My Brother

 

 

Wednesday was the first day in 15,498 days where the sun rose and my brother, Jason Magrane, wasn’t around to see it. He passed away on Tuesday November 10, 2020 at 12:42 pm at Portsmouth Regional Hospital in Portsmouth, NH surrounded by his mother, father and me.

 

That last sentence is the type of “just the facts” information that I would throw down when I was a reporter writing obituaries. It’s not very personal and it doesn’t give much of a picture of who the deceased was, it was more of a record that this person existed for a time and then departed the world.

 

Like you, I’ve experienced death before, but the passing of Jason has hit me hard. He was much more than a range of dates, he was a father, a son, a husband, a friend, an employee, a boss, but most importantly to me, he was a brother. As I’m writing this blog post on November 12, I can only think of the future and the past. Jay is going to be laid to rest two days from right now but three years ago to the day, I gave the best man’s speech at Jason’s wedding. Below is a portion of what I wrote, this was supposed to be a toast to Jason’s nuptials, never did I envision it becoming part of a eulogy:  

 

“According to Magrane lore, when my mother came home and told me that she was going to have another baby and it was going to be a boy, I was inconsolable. I wanted a sister and the thought of having a brother muscling in on my territory and sharing my toys was too much.

 

Despite my best wishes, Jay never turned into a girl, so I was stuck with a brother for my childhood. And it turned out to be pretty awesome. Growing up, Jay and I were pretty much alone at any extended family gathering—and we used to see our family a lot. I would think about friends who had dozens of cousins and how they’d talk about hanging out with them at family gatherings and it sounded pretty great.

 

But with Jay and I growing up together, we had to be each other’s best friends. Whether it was at my grandmother’s house or Aunty Rita’s or at Cousin Kathy’s in New York, it was just him and me. That meant he and I would play He-Man and GI Joe, read comics, or draw or play Wiffle Ball. It was always Jay and By or By and Jay. With us being together that much, it could have gone a few different ways, but we became close.

 

A few years later, as I got into high school and had my own group of friends; I began to notice that my friends—all of them—took a liking to Jay. Was I happy about this turn of events? No, I was not. It used to drive me crazy that my friends always invited Jay to come with us whenever we did something, whether it was hoops or pond hockey, Indian ball or football, Jay was always a part of the crew. And not only that, but my friends genuinely liked him and respected him.

 

It wasn’t until a few years later that it dawned on me: some of my friends had younger siblings and they were never invited to do stuff with us. Jay was included because he was funny and smart, athletic and loyal; he was included because he was one of us.”

 

It’s funny, when you grow up with a brother, you’re inundated with a lot of media about how close brothers have to be: from Wally and the Beav to Greg, Peter and Bobby to Willis and Arnold, all of those brothers were the best of friends.

 

But real life isn’t like that. Life isn’t scripted, each person doesn’t know exactly what the other person is always thinking and problems aren’t solved in 30 minutes (minus time for commercials). The idea that two people could be complete and total best friends forever and ever and ever without any disagreements is a silly, unrealistic myth.  

 

As we grew into adulthood, Jay and I were close-ish. We were both independent men who had their own life and their own life’s philosophies. Mine was a bit more conservative in regard to risk and rewards. Jay was the opposite. Jay lived his life the way he wanted to live his life, which I found admirable and a little concerning, but that wasn’t how my brain worked. Jay could talk to literally anyone—he had no fear in that department, made everyone feel comfortable—which is an awkward endeavor was for his older brother, was fun, constantly laughing and wondering when the next good time was going to happen.

 

As we grew up we worked through our differences and over the last few years, we began to get closer. While we didn’t agree on everything, I could at least understand why Jay was doing what he was doing. And I think he could see things from my point of view too. Even though we were closer, Jay still wouldn’t (or couldn’t) tell me what was bothering him when asked. And it wasn’t just me, Jay didn’t want to burden anyone with what he considered his “trivial problems”.

 

“By, you have a family, focus on them,” he’d always say. But what I don’t think that Jay got was that even though I have a wife and two children, Jay was my family and I did want to focus on him. But his carefree persona or his pride or whatever he felt at the time wouldn’t allow him to tell me what was really going on. Would I have helped him? Would Jay be here today? I don’t know. Maybe. It’s a question that I’ll have to live with.

 

The thing is, Jason was 42-years-old and you could ask him what’s wrong, I could ask him what’s wrong, Bo Jackson could ask him what’s wrong and Jay wasn’t obliged to give us an answer. Jay’s stubbornness knew no bounds. He was the Michael Jordan of stubborn. Things were easier when we were kids and if I wanted to really know what his problem was, I could jump on him (I always weighed more than him), sit on his chest, put my knees on his biceps and tickle him until he told me his deal. I wish I thought of doing that a few months ago, but that approach seems sort of weird now that I think about.

 

You’re never going to get a straight answer out of tickle torturing someone and just because you ask someone to do something, doesn’t mean that they’re going to do it. For example, Jay went into the hospital last Monday and that prognosis looked grim even back then. While I was putting away that evening’s dishes, I decided to try and honor my brother by playing the Grateful Dead Pandora station. The Dead were Jay’s favorite band (he saw them at the old Boston Garden in 1994) and he was always trying to get me to listen to them. Aside from a few albums and a couple of singles, the Dead and jam bands never appealed to me. But last Monday night, I was going to listen to the Dead in honor of my brother.

 

I made it three minutes. I’m sorry Jay, and I know that you understand, but I just couldn’t do it.

 

Alas.

 

There’s a lot of things that suck about my brother’s untimely passing, but I think that the biggest one is that he and I are never going to get the chance to be as close as we were when we were kids and that truly makes me sad. I was looking forward to the day when Jay and I take our kids to a Sox game. Or he could ask me for the millionth time why I don’t like Bill Simmons anymore. Or when we could have a moment and remember long-passed relatives who seem to exist in the fogs of our minds. Or he could recommend a podcast to me. Or when a tragedy happens and I need someone beside my wife to talk to, so that I can get through the latest malady without losing my mind.

 

All of that has been taken from me and it makes me very sad.

 

Earlier this morning I was thinking about a random memory of Jay and me. It had to be during the spring of 1990 and I was in my room probably obsessing over my baseball cards or reading a magazine while listening to Public Enemy’s newest tape “Fear of a Black Planet”. There’s a song on that album called “Welcome to the Terrordome” and if you know anything about PE—and especially that album—you know that it’s a wall of sound. It’s literally a pastiche of samples and cuts laid upon one another to make new beats.

 

At 1:47 into the song there is a horn that wails unsettingly loud and shrill. That day in 1990, I thought it was my brother calling, “Byyyyyyyyron!” from downstairs. And it wasn’t just that day, for like the first 10 or 15 times I listened to that song, hear that sound, amble over to my stereo, shut off my tape and yell, “WHAT DO YOU WANT JAY?” And he’d always say that he never called me, I’d press play and grumble to myself about Jay being a pain in the ass.

 

Today I listened to that song and in particular that shrill horn and it made me smile and cry. Jay may be gone, but he’ll never be forgotten.

Top 19 -- Jane's Addiction: Jane's Addiction

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.

By the time I started my second semester of my junior year at Merrimack College, I was done with two of my roommates. And they were done with me. We had lived together for two years and those peccadilloes that we thought were funny and quirky when we were sophomores were now annoying and grating. We spent a lot of time with each other going all the way back to freshman year, but these last four months were a slog or passive aggressive bitterness. 

I was a dick and would get really drunk every weekend at some party and go on and on about how "they missed out" and how the party at the apartments "was just so fucking good." My roommates were homebodies and didn't like going out, so I knew what I was doing and which buttons to hit. They were getting into jam bands like Phish, the Grateful Dead, Blues Traveller and Dave Matthews and I'd constantly tell them how bad these bands were while listening to my music (Led Zeppelin, the Doors, Public Enemy) over and over again at loud volumes. 

And then they'd do stupid shit to me too. Like rearrange the room that my roommate and I shared. One day my roommate let his girlfriend, who I couldn't  stand, wear one my hats--which when I spotted her across campus with it, I went fucking bananas when I got back to our suite. "Who the fuck do you think you are, thinking that your girlfriend can wear my 1961 pinstriped Cincinnati Reds hat? That's my hat, not yours," which is pretty much word-for-word something that I once said in all seriousness and anger.  

So the feeling was more than mutual when around March of 1995, I just wasn't interested in hanging out with them that much any more. One of the guys that I really started hanging out with a lot during this time, was a big Jane's Addiction fan. He especially loved this album and before we'd go out on Friday and Saturday nights, we'd end up playing drinking games and listening to this album over and over and over again. 

When I was doing some research on this album, I found out that this was recorded in late January 1987 and released that May, which seems like a pretty quick turnaround. And it sounds like it. Even though the Wikipedia page said that the crowd noises were goosed by a Los Lobos audience, there is an energy here that you don't get in a lot of debuts. I think that's because most debut albums aren't recorded live. 

Jane's Addiction is very much a Los Angeles band. During their ascent they were sharing the Sunset Strip with all of the hair metal bands that called LA their home: Motley Crue, Poison but mostly the second-wave of hair bands that were coming up in the late 80s like Warrant and Slaughter. For Jane's Addiction not to copy that style of both dress and music is a remarkable tribute to Jane's Addiction classic lineup of Perry Farrell, Dave Navarro, Stephen Perkins and Eric Avery. 

By the time that I had found Jane's Addiction and really enjoyed them, they had released two other albums, headlined Lollapalooza and broken up. So to me, Jane's Addiction was the "band that got away". Between drinks, my friend and I spoke a lot about how awesome it would be to have seen Jane's Addiction and how stupid it was for them to break up. "They had so much more left in the tank," I probably said. 

Over the years, I saw Jane's Addiction twice: once was a really good show, the other was a complete shitshow. They reunited in 1997 and played a college tour. My friend and I went with his girlfriend and a few other friends to see them at Brandeis University, which is outside Boston. Red Hot Chili Pepper bassist Flea was subbing for Avery, so I was incredibly excited about this show. I wasn't alone. The show was held at a smallish gym that was packed with people eager to see the reunited band. I don't think that Brandeis understood what kind of concert that this was going to be because even I could see that security was lax and the barrier between band and audience was barely existent. 

Navarro came out and played the first note to either "Mountain Song" or "Ocean Sized" (I can't remember, it was a long time ago) and the entire audience rushed the stage at once. Farrell begged for the crowd to back up, finished the song and the band left the stage citing safety concerns--who could blame them. About an hour and change later, the band came out and played a handful of acoustic songs and that was it. Curfew came and Jane's was gone. 

A few years later, I saw Farrell's second band, Porno for Pyros during the WBCN River Rave, which was an all-day festival. There was a rumor that Navarro and Flea were going to jet up from Washington DC to reunite with Farrell, but it never happened. I'm not sure where I heard that, but I was taking it as gospel and was completely disappointed when Farrell and his band left without Flea and Navarro playing a note. 

The last time I saw Jane's Addiction was at Lollapalooza 2003. The show was great and nothing went awry. They played all of the songs that I wanted to hear without any shenanigans and it was great. I guess third time is the charm. But after spending money and time waiting to see a good Jane's show, it put to rest any romantic notions of the mercurial band. It sucks when you are disappointed by a performance and there's nothing fun about saying, "Yeah, that show was a complete disaster. But at least I have a cool story!" 

I'd rather have heard a good show. 

To wrap this blog up, I want to say that my roommates and I made up during the following year. We didn't room together and that was for the best and we became better friends. I still text with these guys a few times a week and we joke about how we were assholes to each other when we were younger. It sucks, but it happens. Looking back on it, when you're in your late teens and early 20s, it's probably not a good idea to room with the same people for more than a year. You're way too self-absorbed for anyone to handle you for more than 12 months. Add in the crucible of the cinder block or a small dormitory suite, alcohol, other illicit substances, the pressures of school and the opposite sex and this was  tinder box. I'm surprised that we didn't murder each other. 

Good Songs XXII

Strange Days – The Doors

Suzy Greenberg – Phish

Over the Hills and Far Away – Led Zeppelin

Only Happy When it Rains – Garbage

Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite – The Beatles

Ants Marching – Dave Matthews Band

Run Through the Jungle – Credence Clearwater Revival

Glorified G – Pearl Jam

Theme from Shaft – Isaac Hayes

March of the Pigs – Nine Inch Nails

The Golden Road (to Unlimited Devotion) – Grateful Dead

Who Will Save Your Soul – Jewel

Tears of a Clown – Smokey Robinson

Supernova – Liz Phair

Free Ride – Edgar Winters Group

In Bloom – Nirvana

Is There Any Love In Your Heart – Lenny Kravitz

Kids in America – The Muffs

Unbelievable – EMF

Comfortably Numb – Pink Floyd

I’ll Stick Around – Foo Fighters

Take the Money and Run – Steve Miller Band

I really didn’t want to graduate college. Like at all. My last semester of college was supposed to be my funnest, a culmination of 17 years of school, but I spent a lot of time dreading May 19 and worrying about the days beyond. I enjoyed Merrimack College, especially my senior year when I really liked the classes I was taking, loved where I was living and had a lot of fun with my friends. I had no idea what I was going to do with my English major (and Visual Arts minor!), had zero job prospects* and did not look forward to moving home with my parents.

* When I think of how I used to apply for jobs back in 1996, it feels like I’m talking about 1892. Every Sunday night I’d open the Boston Globe Want Ads, circle the jobs that I wanted, print out a cover letter and resume, stuff it into an envelope and mail it to the company. Sometimes, I’d open the Yellow Pages and send an unsolicited letter and resume to every publishing company I could find. Before companies discovered the ultranet, it was hard as hell to find a job back in those days.

I love my parents and it was cool as hell for them to take me back, but I had just spent the better part of four years living in close proximity to my best friends and didn’t have to answer to anyone. Now it was back to a world of free food, free laundry service and no bills to pay. Ugh, the agony.

My parents also were nice enough to buy me a car after I graduated school. I’m not what you call a car guy, at all. I use my vehicles to get from Point A to Point B and I honestly don’t care what it looks like, as long as it’s reliable. My first car was a light blue 1988 Ford Tempo that my dad (who was a traveling insurance adjuster) beat the hell out of before it was passed down to me. It ran, though not always at the times I wanted it to. So when I was able to get my own set of wheels I wanted something fast and I wanted something sporty—something that was the complete opposite of my personality. I got that when I purchased my 1987 Honda Prelude Si.

I know that we’re not talking a Ferrari or Camero, but that car was the first and only car, that I really loved. Jet black and fast as a rocket, my ride was essentially a two seater (the back seat was technically there but it was extremely tight) and with the seats being so low to the ground, I felt as if in I was in the most supped-up sports car. However, less than eight months after I bought it, I blew out the engine*, but after a new one was put in, the thing ran like a dream for years.

* This was to the only malady to happen to Jet Black (which is what I called my car--my first car was called Baby Blue [because I thought I'd get a ton of babes] my third car was called Norrin Radd because it was silver and Radd is the real name of the Silver Surfer. Yes, I know.), the first week I had it, I had to replace the driver’s side door when I jumped out of my car and forgot to put it in gear—the Dukes of Hazzard were on and I was pumped. The car lurched forward into my friend’s father’s boat and there was a massive hole in the door (the boat was fine). Apparently this was a thing with me and new cars because the very first day I had Baby Blue, I smashed into a DPW truck when I was too busy staring at a girl in spandex and not watching what was in front of me. I smashed the truck’s light and busted up my fender. Did I mention I took the car after my parents told me not to because it was without plates? Because that’s exactly what I did.

I did what any person with a new car and no job did, I delivered pizzas. And this playlist was the Good Songs tape* I created when I was bringing pizzas and subs to the fine people of Newburyport, MA in 1996.

* The only difference between this playlist and the actual Good Songs tape is that I included TV theme songs between every other song. The 90210 and a majority of the 70s and 80s crime themes were particularly awesome driving music. BTW, I bought five TV Theme CDs (they were kind of expensive too) one year because I thought it would be a cool conversation starter if a girl looked at my disc collection. No one ever mentioned them.

That summer was the best that I ever had as I either aimlessly floated around my pool on Fun Island (a gigantic yellow tube), played Wiffle Ball, went to the beach or watched TV until it was time to deliver pizzas from 4:00 to 8:00. After that, I went drinking with my friends. I do wish that I saved some of that money and went to Europe that fall, but I didn’t have the courage to go by myself, so I essentially threw the cash away. But this tape was the sound track of my summer. I think that there was a part two of this playlist, but I can’t seem to find it.

The song on this tape that sticks out like a sore thumb is Jewel’s debut, “Who Will Save Your Soul”. I am pretty sure that I chose this song mainly because I found Jewel extremely attractive because as a song, it’s not very good. The lyrics, the guitar playing; it’s all really basic and clichéd. I think that this was a hit because of Jewel’s story, she was a homeless in Alaska! and made her way to California where she was discovered and given a record contract. Or something like that.

People love stories like that and if they star a good-looking girl, even better. And I was caught up in that. I remember using some college graduation money to buy “Pieces of You” at Newbury Comics and trying really hard to like it. I thought that it might say something about me if I could like this album. But I couldn’t do it. I thought that it was terrible and couldn’t stand the over-serious writing, the elementary guitar playing and her voice wasn’t pleasing either. I didn’t hate Jewel, but by the end of the summer, I was pretty sick of her.

Another CD I bought on that Newbury Comics excursion was Garbage’s premiere effort, “Garbage”. Unlike “Pieces of You”, I thought that this CD was excellent. I loved how lead singer Shirley Manson’s voice paired with the rest of the band’s sound. It was sexy, it was unapologetic, it was really awesome. “I’m Only Happy When It Rains” was one of three popular hits from the CD (“Queer” and “Stupid Girl”), but the whole album is something that you should check out if you haven’t.

Their sound softened a bit over the years, but Garbage’s first album was something special. One of the things that were so cool about the group was how innovative it was, and with super producer Butch Vig (he was behind such bands as Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Sonic Youth, among others) it’s no surprise that Garbage had a sonic sound that was unlike anything on the radio at the time.

Pearl Jam might be one of my favorite bands of all time and I’ll probably write more about them in another entry, but I am conflicted about “Glorified G”. The first time I bought “Vs.” this was the one song that I came back to again and again and again. I liked the bouncy rhythm, the guitar riff, the lyrics were something I was interested in and it was just a good tune.

But one day my roommate was making fun of another friend of ours and he said something to the effect of, “Yeah, I bet that your favorite Pearl Jam song is ‘Glorified G’!” With the implication that GG was not “serious enough” for real Pearl Jam fans and was thrown on the CD to please teeny-bopper PJ followers. You know, the ones that don’t really get “Daughter”. In any event, that throw-away line from a long-forgotten fight, got to me and I never told anyone that I liked that song, lest they think that I wasn’t a true fan of Eddie and the boys*.

* Yes. This is something one contemplates when one doesn’t have anything to really worry about.

But my love for this song didn’t go away and I felt pretty bold putting this song on a tape that was going to get a lot of airplay. Especially in the summer with the windows and moon roof rolled down. But by then, I had a boxful of Pearl Jam bootlegs and if anyone attacked my fandom, I could show them my collection. “Would a teeny-bopper fan have Pearl Jam, live in Atlanta from April 1992? Huh?”

I’ve made my peace with the song (I’m still a supporter!) but during the last five or six years, the song has taken on a new meaning. The number one sports radio show in the state is “Felger and Mazz” and as far as sports talk goes, the show is okay. There’s your typical daily HOT SPORTZ TAKE but sometimes they can dial it back and have good conversation about the day’s event. The song that opens up every hour on the Felger and Mazz tape is a loop of the opening guitar rift, so when I heard it today I expected to be assaulted with a diatribe on why the Patriots are so cheap or why David Ortiz is a wimp or why the Bruins and Celtics are hopeless suckbags.

I was pleasantly surprised to not hear any of that.

Trent Reznor moved to 10050 Cielo Drive Benedict Canyon in Los Angeles when he was working on “The Downward Spiral”. You might remember that address as the home of Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski. And you might remember that a very pregnant Tate and her pals were brutally slaughtered by Charlie (no relation to Shirley) Manson’s zombie death squad in August 1969. The word “Pig” was written  in blood on a door of that particular house. You might also remember that the day after the Tate killings, another of Manson’s group mutilated Rosemary and Leno LaBianca. Before leaving the house, Susan Atkins carved the word “PIG” into the stomach of Leno with a fork.

Reznor wrote a song called “March of the Pigs”.

I’m not sure how I feel about it. I know that when I was younger I thought that it was cool that Reznor did this because it was spooky (okay) and anti-authoritarian and all that fight-the-power bullshit. But now that I’m a little older, glorifying a mass murder might not be the best thing to do. And I’ve read interviews where Reznor essentially feels the same way.

The song is still really good, I love the driving, industrial beat – it was a staple of any gym mix that I’ve made through out the years. But the sentiments behind it may be a bit off. 

Good Songs XIX

Box of Rain – Grateful Dead

Would? – Alice In Chains

No Excuses – Alice In Chains

Low – Cracker

Loser – Beck

Killing in the Name Of – Rage Against the Machine

Me and Julio – Paul Simon

50 Ways to Leave Your Lover – Paul Simon

You Can Call Me Al – Paul Simon

New Style – The Beastie Boys

Verse Chorus Verse – Nirvana

Spin the Bottle – Juliana Hatfield

Mrs. Robinson – The Lemonheads

Into Your Arms – The Lemonheads

L.A. Medley – Jane’s Addiction

Been Caught Stealing – Jane’s Addiction

My Time – Jane’s Addiction

Rock & Roll – Jane’s Addiction

Sympathy – Jane’s Addiction

Fee – Phish

Linger – The Cranberries

If this playlist or mix tape had a smell, it would reek of Keystone Light or Milwaukee’s Best. This tape was created sometime in the spring of 1994 and it features a lot of the songs that my friend Archie and I would listen to while we sat in our dorm rooms, played cards or Sega Genesis and drank.

When I went to Merrimack College in the mid-1990s, the school was in a strange place. It was beginning a transition from a small Catholic college that didn’t have many students living on campus, to what it is now: a medium-sized Catholic college with a good amount of kids living on campus. There were advantages to attending a small college: most people knew who you were (which could also be a disadvantage) and the classes were smaller. But there were disadvantages; mainly the social life could be incredibly dull*. 

* Merrimack did have fraternities, but there was no need for them. Merrimack was located in North Andover and Andover, MA and both towns had laws strictly forbidding frat houses – not that it would matter, the rent for places in those two towns were astronomical. Many of the fraternity houses were located in the next city over: Lawrence. Freshman year, the parties were fun but as we got older, the parties became lame. The frat dudes didn’t want us there, which is understandable since we were guys. Who wanted more guys at a party? We’d end up paying $5 for a cup of skunky beer, which was refilled after you waited in line for 20 minutes, the cops would inevitably show up around 10:00 and we’d have to go home. After awhile, it wasn’t worth the trip to leave campus.

There were parties in the on-campus apartments, but we were sophomore guys and never got invited because, again, who wants more guys at a party? And most of my friends didn’t have the cash or the fake IDs to get into Boston bars. Therefore we had to drink in our tiny dorm rooms—which by the way, were dry, so we had to sneak our alcohol past resident assistants working the front door, days in advance*.

* I’m not even going to front and nostalgically say how sweet each beer tasted because you had to work to bring it up to your room. It sucked. There was nothing fun or romantic or cool about sneaking beer into your dorm room. Take this from a person who was busted doing this.

Archie had good music taste and we listened to a lot of Jane’s Addiction that spring – he was a big fan of the band. And I became obsessed with the group too, especially their first CD. Their first CD makes up a bulk of this tape and I’m surprised that I didn’t include “Jane Says” because I listened to that song a lot when I was a college sophomore.

Like I wrote about during the last entry, “L.A. Medley” hit me in a couple of areas: it comingled my old obsession (the Doors, most of the song was an “L.A. Woman” cover) with my new obsession (Jane’s Addiction), it was from a live bootleg CD (so exciting, so rare!), Perry Farrell was cool (he was the face of Lollapalooza) and the band had broken up (so I could wallow about missing them – I saw them play live twice in the coming years). Basically it had everything 1994 Byron was looking for in a group.

And I still think that 1994 Byron is right as Jane’s Addiction is a great group to listen to—especially their pre-Kettle Whistle/pre-reunion stuff. “Been Caught Stealing” was their break-through hit and was on heavy rotation on MTV back in the day. When I first saw it, the video seemed strange in that it featured a bunch of weird-looking people* ripping off food from a dimly lit and dirty supermarket. Added to that montage were quick shots of Farrell with nylons stretched over his head singing, which is an image that’s difficult to forget.

* Looking at the video now, the people weren’t really strange looking, they looked like folks you run into every day. Twenty five years ago, that looked “strange” because MTV was wall-to-wall beautiful people. On MTV, a person with normal body proportions and regular facial features looked grotesque and odd.

When grunge and alternative music exploded, I don’t know if Jane’s Addiction ever really got the mainstream credit that they deserved and that’s probably because they weren’t in the spotlight for too long. Both them and the Red Hot Chili Peppers were both LA-based bands that didn’t kowtow to the glitzy, hair-metal music that was popular at the time. Their sound wasn’t as polished, it was a bit more funky and sludgy at the same time (if that makes sense). The guitars were still fast, but the song lyrics were a bit more thoughtful, a bit more real than anything that Poison or Motley Crue were putting out at the time.

Jane’s Addiction broke up just a hair before the alternative music wave crashed into the mainstream. If they had stayed together, would they have been as popular as the Red Hot Chili Peppers? I don’t know. But it is interesting to think of a world where the RHCP broke up in 1991 and the JA kept making music together for over 30 years.

The Paul Simon tracks aren’t me thinking that I was Merrimack College’s answer to Lorne Michaels, but those songs were the ones that we listened to most when we were drinking. Now that I have children, “Me and Julio” has taken on a different connotation. The song was included on “The Muppets” (the Jason Segal remake – which was actually quite excellent) and my kids begged us to listen to this song over and over and over again. A request my wife and I complied with because, this song is awesome.

The Nirvana and Beastie Boy tracks are from an album called “No Alternative” which collected many of the best acts of the day—there was at least one song from every one of my favorite bands (Beasties, Nirvana, Soundgarden, the Breeders, Matthew Sweet) at the time, except for Pearl Jam—and the money was donated to AIDs relief. The Beastie Boy song is a live version of “The New Style” and the Nirvana cut is one of the “hidden tracks” that bands used to do back in the day.

A hidden track referred to a song being at the very end of the CD. It was never listed on the track list but sometimes, if you let a CD continue playing after the end of the last song, it would pop up. Sometimes, you’d have to listen for up to 20 minutes to get the hidden track, which was annoying (and scary – if you forgot that there was a bonus track) as hell, but it was a precursor to DVD Easter Eggs.

I told you that the 90s were a magical time!

It’s not often that something lives up to your imagination, but for one brief speck of time: I felt as that I had correctly foreseen my college experience. I made it through high school with decent grades, but I never studied for one test (aside from chemistry – God, I was terrible at chemistry). My philosophy was: I paid attention in class, I took notes, I did the homework; if I didn’t know the material at that point, then studying wasn’t going to help me. This is the rationale of a very lazy person.

However, I knew that college was going to be a different ball game, as I’d have to get serious and study because things were going to be much more difficult. The summer before college started, I was lying in my bed thinking about going to school outside of Amesbury for the first time and I began romanticized about late-night walks home from the library after cramming for a test. I had seen this scene a million times in countless movies about college and it seemed so cool: broken pencils and balled up papers, coffee cups stacked to the roof, the tell-tale signs of a person working his ass off to get a good grade. There was something very satisfying about it.

Fast forward to December of my freshman year, I was through studying for final exams (quick aside: not as glamorous as I envisioned!) and I was on my way home. It was snowing, but not very hard, there was a nip in the air and I was listening to the Cranberries “Linger” on my Walkman. And as I was walked down the street lamp-lined path to my dorm, it occurred to me that this was how I pictured this moment many months ago. Maybe not exactly, but the feeling of accomplishment that I imagined was exact. I felt good that I actually studied, I felt like I accomplished something, that I was finally becoming a responsible person.

After coasting through life and not really giving a shit, it was an amazing feeling that I did care.  

I once read that the sense of smell is linked most strongly to memory. But I think that a close second is your hearing, because every time I hear “Linger”; I feel that chill in the air, the snow falling gently on my face, the feeling of solitude and that sense of pride that one gets when they work hard and they’re prepared for the next day’s test.

As I was listening to that song this morning, I thought things may not be that great today, but they will be better tomorrow. It always is.   

Good Songs XVII

Would? – Alice in Chains

Sabotage – The Beastie Boys

Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds – The Beatles

Tones of Home – Blind Melon

Cannonball – The Breeders

Fire Woman – The Cult

Peace Frog – The Doors

Box of Rain – Grateful Dead

Rock N’ Roll All Nite – KISS

Alison’s Starting to Happen – The Lemonheads

My Sister – The Juliana Hatfield Three

Is There Any Love in Your Heart – Lenny Kravitz

LA Medly – Jane’s Addiction

Dazed and Confused – Led Zeppelin

Some Day I Suppose – Mighty Mighty Bosstones

Heart Shaped Box – Nirvana

Elderly Woman Behind a Counter in a Small Town – Pearl Jam

Fee – Phish

Every Little Thing She Does is Magic – The Police

End of the World as We Know It – REM

Rocket – Smashing Pumpkins

Deeper Shade of Soul – Urban Dance Squad

Blister in the Sun – Violent Femmes

Fire – Jimi Hendrix

This is a very long (over an hour and a half) Good Songs mix, so I’m starting to write this entry as I’m listening to it. Technically this is a no-no, but since it’s my blog, I’ll allow it.

I recorded this mix in the spring of 1994 and when I was thinking of college-era Good Songs tapes, this is what I was thinking of. A good mix of newer grunge-era stuff, mixed with some older stuff. The good news is that aside from one song, there’s nothing there’s nothing really embarrassing. In fact, a vast majority of these songs appear on upcoming Good Songs, so this is kind of the back bone of the next generation of Good Songs.

That translates into, what I was listening to when I was 20 is basically what I’ve been listening to for the rest of my life. In retrospect, that’s more than a little depressing. The one thing that jumps out at me about this mix is that there is no rap or hip-hop. Another thing that jumps out at me is that the tracks (aside from Hendrix) are listed alphabetically by artist – which answers my question from earlier today, “Why did I start this mix off with Alice in Chains?” I like AIC, a lot actually, but I don’t remember liking them that much that I’d start a Good Songs with them.

Since the track listing is not based on how I was feeling, but the alphabet and these songs repeat in subsequent editions of the Good Song catalong, I’m going write out 24 quick thoughts (FIVE bonus thoughts!) on these 24 songs.

Alice in Chains – if there is a quintessential song that not only sums up the mid 90s and the zeitgeist that surrounds it, AIC’s “Would?” does the trick. AIC was one of the four most popular groups from the Pacific Northwest and this song is featured prominently in Cameron Crowe’s ode to Seattle “Singles”. With its tuned-down guitars and lyrics that are dark, depressing and full of self-involved angst, it perfectly captures the mindset of Generation X. Layne Staley essentially heroined himself to death a few years later, which also captures the mindset of that same generation.

The Beastie Boys – this is my favorite video ever. And there’s nothing even close. But when I think of the group, I think about the two times I saw them live: once at a gym at the University of New Hampshire (with the Rollins Band and Ice Cube’s group Da Lench Mob opening) and once at Lollapalooza. The former site was excellent, the latter was a dystopian hellscape that actually featured the death of a concert goer. In 1994 Lollapalooza was held at the Quonset State Airport in Quonset, RI. It felt like 100 degrees, there was no shade, no water and most of us were completely dehydrated thanks to the amount of alcohol we consumed in the 50-mile traffic jam on the way to the show. The lineup was awesome: A Tribe Called Quest, The Beastie Boys, the Breeders, L7, Smashing Pumpkins and Georgeo Clinton and the P-Funk All Stars. The venue sucked. Hard.

The Beatles – pretty good band from Liverpool. Or so I’m told. This is their first appearance on a Good Songs tape and I’m sure the lads are touched. A real crowning achievement in their careers. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds is the greatest psychedelic song ever recorded. Like the B-Boy’s “Sabotage” video, nothing comes close.

Blind Melon – the death of BM’s lead singer, Shannon Hoon disproves the axiom that the death of lead singer increases a band’s popularity. Blind Mellon released another album after this one (this is the one with the Bee Girl song, “No Rain) but it did nothing and people remember this band for their Bee Girl mascot. Hoon also shows up as a background singer in the Guns N’ Roses’ “Don’t Cry” video, so there’s that.

The Breeders -  I still enjoy this song. The bass line is infectious and I like to think that lead singer Kim Deal is singing to an actual cannonball. Or some guy doing a cannonball in a public pool. There’s probably some real interpretation to what the cannonball represents, but there are times where I like the Sigmund Freud version: “Sometimes a cannonball is just a cannonball.” Due to seeing this video (conservative estimate) over a thousand times, I think that even though the drummer in this band is a dude, I have a feeling that he used to get the crapped kicked out of him by the rest of his band mates on a regular basis.

The Cult – I think that the name “The Cult” is among the best names for a band. I don’t know whether it has to do with an extreme form of fandom or whether it harkens to spooky, mind-controlly type guru thing from the 60s, but loving a band is a lot like being in a cult. Especially when you’re young. I remember getting all fired up if someone said they thought the Doors sucked. The Doors! “How could you not like the Doors,” I’d wail. “They’re awesome!” And then I’d make up some bullcrap about how Jim Morrison redefined the role of rock star, was a thinking man’s* front man and how the rest of the band were extremely talented musicians (true). Then I’d start attacking the other person’s favorite band. Get a grip 20-year-old Byron, it’s just a band. Who cares?

* Yes, I actually once said that. God.

The Doors – I mumbled something about the Doors in a previous paragraph.

Grateful Dead – I have a couple of very long and thoughtful paragraphs about a band’s fans and how that can have an adverse reaction to that particular band’s music. But I think that I’m going to save that until I reach the Dave Matthews portion of the Good Songs universe – and that’s coming. But it’s hard to get past Deadheads (especially when you’re in college) and the Grateful Dead. This is a really sweet song that invokes a lot of things that one should be: a sense of community, sharing, helping out a person in need. And it’s not overly preachy too, which is nice. Juxtapose this with the scene in “Freaks and Geeks” where Lindsay is dancing in her room and you feel good about listening to this song. But talk to a Deadhead about this song (or any Dead song) and you’ll be lead down a labyrinth of bootlegs, concerts that occurred before you were born and minutia. Forest for the trees guys, forest for the trees*.

* That’s just not a Huey Lewis and the News song either.

Kiss – you know how I feel about Kiss. I don’t think that I need to restate my thoughts on this band. But I will say this, the only reason this song is included on this tape is because I was going through my incredibly annoying “Dazed and Confused” phase. To say that I was compulsively obsessed with that movie is just scratching the surface. I often wondered where the characters were right then (not the actors, the characters). Did they go to college? Did they leave their town? Did they enjoy the Aerosmith concert? How did the football team do that season? How did the coming of punk influence the incoming freshmen? The first thing I looked up on a search engine wasn’t porn (that would probably be the second), it was “Dazed and Confused”. And while I was thinking about the characters, I did everything I could to warp back to those times: lava lamps, beaded doors, the music, TV shows on Nick at Nite, it’s probably why I was equally obsessed with “Sabotage”. I felt as if I was a man out of my own time.

The Lemonheads – this was the first and only real band that played a concert at our college in the four years I went there. And it was the day after Kurt Cobain shot and killed himself, so there was a rumor that Evan Dando wasn’t going to show up, you know, out of respect for Cobain. I managed to get really wasted, almost fight someone in the mosh pit and spent a lot of time screaming for them to play “Mrs. Robinson” (they did not). Oh yeah, I had a friend, who didn’t go to college at Merrimack, came to visit me and got so incredibly wasted that instead of passing out in my room (like he said that he would) he walked 10 miles to his girlfriend’s house. He did not inform me of this change in plans until I found a note on my desk hours after the show ended – for awhile, I thought he was dead.  It was an eventful night. Years later I made a mix CD for my wife, who was my girlfriend at the time. This was the first song on the tape. I’m lucky she thought it was sweet.

Juliana Hatfield – if you were a woman and could play guitar, the early 90s were your salad days. I don’t think that there has ever been a time in popular music where women were so welcome to the show and weren’t treated primarily as sex objects. That being said, I had a big crush on Juliana Hatfield -- especially the image at the top of this entry. Feminism only goes so far, I guess.

Lenny Kravitz – as far as Lenny Kravitz songs goes, this is probably the best one out there. If that’s not damning with faint praise, I don’t know what is. From my understanding Kravitz is a notorious lady killer (I don’t mean that literally). But in this song he takes the point of view of jilted lover. He does a pretty good job of bitching and complaining about all the things she did to him. I bet Lisa Bonet tells people she doesn’t like this song, but really loves it. “Fuck you Lenny. How do you like it? Asshole.”

Jane’s Addiction – around this time, I really got into Jane’s Addiction. And this song was on a rarities album that my friend found in some rare record shop in Boston that cost at least $40 (big money back then). I downloaded it off iTunes for $1.29 a year ago. TECHNOLOGY! The beginning of the song is a cover the Doors’ “LA Woman” (which is still my favorite Doors song) and includes “Nausea” by X and “Lexicon Devil” by the Germs. At the time it married my two favorite bands and I still dig it. 

Led Zeppelin – this isn’t one of my favorite Zep songs, I guarantee I chose it because the movie was named after it. Man.

Mighty, Mighty Bosstones – in 1997 I was working at a job that I despised for a company that I hated. There was no email or internet connection (I worked for a bank and they were afraid we’d smuggle secrets out, I guess, no one knew who the internet worked back then) but we were able to listen to the radio. Most days I listened to Howard Stern in the morning (really low) and in the afternoon WBCN would come on and play music. This summer the MMBs blew up with the song “The Impression That I Get” and one day the DJ came on the air after the song and said, “Years from now when you hear this song, the first thing that pops into your mind will be the Summer of 1997.” And you know what, he’s right. Even when I hear another song by the MMB, that particular time pops into my head. I am so damn suggestible sometimes. I would have made a great cult member.

Nirvana and Pearl Jam – in 1994 if you were to ask someone who the more popular band was; Pearl Jam or Nirvana, I bet more would choose the former. Whether you base on album sales, concert sales or just accessibility, Pearl Jam was the clear winner, this is something that Bill Simmons writes about every so often. Pearl Jam had a friendly second album (“Vs.” over “In Utero”) and they were riding high. Cobain was unreliable, had a horrible wife and released an album meant to alienate fans*. Then Cobain shot himself and instantly became the martyred voice of a generation. Pearl Jam soldiered on, doing what they do and some how got slagged for not having a band member kill himself. It sucked that Cobain killed himself for a number of reasons (and this was always going to happen, I think) but the worst part was that there were a lot of “conversations” about what it meant to be a rock star and what were a rock star’s responsibilities and crap like that. Then OJ Simpson killed his wife and a waiter and everyone forgot about Kurt Cobain.

* I’ve read that In Utero was recorded to be the opposite of the “Nevermind”, in other words less poppy and relatable, because Cobain had grown to despise his new audience. The ones who were singing along to the chorus “Here we are now, entertain us” were the types of kids that beat the crap out of him when he was younger. While I’m sure he appreciated the irony, he knew that the audience were completely unaware.

Phish – I went to school with two guys with the last name Fee. They were both really funny, really cool dudes. I pray that’s the reason why I put this song on this tape because Phish is not my type of band. Though I will say that my skin still crawls when I hear the line, “Sliced him on the nipple” followed by a piece of paper being ripped. That’s just some good production, Vermont hippies.

The Police – I just finished a really good biography of the Clash called “Fashion is the Passion”. One of the things that made me laugh is just how much the Clash hated the Police. One example is when the replacement drummer for Topper Headon (I’m pretty sure it was Pete Howard) was brought on, he was on the bus minding his own business listening to a Police tape. The Clash’s manager bitched him out for a solid two hours, the dude was almost in tears. This is a good song though and I really like the ending parts where Sting is singing “There’s a big enough umbrella, but it’s always me that ends up getting wet” over and over like a mantra. That’s some self-loathing any kid can get behind.

REM – in 1995 I saw REM in concert because I thought that everyone in that band was going to be dead within two years. They were not and the concert was actually pretty good and the coolest part was the next day I went on-line to an REM usenet group where I was able to get a bootleg of the concert from some girl in Chicago. That’s when I realized that the Internet was going to be a big thing. The opening act of the REM show was none other than Radiohead. I’m not sure if they played “Creep” but if they didn’t, I was probably pissed.

Smashing Pumpkins – I never knew whether the word “smashing” in Smashing Pumpkins was a verb or an adjective. There is a huge difference. I saw them at Lollapalooza with the Beasties in Rhode Island and they were terrible. Their sound was shitty, they seemed drugged out, they just didn’t care.  Lead singer and Smashing Svengali Billy Corgan made guitarist James Iha tap dance for us, which seemed incredibly demeaning. Until the Pumpkins broke into the collective conscious in 1993, they were always this weird, ethereal, mysterious group. As much as I loved “Siamese Dream”, I kind of liked it that way better.

Urban Dance Squad – when I was in high school I really wanted this tape, but didn’t have a set of wheels. I would bug my friend to drive me to the mall (about a half hour away) and see if Sam Goody or Record Town or Tape World got “Mental Floss for the Globe”. More often than not, they didn’t. One fine day, one of those places did and I will never forget my friend’s words, “I hope that this tape is fucking awful.” Even if it was (it kind of was) I would tell him how great it was. Pretty much every day. I’m a hell of a good friend.

Violent Femmes – this band and especially this song is so college, the Violent Femmes Greatest Hits CD should come with every acceptance letter.

Jimi Hendrix – I’ve written over 2900 words. I can’t write anything about anything any more. Sorry Rover. San Dimas High School Football Rules!