New Wave

“It's every generation that throws a hero up the pop charts”

The first real New Wave song I heard, that stuck with me, was B52's “Rock Lobster.” My brother had bought the album, came home and put it on the turntable. He was earnestly excited at this new acquisition. I sat there on my bed, sort of perplexed as there was very little harmony or a beat I could groove too because it seemed sooo simplistic. And never mind the backup girl singers who were basically screeching. I had grown up on heavily layered 70's rock that kept getting more complex. I enjoyed that stuff as I knew it well. Rock Lobster reminded me of that old show, Dr. Demento that would play silly and simple novelty songs late Sunday nights on WAAF (remember the Cocaine Realty Building? WAAF Giraffe?). But my brother's response to the B52's looked as if he took them seriously. How can you take that shit for real? It's CRAP!

“What do you think?” he asked once Rock Lobster ended.

“Ummmm....” was all I could say. I had the same response to Zappa's “The Torture Never Stops” when he brought that album home. It took a bit longer for me to get my head around this New Wave stuff. Zappa's music, I came to learn and figure out, had a method in it's seeming screwy madness. It was complex as hell, chewable, with a hundred facets to approach and enjoy. New Wave reminded me of a 4 year old kid's colored xylophone that you'd whack away on. “Ding, ding, dingy-ding!” 

Perhaps that was the point. Simplicity. A revolt against 70's progressive concept rock. It was easy to jump around too and a new cohort of kids were coming into their own, they need their own music to rally around. That cohort was my brother's generation when they hit their late teens.

The house started to fill up with more and more New Wave albums. I'd see something like Gruppo Sportivo, a Dutch band that took the punk scene from London and made it their own. It was then that I first heard of Peter Gabriel as well. I was too young to have much money to buy albums so I'd have to rely on my brother, who did have a job, to bring newer ones into the house. For the longest time, he'd bring home Zappa, Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull and all the greats, then the bastard started bringing home this weird shit. To me, it was like being deposited in a foreign country and I had to get used to eating strange cabbage filled thingies as that was their common cuisine. No, what it really was, was a 13 year old kid (me) being forced to move away from his local, parochial home town world view. “Dammit! It's not like HOME! The bed smells funny and the food tastes weird!” I had the same response when Dad would take us on vacations to the Cape and I found Hyannis, Eastham unacceptable because it wasn't home.

**

In one way, I'm glad New Wave did come along when it did. Fucking Disco music was dominating damn near every radio station around here. I can point to a specific month and year when it was impossible to avoid it, February 1978. I have a distinct memory of my going up and down the radio dial on my brother's stereo, in a futile attempt to find any rock songs. All that I could find was one disco song after another. I turned off the system and left the room in disgust. It was that bad. But thanks to New Wave, it started to unseat the Empire of Disco and throw it's ass into the gutter. Because New Wave arose, it allowed all other kinds of music to come back again too. Thank God! The final emancipation was when 94 WHJY went from a classical music station to AOR in 1981. Finally! More choice!

And I can't deny this. New Wave made me grow up even faster than I already was. High school/college kids love to form bands and play, emulate and hope to be just like their Heroes they hear on the radio. On top of that all, it's great fun! Since my brother and his friends formed a band, specifically in the New Wave kind, I could tag along as a roadie and get into the college bars at 14. That certainly opened my eyes more to what else was going on. It was then too, where I fell in love with audio equipment, how to use it, run a mixing board for the front and back of the house, and above it all, develop an ear for sound. All great stuff when you're in the 8^th grade! To this day, I tweak a system I have in my living room. I shoulda been a music engineer, one who couldn't play the riff of Smoke on the Water unless I looked at the fret board.

Today...I like Disco, New Wave, even the B52's. Huh? What did he say? This only makes sense because I am old now and all of that music from then is nostalgia to me. I can hear Donna Summer's “Bad Girl's” (which I detested in '79) and can hum along to it and remember that summer of '79 when I first noticed Gail's body was far more interesting in a bikini vs. what it was a year or so earlier. I know, nostalgia only remembers the good, not the ugly. It also is a bit pathological if you decide to move self, bag and baggage into it. But c'mon...every generation is in love with what they grew up with. Give it time. Even Grunge Rockers of the 90's are now pining away for the days when Nirvana was alive and racing up the charts.

Getting Someone's Goat

In order to maintain or move up the social ladder, you have to develop a reputation that everyone agrees is “normal.” In fact, be more normal than normal. There's nothing people love to do, when you're not around, is to gossip and unfairly judge you worse than than a Jesuit Inquisitor. So defend you must! Unless you're like me and want to fuck with people's heads, start fires and come out of a social situation good and scratched up...for fun! It's almost guaranteed they'll talk about you for days!

I did this more so when younger, screw around in situations that had, perhaps, a casual, unwritten order to them. Actually, it was an instant attention getter if you do something to cause other's mouths to drop. Also, I found it pretty comedic. The humor was generally completely LOST by those who couldn't sub-reference a joke fifty different ways in under five seconds. Those people were kinda boring, commonplace and dull. Though you do need these people there, they're the mark, those of us who get the joke will be our audience and will demand continual torture of the dullard.

At an annual 4^th of July event, I managed to piss off a few people on purpose. I don't know why I go down that road but I do it willingly, with gusto! Once I get someone's goat, I can't help but to abuse it to no end. Of course, after it's all done, I won't get any invitations to their house anytime soon.

I don't know how we got on the subject but dating later in life came up. I then opine that when I was dating more so than now, I'd come across women who invariably had kids from a previous marriage or whatnot. I made it a point to surreptitiously find out about those kids. What I did, was to ask if their kids liked school, did well there and specifically, asked if they did well in English class. Why English? Because it's kinda hard to succeed at the other classes if you can't read.

If the Mom's told me the kids suck in school, hated it, or really sucked in English, I then became pretty damned suspicious about that. Why....did they do sooo poorly? Was their home life so god damn chaotic that education was impossible? Did the kid have some weird genetic problem? Was the kid an asshole to begin with? If I found out that any of these were the case, I'd never have a second or third date.

Why am I so ardent? Because I've been through it before where the little bundle of joy would like throw the TV onto the floor when he didn't get his way. That or call DCYF and lie about his Mom burning him with cigarettes. That was alot of fun. I will not repeat it.

But when I told a group of women at the party of my RULE #1, some of them became super defensive.

“Whaddya mean if they don't do well in school? What if they're just a bit slow? What if they need help of a tutor? Why blame the Mom? What? Is YOUR life so damned perfect? Huh? What do YOU know? You've never been married or had kids!”

I had tried to repeat my view but I was getting shouted down nearly. It then hit me. The old Shakespeare quote does fit, “The lady doth protest too much.” What I realized, was that a few of them took my view as a condemnation of their own, personal child rearing success. Gee...what archery on my part! Nailed it! Bullseye! And I wasn't even trying.

So...why waste a good chance to make the situation far worse and have fun at it?

I don't know where my next comment came from. I was good and buzzed because I rarely drink now and putting down half a case of Yuelings over a 3 hour period got me going. I think I was thinking about marriage in general, how it's NOT always the panacea it's claimed to be and the other thousand problems that can muck it up.

So I remember a short conversation I had with a Pawtucket fireman and it gave me the comment I needed to shock the staid, middle class, married women there.

“Ya know...if I wanted a really pretty girl, just for a short time..I can always go to Las Vegas, get an 18 year old teen prostitute, at one of those agencies where it's completely legal. I too, can make believe I'm a teenager again and use her like a Shake 'n' Bake bag!”

(No joke. I said that)

For about seven seconds, everyone there just sat there in dumb silence.

On the eighth second, they ALL rose up in condemnation of my idea. “You PIG! A teenager! What about STDs? What about being LOYAL? That's GROSSSS!”

I then said: “Do you want to hear the story?”

They all shut up pretty quickly as they thought I was about to further shock them about my nailing a high school girl in a hotel bed. Nope, I was about to tell them a true story about a fireman I know. The story I was about to tell was a bit of condemnation of marriage when it doesn't work.

Fireman B: “My marriage has been dead for years. As it was going down, I tried ways to make her happy. I had bought that house in Matunuck she wanted, a pretty pricey beach house that made me work far too many hours of overtime, plus a second job. When that didn't make her happy, I relented to paying for plastic surgery. I spent $9,000 on a pair of tits for her and other things, that made her look she was 19 again. Christ...I went into hock over her”

I keep telling the tale...

“She had long ago shut me off sexually and to tell the truth, I was ok with it. I didn't find her that appealing anymore anyway, but I still liked girls, wanted to get some. So I went to Las Vegas, with some other guys...not to gamble, but to pool our money for a weekend long escort.”

He told me that once the agency verifies you, find out you ARE who you say you are...and can come up with the $2,000 fee for a weekend girl, they send over a catalog to your hotel.

“I flipped through the pages and I picked HER! She looked like the girl next door, the girl you knew on the cheerleading team. I had her for the whole weekend! It wasn't just sex, but I turned her into a tour guide for me in Las Vegas too. The best part? She LEFT ME on Sunday night when our contract was up...she WENT AWAY!”

“Fireman B” I say, “What's cheaper? Marriage or a teen escort from Las Vegas?”

“The teen!” he blurts out.

The girls I had insulted around the table sat there in silence. I could READ their faces after they heard the story. What was it I read? I saw them quietly thinking about their own husbands, whether they'd stray, whether they would stay put. Perhaps even there was straying but due to whatever...they stayed married. It was a conscious surrender and as long as they were Wife #1, with their names on the deed, 401k and such...a dalliance that lives in Las Vegas could be tolerated.

I stood up from my chair, I pointed at the women and said, “I'm RIGHT.”

The whole time I was doing this, I felt like giggling. Here I was poking the bears through the cage bars with a stick and I couldn't STOP! I kept at it even though I was probably, most assuredly, spending to zero any good collateral I had with them before.

Ah, I hadn't done this in a few years. I used to do it all the time when younger.