The End of the Eighties: 70 Songs About 24 Months

Somewhere around the turn of the millennium, The Cure released Bloodflowers, I moved back to Northeast Ohio after ten years away, and the milestone of turning 30 was upon me. That throat-knotting mixture of nostalgia and aging (and realizing your heroes were aging too) resulted in a need to reset the compass. In dealing with this mini-crisis, I turned to the music of my youth, the music that had the greatest impact on shaping who I am and provided a soundtrack for the most formative time in my life, and attempted to capture the amazing two-year arc between late 1988 and late 1990.

The collection of songs began life as a series of mix CDs. Two discs covered the music of my freshman year at Bowling Green State University. Another two discs were devoted to the music I associated with Thursday’s, the punk bar on Exchange Street across from the University of Akron.

The BGSU collection was for all those in our tight circle of college freshman friends, though I think I only ever gave copies to John and Jeff. John and I have been in each others’ lives since sixth grade or so, but we met Jeff at college and then lost touch. When Tracy and I moved back north, Jeff and I reconnected and our wives became friends, and we have kept that friendship going ever since. The BGSU mix was a (hopefully) thoughtful collection of many of the songs that were so important to me (us) during those two semesters of chaos and emotion and laughter.

The Thursday’s collection was for Tracy and me. Tracy and I grew up Northeast Ohio and ran in the same Akron punk circles and knew many of the same people, but didn’t meet until we were both living in Florida. We’re certain our paths must have crossed at some point in the late ’80s when we were both frequenting Thursday’s regularly and attending the same shows at the same clubs, but neither of us remember actually meeting back in the day. I wanted to put together a songlist that captured that soundtrack I (and presumably, she would also) remember from Thursday’s.

The mixes might have begun life as mix CDs, but they now exist as mix playlists in iTunes. The original 60 songs spread across those four discs ballooned to 70 once I went digital and shed the constraints of physical media running time capacities (but still tried to keep things reasonable). Originally called BGSU / Fall 1989-Spring 1990 and Thursday’s Mix, they now commingle under the single playlist named “The End of the Eighties.”

Inspired by the conversation John and I have been having over the last few weeks (both publicly via our blogs and privately in email and in personal exchanges), I’ve decided to go back and revisit these combined playlists and capture some thoughts on each of the songs. I’m not really sure how this is going to unfold over the course of the next few weeks and months (and year?!). Blog entries could be a semi-coherent paragraph about some long-ago personal reference, or it might be something in the larger context of alternative music and the zeitgeist, but I’ll do my best to hopefully make this little nostalgia trip entertaining.

And, at the end of this little writing experiment, hopefully you’ll be rewarded with the blueprint to a killer mix playlist.

A Frightening Reality

Thanks to a tweet by my friend Dave, I tracked down and read The Ground Truth: The Untold Story of America Under Attack on 9/11 by John Farmer. It’s a frightening account of incompetence perpetrated at every level of government.

Farmer, who served as senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission, provides a compelling read. The book looks at the attacks on 9/11 chronologically. 1996 through 2000 is explored in terms of years. January 2001 through September 10, 2001 is dealt with as months, weeks, and days. September 11 is explored in first hours, then minutes, and finally seconds. This structure succeeds in ratcheting up the tension and drama, despite the reader’s advance knowledge of what’s ultimately coming. It also highlights the confusion and misinformation delivered on what Farmer refers to as “The Day of Days.”

The other interesting (and equally alarming) aspect of the book is a comparison between the government response on 9/11 and the government response to Hurricane Katrina four years later. Two disasters: one man-made and considered unlikely, one natural and predicted with certainty. Different agencies were involved between the two events, but Farmer’s case is that because the 9/11 Commission (along with the American public and media) was lied to, the changes put in place as a result were inappropriate and inadequate. This, he posits, led directly to the botched response at the local, state, and federal levels of government when Hurricane Katrina hit.

The Ground Truth is a fascinating read and a fairly damning assessment of American government competency. No surprises there, I suppose.

Deus ex New Year

If only because it was the year I published Deus ex Comica: The Rebirth of a Comic Book Fan, 2009 was pretty amazing. But after you get over how cool it is to think that you published a book and the excitement of holding a physical copy of it in your hand, there is the suddenly daunting task of somehow getting the word out about said book. Self-promotion is decidedly not in my comfort zone, but through necessity and the help and encouragement of Tracy and John, I stepped outside of it and surprised myself with how much fun I had!

My local comic shop, JC Comics & Cards, stepped up and hosted me for my very first in-store book signing in April, and, despite competing with a gorgeous day outside, it was a success! From there I promoted the book at a bunch of regional comic book conventions and did an in-store signing on Free Comic Book Day at Bill’s Books and More.

Learning to write a press release and sending copies of the book to local newspapers resulted in write-ups in the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Akron Beacon Journal, and interviews with Robot 6 @ Comic Book Resources’ Tim O’Shea and Elliott Serrano of the Chicago Tribune’s RedEye Geek to Me blog, and a great review and interview on Wired Magazine’s GeekDad blog.

The year ended with two well-received author visits. The first came out of nowhere when my old friend Mark, a professor at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, asked me if I’d like to be a part of the Fall for the Book Festival. What an amazing experience that was! My prepared reading in front of an audience of 50 or so was followed by a great question and answer session.

I was able to get copies of Deus ex Comica in virtually all branches of the Akron-Summit County Public Library, which led to my other author visit, this one at the Fairlawn-Bath Branch of the library. Although attendance was lighter than the GMU festival (somewhere around 20 attendees), it was just as fun and, again, the conversation with the audience afterward was wonderful.

Amid all this, I was fortunate enough to give copies of the book to both Stan Lee and Neil Gaiman, and share Deus ex Comica with friends and influences at the Chicago Comic-Con.

So now I feel like I sort of have a game plan. Or, at least, that’s what I tell myself. And as 2009 wound down, I set out to line up as many appearances as I could to start off the New Year. My hope is to average one book-related appearance per month in 2010, and while I’m still working on some dates and opportunities, I’m thrilled to so far have seven appearances confirmed between now and mid-July!

The first Sunday in February I’ll be promoting the book at the Akron-Canton Con (John will be there too, selling copies of Collect All 21!). The following Saturday, February 13, John and I will both be at The Learned Owl Book Shop in Hudson for a local authors event, sharing some prepared readings from our books, chatting with customers, and signing books.

March and April will find me doing author visits at the Northwest Akron (March 04) and the Nordonia Hills (April 29) branches of the Akron-Summit County Public Library. I’ll be following that up by helping Comic Heaven celebrate Free Comic Book Day on May 01 with an in-store signing event at their Willoughby store.

The end of June brings another Akron-Canton Con (June 27) and then two weeks later I’ll be speaking at the Firestone Park branch of the library.

I have more book promotion opportunities on the horizon as well, but they aren’t firm enough to share just yet. Some are nearly finalized and some are still just ideas I’m exploring. As soon as things do finalize, I’ll be sure to post them. I hope, if you’re able, you’ll come out, say “hello,” and support a local writer!

• February 07, 10am-4pm: Akron-Canton Con (with Collect All 21! author John Booth), Chapparells Community Center, 2418 S. Arlington Road, Akron
• February 13, 3pm-5pm: The Learned Owl Book Shop (with Collect All 21! author John Booth), 204 N. Main Street, Hudson (330.653.2252)
• March 04, 6.30pm-7.30pm: Northwest Akron Branch (ASCPL), 1720 Shatto Avenue, Akron (330.836.1081)
• April 29, 7pm-8pm: Nordonia Hills Branch (ASCPL), 9458 Old Eight Road, Northfield (330.467.8595)
• May 01 (Free Comic Book Day!), TBD: Comic Heaven, 4847 Robinhood, Willoughby (440.942.6960)
• June 27, 10am-4pm: Akron-Canton Con, Chapparells Community Center, 2418 S. Arlington Road, Akron
• July 10, 2pm-3pm: Firestone Park Branch (ASCPL), 1486 Aster Avenue, Akron (330.724.2126)

Holiday Break 1989, Part 2: Nothing Quite Like the Feel of Something New

Twenty years ago I was on holiday break from Bowling Green State University. There are two things that stand out about those few weeks I was home. First was the debut of The Simpsons, and the other was the New Year’s Eve party at John’s house a few weeks later...
Weeks after the debut of The Simpsons, and just days after seeing Nine Inch Nails live for the first time at the Phantasy Theater, I rang in 1990 at John’s parents’ house with a group of friends that ranged from years old connections to brand new relationships. (Maria wasn’t in attendance this night. Although we were together from that Christmas break through much of that next spring semester back at BG, we never officially dated, and I don’t think she ever actually broke up with her boyfriend.)

Although I contest the clarity of John’s chronology, I fully corroborate the importance of that night and Nine Inch Nails’ Pretty Hate Machine.

(To be clear, I did have an advanced copy of PHM by way of the Akron record store I worked at over summers and on breaks home from college, but by the time December 31, 1989, rolled around, PHM had been officially released and available for a couple of months. Long before that New Year’s Eve, I had the CD and John, by virtue of being not only my best high school friend but also my college roommate, had heard the album many, many times.)

This amazing confluence of old and new friends, alcohol, and music was somehow significant. It was a mingling of high school and college, Bizarre Love Triangles, and the inherent hyper-dramatic sense of trailing childhood’s end. And PHM was the soundtrack to my life at the time. It was, as John put it, “a damn dark raging album,” but more than that it captured the confusion and pain and drama and sex and fun of coming of age. No album will ever be as meaningful to me as PHM was when I was on the cusp of my twenties.

A few years ago, in a review of the Nine Inch Nails "Live: With Teeth" tour I did for Field’s Edge (a neutered version of the review also ran at PopMatters), I described PHM as “a perfect storm: The fury and passion behind the lyrics mixed with a completely different sound that bled into my world; I found it at a time when I was also discovering new sides of myself. The album came along at just the right time to be the single most influential collection of songs in my life before or since.”

At the time, The Cure’s Disintegration was epic, and Matt Johnson’s poetry on The The’s Mind Bomb was incredible, but what Trent Reznor captured in those ten songs on PHM was nothing short of monumental to a Midwest punk finding his way in the larger world. It was more than I could stand to not share it with everyone in my circle of friends – old and new, regardless of our personal history or musical tastes, I played this album for every last person I came in contact with for probably a year straight.

(The closest any other album has ever come to being as fundamentally meaningful to a period in my life is U2’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind. Released just after my 30th birthday at the end of 2000, this collection of songs became the soundtrack to our return to Ohio after ten years away, our trip to Paris, the birth of our son, our friendship with Jeff and Anna, our post-9/11 trip to New York City in December 2001, and on and on. But it was different, in that this was a collective soundtrack for experiences Tracy and I shared. And if you’re lucky, your thirties inhabit a very different worldview from that of your 19-year-old self.)

Much of that night two decades ago is fuzzy, and a lot of what I can remember is best left unsaid, but there was something about that moment when we shared Pretty Hate Machine, something of consequence. And sharing that collection of songs with our wider spheres of influence carried weight. A weight worth remembering 20 years later.

Holiday Break 1989, Part 1: Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire

Twenty years ago I was on holiday break from Bowling Green State University. There are two things that stand out about those few weeks I was home, the first being the debut of The Simpsons in their Christmas special, “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire,” in December 1989...

The Fox network was only a few years old in ’89. The Tracey Ullman Show and Married... with Children were the originals, along with 21 Jump Street, that I remember watching, mostly in college, on John’s little TV we had in the dorm room we shared.

That fall semester at BG, I took a music appreciation class of some kind (it’s a little fuzzy at this point) in the Moore Musical Arts Center. The first day of class, this cute girl and I chatted briefly and began a classroom friendship, but neither pursued anything beyond that until the end of the semester rolled around. Through small talk in class, we realized we were both from Northeast Ohio. She went to Central Catholic and grew up right in the geographic center of my high school social world. We decided to get together while home for the holidays.

I was at the peak of my punk phase at the time... my hair dyed jet black or blue-black or maroon or purple depending on the week, eyeliner, black nail polish and lipstick, my ears pierced a half-dozen times. She had a simple, girl-next-door beauty. And a boyfriend. Despite my appearance and her ties, her parents and I got along well-enough, and Maria and I spent a large part of those weeks home together. There were many late nights getting to know each other while we drank bottomless cups of coffee and I chain-smoked Marlboro Lights in a booth at the Denny’s on Everhard Road, and hanging out at her parents’ house.

The Jesus and Mary Chain album Automatic – released just a few months earlier – is forever linked to her and the time we spent together (it seems we listened to it constantly), and so is that first episode of The Simpsons, because I watched it with her at her parents’ house. Again, details are a bit fuzzy, but I remember her parents were out that night and that she was supposed to go out with her boyfriend, but we hung out together and, at my insistence, watched The Simpsons Christmas Special.

It could have been during the first showing of it on Sunday, December 17, but for a few reasons I tend to think it was the encore performance the following Saturday night that I watched with Maria: First, I don’t know why her parents would have been out on a Sunday night. Second, I’m pretty sure I viewed the very first broadcast of “Roasting” with my buddies because I remember watching the Married... with Children Christmas Special with Sam Kinison as Al Bundy’s guardian angel, which aired immediately after The Simpsons debut, with one or more of them. Third, it makes sense that I would have seen the original airing and then insisted on watching it again with Maria to share it with her.

There’s probably a good chance that later that night Maria went out with her boyfriend and I met up with my buddies, but that first taste of a larger Simpsons world, something sustainable beyond a one-minute bumper, is forever tied to a bitter cold Northeast Ohio night in North Canton. Somewhere around the eighth or ninth season I stopped watching The Simpsons regularly, and within a year or so of that stopped watching it altogether, but the nostalgia of that first special and the rose-colored memories associated with that period in my life were more than enough to get me to buy that Season One set when it was released on DVD. And every now and again I pop those discs in the player and ride the wayback machine to 1989.

Book List 2009

Time once again for the annual “What I Read This Year” list, in the order I read them and broken down by type. The number of books in all categories went up from last year. Nearly two books per month (non-fiction and fiction) and well over one collected edition per week. Some clunkers on every list, but overall, a lot of good stuff packed in this year!

Non-Fiction

1. Belushi: A Biography - Judith Belushi Pisano and Tanner Colby (Excellent read. Reminded me of Live From New York.)
2. Marvel Chronicle: A Year by Year History - Tom DeFalco, Peter Sanderson, and Tom Brevoort (Maybe the best Xmas gift I got last year!)
3. War as They Knew It: Woody Hayes, Bo Schembechler and America in a Time of Unrest - Michael Rosenberg
4. God, Country, Notre Dame - Theodore M. Hesburgh with Jerry Reedy (Recommended by our parish priest. Good read.)
5. Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk - Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain
6. The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music - Steve Lopez (A very quick read. Although hard to believe, I think the movie was even more slight.)
7. I Swear I Was There - David Nolan
8. Time Bandit: Two Brothers, The Bering Sea, and One of the World’s Deadliest Jobs (audio) - Andy and Johnathan Hilstrand, with Malcolm MacPherson
9. Munson: The Life and Death of a Yankee Captain - Marty Appel
10. Wishful Drinking - Carrie Fisher
11. An Hour Before Daylight: Memoirs of a Rural Boyhood - Jimmy Carter
12. We’ll Be Here for the Rest of Our Lives: A Swingin’ Showbiz Saga - Paul Shaffer with David Ritz (There isn't a hipper mother fucker on the planet!)
13. Vinnie Here: Fanciful Conversations Between a Pastor and His Dog - Rev. Joseph Kraker & Vinnie
14. The Buzzard: Inside the Glory Days of WMMS and Cleveland Rock Radio, A Memoir - John Gorman with Tom Feran (Radio Daze “lite”)
15. My Anecdotal Life: A Memoir (audio) - Carl Reiner
16. 11 Days in December: Christmas at the Bulge, 1944 (audio) - Stanley Weintraub
17. How to Survive a Robot Uprising: Tips on Defending Yourself Against the Coming Rebellion (audio) - Daniel H. Wilson
18. Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984 - Simon Reynolds
    

Fiction

1. The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
2. The Stranger - Albert Camus, translated by Matthew Ward
3. I Love You, Beth Cooper - Larry Doyle (Recommended all over the place as a great book. Completely underwhelmed by this thing. Don’t see it as anywhere near being a “John Hughes ’80s film in book form” as it was touted to me.)
4. The Witches - Roald Dahl
5. Boy: Tales of Childhood - Roald Dahl

Trade Paperbacks and Collected Editions

1. The New Mutants Classic, Volume 1 - Chris Claremont and Bob McLeod
2. The New Mutants Classic, Volume 2 - Chris Claremont and Sal Buscema
3. Spider-Man/Red Sonja - Mike Avon Oeming , Mel Rubi
4. The Astounding Wolf-Man, Volume 1 - Robert Kirkman, Jason Howard
5. Batman: Haunted Knight - Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale (Love Loeb and Sale’s Batman work!)
6. The Transformers: All Hail Megatron - Shane McCarthy, Guido Guidi
7. Powers: The Definitive Hardcover Collection, Volume 2 - Brian Michael Bendis, Mike Avon Oeming
8. RASL - Jeff Smith
9. Air: Letters from Lost Countries - G. Willow Wilson, M.K. Perker
10. The King - Rich Koslowski
11. Ms. Marvel, Volume 1: The Best of the Best - Brian Reed
12. Ms. Marvel, Volume 2: Civil War - Brian Reed
13. Ms. Marvel, Volume 3: Operation Lightning Storm - Brian Reed
14. Mini Marvels: Rock, Paper, Scissors - Chris Giarrusso
15. Mini Marvels: Secret Invasion - Chris Giarrusso
16. The Demon Omnibus - Jack Kirby
17. Maxwell Strangewell - The Fillbach Brothers
18. The Walking Dead, Book One - Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, Cliff Rathburn
19. The Walking Dead, Book Two - Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, Cliff Rathburn
20. Y: The Last Man - The Deluxe Edition, Book One - Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra
21. Wanted - Mark Millar, JG Jones, Paul Mounts (Saw the movie first. Entertained by both.)
22. The New Mutants Classic, Volume 3 - Chris Claremont and Bill Sienkiewicz
23. Fantastic Four - Visionaries: John Byrne, Volume 4 - John Byrne (Possibly the best collection of single issues ever.)
24. Classic Transformers, Volume 2 - Various
25. Fantastic Four - Visionaries: John Byrne, Volume 5 - John Byrne
26. Civil War: Heroes for Hire - Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti
27. Y: The Last Man - The Deluxe Edition, Book Two - Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra
28. Daredevil Omnibus, Volume 1 - Brian Michael Bendis, Alex Maleev (Giving the FF Visionaries Volume 4 a run for its money in the “best collection of single issues ever” category.)
29. Ultimate Spider-Man: Ultimate Collection, Volume 1 - Brian Michael Bendis, Mark Bagley
30. Civil War: X-Men - David Hine, Yanick Paquette
31. The Complete Frank Miller Spider-Man - Frank Miller
32. Indiana Jones Omnibus: The Further Adventures, Volume 1 - Various
33. Young Avengers, Volume 2: Family Matters - Allan Heinberg, Jim Cheung, Andrea Divito
34. Civil War: Punisher War Journal - Matt Fraction, Ariel Olivetti, Mike Deodatto
35. Civil War: Iron Man - Various
36. Storm - Eric Jerome Dickey, David Yardin, Lan Medina
37. Black Panther - Reginald Hudlin, John Romita Jr., Klaus Janson, Dean White
38. Spider-Woman: Origin - Brian Michael Bendis, Brian Reed, Luna Brothers
39. MySpace Dark Horse Presents - Various
40. Super Human Resources - Ken Marcus, Justin Bleep
41. Wolverine: Logan - Brian K. Vaughan, Eduardo Risso
42. Daredevil: Battlin’ Jack Murdock - Zeb Wells, Carmine Di Giandomenico
43. The Nobody - Jeff Lemire (Absolutely lived up to its billing. Fantastic story.)
44. Civil War: Amazing Spider-Man - J. Michael Straczynski, Ron Garney
45. House of M: Avengers - Christos Gage, Mike Perkins
46. Spider-Man vs. the Black Cat - Various
47. Annihilation Classic - Various
48. Annihilation: Conquest, Book One - Various
49. Nova, Volume 1: Annihilation Conquest - Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning
50. Nova, Volume 2: Knowhere - Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning
51. Annihilation: Conquest, Book Two - Various
52. Queen & Country: Definitive Collection, Volume 1 - Greg Rucka
53. The Walking Dead, Book Three - Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, Cliff Rathburn
54. Punk Rock and Trailer Parks - Derf (Fantastic story from a local guy.)
55. Whiteout - Greg Rucka, Steve Lieber (Not nearly as strong as his Queen & Country work, but entertaining.)
56. Fantastic Four/Spider-Man Classic - Various
57. Dead @ 17: Ultimate Edition - Josh Howard
58. Daredevil: Yellow - Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale (Didn’t really care for this story at all. I have Spider-Man: Blue and Hulk: Gray on my shelf, but don’t really want to read them after this.)
59. Absolute Dark Knight - Frank Miller, Klaus Janson, Lynn Varley (Stunning.)
60. Captain Britain Omnibus - Various
61. The Walking Dead, Book Four - Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, Cliff Rathburn (This series is amazing. I don't find it as personally depressing as others do; I think it's just appropriately affecting storytelling.)
62. Chew, Volume 1: Taster’s Choice - John Layman, Rob Guillory
63. The Mighty Avengers: Assemble - Brian Michael Bendis, Frank Cho, Mark Bagley
64. Queen & Country: Definitive Collection, Volume 2 - Greg Rucka (Reading Queen & Country makes me want to pull out my MI-5/Spooks DVDs and rewatch that series. Thrilled I got Volumes 3 and 4 for Christmas this year!)
65. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - Alan Moore, Kevin O’Neill (Enjoyed this so much more than Watchmen! Great story.)
66. The Complete Essex County Hardcover - Jeff Lemire (I read all 512 pages of this amazing book over the course of 24 hours. More personal than The Nobody, it's haunting and gorgeous.)

Friends Like These...

I alluded to this on Twitter the other day, but it’s always amazing to discover how talented your friends are. Last year I got knocked back by a package from Dave.

(Coloring courtesy of my kiddo.)

This year, it was Alan. I know he’s creative, what with his producing audio theater and the like, but I had no idea he could draw as well!


But this is not to take away from my friends who I am already aware have humbling talent, like Pat...


I’m just a guy who fancies himself a writer and is a comic book fan. These friends of mine are talented artists.