On Sunday night I was watching the Browns vs Steelers in a highly anticipated matchup. In recent years I've become a bit of a Browns fan - I've always had a bit of a soft spot for the underdog and to call the Browns an underdog is a bit of an understatement. And the Steelers are a juggernaut. They are always at or near the top. It was more like David versus Goliath. The Browns were just a jester who sang for a king.
During the game my partner asked what I'd be writing about the next day. I hadn't given it much thought yet, I said. She said write about something happy. So the next day (yesterday) I sat down to write. Nothing came to mind. But I woke up this morning and it was then I realized, she had asked me for some happy news. I'd just smiled and turned away.
In high school, I listened to a variety of music. Boy bands were at their peak. Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera were battling for supremacy. Britney was no doubt the queen, but Christina would ultimately take that thorny crown. FYE was the music store in the mall, which I believe had recently bought out Camelot music. We'd go and sort through CDs on weekends; every now and then our parents would give us $20 to buy one. But "burning" CDs was becoming a thing. Anyone could download from Napster, LimeWire, or Kazaa, create a playlist, and burn it onto a new CD. Some might say it was a day that music died.
Though I listened to all kinds of music, my parents were children of the 60's and 70's. They had all the good jams - and all on record, too. To this day my dad can name just about any song from the era that comes on the radio, and band members, too. It was a different time. They got to know these people. I recently watched Almost Famous which is a movie about a young man who aspires to be a journalist and gets assigned to interview an up-and-coming rock band in the late sixties. The young man's mom had sheltered him but his older sister left him her albums to teach him about rock 'n' roll, in an attempt to save his mortal soul.
I was always torn back then. My best friend had moved outside the city limits to go to a county school. Years later, I'd see it as a strategic move by his parents based on what I've seen on their Facebook feeds; Thomasville schools were mostly black while the county schools were mostly, if not all, white. I remember a CD we'd burned that had the likes of DMX and 50 Cent on it being thrown out the window while his dad drove. So during the week I went to school in Thomasville but on weekends I went and hung out with my bestie and his buds out in the country. Most of them lived over 30 miles away and for a high schooler, with or without a car, that was a long way. So I was never really close with any of them; I was just a lonely teenage broncin' buck.
For my junior prom I went with a girl who had just moved to Thomasville from Kinston, NC. She had a twangy accent (she'd pronounce it ak-say-ent) and we went with a few others from our class. She wore a pink dress - which meant I had a pink carnation and I'm pretty sure my dad dropped me off in his pickup truck.
Freedom back then was a CD and my 1989 Honda Prelude, I nicknamed it the "Wildlude." It was an automatic but it had a very primitive version of "sport shifting"; it was supposed to automatically shift but if I got it in between S2 and S3 just right I could override that and it would stay in 1st gear until I shifted it manually to S2 and then to S3. If you guessed that I got pulled over once or twice for speeding, you'd be correct. Some of the other kids at school had cars they'd tricked out with wheels and sound systems, too - we'd blare our music and rev the engines at stoplights while we were in Neutral and then slam the shifter into Drive so the tires would squeal. Or pull into the A&P or Wal-Mart parking lots and sit around. There we were all in one place, just a generation lost in space.
Growing up I never really understood the power of music. It was just fun to listen to. To hear someone else's version of life and maybe relate to it somehow or just beebop along to catchy beats or lyrics. But I never really understood that some lyrics went deeper than a hit song. That someone took the time to write about what they felt and transform it into something that connects with people. These days I get a bit more caught up in listening to the lyrics. Other times I just need sound to fill the air because I just dig those rhythm and blues.
I spent a lot of time out with my friend on his parents' farm. Life in the country is a bit different. There are a lot of trees. And those trees have lots of branches which would break every now and then, if they rotted or there was too much wind or rain. Sometimes a whole tree would die because it couldn't get enough sun or needed to be cut down to make a new trail. And we'd end up with a ton of firewood. So we'd haul them in and stack 'em up high and prepare for a bonfire. Bonfires were the best. It felt like a cleansing, not just of the woods, but ourselves. We'd sit around, someone would have a gee-tar, and we'd stare into the fire or make s'mores. And those flames would climb high into the night. I never saw Satan laughing with delight, but he was probably there, looking down on us as my friend's mom played songs about the father, son, and the holy ghost. I never was really religious; for me, the church bells all were broken.
I can't remember if I cried, when I first heard American Pie. It was definitely on a CD I'd burned. I probably found it on LimeWire randomly, because it was not something on the radio. The radio was mostly repeats of current hits. I think 98.7 started to mix in older and newer stuff at some point; either way, it doesn't stick out where I heard it, but I most definitely remember it. It is one of those songs that just sticks with you. Whether you like it or not, it is catchy and the lyrics can just about apply to anything.
Even today, Don McLean himself won't talk about what the majority of the lyrics are about. He has been famously "stumm" on the song's meaning, according to this article from The Guardian. He would prefer that people interpret it however it applies to them, because
the song is meant to "capture and say something that was almost unspeakable. It’s indescribable.”
Which I think is fine. Every time I hear the song I vividly remember being in my 1989 Honda Prelude, with the sunroof open and windows down, driving out to the backwoods of North Carolina, in search of something that would make me happy.
It's almost February, and almost every piece of news is something that makes many of us want to shiver. Them good ol' boys might be drinkin' whiskey and rye. But this won't be the day we die. This won't be the day the music dies.
Ahh, the wildlude, in all of its glory.
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