I Don't Come from Nowhere, or How I Got Here from There

Yeah, this is a little more about me. What can I say, I'm a narcissistic hillbilly! For those of you who have befiended me over on LAST, you already know this. For those of you reading this for shits n' giggles, this is a rehash of what I wrote on LAST, with some updates and less insane spelling.

I am from someplace so small and inconsequential that until the 70s you couldn't even find it on a map. I am from someplace that just turned 100, but no one much cared either way. I was born and raised in a town so small we had to drive half an hour just to get groceries. I could walk to my high school. I could walk to my grandparents' house. I could walk to my friends' houses. My mom always knew where my brother and I were. If it weren't for my dad being from a major urban area, I would have grown up on country and bluegrass and nothing but.

But I didn't.

My parents listened to everything. Jazz, rock, folk, classical, and everything in between. My dad befriended a lot of his former high school students, so a lot of my musical tastes come from them. I was the little kid, they were the bigger kids, and I always wanted to be like the bigger kids, what with me being the little kid and all. It was how I discovered AC/DC's Back in Black album, as well as Elvis, and Buddy Holly. See, here's the thing. . .

My dad is this beatnik jazz cat who grew up near and ran around New York's Lower East Side and Greenwich Village, back in the late 50s, when Ginsberg and Kerouac and Bob Dylan were hanging out, before people became hippies. My dad was not an Elvis fan. Everyone else we knew was. Imagine being the only kid in your hometown whose parents don't have any Elvis albums. Yeah. . . . . I could play Harlem Notcourne from memory by the time I started high school on sax, and I knew more about classical soprano and alto recorder music than how to get a boy to like me.

Then something crazy happened at our house. Punk rock happened to me and my brother via the Bargain Bin at our local discount chain (the long-gone Fisher's Big Wheel in New Martinsville, I believe). The Sex Pistols' Never Mind the Bullocks, The Cure, the first, flawless Violent Femmes album, The Buzzcocks, X's Wild Gift (which I bought on tape, the tape player ate, and then I wore out my dad's vinyl album copy), and EVERYTHING from The Stray Cats. If you don't think the Stray Cats have their place in punk, you're sadly mistaken. My brother and I played the first two Stray Cats tapes so much we had to buy, like, three different copies, and it seemed no matter how much we cleaned the damned tape player they always got destroyed. So we got over it, got a sense of humor about it, and one year at Halloween found a sticker of a huge, gaping, blood-stained vampire mouth with teeth and put THAT on the cassette door!

Then grunge happened. Now here's where things get a little nuts. I went to a college that was in a place just as small as where I grew up. I knew who Nirvana and REM were before half my friends had any idea what was up. Though I had a thing for PrettyBoys from England (Nick Rhodes and Adam Ant being my two all-time faves), I was more familiar with the likes of guys like Neil Young, Kurt Cobain, and Sid Vicious---violent, fucked up, tortured, talented, and volatile. It's ok to listen to music from people like that. I tried dating one once. . . . not good.

But I ain't no snob. Anyone who accuses me of such will be greeted with an upraised middle finger and a quick telling-off.

If it weren't for punk, I never would have gotten into rockabilly. If it weren't for rockabilly, I wouldn't be writing this blog.

About 4 years ago, I discovered a groovy, 4-cd set from Rhino Records entitled Rockin' Bones: Punk and Rockabilly from the 50s and 60s. A lot has happened and changed since then, which eventually I reckon I'll get into. But for now, just know this. . . . I don't come from nowhere, just like most of y'all.