Some Extreme Reactions to Music I Have Witnessed Firsthand

I am walking south on Lexington Avenue at about East 81st in 1981, three or four days after seeing Devo at Radio City Music Hall on Halloween night, which also happens to be the very first proper concert I have ever attended. Still buzzing from the show, I am dutifully sporting a freshly procured black concert t-shirt, emblazoned with Devo’s askew logo across the chest and the Boojie Boy insignia on the shoulder. I am about 14 year old. A complete stranger in his mid-40s with glasses and a cop-style mustache accosts me. “Yo, kid,” he says … poking his finger into my sternum, “ … fuckin’ Devo SUCKS!”

It is the fall of 1985. I am in the basement of my friend Rob's house out in Jackson Heights, Queens. Rob and I are hanging out, listening to some of our favorite music. His father, Mr. Bala, is down in the basement, too, but is what can only be described as strenuously disinterested and blithely tolerant of our audio shenanigans. He sits at a table in an adjoining room, doing some sundry paperwork while we bombard him with high-voltage airings of tracks by bands like the Buzzcocks, Kraut, Venom, Iron Maiden, The Clash and The Cult. He remains entirely unfazed and stoic. Rob drops the needle on the Bauhaus compilation entitled Bauhaus 1979-1983 while we repair to the adjoining kitchen area to eat some sandwiches. Four songs into side one of the album, the ominous opening notes of “Stigmata Martyr" start emanating out of the speakers. When Daniel Ash’s guitar starts squealing and scraping under Peter Murphy’s portentous incantations in Latin, Mr. Bala stands from his desk and walks over to the stereo. After a jarring scratch of stylus across vinyl, there is an abrupt silence, a brief pause, and then the first, subtle words Mr. Bala has said all afternoon. “That’s quite enough of that bullshit.”

It is the summer of 1986. I am a dishwasher at Ina Garten’s celebrated posh-food market, The Barefoot Contessa, on Main Street in Westhampton Beach on Long Island. There is a multi-speakered sound system that plays in both the front of house (where entitled patrons are paying entirely too much for scones and chicken-salad sandwiches) and in the back of house (the kitchen, food-prep area, the walk-in freezer and, in the very rear, the comparatively squalid dishwashing station). The sound system consists of a tape deck equipped with auto-replay functionality. As such, whatever tape is playing will, upon fruition, turn itself over and commence playing again. Initially, we staff are informed that the sound system is to be collectively operated and enjoyed. We are welcomed — nay, encouraged — to play our own music, in the spirit of fostering a permissive and convivial work environment. In relatively short order, this privilege is rigorously tested by myself and a colleague that works in the ribs, chickens & ducks station named Jeff. While I feel certain that Jeff’s brazen airing of some of his favorite songs by the Minutemen will be the last straw, it is actually a tape I put in — featuring a few gruff, energetic selections by The Jam — that changes everything. Halfway into a robust airing of “Funeral Pyre,” all music in the eatery comes to a dead stop, and our manager storms into the kitchen with a furrowed brow and the offending cassette clenched in her angry claw.

From this day forward, the shared sound system options become prohibitively limited to three selections: Diamond Life by Sade, Picture Book by Simply Red and …most upsettingly … the original Broadway cast recording of “Annie” (which is evidently a big favorite of Ina’s). After one particularly painful shift a few days later wherein the entirety of “Annie” has been played seven or eight times in maddening succession, “someone” absconds with the cassette in question. It is later recovered out by the septic tank, snapped in half. At this point, my fellow dish dog Billy G. resourcefully climbs atop the stainless steel sink to access the wires to the speakers in our section of the kitchen and disconnects them. For the rest of the summer, the dishwashing station provides its own boombox and we listen tirelessly to Black Flag and Iron Maiden.

It is the fall of 1987, and I have secured two shifts on the weekly schedule of my college’s radio station, WDUB 91.1 FM. Time that would have been better spent studying becomes slavishly devoted to plotting out playlists for same. I have a midday shift on Thursdays which I usually reserve for needlessly splenetic punk rock and a late-night shift on Sunday nights (when precious few are actively listening), wherein I play comparatively mellower fare. One Sunday night, I’m playing several selections by Kate Bush when a sophomore girl named Laura who lives in my dorm calls in to request a certain Elvis Costello song. Despite the track in question being a bit more rousing than the music I’m currently spinning, I dutifully cue up her request, as I harbor tragically unrealized affections for this young lady. Wanting to sustain the new momentum, I follow up Elvis with a pulse-quickening bash through “People Who Died” by the Jim Carroll Band — a song, I learn very abruptly the next day, that Laura finds so profoundly distasteful and offensive that she stops talking to me from that day forward.

It is the spring of 1992. My friend Sean and I are in his car speeding down the Long Island Expressway. Sean is driving, while I have commandeered the tape deck. I reach into my unwieldy briefcase of cassettes and pull out what I consider a compelling selection, that being the lone album by actor/filmmaker/author/weirdo Crispin Helion Glover entitled The Big Problem Does Not Equal the Solution, The Solution Equals Let It Be. The album in question is already about four years old, but based on Sean’s esoteric tastes, I’m assuming it might be something he'll dig, although it is assuredly not for everyone. I slap in the cassette and push play. A few moments into the second track, “Selected Readings from Rat Catching,” Sean turns to me, smiling broadly, and opens the sun roof of the car. A few seconds later, he presses the eject button, grabs the tape and flings it out of the sun roof into open traffic.

Comments

[the G]

great post.

[Dave]

Great stories. We all have those tales from a time when non-mainstream music was looked upon as lower than sewage.

In the 80s one of my cousins was listening to "Let it Be"- The Replacements.

My Uncle came in and said "I'd like to replace that with some music" and turned it down.

[George]

I can recall two such incidents involving my father. When I was growing up, he had a painfully limited music collection that he never felt the least desire to expand on. Invariably, family car trips meant the same Billy Joel, Bob Seger, and Eagles songs on repeat.

At High School age I was able to lobby for brief spells where a cassette of mine would be "tolerated." I would carefully craft mixes of songs that I considered "mellow" for this purpose. At best my selections would illicit no response from my father, but if he found something distasteful he would declare "this is not music" as he violently hit the fast forward button for random lengths of time or hit the eject. One of the only times I remember him being too shocked by what he heard to press anything was about a minute into World of Skin's "A Parasite & Other Memories" wherein he exasperatingly demanded of me "what the hell is this??"

A similar tone was used about a year later when he poked his head into my bedroom to inform me that Yo La Tengo's "Mushroom Cloud of Hiss" was the single worst song he had ever heard me play.