Why It Matters

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  • 12. Does Anybody Want To Get Mellow?

    By the time we settled in South Carolina I had embraced fully my outsiderness.  This is not to say that I didn’t want to make friends; rather, it’s more akin to a deathbed confession (without the death or the bed) that I knew all along that I was getting attention for being the smart, funny,…

  • 11. Hey It’s Good To Be Back Home Again

    Finding a road into South Carolina has been tough.  It should not be so difficult.  The interstate medians are wide there, and the traffic is light.  But those are the wrong roads, unfortunately.  They exist in the same three dimensions as the highways and backroads of my childhood, but they are missing the most essential…

  • 10. Loose Nut

    Henry Rollins is right. I should end this post right there, but that would be nowhere near narcissistic enough.   Over the past week I’ve been reading Smile, You’re Traveling, which is probably the tenth Rollins book I’ve read.  It is framed as a travelogue circa 1997, but essentially it is a  couple of years’ worth…

  • 9. The Cutout Bin

    Texas was a blessedly short adventure.  We were only there for nine months or so before my father took a job in South Carolina and we were off again.  Not much grows in upstate South Carolina’s red clay – kudzu, peach trees, scrubby pine trees – but it was rich ground for music.  It was…

  • 8. You Can Check Out Any Time You Like

    Shortly after Independence Day 1976, we moved to Texas and reunited with my father. A new state, a new town, a new school. It didn’t take long to meet all of the kids in the neighborhood – no fights required – and see that they had the same collection of Monkees, Neil Diamond, and John…

  • 7. Your Dreams Were Your Ticket Out

    After my father left we moved again, this time to a small rental home not too far from our old neighborhood. I didn’t have any interest in another round of fights just to make a new batch of friends, so I stayed inside for the most part and played with a super ball in the…

  • 6. Just For One Day

    Life continued in the Chicago suburbs. My baseball skills improved, and I started holding my own in fights. I made a best buddy. We’d play Evel Knievel and Hot Wheels and listen to his Monkees records every day after school. He had a Labrador named Sunshine, named for his only 45: John Denver’s “Sunshine on My…

  • 5. Show Me the Way

    Manilow Madness aside, I did my best to be the manly son my father wanted. I joined the Cub Scouts. I played Little League and flag football. And the thing is I liked it. I wasn’t a mama’s boy by nature, I was a mama’s boy by nurture.

  • 4. My Dark Confession

    I was hoping to never think about this, much less write about it. This is such a dark corner of my past that I’ve done my best to expurgate it from my personal narrative. But the purpose of this ongoing ramble is to try and explain, if even only to myself, why music matters. How…

  • 3. When Am I Gonna Come Down?

    The Montgomery Ward Bargain Basement was a frequent destination in my early childhood. My father was a repairman for Wards at the time – one of those guys who drove a van, wore a smart uniform, and pleasantly fixed your television while your chihuahua chewed on his trouser leg. It seemed like an awfully glamorous…