[fishmonkey]

Originally Posted by sonicl

That's not culture. Disqualified.

haha!

[jon boy]

did not tape too many things of the radio but enough. mainly listened to my sister playing music through the wall. got into the cure, iron maiden, sousie, stranglers, buzzcocks and so many others that way.

[_slavo_]

1. Purchasing Radiohead's "The Bends" in a local store when I was 15. That thing changed my life in a HUGE way for the following 4-5 years. During that period, basically the only thing I kept talking about was Radiohead.

2. Reading local music mag called "Rock&Pop" on a monthly basis from 1997 to 2002 (then the quality of the mag went to a dump). That was basically the only way for me to get up-to-date info on music that was beyond mainstream.

3. Watching the now non-existing music channel VIVA2 while being on high school. In a certain period there was really quality stuff being broadcasted there (I remember them showing a Merzbow gig once).

4. Being heavily involved in music trading across Slovakia (physical trading, not mp3s or anything like that). There were like 6 fellas that kept exchanging music between each other and I guess I broadened my horizons quite much during that time.

5. Logging onto this board 2 years ago. (ok, maybe not as a teenager anymore, but this has been quite important for me as for what music education goes).

EDIT:

6. Oh, yes, having seen Washing Machine's post below, getting stoned for the first time was a big deal for me too ! The following day after that, I wrote my first track ever, I think it was pretty special and reflected well the things I felt.

[Washing Machine]

1) First Kiss / Loss of Virginity
2) Getting drunk/stoned with my friends for the first time
3) Discovering The Smashing Pumpkins
4) Listening to 'Daydream Nation'

[nicfit]

_slavo_ , speaking of RH, did you get the chance to listen to that "acoustic" bootleg?

[drrrtyboots]

Those are great schizo, especially those deerhoof ones!

I have a bunch but the one that i'll never forget was driving down to philly to see Sonic Youth for my first time on the last day of school last year, completely against my parents' will. I was right up against the stage with Lee shadowing over me, getting stiff looks from Kim. More specifically, when they played PCH because that was just fucking awesome.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by schizophrenicroom

here are 10 that i can remember in no order at all. do they have to be cultural?

1. seeing deerhoof with one of my best friends, club is packed to the brim, i'm being pushed against the stage because of the way i'm standing in a sort of weird-hug embrace, hearing all of my favorite songs by them
1a. coming out of a kiss and turning to greg saunier, and i guess he was watching us or something somehow while rocking the fuck out and he gave me this "score!" look that made my night. and getting a stick from him and a hundred thank yous for coming three hours early.
1b. meeting the opening band (harlem shakes), and continuing to message back and forth on myspace with them
2. walking around canal street, sat on a bench, when the cop pulls up and asks what the hell we're doing on a bench at four am sitting there
2a. crying my eyes out because it was a night where i felt happy
2b. my mother asking 300 questions, one of which is "did they have pot?"
3. the last two birthdays
4. halloween horror nights last year with my friends and little brother sean (as well as our mom and boyfriend in tow) and i realized, as sean was walking with us, how much he's grown over the years and how proud i am of him
5. not a cultural moment, but one day when sean was just getting the hang of talking (so he was around four), he said "i love sister" in his teeny, tiny voice and fuzzy elmo sweater and i think i cried.
6. ted leo opening for death cab, front row, and a guy walks up very drunkenly and whips out a lighter during some upbeat song off plans that i don't know. i'm serious, beer in one hand, lighter in the other. he had that too-small argyle sweater that every indiefuck in the place had and went on "DEATH CAB DEATH CAB" until some girl behind us yelled out to him to "put the lighter down, fag!"
7. turning thirteen was a big one. i was one of the younger ones in my gifted class and to finally NOT BE TWELVE YEARS OLD was the best feeling.
8. discovering sonic youth and pavement and asking myself why the fuck i didn't know about them earlier
9. star wars iii opening night with my dad, being one of two people not in costume. i remember thinking that i had no idea we had this many geeks in daytona. daytona is such a blank city to me because of all the touristy things and to see every girl done up as padme or leia or whatever was just so odd.
10. "web in front", archers of loaf
11. 9/11 was incredibly scary. they told us to turn on the tvs at school and to keep them on, and i remember this girl i kind of knew had an aunt working in the wtc. she wasn't in that same class i had that period, but it was common knowledge after the bell rang.
12. i can't remember what bands i listened to before i knew stuff like the youth, but i know i'd write their names all over my cheesy binders next to pictures of models i wanted to be like linda evangelista. i hope i tossed them out, because most of my binders years back are now kind of mortifying to think about.

...and when somebody asks me why i feel compelled to say on the internet how wonderful i think schizo is, i'll just show them this as a way of explanation.


anyway, some of my defining teenage moments (that i can talk about here anyway) are:

- when a childhood friend died in a freaky car accident when we were 14. 3 of us then went to my house and made an attempt to comunicate with the dead by hypnotizing one of us and using him as a medium. apparently, it worked.

-the last fistfight of my puberty (fists flying! roundhouse kicks! noses spraying blood like showerheads!). we shook hands and ran home when we heard the school principal was approaching.

-pissing on someone's shoes-- he was getting annoying, trying to verbally abuse me, which i found quite... insolent. i think we were 15. i don't know why i even did it, i just... zipped it out and started pissing on his shoes, in the middle of the street, with traffic around us. that's when i realized i was an ape, and reason had little to do with anything.

-winning my first boat race at 16. oh it hurt it hurt we were almost dead we were purple from the lack of oxygen and our legs stiff with pain but winning was so sweet, and we got very plastered afterwards on my dad's liquor stash (my parents were away on a long trip). it was the 2nd time i got drunk and UAU! i passaged!

-getting out of highschool and into the university, i had just turned 17, and it was the best feeling ever, until...

-i met my first girlfriend. i had other girlfriends before but this was "serious". damn! to finally find a beautiful girl i could relate to in a "deep" way was the most mind blowing experience of my life. i was forever marked.

-running into some the most amazing nerds on the planet at the university, i mean people who lived in caverns outfitted as labs, and they populated their own universes with their deranged minds, and read strange books which they loved to discuss until the sun came up.

there are others, but some tales i should confine to books, and i need to get back to work, im learning php today.

[_slavo_]

Originally Posted by nicfit

_slavo_ , speaking of RH, did you get the chance to listen to that "acoustic" bootleg?

Yeah, I did ! Sorry mate, I even forgot to say thank you for it.

It was nice. The way they did "Sail to the Moon" was lovely. On the other hand, I wasn't very fond of the new song...what was it called...Fog?

[terminal pharmacy]

The Western Land Trilogy

[Everyneurotic]

teenage rites of passages?

just to be clear i don't feel that much different than when i was like 15 on, except that i'm caring less about people and what they think...also bear with me as most of the music and drinking and getting band t-shirts and buying bootlegs tapes of death metal and all those other things i began before i hit the teens.

-my bar mitzvah party, bunch of kids were there and was one of the few parties i've actually had fun, then sneaking to the bathroom towards the end to light up a cigarrette, i mean, it was huge. the next day, i ran into a friend and his family were having a big super bowl party, so i go with them and me and another friend just went up to the cooler and grabbed a beer, all casual, and drank it outside, feeling mellow and cool.

-when i was fourteen, i began doing a list of albums as they were released and i also began reviewing every single album as i was getting them and storing them, little did i know...

-my first show, opening a showcase on the place i was learning guitar, me and some dudes rocked to sabbath's paranoid in front of every kids' parents, it was great!!!

-recording for the first time into a boombox, i still swear it's better than harry pussy, i wish i had a copy of the next session.

-getting pantera's the great southern trend kill tape the day it came out and placing my order for metallica's load.

-picking up metallica's load tape and thinking it was a piece of crap (little did i know...)

-listening to the radio, to specific programs playing "alternative" (where i first heard the fall and dead kennedys) and metal and taping those shows, also listening to the weekly show where they played a new album whole as they were being released. i miss the radio.

-going to see morbid angel at a bad part of town in a wrestling (very small) arena with people twice as big and older than us and ending up in one of the best shows ever.

-the first time i walked out of a party and wandered on the streets.

-finding out about punk, about what it stood for, about what these bands sounded like and for saving me.

-going to israel, doing the army thing for a week, and being there when two terrorist attacks happened on places i had been mere days before.

-discovering i was in love.

-forming my first real band, rehearsing, recording and doing everything on our own while having a blast pretty much the whole time while the other idiots at school were out passing out and crashing their cars.

-sneaking to the parking lot in school to smoke with people.

-when my english teacher took a poem i did for an assignment and submitted it to a literary journal (she eventually nicked it).

-driving by school on graduation night and screaming FUCK YOU!!!! out of the speeding car.

-staying up all night around a bonfire with the people i grew up with and just being there.

-telling someone "i love you" for the first time to a girl.

-not getting my feelings reciprocated by that same girl at that very moment.

-thrashing the stage at a battle of the bands, ending with the drummer throwing a stick straight to a judge.

-finding a pirate copy of that minor threat video and watching it.

-finding damaged on a big record store.

lots more. screw culture, i guess i've been aware but all i got was so manufactured and had so much expectation that it lead nowhere basically. i remember the unabomber, the chupacabras (i think i even wrote a song about it), jeffrey dahmer and 9/11 (i was 19), a lot of stuff but they didn't affected me being a teenager.

oh yeah, and the whole episode 1 crap; finally getting to the theater and walking out saying "what is this crap?!"

[schizophrenicroom]

the whole beer thing was exciting for me, every-e. sitting back with friends and cracking open a can was such a cool feeling. (i'd had it hundreds of times in shandies but never just reaching for a beer.)

[Everyneurotic]

people don't become alcoholics because alcohol is addictive, it's just that we want to capture that feeling over again.

[Cantankerous]

while i certainly don't feel like it, technically i'm still there but i'm kind of at the tail end of it now.

quitting school
leaving my mom's house and supporting myself
moving to new york (v. soon)

i can't really think of any other HUGE milestones. getting a drivers' liscence (which they will give to just about anyone it seems) was not that big of a deal. probably because i've been driving illegally since i was 14.

[TheDom]

1. finding out my pancreas doesn't work.
2. moving.
3. sonic youth.
4. kerouac's on the road.
5. getting stoned for the first time.

[schizophrenicroom]

i remember reading on the road for the first time in seventh grade.. that book, followed by our band could be your life two years later, were (i think) the books that really changed my life.

[schizophrenicroom]

Originally Posted by Everyneurotic

people don't become alcoholics because alcohol is addictive, it's just that we want to capture that feeling over again.

exactly. i have other reasons too, but it's that feeling that feels so good to chase.

[Everyneurotic]

the book that, more than change it, reaffirmated my life was american hardcore.

[Norma J]

I don't know about cultural, but I romanticised with seclusion and reclusion a great deal in my youth. My friends at the time would ask me to come to parties and do general teenage things and I opted to stay at home and save my money for an analogue 4-track. I rarely left the house my whole teenage years. But I'm not like that anymore.

[schizophrenicroom]

Originally Posted by Everyneurotic

the book that, more than change it, reaffirmated my life was american hardcore.

i've bought it but only thumbed through because other than minor threat and bad brains and a few others (would nation of ulysses count as hardcore?) i've only ever been superficially interested.. something about hardcore that seemed really tight-knit and warm to me.

yeah, i meant that, instead of changed it. spring break kills my brain.

[Norma J]

I need to track down a copy of that documentary.