finds

When I was fifteen or sixteen, my cousin Erik (who I had to bunk with in the Cadillac story) was a budding electrician and on job sites would sometimes find discarded tapes.

That's how I learned about Sir Mix-a-lot and Fear. Fear's More Beer wasn't as lucky as their debut, The Record, but nearly as good. It plays like any hardcore punk record, but these guys were on The Decline and Fall of Western Civilization, so they were punk rock royalty. 

More Beer

Responsibility

Swass, was brilliant and I had no preparation. My Posse's On Broadway is still a goddamn classic and I'm sure Mr A-lot would rather remembered for that than Baby Got Back. 

Buttermilk Biscuits

My Posse's On Broadway

I think a copy of Born Again, the Black Sabbath album with Glen Hughes (before Deep Purple drafted him for a reunion) was also in the mix, but it moved no mountains. 

1981-2

The last two posts, the songs weren't really structural. They simply bore witness to my story. This shit is structural. 

Devo Snowball

Devo That's Pep

My brother had the 8 Track taoe of Devo's masterpiece Freedom of Choice. At 9 years old, I had no context for this. But I listened over and over. 

Devo Gates of Steel

Devo Mr B's Ballroom

Not saying that I wouldn't have become a weirdo if it was a Jefferson Starship 8 Track instead, but this record made a heavy lift. 

1981-1

We moved back to Detroit before we were really ready. Visited the house of some mook from Alcoholics Anonymous, we're gone just as quick and in the home of a couple of my brother's school buddies. Phil and Steve were a couple of jagoffs. In a whole fucking family of jagoffs.

I have memories of this period that I feel are disproportionate to the actual period. 

Alan Parson's Project Games People Play

I don't remember how long we stayed in their house, but the girls folded-in with the girls and the boys with the boys. 

Rush Tom Sawyer

Between me and your phone, I didn't realize that I can remember the release of Rush's masterpiece, Moving Pictures, but, yep, there I was, barely nine. They were doing shit like nobody else at the time. 

J Geils Band Just Can't Wait

I think some of the songs in my memory are the result of our hosts. I remember them listening to music with my brother a lot. 

REO Speedwagon Don't Let Him Go

The bros reminded me of the dude from REO Speedwagon. Country but not southern. 

Taxes rolled around, as they did and we were finally back in not-somebody-else's-house. 

1980

It's an ordinary Friday afternoon in the summer of 1980. Except that your mother's drunk-ass hillbilly boyfriend just got pinched for DUI and by lunch the next day you are packed, racked and on a 250 mile journey to the far side of the lower peninsula. 

I was eight years old. Had an older sister and brother and we were moving in to the home of an "aunt" with three children of corresponding ages/genders. That's how I started 3rd grade. 

Donna Summer The Wanderer

It was country but they'd only inherited the house a year and a half before we showed up so they weren't country. They were Top 40. 

Pointer Sisters He's So Shy

Lotta disco here. I know disco wasn't supposed to be cool but we were from "Dee-troit", stuck in fucking Dogpatch, so fuck cool. 

Here's the rub. Kids aren't always kind or compassionate or even merciful. And the three of us were stuck somewhere that we literally didn't belong, in the space of "cousins" who were where they were supposed to be. If you're not careful, you could go through life feelings like you don't belong anywhere at all. 

Bruce Springsteen Hungry Heart

Learned to ice skate. What to do when you broke through the waste-deep ice. To put my initials on my clothes. 

Electric Light Orchestra All Over The World

I was the youngest of a blended double family. In a place that I had no context of. I'd lived in Ann Arbor and suburban Detroit and now I was in fucking woods. 

John Lennon Just Like Starting Over

But life keeps going, despite the consternation of lost little kids. And I was then privy to my first assassination. What a way to roll out the eighties .

Diana Ross Upside-down

But life goes on. My first record. A disco track on Motown. With a map of Detroit streets on the label. 

Not long after the new year we moved back home. Our mother quipped that she had read every book in the local library. (Like they had a library. Or books).