Top 19 -- Guns N' Roses: Appetite for Destruction

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.

Looking back with rose colored glasses, one of the things that I liked about living in a pre-Internet world was that as a naive young boy, the world was much more interesting. I believed just about every story that I ever heard. Amesbury High School is a pretty small school in northern Massachusetts, the town sits at about 16,000 and the sports team are meh at best. But I heard two stories of AHS athletes who turned down full-boat athletic scholarships because each wanted to "stay in state due to their girlfriend" and completely believed both of them. Years later I found out that both of those stories weren't true at all. 

I'm not sure why I believe them, but they seemed plausible (at least for one of the guys) and it didn't seem like a malicious rumor (neither one of those guys would have started a rumor about themselves) but I think that I wanted to live in a world where I went to school with two super star athletes who turned down potential fame and fortune for a girl. Not that I would do that. But for someone else, that seemed sorta romantic--though I'd never admit that--and also sorta cool. "Yeah, I could have gone to a Division One school but I decided not too." Lots of self restraint there. At least that's how I looked at it. If this was true, the other perspective is that the athlete was too afraid to test his mettle in the big time. But like I said, this story was not true. 

This belief of off-the-wall stories wasn't just limited to Amesbury High School athletes. If you told me a story about a celebrity, chances are I'd almost 100% believe it. Not only that, but I'd tell the next person I saw. When Guns N' Roses first popped into my universe, they seemed to come out of nowhere. Who were these guys? Why were they dressed like that? Why did they act like that? Why did they look like? They appeared really fucking dangerous. I was in eighth grade when I first experienced GNR and I know that they'd kick my ass for my lunch money. And they were adults. 

They sneered, they appeared completely out of it (I don't think that I understood what being drunk was, never mind being high), they fought every body and they were all skinny and gross. But the most mysterious Gunner was Slash. Slash wasn't his real name, right? What does he even look like, you never get to see him with his mop of hair in his face or that goofy top hat. Like, seriously, who the fuck wore a top hat in 1988? Irony wasn't a heavily traded commodity back then, so the answer to that question is no one. I was top the reason why you never saw Slash's face and the reason why he wore a top hat is because he had AIDS in his face. 

AIDS. In. His. Face. 

Yup. I was such a dum dum, I thought that AIDS can be transmitted to specific body parts and poor Slash had it in his face which is why his hair was always hiding his eyes and nose and ears. Like I said, I pretty much believed anything and I sure as hell bought this. I probably told everyone I knew and I everyone thought that I was a big dipshit, but it's cool. Live and never learn. That's what I say!

Face AIDS aside, I remember buying "Appetite for Destruction", Poison's "Open Up and Say Ahhhh" and Kiss' "Crazy Nights" with my eight grade graduation money. They were the first tapes that I bought that were a bit out of my comfort zone. One tape was pretty terrible, the other one was okay but "Appetite" was incredible. I had never heard anything like that up until then. 

The songs were grimy and slick, enticing and off-putting, electric and aggressive and tough and drugged out and boozy and vulnerable and honest. Axl Rose was like a chameleon in his voice--I was sure that old AIDS face himself, Slash, was singing on "It's So Easy" because Rose didn't look like he could sing like that. I'm not sure what that meant, but I believed it. 

AFD was what I thought an adult album sounded like. There were lots of songs about drugs--though I didn't understand what they were singing about, sex--ditto and swearing. I knew the last part. To be completely honest, I'm not sure if I was ready for this yet, but I dove right into that pool. I can recall one day my brother and I were on the floor of my room playing with Legos and listening to this tape and on "It's So Easy" Axl (or was it Slash, I'll never know) sang loudly, "Why don't you just ... FUCK OFF!" before a guitar solo squealed in. At that very moment my entered my room and asked us a question. I don't recall what she asked about, but I do remember Jay and I looking at each other, eyes wide and mouths agape. 

"Do you think she heard that, By?"

"I think so. She was right here when he screamed it."

"Do you think that we're going to get in trouble?"

"I'm not sure."

I remember wondering whether I'd ever hear this tape again. And I remember trying to come up with an excuse as to why Axl (or Slash) said that and whether I knew about it prior to the purchase of the tape for plausible deniability purposes. But my mother never mentioned it. Ever. I doubt that she even heard it, or if she did, she was cool with it.

But that's the type of kid that I was. At the time, I was still sitting on the floor playing Legos with my nine-year-old brother listening to a tape of depraved junkies sing about the worst parts of humanity that they run into on the streets of Los Angeles. Unlike "Straight Outta Compton" I definitely didn't think that I was a bad ass. I was too young for that. I cared that people thought that I was a good boy, especially adults. I mean, I was still an altar boy during this time in my life* and would be for another year. 

* I've discussed this before, but my first job was working for the church where I served as an altar boy. I got paid $10 a week to open the church before Mass and get it ready for the day's celebration. If I didn't serve, I'd either go hang out at the rectory or sit in the sacristy and listen to my Walkman and wait until Mass ended. One day I was listening to my Walkman and the church pastor** came up to me and asked what I was listening to. I answered, "Kiss". He said, "Oh you mean Knights in Satan's Service?" and I'm sure that I stammered something out, but that made me feel like I was doing something wrong. I mean, he wasn't incorrect, I was doing something wrong (Kiss' "Crazy Night" fucking blows) but Paul, Gene, Bruce and Eric weren't devil worshipers. They were just four dudes who liked wasting money and trying to hold on to some semblance of relevance. 

** About 15 years after this interaction, the priest who asked me about this was found in the middle of the Massachusetts Archdiocese sex scandal. Though he wasn't into kids, he had a fondness for prisoners. He'd go to jail on the first Tuesday (in the article he called it "fresh meat day", which gross) and find his prey. 

No matter how you slice it, "Appetite for Destruction" is on a short list of the best debut albums ever. Guns N' Roses never again reached this level of greatness. They got bloated and couldn't deal with being famous, but for a little while, they were the absolute pinnacle of the rock world. They were mysterious and ubiquitous at the same time. "Sweet Child O' Mine" ran every hour on MTV, yet I knew nothing about them. 

It was a fantastic time to be a fan. 

Top 19 -- N.W.A.: Straight Outta Compton

On Facebook I was asked to list my top ten all-time albums that most influenced me. Since I can't list anything without a huge explanation, this is it. Not only that but I'm writing about my Top 19 instead of my Top 10. 

Here's what I wrote on Facebook today, "Here's another quick story: when I first heard this album, I was about 15-years-old. When you're 15-years-old, there is a weird dichotomy in your brain. You want to be part of a group, but at the same time, you want to be unique. You want to tell the entire world to go fuck itself but at the same time you're deathly afraid of doing so. You done with being a kid but you can't begin to handle adult responsibilities. Therefore you begin to find ways of trying to express yourself, your frustrations, your confusion, find someone or something that has similar problems; otherwise you might explode. For me, it was this cassette tape put out by five guys who were figuratively and literally the opposite of me and my entire surroundings. They expressed the frustrations and confusion that I was experiencing every day. Maybe what they were rapping about wasn't exactly relatable--I didn't have a problem with the police or women weren't rying to convince me that they were carrying my baby--but the emotions that they conveyed did."

I've written about NWA a lot. Probably more than any other band that I've listened to, which is weird because they only really had one album that I liked. The other two, "100 Miles and Runnin' " and "Efil4Zaggin" had their moments, but once Ice Cube left, the band sort of fell apart into a self-parody of what they once were. 

So I think what prompts me to continuously write about a band--actually an album--that I really loved when I was 15-years-old is how it made me feel at that age. Like I wrote up top, there's a lot of pushing and pulling in a teenager's head. You need to make sure that you get that frustration out before it boils over. Just be listening to "Straight Outta Compton" allowed me to relieve some of that pressure. It was loud, it was aggressive, it was in-your-face, it didn't give a fuck. All of those things are the opposite of me. When I rapped along with NWA, I wasn't Byron Magrane anymore. I was someone completely different. 

And I think that's why this album was such a hit with a lot of kids that I knew. Sure, the words and what they say are shocking the first 100 times you listen to them. After awhile though, if you're still listening, the message is even more reticent. Like everyone wants to be in a gang--I'm not talking about the crips or the bloods--I'm talking about being in a group of people with like minded thoughts. Not only that but you want your gang on the outside. There's no fun in being the favorite, the underdog, the downtrodden, the group that's going to rise up and show those bourgeois pigs who's boss was where you wanted to be. You want to be the group of people who sees through the bullshit and speaks truth to power. 

That was NWA. This group was popular, but they couldn't get on MTV or the radio. They sold millions of albums, yet you never saw them on any late night shows. They were the World's Most Dangerous Band and when you're 15 or 16-years-old, that's how you feel. No one really recognizes you. You're doing stuff, some of it great, but no one cares. In fact the only responses you get are negative. "Clean your room!" "Do your homework!" "Dump that beer in the fire!" "Run 15 laps!" 

You're powerless and it sucks. You know who else was powerless? Ice Cube, MC Ren, Dr. Dre, Eazy E and Yella Boy. You know who fought back? That's right, NWA. If they can do it, why couldn't we? At least that was the theory. 

One day we were all talking. The annual lip-sync was approaching and they were looking for acts. Wouldn't it be awesome if a bunch of us did "Fuck the Police"? Could you imagine the principal and the vice principal and everyone else totally freaking out? They'd talk about us for years! We'd be the (very white) NWA of Amesbury, MA. The more we talked about it, the more a plan formed. "I have a White Sox, Raiders and LA Kings hat!" "I have these awesome Locs!" "I know the dude who does the PA for the lip sync, we can tell them that we're going to do 'Express Yourself' and at the last minute substitute 'Fuck the Police'!" 

We must have talked about this plan for hours, getting us more and more excited. The lip-sync day came and went, and myself and my friends sat in the audience. We never put the plan into action. In fact, I don't think we ever talked about it again. 

We weren't NWA. We weren't anywhere even close. We were just four scared white boys who talked shit and never backed it up. NWA may as well have been Spider-Man or Bat Man; we'd never be like them. That's okay. Not everyone can be iconoclasts. That's what makes them special. The rest of us just have to bask in their glory and dream.