Strength Through Wounding-AFI

I didn’t even go to the concert for them. I had only heard them on some random mixtape a friend had given me, and it didn’t stick out as anything extraordinary at the time. CHOKE was the main attraction for me. I was just hitting my punk rock groove. Grade 10 had been a mix n’ mash of musical variety. Heck, I was even in the musical at our school. The shame lives on. Not really, but I do remember being really embarrassed about it. At any rate, my playlist was a steady mix of Eminem, Tupac, Metallica, Green Day and as my tagline says, anything but country. But the summer before grade 11 changed all that.

I had gone to a few punk rock shows the previous year, and they all had a lasting impact in my life. There are too many shows to even remember, yet as I think back, a million memories of friendship and pure joy run through my mind. But until now, nothing had shattered my world the way this evening would. AFI was the band. They were small, at least in the Regina neck of the woods. The concert was in a large venue, but it was hardly a show people were clamoring to get to, as there were a couple hundred people there, but room for many more. I went for Choke, and for an amazing local hardcore band named INDIGNANCE. There was this band named AFI headlining the show, yet I’d never heard of them.

From that opening buildup into the song “Strength Through Wounding”, I knew this was something big. I could feel the intensity growing. It seemed I was in the minority, as everyone around me joined the chant once the buildup had reached a fever pitch.

Through our bleeding we are one! 

Through the darkness breaks the light. 
Through the light unending pain. 
Defy the wretched ones till the darkness comes again. 

Through our bleeding we are one!

I don’t know what those words mean. I didn’t then, and I don’t know. They are kind of morbid, dark and twisted. Yet they impacted my soul like a sledgehammer to my skull. It was like a shot of adrenaline started in my chest and flowed through my whole body. And no, I was not high. We didn’t have any drugs until after the concert. That’s how I knew it was real. The feeling of this music creating a love inside of me that up until this point had been divided. From here on out, it was punk rock or no rock.

There isn’t much to remember from this night. But from that opening chorus until the final note, the smile never left my face. I was standing at the front with the stage about chest height. At one point, a crowd surfer kicked the back of my head, sending me forward face first into the monitor. The adrenaline didn’t allow me to feel pain, but the blood gushing out of my eye and all over my white t-shirt said differently. The girl next to me asked if I was okay, handing me her water bottle. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I smiled and poured it all over my head, which most likely just made a bigger mess out of the whole ordeal. But she laughed because I was laughing and there was nothing that would take me out of that crowd and that moment of joy. After the song, the lead singer, mr. Davey Havoc himself, came and checked on me, handing me his towel to wipe up the mess that was my face and patting me on the back. To this day, it was the coolest moment in my concert going life.

Afterwards, I asked him to sign the towel. It was blood stained and sweaty, but he smiled and wrote his name with an inverted pentagram. I was a somewhat christian kid (I say somewhat because of my upbringing more than my lifestyle) but I could care less about the satanic symbol adorning my new prize, it was a treasure that meant the world to me. After that, we went to 7-11. Kris laughed at me as I walked in to get my slurpee. Blood all over my t-shirt mixed with sweat stains, a gash over my eye, exhaustion and dehydration showing in my weary look, but the biggest smile on my face. It must have looked as though I had been on the losing end of a street fight, minus the smile. But I was on the winning end, no matter how bruised and battered I was. It was a night that changed everything, and that opening song awakened a passion in me that I never knew existed.

And while you might not get why I loved this music so much or why something so dark could reach down and bring so much life to my soul, I can’t really explain it to you. For some people, it was the Beatles that did it to them. For others, it’s an old hymn from church. When I listen to the music that teenagers clamour over these days, sometimes I want to bang my head against the wall in a combination of frustration and regret for not teaching them a better way. When your a kid, it’s less about the message and more about the presentation. So this band with morbid lyrics and satanic symbols galore wasn’t scary to me. It brought me life, joy and happiness I hadn’t understood up until that point. The song for me was “Strength Through Wounding” & the chant of “Through our bleeding we are one!”. I have no explanation. I just have a memory and a smile.

Ice Ice Baby-Vanilla Ice

For those that know me, if they had to place bets on which song I would talk about first, this would be the safest bet. A staple in my musical diet, although now days, a joke more than anything. I can rap the whole thing, and while I stand by the fact that this is something to be proud of, my wife assures me it’s not with each eye roll as the familiar “Yo, VIP. Let’s kick it!” comes through the speakers.

It was 1990 and I was fresh out of grade 1. Life was simple at that age. Go to school, play until bedtime, try to get out of brushing my teeth, go to bed, repeat. Music had barely entered my vocabulary at this point. All I knew of music up until now were the songs from the old dusty hymn books at church, some of which I’ll talk about another day. That is until ‘the day’. I refer to it as ‘the day’ because as ridiculous as it might sound, the day I heard “Ice Ice Baby” for the first time, my whole world turned upside down in the best way possible.

My brothers came home from school ecstatic about a cassette tape their friend had borrowed to them. For those of the younger generation, a cassette tape is the CD of old. Wait, you guys probably don’t know what CD’s are anymore, do you? Let’s see…Cassette tapes were the itunes of old, the digital downloadable music of a bygone era. Cassette tapes had spools wound with shiny tape. I feel old just describing that. All kidding aside, it was the only way I could hear music, through the cassette tape. There were times in years to follow once I discovered my love of music where I would sit with a blank tape listening to the radio, waiting to hit record for just the right song. This was also before they played Nickelback or Lady Gaga every other song. So it was quite the ordeal as we never bought cassette tapes at our house, especially not of the kind of music I liked. But this friend was kind enough to lend my brother Mark a copy of Vanilla Ice’s debut album with the hit single, “Ice Ice Baby”.

We knew mom and dad wouldn’t let us listen to it. It’s not that they were tyrants. It’s just that it was a different era. All secular music was of the devil, and that was assumed as part of our church culture, and still is in some places. They listened to the Nylons on vinyl, so there was no way they would understand. After all, our parents never disobeyed their parents and listened to forbidden music, right? That’s only our generation…

Once mom had tucked us in, we put the tape in the player and listened to the album. I remember loving it, less for the talent, but more for the forbidden fruit I was partaking in. That’s the reason this was so monumental in my life. I had disobeyed my parents several times in my younger years. But I had never enjoyed it as much as I did now. It felt worth the risk to be exposed to what felt like the most amazing music of all time. The song that stuck with me more than the rest was “Ice Ice Baby”. That might seem obvious since it was the only hit of Mr. Ice’s career, but something about it was so catchy that I couldn’t resist the stolen bass line and oh so white guy rapping about how cool he was. Something about this song reached into my soul and gave a shot of adrenaline I hadn’t felt before. Most rockers use heroin, but I was only 6, so the natural would have to do.

We stayed up late listening. I’m not sure if my brothers cared as much as I did, but it felt monumental. It felt like the first time in my life I was disobeying my parents and living for myself. It all ended one time when we didn’t hear mom’s footsteps. She said our younger sister, Keri-lyn had complained that we were listening to music and she didn’t get to, so mom came to take the tape player into her room so she could have a turn. Mom must have assumed we had borrowed one of their A cappella tapes. We held our breath. It didn’t take long to hear the shriek from my mother. It happened to be on the song Life Is A Fantasy where Mr. Ice describes rubdowns and sex on an inner-tube. For some reason, my impressionable young mind remembered my mom screaming at us about that line. Not sure why…

Needless to say, mom and dad monitored our music a little more closely from then on. Exposing our 3 year old sister to Vanilla Ice’s fantasy didn’t sit too well with them. But I’ll never forget those nights and days spent listening to those songs, and “Ice Ice Baby” in particular. If you ask me today, I can still rap the whole thing, and I will do so with pride. It is my sole claim to fame/infamy, depending on how you look at it. It was my awakening to music and disobeying my parents. My parents may have despised you, but I thank you sir for being an awful rapper (i can’t bring myself to say musician) and opening my eyes to the world.

Until next time, word to your mother.

Songs That Changed My Life…

I was driving to a family reunion yesterday with my wife and two kids. My Ipod was plugged in and while there was some sporadic conversation, most of the drive was covered by music accompanied by my playlist, “Inspire Me”. This list on my Ipod isn’t all the songs that have ever inspired me, but the ones that currently are. I would crank it up and belt out in my broken voice every word of every song. I would look in my rearview mirror to see my 5 year old daughter dancing in her booster seat like the was bursting to get out and tear the world a new one, a la footloose. If there is one role model I want for my 5 year old daughter, it’s Kevin Bacon. I bet that sentence has NEVER been said before. Between my brutal singing and my daughters epic booster seat ballet, something occurred to me. It wasn’t a monumental epiphany by any stretch, as this has been said a million times before and known since the beginning of time. Music is powerful.

It transcends the daily monotony and reaches deep down into the soul of everyone. We all get that song stuck in our head that we can’t stop singing along too, for better or worse. Everyone has sung at the top of their lungs to their favorite ballad in their shower/bedroom/car at some point in their life. Everyone has rebelled in their youth by listening to that music our parents told us not to. Everyone loves music. Young or old. Regardless of race, status in society, free or locked up, educated or not, music reaches a place that nothing else can. Rare is the person who just doesn’t like music. You find me a person that doesn’t love music, and I will show you someone who has never given it a chance. Because there’s music out there for everyone. We all have our style preferences. There is enough bad music out there to fill the worlds garbage dumps, but a different person in a different part of the world would see the same music as treasure. Heck, a person across the street would disagree with what I think is junk. But for every 1000 horrawful bands there are out there, there is one that reaches into the depth of your soul and inspires even the most uninspired to greatness.

So I sang at the top of my lungs in my car with my wife desperately wishing I would let her sleep, and I watched as my daughter danced a modified seatbelt dance in the backseat, and I saw the beauty and importance of music in a whole new light. I started thinking about how important music has been to me over the years, from all different genres and artists. Some songs are hilarious to think of now. That they inspired me so much at one point is embarrassing, yet they did. Some songs I still love dearly to this day, and they continue to inspire me. Some songs I discovered last week and I am amazed at their beauty and ability to move me from my seat. Music transcends the daily routine and wakes you up to the beauty of everything. People, places, interactions, struggles, triumphs. Who hasn’t had a moment in their life when they thought to themselves, “If I could pick a song for the soundtrack of this moment, it would be _________”.

So that’s what this blog will be. A soundtrack to my life. A look back at the songs that changed my life, why they did, and what I was going through to make them so powerful. There have been so many songs at all different stages, and I will jump all over the map. From childhood up to today. I don’t really have an established goal with this. I am no music expert, not by any stretch. My opinions matter little in music theory. Some of what I love will be ridiculous to you, and some will resonate deeply. Regardless, I hope this blog becomes a place where through shared life experience and music, I can transcend the ordinary and capture some of the moments in my life where the soundtrack stood out. Hopefully you can do the same.