Is there a song or album that torments you for a particular reason? I’m not talking about a song or album you simply can’t stand for aesthetic reasons alone. No, I’m talking about a song or album that you not only can’t stand but that, at least in large part, is tied to a specific painful or distaste experience or memory.
I’ve got a few songs and albums that fall into this category. The first one that comes to mind is J. Geils Band’s Freeze Frame album. In and of itself, although I didn’t like the production, it was not that bad an album the first few times I heard it. Then I went off to college, where I soon grew confused, occasionally elated, and frequently miserable. I shared a large dorm room with two guys I had nothing in common with beside a love of baseball. Even that wasn’t enough.
One guy was a straight-laced guy from Wisconsin. Nice guy, but not enough of a baseball fan to make up for all the things we did not have in common. I felt bad that I was such an asshole. The other guy was a bigger baseball fan but a judgemental prick who, probably with justification, judged me very poorly. The look on his face said, “I judge you very poorly!” I could live with all that, because I was getting high and meeting women, man, and he wasn’t. However, that’s not what would torment me about this guy.
His copy of Freeze Frame was the thorn in my side. He played that album constantly. I’d be laying on my bed jotting down notes about world domination – or just enjoying the feeling of being really high – and Mr. Buzzkill would come back to our room, place Freeze Frame on the turntable, and crank it up. To make matters worse, he’d just stand in front of the turntable with his arms folded and a dispassionate look on his face. It was as if Henry of Eraserhead were listening to the album. Sometimes he’d feel the need to lift the needle and play a particular song again, all the while with that serial killer’s lack of engagement.
Ugh. To this day I dread having to hear either the title track or “Centerfold”. Again, I never liked the production, but they are not terrible songs in and of themselves. The torment is unlike the torment I get from simply hearing the intro to a Kansas song on the radio. There’s not switching stations on this kind of torment.
So how about you? I’m sure you’ve been tormented by a particular song or album based on a soured personal relationship, a particularly bad day in your life, or what have you. I trust I’m not alone in looking forward to your instances of musical torment.
Sadly, The Skydiggers album Restless. For the length of about a month, I had to endure that album every time my friend came to get me, wherever we drove, Restless was our constant companion. It got depressing, really fast. Bleah.
So only 2 of us are tormented by a song or album for specific, personal reasons? Open up, Townspeople. Scrape at those scars and let the real healing begin!
There was this guy in my frat. I’ll call him “Joe Ferris” because that was his name. This guy always wanted to go out and “get some trim.” (And never did, as far as I know. I wonder why.)
HUGE fan of the Billy Idol. Yet had zero tolerance for anyone that looked different or might have dressed like Idol. Strictly a jeans and iZod dude. In that sense he appreciated Idol in more of a heavy metal, as oposed to punk, sort of way.
Anyhoo… He blasted it all day. We had communal showers on the 2nd floor and he would drag his 4 foot speakers (yes both of them) out of his room, down 2 rooms and into the bathroom and BLAST it. All the time. At the time I have no idea how many Idol albums were out but it seemed like just one that was played over and over.
I tried to out blast him with Metal Circus but sadly, he was just more of an asshole than I and would be willing to piss off everyone to hear his Idol.
Then he bought something new- a Billy Idol interview on wax. Side A and Side B of Billy Idol talking about himself. No music and I don’t recall there being an interviewer but maybe… (It hurts to remember.)
And for the next eternity he would BLAST the fucking interview. Unbelievable, as if he was listening to der Fuhrer or something.
And after awhile I noticed that he absorbed Billy’s opinions as his own. We were in the lounge one night getting high and watching that Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii flick. He comes bounding down and snidely sneers “How come these fags don’t tour?” Damned if it wasn’t almost word for word (minus the “fags” that he cleverly inserted on his own) what Mr. Idol says in this interview when the subject of Pink Floyd comes up.
I’m not sure I could have ever liked Billy Idol anyway but he’s just a nightmare now, no matter if its Gen.X era or his cameo in The Doors or I read about a motorcycle accident or… I can’t stand the guy.
During my first two years at college, I heard “Steve Miller’s Greatest Hits” and Meat Loaf’s “Bat Out Of Hell” at damn near every party I attended. Most of those parties were downright awful, and the only way to get through them was to get as intoxicated as possible on whatever awful beer they happened to be serving. If I hear so much as a song from either one of those albums, I grind my teeth.
Wow, Scott. You’re a bit younger than me, right? I’m surprised those crap albums were still being played at parties during your time in school. Sad…and tormenting, I’m sure.
Sammy, love that story!
In between my junior and senior years in college, I lived in a frat house that was being renovated. While RTH’s Rick Massimo tried living there a few weeks, he was driven back to Providence by the Dostoevskian attic he was shoved into, and crappy job prospects. Most of the summer, the only tenants were me and my roomate Jim. We had to go next door to take showers, we used the open window as a garbage chute, kamikaze roaches that would now be understood as terrorist threats would soar in and hit the walls loud enough to wake me out of a drunken sprawl. If you happened to be sober, they’d aim for your face. I think they may have frightened the rats away. Upon a visit, my dad said “They condemn places like this.” You get the idea.
So, in a busted up house with six or seven bedrooms, we’re there with ONE frat guy who was the “landlord”. This putz, who was working as a used car salesman, had ONE album. The 12″ single of Don’t You Want Me by the Human League.
You could always tell when he was feeling frisky, or going out someplace, because that was ALL you would hear in the house. Never the radio, never an existential wail, never the sound of human interaction, rarely the sound of impacting insects – just, Don’t You Want Me Baby.
Fortunately, being the dick I was/am, I would turn my bass amp toward the ceiling, the volume all the way up, and start up Distorto Jazz Odyssey. Feedback would achieve quick results as well. In fact, under the best circumstances you could expect a lot of crackling from that crappy speaker cabinet I had.
The best part is he always remarked about our “weird” taste in music.
These all seem to be college stories, and mine is similar, if hardly as intense. I had a roommate who played the first of those Journey records that was a big hit (praise the Lord that I don’t remember the title), and that used to drive me crazy. A guy down the hall–an incredibly nerdy, awkward guy–was a big fan of the Prince early records, and used to play them constantly and talk about how cool he was when he went dancing and picked up girls; it was embarrassing, and helped convince me quite early that Prince’s music existed primarily to provide fantasy love lives to losers.
That said, I drove more than one other person batty with playing Jefferson Airplane and Fairport Convention records, so who am I to complain that hard?
I mean, haven’t we all driven other people crazy sometimes with OUR music?
When my apt mwas broken into for the second time in the 80s, my stereo was stolen. The Smiths’ first album was on the turntable that they stole. I didn’t realize that till a friend came over to watch the place while I went out for groceries (the window as still busted and I was afraid they’d be back). I got really pissed and threw the album cover across the room, and my friend got really scared because I don’t do things like that. I still love the Smiths, but to this day I get a little twinge when I see that Joe Dallessandro cover.
I have another story (btw BigSteve, that Smiths story is completely tragic) that made someone else crazy but had to do with me. I brought my mum’s Joni Mitchell “Blue” cassette tape with me (among others, quiet down snickerers) in 1993 when I moved to Vancouver, and I lived in a semi-communal kind of house while I was waiting for my friend to go to trial (long-story). Anyway, another roomate of mine had these hippie friends from back home come and stay with us, they got on everyone’s nerves but no one had the nerve to kick these freeloaders out because well (that’s another long story) anyway, the hippies would provide decent pot and tequila and amusement (I thought, anyway), and the shoplifting from the huge grocery store down the street was also timely and amazing. Not that I’m condoning shoplifting, but they were graceful about it, I’m talking a head of lettuce and a wedge of cheese in a hemp sewn bag like in the Jane’s Addiction video from the double-decker grocery chain without the drag. Anyway, so this girl who I always thought dressed like and thought she was Patsy Cline from another era decided that the hippies were playing my mum’s Joni Mitchell tape far too often for her liking. One day at the height of the crazyness (I only heard the story upon my return from work) Patrice (the Patsy Cline look-a-like daemon) apparently ripped the tape out of the player while it was playing, dragged the cassette ribbon all through the house threw it into the middle of the street and proceeded to stomp on it and grind it into dust on the pavement. It was left for me upon my return as a “See what your music made me do” kind of offering, and I believe my sentiment was, “What the fuck happened to this?!” And then I heard the story… Needless to say, at the end of the summer I was ripped off by said hippies. Never trust a hippie who says “Sure, I’ll watch your stuff.” I’m sure they sold it all on the front lawn. Oh, and Patrice, if you’re reading this – email me so we can patch things up. Yeah right, Psycho.
Before my judgemental freshman-year roommate would come back to the room, I was know to put the speakers up to the window and blast my double-album of all the dialog of Apocalypse Now onto the quad. It was an asshole act with a purpose, or so I thought, but yeah, it was my “Don’t You Want Me Baby” moment.
The song “Miracles” by Jefferson Starship.
Whenever I hear it I’m thrown into a depressed mood. I have no specific reason why – just the “sound” of this song creeps me out (is it in a minor key?). In 1975 I’d have been 13 listening to a little crappy transistor radio in my room when this song came out.
Maybe it’s the reason I hate/avoid anything by Jefferson Airplane, Starship or Grace Slick…yuck.
In Indiana, PA, in 1980 or so, there were several of us who used to go out and drink at campus parties just long enough to get a buzz on, maybe longer if the place wasn’t overrun with belligerent frat-types or had an unusual denisity of good looking girls. These criteria were rarely met, however, and certainly rarer still that you would get one without the other. Anyhow, there was a code among us, that wherever we were or however innocuously things were going, when the song “Celebration” came on, we would get up and leave immediately. There was a lot of horrible music at the parties there, but that song was emblematic of the worst of it. (Note its survival at corporate events and the like, its reduction to sound glyph of pleasant, modulated non-sound.) In any case, I can’t tell how many times in that short span I found myself standing out in the cold in the front yard of some house with my doofus friends, saying “*Now* what do we do?” I will say that having a specific plan of action in mind made one feel much more pro-active in one’s otherwise impotent disdain for such cultural touchstones.
Also, not many artists leave me with less impression per hearing than Mr. Springsteen. I tend to like the guy, though his music leaves me cold. But back in the day, the tormenting thing was the hollers of “Bruuuuce!!” and, yes “the BOSSS!” followed by Rosalita or whatever, that led me to believe I hated his music with a passion. I tried to listen to some of my mix tapes one summer at work, and the guys would say that things like the Dead Kennedys did nothing for them, whereas Bruce sang about their lives. I had to admit defeat here saying that though the numbers were small, I at least had some experience with “Stealing People’s Mail”, while no one has ever to this day, “Strapped their hands ‘cross my engines.” In any event, the phenomenon of Bruce tormented. The music did not.
Finally, does anybody remember the brief period of time when anything that smacked of oddness or punk rock was called, as a genre, “Devo”? This happened in Indiana, PA as well as in Philly. I was a big Gary Numan fan and I was listening to one of those albums frequently (see “being the tormentor” sub-thread), and one day these girls came upstairs in the dorm asking in very sharp Philly accents, “Yoew. Are Yiw the wuns litening to all that Devehw?” Of course we answered with snarky literal honesty, no. We must have tortured so many with our stoned record oddyseys.
Yes. When the DM first began, we rehearsed in a house in Manayunk on Baker Street. Dave B’s brother Joe dated a “Punk Rock Girl” with colored hair etc. They used to get yelled at by the neighborhood kids “Yo Devo!!!” whenever they’d come home…
I, too, vaguely recall the Devo charge, although to this day nothing disturbs me more than a memory of a teenage African American boy in West Philly pointing at me and saying, “Jim Nabors!”
McClean: It’s funny that “Miracles” disturbs you so. It’s probably my favorite song from that Jefferson Crapship collective, and I know that’s not saying much. It is heavily tied to my depressed mood in ’75.
Nah, “Miracles” sucks. And I say that as a big Airplane fan–Airplane. Any failure to distinguish between the two bands is lame, but not unexpected, coming from these pro-rock standardization quarters. Rocktown Hall, where if we had our way, every rock song would be the same!
I’ve been tormented by bad music, plain and simple. It’s not as if there was some “good” song that was forever tarnished for me. Rather, its the overall crappiness of the music itself. Such as George Thoroughgood (sic), Billy Joel, that awful Total Eclipse of the Heart song, etc.