A Song From My Childhood | Where As a Child I’d Hide

I was born when my mother was 21. My brother followed a couple days after her 24th birthday. She spent her entire 20s taking care of at least one child, when she was the age that’s turned out to be (apparently) the prime time of my life.

I don’t envy her that.

Nevertheless, she had lots of friends in those days, a remarkably healthy social life for a single mother of two in her mid- to late 20s.

Her friends were, as far as I can recall them, good people. David and Marty, who were brothers; my mom’s best friend Rhodi (given name Arnita; I never got the story of where her nickname came from); Jerome, whom I called Jome because I couldn’t pronounce the rest of his name for some reason. Others, too, but those are the ones I remember.

Like I said, good people. They never just tolerated my brother and I, they appeared to enjoy having us around, even though from what I know of children, that can’t possibly have always been the case. My mom trusted them with us, and us with them, and she was right to do so.

Sometimes, though, a little kid just wants his mom.

When I was little, four or five, she threw a party in our house. If I had to guess, I’d say it was on a weekend, but honestly, at that point, such a designation didn’t matter for me. I wasn’t in school yet, so I only remember knowing the different days of the week on a sort of conceptual level. Still, there were people, so let’s assume weekend.

My mom listened to a lot of hair metal and other rock and roll in the ’80s. It shouldn’t be surprising; that was, after all, the music of her people, her own aspect of phonomancy. Consequently, it is my own first aspect, as I wrote in Phonogram vs. the Fans.

Her favorite band was, and still probably is, Guns N’ Roses. They were the first band I picked back up after I left all of my parents’ music behind and struck out to find my own music as magic god. I love them, both historically and currently.

But I’ll still never forget that party.

I was a little kid, and for some reason, I was afraid. My mom was gone, off on some errand, trusting me in the charge of her closest friends. I was safe, but I didn’t feel that way.

The way our living room was set up, there was a little alcove behind the front door when it was open. If you opened it as far as it would go, it would touch the side wall, leaving a little triangle of space that a small person could fit into.

That’s where I went. I didn’t want anyone else. I wasn’t crying, I wasn’t acting afraid, I didn’t ask for my mommy.

Nevertheless, anyone who would have looked behind that door would have found a small, scared little kid who wanted his mommy, and in the meantime was going to sit there by himself, listening to Appetite for Destruction, until she came back.

She did come back. I’m the one who left and never returned.

Funny how that works.

A Song From My Favorite Album | It’s Not the Ribbons in Your Hair

When I was about twelve or so, I decided that I wanted to listen to my own music. I immediately eschewed the tastes of my parents; if they liked it, I didn’t. I wanted something of my own.

What can I say, I was on the cusp of being a teenager.

I went to the Musicland (status: sadly defunct) at Eastland Mall (status: sadly defunct) and bought a cassette (status: sadly defunct) of Pearl Jam’s Ten (status: not defunct; in fact, awesome). That was the first music I bought for myself.

I steadily increased my music collection over time, first a cassette every couple of weeks, then the switch to CDs, then the job at the big box store, where I’d buy just about anything that caught my fancy, and listen to all of it.

Throughout all that, though, there was one band that I never left, one band from my mom’s collection that I didn’t drop, who I never stopped respecting: the Cars.

(That would be in opposition to the bands I dropped but then went back to when I realized that I was wrong, like Guns N’ Roses or Metallica or Bon Jovi. That was a valuable lesson, realizing that these things I’d dismissed were, in fact, worthy of my attention. It taught me that it’s okay to be wrong sometimes.)

So, the Cars. Always awesome. By my own definition, which is that I’ve never not liked them, the Cars are my all-time favorite band. The pinnacle of their music? Their excellent self-titled first album. Nine tracks, each as strong as the next, each worthy of its status in the rotation of those stations that still play the fuckin’ Eagles.

(As I said, their debut was only their musical pinnacle. Their overall pinnacle is the cover of their second album, Candy-O, which featured an honest-to-goodness Vargas girl. But that has nothing whatsoever to do with their music, and this is tragically not 30 Days of Pinups. Although I would gladly read someone writing about that.)