Cassie covers Charles Bronson - Youth Attack

My step sister Cassie is always posting airy, acoustic covers of pop songs and singer song writers. I told her I'd buy her a case of beer if she could cover this:

  Within an afternoon she came back with this:

  Cassie for the win.

drunk 90's music videos

(Usually I would edit this blog, but I'm not going to today. What you read is what you get today.)
When I was a kid all I cared about was music videos. Most kids have better interests, they're really good at a sport or they have great grades. I just cared about music videos...and music and playing bass. It was my brother's 19th birthday today so I took him for drinks with his sister in the afternoon and now I'm kind of drunk and it's 3:30 on Saturday afternoon. So what do I do? Continue drinking. Not excessively, but if you stop once you've started you'll feel worse later. So what do you I do when I have to pass time, buzzed and alone for the moment? I pull out the twelve VHS tapes that I filled with music videos in the 90's. I guess the whole point of this blog is nostalgia and there's nothing more nostalgic to me than these tapes. I chose video tape number two which was was fall of grade nine, a great time for me. Green Day "When I Come Around" is the first video on it, I used to have hair just like Tre Cool, bleach blond with an undercut and spiked out to the side. If you didn't understand that description just watch the video on youtube, that was literally what I looked like in high school. The first set of video's on this tape were on the Much Music Countdown which was on every Friday night. This was my life at this point, going to someones house on Friday, hanging out and watching the countdown. I must have been in Collins Bay at Colleen McKracken's house during this because I remember holding hands with Erin Jacobi on a floor watching the Black Crows "Be My Conspiracy." I can't believe how influenced by the 70's the 90's were while I watch these videos The Black Crows and their affinity for psych rock and Skynard and Green Day with their Clash cribbing.
Oh my god Moist is on the screen! I not embarrassed, "Believe Me" was a great song and Moist were popular so I'm not a loser for having taped their video. And Bif Naked is in the video all the west coasters stick together don't they.
And this is where I'll end it because Weezer "Buddy Holly" is on now. One of the greatest videos of all time of course by Spike Jonze. I saw this video, ordered the CD on Columbia House and never looked back.

Things white kids liked in the 90's: Quoting Dazed and Confused

The day after I graduated grade eight, Matt Emigh rented Dazed and Confused. It was newand I hadn't even heard of it but Matt was always current with his films... and the Montreal Canadians. A bunch of the graduating class of R.G. Sinclair went back to my house to watch it in my basement but we were more interested in gossiping and eating pizza than watching the movie. How typical was it for a bunch of suburban kids to be inside on a beautiful June day, sitting in a basement with the tvon but not paying attention to it? Wasted youth. I don't think I actually watched Dazed and Confused until we rented it again with Matt Emigh when I was 17 and I taped it that time. We had also bought beer at Mr. Beer the brew by you that to sold teenagers to compliment our evening while smoking cigarettes in my parents rec room while they were out of town. The dubbing of this film led me to memorizing the entire movie which also led to all of my friends memorizing it. Dazed and Confused became staple viewing within my group of friends, so much that two games were formed out of watching it. The first was a drinking game, where you had to take a drink every time Mitch Kramer touches his face. In the scene outside the Emporium I think he touches his face 19 times inside of two minutes. The other was even simpler, you'd get a punch in the arm if you quoted the movie while watching it with your friends. This obviously stemmed from the fact that all we did was recite the movie while watching it thus ruining the film for everyone else, so we installed a penalty system.
Dazed and Confused connected with us so well because it was about us. Even though Slater, Pink, Donny, Benny, Mitch, Pickford and Wooderson were from 1976 Texas, they were just another bunch of bored white kids living in a small city with nothing to do but drive around and party in the forest. Everyone had a popular athlete at their school who hung out with the stoners, everyone had an older guy who was still clinging onto his youth in high school to stay feeling young and pick up impressionable young girls. I was amazed how a generation with a twenty year separation from mine exactly the same, it showed me how slowly small city life progresses. Technology changed but teen life hadn't, they drove around with 8 tracks, we had CD players, that was about it. We still all smoked pot, drank beers, smoked cigarettes, interacted with the opposite sex and felt bored all the same as the teenagers from the movie. It gave you sense of ease, like you weren't alone, that everyone goes through the same thing, which you don't know until you're in your twenties.
Lastly, if you haven't watched Dazed and Confused in a while, watch it again, in my opinion it is under rated from a film stand point. Richard Linklater wrote and directed an entire film about one solid day with a cast of about twenty characters that you care about. It's difficult to direct and write a film where you care about even one character, but there is not a dull moment in Dazed and Confused and you care about what happens to everyone in that film.

...birthday

It's my birthday today and I'm drinking beer and watching TV in a hotel room outside of Detroit. It's not like I'm Howard Hughes or anything, but I do have a buzz and I just exchanged emails with my best friend Hugh who has a birthday a day apart from me so it was a quick reminisce session. My friend Rebekah who I dated in high school just texted me how we had our first real conversation on my birthday 15 years ago, she reminded me because she knows I love to reminisce (which is what this blog is all about). So here are a whole bunch of suburban, white birthday memories.


Age 13 - May 9, 1993

On this birthday I became a teenager and I had Geoff Fisher, Steve Oakley and Marcus Thomson sleep over at my house. My mom made us coffee so we could stay up all night and watch the Exorcist and play the VHS board game Nightmare.

Age 16 - May 9, 1996

This was a pretty cool birthday, it was the first time I went to New York city. The morning I left for NYC with my mom I handed in a geography paper about nuclear waste disposal in the North West Territories that I completely made up. Then I got in a car and drove to my mother's cousin Georges house. That day I went to Michael Moores office and then that night I smoked expensive cigars with my cousin Alex and read Playboy.

Age 19 - May 9, 1999

This was a monumental birthday for any Canadian teenager living in Ontario, it's the birthday you can legally drink. As most of these birthday's go this one was full of missing scenes. I went to the big club in Kingston, AJ's Hanger at 11:00 but they wouldn't let me in because my birthday wasn't until midnight so I went to The Shot and drank a pitcher to myself. After this I remember only a few things. I remember singing all of This Is How We Do It on a stage, I remember doing about seven Dr. Pepper shots which are something dropped in beer to make it taste like Dr. Pepper. Then I remember laying on Ben Fishers floor back in my neighbourhood with Jessica Castel and Ben playing The End by the Doors on accoustic guitar as per my request. I also requested that the lights be turned off because the room was spinning.
The next day was my actual birthday and I was, understandably, in rough shape. I didn't come out of my room all day and when it came time to pick up my girlfriend Rebekah at 4:00pm, I had to get my dad to drive me because I'm pretty sure I was still drunk.

age 20 - May 9, 2000

On this birthday I drove to Toronto with Jess Flemming and Brian Laplante to Toronto to see Ween for the first time. Ween played for three hours and were amazing. Ween were eating sandwiches on stage and threw one into the crowd hitting Jess in the face, after she had already been pummelled by dreadlocks from sweaty hippies. We stayed awake on the drive back to Kingston by playing a band naming game for two and a half hours.

age 21 - May 9, 2001

On my 21st birthday I was with my best friend Mike Perlin in Ottawa working for the government. We got off work at 4:00 were drinking Absinthe and beers by about 4:20. Then we smoked a joint and hit a patio, Perlin bought me a piece of cake. I barfed up that cake up at around 10:00 and the next day was the worst day of my life. The next night I ran into Harmony, my girlfriend from high school, and made out with her in a park.

Age 25 - May 9, 2005

My friends Dave and Sarah were having the type of office party at their work where you bring your family. I went to drink from the Keg the company had bought and we played frisbee standing on chairs over cubicles. Then I went to the 360, a punk bar on Queen st. that had two dollar beers on Mondays and everyone bought me whiskey shots. I was in bed by 11:00pm. The 360 is now an Ugs store.

These aint your daddy's ticket prices... oh wait, they are.

I think most music fans have a bucket list of bands and artists they want to see. It's taken me about ten years but I'm almost finished my list. I thought I only had one left on the list but I realized that I actually have four (and probably more once someone reminds of something else). The four on the list are Rancid, Fugazi, The Dead Milkmen and Soundgarden, I have resigned to the fact that I'll never see the Beatles or Nirvana so I don't bother adding them. I only had the opportunity to really attend concerts in the 2000's and Fugazi went on "extended hitatus" in 2003 so they're out until they feel like it again. The Dead Milkmen haven't been a band since the 90's, they did reunite for a few shows a couple of years ago but then their bassist Dave Blood committed suicide so I'm probably not going to see them. Rancid I have no excuse for, they've come to Toronto several times since I've lived here and I don't know why I haven't gone, but they'll be back I'm sure. The last band is Soundgarden. They broke up in 1997 and I thought I would never get to see them. But on July 2, 2011 I'm going to be front row. However this wasn't cheap. I bought the tickets on their website the second the pre-sale happened and it was around $169.00 for the pair, $85.00 each! I'm pretty sure that's the most expensive concert ticket I have ever bought. I used to bug my dad about paying $200.00 for an Eagles ticket, now here I am spending $85.00 for a Soundgarden ticket. But although I hate to admit it, the principal behind the Soundgarden ticket and the Eagles ticket is the same . When you're young, you don't have any money and you go see young bands who don't charge a lot for tickets because if they did kids wouldn't show up. However Soundgarden and the Eagles are now both selling to a generation that loved them 15 plus years ago, these fans have grown up gotten jobs, own cars, houses, have kids, cottages, boats and have savings accounts. These people can now afford to spend $85.00 on a concert ticket, and Soundgarden knows this. They know I'm 30 and have a job, they know that there probably won't be a single 15 year old at their show unless their dad is taking them. When I was 15, $85.00 was a million dollars, I could live off that kind of cash for weeks. I could pay my way into an all ages show, split on a gram of weed and some nachos at 7-11 afterwards and still have about $75.00 left. Now $85.00 is one concert ticket, but lets be honest one awesome concert ticket. And lets make something clear, I'm not some Eagles fan hanging onto the past like my dad!

What your favourite alt rock band says about you

I just read McSweeney's: What Your Favourite Classic Rock Band Says About You and then a follow up on flavorwire.com: What Your Favourite PUNK Rock Band Says About You. I have decided (before anyone esle can) to do a What Your Favourite ALTERNATIVE Rock Band Says About You. I realize that some of these bands still exist and are probably referred by another general genre label but they used to be alternative bands. In 1994 EVERY band was an alternative band.

Dinosaur Jr. - You haven't bought any new clothes in years.

Soundgarden - You dyed your hair twice: once blue and once bleached.

Weezer - Your style hasn't changed at all but you picked the one style that hasn't ever really gone out of style.

Alice in Chains - You wear waffle shirts under t-shirts still, but they're from the GAP.

Nirvana - You have lots of pictures of you in the high school smoking section.

Mudhoney - You still have a Sony discman hooked up to an old stereo receiver.

Hole - You scratch nail polish off your fingers.

Cyprus Hill - You won't shut the fuck up about WEED!

Silverchair - You wear collared shirts under vintage sweaters.

Green Day - You still owe money to Columbia House.

Offspring - You never moved away.

Pearl Jam - You wear a hat from your univeristy with an adjustable back and the peak is NATURALLY tattered.

Rage Against the Machine - You play in a cover band.

Smashing Pumpkins - You're sort of tough but sort of girly.



Radiohead - You write for a modern tech blog.

Beastie Boys - You sort of know how to dance.

Beck - You have a bean bag chair in your basement rec room and the artifacts of an elaborate pipe system enabling you to smoke pot in your bedroom and blow it outside masking the odour.

Breeders - You're an English grad student.

Pixies - You lost your virginity in the bathroom at an all ages show.

Built to Spill - Your girlfriend told you to listen to the Pixies but you thought they were fags because of their name.

Candlebox - You don't listen to music anymore.

Spacehog - You know at what point to switch sides on a mix tape to get to the beginning of a good song on side B.

Cake - You like jazz now.

Red Hot Chili Peppers - You love Hollywood and imported beer.

Counting Crows - You were a resident adviser in your college dorm for 3 years of college.

Rollins Band - You watch a lot of documentaries.

Foo Fighters - You've only been to concerts in arenas.

Sonic Youth - You have a mantle with melted candles on it.

Garbage - You're a woman in upper management.

Limlifter - You live in Canada.

Ghadharvas - You live in Ontario.

Helmet - You're an abrasive drunk.

Korn - Your eyebrow ring is now an eyebrow barbell.

Deftones - You love UFC and wear a black windbreaker.

Janes Addiction - You smoke king size Du Maurier cigarettes.



Bikini Kill - You live in a cool loft.

L7 - You've been bruised by a woman.

Ween - You get stoned and eat Nutella.

The Melvins - you can take a punch, you have a beard.

Portishead - You listen to dub step in your car.

Less Than Jake - You hate Mighty Mighty Bosstones.

The Mighty Mighty Bosstones - You hate No Doubt.

No Doubt - You love MXPX.

Sublime - You are undeniably white, you like the X Games.

Nine Inch Nails - You've done a lot of acid, you had an undercut - you are a sound engineer.

White Zombie - You wore green army cargos and combat boots, you write for a horror movie blog.

Pavement - You work on your Mac at a cafe with free Internet and $6 pieces of cake.

Primus - You only like Primus.

Blur - You moved to England for 6 months after you graduated high school and then wouldn't stop talking about London for 2 fucking years.

Bjork - You have a degree in environmental design.

Limp Bizkit - You're a date rapist.

Superchunk - You sell vinyl on Ebay.

They Might Be Giants - You write intellectual satire - you are socially weird.

Tool - You are a line cook who does a lot of meth.

Veruca Salt - You wear cute, knitted mittens.

Bush - You worked at a t-shirt store with ironic slogans, you still have chin legnth hair parted in the middle.

Everyone hates teenagers, except teenagers

I'm a person who can remember everything. Actually a more accurate statement is I have an incredible long term memory and a terrible short term memory. I can remember Danny Hulton's journal entries in grade one but I can't remember to buy bread crumbs to make dinner on my way home from work. When you're in primary school, your life is at it's most current stage. When you're thirteen and under you don't have the ability to reminisce yet, you talk about what happened that day and then you move on. When you enter high school you reminisce about primary school and by grade 11 you're reminiscing about all the times your got drunk at parties and threw stuff off balconies the previous two years. When you enter university you reminisce about dumb shit you did when you were a teenager and amazing stories about Jeremy Gray doing a back flip off a hotel into a boat harbour. Your twenties are a blur and when you hit thirty you reminisce about everything that seemed like it happened a year ago when in actuality it happened five years ago. This makes your start realizing that pictures of parties you were at when you were seventeen were a mind melting thirteen years ago. When I was fourteen, eighteen year olds seemed like they were thirty and the age of twenty-three seemed unfathomable. I had no idea what being twenty three meant at all. Now I'm thirty and I look at twenty year olds like they're thirteen. I wasn't mature when I was twenty, I was mature enough to live on my own but I ate chips, pancakes and drank 950 cans of Steeler beer everyday. Now I've become something I never thought I would be: an ageist. I look down upon 20 year olds and teenagers because I know more than them about life than they do. I can't have a conversation with them because everything they are experiencing I already experienced ten years ago. Everyone hates teenagers except teenagers themselves. When you're in your teens you want respect that you don't deserve and then you grow up you realize why you didn't get it. Looking beyond that I can relate to twenty year olds because I loved being twenty, I had a job with the government, made a lot of money, and drank on patios all summer.