pee my pants on school property between the ages of 10 and 12, and it very much looked like I did on two separate occasions, and I think about both occasions often.
Thanks for reading. I have a new blog thing over on Substack, too. It’d be cool if you checked that out, but it’s also cool if you don’t. I’m still figuring out what that space is for, but for the foreseeable future, I’ll be posting here sometimes, and there sometimes, and sometimes the twain shall meet. This is one of the latter times.
I care an unhealthy amount about the things I can’t at all help,
I’ve always been an avid reader, but I’ve also always been mostly ambivalent about reading poetry. Growing up Hoosier and all, I’ve liked James Whitcomb Riley’s stuff since I was a little kid, and “Little Orphant Annie” still gives me the willies. Dr. Seuss was my shit when I was a tyke, much to my mom’s chagrin. She somehow got it in her head that reading Dr. Seuss would “warp my mind”. She had the same reservations about the 1983 television miniseries V, as well as Twin Peaks. If she was still alive, I believe she would suspect that she was correct about the mind-warping. My family has never understood me, but I’m not gonna get into that right now. I gotta save something for the book, am I right?
What’s not to understand?
I think my main obstacle, re: wanting to read poetry stems from my senior year of high school, when I took L202 (a college-level Literary Interpretation class offered for dual credit). We analyzed and parsed and picked over Shakespeare and Dickinson and Frost and Plath and more until none of it could ever again be anything but a collection of meaningless words, devoid of any of the humanity those words might ever have had.
There are a few exceptions to my “Joel doesn’t like poetry” rule. I lovePoe, and Shel Silverstein, and Langston Hughes, and Robert Frost (in spite of the over-analyzation), and “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and “The Waste Land”, and a lot of others I’m sure I’ll think of after I mash that “Publish” button. I enjoy most of JackKerouac’s poetry, when he wasn’t too far up his own ass with his jazz notions. Big Sur is one of my favorite books ever, but “Sea: Sounds of the Pacific Ocean at Big Sur”, the poem he composed during the events semi-fictionalized in that novel, is nonsense to me. To be fair, though, I’ve never had to deal with sudden, overwhelming fame or alcohol withdrawal-induced panic attacks, so I can’t say for certain that the Pacific Ocean doesn’t sound like that.
♪♪To be faaaaaaiiiiiiiir.♪♪
The only author I can think of offhand whose poetry I ever really read on purpose anymore is Charles Bukowski. I know Bukowski was at best a very problematic human being, and I certainly don’t condone his behavior or consider him any kind of role model, but you can’t say he wasn’t honest, and goddamn, could he write. I’ve read his screenplay for Barfly, as well as his fictionalized account of that experience, Hollywood, and I like both. The movie is worth watching, too. Mickey Rourke is iconic as Henry Chinaski.
I’ve also read a big chunk of his short stories, and I can’t recall not enjoying any of them, but I think I enjoy his poetry more than his other writing. It has the same realness and rawness of his prose, but the poetic form makes it even more real, and more raw, like a carcass bleached clean by the sun.
Anyway, I wrote a poem today.
I used to write poems pretty regularly, but the urge hasn’t struck me much since I left Texas to return home to Indiana in ’06 (I lost the urge in the divorce, I guess). I have a lot of journals I kept between the ages of 18-24, and they contain an alarming number of extremely embarrassing poems about being lovesick and forlorn. Thankfully I never actually used the words “lovesick” or “forlorn” in any of my poems. That would’ve been much worse.
I did, however, self-publish/print-for-free-at-the-computer-lab-on-campus-when-I-was-in-college1 a book whose very existence mortifies me. It was a collection of my embarrassing poems combined with a collection of my even more embarrassing journal entries from when I was 22 years old and going through Some Shit That Nobody Else in the World Could Ever Possibly Understand (aka a broken heart). I gave a copy of that book to HenryRollins once. He was very polite and gracious, and he said he liked the title (All Aboard the Joel Train) which is the only thing about that book that doesn’t embarrass me. I immediately regretted giving him a copy, and one of my greatest hopes in life is that he never read it. I thanked him in the introduction “for inspiration, in both writing and life”, and I included a handwritten note inside inviting him to contact me if he wanted to.
Same, David.
I continued to dabble in poetry well into my mid-twenties (right around the time I moved to Texas, now that I think about it), and then at some point, my writing just began to move away from it. I recently came upon an unfinished poem I wrote for Sheila not long after we started dating, and I think that might’ve been the last one I wrote until today, so I guess I maybe just finished my first poem in a quarter century. I’m not gonna say it’s good, but it made me laugh, so I decided to share it here. At any rate, it’s 100% better and 120% less embarrassing than anything I wrote when I was 20 years old.
“bling”
stumbling and mumbling and grumbling and tumbling and crumbling and jumbling and bumbling and fumbling and finally thumbling and something called scumbling and those are the words that all rhyme with humbling
I told you it was kinda dumb.
Not even me.
Thanks for reading. If you liked it/didn’t hate it, feel free to leave a comment and/or share it with your friends. If you did hate it, you could still share it with your friends, then you could all make fun of it together. Please don’t be mean in the comments, though. I have more feelings than my burly appearance and my surly demeanor might have you believe.
How much you wanna make a bet I can throw a football over them mountains?
I’m also on Bluesky. Why not give me a follow for updates? It’s like Twitter, but not owned by a cartoon super-villain.
On the street and the epitome of vague…
1In retrospect, I might have been part of the university’s decision to start charging for copies.
Today is the twentieth anniversary of my Facebook account, and I deleted it this morning, along with my Instagram account. I’ve been spending far too much time paying attention to other people’s lives, and not nearly enough time paying attention to my own. I’m a statistic: being chronically online has caused my mental health to suffer. I’ve become a kind of weird Facebook Hermit, hiding out in my house, going on intermittently for my own amusement about how much I like Peanuts comics and Sanford & Son and The Tragically Hip and Ginger, the woodchuck who lives across the road and eats clover in our backyard in the summer, or complaining for my own amusement about how much I dislike Donald Trump and football and Nicolas Cage and the asshole I got stuck behind while I was prairie doggin on my way home from Kroger.
Ms. Ginger Wiggles, at your service.
What, am I supposed to not talk about how much she rules?
When I wasn’t posting dumb shit on Facebook, I was angrily reading comments so I could feel superior to strangers. I’m 47 years old, y’all, I don’t have the time or energy to devote to being pissed off that some random guy with a “Let’s Go Brandon” image for a profile pic on the Louder Than Life fan group says Slayer is overrated and AcidBath sucks. That guy is wrong about a lot more than his shitty musical taste whether or not I know about his opinions or his existence, and besides, it’s easier on my blood pressure if I don’t know about either. Plus there are way bigger things to get pissed off about (see also the real-time, real-life documentary series 2025: We’re Hosed, starring Nazi billionaires, religious fundamentalists, and dozens upon dozens of sex pests with a proclivity for violence).
Speaking of Nazi billionaires, I used to also have a Twitter account, which I pretty much only used to promote this blog and harass Ted Cruz. I deleted that account the instant I read that the present owner was buying the app. The decision wasn’t difficult, as I never like the format of Twitter anyway. Character limits are not conducive to my being long-winded, as evidenced by this very blog.
Anyway, I cruised along happily with Facebook and Instagram for a while, feeling somewhat morally superior, until right around the time it was announced that Suckerberg was donating money to the Orange Husk’s inauguration. That was my first real indication that my time with my beloved social media security blanket had to come to an end. The events of Inauguration Day itself solidified it for me. Facebook had to go, just as soon as I could muster the energy to start the process – no small feat in and of itself, what with the year of January being so emotionally and physically exhausting.
Speaking of Instagram, when I wasn’t posting dumb shit there, I was watching reels of cute animals and stand-up comedians and clips from Regular Show and Curb Your Enthusiasm, which is a way of saying that Instagram was much better for my mental health than was Facebook, but unfortunately, they’re both owned by Zuckerberg, so they both had to go fuckerberg off.
It’s gonna be weird to not have those things at my fingertips to kill time during commercial breaks, or when Sheila goes to the terlit while we’re out at a restaurant, or while I wait for a doctor’s appointment. I’ve automatically lost touch with several people that I only knew through Facebook – people with whom I could’ve certainly enjoyed a cup of coffee or a beer IRL, but who I have no good reason to call or text. I’ll particularly miss a couple of folks from a Bill Hicks fan group and a few fellow metalheads from around the globe. There are some former co-workers who live in various places around the country who are evermore banished to the land of wind and ghosts, unless I happen to run into them while they’re in town visiting someone else.
You have very lucky dishes, Mr. Simpson.
Facebookhas admittedly been good for some things. I have a friend in Australia who I met in the late 90’s on Bolt, an early social media website. We chatted and emailed on that site, as well as exchanged letters and phone calls a few times in the early days (one time her dad answered the phone, and when I asked him to tell her I called, he said “alright mate,” and I accidentally squealed a little bit), then our lives drifted apart for several years, until Myspace (and later, Facebook) brought us back together. Anyway, I was able to get her contact info before deleting, and I’m very glad about that. It’s fuckin wild to think that we’ve been friends for 26 years and have never met in person.
In addition to bringing people back into my life, social media has allowed me to show my true self to the world without the terrible inconvenience of being looked at while I do it. That’s an important thing for a socially awkward introvert such as myself to have. The amount that I dislike being looked at while I talk is unfathomable. I’m totally comfortable around a few key people, but for the most part, if I’m talking, and you’re looking at me, all I’m thinking about is how uncomfortable I am with the fact that you’re looking at me while I’m talking. That’s obviously a thing I need to get past, and I am working on it, but personal change doesn’t come easily or naturally to me. I can appreciate spontaneity from time to time, but I like my routines, and they are hard for me to break. But it’s like they say, knowing is half the battle.
Hey Roadblock, some stranger’s bringin me a prize!
Another not insignificant benefit of Facebook and Instagram is the added reach it gave my blog. It’ll be interesting to see how my stats differ without having those accounts to promote from. And while I know that in the short term my total views will take a hit, I’m happy that one less billionaire is making money off my work. I’m sure I’ll write more about all this another time, but until then, why not subscribe for updates, and/or follow me on Bluesky (@clockwisecirclepit.bsky.social)? Bluesky is pretty much exactly like Twitter as far as I can tell, so I doubt I’ll use it much, but at the very least, you’ll find out when I’ve posted something new here.
On my drive to work yesterday I realized that, while I’ve mentioned them on these “esteemed” pages before, I’ve never actually written about Clutch, and that’s dumb, because they’ve been one of my favorite bands for almost 30 years now. I’ve written extensively about Iron Maiden, Testament, Helmet, Metallica, Anthrax, and especially Voivod, mostly on my old blog, but for some reason I just haven’t bothered to sit down and write anything substantial about one of the most consistent (and consistently excellent) bands making rock ‘n’ roll music today. I’m here today to remedy that.
If you’ve read much of anything I’ve written here (or anywhere, really), you know that I can be quite long-winded when I get worked up about something (especially if I’m not being looked at while I go on about it), and if you think I don’t get worked up talkin about Clutch, then you’re fixin to learn a thing or two about me. In the spirit of making this more easily digestible, I’m gonna break it up into parts. I flew pretty close to the sun when I posted my guide on how to maximize your good times at Louder Than Life, and if you made it all the way through that sprawling beast, I salute you. I know attention spans are at an all-time low, and it was risky to post something that takes a full 30 minutes to read, but that piece needed to be its own thing.
This thing can certainly be broken into parts. I figure there’ll be three of them. It could be more, and it’s also entirely possible that this’ll be the one and only installment, because sometimes not finishing things is what I do.
Like many of the bands and artists I got into in the mid-to-late 90’s, I first heard Clutch via my homeboy Travis. I grew up in a housing addition in a rural area (I called it the “ruburbs”, since it was like a suburb, but rural, and because I’m very clever) less than 200 yards from the county line, and cable TV wasn’t available there (I’m pretty sure it still isn’t, nor, as recently as late 2021 was any semblance of road treatment during a snow or ice event). It was pretty annoying for me as a kid, but I realize now that even if the cable company had put in the time and expense to bring their services to a small enclave of houses 20 miles from the nearest “city” (Bedford, population: less than 15,000), my parents most certainly wouldn’t have been willing to pay for it, and I couldn’t fault them for that even if I wanted to. We watched 60 Minutes and Hunter and Roseanne and Hoosier Millionaire for free, goddamnit, and we either liked it, or we lumped it.
This was also a few years before PrimeStar and DirecTV became available in my neighborhood. If you lived in the neighborhood of Airy Hills just north of Springville, Indiana in the early-to-mid 1990’s and wanted to watch anything other than the few channels you could pick up with an antenna, the only option was one of those big, old school C-band satellite dishes. Quick side note: it seems as though back in 1970, someone thought “Airy Hills” was a good name for a brand new, developing neighborhood, and no one bothered to tell them they were wrong, and so I grew up in a place called “Airy Hills”.
The future isn’t what it used to be.
Anyway, Travis lived up the road, and his parents had one of those C-band satellite dishes (which I just learned today was the name of those dishes), and one of the cool things he had access to was MuchMusic. At the time, the channel was more or less Canadian MTV, and like its American counterpart, it has since moved away from music programming (the name was changed to “Much” in 2013 to reflect this). The intersection of time when MuchMusic played music and Travis’s parents had their satellite dish also happened to contain the years 1991-1995, which is when the channel aired a show called Power 30. If MuchMusic was Canadian MTV, Power 30 was Canadian Headbanger’s Ball, although as the name suggests, Power 30 was only 30 minutes per episode, whereas HBB ran a full 3 hours at that point in time. Americans always have to do things bigger, eh?
Anyway, Travis taped two episodes of Power 30, and one summer day between high school and my first ill-conceived attempt at college, we watched that tape together. He was particularly excited for me to see the episode featuring some band called Clutch, as he figured it would be right up my alley, and as usual, he was correct. Travis has a near perfect record when it comes to music recommendations and me.
The episode kicked off with the video for a song called “A Shogun Named Marcus”, and less than halfway through its sub-three-minute run-time, I was hooked.
Hari Kari and combines, come dancin with me.
That fateful 30 minutes also included some live footage of the band and an interview clip, and the live footage was intense and the interview was funny, and I was already well on my way to adding a new favorite to my “all-timers” list. The next payday after watching that video, Travis and I went CD shopping, and I managed to score a used copy of their self-titled second album, which had been released no more than three months prior. (Thinking about that now, it occurs to me that someone probably bought it after seeing “A Shogun Named Marcus” on Beavis and Butthead, and found themselves less interested in the direction the band was taking. Whatever caused them to sell it, I’m still reaping all the benefits.)
Jon Lovitz is incredible.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Plus I don’t wanna get too much into my personal Clutch-related narrative yet, because I have to go grocery shopping before the price of everything goes up in a few days, so I’ll just knock out some basics about the band first, for anyone who might be unfamiliar with them.
Clutch formed in 1991 in Germantown, Maryland, and after a brief stint with another singer that I only just learned about earlier today, Neil Fallon joined guitarist Tim Sult, bassist Dan Maines, and drummer Jean-Paul Gaster, and outside of a relatively brief stretch of time in the mid-to-late aughts where they brought in a full-time keyboard player (Mick Schauer, RIP), the lineup has remained unchanged since. There’ll be more on the Mick years in a later installment.
They released their first EP, Pitchfork, that same year on 7″ and 12″ vinyl. It was a feral beast, completely betraying the band’s love of 80’s hardcore punk and boiling over with youthful anger and vitriol. It’s very good, but it sounds nothing like the grooving, swinging, juggernaut the band has become over the past 34 years.
See what I did there?
I didn’t hear Pitchfork until sometime in 2005 (sweet baby jeebus, has it really been twenty years?!), as it went out of print long before I even knew it existed, so I won’t spend any more time on it here, but it will come back into play later. I’m sure you simply cannot fucking wait.
Clutch released their second EP, Passive Restraints, in 1992, and it is sonically very similar to Pitchfork, but careful listeners will note some changes already taking place in the sound. To my ears, the songs on Pitchfork are more amorphous and interchangeable, whereas the songs on Passive Restraints sound more distinct from one another. It’s also a bit more polished, sonically speaking.
Can you dig it?
It’s a real tight, badass collection of songs, and I can’t recommend it enough. You should also watch this video, which is Clutch performing “Passive Restraints” in 2020, with Randy Blythe from Lamb of God doin up some guest vocals. It’ll get the blood flowin.
Efficiency is beautiful, efficiency is art.
As mentioned above, Clutch released their full-length debut, Transnational Speedway League: Anthems, Anecdotes, and Undeniable Truths, the next year. The extra run-time inherent in the format shows significant growth in the overall sound of the band. This is also where Neil’s penchant for oddball, often hilarious lyrics started to really take form. It’s not my favorite Clutch album, but it’s also not my least favorite Clutch album (more on that in a later installment). I listen to it at least a few times a year.
Highlights include the aforementioned “A Shogun Named Marcus”, “12 Ounce Epilogue”, “Walking in the Great Shining Path of Monster Trucks”, and one of my personal Top Ten Favorite Clutch Songs, “Rats”. I actually wrote a little bit about “Rats” in my last post for this blog, and you can read that here if you want. “Rats” also happens to be one of the songs in the live footage on that episode of Power 30. I suspect that tiny clip is at least part of what made me fall in love with the song.
I finally got to hear “Rats” live for the first time two years ago, which was my twelfth time seeing Clutch live, and which, sadly, is also the last time I’ve been able to see them live. I’m really hoping they’ll get added to Louder Than Life again this year, since their day was cancelled last year.
And God was certainly a genius to expose this human weakness.
1995 saw the release of the band’s self-titled second full-length album. In a lot of ways, Clutch (the album) marks the proper beginning of the modern sound of Clutch (the band). This album took the riffs, the hooks, the aggression, and the sense of humor that the band were already perfecting, and injected the whole mess with a groove and swing that absolutely cannot be denied.
One notable change on this album (one that really came to fruition a bit later down the road for our stalwart DC sound attackers) is a developing tendency toward somewhat psychedelic freakouts, including on one of the band’s best-known songs, “Spacegrass”.
We’ll find us some spacegrass, lay low and watch the universe expand.
The album ends with a 10+ minute jam (technically two songs, but really they’re one), beginning with the almost meditative “7 Jam”, which finds Neil spitting lyrics like a fire and brimstone preacher giving testimony at a tent revival. “7 Jam” flows directly into the instrumental closer “Tim Sult vs the Greys”, which revisits and reimagines the riff and groove from “7 Jam” in a wonderfully understated way. It also features some pretty dope keyboard work courtesy of Richard Morel. If I didn’t already know it was the same band responsible for “Binge and Purge”, I wouldn’t believe it.
I stood up, and everything was alright.
Clutch’s ongoing artistic development led to the band sometimes being categorized as “stoner rock”, which bugs me, even if it isn’t the least bit important. To me, the term “stoner rock” carries with it an implication that one must be stoned to truly enjoy it, and while I’ll freely admit that mellowing out and listening to Clutch is an auditory treat that can’t be beat, the fact of the matter is that I loved Clutch for fully 5 years before I ever even thought about getting high for the first time.
Yo, I don’t know, B!
I know I’m overthinking it, and I also know it really, truly does not matter at all. I thoroughly enjoy a lot of bands that have the “stoner rock” label applied to them, so whatever. The important thing here is that in the year of our gourd 1995, Clutch started to groove like a moose, and they never looked back, and the world is a better place for it.
That seems like as good a place to stop as any. This nap ain’t gonna take itself. If you’d like to learn more about Clutch, and the impact they’ve had on my life for pretty much the entirety of my adulthood, check back for more soon. Maybe not too soon, though.
Until then, thanks for reading. And remember, beebopalloobopawopshamboo, and domo arigato if you got to.
I’ve been a nostalgia junkie since I had my second memory. I have no memory of my second memory, but I can see my first memory so vividly that I sometimes forget that there is no physical photograph of that memory. The year was 1980. I was 3 years old (possibly not quite 3 yet), and a cloth Holly Hobbie calendar hung on the wall in the kitchen of my childhood home. I remember strawberries on the calendar. The light I see in my mind’s eye is the soft, light blue haze of a rainy day coming outside those front windows.
I decided to log onto the world wide web to see if I could find an image of that exact calendar. The first hit in my Google search for “Holly Hobbie” taught me that Holly Hobbie is actually the artist’s name! I imagine a lot of people were already aware of that fact, but it was news to me.
When I added “calendar” to the search, the first hit that came up was exactly the image I’ve had in my mind all these years.
Forgive the pixels, please.
“Of course!” I thought, “my dumb li’l 3 year old brain must’ve thought that bonnet was a strawberry! This is definitely the calendar, though. It’s exactly as I see it in my memory.”
I didn’t actually think those exact words, but you get the idea.
If you squint just enough you might notice, up there in the top right corner, the year 1981.
“But Joel!” you thought, “you said this memory was from 1980!”
“You’re right,” I thought, “I did say that. I must’ve been wrong about that detail all these years. I mean, it is my very first memory ever, and I was only 3 or 4 years old, so I’m bound to fudge some of the details. I was still learning! I’m sure this is the image though. I’ve maybe never been more sure about anything in my life.”
Again, I don’t think in sentences like that. It’s just a narrative device.
Anyway, I went ahead and bought the calendar, because it’s like I said to myself, “why wouldn’t you wanna own the real, physical, tangible version of your first memory? Be able to hold it in your hands after all these years. Huh?”
That’s why I don’t have a better picture of it, by the way. After the transaction was completed, eBay wouldn’t let me embiggen the picture again.
Here’s another thing that happened after the transaction was completed: I returned to the search page, and what I found there alarmed me.
I’ve always been a sucker for a silly, folksy, homespun rhyme.
I also remember this exact calendar, and it is from 1980, and now I figure my dumb li’l 3 year old brain must’ve thought that big ol dress was strawberry, and I was wrong about it being a Holly Hobbie calendar all along. Sonofabitch!
Then I found myself wondering if it was really the calendar itself that I remembered, or if it was just the silly, folksy, homespun rhyme. There’s a 900% chance that those words appeared on at least one thing in my childhood home, and an equal chance that various relatives also had trinkets and doo-dads and walls festooned with that declaration.
For the first time ever, I considered the possibility that my First Memory was actually two memories smooshed together.
I went back to the search page again, and saw this one next:
It also looks extremely familiar.
Maybe my dumb li’l 3 year old brain thought that red dress was a strawberry. Maybe my first memory really did happen in 1980. But that would still mean that I bought someone else’s first memory instead of mine.
Then I saw this one.
“Oh, tell me that’s not glorious.” – Racebannon
I also remember this exact calendar, and if the year read either 1980 or ’81, I would swear in court that this was the calendar from my first memory.
I celebrated my sixth birthday in 1983, and a whole bunch of snapshots of memories exist between that blue-gray day in 1980 or ’81, and also these actual snapshots from my sixth birthday party.
My sweet, sweet Grandma made that clown for me. It would go on to scare the bejeesus out of my cousin Jason and me a few years later. That’s my cousin Anthony with me in this picture.
I still have that book and record set to the right of the ’69 Camaro SS scale model that I never managed to put together correctly.
In what is almost certainly a total coincidence, the wall on which that banner hangs is the same wall where that calendar hung in either 1980 or 1981. Speaking of that banner, it was a gift from my kindergarten class. My kindergarten teacher, Miss Baker, was awesome. She became Mrs. Dillman later in my elementary school career, but she didn’t become any less cool.
I would be remiss if I failed to mention that I wore that shirt from the birthday party for my first grade picture the following September.
Speaking of cool…
The point I’m trying to make, I think, is that memories are not necessarily as accurate as we like to think they are. As far as I know, I’m the first person to ever come to that realization.
I’m just kidding. Many studies have shown that, while our memories can at times be surprisingly accurate, humans remember things incorrectly a lot of the time. I’m not gonna cite sources. You can Google it if you want receipts.
If I’ve learned one thing this afternoon, it’s that the only detail I’m sure about any more, with regards to my first memory, is that the light was tinted blue. And ultimately, I decided that even if the Holly Hobbie calendar is not the specific calendar from my first memory, it’s definitely a calendar I remember, so it’s okay that I bought it. I suppose it might even be my second memory, and that’s pretty cool too.
Before we finish up, let’s skip ahead a few years. I’m in fourth grade now, and I’ve had a lot more practice remembering things since the day I noticed that vague calendar hanging on the wall in that soft blue light. The day is gray and rainy, and I’m in my classroom taking a test. My desk is across the room from the outside wall, and it faces the windows.
My gaze moves across the room, out the window, and I notice that the silhouettes of my classmates are bathed in that same hazy blue hue from 6 or 7 years before. I don’t recognize it as the same blue just then. It’s only in retrospect that I realize both memories have the same color.
My discovery as documented above makes me wonder now how much of my fourth grade memory is correct. Were we actually taking a test? Was it actually even fourth grade? I’m pretty sure it was, based on the room we were in.
The only thing I know for certain, without even a whisper of a doubt, is that both memories exist in the same blue glow.
I can’t think of any other memories that appear blue to me, but I do sometimes dream in that same blue. The blue in my dreams is less hazy and more vivid, but it makes sense that it would be.
On a different note, blue has been my favorite color for as long as I can remember, and now I find myself wondering how much the cozy blue glow of that first memory has to do with that.
I don’t know what any of this means. Probably nothing. I hope you weren’t looking forward to a satisfying conclusion.
Thanks for reading. What’s the first thing you remember? Do you have any colors associated with specific memories?
Clockwise Circle Pit 