Our family was middle class, blue collar, Polish and suburban. If you look at the average income of all the Chicago suburbs, Palos Hills falls literally right in the middle. Whatever “middle class” is these days, but in 1991 there was still a middle class and my brother and I grew up in it. As such we generally took one family trip a year, that is if my parents could afford it and get off of work. In the summer of 1991 we traveled west for not one but two weeks! I think my father’s rationalizing was we hadn’t taken a trip the previous year, and odds on after I graduated high school would not take another one as the four of us. This was “the last big family adventure!”
In late July we pilled into our tan Chevrolet four-door Suburban (the SUV before SUVs) and headed west on I-80. I will hand it to my parents, it was an epic trip and more then likely spawned my travel bug for years to come. We made stops at Pike’s Peak, the Grand Canyon, four corners, Las Vegas, The Great Salt Lake, Yellowstone National Park and The Devil’s tower. I’m sure there were a few kitch stops as well knowing my mother.
Appropriately enough, I read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy during that two weeks. I had a black Sony Walkman and I loved that machine. I played so much music through that contraption in the four years between sophomore year in high school and freshman year at the university. On this trip it was REM’s Out of Time, Sting’s The Soul Cages and of course Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers Into the Great Wide Open…today’s Friday album.
Remember that time when…we were 7th row for David Bowie?
David Bowie and NIN on the Outside Tour 1995-96
How it works:
1. I’ll start with a story from my past which happens to be the one and only time I saw David Bowie in concert
2. I’ll leave it open to the next author (whomever would like to continue on) to recall “That time when…” Perhaps then we can nominate? I leave it to the authors and my co-publisher Shawn Baker to decide.
3. The only catch: it has to relate somehow to the previous story. It could in a number of ways. For instance the setting for this story takes place at The World Music Theater in Tinley Park, Illinois in October of 1995. So a number of thing could spin off…the location, the year, Trent Reznor whom shared the stage with Bowie, or even Bowie himself. But there should be no repeats in your relations from story- to-story.
4. Continue our stream of consciousness.
The Making of a Superband – Tinley Park : Central Middle School Band
2014 ISU Invitational: The students decided they would each have a chance to touch the trophy and have his or her picture taken by it.
Do you remember what you did in your spare time when you were in seventh and eighth grade? I remember babysitting, playing baseball in the street with my friends, swimming in my backyard pool, and wasting an inordinate amount of time trying to beat The Legend of Zelda. I was also in the school band which met once or twice a week, and I took lessons for which I was rarely prepared. Our band concerts were twice a year, and I am pretty certain our audience consisted of mainly our parents because, quite frankly, they were the only ones brave enough to subject themselves to the torturous cacophony of a junior high band concert. This experience starkly contrasts with the experience the students have in Central Middle School’s Symphonic Band.
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS LATER: QUESTIONS IN A WORLD OF BLUE/ANSWERS IN A ROOM OF RED – TWIN PEAKS REVISITED (A ‘Your Fucked Up Childhood’ Special)
“Oh God. I was just a boy.
I saw him in my dream.
He said he wanted to play.
He opened me and I invited him and he came inside me.”
~ Leland Palmer
Your Fucked Up Childhood #1 Jack Prelutsky ‘The Ghoul’
This Be The Verse
BY PHILIP LARKIN
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
The Sunday Song Poem #2: David Fox/Caglar Juan Singletary ‘Non-Violent Taekwondo Troopers’
Throughout the course of reacquainting myself with the genre for this column, I discovered that Song Poems (or ‘Song Sharking’ as it was referred to by jaded contributors to the industry) are 100 years old this year. In celebration of the Song Poem’s centenary, it seemed fitting to showcase a modern example of the form. A few years I ago, I was surprised to find that Song Poems were still being sourced and recorded at all while watching the definitive documentary on the subject ‘Off The Charts: The Song Poem Story‘ – the stand out track from which is our chosen Song for today.
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