During the first week of freshman year in college I immediately bonded with a fellow supercharged, true believer in rock ‘n roll named Doug. The kid had a raw nerve quality that fed into my own need for letting it all hang out. With a wiry build, a head full of thick curls, and a jagged nose, Doug talked in quick spurts, in deep grunts. His days were spent on a teeter-totter of partying his ass off at night and then spending the following morning jogging off the ills of the previous night. In those days I maintained a more even-keeled dedication to destructive behavior, so I rarely saw Doug while the sun shined.

We’d get together a couple of nights a week to do bong hits and examine the grooves of our favorite records. We’d each pull out 3 or 4 records the other guy didn’t know or may not have fully appreciated and then spend a couple of hours pointing out all the transcendent moments, all the while gauging each other’s reaction and calculating “turn-on points” we might be collecting. (Looking back, no wonder we weren’t getting laid nearly as much as we would have liked.) One record we both loved that we agreed required exclusive examination was The Stooges’ Funhouse.
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