A brief and former life as a ...gasp!... groupie
-
Artist:
-
Album:Gotta Gettaway 7"
-
Track:
As far as my folks were concerned, junior high was the year I took the freeway that forked southward to the devil's road. I outed my rebellion in full force. I was thirteen and it was, if you ask me, the one time I went off to follow music, nay hound pimply, newly voice-broken troubadours, Penny Lane style.
The story isn't unlike what was told already in Almost Famous but for the parts about being made into a wager or stripping down to flag-emblazoned undergarments, which, as you know, is why we like to watch versions of our lives in movies. Arguably my own cinematic turn was that I could, not play but, bang a drum to great effect.
Being second drummer for my batch in [nerdness alert] the school cheerleading competition, I managed to lacerate drum skins two years in a row during finals. The main drummer hardly absolved me, despite winning, but drum-banging earned me a share of love letters and V-Day roses from schoolmates, which is noteworthy only because I went to an all-girls Catholic school and to suggest that I knew how to mishandle a snare.
So it went that I found myself in houses whose occupants I did not know, in streets and with faces I didn't know. Really, I hung around for punk rock. Them kids were playing Gang of Four, Stiff Little Fingers, X-ray Spex, The Dead Milkmen, The Clash. I owned none of the records, they were something else to hear raw. As goes with being young, everything went down like liquid, you had to sink or swim.
I would never recognize any of those people if I ran into them now but what left a lasting impression was how there was no club, there was only a bunch of solo flighters getting together on occasion. You come alone, join forces, leave alone. It's kind of like MOG, no? We are loners sharing a passion. Shared passion is so personal that the sense of kindred it creates makes us, with all our compulsions to be solitary, look after one another.
Some of the other girls went to my school and I don't think we ever talked in campus. (I was the star-section dork in the cool crowd fluky.) At least a couple went on to do vocals in graduation parties a year later, bringing tears in the eyes of all of groupiedom. I missed those moments of validation, having moved on to activism by then and declared grad balls as establishment. However, good times.
I should, at this point, thank the Lord for tempering my recklessness with sensibility. I am, after all, alive and well.
Lastly: Thank you, B42.
Comments (27)
Poe, you always make me smile with your beautiful 'lyrical waxing', I think we all have a similar story around that time in our lives where we were trying to find our niche in the universe... and there are things I look back on that I did/took/abandoned myself to and yes.. I too:
Thank the Lord for tempering my recklessness with sensibility. I am, after all, alive and well
I'll drink to that... lol.. oh I already am... :-)
X-ray Spex : I Am a Cliché
ZR, that makes two of us drinking to that right now. it's almost sunset so it can't be that bad. {:
Cliché? I'd say wildly, heedlessly precocious at 13. But who am I to judge?
hello, Knifey. i'm not sure whether to bid you good morning or good night. ;D believe me, i was also a little very stupid at 13.
now, if only the tagged track would work (you can listen to it at the bottom of the post), this would be a very happy moment of me Mogging while other Moggers are awake...
I have just been watching the most spectacular thunderstorm... and for some reason my emotions are really heightened... or is it the second scotch??? :-)
maybe we are in the same zone... time that is amongst others.. :-) heading to dusk here too..
xx
And I think I was a little shit at 13... but then again I think everyone is...
indeed! you're in Thailand and i'm in Vietnam. i really thought i could hang out in a Bangkok hospital with you (LOL) in my last morning there (that day i emailed) but, as your status says, "next time"!
ps- overcast sky here as well.
ahahahah. more reasons to clink glasses--we were all little shits at 13.
*clinking* as I type, you gotta love multi tasking women!!! :-)
And yes Poe.. absolutely next time... I will be back in Laos/Thailand in November for a while...not sure where you will be in the interim or then.. but keep me up to date... anything is possible.. if the wind is slightly blowing in your direction over the next months.. as I said anything is possible.. my spirit is open and wandering where it will...
xx
aw we are certainly on the same wavelength, dear. and i had a feeling you'll be back! i may go home (to the Philippines) for some needed replenishing of resources (uhrm, money and such) and then go at it again. i am too addicted to stop and that's how i know we'll cross paths eventually. (;
Yes that I think is the case!!! A nice thought :-)
I'll be back to read this more thoroughly ilay. Gotta make a buck ya know!
Hey, not groupies... BAND AIDS!
Well said, Jox. And BTW, poeby, it was a goodnight sitch - the last glimmer of MOGging before 4 AM sack-time. (Thanks for the Stiff Little Fingers jam. How nice that a post about groupies gets us all a little Stiff.)
Well, earlier, I felt...uh...it would have been intrusive to get in the middle of you and Zen (or maybe I liked being the fly on the wall)...but I like Jox's sum-up, there's no groupie in this story. Mike's's the analogy of a hardened fella...remind me sometime, and I'll tell you my most embarrassing rock moment as a Badfinger groupie. Really, but only for a moment.
"We are loners sharing a passion." - nothing could be more true, and it makes me feel lucky to know all these moggers. another great poe-st!
Some day Ilay, ...some day.....I'm gonna brag to who ever will listen....."I knew her when"
Great song (the only SLF song I knew before, to my frank embarrassment, was "Suspect Device," which is so great I took it for granted the rest of their stuff would disappoint; it does not), fluid and intelligent writing, and a winsome story. Very well done, Poe.
I've been on the groupie tip from both sides, been one many a time/had some of my own. I've had a harem too, back in my teenage days, who were my groupies of a sort, heh. But I wish I had friends as cool as you did back in high school who listened to GOF, etc.
If I'm a loner on MOG, you should've seen me when I was 13..but, naah, y'all had a community there..nice. I always ran in groups larger than 1 and smaller than 4. A little less abstract than usual, but still vintage poe.
"mishandle a snare"-wish I'd thought of that one.
Jox, thank you for that, i stand corrected. ;D
Mike, ah yes, your 4 AM sack-time, i figured as much. {:
Scott, Badfinger, eh? not bad to be a "groupie" of, if only for a moment. i shall not forget to remind you to spill it. "poe-st", hah, nice.
Jeff, aw i don't think that day will ever come but certainly i can dream.
zarpex, thank you. i was not aware of SLF myself until the late Eighties and have always wondered about the band's popularity in its active years. i suspect they never made it so big but i could be mistaken.
Aug, a harem of groupies! lucky duck. they weren't friends, they'd hardly remember me either. but, yeah, these almost-strangers hipped me to a lot of good music that i still love to this day.
Cody, i like that idea of groups larger than 1 and smaller than 4. i am never fond of medium-sized crowds (# of people relative to size of place) because there's no way to get lost in them but they're big enough to keep reminding you that there's someone else around.
a catholic girl who knew how to mishandle a snare! i vote this best post ever! just awesome.
Our dear Poebegone has achieved legendary staus here. I really believe she's (you're) destined for more.
That's a nifty track by a group I've never heard. It's not easy figuring out which of your bon mots here are my favorite, but I'll pick "As goes with being young, everything went down like liquid, you had to sink or swim."
poebegone, one of the good things about your growing size as a fish in the MOG pond (see comments above also) is that you're unlikely to let it go to your head.
Jeff LOK, i never saw it that way (catholic girl mishandling snare) but i like it! reminds me of Margaret Yang in Rushmore, the Asian geekgirl who studied rock guitar in after-class hours. 3)
Jeff DMDM, pshaw, schmegendary. if anyone gets the idea that i'm selling out to "rock n' roll infamy", no one will read / believe my posts anymore. ;p
Charles, i meant that, too. when i was a kid, everything was too ephemeral. when you were sad, you weep it out (when happy, laugh it out) as quickly as you can and then move on because the grownups hurried you along and exemplified that the world was not going to wait for you. sigh.
I missed those moments of validation, having moved on to activism by then and declared grad balls as establishment.
:) the establishment just keeps eating everything up around it. does it ever get full and satisfied with itself?
P.S. - I love this stiff little fingers song, and I love that you posted it as the 7" and I don't love that I cannot stream the tune. I am crushing on your lacerated drum skins, which more than acknowledges you as a champion in my book!