Music means everything to me and it’s been the backdrop to my life every moment of my life. I’m sure you can relate if you love music, if music stimulates all your senses and all your emotions.
When I was twelve, my sister was into the Go-Go’s and their song “We Got the Beat” was so contagious, with that simple, straight-forward drumbeat, that I felt compelled to grab wooden kitchen spoons and drum along.
A year later, I got a 7 piece Rogers drum set for my birthday and I was playing “We Got the Beat.”
About a year later, I was riding in the car with my mom home from school and heard a heavy guitar sound coming from the radio. I turned the radio up and was suddenly entranced by the power chords of a song by Iron Maiden, called “Number of the Beast.”
This was the official introduction into Hard Rock and it would rule my life for a little too long.
Iron Maiden had a mascot named “Eddie” and I would picture Eddie attacking the bullies at school for me.
The drums of Iron Maiden mesmerized me as I tried playing along with giant headphones on.
Soon, music was more interesting than school, go figure.
Music lullabied me to sleep with fantasies of destroying all the opposition in my daily life and capturing the “girl.”
Around seventeen, I dropped out of school. I had too many flunked classes to make up and missed out on the graduation present of going to Hollywood to the Music Institute of Technology.
Oh well, it was probably better because at the same time I was listening to Hard Rock, I began to drink.
Hollywood would have crushed me and my Rock dreams just like so many other starlets and wanne-be rockers.
So, as a dropout, I lived in a Volkswagon van and couch surfed.
LSD was now something I experimented with and my thoughts were getting more abstract.
Well, this was perfect because when I walked into a pizza place on a Saturday night to get a slice of pizza, I heard a powerful, melodic, alternative song coming from their radio.
It was around 1992, and it was Jane’s Addiction’s “Stop.”
Perry farrell’s voice cut through the pizza joint as if he was God speaking down to us about how petty life was.
Jane’s Addiction was alternative music on Heroin and LSD.
Perry Farrell was a guru who didn’t belong in any niche or style.
I saw them at the first Lollapalooza where steam rose up from the crowd because the moshers were so hot and sweaty which clashed with the cold air.
Life was getting a little darker now. I was starting to get drunk 5 nights a week and was angry when I was hungover. Plus, I wasn’t speaking to my parents.
For some reason, probably through the haze of drugs and alcohol, I thought I was adopted and hated them because they were different.
I even changed my last name for $48 bucks at the courthouse but it never stuck.
So, what better music to feel dark and depressed with than Korn and Limp Bizkit?
Limp Bizkit’s “Break Stuff” was every jock’s anthem to break stuff wherever.
Even though I wasn’t a jock and hated that it was called “Jock Rock” I really loved Fred Durst’s ridiculous rapping.
I think I loved the crunchy guitar and tight, funky drumming more than anything, and Wes Borland, the guitarist, always had to dress up way different than the rest of the band, which made them even more unique.
For the next decade and a half, I basically was in denial that I was getting older, 30’s flashed by so fast, that I was now in my early 40’s.
Korn and Limp Bizkit were finally not exciting, depressing or anything.
I had to grow up and get sober as well.
I always listened to soft jazz when I was hungover, but now the hangover was from my youth disappearing and middle age hitting me in unexpected and unwanted places, like losing girlfriends and jobs and getting a beer belly.
The demons finally surfaced when I got sober and wanted nothing but peace and soft trance music.
I wanted electric trance that felt like my mind was sliding on ice, numbing out the past and existence altogether.
I discovered one of the best electronic trance guys, Steve Roach, and his music took me to new worlds, fifth dimension, the Shamanic world of Ayahuasca and deep, ego-crushing introspection.
My life has always been part of music, and vice versa.
I heard once that heaven has music that makes your eyes tear so much with pure, ecstatic bliss.
I don’t want to die yet, but wherever there’s music, I won’t be scared.