Punk Rock Archaelogy

While combing through my parents' basement to find my old Warhammer models (shut up), I stumbled across a CD-R with my name written on it in someone else's handwriting. Of course I was curious, so I popped it into the computer and discovered two demo recordings of songs I had written in high school. The playing is sloppy, the lead parts totally unrehearsed (and foolishly undubbed), and the vocals are much whinier than I remember my voice ever being, but they're fun enough. This, in addition to my MORTIFIED performance last Saturday, and the further basement discovery of VHS tapes from my high school band's performances (coming soon!) have made this a delightfully nostalgic week. Anyway, for your laughing/listening pleasure, here they are:

The Dot of My "I"

[soundcloud url="http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/72843665" params="" width=" 100%" height="166" iframe="true" /]

Yes, this song was written about Ellen Hickle from The Adventures Of Pete & Pete  (AKA the greatest TV show ever created and I will stand by that fact until the day I die). The lyrics are slightly different here than I remember, but that's alright. Maybe I'll re-instate the Endless Mike line if I ever perform it again. Or, maybe not.

(And ugh, bongos?! REALLY, High School Thom? I'm so disappointed in you. I thought you knew better, even then)

Fun fact: a high school friend of mine had a popular public access TV show (oxymoron?) and, after hearing this song, invited me to perform it on the show. Little did I know that he had actually contacted the actress that played Ellen Hickle and offered to pay her to be a surprise guest on the show, which would then chronicle our hilariously awkward blind date. Sadly, she backed out at the last minute (she was apparently working on a pre-med degree at Dartmouth circa 2004, go figure), so our love never had its true chance to blossom, but I suppose it's for the best.

Rockstar Me

[soundcloud url="http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/72843820" params="" width=" 100%" height="166" iframe="true" /]

This song was an adolescent attempt to deconstruct the myth that guys in bands get laid all the time. So, ya know, it's fictional, tongue-in-cheek, and there's a nice little ironic twist at the end. It's corny power-pop, sure, but it's hardly the worst thing I ever wrote...

Fun fact: My good friend Andy Michaels heard me play this song at an Open Mic night my freshman year of college. We had never met at this point, but his friend had a crush on me, and upon hearing me sing this song, he decided that I was the biggest dick ever, and made plans to kick my ass (though it never actually happened). We finally ended up meeting in the fall of my sophomore year. His aunt was friends with my mother, and he was in a comedy troupe with my suitemates, and one night he drunkenly stumbled into my room and said "Hey! My aunt knows your mom! Is that a Spider-Man comforter? That's awesome! Hey guitar! Let's play a song!" and then we lived happily ever after.

Wow. Our Town. Wow. Okay.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPwJ-8cGXpI] I say this with no personal bias -- not because my wonderful girlfriend, the producer of this fine production, has been busting her ass for 10 months to make this show as a reality, and not as an employee of the theatre company that is presenting the show.

David Cromer's production of Our Town at the Huntington is one of the Desert Island All-Time Top 5 Most Moving Shared Communal Experiences I have ever had in my entire life.

Perhaps it's especially poignant for me when I think of the friends that I've lost in recent years, but I watched the show on both Tuesday and Wednesday night, and I couldn't stand to watch it for a third time last night for our opening because I was already so overwhelmed with emotion. Three days in a row, and I think I would be eternally reduced to a sobbing puddle of flesh lying in fetal position on the floor. Yes, this show is so good that I literally could not watch it a third time (although I will probably go back at the end of the run, and hopefully catch some things I missed the other 2 times, because there's so much to see in the nothingness of this production, and as the play itself suggests, we can't possibly appreciate all of it when it's happening).

Anyway, there's a video I made up there about the show. I cannot stress enough how powerful and poignant this production truly is. Our Town might be seen as hokey and sentimental and high school-y to many people (though oddly I grew up in Thornton Wilder's hometown and never read or saw the show once, although I did play lots of shitty punk rock shows at Thornton Wilder Memorial Hall), but man, David Cromer just gets it, in a way that'll just blow your mind.

(Also don't read the review in The Boston Globe because [a] it's douchey, [b] IT SPOILS THE END OF THE PLAY, and [c] it's douchey. Yes, Our Town has been around a while, so there are certain spoilers that are now beyond the statute of limitations, but to spoil what makes this production so remarkable -- and to spoil it in such a nonchalant manner -- is awful. If this guy had reviewed The Sixth Sense when it first came out, he would have said "And then it turns out that Bruce Willis was dead the whole time which was totally brilliant and stunning -- I mean, that is to say, if you're one of those people who enjoys brilliant and stunning things or whatever. But otherwise, meh.")

Burning Words

It was the first day back from winter break. As the first period bell rang, we begrudgingly sidled into Ms. Nitkin’s 11th grade double-period American Studies class. Nitkin was a feisty old Jewish lesbian from Cheshire, who had long since cemented her reputation as both the hardest and greatest teacher at the school. She didn’t take any bullshit (as she so eloquently told me when she handed back my very first essay with a big fat “D” sprawled across the page), but she made her teaching worthwhile, and always pushed you to your very best. She had given us the week between Christmas and New Years to read Huckleberry Finn, by native Nutmegger Samuel Clemens, also known as Mark Twain. Being assigned an entire novel to read over winter break always seemed cruel and unfair, but we did as we were told, and came to that first period class ready to discuss the book and bear Nitkin’s sardonic, witty wrath.

Once we’d all settled down — a good five minutes after the late bell rang — Ms. Nitkin stood up from her desk, hardly taller than she was when sitting down, and made her first declaration to the class: “Nigger. There, I said. Now that that’s out of the way, I hope you all read Huck Finn,” and proceeded with her usual four-question verbal quiz, just to make sure we actually read the book, instead of skimming SparkNotes.

After the quiz, Ms. Nitkin told us a bit of the history of the book’s censorship, as a means of launching us off into a class discussion. Almost immediately, and with much less arguing and shouting than was typically expected of us, the class came to several unanimous decisions: yes, the book uses the word “Nigger,” no, it’s not a very nice word to use, and yes, it was still historically accurate. This set us off on our debate — was Jim the true hero of the book, despite the fact that he was a “nigger?”

The lone black girl in the class — technically Jamaican-American, not African — raised her hand for the first time. Ms. Nitkin called on her to speak, and with seething vitriol she declared her disgust for that word and the shame it brought upon her people. Once again, the rest of the class agreed, and genuinely sympathized as best we could.

But she carried on, spewing vile about how terrible it was for Jim to be called such a thing. Still we all continued to agree, just as we had at the start of the class. She insulted Mark Twain’s worth as an author, and the educational and historical value of the book because of this. Ms. Nitkin tried several times to change the topic, re-iterating that, although the rest of us were white, we were still on her side.

The girl continued her rant, or argument, or declaration, or whatever else it may have been, well into the middle of the second period of the class, interfering with the instructional time allotted to another teacher. The next day, Ms. Nitkin brought in an entirely new book for us to read — this time with only three days to do it. In her final year as a teacher before retirement, Ms. Nitkin changed her curriculum for the first and only time, in effort to satiate the outraged student.

I can’t remember anything about that book we read next, but I sure as hell remember Huck Finn.

"Burning Words" on FiveByFiveHundred.com

In light of this whole big Huck Finn controversy, I couldn't help but recall my own experience with the book back in my Junior year of high school, which now seems frighteningly poignant and topical. Read the story over at FiveByFiveHundred.com.