Defending Your Opinion in a Cacophonous World Filled with Them

Can There be Tenable, Objective Opinions among all the Narcissistic, Biased and Allegedly Informed Ones?

by James Albert Barr


The idea of having an "informed opinion" is one not so readily accepted in our current culture, where everyone seems to think they are an expert in a vast variety of areas, fields, topics and subject matter. And it doesn't matter if they have "official credentials" or not; where they went to post-secondary school, or if they even got through high school. Everyone, seemingly, has an unqualified licence nowadays to express their self-proclaimed relevant opinion[s]; and in, or on, some kind of public arena or platform; and usually in the digital world of cyberspace, of course. And make no mistake about it: everyone is expressing those opinions with fierce velocity and audacity!

Why is this the case more so now than in any other time in recorded history? Because, of course, the aforementioned digital world we are all ubiquitously immersed in on a daily basis, that's why. The Internet has given us an all-encompassing, time-and-space-defying technology to interact with anyone at precisely any time around the world, even if they are asleep in their particular time-zone. One can still message someone via a social network, like Facebook or Twitter, for instance; or text them on their ever-present, hand-held digital device/cell phone, or comment/respond to someone at a particular website, like, say, You Tube or Amazon.com.

The one thing I (as well as everyone else, I'm sure) notice, however, amongst all the online chatter, is the obvious and endless yammering and bickering back and forth; much of it being quite aggressive, petty, immature and denigrating towards someone they usually don't know personally. About ten years ago, there was a study done to determine the most prevalent phobia in our society. That phobia turned out to be: Allodoxaphobia. It means to fear, or have an aversion to, other people's opinions. This vile phobia has reached downright epidemic proportions in our ever-divisive society!

But there has unquestionably been one psychological malady, quite naturally prevalent throughout human history, even before humankind conceived, formed and built what we call "civilization" (a suspicious nomenclature always, ultimately, rife with blatant contradiction, quite frankly) and that's narcissism. Today, especially in the so-called "first worlds", where capitalism is the de facto economic system that wholly rules the lives, inwardly and outwardly, of millions currently residing in, predominantly, liberal democratic societies around the world, we are seeing, more and more, tenable evidence of an increasingly narcissistic and self-absorbed populace, commuting to their daily jobs/careers, their favorite social haunts, excessively clean shopping malls, over-corporatized sports arenas and occupying personally-acclimated residences with the pathological delusion that what they have to say, or opine about, is as valid, if not more so, than anybody else's expressions and opinions, no matter how qualified or well-informed those others happen to appear.

Now, as mentioned, narcissism has been around for eons. It's a quite natural psychological and social attribute from within all human beings. Some are more discernibly narcissistic than others, of course, depending on the variables that went into the gradual development of any given human being throughout history, recorded or not. However, there has always been an all encompassing system of belief(s), from without, that has governed the majority of "citizens" living under such a system, which has usually included: a religious tenet, a political persuasion, and a national identity, according to whatever country (i.e. nominally identified body of "claimed land") one arbitrarily happened to be born into. This is where the notions of "national pride and patriotism", "religious devotion and adherence", as well as "political advocacy and partisanship", derive from. And narcissism, both collectively and individually, can be found to be inherent in all these belief systems. It's inescapable and, seemingly, part of the natural order of things in human relations suffused through our collective history, from the Sumerians and Egyptians to the Greeks and Romans, from the Christians and Muslims to the capitalists and communists, from ivy league freshmen and unionized dock workers to soccer hoodlums and Taylor Swift fans - narcissism can be found everywhere. The bigger the collective, the more enabled and rampant the narcissistic streak, in general.

To give an, admittedly, facile illustration of the dynamic of narcissism, and its attending egotism, think of the way people compare themselves as individuals and as a unified group. Now if we break it down from an astronomical perspective to a domestic one we'd have something like this: In the universe, we naturally take for granted that our solar system is the best one because the Earth is part of it. Of the nine planets in our solar system we obviously assume that our planet is the best one; it has clear evidence of thriving life on it, especially us, for example, and no doubt. Of the seven separate continents that make up the 30% of dry land on Earth the assumption is that whoever comes from one of these continents, they are sure it's the best continent compared to the other six. And you can take it from here, I'm sure, down to the countries and cities and its ends and sides, down to the neighborhoods, streets, houses/apartments, and straight into the family unit itself, finally resting on the special, singular person, him or her self.

Not that there isn't more humble, less egocentrically-minded peoples on Earth; you're likely to find them in "third world countries", where a genuine sense of unity and utilitarianism can be discerned; maybe not so much within their respective governments, but certainly among the general population/villages, to be sure. No, the most wide-spreading examples of increasingly unbridled narcissism are conspicuously found in "first world countries", particularly those living under the capitalist economic system.

With Western communism ending at the end of the 80s, and Francis Fukuyama's declaration in his controversial 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man, that liberal democracy and capitalism won the "ideology wars", and that it could, ultimately, not be improved upon, allegedly, the ensuing years have simply exacerbated the "me-me" attitude so flagrantly put on display during the Reagan years. This was, of course, with shameless apotheosis and droll bravado, given full legitimacy by Oliver Stone's unforgettable Wall Street character, Gordon Gecko, in 1987. The tragic irony, however, was that Gecko became a hero (however fictional he was, of course) to so many young, up and coming business graduates, despite the late 80s stock market crash. The other fictional hero to come from the 80s and inspire a generation of "gangstas" in the 1990s was, of course, Tony Montana - an untethered egomaniac like Gordon Gecko, only more directly violent, where Gecko's violence and merciless viciousness was consigned to numbers and a simple phone call. These, albeit charismatic, characters were meant to represent, analogously, as a "cautionary tale", what not to become; what we all should not strive to be. But, again, with perhaps suspicious irony, we all love a great villain: Hannibal Lector, Patrick Bateman, Tommy DeVito, Keyser Soze, or Heath Ledger's The Joker. Part of the reason why we love these characters so much is that they have done (within the convenient boundaries of fiction, of course) what most of us secretly would like to do, sans any social constrictions and laws. Perhaps I'm being overtly cynical, but I'm willing to bet dimes to dollars that it's the unvarnished truth, if the lid was able to be thoroughly opened and revealed before all to see.

Now, in the limitless anonymity of the digital world that is cyberspace and the Internet, we now straddle the virtual world and the so-called real everyday world. Some of us even spend more time in the virtual world. This cyber-habitation is becoming more "home-like" for us with every passing day on the Gregorian calendar. Ubiquitous advertising, coupled with the apparent "dumbing down of culture", while ads incessantly pump up our respective egos to sustain our effectiveness as consumers, and therefore slaves to the capitalist system and its antiseptic, banal, homogenized ideology. It, in turn, also, surreptitiously, exploits our superegos, that is, our sense of guilt and complicity, as well as our sense of perpetual inadequacy, in order to keep this precarious (and it is precarious!) system running. As "system players", we feel entitled as constant consumers, with ever-modifying identities and senses-of-self, to be the center of attention (which is the apotheosis of our world view, individually speaking), the bastion of intelligence, and the minister of culture; our opinions, on an individual basis, rife with personal bias, are above reproach, whatever limits our respective frames-of-reference and cultivation project to be, vis a vis whoever we happen to be interfacing with online, or in person.

In a frantic, increasingly artificial world, where histories and stories and identities are getting rewritten, rebooted and retconned, unchecked egotism is running rampant and wild. Even while attempting to correct someone who may be lacking education, or knowledge, or information, or even intelligence, you are more than likely going to have to contend with someone defensively and resolutely unwilling to back down from an argument or debate filled with glaring holes and unsubstantiated claims, particularly, if you confront someone online, who's at a safe and anonymous distance and place somewhere around the globe, or even possibly on the same street you live on. The digital age, and late capitalism, has unleashed a tsunami of narcissism, the likes of which has never been attained, culturally speaking, before in our recorded history. The only way to combat it (and as long as you, yourself, have achieved a reasonable level of integrity to truth and conscientiousness), is to keep informed, keep reading and learning, and stay fortified in your necessary humility, while maintaining confidence, compassion, empathy, understanding, and patience. And don't be afraid to admit falsehoods and inaccuracies within your own dispositions and stances. As the cliche goes: "Nobody's perfect". Damn, even that very cliche can, and has been, exploited to gain leverage on a point of view, and usually a selfish one at that. Paradoxically, we are all winners and losers, simultaneously, it would seem, depending on the situation, in the "wrestling ring of social interaction". You just got to fight on, I guess...,unfortunately, and out of necessity. That's my opinion anyway, and I can assure you that I'm not afraid of yours. I welcome it.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the Psychical Damage of a Nation

How an Independent Horror Film Revealed the Nightmare Below the Surface of Culture

by James Albert Barr

"Every art, every philosophy may be viewed as an aid and remedy in the service of growing and striving life: they always     presuppose suffering and sufferers." - Friedrich Nietzsche: On the Genealogy of Morals

Just this past week the star of one of the most iconic films - let alone "horror films" - of all-time, Marilyn Burns, passed away at the age of 65. The film in question is none other than Tobe Hooper's 1974 groundbreaking, nightmarish classic, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Marilyn's character, Sally Hardesty, the lone survivor at the end of the film, was later dubbed what the slasher-genre refers to as the "final girl". And she is also known as one of the original "scream queens" in the annals of horror films.

Horror film buffs (as well as general film buffs and film critics too, quite frankly) usually count The Texas Chainsaw Massacre among the all-time great horror films ever made. So it's a film that has accumulated quite a reputation in the ensuing 40 years since it first, controversially, hit theaters with an unforgettable force back in the fall of 1974. Why is this so? Why is this "slasher flick" so important? Is it because of its pop-cultural pedigree in terms of its utter originality and perpetual popularity? Yes, there's that, of course. Also, there's the undeniably immense influence it has had on subsequent horror films, particularly regarding the sub-genre of "slasher films", thus inspiring the likes of slasher film franchises such as Halloween, Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, and even the classic sci-fi horror franchise, Alien, as well as "found footage" horror films, such as The Blair Witch Project and the notorious Cannibal Holocaust. Most of these film institutions depicted the notion of the indomitable antagonist; the implacable dark force from our worst nightmares; the ultimate "boogie man" coming to get us in the remote regions of darkest night (even in broad daylight, as was the unfortunate case for the first two victims of Leatherface).

These monsters were something far beyond the "popular monsters" of, say, the 30s and 40s - the Draculas and Wolfmen and Frankensteins and Mummies. No, these monsters were something new, something modern (even perhaps postmodern, given the association with industrialism and consumer consciousness), and something altogether more horrifying and psychologically disturbing: Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, Freddie Krueger, and, of course, the one that started it all, Leatherface, the chainsaw wielding maniac from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. To enhance the realistic aesthetic of this film, despite it being a work of pure fiction, it was convincingly advertised as a "true story", and given a grim voice-over at the beginning of the film by, then unknown actor, John Larroquette, who would become famous less than ten years later playing Dan Fielding on the popular 80s sit-com, Night Court.

It's particularly crucial to put The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in its proper context, both culturally and historically. The movie was filmed during an extremely hot and humid summer in 1973 at a farmhouse located on Quick Hill Road near Round Rock, Texas, making it especially uncomfortable for all those involved, besides the disturbing nature of the film's subject matter. The budget was fairly cheap at approximately $300,000. The cast featured relatively unknown actors from the Lone Star state area, including Gunnar Hansen (who was actually born in Iceland), who portrayed the feral lunatic, Leatherface. Director and co-screenwriter, Tobe Hooper, initially got the idea for the film based on what he saw happening in the culture and political climate at the time. The Vietnam War was still, exhaustively, in progress, and the "come-down" from the abject failure of the 60s cultural revolution was still very fresh within the collective consciousness of most of America's liberal-minded and progressive demographic. Also, Hooper was inspired by a moment he had at a busy, crowded department store when he noticed a wall full of displayed chainsaws in the hardware department, offhandedly thinking to himself how effective it would be to scatter the crowd away by simply starting up one of the chainsaws. And, lastly, Hooper was influenced by the grisly murders of the infamous serial killer, Ed Gein, whose farmhouse of horrors, which included lampshades made from actual human skin, created a media frenzy during the late 50s, and was the inspiration behind what became Alfred Hitchcock's most famous and controversial film from 1960, Psycho.

I would also argue that there was a direct link, culturally speaking, between The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and key countercultural examples such as the 1969 film, Easy Rider, and Hunter S. Thompson's 1971 gonzo journalist novel, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Both the film and novel dealt with the notion of searching, in vain, ultimately, for "the American Dream"; and a veritable exposure of "the state of the union" of sorts as being the main point of departure, again, for both. Tobe Hooper's unprecedented horror film seemed like the logical, if extreme and unpalatable, conclusion to this necessary venture. In other words, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was, and is, a perfect, and wholly unsettling, metaphor for the death of the 60s. And representing a "se[e] change" within the collective American psyche, still reeling from the deep wounds incurred by a severely divided nation over the justifications behind the Vietnam War; JFK's, and his brother Robert's, respective assassinations, as well as Martin Luther King's; not to mention the horrific "Sharon Tate murders" perpetrated by Charles Manson's brainwashed followers, as well as the "Zodiac killer" who terrorized San Francisco.

A deep-seated cynicism and disillusion set in shortly after the 60s ended in America, and other parts of the Western hemisphere, particularly, but especially in the U.S. This disillusionment was further exacerbated by the Watergate scandal, implicating then President Richard Nixon in 1973. And the year before, on the international stage, there was the tragic hostage killings by the Black September terrorists during the Munich Olympic Games, so things were less than positive and hopeful around that rather dark and sobering time to be sure. A thoroughly unsettling, grainy, d.i.y., grindhouse film like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre irrepressibly expressed the disillusion, fear and cultural confusion so ineluctably felt by most Americans at the turn of the decade, representing a collective nightmare of sorts that needed projecting in some form of cultural media that struck an immediate cord with movie-goers, because most couldn't articulate it verbally and openly. And it was one of great and heavy pessimism, too, that would continue to reverberate all through the decade (especially in American cinema), only finally lifting around the end of the 70s when viable, escapist media and pop culture, like disco, arena rock, sillier sit-coms, Farrah Fawcett Majors, cinema porn, Corvettes, Trans Ams, Pet Rocks, and most definitely Star Wars, provided some diversion and relief. Perhaps Steven Spielberg's 1975 blockbuster, Jaws, was necessary to make, psychologically speaking, given that it followed the commercially successful, but immensely upsetting, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, by changing the antagonist from a seemingly incomprehensible "human monster" to the far less identifying "sea monster" that was the great white shark, as a substitute, reason-devoid "killing machine".

Of course, by 1978 and 1980, two more slasher-film franchises would be respectively launched: Halloween and Friday the 13th. Only by then would that horror genre's formula be well-established and executed - in a manner of speaking - to further provide psychological release of internally-checked, libidinal desire and cultural anxiety, particularly among the younger generation, then growing up and orientating themselves in an increasingly expanding and ubiquitous consumer culture, as "late capitalism" (in the words of critical theorist, Fredric Jameson) was priming up for the excess that was 80s "Reaganomics". By then, pop culture, which was experiencing a massive consumer explosion, thanks in huge part to Star Wars paraphernalia hitting the stores everywhere, and mall culture, in general, making a big splash, not to mention more and more movie blockbusters popping up every other weekend it seemed, there was plenty enough cultural membranes and ideological buffers to allow slasher films to more comfortably co-exist within this new consumer-obsessed world we, seemingly, unwittingly created around us, like an artificial, surrogate "mother's womb". By the mid-90s, cyberspace and virtuality would be that womb's "technological upgrade".      

Reverting back to the 70s, interestingly, the "women's lib" movement was also in high gear which caused even more confusion for the predominantly patriarchal establishment still clinging to the more traditional notions of gender relations within the culture, particularly those residual perspectives that remained from the Eisenhower years during the 1950s, before the counterculture openly challenged them, along with pretty much everything else regarded as wholesome, conservative and anti-modern, by the mid-60s. And so the idea of the "final girl" in horror films, especially within the, relatively, new slasher-film genre, which would gain more momentum and ultimately peak (at least the "first wave" of this kind of horror film) in the early 80s, would assert itself beginning with Tobe Hooper's unforgettable first film.

However, it wouldn't actually be until 1987 (in a published academic essay entitled, "Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film"), and 1992 (in a book called "Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film"), that University of California at Berkeley professor, Carol Clover, would coin the now fairly well-known catch-phrase, "final girl", to describe, by then, the cliched, standardized role of the noble and innocent female who, almost invariably, is the sole survivor at the end of nearly all slasher flicks. Despite her clean reputation and innocence, she is always attractive and nubile (a word, coincidentally, that was first used, contextually, in 1973 - the year The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was filmed, remember - to describe a "sexually attractive young woman", unlike its original connotation [dating back to the 17th century] meaning "marriageable" - a key distinction, I feel).

Marilyn Burns, and her character Sally Hardesty, of course, were both attractive and nubile during the filming of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Moreover, during the difficult shoot that hot summer in 1973, Ms. Burns was subjected to excruciating conditions that pushed her own sanity to its absolute limits, especially during the horrifying "family dinner scene" near the end of the film. One of the several terrifying and sick moments playing out during this gruesome scene called for Sally's freshly cut and bloody finger to be sucked by the excessively old and dead-looking grandfather sitting, catatonically, at the dinner table. Because the blood-squib on her finger malfunctioned, Ms. Burns' finger was actually split-opened to get some blood flowing. And the long, exhausting hours of filming were so taxing on the actors that the line between real and fake was blurred, thus making the psychological torture Sally was being put through all the more convincing and disturbing for the actors to experience and the viewer to, ultimately, watch. In the end, Sally manages to escape her tormentors and would-be murderers, by luckily being rescued, yes, by a guy in a pick-up truck just before Leatherface caught her. Much feminist literature, and discussion, preceded, and especially followed, Carol Clover's fascinating insights on the role of females in slasher flicks, particularly, and the sexist notion of the "male gaze" regarding said females' treatment in these kinds of films.

When The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was first released at the beginning of October, 1974, the film was met with some harsh opinions from established film critics. For instance, Steven Koch of Harper's Magazine said: "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a vile piece of sick crap...It is a film with literally nothing to recommend it; nothing but an hysterically paced slapdash, imbecile concoctions of cannibalism, voodoo, astrology, sundry hippie-esque cults, and unrelenting sadistic violence as extreme and hideous as a complete lack of imagination can possibly make it". And Linda Gross of the L.A. Times called it, "despicable". Rex Reed found it an effectively terrifying experience. Roger Ebert was, at least, impressed with its technical skill. However, Patrick Taggart of the Austin-American Statesman praised it highly, calling it the most important horror film since George A. Romero's, Night of the Living Dead. Famed horror novelist, Stephen King said: "I would happily testify to its redeeming social merit in any court in the country". There were reports of film-goers walking out of the theater in disgust over the film's graphic violence and gore, however little of it there actually was. And there was even an incident in Ottawa, Canada where two theaters were advised by Police authorities to withdraw the film on the grounds of morality violation. The film had indeed become a sensation, both positively and negatively. Great art usually incites polarizing responses.

The great American/British poet, T.S.Eliot, once wrote, in his first Quartet poem, "Burnt Norton", back in 1936, that "Humankind cannot bear very much reality". Despite all the bravura surrounding the modern notion of "pushing the envelope", people today, for the most part, as it was for them back in 1974, let alone in Eliot's time during the 30s, "cannot bear very much reality". Our technologically-obsessed, and virtuality-addicted, populace here in the early stages of the 21st century are, indeed, living (I use the word "living" in its loosest sense) proof that Eliot's crucially telling line of verse is more true now than ever, regardless of what "truth-harboring" piece of art gets any substantial exposure in the mainstream. The defense mechanisms /unbridled ignorance, currently operating in the majority of people, continue to keep at bay the mental ability to process metaphors and symbols, thus accessing, at least to a considerable degree, the realities of the world we actually live in. Of course, there's also culture-industry ideology and hegemony to take into consideration too, as being an effective tool used by corporate power and ubiquitous, psychologically-manipulating advertising to surreptitiously relegate whole bodies of active consumers into incessantly, and blindly, forwarding their insatiable, capitalist agenda. Or so the "theory" goes, that is.

The maniacal character, Leatherface, I feel, serves as a perfect metaphor for the unrelenting, masked force of unbridled capitalism; an unyielding force that, ultimately, refused outright to allow a young, spirited and informed generation to change the world for the better. And it was more than appropriate that Tobe Hooper was in a busy department store, on that inspired day in the early 70s, witnessing a crowd of unconscious shoppers filling up commercial space for the purposes of ceaselessly filling up the "artificial gas tanks" of their consumer culture existences, and feeling a strong urge within himself to disperse the crowd with a purchaseable item of no small discretion. With tech-savvy consumerism literally consuming our lives, identities, purviews and very dreams/nightmares, can there possibly be an escape from it? Can we ever become like the "final girl", collectively?

      

Seinfeld: 25 Years after its 1989 Debut

Celebrating and Deconstructing the Greatest Ever Sitcom

by James Albert Barr

On July 5, 1989 the pilot episode of "the show about nothing", The Seinfeld Chronicles (its short-lived title before being renamed simply Seinfeld), debuted to a spectacular level of indifference with television viewers. NBC decided to pass on the show, and so it was, ostensibly, relegated to the overflowing "never was" dustbin of the not-so celebrated annals of television's then 4-decade existence. However, a lone visionary NBC executive, Rick Ludwin, claimed that he saw "potential" in the show, and gave it a big enough budget to produce four more episodes to conclude its historically-short first season run.

However, there were some necessary changes that were made to facilitate a much better audience reaction than the all-but-ignored pilot episode. First, the show would be known simply as Seinfeld. And secondly, a significant female character would be introduced as part of the already male-dominated cast: Elaine Benes. Little known actress (at the time, of course), Julia Louis-Dreyfus, was cast to play Jerry's ex-girlfriend, Elaine. She had been best known for being a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 1982-1985, and more contemporaneously for having played a snobbish yuppie neighbor in Christmas Vacation.  

Having been created by its titular star, Jerry Seinfeld, and Larry David (who would be one of its principal writers for the first seven seasons; would make an occasional cameo appearance; and eventually did the wacky voice of volatile Yankees owner, George Steinbrenner), Seinfeld, initially, was a "comedy of manners" poking fun at contemporary people's neurotic and narcissistic hang-ups and foibles, their petty grievances with one another, and self-absorbed insecurities, which were typically blown out of proportion. The situational set-up and tone of the show also turned the notion of the "sit-com" on its head by transgressing the traditional form, dynamic and style of the standard half-hour comedy show.

This was most immediately expressed with Seinfeld's "no hugging, no learning" policy on the set and at the table-readings. There would be absolutely no moments during an episode where any character would emote in a serious and convincing manner depicting honest human drama, and no moments of character progression and personal growth; in fact, any given episode may, and did, mock those very qualities found in all previous sit-com's that came before Seinfeld.

Many of the ideas for the episodes actually came out of the real lives of Jerry Seinfeld, and especially Larry David, such as "The Stake Out" episode from Season 1, where Jerry meets a woman he's attracted to at a social gathering while accompanied by his ex-girlfriend, Elaine. Feeling hindered by his desire to flirt with said woman in front of Elaine, and ultimately accrue personal information from her leading up to asking her out, Jerry decides instead to stake out her workplace and feign bumping into her by sheer chance, thus enabling him to get her name and ask her out. This actually happened to Larry David. Another example was the Season 2 episode where Jerry spends an obscene amount of money on a suede jacket (lined inexplicably with a silly-looking striped design) only to have it ruined when he was forced to wear it during a snow fall, because Elaine's intimidating father (played memorably by Lawrence Tierney, who, "mother-fucker, looks just like...The Thing!"), whom Jerry and George were meeting for the first time, refused to be seen with him wearing the jacket inside-out with the silly lining exposed for all to see. Again, this actually happened (though it was slightly tweaked for greater comedic effect, of course, in the episode) to Larry David.

Though Seinfeld instantly distinguished itself from other sit-com's, the first three to four seasons were mostly based in "reality". Also, because the show hadn't yet hit its stride, both creatively and popularly, its budget limited the show to fairly cheap and contained scenes, set-wise, although during Season 3 there were signs that it was beginning to branch out of its initial limitations as the budgets began to allow more elaborate settings, particularly outside of Jerry's apartment.

Two particular episodes from Season 2 proved to be revelatory for the show's creative growth and overall sense of originality. First, there was "The Chinese Restaurant" episode in which Jerry, George and Elaine
attempted to get a table at an Asian restaurant before going to see the infamous cult film, "Plan 9 from Outer Space" (Kramer, incidentally, did not appear in this episode, because, at the time, his character, strangely enough, didn't venture outside of his apartment building - actor, Michael Richards, was displeased by these circumstances). However, after being informed by the maitre d' that it would be "five, ten minutes" before they'd get a table, the three main characters are then put through an entire episode's time-frame waiting for that alleged table. All that happens happens in "real time"; Jerry trying to remember a woman he sees already seated; George trying to use the pay-phone to call his supposed date; and Elaine dealing with her hunger pangs. It's a very interesting episode even when talking about it with fans of the show, or casual ones, because "The Chinese Restaurant" became a rather polarizing episode - you either "loved it", or "hated it/bored by it". Regardless, it conveyed a palpable realness that many could relate to, further distinguishing it from other shows, and additionally pushing the envelope of what could be done within a sit-com's framework.

The second key episode from that season in terms of the show's creative growth was "The Busboy" episode. This was the episode where the show's creators and writers had a "light-bulb going off in their collective heads". The basic plot (and I use the word "basic" here for good reason) of the episode revolves around George having inadvertently gotten a busboy fired from his job at the restaurant they were eating at (many, many Seinfeld episodes feature scenes in restaurants; a great metaphor for the pressured confines of "good public behavior", or bad behavior as the case was innumerable times throughout the show), and George trying to apologize later by going to the busboy's cheap apartment with Kramer. Meanwhile, Elaine unwittingly picked up a guy whom she quickly becomes annoyed with and tries to get rid of by driving him to the airport. However, when she fails in this attempt (despite driving amazingly through hectic traffic before taking a wrong turn) and then goes to Jerry's place, simultaneously, the busboy suddenly shows up there as well to thank George for saving his life, due to the restaurant he was fired from having suffered an explosion that killed his replacement. As the busboy leaves, Elaine's jilted suitor, who was outside parking the car, bumps into the busboy in the hallway off-camera. The show's stars, and we, the audience, suddenly hear the busboy and spurned guy get into a heated argument which escalates into a full-fledged fight. For the first time on the show, two seemingly separate plot-lines intersected with one another to great levels of coincidental hilarity. This dynamic would become Seinfeld's modus operandi from Season 3 and onwards to greater and greater heights of absurdity not seen before in a situation comedy.

The third season was the first "full" one with 23 episodes in all. Some of the more memorably hilarious episodes were "The Note": where George gets a massage from a man, and then questions his sexuality afterwards because he thought "it moved" during the experience; "The Pen": Jerry visits his parents in Florida with Elaine and accidentally compels next-door neighbor, Jack Klompus, to give Jerry his beloved pen all because Jerry liked it so much in front of his parents and Elaine. Jerry politely refuses the pen, but Jack insists that he take it (also out of politeness), to which Jerry finally gives in to Jack's aggressive persistence even though he didn't really want to give it up. In Zizekian terms, this is, socially speaking, an example of "traversing the fantasy", when something is offered to you by someone who doesn't actually want to give it up. The social custom is to, of course, politely refuse it, thus relieving the pressure off the giver, who was only feigning the offer as genuine in the first place. One "traverses the fantasy" (and therefore bucks social convention) when one actually accepts the offer; "The Library": a classic episode where Jerry is confronted by an intense, Joe Friday-type "library cop", a Lt. Bookman ("That's actually his name?"), looking for a copy of Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer that has been overdue for about twenty years! A great early example of intersecting stories among the cast, Kramer begins dating the attractive librarian, George is harassed by a bum, hanging around outside of the library, who looks like his old phys-ed teacher from high school whom he got fired because the teacher gave him a wedgie. We learn at the end of the episode that the bum was in fact said teacher, and that he actually had the copy of Tropic of Cancer that Jerry had signed out of the library all those years ago!

Expanding on "The Chinese Restaurant" concept, there were a couple of 3rd season episodes depicting "real time" and confined to a specific enclosed area. One was "The Parking Garage" and another was "The Subway". One of the best episodes of that season was its first ever two-part (or hour-long) episode: "The Boyfriend". It was a send-up on the then new Oliver Stone film, "JFK", and also featured baseball great, Keith Hernandez, playing himself. This episode also established a new, frequently appearing, supporting character, Newman (Jerry's arch nemesis, or "Lex Luthor"), wonderfully played by Wayne Knight. "The Red Dot" was yet another classic episode that featured perhaps the defining moment of character, George Costanza, when he was confronted by his boss, Mr. Lippman, for having sex with the cleaning lady on the desk in his office: "Was that wrong? Should I have not done that? I tell ya, I gotta plead ignorance on this, because if anyone had said anything at all when I first started here that that sort of thing was frowned upon,...because I've worked in a lot of offices and people do that all the time." Season 3 did not get the attention it deserved the first time around.

After three seasons of failing to hit the Top 40 on the Neilsen Ratings it finally started to pick-up steam with audiences when Season 4 was rated #25 that television season in 1992-93. This was the season that Seinfeld started becoming a "water-cooler show", in which viewers would talk about the previous night's episode with co-workers, friends and such the next day. Season 4 is also remembered for providing a season-long story-arch which reached into the postmodern realms of "self-referentiality". At the beginning of the season Jerry is approached by a couple of NBC execs, after he came off stage doing one of his comic routines at a club, offering him the opportunity to star in his own sit-com. This was a classic case of "art imitating life/life imitating art". So Jerry pitches the idea to his best friend, George, hoping to get him involved in the writing aspect of it, but has difficulty trying to establish an angle for the show, to which George suggests that they do "a show about nothing", meaning to simply depict everyday, mundane existence. Ironically, besides the sheer irony of basing an entire season on such a self-referential premise, the pilot-show of "Jerry", within the Seinfeld show, was not picked-up by NBC. Perhaps the single greatest, or certainly the most popular and memorable episode in Season 4 was, of course, "The Contest" episode, where the four main characters bet on who among them was "master of their domain". In other words, who could hold out masturbating the longest? One of the most risque episodes in sit-com history, the entire episode never once mentions the word "masturbation", but instead brilliantly circumvents around it all the while making it unequivocally sure to the audience what is happening and being discussed. The proverbial "envelope" got an especially big push with this classic episode to be sure.

Another new, and groundbreaking, so-called "sit-com", The Larry Sanders Show, debuted around this time as Season 4 of Seinfeld was re-writing the possibilities for situation comedies in the early 90s. It too challenged the hitherto norms of society and culture, and television etiquette in general, by realistically depicting the behind-the-scenes running of a late-night talk show. The show displayed coarse language and highly sexually-charged material and scenes. It was clearly influenced by Seinfeld, by including as one of its ongoing tropes, the petty behind-one's-back kind of behavior known to be quite normal in such an environment as the "dog eat dog" world of show business, as well as everyday life. Such harsh, sometimes hilarious, sometimes not, social honesty was rising to the surface of our culture's collective consciousness in the 90s, not only on television (particularly with Twin Peaks, and then Northern Exposure, besides the new breed of sit-com) but even more harshly in film (Pulp Fiction, GoodFellas, The Silence of the Lambs, Trainspotting, Fargo, Se7en) and music (the grunge movement, hip-hop/trip-hop, industrial/electronic). And much like the self-referentiality and culture referencing on Seinfeld, so too was this burgeoning social phenomenon being expressed in everyday culture with more and more culture-savvy people, especially within the so-called "Generation X", popping up everywhere, because cultural media had expanded so exponentially and ubiquitously.  

By the end of Season 5 Seinfeld was a runaway hit and cultural phenomenon. It finished in the Top 3 of the Neilsen Ratings during its last five seasons, including two #1 spots for Season 6 and the ninth and final season. Unlike the previous four seasons, the show's, now always, intersecting plot-lines became more ridiculous and less realistic without compromising the show's astounding comedic quality (although there were detractors at this point who lamented over the show's ante-upping on the more outrageous situations the cast were finding themselves in). It went from a "comedy of manners" to an "absurd comedy of manners". The crazier culture became throughout the 90s, it seemed the crazier, zanier and more ludicrous Seinfeld became. Thus more of "art imitating life/life imitating art" became the very air we breathed in our wholly postmodern landscape by decades/millennium's end. Seinfeld presented this "postmodern situation" in real life every week, under the guise of its episodes, right under the unsuspecting noses of many of its viewers (and no doubt its own people: actors, writers, producers, etc) who were not conscious of that fact (hindsight being 20-20, of course). A fish doesn't know it's in water, because, unconsciously, its environment is all it knows. The same could be said of human culture for most who exist in it.

Despite it's absolutely groundbreaking accomplishments, its monumental plethora of endlessly funny episodes and individual moments, and, of course, its unforgettable array of characters (many guest-stars who went on to have "careers" simply because they appeared on Seinfeld), let alone its magnificent main cast, what was Seinfeld about? Because it was anything but "about nothing", that's for damn sure.

It featured four despicable, if affable and occasionally charming, excuses for human beings. Four so-called "friends", who would turn on the other in a heartbeat if it meant saving their own ass, or face, or gaining something over the other, even if there were odd times when they actually helped one another as a genuine friend. The show was a cultural mirror that reflected back at us our true nature in this inherently flawed society we have built over millennia. It was an infinitely clever and penetratingly written and performed, 30-minute long television program by a greatly talented crew of actors, writers, producers and directors. And it was gut-burstingly hilarious! Whatever, the dark realities of our very real human nature, Seinfeld was always funny as hell, probably because it was so fiercely honest in its, albeit, but not too far off, exaggerated depictions of justifiably, ridiculously shameful human behavior. One is supposed to watch it with an always sense of ironic self-perception, not being directly attached to the situations on display, of course, but having them still ring true in one's own life. We laugh at these characters and rarely with them. And hopefully we learn, through this televised reflection, that we should not act like that ourselves, that we should be above such petty behavior, especially as apparent adults.

But has that actually happened in the ensuing 16 years since Seinfeld ended its celebrated 9-season run in 1998? When you look around society and culture in general now, what do you honestly see? What is the main draw of most reality television shows? The petty, self-absorbed, duplicitous, lying, immature, backstabbing behavior between the contestants and/or participants isn't it? Be honest. This is the norm in our society now let alone how it's depicted daily on television, or on the Internet. It's the very air we breathe. And accusations of mere cynicism is too facile, and ignorant, a conclusion to make, I tenably believe. Almost 15 years since the first season of Survivor tellingly debuted in 2000 - the first official "reality t.v. show" - we still can't get enough of it, as television today is incessantly flooded with such brainless and moronic programming. As much as I love Seinfeld, how much of an overarching, negative influence did it unwittingly have on culture, ultimately, despite its light-hearted, brilliantly funny antics on the surface? Most people would likely bemoan such a seemingly outrageous allegation: "That's absurd! It's just a show for crissakes! You're reading too much into it". Perhaps. Oh, the humanity! indeed, huh? Still, I continue to watch Seinfeld fairly frequently on DVD. It makes me laugh to this day, which I find comforting. It all makes me laugh, ironically enough. How about you?

     

Under the Skin and Over the Soul

How Jonathan Glazer's Profoundly Unnerving New Film Invades the Mind and Heart 

by James Albert Barr

*Spoiler Alert

British film-director Jonathan Glazer has made an extraordinary, new science-fiction film called Under the Skin. It is just his third film after 2001's raucous Sexy Beast, and 2004's controversial Birth. The latest film stars Scarlett Johansson as an alien seductress sent from outer space to collect the bodily contents - literally leaving just the skins - of the unsuspecting male victims she enticingly picks up while driving around Scotland in a van casually searching for them through the city streets, although she passes on those who are expected by someone else; she tries to stick to victims who are seeming loners. Something goes wrong later on, however, that provokes the seductress to abort her mission. That, in a proverbial nutshell, is basically "the plot" of the film.

Based on the 2000 novel by Michel Faber, Glazer chose to loosely adapt the novel by focusing primarily on the female alien, where as in the novel the narrative involves both a male and female alien coupling. However, in the film there is a male alien counterpart to Scarlett Johannsen's character, but he acts more as a fringe character than a main one. He basically drives around Scotland on a motorcycle, initially delivering a female corpse to the back of the van where Scarlett's character then disrobes and uses the victim's clothes to dress herself (during the scene, which features a completely white, non-geometric, interior of the van, the female alien picks up an ant from the dead body and observes it between her fingers). Afterwards, the male alien acts as a "clean-up guy" for any contingency situations. He also later does an apparent "inspection" on his alien partner, perhaps suspecting that she has been altered somehow by Earth's social atmosphere and environment, and thus is jeopardizing the protocol of their mission on Earth.

The film gives very scant information/exposition, and open narrative/dialogue, for the viewer to follow and comprehend. A second viewing enabled me to take in a lot more than my first viewing (though I was still mesmerized by the first viewing, to be sure), so I could focus on the underlying meanings and social commentary that is most definitely suffusing through this remarkable film. It relies more on feel and atmosphere and subtlety, than straight forward, easily accessible narrative and plot. This directorial approach, I feel, was executed perfectly. The point was to deliberately disconcert and unnerve the audience. Mica Levi's chillingly piercing and haunting soundtrack only increases the tension, particularly when the female alien lures the unwitting male victims into the house where the "meat harvesting" takes place. These scenes, and Mica Levi's unforgettable music, truly get "under your skin" and are quite frightening, despite the seductive stripping of one garment of clothing after another from the beautiful Scarlett Johannsen (who gives a note-perfect, sultry, offbeat performance of reserved intensity), as the male victim does the same in turn, while following her deeper into the "trap room", which, like the van, but this time completely in black, has no apparent, discernible geometry - it's all black space. The victim then, with seeming imperceptibility, sinks into the floor, and into a dark liquid, which gradually loosens the skin and literally pops the body's contents from the now eviscerated victim, where it then runs through a conduit and into a receptacle chamber.

Under the Skin is ostensibly a "science-fiction film", but it's also a surrealist, arty, independent film which came out earlier this year as a limited release seen only in select theaters. Understandably, given its obvious lack of immediate commercial appeal, it has proven to be a kind of polarizing film, certainly among those who have paid to see it. Film critics, however, have been near unanimous in their collective praise for Under the Skin. At present, it has made just over 3 million dollars, domestically. Those are indeed art-house type numbers, good numbers, in fact, for this kind of film.

One of the film's more discernible influences is the work, style and tone of Stanley Kubrick. Under the Skin's very first shot instantly recalls 2001: A Space Odyssey, with its strange otherworldly image of what gradually becomes the formation of an eye. At first peek it reminds one of the Discovery One spaceship from Kubrick's 1968 masterpiece. The weird sounds being made during this opening scene of Glazer's new opus, as the female alien's human eye is being constructed, are broken vocal utterances emitting from, or being programmed for, her to test and perfect. I was also reminded of 2001's initial monolith scene around the end of "The Dawn of Man" sequence where we can hear an increasingly loud, high-pitched buzz or signal emanating from the monolith that frightens the early hominids, and apparently plants an idea, or new consciousness, into the man-ape referred to as "Moonwatcher" when he realizes the weapon-potential of a dead animal bone. The overall sound and sound-editing in Under the Skin is both crisp and sharp, as well as affecting in a slightly disorienting way; one of the many impressive technical aspects featured throughout, in fact.

One of the most disturbing scenes in the film, and one that emphasizes the alien's initial indifference to the Earth's inhabitants, happens at a beach on a windy and overcast day. The female alien meets a young Czech man who has been swimming in the sea. The two of them converse a little before they both suddenly observe a woman, fully dressed, jump into the water to save her dog who has been caught by the sea's waves and is being pulled further out into the water. The woman is then followed by her husband when he sees that she, herself, is now in danger of drowning. Unfortunately, both the woman and dog are lost as the sea drags them down into its depths. The young Czech runs to save the husband. He actually succeeds by pulling the husband out of the water, but the husband then jumps right back into the water, in another futile attempt to save his wife, only to finally drown himself (this is confirmed later when the female alien hears of the couple missing during a news report on the radio while sitting in her van). The Czech, exhausted by the attempted rescue, lays, face-down, on the beach, physically spent. The female alien then casually walks over to him, looks on the ground for a good rock and then likely kills him with a blow to his head. She then starts dragging him off.

While this is happening we, the viewers, are shown a helpless toddler sitting a little further up the beach wailing away, not fully realizing that he has just lost both of his parents for good. Later that night, the male alien partner goes to the scene of the tragedy/killing and removes any signs that his partner had been there and then leaves. As he leaves we, once again, see the abandoned child still sitting on the beach alone in the dark and absolutely helpless. The sheer coldness of the male alien's total indifference to the child, coupled by the equal impartiality of the outdoor elements of which the child is at the mercy of, induced a certain existential chill down my spine and an extreme sense of sadness towards the poor child's imperiled situation, to be sure. As a film maker, Glazer is most certainly playing with his viewer's emotions and sense of humanity here without resorting to typical cinematic tropes mostly found in more mainstream films.

After having collected several victims' bodily contents for her home planet, the female alien is later walking down a busy urban street when she suddenly trips and falls to the ground. A few passers-by come to her aid and help her back onto her feet. She becomes visibly disoriented and uncomfortable by both the fall and, especially, the help bestowed upon her. It shakes her and instantly changes her. She slowly and awkwardly walks away without acknowledging those that helped her. The apparent "inspection scene" happens shortly afterwards, where the male alien slowly walks around his female partner, back at the dimly lit house she has been luring victims into, and stops right in front of her face and looks intensely into her eyes. This "inspection", and seeming suspicion towards her, provokes the female alien to flee from the mission, especially after she picks up what turns out to be her last male victim.

This victim, whom she finally convinces with some effort, to get into her van, suffers from a facial deformity known as neurofibromatosis (similar to John Merrick's disease). After some coaxing from the attractive female alien, the unsuspecting man tentatively gets into the van. His head is covered with a hood and he's socially shy. She finally convinces the deformed man to let down his guard and he then takes the hood off his head revealing his severely deformed face. This does not startle the female alien at all. She simply sees the man as yet another victim to harvest. But as they continue to talk, she pries answers from him concerning his social shyness and late night behavior. To further convince him to relax and open up to her amorous advances she lets him feel her face. This moment of open intimacy between an obviously willing, beautiful woman (at least on the surface of course, according to ours and the deformed man's perspective) and what would be considered an extremely ugly, unattractive man can, and did (I witnessed two sets of couples leave the theater during this very scene), create a sense of discomfort and awkwardness, if not outright disgust, for the viewer. The themes of social identity, discrimination, the standards of attraction and repulsion, and simple human, intimate interaction are played out very effectively during this memorable scene. The theme of "female identity", in particular, is also a major theme throughout the film, depicting both positive and negative stereotypes associated with it.

The female alien succeeds in luring the deformed man back to her "trap room", and he does indeed disrobe and sink into the floor. However, she evidently has a sudden change of heart, a very human sense of compassion and mercy towards the unfortunate man by allowing him to go free instead of being harvested of all his bodily contents, and therefore very life. We see him, completely naked, jog through a field, while it's still nighttime, back to his home, only to be intercepted by the male alien, who hits the ultimate victim on the head and throws him into the trunk of a car that is parked outside of a house that may or may not be his home. At this point we now know that the female alien has officially gone "rogue" and compromised her mission.

She drives the van far away from her base of operations and into a countryside. She then stops the van, gets out and starts to walk in an arbitrary direction until she comes to a small town where she patronizes a cafe. While there she orders a piece of cake. However, her alien body instantly rejects the human food, and she regurgitates it loudly in front of the other customers. We then see her wondering aimlessly until she meets a man who is waiting at a bus stop. It is raining out so he convinces her to wait for a bus inside the bus shelter. She complies without any resistance. This compliance continues as she is then taken back to the strange man's apartment. At this point the female alien is so disoriented by her gradual alteration in feeling and behavior that she nearly becomes catatonic, and verbally unreceptive. The man makes her some dinner (which she doesn't touch, of course) and they watch television. She is visibly fascinated and confused by what she sees flickering from the TV screen. The man gives her his room to sleep in. One night she studies her naked human form in a mirror. And later, likely during the next evening, the man makes sexual advances towards her, which she actually welcomes by returning his kisses and embraces. They attempt sexual intercourse, but the man is not able to penetrate her. This attempt at penetration surprises her and she jumps up out of bed, grabs a lamp and inspects the area between her legs, which evidently lacks human female genitalia. This incident provokes her to leave the man's apartment.

Finally, she winds up wondering in the woods where she is met by a logger who tells her that a shelter could be found straight ahead of her. She chooses to go there to rest, but then the logger shows up and cops a feel while she is almost asleep. This appalls her, and so she flees yet again, but is chased by the determined logger through the woods. He catches up to her and tackles her to the ground and attempts to rape her. However, his rough treatment of her suddenly loosens her human disguise and he is stunned by what he sees, which provokes him to run away. The female alien then slips out of her human skin, down to her waist, and turns the human head towards her real alien head, which is dark, smoothly textured and androgynous. The human face's eyes continue to blink and the face emotes a confused look. Suddenly, the logger reappears and doses her with gasoline and lights her on fire. She runs out of the forest all aflame and finally drops to the open ground, burns up and apparently dies. The last shot of the film peers up in to the white snowy sky. The female alien's smoking ashes are met with softly falling flakes of snow. The end.

Another one of Under the Skin's immediate influences that stirred my senses is 70s cinema, and its dark, cynical tone and raw realism. After the failed cultural revolution of the 60s, there was a severe comedown and hangover throughout most of the 1970s, especially expressed in American cinema; that sense of disillusionment and future foreboding, where many were asking out loud or inwardly: "Where do we go from here?", "Who are we now?", "Who are you?", "Who am I?" The sense that I got from Under the Skin is akin to that pessimism and uncertainty depicted in the 70s. Our contemporary culture has been naively intoxicated, distracted by and immersed in a flood of new technology and artificial, cyberspatial experience since Windows '95 was unleashed, where the notions of what makes us human seems to be getting a decidedly disturbing "reboot" and redefinition based on the technological alteration of our world to the indifferent detriment of the natural environment that is becoming more and more alienating to us. We, ourselves, are becoming alien's to our own planet, and, consequently, we are becoming more and more disoriented with each other and the natural world outside of the cyberspace we are spending more and more time inside, so much so that our very bodies, and even respective identities, are becoming alien-like to us, individually and collectively. This, I fervently feel, was expressed brilliantly, however subtly and disturbingly, in Jonathan Glazer's superb, and considerably important, film.          

A Music Journey: From Men at Work to Radiohead to Amon Tobin

The Personal Adventure and Evolution of One Man's Love of Music

by James Albert Barr

"Without music, life would be a mistake." - Friedrich Nietzsche

I often tell people whom I'm engaged in conversation with over the topic of music that "it is the very blood that flows through my veins". Music means everything to me! I've had this ardent feeling about music since I was a kid, since I can remember my mother bringing vinyl records into our home and playing them on our ridiculously huge, 70s country stereo; a stereo that looked like it came straight out of a gaudy, honky-tonk, mahogany-enclosed home circa-1970, with big "Loretta Lynn hair" and awash with rhinestone glitter to boot. That beastly addition to our living room was one tall mutha, and I remained shorter than it until I was on the cusp of teenhood! It had a turntable on the right side of it, and a bar on the left. The respective compartments opened like a castle's draw-bridge, and below them in the center of this honkin' piece of furniture was a faux-fireplace that included a synthetic log-formation, featuring a central, rotating plastic cylinder painted to look like a log, with an interior-light used to simulate fire and flickering embers. I think it remained in our family (i.e. in my parent's home) until around the time of the millennium, which meant they had it for about 25 years. By that time it had long since earned its dubious right to be called "classic kitsch".

Before I started buying my own records in 1982 when I was around 14 years old, my mother pretty much dominated the musical selection in our home. She would buy country albums by the likes of George Jones, Don Williams, Kenny Rogers, The Kendalls and Dave & Sugar. This, of course, appeased my father, who was only a fan of country music - liking very little rock 'n' roll, and unequivocally hating everything else, musically speaking. I remember the cheesy 1976 C.W. McCall novelty-hit, "Convoy", being a veritable "cultural event" at the Barr household - my father was a truck-driver, of course. However, my mother did like a fair amount of rock music, and especially pop music, so she'd also bring a lot of that kind of music into our home, to which my father paid little to no attention to, naturally.

Most of the pop-rock records that my mother bought in the 70s and early 80s were the very popular K-Tel records that featured Top 40 hit songs. You couldn't escape the flood of K-Tel commercials on television. We had many of these records in our home when I was growing up. And, ironically, it was through these K-Tel records that I was first exposed to several great bands and artists that weren't really known for scoring a lot of hits. In fact, I can remember one specific K-Tel double-album that featured a bunch of bands that I would later count among my favorites: Certified Gold - 1981.

Aside from the big commercial hits that appeared on this collection, such as "Funky Town" - Lipps Inc., "Reunited" - Peaches & Herb, "Lost in Love" - Air Supply, "Ah Leah" - Donnie Iris, "Seven Year Ache" - Rosanne Cash (a song I still love to this day), and "Stars on 45" - Stars On, there were some by artists whom had not scored many, if any, hit singles before, like "I Got You" - Split Enz, "Take Me To The River" - Talking Heads, "Brass in Pocket (I'm Special)" - The Pretenders (though they would score two more Top 10 hits after this one in the ensuing years), "Making Plans for Nigel" - XTC, "Echo Beach" - Martha and the Muffins, and "Money" - The Flying Lizards. These were "new wave/college bands" that managed to achieve enough airplay on the radio and record sales to make the Top 40 (if not the Top 20 or 10) in America and/or Canada. It was these latter "hits" that transfixed me, especially, as I was just entering my teens. Gradually, I would seek out other material from these particular artists.

That's not to say I didn't love much of the more commercial, typically Top 40, stuff - I most certainly did. Some other K-Tel titles I remember my mother buying (several as Christmas/Easter/birthday gifts for me and my brother Jeff) and playing a lot were: Radio Active - 1982 (an album I got for Easter in 1982 that officially, and importantly, introduced me to the music of The Police by including "Every Little Thing She Does is Magic" in its track-list; as well as featuring other songs I quickly came to love: "Time" - Alan Parsons Project, "Private Eyes" - Hall & Oates, "Night Owls" - Little River Band, "Our Lips Are Sealed" - The Go-Go's, and "Rapture" - Blondie); Full Tilt - 1981 (this one had personal favorites such as "Turning Japanese" - The Vapors, "Drugs in my Pocket" - The Monks, "Midnight Rocks" - Al Stewart, "More Love" - Kim Carnes and "Carrie" - Cliff Richards); Wings of Sound - 1980 (for better or worse, this was the album I heard my first Bob Dylan tune from; the Slow Train Coming single that signaled Dylan's controversial "born again phase" in 1979, "Gotta Serve Somebody"). This album also featured great songs like "Dream Police" - Cheap Trick, "Cruel to be Kind" - Nick Lowe (a much beloved tune for me), "Hold On" - Ian Gomm (he actually co-wrote Nick Lowe's aforementioned hit song, and the two used to be band-mates in the 70s English pub-rock band, Brinsley Schwarz!), "Please Don't Go" - KC and the Sunshine Band (hands down my favorite song of theirs), "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)" - Rupert Holmes (yes, this cheesy tune still holds a fair amount of nostalgia for me, and was wonderfully used in the outstanding 2003 film, American Splendor), "This is It" - Kenny Loggins (as mainstream as he was, this "Yacht Rocker" did have four or five great singles to his credit, in my opinion, and this is one of them), and, finally, the disco staple "Ring My Bell" - Anita Ward.

In 1980, I officially discovered The Beatles! This was in great part thanks to a 1978 film about the band's early years that I watched on television, and a downstairs neighbor and friend of my mother's. She had a couple original pressings of early Beatles records that she allowed me to listen to. They were titled, respectively, Twist and Shout (a Canadian version of The Beatles 1963 debut album Please Please Me) and Something New (an altered version of A Hard Day's Night). I especially loved the former album. In 1981, I received a copy of the Beatles compilation, Reel Music, a collection of songs featured in the five films the band made, from "A Hard Day's Night" in 1964 to "Let It Be" in 1970. It was a Christmas present from my parents, and I played that album a lot, especially digging the classic psychedelic track, "I Am the Walrus". However, it wouldn't be until the late 80s that I would finally become an official "Beatles fan" wholesale, thanks to a small 1987 indie film called Five Corners, starring Jodie Foster.

While the plethora of K-Tel albums were filling up the brass record-holder in our living room with pop/rock, there was still the occasional country album making its way through the front door. One particular country act that first made it big in the early 80s was, of course, Alabama. Their 1980 debut, My Home's in Alabama (which featured the classic tunes "Why Lady Why" and "Tennessee River"), was an instant hit with country music lovers. And even some listeners more prone towards pop/rock music started noticing this tuneful combo that sported a few rock influences in their fresh "new sound", as far as country music was concerned at least. And so it was actually their sophomore effort, Feels So Right, that my mother purchased and brought home for us to listen to on the turntable. This terrific album spawned such huge hits as "Love in the First Degree", "Old Flame", and the beautiful title track. And for the first time, Alabama began achieving cross-over success as well, with both "Love in the First Degree" and "Feels So Right" cracking the Billboard Top 40 on the pop charts; the former actually peaking at #15. "The Beatles of country music" continued their phenomenal success with subsequent albums like Mountain Music, The Closer You Get (this album has my absolute favorite Alabama song on it: "Dixieland Delight"), and Roll On. Every single released off these albums hit #1 on the country charts, and they even managed a couple more "pop hits" until they stopped beginning with the Roll On album. They kind of lost me after 1985, because I found their later songs didn't have the distinctive hooks and quality their first six albums had, although they'd continue having amazing success right up to the early 90s before it finally waned, and other country acts were dominating the genre, like Brooks & Dunn, Garth Brooks, Shania Twain, George Strait and Alan Jackson.

And so it was, for me, personally, in 1982 that my own musical journey would officially begin with the purchasing of my very first 45-single record with my own money. That 45-single was none other than the corny, but insidiously catchy and well-meaning, Paul McCartney/Stevie Wonder smash-hit, "Ebony and Ivory"! I absolutely fell in love with this song during the spring of that year. It was at this time that I started listening to the radio by myself, instead of what I was used to prior to that; that is, listening to whatever my parents happened to be listening to on our stereo. I finally received my very own small radio and tape-deck, and would incessantly listen to the radio in my bedroom. And when I heard a song that hit my aural sweet-spot, I would tape it on one of the cheap blank cassettes I had bought for only a couple of bucks at the Zellers department store at the nearby shopping mall in my area of town in Saint John, New Brunswick. I had been taping at that time in 1982 songs like: "I.G.Y" - Donald Fagan, "Industrial Disease" - Dire Straits, "Arthur's Theme (The Best That You Can Do)" - Christopher Cross, "What If We Fall in Love" - April Wine (a nostalgia-heavy song that instantly evokes a time when I started collecting comics and even making my own, using characters I had created, while listening to songs on the radio like this one), "'65 Love Affair" - Paul Davis, "Heat of the Moment" - Asia, "You Drive Me Crazy" - Shakin' Stevens, "When I'm With You" - Sheriff, 'Love's Been a Little Bit Hard on Me" - Juice Newton, "Steppin' Out" - Joe Jackson, "Pass the Dutchie" - Musical Youth, "Whatcha Gonna Do" - Chilliwack, "Hard to Say I'm Sorry" - Chicago, "The One You Love" - Glenn Frey, "Pressure" - Billy Joel, "You Can Do Magic" - America, "I Ran (So Far Away)" - A Flock of Seagulls, "Make a Move on Me" - Olivia Newton-John, "Words" - FR David (this delightfully saccharine song would become the second 45-single I would ever buy), and lastly, because it was, after all, my favorite song of 1982 (keep in mind I was an impressionable 14 year-old boy at the time!), "Eye of the Tiger" - Survivor, from the Rocky III soundtrack.

Late in 1982, I discovered the American Top 40 weekly radio show with Casey Kasem. It aired every Sunday afternoon on Saint John's CFBC radio-station. I listened to the program week after week hearing all the contemporary hits of the day and learning many tidbits of pop music history from Mr. Kasem's between-song monologues. I absorbed a lot. I even began writing the entire Top 40 down on loose-leaf paper in early 1984! Music nerddom had taken me over for sure by then. One of the big hits that took radio by storm around the end of 1982 was Hall & Oates' first single from their album, H2O. The song's title was "Maneater", and it completely mesmerized me with its brooding saxophone riff, haunting, urban melody and production, and Daryl Hall's solid, dramatic vocals about a sexually ferocious vixen. These were not exactly "politically-correct" times; not that that was a bad thing, to be sure, considering what has transpired since in our, now, ridiculously hyper-sensitive-leave-no-specialty-group/individual-behind mentality and defensive, narcissistic culture. I recorded the tune right off the radio on my little tape-deck and played it incessantly. At the time, I really felt it was the greatest song I ever heard! That is, until I heard The Police's "Every Breath You Take" six months later in mid-1983!

Having very little money to purchase even a 45-single, I didn't procure many during 1982, but instead collected most of my favorite radio hits on the accumulating number of cheap blank cassette tapes I managed to get. It wasn't until I started delivering newspapers around the neighborhood that I would obtain enough money to buy my very first full-length album in early 1983. That album was Men at Work's colossally popular Business as Usual; a hugely successful debut album that spawned two world-wide #1 smashes in "Who Can it be Now?" and "Down Under" (both 80s standards/classics to this day). It felt fantastic to have in my proud possession a 33 1/3 record that I paid for myself. And how I loved that record! I played it and played it over and over again, falling in love with every single aspect and nuance of its ten tracks, vocally, melodically, instrumentally and stylistically. At night, when I got ready for bed, I would slide the table I had my small record-player on, next to the bunk-beds my brother Jeff and I slept on. I was on the top bunk and would lean over the side to flip over to side-two of Business as Usual when "Helpless Automaton" (a Devo/Gary Numan-influenced ditty composed by multi-instrumentalist, Greg Ham) ended on those great New Wave chords by lead guitarist, Rod Strykert. Aside from the big hits off this wonderful album, Business as Usual also featured outstanding tracks like the romantic "I Can See it in Your Eyes"; the chugging-bass-heavy "Underground", which was punctuated by Greg Ham's solid sax-playing and Colin Hay's assertive and vacillating baritone/falsetto vocals; the quirky, hyper rocker, "Be Good Johnny", which showed Colin Hay's vocals at their most eccentric and droll; the Police-influenced "Catch a Star", with its Andy Summers-style reggae and harmonics sound (a personal favorite of mine); and, finally, the album's crowning achievement, in my opinion, the magnificent "Down by the Sea", a seven-minute whooshing, atmospheric opus with spectacular guitars from Strykert again, booming drums from Jerry Speiser, and arguably Hay's best vocal performance on the album to boot. I still consider Business as Usual one of my all-time favorite albums. And the Men managed to hit the mark one more time, as well (before self-imploding two years later with the wholly uninspired and dull Two Hearts album), with their solid sophomore effort, released later in 1983 (despite having been recorded, and "in the can", since the end of '82), Cargo, spotlighted with two of '83's finest singles: "Overkill" and "It's a Mistake"!

About three months after I had obtained a copy of Men at Work's memorable debut album I heard The Police's "Every Breath You Take", and I was overwhelmed by its instant awesomeness! No song, including the then superseded "Maneater", had ever had such an impact on me on the level that magnificent song did. More so for its utterly hypnotic music and vocal performance from Sting (who quickly became my first real musical hero, just as I turned 15 years of age) than its fairly basic, if disturbingly dark and menacing, lyrics (which still packed a considerable wallop, because of the conviction in Sting's voice), it became my absolute favorite single of that year, and remains in the list of my all-time favorites, period. At the beginning of June '83, The Police's fifth (and as it turned out, unfortunately, their final) album, Synchronicity, was released. I went to the local mall to eagerly buy a copy and proceeded to play the album endlessly, and for the first time, ponder carefully over the, at the time, unusual lyrics that were filled with "big words", big ideas, social issues and literary references I was hitherto not familiar with (but was determined to learn about in due time, thanks to the album's seeming behest). I won't delve too deeply into the many themes and social concerns depicted all through Synchronicity's eleven incredible tracks, because I've already done so last year (which I recommend you check out) when I wrote an article commemorating the album's 30th anniversary, but suffice it to say that no other album in my entire life, thus far, has impacted me more than this masterpiece (and I've been terrifically impacted by many more albums, to be sure, on one level or another)! Needless to say, I instantly became a HUGE Police fan, and subsequently, over the course of the next several months, collected their four other proper albums and devoured hours listening to them and absorbing them!

It was understandably around this time in 1983 that I began buying rock magazines, especially ones featuring my new favorite band, The Police, of course. I plastered my bedroom walls with posters of the band! However, there were other popular acts that magical year in music that I very much liked, if not loved, and I increased the frequency of 45s in my collection too. Some of them were as follows: "Hungry Like the Wolf" - Duran Duran, "Mr. Roboto" - Styx, "Overkill" - Men at Work, "Don't Cry" - Asia, "True" - Spandau Ballet; and full-length albums like Thriller - Michael Jackson, Reach the Beach - The Fixx, Kissing to be Clever - Culture Club, and Seven and the Ragged Tiger - Duran Duran. I also continued to record many songs on those cheap cassette tapes, which would feature such great hits I was enamored of, such as: "Always Something There to Remind Me" - Naked Eyes, "Africa" - Toto, "It's Raining Again" - Supertramp, "Come on, Eileen" - Dexy's Midnight Runners, "1999" - Prince, "Allentown" - Billy Joel, "Our House" - Madness, "Dirty Laundry" - Don Henley, "Lawyers in Love" - Jackson Browne, "Major Tom" - Peter Schilling, "Heart to Heart" - Kenny Loggins, "In a Big Country" - Big Country, "Modern Love" - David Bowie, "Sexual Healing" - Marvin Gaye, "Der Kommissar" - Falco, (I much preferred Falco's original German-version over the English-version by After the Fire) "She Blinded Me With Science" - Thomas Dolby and "Everyday I Write the Book" - Elvis Costello and the Attractions (my official introduction to this brilliant artist and band!). And too many more to mention. It was a year in music that I have not forgotten to say the least! And being a young teenager, not yet beset with older adolescent problems, social pressures and world concerns outside my immediate microcosmic world of Saint John, New Brunswick, I enjoyed pop/rock music for simply the face-value immediacy of the slew of great hook-laden tunes and colorful accompanying videos that added a striking visual stimulus, a face to these wonderful songs that filled the airwaves day in and day out to the carefree wonderment of my inundated senses and developing sensibility.

As the ensuing years passed during the 80s, I discovered other great artists and bands, while continuing to follow established favorites like The Police/Sting, The Fixx, Duran Duran, Culture Club, and Hall & Oates. In 1984, I got Tears for Fears' fantastic, synth-heavy first album (actually released the year before), The Hurting. I had heard the single, "Change" in '83, before I obtained its parent album, but didn't really get to know it well until I began listening to The Hurting, which I had in heavy rotation, because I was utterly blown away by it. The clinching moment I knew I had to get a copy of the album was when I heard "Pale Shelter" at a Thrifty's shop in the Parkway Mall around the spring of '84. That important album became my absolute favorite that year. And the timing for this crucial album in my life was apt, as I turned 16 that year, and those pesky adolescent problems (self-consciousness, raging hormones, peer pressure, parent clashes, monetary paucity) kicked in with a vengeance! The Hurting truly became a personal soundtrack for me, whose angsty synth-sound and emotional histrionics did indeed hit close to home. Another important discovery during '84 was INXS. Their fourth album, The Swing, had been released that year, and when I heard its stupendous second single, "I Send a Message", I was instantly smitten! I also enjoyed the first single, "Original Sin", too, but didn't appreciate it until I absorbed The Swing, which would become my second favorite album of 1984.

While following the American Top 40 on CFBC radio, I started noticing that I was pulling for songs that weren't climbing the countdown very high, much to my puzzlement, because, to me anyway, these were superb songs that deserved a higher placing. These remarkable tunes included: "It's My Life" - Talk Talk [#31](hands down one of my favorite songs of 1984, and my official discovery of what would become one of the bands I love the most!), "Whisper to a Scream (Birds Fly)" - Icicle Works [#37], "Wouldn't it be Good" - Nik Kershaw (an amazing song that wouldn't even crack the Top 40 in America, peaking at #46, though it would become a Top 10 hit in my native Canada, and was my #1 song of the year!), "New Song" - Howard Jones [#27], "Pride (In the Name of Love)" - U2 [#33], "Stranger in Town" - Toto [#30], "Don't Let Go" - Wang Chung [#38], "What in the Name of Love" - Naked Eyes [#39]. And a few wonderful singles that didn't even hit the Top 40 that I loved: "The Ghost in You" - Psychedelic Furs [#59], "Smalltown Boy" - Bronski Beat [#48], "High on Emotion" - Chris Deburgh [#44], "It Doesn't Really Matter" - Platinum Blonde (my favorite Canadian hit of the year, which didn't chart in the States), and the aforementioned INXS singles "I Send a Message" [#77] and "Original Sin" [#58]. Granted, there were many bonafide "hit songs" that won me over completely as well in 1984, such as: "Nobody Told Me" - John Lennon, "Cruel Summer" - Bananarama, "Talking in Your Sleep" - The Romantics, "Stay the Night" - Chicago, "Owner of a Lonely Heart" - Yes, "99 Red Balloons" - Nena, "Hold Me Now" - Thompson Twins, "Jump" - Van Halen, "When Doves Cry" - Prince and the Revolution, "Say it isn't So" - Hall & Oates, "Don't Answer Me" - Alan Parsons Project, "New Moon on Monday" - Duran Duran, "Blue Jean" - David Bowie, "Borderline" - Madonna, "Eyes Without a Face" - Billy Idol, "Head Over Heels" - The Go-Go's, and even, admittedly, "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" - Wham!, just to name a choice few.

By the summer of 1985 my world view, priorities and interests changed by sheer necessity as I became 17, and that much further away from my much missed childhood. Music, for me, was becoming more than just mere, personal entertainment, it was taking on, for better or worse, a more worldly sense of importance as I applied it to not just my own insular life, but more objectively towards the rest of the world. In other words, I was now seeing music in terms of an "art form" of human expression, and a way to possibly change the world, which I was already noticing was in apparent trouble, regardless of my utter lack of informed understanding and cultivation; I quietly observed the people around me, both young and old, and I followed the news and pondered what I was seeing, even from a distance, thanks to the widening of media and technology that was advancing at a quicker pace. Earlier albums like Synchronicity and The Hurting, with their sense of social consciousness awoke something in me, and I even started writing songs along the lines of what I heard from The Police and Tears for Fears. Hearing my first XTC album in 1984, their excellent 1982 opus English Settlement, was a watershed moment for me as well. And all of this was exacerbated by my getting Sting's outstanding solo debut album, The Dream of the Blue Turtles, and Tears for Fears' stunning sophomore effort, Songs From the Big Chair - two more of the definitive albums of my youth. These albums, their substance-filled hits (at least in the context of their being relatively "commercial" in production), as well as the equally fantastic deep-cuts, were a revelation for me and my ever widening purview, despite my still considerable naivete and inexperience. The point was that my trajectory of taste, opinion, and stance was set; there was no turning back for me. I was made privy to the label known as "college rock", and it provided a discernible alternative (before "alternative rock" was coined, and bandied about, at the turn of the 90s) to the mainstream, more overtly commercial, stuff. Music was now my 'soapbox" to express both my individuality, taste and worldview, regardless of the contrary opinions I would inevitably encounter. And make no mistake about it, I would be taken to task more than once for taking music "so seriously", but I didn't care. Conviction was a new concept I gradually incorporated into my personal constitution.

Through the rest of the decade, I would increase my music collection, and overall music knowledge, steadily. I began reading album reviews and articles in Rolling Stone magazine, Musician, Creem, and Music Express (a great Canadian music mag). I took it all in like a massive sponge. In 1986, I continued keeping close tabs on the Top 40, as well as the Top 200 album, chart, although I stopped writing it down and curtailed my listening to Casey Kasem every Sunday, and actually purchased an occasional Billboard Magazine issue. I sensed my friends were humoring and tolerating my incessant rants on the great music I was listening to, while trying to turn them on to some of it. Many of the bands and artists I was discovering were done in almost complete isolation. Bands like China Crisis, Level 42, OMD, Lone Justice, The Blow Monkeys, The Dream Academy, The Box, Tim Finn/Split Enz/Crowded House (my brother Jeff, though, became a fan of the them), and the Pet Shop Boys were artists that I basically listened to completely on my own. with very few, if anyone else, showing any genuine interest in them despite my constant endorsements. I was always promoting band after band in high school to little avail, even to my own girlfriend at the time, funnily enough. Most of my friends listened to hard rock/heavy metal, which was fine; my best friend did as well, and he basically gave me my "heavy metal education" as I became acquainted with the loud sounds of Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, Metallica, Raven, Twisted Sister, W.A.S.P. and Quiet Riot (two bands my own brother was into for a bit during his "metal phase")), The Rods, Killer Dwarfs, The Scorpions, Helix, Kiss, Def Leppard, AC/DC, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Alice Cooper, Rush, Ozzy Osbourne, Lee Aaron, The Plasmatics, Accept, Merciful Fate, Venom, etc, etc. Ultimately, it wasn't my cup of tea, comparatively speaking, but I learned to really like some of it, actually.

The albums that were ruling my rotation frequency during these latter years of what would truly be my "formative decade" in the 80s were: So Red the Rose - Arcadia, Crush, especially, and The Pacific Age - OMD (I would finally engage their more appreciated earlier releases several years later, and they eventually became one of my all-time favorite bands; even seeing them live at The Phoenix in Toronto in 2011!), Escapade - Tim Finn, Punch the Clock - Elvis Costello and the Attractions (my first Costello album, and by the time Spike came out in '89 I was a full-fledged fan, singling out his 1982 masterpiece, Imperial Bedroom, as my favorite album of his after getting my first precious copy of it in 1990), Please and Actually - Pet Shop Boys, Shelter - Lone Justice (and a little later I got their solid self-titled debut album, which most fans and critics agreed was far superior to Shelter, but the latter album was my first taste of the band), The Joshua Tree - U2 (another all-time favorite of mine), Crowded House's eponymous 1986 debut, as well as their phenomenal 1988 follow-up, Temple of Low Men (each were my favorite albums of their respective years), The High Lonesome Sound - Tim Scott (a lost gem of an album produced by Crowded House mainstay, Mitchell Froom, and an album I would never have known existed had it not been for the fine ladies at A & A Records, in Saint John's McAllister Place mall, who turned my attention onto it; they were a big part of my musical education, as I hung out there a lot between 1985-1990), Now and Again - The Grapes of Wrath (one of Canada's best bands at the time), Mending Wall - Chalk Circle (yet another fine Canadian band I was really into then), Broadcast - Cutting Crew, The Colour of Spring and Spirit of Eden - Talk Talk (two supreme masterpieces!), Cloud Nine - George Harrison, Full Moon Fever - Tom Petty, Flowers in the Dirt - Paul McCartney, Diesel and Dust - Midnight Oil, Chris Isaak - Chris Isaak, Nothing Like the Sun - Sting, Frank - Squeeze (they would become another favorite of mine, and when I finally got their 1981 album, East Side Story, in 1991, I was totally blown away by it), Fate - Hunters & Collectors, The Trinity Session - Cowboy Junkies (an achingly beautiful and atmospheric album from one of Canada's best bands of that period), Mysterious Barricades - Andy Summers (still my favorite of his), Sunshine on Leith - The Proclaimers and Blind - The Icicle Works.

By the end of the 80s, I was also doing a lot of backtracking by picking up best of's or greatest hits from many acts from the 50s, 60s and 70s like: Buddy Holly, The Doors (who would eventually impact my life wholly in 1991, thanks in great part to Oliver Stone's biopic on them, or rather on Jim Morrison, predominantly), The Mama's and the Papa's, The Lovin' Spoonful, The Who, The Monkees, Jefferson Airplane, Herman's Hermits, America, The Eagles, E.L.O., Olivia Newton-John (granted, she never released a truly great album, but she did have some wonderful singles,...and I always had "a thing" for her too!), Steely Dan (they would eventually become yet another all-time favorite of mine, and I gradually collected most of their proper albums), Al Stewart, and the Bee Gees.

In regards to The Beatles, I had mentioned earlier that an indie film was the final catalyst that sparked my love, nay obsession, with the Fab Four. I had seen the little known Jodie Foster film, Five Corners in 1989 (a film I proudly have in my current collection). During the film's opening credits I heard a Beatle tune I had hitherto not been familiar with, but was instantly enthralled by it! It was "In My Life". I was bound and determined to learn what album it appeared on and to procure that album posthaste. The song's parent album, of course, was 1965's folk-rock masterpiece, Rubber Soul! After finding and buying a copy of the album on vinyl at good old Backstreet Records on Germain St. in uptown Saint John, I was utterly beside myself with unbridled amazement over just how incredible Rubber Soul was to finally hear! After that...the deluge with everything Beatles related! The rest of their proper albums, books, movies, rare releases, posters, you name it, I was obsessed! It would be, in fact, their 1966 groundbreaking magnum opus, Revolver, that would become, and still is, not only my favorite Beatles album, but one of my Top 5 all-time favorites! Incidentally, their most famous masterpiece, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, was the very first compact disc I ever bought.

Another highly significant musical discovery I made during the late 80s was the one and only R.E.M.! Like most other people in 1987, I was transfixed when I heard "The One I Love". I enthusiastically sought out and purchased the 45 release of the band's first official "hit song", and it became a year-end favorite of mine. However, I wouldn't make my first R.E.M. album acquisition until late the following year when their first compilation, Eponymous, was released, particularly after I heard, or rather saw the video for, "Talk About the Passion", on MuchMusic. I loved the tune, which I learned originally appeared on the band's much celebrated 1983 debut album, Murmur (at least among critics, college students and fans of non-mainstream artists like R.E.M. were during most of their 5-album run on I.R.S. Records, before signing a mega-deal with Warner Bros. in 1988). After being so impressed by what I heard on Eponymous, I finally decided it was time to explore R.E.M.'s entire catalog up to that point just as their Warner Bros. debut, Green, was released. From the murky mystery of the marvelous Murmur; the Southern mix of upbeat paean and dirge-like melancholy on Reckoning; the scarred overcast aura of Confederate ghosts and tuneful tales of the Southern American breed on Fables of the Reconstruction; the call-to-arms, social urgency of Lifes Rich Pageant; to, finally, the thunderous, political grievances set ablaze on Document, I was wholly captivated by each album, and they became my new favorite band, which was fervently reinforced when Out of Time arrived in early 1991 and then their quick follow-up, which many cite as their supreme masterpiece, including myself, the truly magnificent Automatic for the People!

As the 90s kicked in, there was a pronounced sea-change in what I was then listening to. And this became quite apparent when I picked up a copy of The Sundays' debut album, Reading, Writing and Arithmetic, and it became my favorite album of 1990; an album whose tone and aesthetic was completely different from past "albums of the year" for me. I was also now listening to The Replacements, 54-40, Depeche Mode, The Mission, Living Colour, Lloyd Cole, The La's, Sam Phillips, Indigo Girls, Graham Parker, Prefab Sprout, The Tragically Hip and Blue Rodeo (the latter two, admittedly, enjoyed considerable commercial success in their native Canada, but without compromising themselves artistically). By this time, I had all but abandoned Top 40 radio and the like (only occasionally acknowledging and liking something in the immediate mainstream). My tastes were finding themselves more and more "left of center and in the fringes". But this was also a rather easy transition for me to make due to the glaring fact that Top 40 radio at the turn of the 90s was in a terrible state, as it was then dominated by hedonistic "hair bands", and vacuous pop/dance-music. And most of the artists whom I enjoyed throughout the 80s had, by then, passed their peaks, both artistically and commercially. I needed something new and fresh and vital (as did those who shared my particular tastes, though I didn't really know too many of them, personally).

Of course, as we all know quite well, rock 'n' roll (and popular music, in general) got a major shot-in-the-arm when Nirvana, and Grunge music, literally exploded onto the scene in late '91/early '92! This was symbolized by Nirvana's zeitgeist, second album, Nevermind, dethroning Michael Jackson's, ultimately disappointing, Dangerous album from the top spot on the Billboard Top 200 album chart in 1992. Then the proverbial floodgates blew open with the likes of Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Stone Temple Pilots, etc, and other "alternative artists", such as Smashing Pumpkins, Sonic Youth, Sugar, Liz Phair, Jane's Addiction, The Pixies, The Breeders, Jeff Buckley, Pavement, The Beastie Boys, Concrete Blonde, The Jayhawks, The Stone Roses, Blur, Suede, Morphine, Bjork, Beck, Red Hot Chili Peppers, My Bloody Valentine, Lush, PJ Harvey (perhaps my favorite female artist), The Lemonheads, James, Matthew Sweet, Portishead, Massive Attack, Tricky, etc, etc. These kinds of artists ruled the industry (and I ate it up, voraciously!) until just before the end of the decade (and millennium) when suddenly boy-bands, pop divas, and rappers usurped the airwaves and album charts.

With each passing year throughout the 90s, as I thoroughly enjoyed the great contemporary, mostly alternative, artists, I also found the time and money to eventually give my ever-expanding attention to past artists I had yet to fully check-out, or was just belatedly learning of their existence. These artists included (and some of them are now among my all-time favorites) The Jam, The Clash, The Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks, Joy Division/New Order, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Patti Smith, The Modern Lovers, Television, Bob Dylan (his trilogy of mid-60s masterpieces: Bringing it all Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde, are unsurpassed for their lyrical brilliance and towering influence), Talking Heads, Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones, Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band, Van Morrison, Nick Drake, Stevie Wonder, David Bowie, Marianne Faithfull, Roxy Music, The Velvet Underground, The United States of America, Lucinda Williams, Love, Brian Eno, The Smiths, Scritti Politti, Husker Du, The Stooges, The Fall (Mark E. Smith is a true original!)., and, quite significantly, The Beach Boys; having purchased my first copy of the legendary Pet Sounds in 1990, and then Endless Summer on vinyl in 1996, I was obsessed and enthralled with the brilliance of Brian Wilson by the time I fortunately saw the man in concert performing Pet Sounds in its entirety with his new backing-band in 2000! I was beside myself with unbridled excitement in 2004 when Wilson, at last, released the most anticipated album in rock history: Smile! I was hardly disappointed by it. It blew my mind with its incredible beauty, performance and arrangement!

During the 90s I also embraced Classical and Jazz music. In Jazz, I discovered the amazing music of Miles Davis (Bitches Brew was the first Jazz album I ever heard, and I'm glad it was), John Coltrane, Billie Holiday, Herbie Hancock, Charles Mingus, Dexter Gordon, Chet Baker, Ella Fitzgerald, Charlie Parker, Louis Armstrong and Dave Brubeck. In Classical, many of the greats (Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Debussy, Ravel, Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Bartok, Mendolsohn, Satie, Holst, Wagner) and their famous compositions are now among my all-time favorites. As well, Blues legends like Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, B.B. King, John Lee Hooker, Robert Johnson, Skip James, Junior Kimbrough and Charles Caldwell. I also came to appreciate some World Music, or music heavily influenced by it; none more so than the mesmerizing works of Dead Can Dance, especially their 1985 album Spleen and Ideal, 1987's Within the Realm of a Dying Sun (my personal favorite), '93's Into the Labyrinth, and 96's Spiritchaser. And even avant garde music by the likes of Nurse with Wound, Philip Glass and Diamanda Galas. The soundtracks to films such as Naked Lunch, Vangelis's Blade Runner and Jan Kaczmarek's Total Eclipse were characteristically playing as I wrote many a journal entry.  

Perhaps the most significant band for me to come out of the 90s is Radiohead. Their break-through single from 1993, the self-loathing anthem, "Creep", was in my Top 10 favorite songs of that year, but it wasn't until the unexpected majestic throttle and sigh of 1995's incredible, The Bends, that I was completely sold on this amazing band. And when they unleashed OK Computer unto the world in July of 1997, I was dazzled beyond measure, to say the least! Instead of alienating me with the, initially challenging and surprising, eschatological, electronic-based Kid A in 2000, I was even more smitten with them, particularly after Amnesiac briskly followed to nicely cap the band's thrilling transition from "alternative rock band" to "electronic wizards of the post-historic age". As good as these prior masterpieces were, and still very much are, perhaps their ultimate magnum opus is 2007's flawless, In Rainbows. Radiohead are indeed my favorite "active band", and I impatiently await their next, likely great, artistic move.

As was "college rock" in the 80s, and "alternative music" in the 90s, the millennium brought about what is known as "indie rock",and I have, no doubt, followed that scene since I was introduced to the single greatest radio show I've ever listened to, Brave New Waves, around 1996 (sadly, the show ended its 23-year run in 2007). The frequency of shows that I heard increased exponentially by the millennium, and the show's host, Patti Schmidt, turned me onto many, many great new underground bands and acts like: Stereolab, The High Llamas, Yo La Tengo, The Apples in Stereo, Godspeed You Black Emperor!, Quasi, Sleater-Kinney, Unrest, Archers of Loaf, Squarepusher, Trans Am, Slint, Flying Saucer Attack, Mogwai, DJ Shadow, Kid Koala, Jurassic 5, Tortoise, Pell-Mell, Jim O'Rourke, Destroyer, Guided by Voices, June of '44, The Magnetic Fields, etc, etc. I further discovered on my own such fantastic artists, such as: Broadcast (now one of my all-time favorite bands; and I'm still reeling from the tragic death of their lead-singer and co-writer, Trish Keenan in 2011), The Fiery Furnaces, Animal Collective, Grizzly Bear, Badly Drawn Boy, Air, Doves, Elbow, My Morning Jacket, The Knife/Fever Ray, Camera Obscura, Deerhunter, April March, Neko Case, Pram, St. Vincent, Goldfrapp, Hot Chip, The National, TV on the Radio, Wilco, Ladytron, The Shins, and the wonderful Fleet Foxes. In recent years, I got into some French pop from the likes of Serge Gainsbourg, France Gall, and Francoise Hardy; also France's unforgettable "Little Sparrow", Edith Piaf, and the marvelous German cabaret singer, Ute Lemper. I also got into Krautrock too: Kraftwerk, Can, Cluster, Faust, Neu!, Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze (whose 1972 groundbreaking, Irrlicht, has become an all-time favorite). And just in the last couple of years I was introduced, by a great friend of mine, to the phenomenal drum 'n' bass, electronic/DJ music of Amon Tobin! A truly brilliant Brazilian artist whose albums from 1997-2002 (Bricolage, Permutation, Supermodified and Out From Out Where) are particularly stunning pieces of work! He's been a damn fine addition to my always expanding music collection.

Listening to music both new and old, well-known or obscure, commercially accessible or polarizingly challenging, highbrow or lowbrow, has enriched my life immensely. It has entertained me, enlightened me, moved me, soothed me, galvanized me, informed me, inspired me, influenced me, angered me, and confirmed me. I've had an always fascinating synesthetic experience with music, where its aural stimulus, both vocally and instrumentally, would trigger other senses and feelings in me, and lend themselves to past times and places, moods, auras, and such, awakening things that were dormant, or revisiting time and again feelings and frames of mind and body that feel refreshed every time a piece of great music enters my ears and disseminates through me entirely. Music is the necessary soundtrack to everything both good and bad in this life, and I'm eternally thankful for it.