There are some things in my past that I take for granted. Most of the time they just feel like part of a distant story but when I zoom out and try to trace back how I ended up where I am, their influence on me is undeniable.
I have a friend who functions in society a whole lot better than I do, despite having similar ideas about many things. He knows how to get a good paying job and show up every day, and get married and have kids, all things I have failed to do.
While I am only interested in half of those things, I sometimes wonder why it’s so easy for him to just “be normal” when we have so much in common.
Today I asked him if he had any role models growing up. He told me his mother and some older kids he hung out with. I couldnt relate.
My family tried to do right by me and to be good people but I never saw them as role models. Perhaps I got too many passive genes from them and they couldn’t relate to me, which made it more difficult to relate to them.
More importantly, I think I was just more curious and observant than most kids. This curiosity caused me to see all the contradictions in society from a young age and it scared me and filled me with a sense of powerlessness and existential dread.
At first I couldn’t identify a single role model.
Once again, the adults in my life weren’t bad people, but I saw their contradictions more clearly than i was supposed to as a kid, and it didn’t fill me with the confidence to follow their lead.
My favorite teachers definetly had a supporting role in my life. They were sweet and encouraging , but they were the pushover type, and their kindness and enthusiasm was drowned out by the noise of kids who took advantage of them.
Some of my favorite teachers were fired for being too honest and open with students which didn’t give me any cofnidence that I would find my place in the world, and made me even more critical of the system.
I thought for a while and tried to find some words and actions of people older than myself that stuck with me for a long time.
“Fuck Geffen Records, burn the album from a friend, buy a t-shirt if you want to support us”.
That’s what was written on the merch table of RX bandits when I went to see them live right after their small record label had been acquired by a bigger one.
That was the first thing that came to mind.
It was the first time I had seen a real prove-able commitment to ones ideals. Here was a band that could probably earn even more money thanks to being acquired by a larger label but because their ideals didn’t align, they would rather take a loss and a huge risk by punching upwards against a company that would enforce different values on them.
I remembered how they’d stop concerts when mosh pits got too violent and encourage a more peaceful and compassionate atmosphere at their shows.
I remember Joe, the bass player, inviting us backstage when he recognized us from coming to so many shows and telling us a bit about their lives off stage.
I remember Matt, guitarist and singer, refusing to sign a poster and telling us to have a chat with him instead, to take him off of the pedestal we were putting him on.
I remembered the whole crowd, a room full of kids all trying to figure out how to live in a world that treated them as defects, all sing out in unison “Give it away, release all your tension!” And going wild during the metal influenced breakdown of an other
I remembered how they tried to introduce their fans to styles of music they weren’t as open to, hip hop, jazz and psychedelic, despite the fact that they were part of the pop punk scene.
These were the first people who made me feel that maybe I could find a place for myself in the world.
Perhaps I was in denial about that for many years because my parents convinced me that music wasn’t a viable path for me, but I see it clearly now. They were showing me the way.
They weren’t the only ones.
I remember when Joey Eppard, singer of the band 3, treating me like a friend even though I was just a fan, and 10 years younger than him. I had driven hours to see him play at a cafe in Woodstock New York just after getting my license.
I bought a CD after the show because it was independently released and not available in stores. I told him how much i hoped they toured so I could see him play more often, both solo and with his band, and how I had driven all that way.
He was so excited that someone had made the effort for him even though he would soon tour with the likes of Dreamtheater and Porcupine Tree and had already recorded and performed with members of P-Funk and The Band. “Come have coffee with us!!” and just like that I was friends with one of my favorites musicians.
What humility! No pretense whatsoever, and if you watch him play “Bramfatura” , you know he has the talent to hypnotize the masses if he wants to, but he was just doing his thing and treating all his supporters like family.
Later we exchanged emails and his replies were long and natural, no sense that he was doing it out of obligation, and even if he did feel some some small sense of obligation, it was clearly nothing compared to his genuine interest in people and in certain topics.
That’s the kind of person I wanted to be. And I hope that’s the kind if person I ended up becoming.
I don’t say it often but I have said it before and I will say it again, these loval shows and the communities that gathered around them saved me.
Growing up in a the suburbs, where honest expression would lead to negative consequences and everyone was fighting to keep up with the Jones’s, having something real and raw in my life was the only thing that kept me alive long enough to find my own sense of passion and purpose.
I guess I did have some role models growing up. It just took me a while to realize it.
Just as an ode and shout out to the bands mentioned here, here are a few songs. Everyones a bit older and more composed in these videos than they used to be (at least 3/4 of the videos, the last is older) but the new recordings are way better than the ones I can find from back in the day and the audio is close to what it actually sounded like live :
https://youtu.be/TDvZNu5FQu0?si=onH97YFf5DUJ6dd4
https://youtu.be/mpJ_ognoezQ?si=blrtqwN7iwlOUjiR
https://youtu.be/1qwY5tj9-v4?si=Q-fKv72hrkvcVj7Q
https://youtu.be/ZVw2PlOmI5U?si=Wp3BMD6SmNbbmUqz
And my latest experiment if you are interested…maybe you could hear the influence although I definitely haven’t gone out of my way to sound like these bands.
https://youtu.be/aGPWuyhHurw?si=PiiFrdfrZfyLRQ4h
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