Ah, yes, Violent Femmes and Rush. Not a big Neil Peart fan, but my old bands, we used to do Tom Sawyer, Limelight, Spirit of The Radio, and, of course, YYZ <gloat>. Femmes? My current band we do Blister In The Sun. (My band's website is http://JadedWay.com/ and I've been playing drums since I was 11).

I graduated in '85 (high school), and those were my "dark" days. I listened to The Smiths (still do to this day), Depeche Mode, Slayer, old Metallica, The Cure.

Aah - the 80s - my favourite time (of course - when you're a teenager is when you're most emotional).

I was hipper than a hippy thing. I was funkier than a funky thing. When I was 14 (1980) we used to compete with each other as to who was more ahead of the curve. We all knew about Gary Numan, Haircut 100, Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, Visage, Ultravox, Flock of Seagulls etc. weeks before they hit the charts.

I was the consummate New Romantic. Still love that music to this day. I was instep with my school pals, but out of step with the crowd that I hung out with out of school who were all rock/metal fans - so I was constantly subjected to Zep, Beatles, Pink Floyd, Linnard Skinnard (sp?), etc.

Later in the 80s I developed my own interest in prog rock - Yes, Genesis (had the first ever album with Peter Gabriel from 1970), Rush, Dire Straits, Queen etc. Oh, and don't forget ELO.

And later still I got gothy - The Damned, The Mission, The Bolshoi, Sisters of Mercy etc. Saw Hawkwind once at Leicester University.

One of the low-lights of the 80s for me was being forcibly dragged to the cinema to watch a film about Neil Young. I wasn't the only one to fall asleep at this late night screening - I think everyone else was toked out. I was just bored.

The 90s passed me by. Apart from vaguely noticing Bon Jovi and Guns and Roses, and various Ozzie rock bands, and fusion abo-rock bands, I was pretty much asleep.

I didn't wake up again until my slumber was disturbed in December 1999 when Craig David and the Artful Dodger released Bo Selecta. Suddenly a new garage fan was born. Since then I've got into garage, R 'n' B etc. Still out of step with people around me who are still so f'ing white about music - da da da, do it on the beat, techno, trance, rock whatever. Gimme that funky, synchopatin' black stuff! I'm an ass-wiggler not a head-banger!

Jane

PS They's all deluded - Techno and Trance etc is all descended from House, which is descended from disco. Well, actually, all "popular" music is descended from american black music.

You bring a whole new gush of memories, Jane.

I remember my "dark" days (not totally Goth, but close), and even got a kick by delving into the esoteric at the time (I still do!). I listened to some of the bands you mentioned, but I was mostly into the more mainstream alternative stuff, like Depeche Mode and The Smiths. (Yes, I once re-colored my long, blond-streaked hair to black, spiked it and tried to look like Robert Smith from The Cure for a few months, wearing only black.)

I also feel asleep for a decade or so I guess, as I settled on "the pop tune of the day" for a while. Whatever was on the charts, I'd be hooked. But then, I recently rediscovered my love for smooth jazz in the last 4-5 years, from old crooners including the Rat Pack (Frank, Dean and Sammy), Perry Como, Tony Bennett, The Platters, The Righteous Brothers, etc, to new guys like Harry Connick Jr., Michael Bublé, Diana Krall, Matt Dusk, Billy Vera, Rockapella, etc.

Yes, Depeche Mode - the only recognisable life form ever to emerge from the primordial soup of Basildon.

I did a lot of weird **** with my hair. When I was 18 I took it upon myself to buck the trend and go for "lo-lights" - I probably invented it. I took the view that if people with dark hair could highlight their hair, then if I had light hair, I could low light it with black streaks. Hmm ... weird (or so my school friends thought - it seemed logical to me!).

I then went on to have a fringe that included most vivid colours of the rainbow (great fun!!). Later, I dyed my hair black, but kept the front bleached and coloured it with red and blue. After a few weeks I decided that I didn't like black and tried to bleach it back to blonde. Luckily, I was blissfully ignorant of the fact that you can't dye black to blonde or that my hair might fall out from such abuse! In the event, I had to settle for a rather strange orangey-brown colour until my natural colour grew back through.

Oh, and did I mention the cheap, home-done hair extensions that looked like a couple of ferrets suspended from my head?

If Alan was dead, he'd be spinning in his grave right about now!!

I'm so glad I was a complete reprobate, rebel and nutter in my youth!

Actually, not much has changed - and this conversation has reminded me of the fact that I'd still like some pink, purple and blue streaks in my hair - so maybe time to get the Born Blonde out and have another go!

Jane

PS I'm still waiting for knickerbockers and frilly shirts to come back into fashion. Oddly, everything else from the 80s has been resurrected, but not much from the very early 80s, which is a shame. After all, 80s music isn't really about Kylie Minge, Tiffany and Black Box - it's about Electronica.

Yeah - now I remember. Totally addicting game.

Nor I really - many of my friends loved stuff from Metallica and Mega Death, but it tended to give me a headache.

Funny story - I was at a party in San Jose (same place where we played Tom Sawyer - but a few months later) - these guys had become some of my best buddies.

The guy who was putting on the party had bought a keg or two, and was asking everyone to chip in $2 to help him cover the cost (normal administration)

Anyway, 2 serious rockers show up at the front door with two babes draped over them - I was with my friend when he answered the door.

They said they heard there was a party - my friend didn't know them (personally), but he said, "yeah - $2 each to help cover the keg - then you can drink all you want"...

One of the rockers says, "you don't know who the XXXX I am, do you? I'm not paying $2"

My friend says, "yeah, I know who the XXXX you are... if you want to come in, it's $2 - like everyone else"

The dude got pissed, and they left.

I said, "who was that?"

My friend said, "that was the lead singer for Metallica"

Funny.

YYZ? - you monster.

My favorite is Freewill. But we also played Jacob's Ladder, The Trees

Yeah, I too went through a phase where I listened to the Femmes, Smiths, The Cure, Depeche Mode, Duran Duran, etc... and dressed in all black. Mom hated it...

Yeah... lots of parallels here. I had an intense passion to simply "know" if there was life after death - not for dark reasons, or fear - just a burning desire to experience "the mysterious stuff" for myself.

I didn't accept stuff on face value. I wanted to know. Even bought a Ouji board (can you believe Toys-R-Us sells them!) and did everything I could to "break through to the other side"...

I can tell you now - it is no child's game!

I don't have definitions for what I experienced, I just know that there is far more happening than current science can explain. (After all, our senses only pick up less than 10% of the reality around us...)

Anyway - don't want to go into the fantastic and scary details - long story that lasted for several months (but I never did anything alone - always with at least one friend) - so anything that happened always had another testimonial...

Some of the guys who joined me thought it was all hogwash, and teased me for my esoteric desires - not one person who tried it with me teased me afterwards.

After a while I got rid of the board, and I don't recommend it - it's dangerous stuff that can get out of hand.

Two tough, and doubting friends (hard-core rockers), who thought I and another friend were manipulating the board (when all 4 of us used it), decided to buy another board and use it alone (just the two of them - that night).

Something very powerful happened and they both showed up to my house at about 2 am absolutely terrified - I could feel the electricity of their fear, and it even scared me and my buddy as we tried to calm them down - they were practically in tears (we're talkin' 20 year old arrogant hard rockers who didn't believe this stuff). They vowed to never use it again (and had already thrown the board away).

That sort of thing was a part of my later "1980's"... and crazy youth.

But I'm convinced that so many intense emotional experiences (music passions, deep friends, raw fear, love, hope, intense curiosity, rebellious natures, etc) are a big factor to one's capacity in writing effective emotional copy.

I find it very interesting that many of us share such similar backgrounds, and would have probably been close friends had we grown up together... we're not sharing main stream stuff here, but there are a lot of common threads.

ah zork..

"You feel a sense of urgency..."

and so a legend begins..

rush, police, led zep, who, genesis, bangles, yes, pink floyd, mtv, ac/dc, all the 80s stuff was great.. I remember going to the big festivals in so. calif, seeing all the bands ... the 80s were great..

ken

All this Rush talk is making me want to dig out my old Exit Stage Left album!

And Zork 1 - 3 is still available for those that want to go back in time. I downloaded them (somewhere) and it ran fine on my Windows 98 PC. Haven't tried on any newer ones, as that was a few years back, but I bet I could get them to work.

It's actually very interesting how a lot of us graduated around the same time, had a lot of the same experiences, and had that much in common in our teens, even though we were living all over the place!

John

What seems most amazing is that we were all Rush fans! I spent hours perfecting how to write the R on my exercise books!


Jane

LOL! I forgot about that, Jane. And our book covers at school...who didn't have fancy pencil-drawn band artwork and other doodles all over them?

That reminds me (a little off-topic from the off-topic, but still in the 80's) of my days in Spanish class in my senior year in high school (because we actually got graded on having our book covers done for homework once!).

Our teacher required us to do homework in our workbooks for a pass/fail grade: pass if we did it, fail if we didn't. She didn't care if it was right or not, just that we did it.

A friend of mine who sat next to me used to get so pissed at me, because he would do the assignments and get the credit. But I always seemed to forget!

Anyway, the teacher would walk around the room and look at the page in our workbook to see if we did the homework assignment.

My friend would have his completed assignment open and ready...and I would suddenly realize--I forgot to do it again! (Yes, I knew I wasn't going to South America or Spain anytime soon, and I was a teenager).

So what was my solution? I'd open the workbook and write ANY Spanish word in the blanks. Hola, Esta, Espanol, Donde Esta, whatever.

And the teacher would walk by, see that I had Spanish words written there, mark me as a "pass," and move on.

I'm not proud of my laziness back then, but at least I can laugh about it now.

John

Now wait a minute,
I never really liked Rush.\

John, where did you download zork?