So I can’t listen to Supertramp because it takes me back to high school and I don’t wanna go back, but sometimes I get pulled back and it’s. . . okay?
I am not the first to contradict myself.
Anyway, Charlie Pierce linked to Nena so yes I clicked on it and yes, I enjoyed it. And even felt a bit wistful (as opposed to dread-ful) while listen-/watching.
Then I looked for ‘Soviet Snow‘ (couldn’t remember that it was Shona Laing) and I watched and listened to that as well. (The vid is bit crowded; better just to listen.)
Then I wondered: why don’t I mind going back with this and not that?
And then I figured: because this is not that.
Supertramp was a part of my coming-to-music, and while I did listen to it through college, it’s very much anchored in that transition to adolescence, to making my way into high school.
The other music—post-punk? New Wave?—hooked me later in high school and carried me out.
That’s a little too neat, but I think that’s what happened. If Supertramp was about going deep—into the music, into myself—the new stuff was about getting out. MTV hit Sheb Falls at some point in the early 1980s, and for the first time I was exposed to music which wasn’t either album-oriented rock (which was my thing) or Top 40 (which was not). There was the Eurythmics and The Police and the B-52’s and the Violent Femmes, the Call and the Fall and the Clash and the Jam and none of it sounded like home and all of it sounded like somewhere else.
And, oh, by mid-high school I was ready for somewhere else.
So here I am, decades older, and even if I have landed in my ultimate Somewhere Else, I am still restless, still wondering what else is out there.
AbsurdBeats 