I really do enjoy music, but I also really do believe not many of you give a shit what my favorite albums of all time are so I’m going to go about it a little differently. Instead my plan is to make a list of the songs that remind me of some of the good people in my life. Of course this will not be an exhaustive list; there are some great people I know whom I don’t connect to any particular piece of music; because of this, these people are out. On the other side of the coin, there are some people who really aren’t all that great but because I can’t think of them without hearing a song, they might make it in. In any event this will give me a chance to think back on some good times, and late on a Saturday night such as it is, that isn’t such a bad thing.
My childhood was spent in the 70’s and I have nothing but good things to say about that. We had floppy hair and were always dirty. Our parents (usually divorced) all smoked and gave us alcohol at very young ages. We never wore seatbelts or bicycle helmets. Basically we weren’t the soft, emotion-bound bunch teachers like myself are forced to deal. Luckily we weren’t subjected to the corporate hell of boy bands and teenage hoes the likes of which so popular today. We grew up listening to Steely Dan on the car radio; not because we really wanted to, but because that was what they were playing. With all this in mind I bring you to my first connection, my brother Mike and the band Journey.
The first album I ever bought was Journey Departure (“Anyway you want it, that’s the way you need it!”) and it was directly because him. There was already a copy in the house, but I had to have my own. I bought it at the music department at Shopko of all places. Journey had plenty of melody to hook a 12 year old and just enough coolness to survive the 6th grade playground. Mike was always there for me, he was probably the only person whose advice I listened to for the first 30 years of my life (man I just never liked listening to people’s advice). After I got out of the Army we hung out quite a bit. He was recently out of the Air Force himself, and though I don’t promote the glamorization of getting drunk, we got seriously drunk a seriously large number of times and all of them were good times. I always felt comfortable around him, as if nothing was going to go wrong. My first experience with hard drugs was with Mike. We were out at a shitty bar in Racine (The Shufflebear), he asked and I never even hesitated; I didn’t for a second think anything bad would happen (it didn’t). Thank god we didn’t run into any transvestite prostitutes because who knows what might have happened. When I found my brother Matt dead, he was the first person I saw afterwards, and it was exactly as it should be; I’ll never forget that. Mike has been dead awhile now, I miss him.
As far as music and Mike goes, I do regret not doing something about the shmultzness of playing Dave Matthews at his funeral service (in the end, I wasn’t the only one there and other people seemed to enjoy it, so so be it; but I still should have ran up and ripped that tape out)
Next up I will venture back to my Army days and the people who made such a crap-tastic time in my life bearable. First up will be Raymond Corey Cline or Condoosh to his friends. Somehow or other a lot of us got nicknames that ended in –doosh. There was Mickdoosh and Packdoosh and of course me, Big Kevdoosh. I remember being out with my friend Brad Pack, a really large black guy from Queens New York. He used to come over just about every morning to eat my cereal. I didn’t much mind, he was a good guy. Anyways one time we were out somewhere, maybe it was bank or something, and I was talking to a lady behind a counter. Whatever I was doing there was quickly coming to an end when Pack said “Come on Big Kevdoosh, let’s go” to which the lady loudly and unpleasantly responded “THAT’S NOT A NICE NAME”. This might not mean much to you but for the next year or so we repeated that line over and over again. (I’ve decided to use this blog as something of an oral history of my life, so seemingly meaningless bits like the one just described will show up from time to time; rest assured they are not meant for you).
By far the most iconic nickname of the bunch was Condoosh and for good reason, Cline was a special individual. I believe the Con- portion of the name was short for condom, and he probably got that attached to himself after he decided to shave his head for no particular reason. It was often said of Cline, you could use and abuse him and throw him aside much like a condom. As for the song, it has to be “Wish You Were Here” by Pink Floyd. Every time he got drunk (and let’s not kid anyone, we were drunk a lot back then) he would start singing that song, and start singing it LOUDLY. (the guy could absolutely not sing) Worse yet he would make the rest of us sing it with him. He was one those people for whom it is tough to describe in words, he was someone who had to be experienced.
Condoosh was probably the second most beloved one of our group; in any other group he would have been tops, but our group contained Mick Harney. Mick Harney is a blog entry all to himself and since I’m now back in contact with Carey Crane that will have to be a joint venture for another day. In amongst all his other peculiarities was his fascination with Jim Morrison. To put it more bluntly, his honest belief he would someday become Jim Morrison. But for me the music that most reminds me of him is Syd Barrett so I’ll go with “Baby Lemonade”. There will be more on Mick Harney in the future; there will have to be.
Staying with the Army theme, I’ll next go to one of the major inspirations for this “list”, Carey Russell Crane. As I may have mentioned previously, when I first met Crane I really didn’t like him and a large part of that was because of his love of really crappy music; to get right to the point, Motley Crue. Now I grew watching MTV and Friday Night Videos and saw plenty of Motley Crue videos and even as a 13 year old I thought “What’s the point, God do these guys suck!” Luckily with time I was able to get past this and we had some good times together. What the hell? while thinking about all of this, one of those good times just popped into my mind (so here goes).
It was a fine summer day and a couple of friends and I (for those around at the time, I believe it was Chandler and Wilkerson) went out and rented some mountain bikes. I do believe this was the first time I ever went mountain biking. My bike was having a bit of a problem, namely trouble with the back break. Not having much experience with bikes and being of an age when expedience trumps wisdom, we solved the problem by simply disabling the back brake all together. While going down our first hill a potentially dangerous problem began to arise; I was going faster than the guy in front of me and had no real way of slowing down. It soon became obvious that something must be done; within seconds I was going to run right up his ass. I quickly scanned through the options and choose the most logical. I had unhooked the back brake, but the front brake was in perfect working order. When I was within inches of the back tire ahead of me I smoothly and gently hit the front brake and . . .WAS INSTANTLY CATAPULTED INTO THE AIR, RIGHT OVER THE HANDLE BARS. Luckily I completed a full helmetless revolution and landed mostly on my butt in a full roll only to see the bike hurl by above me. From what I hear from the third member of our group, it was quite the site. In the end, I was fine, the bike was fine and we kept going.
Later that day we learned that our friend Crane (Crane always loooved Chandler and Wilkerson) was having a bit of a party at his girlfriend's house, yet another member of the great 10th Chemical Co. (I’m not joking about being great. I’ll have you know, while we were over there we were named “Best Chemical Company in Europe” and that’s the truth; I have no fucking clue how, but we were). Getting there required a good 5 – 10 mile ride on our rented bikes after our little trail riding episode, and mind you this was Germany and Germany has some hills. Needless to say I was worn out and seeing stars by the time we got there. I’m not sure what other people do at their get-togethers, but we at the time drank; we laughed, we talked shit, and we drank. Rosalie, Crane’s lady-friend could cook so we did some eating too, but before I got near any food I was handed the most God-awful drink I have ever put lips on, the Mexican Flag.This monstrosity consisted of some kind of red liquor, some kind of green liquor and Bacardi 151 and if you poured it right the three would form layers . . . much like a Mexican flag. This description isn’t done quite yet; before drinking it you lit it on fire, blew it out and drank it quickly through a straw. It was a warm sweet burning hell all the way down your throat. I think I drank two. So after a hard day of bike riding, to include a very traumatic flip over the handlebars, I was completely drunk within 5 minutes of arriving and before ever getting near the food table. Within an hour or two I was passed out on the living room floor. The next thing I know it’s the middle of the night, it’s dark, and I’m freezing; seriously freezing. After that the next thing I remember is waking up in the morning, completely rolled inside the living room carpet; I was so cold during the night I had managed to find the end of the carpet and neatly roll myself inside for warmth. So there you go that was my story; back to the “list”.
One of the best “breaks” of my life came during Thanksgiving weekend, 1990. During a serious game of football, I managed to mess up my shoulder AND break a bone in my wrist. Ordinarily this wouldn’t be considered a good thing, but with Saddam Hussein invading Kuwait and America about to unleash “DESERT STORM” all over Iraq it turned out to be a great thing. All the able bodied, sad, sons-a-bitches in our company were given the unfortunate task of guarding nuke sites around Germany. The Germans being the smart people they are put these nuke sites on top of mountains in the middle of nowhere. Of course not being able to carry a weapon meant I would be detailed to the mail clerk who just happened to be my friend Carey Russell Crane. Ah I tell you, while our friends were freezing their asses off we spent the next few weeks delivering mail all across Germany in our gov’t issued VW Golf. This task of course could not have been accomplished without some tunes. With his love of Motley Crue, Nelson, and Warrant not withstanding, Carey’s music of choice was Led Zeppelin. Two guys, a boom box, a bag full of mail, and a German hatchback; let me tell you, those were some good times. The album I remember listening to the most was Physical Graffiti, not a bad thing considering it’s a double album and we had some serious mileage to cover. The song I’ll choose is “Houses of the Holy”, a good sing along. Since Carey and I are now Facebook friends I’m expecting a nice comment or two in short order. Perhaps it’s time to leave the Army theme behind; they really weren’t the best of times and it's obvious I never became all I could have been.
Having just received an email from an old friend, I thought it only right to include her in the list. So for Neelima my choice has to be Nusrat, love Nusrat; you can’t go wrong with “Musty, Musty”. Oh an of course the sound track to Chekov’s “The Seagull”, WOW! what a play (JUST KILL HIM).
Oh course you can’t talk about Neelima without talking about the man who won her heart, Joey Lucio Rios. While back in Racine over Christmas a friend described my blog as a “homage to Joey”. I told her I had trouble seeing it that way, but what the hell? others see it that way so how about more Joey Rios? I truly believe my friend Joey is the perfect human synthesis of California. He’s got the white part down (from Mom) AND the Mexican part down (from Dad). He’s got no black BUT he does love Tupac; while at the same time also loving Metallica (at least early Metallica; Ahhhh I can still remember listening to Master of Puppets in the kitchen of the Swiss House in Goroka, New Guinea while cooking up pasta with homemade sauce {and the homemade sauce was my idea}). In perfect California fashion he also poses for every photograph. Californians do this subconsciously, but damn do they do it. Just go dig up your old photos and find the ones with your California friends, the non-Californians will look at peace while the Californians will have their asses out, shoulders up, and some weird hand-jive going. He’s also dabbled in faux-gatarianism AND once had sported a really sweet ‘stache (the mustache part really has nothing to do with California but it was so sweet I felt I had to work it into the story). But to get back on point, the song has to be by Tupac and since there was one about California we’ll go with that.
After my stint in the Peace Corps I ventured out to California and spent a short time living with my just described friends Joey and Neelima. We were three recently returned Peace Corps volunteer (I’m happy to report two of us fulfilled our 2 year commitments) living in a mostly empty house, but I do look fondly upon those times. The reason it was short-lived was because of my brother Matt’s death. Not much is going to be said about that here, but Matt and I spent a lot of time together and listened to a lot of music together. While still in high school I spent quite a few weekends at his apartment on 5th and Wisconsin sleeping on our grandmother’s hand-me-down orange couch. Our grandpa Ralph spent many an hour on that couch so it was a bit of a privilege. Matt had a crappy turntable and a copy of the Rolling Stone’s Hot Rocks album which we listened to all the time. While both home from Germany on leave from the Army, we rented a video camera and filmed ourselves driving around Racine. I don’t know what happened to the video but there is a scene of us driving down what I think was 21st St. with Matt singing Dance the Night Away by Van Halen; I never hear that song without remembering that moment. We saw quite a few Lou Reed concerts together so one might think I’d go in that direction, but I’m not going to. The song that reminds me most of him is a song I didn’t connect to him until after he was already gone. The song is Lady Stardust by David Bowie,
“He was alright, the band was all together
He was alright, the song went on forever
He was awful nice
Really quite out of sight”
Through my brother Matt I met Matt Geisler. There isn’t anyone I’ve listened to more music with than Matt Geisler. Because of this I could take this many different directions; I’m actually very curious as to what’s going through his head as he reads these very words. Matt rented an apartment on Erie St. which, for those of you in the know, at one time actually contained its own Action Jackson room. Around the summer of ’93 I hung out at his place a lot. The music that brings me back to those days more than any is the Beatles (White Album). My favorite song off the album at that time was probably “I’m So Tired” so I’ll go with that one,
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“And curse Sir Walter Raleigh
He was such a stupid get”
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I can’t just leave it at that though. Not long after I got out of the Army; somehow, someway, and for some reason, I got into jazz. I probably would have gone it alone, but if not for Matt; he was right there with me through the best of it. The highlight of this period had to be the Jazz Estate in Milwaukee. Not only was he right there with me, Matt got to be me as he was underage at the time and used to borrow an old driver’s license of mine to make it past the ID check. With my brother along it often went like this: Kevin Peterson, Matt Peterson, Kevin Peterson; I’m telling you it’s a wonder they never caught on. For a couple of years some guy named Steve ran the club and not worrying too much about making a profit, brought it some big name people to a shitty little club in Milwaukee. The place was small with about six tables in front of the stage; the others were wedged into a hallway behind the stage. The place was dark and smoky, and we were being charged $6.00 a drink long before anyone had any business being charged $6.00 a drink. If I have to pick an act, I’m picking the guy who played the flute. I don’t remember his name, but I remember being at the front table. I was leaned back with my feet ON THE STAGE while this crazy, sweaty, balding guy jumped around playing the flute. Sometimes you just hit it right in life, and finding the Jazz Estate when we did way one of those times.
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This has probably carried on too long already so let’s move ahead. My last week or so at St. Catherine’s was alright. I had worked for a jack-ass but had already turned in my letter of resignation so there was a definite sense of freedom. I figured you learn a lot of stuff in high school you don’t need to know so it was about time to spread the word on things young people really should know; like which were the cool videos from the 80’s. I always seemed to find a reason to check out the projector that last week and any time left over was used to watch classic videos on the big screen. Most of that group is scattered around at various colleges and I wish them all well. This will probably break Holly Myrup’s heart which isn’t good because Holly was my main video watching partner, but I’m going with Dexy and the Midnight Runners’ “Come On Eileen”; a true classic. Sorry Holly I just could never get into Rick Astley.
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I started with a brother and will be ending with a brother. Dan has always had slightly odd tastes. Things may have changed but when younger, his favorite color was purple and his drink of choice was champagne and coke; that right there probably says everything that needs to be said. With that, it shouldn’t surprise you to learn he had what can only be described as an Elvis obsession. There was a time when if you got into a car with Dan, you knew you were going to be listening to Elvis. I still remember the time we decided we had nothing better to do on a weekend so we rented a car and drove to Graceland. In fine Peterson fashion Dan stole the audio tape they give you on the walking tour. There was also the time soon after I returned from the Army when a group of us went to Milwaukee to see Tom Green, one of America’s great Elvis Impersonators. In fine Elvis fashion the show was held in some big banquet hall, and it was packed. We ended up way in the back, a fact I’m sure made Dan pissed; how was he going to be able to call out any requests from back there? His mood lightened after he and our brother Matt walked in on Tom Green, Milwaukee’s greatest Elvis impersonator, gettin’ it on with some woman in the coat room (true story). I’ve always remembered this.
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In college I had a philosophy class and we discussed a political philosopher who came up with the idea society should be set up in a way that presupposes nobody has any idea who or what condition they are going to be in. This way when rules and regulation are made people will think hard about making it difficult for handicapped people because who knows, they might end up being the handicapped pereson themselves. There was more to it than that but that was a long time ago. The reason I bring it up is because at the time it got me thinking. If I was suddenly going to appear on Earth what would be a thing to appear as. I’m telling you I think Elvis impersonator would be a pretty good gig. You would get to completely escape the routine of the ordinary world and you could pack a room just about any Saturday night; people would love you. Tom Green was not a good looking man, but here he was getting it on with some highly devoted middle aged woman during intermission of a show. It would be like a teacher getting it on with some middle aged mother during break time at a PTA meeting. I’m sure that happens, but it seems so routine; where's the fantasy, the wonder? No, for my money give me the middle aged woman and the coat room of the Palace Hotel Ballroom on a Saturday night. I was originally going to go with the song Suspicious Minds because it always seemed to be Dan’s favorite, but this list is too big for that song; we have to go out bigger. There is no better way to end any mixed tape than with Elvis’ American Trilogy; ooooohhhhhh man, I can almost hear those horns now.
So there you go, there’s my list. One of you music downloading people should put this altogether for everyone. To recap it will go like this:
Anyway you want it ----------Journey
Wish you were here ----------Pink Floyd
Baby Lemonade --------------Syd Barrett
Houses of the holy ------------Led Zeppelin
Mustt mustt ------------------Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan
California Love ---------------Tupac Shakur
Lady Stardust ----------------David Bowie
I’m so tired -------------------The Beatles
Come on Eileen ---------------Dexy’s Midnight Runners
American Trilogy -------------Elvis Pressley
Hopefully I was able to include must of the regular readers in one way or another. If not I guess we just haven‘t listened to enough music together, but that’s OK I can always make another list.
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It's off to Thailand on Wednesday; you have to think a story is somewhere there to be told.
