Music from another time.

I load a play list frequently - it's a collection of tracks from the 90's, a decade in which were some of my formative years were spent.




Without much effort I can relive those times in Long Beach, California. I can see the chinzty, tacky t shirts emblazoned with a tough looking tweety bird, or bugs bunny. Or a ferocious tasmanian devil. People wore beepers like little badges of wealth. I can hear the rap music as I ride home with Dad in his red astro van, the music from the 'black' neighborhoods where as children we played without care. You could approach a group of kids then as kids can now: Can I play? do you have pogs?  Nice skates, can I try?

I can remember some summers from that time: Hot and full of freedom as we ran barefoot down the street to play in someones yard, running back home to check in and leave again for drinks from the hose and bike rides to the corner store.  This was before we got a computer, gameboys were just coming out - my mom had one and spent a lot of time on it playing super mario brothers.

I was in high school/middle school in the 90's too. You don't realise it then, but music is so important then. Despite the despotic rule my mother had over our lives growing up, music wasn't something she could easily take away from me.  Countless hours were spent listening to KROQ and Star and the sounds of anger and rebellion. I'd record little mix tapes, waiting for the perfect song to come on.  I'd sneak MTV, watching the videos of the day - You couldn't forget the Red Hot Chili Peppers and their vigor, or Jewel and her feelings. I drowned myself in the Doors - an influence of my father. Still to this day, they dominate my oldies playlists. I cherish memories of driving through Long Beach with him, on errands, blasting Light My Fire eagerly and playing an air-organ on my knees. CD players were a weird, cumbersome bit of technology to be coveted and cherished, and I spent a lot of time collecting Mom-Approved CD's (and maybe a few under the eye of my father, who indulged me in a more adventurous style).

It's not just 90's music I cling to. There's an album by the Rolling Stones that came out then; with a lurid video for one of the songs I can still see in my head quite vividly. Bridges to Babylon is still an album I listen to, and like the Doors, I enjoy them because if my dad. That weird blue lion with a beard rearing up on the cover art still dancing in my head.

I wonder sometimes if he knows I look back on music and think of him fondly. He's why I like Emerson Lake and Palmer and Bowie. Those summers in Long Beach at his house were punctuated with oldies being blasted while we hung out in the back yard in the 2000's.

But high school - the days where the Smashing Pumpkins and the Gin Blossoms were played loudly, Sarah McLachlan was still relevant, and who can forget the voice of Alanis Morrisette? She led countless young women to victory in their dreams, belting out her anthem, You Oughta Know heartily.  Korn was a terrifying, dreadlocked force - forbidden at home, but secretly watched on that most terrible of channels: MTV.

You were only allowed bubble gum oldies under Mom's rule, or that horrible, over played country music she was so fond of. I can't hear that twang without giving a full body shudder to this day. Rap music was maligned, seemingly consigned to 'bad neighborhoods' and therefor to be savored by the younger set - to us, Snoop clearly knew what was up.

I drowned myself in music after she passed in 1999. Korn was my angst filled outlet that I still think kept me out of trouble. I look back now on the Issues album and can finally listen to it safely, without spiraling in to some dark funk that lasts weeks.  Dad was there, quietly indulging this sudden display of teenage emotions and coping. He seemed to understand that so much was stifled before she was gone, that finally, his children were able to be themselves, and we did that. We blossomed without the constant tirades, iron fisted tyranny that came with her ways. I cannot fault her totally - she was not healthy and lacked the care she could have gotten today.  Davis' screams and dreadlocks seemed so real then, as though he understood the world ending pain and confusion I was enduring. Music was the language, and we ran wild with it for years.

Imagine losing a parent at the age of 17. That's when you need your mom, but music helped. All those angry words and screams, the distorted guitars and beating drums offering an outlet for the anger and hurt you feel.  That was a weird time. I am grateful I didn't fall in to some darker path, and I think music and a terror of new things stopped me.

I still listen to a lot of this music. Sometimes I cry for the memories they bring up. Otherwise I sing along, dancing with my children. You're welcome to join.  Today, our listening is filled with today's artists; Lady Gaga and Katy Perry feature heavily in our listening - the desire of my now six year old. Someday I'll show her the magic of Alanis, or Sheryl Crow. She likes David Bowie, and prefers ELP's Lucky Man moog solo to that of Still You Turn Me On. Already at six she has tastes all her own. I encourage them by leaving all sorts of music on, and adding select songs to *her* playlists on youtube. She has a special love for Fitz and the Tantrums, and for Ghost.

It's important to me, as I live my life with music that she experience it at her own pace. So we'll listen to Katy Perry or the 90's list again. I'll quietly hope she has a love for music as I do.