For our inaugural essay, Chad Patterson tells us about the moment early in his college days when he realized he was, as Steve Perry once opined, "just a small town boy".
My First Time Ever: The Violent Femmes
By Chad Patterson
I was studying theater at Lansing Community College. And, as you do in college I met an eclectic group of people; young, old, black, white, hispanic, gay and straight. None of that surface stuff really mattered. What mattered is that performance brought us all together. We all loved doing live theater and we also all loved partying.
On opening night of my first College theater production we had a cast party in a small two bedroom apartment. There had to have been 20-25 us roaming around this little place. I was still a minor, but alcohol was there and accessible to all of us. It was a party like you see in the movies. There were people making out, people wearing lampshades on their head, and loud music playing and drinking. Lots and lots of drinking.
Now, don't get me wrong I had been to my share of shit kicker barn keggers in High School, but this was different. This party had that Bohemian art feel to it where at any time sex might just accidentally happen to you, or some older guy might start cutting lines of cocaine on the kitchen counter. Now none of that happened but it felt like it could.
Everything was hot and smoky and unlike anything I had ever experienced. I felt very outside of it, like a kid looking in at his own birthday party. But there was one moment in which I felt alienated more than any other and it wasn't because my friends were ostracizing me or that I wasn't participating. This environment, if nothing else, was extremely inclusive. This moment had everything to do with how out of touch I was culturally.
Everyone was gathering at the CD player. One person in particular, my Improv teacher and mentor Bill getting very excited about what was going to happen. There was a palpable buzz about the music that was about to be played. My friend Dawn, whose apartment it was, took a CD from the jewel case with a dark cover and she placed the disc in the player. The door closed on the player and people backed away from it as if it were going to emit light and melt their faces.
I was glued to this plastic kitchen chair seemingly unable to move in anticipation for what they were about to hear. My mind filled with great party songs of my youth; Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, or maybe some Bob Seger? No. I was painfully out of touch.
The sound that came from this tiny little stereo at an apartment party in South Lansing was a raw, whiny lone voice that primally moaned "DAY AFTER DAY I WILL WALK AND I WILL PLAY, BUT THE DAY AFTER TODAY, I WILL STOP, AND I WILL START..."
Everyone in the room knew the words, they screamed them along with this man and as soon as the very raw, crude music began to this very simple beat and guitar riff the entire group of people were gone on this mad pogo jump around the living room slamming into each other. Then the singing started and everyone sang along sans myself. The words were so unforgettable; a man actually pleading in a song "Why can't I get just one fuck?" and then for good measure repeating the same line because inquiring about why one can't get a fuck bears repeating.
This was the first time I had ever heard The Violent Femmes and I may venture to say the first time that I had ever heard anything that would qualify as college radio. My entire childhood had been littered with a hodge-podge of classic rock, heavy metal, disco or easy listening contemporary crap. In other words Popular music.
Here I was in college looking at this group of people that I admired a great deal reveling in this song that they had obviously worshiped like a church hymn of youth rebellion and I couldn't even identify it. I was still wearing my Motley Crue concert T to class sometimes and not to be ironic either, but because I actually thought it was cool.
From that moment on my ears and eyes were opened. I had missed out on an entire list of great artists in the 80's and early 90's because if for no other reason they weren't ever on the Monsters of Rock tour. I missed out on great bands like R.E.M., The Smiths, The Cure and Depeche Mode and of course the Femmes, who will always hold a special place in my heart because in my ways they very roughly deflowered me culturally and musically at a little apartment party in South Lansing.
The Violent Femmes - Add It Up
MILWAUKEE RULEZ!!!!!
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