February 1, 2013

Shameless Use of OEF

A foreword: I'm fighting a very losing battle at my place of employment to just get a few social media quotes posted.  I cannot find a way to explain that these things are just meant to educate/attract new readers (and hello Colonel Meow and Takei can't be wrong!) It's a place of education - so it's not wrong to utilize these quotes to get people to come and learn. We're not selling anything.

So to make me feel better about designing all these - Hench said I could post them. Use the knowledge as you feel. It can't hurt to have some factoids in your brain. I enjoyed making them. If you have any silly ones - where you'd like to replace credit with mayonaise, or Bankrate.com with "Lil the Cat".  Please let me know.




Pointless outpouring of love (for music)

With apologies to my main man from high school, J. Mascis was my first love.  I was 13 and I didn’t even know what he looked like, and I didn’t really care. (This was before the internet was what it is now, no Google, no Yahoo, no way to find out every intimate detail about somebody by simply typing in their name and hitting “enter.” Kids these days are so spoiled.)

Had I seen this when I was 13, it would have enforced my love. (Ebet Roberts/Redferns)
All I knew was that his voice, his lyrics, his freaking amazing guitar playing was all for me. He was my soul mate. He’s the reason I spent my early teenage years in a fog of manufactured sadness. I wanted to hug him, to protect him from whatever made him so sad. It was all about the music.

My first musical crush was Chris Cornell, but with him I think it was all about the hair and the piercing eyes. Let’s face it, that man is a minor god, still. He’s aged very well. But he was no match for the pure soul that J. Mascis poured out from the dented speakers on my portable CD player. You know, the kind that had a CD player on top and a tape deck on the front. Because, well, my Dinosaur Jr. albums were on tape. I was cheap and tapes were cheaper, so that’s what I bought.

I liked other bands, sure, but I was crazy for Dinosaur Jr. I listened to them everyday, sometimes all of the albums back to back, over and over. In the car with my parents, I begged them to let me listen to my tapes. My dad even liked a few of their more radio-friendly songs, though he insisted on calling them “Dance for Junior.” (He also called Pearl Jam “Toe Jam.” So disgusting.) I had the names of all of the songs memorized in order from oldest to newest and vice versa. What can I say, I had a lot of free time.

When I discovered that J. was in a movie called Gas, Food, Lodging I recorded it (VCRs, ha!) on HBO and watched it over and over again. I memorized his few lines and obsessed over them, and his delivery of them. I still love that movie.

J. was Dinosaur Jr. for me. Yes, I knew he had a reputation of being so difficult that there was a revolving door of artists that were in the band with him. I even grew to love Lou Barlow and Sebadoh. But despite what Lou screamed at J. during a Sebadoh show, J. was the band, not Lou or Murph. Lou and Murph did not make J.

Now, almost 20 years later (can that really be true??), Dinosaur Jr. has reunited and released several albums. J. released a solo album that takes me right back to my teenage years. He still speaks to me. He gets me. "Can I" is one of the best songs I've heard. And even though he has a wife to protect him from pain now, if she needs backup, I’m available.