Atmosphere - Joy Division - Substance - 1995

Of all of my relatives, the one that I am probably most like is my maternal grandfather. I may have gotten my alcohol tolerance, blarney, and sense of humor from my biological fathers side, my intellect from my mother, and my professional sense from my (step)Dad...but my grandfather is the person I see myself in most.

Born in 1930, he was certainly raised with Depression era ethics. He was too young for WWII and his service was concluded before Korea. He worked most of his early adulthood as a shoe salesman before opening up his army surplus store in Kokomo, IN. He was 2 pack a day smoker until he had a heart attack at the alarmingly young age of 38...at which point he decided to go on mission to Puerto Rico to help build a church.

Always an incorrigible flirt and a man who loved to stir the pot, he was a son of a bitch in the best possible sense. I lived with him for a few years in high school due to some family difficulties and he was my first employer, putting me to work at the shop and at the gun shows he'd attend on weekends to sell his wares.

I went to go visit him this weekend for the 4th, as my family has recently had to put him in a home. He is wheel chairbound, and at nearly 80 has survived 6 heart attacks, many strokes and recently been diagnosed with bowel cancer. It's heart rending to see a man of such limitless spirit stuck in a place that he clearly sees as a waiting room for death...though it is encouraging to see that he has made many girlfriends among both the nurses and the other inhabitants.

I've survived 34 years without losing a family member...and for that I should be thankful, but it is never easy to watch someone you love fade away.

Was this an appropriate post for Joy Division...maybe? They are certainly a band for whom death (though not aging) is usually associated. The best I can say is that at least I gave tribute to my grandpa on a great song as oppossed to one of the filler tracks.

Ashes to Ashes - David Bowie - Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) - 1980

For the record, my own St. Patrick's Day celebration went quite swimmingly and I woke up relatively hang over free...though I was hungry as a mofo.

So anyway, to get back to the trip (I can't believe this shit has taken me nearly a month to write, but hey...I got other things going on too...and I'm almost finished...and honestly, the end is the best part, so stick with me...if you're still here). We woke up the next day fairly late, as this was one of the few days that we didn't have to travel. By the time we were all cleaned up and ready to roll it was nearly 1PM.

Incidentally, it was also my birthday...despite my protestations that the trip itself was my birthday party and that as my birthday was on a Monday, no special treatment was required, the guys had already started throwing shots at me the night before. They insisted on "celebrating" my birthday from midnight Scotland time through to midnight of the following day NYC time...so I essentially had 29 hours of birthday shots. Ugh.

We took the day to do some touristy site seeing. We started off by heading up Buchannan St. which appears to be their mini-version of NYC's Broadway, or Grafton St. in Dublin...basically just a long street with lots of clothing stores and restaurants. We were there for coffee.

After getting appropriately caffeinated we headed over to Glasgow Cathedral and The Necropolis. As I stated earlier, I'm a history nerd and love old shit. The Cathedral was especially interesting for being a Roman Catholic church that had survived the pretty thorough reformation of Scotland. As such the basement level had at one point actually been converted into two protestant church until the late 19th century, leading to a large cathedral with two small churches in the basement.

The Necropolis was the real site though, a giant old cemetery built spiraling upwards on a tall hill. The highest grave at the top of the hill was reserved for the monument to the man who had brought the reformation to Scotland. From that high point you could see most of the city before you. It was one of the most touching sites I saw on the whole trip, and probably my favorite thing I saw that was not in Berlin.

Scary Monsters and Super Creeps more less marks the rather radical change between late 1970's ultra-arty, Berlin and Eno-loving Bowie and the white suited pop dork we all know and love from the "Dancing in the Streets" video. I will always have the utmost respect for Bowie, and I like the way he's managed to retain some dignity with age that his "Dancing in the Streets" co-star has not...but the 80's pretty much end my interest in his music.

Anyway You Want It - Journey - Departure - 1980

"Hey Everybody! We're all gonna get laid!"

Seriously, are there many more perfect examples of mindless, flat-out stupid, summer time bliss than "Anyway You Want It?"

And in the pantheon of just plain dumb rock lyrics you'd have to include "She Loves to Move/She Loves to Grove/She Loves the Loving Things"

Another One Bites The Dust - Queen - The Game - 1980

Sure, Freddy Mercury is gay as all hell. And this song is basically funk. And it was a favorite of Michael Jackson...but I still kinda like it. Honestly, it's Mercury's vocal that make the song totally work. He doesn't croon or do his usual theatrical melisima shit. He just sings the song with a kind of viciousness, particularly after the first chorus, where he nearly screams. It's a kind of staccato vocal assualt that would be mimiced by countless others down the line. 90's industrial of the NIN stripe would use it a lot. Thom Yorke, an embarrassed but avid Queen fan, apes it in soft/loud songs like My Iron Lung and the second half of 2+2=5. Cobain also was a noted Queen fan, though it would be hard to think of two more different male vocalists, so it's sorta hard to tell where his influence lies...easier to look to Brian May for that.

Anyway....

And The Cradle Will Rock - Van Halen - Women and Children First - 1980

Ok, so I mentioned the wait in line for the ID in order to drink...but I didn't even get to the biggest indignity of the day. The beer pens.

So, after you waited your 45 minutes for a beer...you had to stay in an enclosed area about 25 feet by 15 feet in the grass. You could not take your beer out to the show. You were also limited to 5 beers and they stopped serving at 830. To enforce this they had a ridiculous system...a purple x was drawn on your left hand in permanent marker. Then you were given a plastic wrist band with 5 plastic pull tabs. Each time you bought a drink a tab was pulled from the bracelet.

Basically, this sets off all of my alarm bells at once. First of all, there's the simple practical matter of having to sit in a confined pen to drink my beer, when I'm at an outdoor festival. Second of all, there is the moral principle of the thing. This is clearly designed to try to curb underage drinking...and nothing infuriates me more than things done for "the protection of the children". The world exists for adults...children should be toughened up for the world not protected from it, and adults should not be made to curtail their lives for the sake of the children. Beyond that, we are kidding ourselves if we think silly activities like this are actually going to curb underage drinking...and we are sucking all the fun out of childhood too. What the hell else are you supposed to do when you are 16 at an outdoor concert in August, you are going to sneak beer...that's what you do! And finally, kids these days don't even drink that much...they just steal the prescription drugs out of your medicine cabinets and snort them. The attitude that kids were pure and innocent and only corrupted by our society is one of the reasons I had to get the fuck out of the midwest...and to have it occur here in NYC (ok, Jersey, but barely) really infuriates me.

I'll give you a for instance of the kind thing that sets me off. I'm sitting in the beer pen drinking a couple beers and I bum one of Anand's cigarettes. Sitting next to us is a woman in her mid-late twenties reading a book. She immediately starts covering her nose and exaggerating a cough. Seriously! First of all, honey, go do your fucking homework somewhere besides the beer pen. Second of all, it's THE BEER PEN...it's bad enough I have to be locked in here drinking, you could at least not take up space READING. And third of all, when you are in the only place in the park where you can legally do anything even slightly unsavory...maybe you can cut me some slack on having a cigarette. Ugggghhhhh.

You know who'd really hate the beer pen policy? David Lee Roth, that's who. The Cradle Will Rock indeed, Diamond Dave. Rock on!

Ace of Spades - Motorhead - Ace of Spades 7" - 1980

Okay, so I took a couple of my co-workers to lunch at a German place where I drank a giant 1 liter stein of black beer...this certainly helped the hang over. But now I want a nap.

Motorhead can only help that. How can you listen to this song and not want to slam some Jack Daniels and then start a fight in which you use a pool queue as a weapon? And I don't even like Jack Daniels.

Seriously, though...who wants some?