We've come to the part of the Top 19 where I no longer talked about these albums on Facebook. Even though they're still in the Top 19 I guess you can consider them honorable mentions or runners up to the Top 10 Facebook list.*
* This preamble seems highly unnecessary but so is this list.
I mentioned this yesterday, but I wasn't the world's greatest roommate in college. I thought that I was, but on further evaluation, I really wasn't. I was stuck in my ways, I wanted things to be my way, I wanted my roommates to be into the same things that I were in. Any pushback and I'd get offended. I didn't do act this way on purpose. A lot of times when you're the oldest child, you don't have to compromise mostly because if you do get pushback, you can just squash that little insurrection with a physical beating or psychological warfare.
That's a bit difficult to do when your roommates are your age and can make up their own minds about who and what are cool.
In September of 1993, a movie called "Dazed and Confused" directed by Richard Linklater was released. It didn't do very well. I remember seeing an add of an obviously stoned smiley face on a teal background (the first album in the above image) with the tagline, "See it with a bud". My first thoughts were, what is this movie about? But there were no other indicators about plot or character. I was stuck at school without a car to get to the movie theater, so I forgot about it. Apparently a lot of other people did too because it was gone from the theaters by October.
Fast forward to the summer and I'm home and my friend Jesse said that I have to see this movie. "What is it?" "Dazed and Confused," he answered. "It's great." So we sat down and watched it. And he was right. It was great. At that point in my life, the best movie that I had ever seen was Oliver Stones' "The Doors" and this blew it away. I became completely and totally obsessed with this movie.
The movie was about the last day of school in 1976 at a Texas high school. The incoming juniors spend the day terrorizing the outgoing eighth graders. Once the town-wide hazing ends, the kids get together and have a kick-ass party and then go try to get Aerosmith tickets the next day. That's it. That's what the movie was all about. If you never saw it, you should. It's well worth your time. Lots of actors got their start in that movie including Matthew McConaughey, Ben Affleck, Parker Posey, Joey Lauren Adams and a bunch of other people that you'd no doubt recognize. Not only is the acting good, but Linklater's script and direction is excellent. He really immerses you in this world and makes you care about the characters*.
* I cared so much about these characters that I spent a lot of time thinking what they did with their lives. Did they go to college? Did they get married? Did they ever leave their town? If so where did they go? What did they do? What were they doing in 1994? Would I be friends with them if I was in high school? How would I handle the hazing (both as a junior and an eighth grader)? Like I said, this was a complete obsession.
I bought the movie on VHS tape and I watched it at least two or three times a week. I bought both soundtracks, and listened to it constantly. I even bought the Dazed and Confused companion book* (which was absolutely hilarious and added a lot of backstory to the characters). And I brought all of that shit back with me to college for my junior year. Like I wrote about yesterday, junior year was a bit of a rocky year for me and my roommates. We were getting along, but just barely. There was an underlying tension in the air, but we were all too cowardly to talk about it. The bottom line is that we all needed some space between us. And the space that we were in, practically being the only juniors in a underclassman dorm where we were still under the thumbs of the RAs, wasn't that place. Add in a dude who is wound way too tight, but now "loved" the 70s lifestyle and again, it was too much.
* The first time that I went on the Internet and used a search engine was to look for stuff about "Dazed and Confused". I found an interview with Linklater who talked about the behind-the-scenes stories of making the movie and how much of a pain in the ass it was for him to realize his vision and all of the fights that he had. One of the interesting ones was that he wanted Led Zeppelin's "Rock n Roll" to be the first song in the first scene. He heard that if Jimmy Page gave his blessing, Robert Plant usually followed suit. Linklater got in touch with Page who loved the idea and said yes. Plant demurred saying that he didn't want to be remembered for Zeppelin, that he wanted people to focus on the music that he was making now. Linklater went bananas in the article recounting his interaction with the Zep front man. They used Aerosmith's "Sweet Emotion" instead. I printed out that interview and still have it. Bonus trivia: "Sweet Emotion" and Bob Dylan's "Hurricane" were two of the songs that were in the movie but not on either soundtrack.
Like I said, I pretty much went all out on the whole 70s aesthetic. I bought a couple of tapestries and a lava lamp. My girlfriend at the time bought me beaded curtains--I was hinting around for months about this--that I put up in our room. And I played these soundtracks over and over and over again.
These albums contain a lot of popular hits from the 1970s, it was basically a K-TEL Best of the 70s hit collection with a different package. KISS, Black Sabath, The Runaways, Ted Nugent, Peter Frampton, Sweet, The Edgar Winters Group, Black Oak Arkansas, The Steve Miller Band, ZZ Top and more were all part of the set. And a lot of these songs are quite famous and ones that you've heard before if you spent more than ten minutes listening to a classic rock station. But I didn't care, I listened to the over and over and over and over again.
It got so bad that the one roommate that I was not angry at snapped the CD over his knee. We were all hanging around one night have a few beers and I announced, "I'm putting in Dazed and Confused." He said, "No you're not." "Yes I am, I can do what I want." And he said, "If you put that CD into my stereo (we were in his room) I am going to break it in half." "Fuck you, I'm doing it," was my response.
I put the disc in the stereo, pressed play and sat down as "Rock N' Roll Hootchie Coo" started blaring out of the speakers. My roommate, Scott, was one of the nicest, most passive (in a good way) guys that I know. He stood up, walked over to the stereo and, true to his word, snapped it over his knee. I was stunned. The room was quiet -- not just because there was no "Rock n Roll Hootchie Coo" but because this was an act of war. What would I do to counter this aggression? I did nothing. I sat there gobsmacked. I wasn't going to beat him up, he was one of my best friends and, to be honest, he did warn me. And it was his CD player. I wasn't going to cry, but when you're broke and having your favorite CD busted in front of you is a tough pill to swallow.
Scott worked part-time at a record store called the Wall. Their policy was, as long as you have a Wall sticker on the disc casing and if there's something wrong with the CD--no matter what--you can return it for a brand new album. It's an awesome policy, but it probably cost the place millions, which may explain one of the reason why it's no longer in business. After what seemed to be like hours, Scott said, "Before you put the disc in, I had a couple of Wall stickers and put it on the back of the case. I have to work tomorrow, so I'll exchange this for a brand new one. Dude, I just couldn't listen to this shit tonight."
I think that little lesson changed my behavior because sitting there with a broken CD in my hand really sucked. Hearing my friend tell me that the music I was listening to was driving him nuts, sucked. I hope that I became a better person after that incident. I don't know if I did, but I can say that I became a bit more conscious of how things that I like affect other people.
I still hold a soft spot for this movie. I think I bought three different versions of it on DVD/Blueray, but it's not my favorite movie any more. In fact, I can't recall the last time that I saw it. And to be honest, a lot of emotions come back when I hear the soundtrack or watch the movies. Mostly about the embarrassing way that I acted, how I wasn't always the greatest friend and how obsessed I was about this film. However there are a lot of good memories too; I mean this is an awesome movie. The soundtrack is pretty good. And I did have a lot of fun immersing myself in this world.
I guess once you leave your teens and 20s, you never find yourself that deep in something anymore. There are bills to pay, work to do and kids to take care of; but every so often it's cool to go back and reminisce about something that you truly and deeply cared about.
