Stages of cool...

A question had popped up in my Facebook asking for 15 albums that changed my life and to list them within 15 minutes. I made the list and revisited one of the albums today. Peter Gabriel's Security (the U.S. title; everywhere else it was simply Peter Gabriel or Peter Gabriel 4).

Jon Wolf, older brother of Mike Wolf, whose house I spent the night at, who was my first (and only) fight because I called his girlfriend a scum in 7th grade, recommended this to me. He mentioned that Peter Gabriel was an expert at synthesizers and that sounded really cool even though I had no clue what he was talking about. So I went out and bought the cassette. I had the 45 single of "Shock the Monkey" and loved the B-side track.

Up until this point, the general interest was KISS Alive II, Van Halen's Diver Down, AC/DC's Back and Black and Top 40 radio. Lightweight, trapped in the insulated bubble of suburbia.

However, having been raised on a healthy of mix of outlaw country music, Gordon Lightfoot and early Jimmy Buffett (all on 8 track tapes, mind you) my little world began to expand. Perhaps the earliest album that infiltrated my naivete was Pink Floyd's The Wall . I remember playing "Another Brick in the Wall" and having my dad comment what a stupid song it was.

I have happy reminisces about listening to WDMT, an urban radio station out of Cleveland, in the early 1980s on my little clock radio, recording rap songs with an old tape recorder. Long before Run DMC hit the big time and brought rap music to the mainstream en masse, Grandmaster Flash's "The Message" freaked me out when I heard lyrics such as "junkies in the alley with baseball bat" and had horrific images of what this meant (most likely formed by stereotypes reinforced either by television or through attrition in the fears of suburbia). Morris Day and The Time's "The Walk" introduced me to funky, the lyrics which caused endless hours of laughter and curiosity. I still had a tape up of a bunch of these songs until a few years ago where it has since disappeared.

Anyhow, while these seeds of eclecticism were still budding, Peter Gabriel's music took what I was hearing one step deeper and one step beyond. The year is 1982.

The Security album set me free. The first track, with its thundering drums and exotic sounds, were unlike anything I had ever heard. I played it and played it and played it. My world changed. Lyrics included such words as "mitigating circumstances", "cynical bite" and "Hippocratic oath" that expanded my awareness of what music could do and say.

Though I would still surf the pop music wave for quite some time, it was this album that seeded my interest in world music and music outside of the mainstream.

I really didn't get into "alternative" music until my freshman year in college when I would encounter the Violent Femmes, the Smiths, early hardcore punk, the Beastie Boys and early college rock. It was then that I was on my way and I would eventually leave Top 40 pop music in the dust. I had found music that spoke to me; I had voices speaking for me.

I saw him in concert twice, once in the second row of the Pittsburgh Civic Arena with Youssou N'Dour opening on his So tour. I absolutely loved Youssou. I will never forget the freshness of these artists from South Africa, dressed in their bright, colorful clothing and dancing so freely. I didn't understand a word they said but loved it. We fed off of them and they fed off of us, a bunch of goofy suburban white kids dancing to this "exotic" music.

The show itself was one of the best concerts I had ever seen. The songs didn't sound like the versions on the album. They were fresh. Peter Gabriel performed as an artist, a far cry from the rock n roll shows I had seen previously where the songs sounded like the albums, or worse. No, Peter Gabriel was, and still is, an artist, the standard by which I would measure other concerts. No longer would I throw money away at glorified bar bands. I suppose I developed musical "taste" (or snobbery, not sure which).

I have a piece of his shirt from this show. What the hell was I thinking? During this song he stage dives (long before stage diving became popular...) into the audience and the hands carry him around the arena. Not this time. I don't know if it was just me but I grabbed his shirt and wouldn't let go. It ripped. I still have it, like a vampire, like a groupie. When he got back on stage, shirt torn, he stared right at me and smiled. Or smirked a knowing smile. What an embarrassment. Rather than surf the crowd he got to the second row.

Loved the show; this moment is what I remember. My filter is whack. I hold onto those things that carry pangs of regret, shame, guilt, embarrassment. Yet these too are my ego holding on to some notion of who I am that is false. This is becoming ever so clear. At some point I hope to laugh at them, not out of spite, not out of shame or embarrassment, but of genuine laughter at the clarify of seeing the illusion in them, a true sign of being healed.

I remember a classmate's obsession with Rush, a group I had never heard of before his mention of them, and another classmate's infatuation with Bono from U2 in 1983 (same year as the book jacket in my other post), another group I had never heard of until that moment.

I was never cool. Still not. Which is cool.

Let the healing process unfold...