Of Reunions and Blog Tag

Courtesy of this post, which was a bit of a shaming after my promise in comments related to this post, I am catching up in my all-too-typical very-remiss fashion. Mea culpa.

And your post comes at an interesting moment in time, Mr. Childs. This nostalgia jag is at a crossroads with this year, 20 years from when I turned 18, which is coincidentally the year of my 20-year high school reunion.

I'm not going. I haven't been to Coffeyville in nearly that long, and I'm thinking that it's not nearly long enough. I have tried a few paths to nostalgia, from being involved in the class reunion page at Yahoo! Groups to penning a few letters to former classmates. I am not exactly sure who remembers the years between 1983 - 1987 in Coffeyville, KS with much fondness, but I will readily cop to disaffection for much of the experience. The times in that interval which I do remember fondly often has strong connections to music, but seldom any of the #1's to have hit the charts. I recall having a class notebook which had better cover-art detail than the notes kept within, and I similarly recall that 1987 was the year I discovered Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, Psychocandy, Big Lizard in My Backyard, and got into Never Mind the Bollocks for the first time.

As regards the reunion of the class of 1987: One of the central events planned is a large-ish tailgating event for a football game with still-traditional rivals from nearby Independence. I don't know exactly how that idea got developed, but that sounds like the sort of thing that would set the Wrong Tone for the entire weekend. No thank you. I never liked the whole sports scene much in the first place, so I can't imagine being whisked off into some positive frame of mind. Being surrounded by modern-day high-schoolers in close proximity to the people with whom I'd gone through the "high school experience?" That sounds like a recipe for the sort of dysphoria that might take me four or five years of electroconvulsive therapy to overcome.

Case in point: The number 1 song when I turned 18 was January 24 - February 6: At this Moment - Billy Vera and The Beaters.

Having completely forgotten what this song must have sounded like (and I know that I knew it, since all that was available in a 4-state region was AOR or Top 40 radio), I went to the iTunes Store for a refresher, if you could call it such.

Oh, dear God. Maudlin, blue-eyed "soul." I remember that now. I'd tried to shut it from my consciousness, but now I am recalling slow dances at the local VFW for the senior prom; me, resplendent in full-white tux with black tie & cummerbund. Guh.

Well. With that setting the tone, let's dive in and see what else we have. Following Hayden's example, I'm going to investigate from the bottom up on this page.

68. Why Can't I Be You - The Cure. OK, now this isn't quite so bad. Boy, did I ever like The Cure. That seems like a guilty admission by my current standards, but by my lights at the time, The Cure was something of a revelation. I think this was the first "new" album they'd done since I'd purchased Standing on the Beach/Staring at the Sea on cassette from a Camelot Records in Topeka. My wont was to peruse the cassettes in alpha order. I just stopped anywhere I saw a name that sounded interesting, and "The Cure" sounded interesting. For the price, this comp was a natural. Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me was their foray into Top 40'dom, and this was the first single. If I listen to anything by The Cure these days? It's more likely from Faith or Seventeen Seconds (which I had known as the Happily Ever After release).

61. Touch of Grey - Grateful Dead. This was more or less my introduction to The Dead. I didn't get it then, and I still don't get it to this day. Hippie-dom was rampant in the years to follow, and many people have come and gone who've tried to convince me of the genius of Jerry Garcia, and I have yet to have the epiphany. Still - cool video.

32. Where The Streets Have No Name - U2. Although The Joshua Tree was the high-water mark for U2, I didn't quite know it at the time. I still recall splitting the wrapper off of this release on the day that it came out, and I spent a lot of time with it in the coming months (that is, when I wasn't wrapped up in Rodney Anonymous and his skewed take on human existence). Still, I listen to the chugging, soaring, heavily delayed guitar of The Edge which opens this track, and I can vaguely see Bono's supercilious mug taking front stage atop that Los Angeles building, and I can't help but smile. I don't recall ever loving big-time rock stars like I'd loved U2. To this day, though, I have yet to see them in concert.

24. Brass Monkey - Beastie Boys. I didn't like this song in high school. I thought Beastie Boys were awful, unserious, and one-hit wonders. I didn't pay attention until Ill Communication. So the relationship I have to the BBoys has always contained an element of lost time for me.

7. Oh Yeah - Yello. The theme to Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Ah, John Hughes movies. Lighthearted, hackneyed romps through the world of teen alienation, reaching embarrassing levels of both phony and maudlin - and I have seen them all. What more need be said about 1987?