I'll tell you this vision I have of listening to The Stone Roses. I can't speak to its veracity, as it's about sixteen years old, the memory, and you know how things like this get. But I was in my room, and I was about to turn 21 years old. The timing of it was coincidental. It's not like I planned to get deeply into this album in honor of finally turning the legal drinking age. But that's how it worked out.
I was spending a lot of time in my bedroom. I'm talking about my childhood bedroom, like at my parents' house. I was commuting to school that year, which really has a way of fucking with your social life. I was five months away from meeting my future wife so romance wasn't really happening in my day-to-day either. I was just hanging out in my bedroom, on the computer, and listening to The Stone Roses.
And I was drinking. Since that's what the occasion called for. Temporarily drinking alone, there in my room, listening to some good music, and getting excited for the days ahead. For whatever reason, the beer of choice that week was Coors Extra Gold. I remember the taste of that beer just like I remember every snare hit and guitar jangle of "She Bangs the Drums." There were three friends coming over in a little bit, maybe 10 PM. It was a Monday night, and Monday hangs don't really happen all that often. But anyone who was my friend and lived close by and had already turned 21 was invited to hang out in my parents' Florida room while we counted the minutes till midnight. Dave (23yo), Nick (22yo), and Andrew R. (21.05yo) were there. We drank the Coors Extra Gold that I had bought earlier that day (a fake ID being a pillar of my pre-21yo days). We listened to the Stone Roses.
We got a little tipsy, and then the four of us walked down to the Rockledge Pub (three blocks away) at around 11:50 PM. It turned midnight as I was sitting on a barstool. I requested to buy a round of beers basically in the same minute I said goodbye to underage drinking forever. The bartender did not card me. But I insisted on pulling out my ID anyway, and making her check the date.
Listened to the Stone Roses on the drive to school the next day. Slept through a few classes, including a religion class with the president of the school, who had a policy that you could be up to one week late on exactly one essay of your choosing each semester. He laughed when I told him why I was taking my extension today. He was a good dude, and plus my reputation as teen-turned-20-something alcoholic proceeded me.
I don't remember every detail of that day. I probably had jazz band practice. I don't think there were Masque winter drama auditions, I'm pretty sure that had happened a couple days prior. But at the end of the day, I made it home, freshened up, and then we went back out to the bar. McNally's this time. Dave and Andrew R. were back too, but instead of Nick (I think he was a chef at the time, so the night before being a Monday was probably ideal for him), Andrew's sister Jen was there. She worked at the Laf with me and Dave. I had a crush on her for a long time, and for just as long, she made it incredibly clear that the feelings were not mutual. We got pretty drunk, or at least I did. I got cut off when I accidentally knocked over a barstool. Which is probably slightly ironic, knowing now all the shenanigans I'd get into at that bar over the ensuing years, and how rarely I was ever cut off.
I remember I got back to my bedroom in the AM hours, and did the thing where I would look at the computer drunk with one eye open, trying to focus on the screen. I know for a fact that the Stone Roses were playing here too. I was loaded, and I went to the Masque Facebook page to check the audition results for String Fever. I did not make the cut. It was the first time I had ever not been casted in a show I tried out for, and it hurt. Plus, I was fucking loaded, so I listened to "Waterfall" and cried a little bit. You take the good with the bad.
I listened to the Stone Roses a lot that year. It wasn't the only think I listened to. It was a rough year of college for me, and a lot of different albums cut grooves into my soul on those long drives to and from campus. But The Stone Roses was one of them, and they were there for me during a somewhat pivotal birthday in my life, the day that I stopped being an underage drinker and started to be a legal adult problem drinker.
I was still listening to them about eighteen months later, after I had met Pam and we fell in love and I graduated La Salle somehow and got my diploma (eventually—they even denied me that on graduation day, the fucking losers), and a few friends from the Honors Program and their significant others were all headed down to Sean E.'s parents' time share, in Virginia, which was pretty far. Probably a little too far for an overnight trip, but what are ya gonna do, we were young. I don't think we listened to the Stone Roses on the way down there, me and Pam. Though I'm sure she was familiar with "She Bangs the Drums" at that point, my starry-eyed romance with her spurring monthly and probably questionable mix CDs with little hearts drawn on the discs.
The "controversy" of that trip—though extremely mild, and not even that in retrospect, but you know how 22-year-olds are—was that my ex-girlfriend was going to be there with her British boyfriend, and that the boyfriend was "uncomfortable" with my presence. Which I thought was pretty rich for a few reasons, mainly that I was going to have my girlfriend there too, and me and my ex had already had the conversation like eight months prior where we buried all hatchets and expressed admiration and joy for each other for having found our respective The Ones, and, most pertinent in my mind, I wasn't even the guy staying at that vacation house that had had sex with my ex the most recently! That was the founder of the Virigina-timeshare feast, Sean E. (sorry buddy), and for some reason British boyfriend didn't seem to have a problem with Sean being there???
There was no drama when we were all actually there under one roof. We drank a bunch of beers and played some drinking games and quite honestly just did things that we probably didn't have to drive six hours each way to do. But we were crowded around the Kings circle at one point, and the music was playing, a shuffle from who knows who (not me, I don't think), and the Stone Roses come on. And I'm like, fuck yeah, I love this album. And British boyfriend's eyes light up and he jumps out of his chair and goes "Oi! Fookin' Stone Roses! Fook yeah brudda!!!" and we high five and giggle and listen to the rest of the song and get drunk.
Took me about six more years to see him again, at a wedding. There was no mention of the Stone Roses. Mostly just pleasantries. There was a moment early on that wedding day when me and Sean E. were walking down to the lobby to buy some beers from the lobby fridge and we ran into British Now-Husband, and said what's up and kept walking. And I remember asking Sean if he was wondering what I was wondering. Whether British Husband was still uncomfortable around us, and at what point ancient hookups expire and are buried in the sands of time. I don't know if there is necessarily one answer to that question. It's probably different for everyone. But it's been almost nine years since that hotel lobby run-in, and the fact that I'm writing about it now in public makes me pretty confident that British Husband doesn't even remember who I am anymore, let alone care anymore.
The funny thing is that these circumstances make it so that I can't listen to The Stone Roses and not think about all the tiny little memories that have attached to the album like barnacles over the years. The process never really ends. Even just a few months ago, we spoke about a movie that portrayed a slightly fictional account of the scene that the Stone Roses were involved in, and the presence of "Fools Gold" on my copy of The Stone Roses finally clicked for me, now understanding the sounds that were emanating from that scene at the time. I listened to this album a lot this week and I thought about that Zoom in the same way I thought about playing Kings in Virginia Beach and walking through the doors to the Rockledge Pub and driving to school all hungover the entire first week of my 21st year.
I have a friend who recently told me that she views music like a little time capsule, that she hears a song and is transported back to another time. I like that. I feel that way sometimes too. I feel it even when I know that the memories are small and unimportant and micro-personal. I don't think Jen remembers that night at McNally's, I don't think Brother Tom remembers that Religion 301 class, I don't think my ex remembers her husband and ex-boyfriend bonding in that briefest moment in time, and I don't even think some of our stoned blogging friends remember being at that 24 Hour Party People Zoom discussion. But I remember it all. I remember it when I listen to the music. And that brings me so much joy.
GRADE: 4.5 pukes out of 5
No comments:
Post a Comment