It was the era of sitting on the floor of my childhood bedroom, a room covered in movie posters and concert bills, an ancient laptop computer before me, an action-oriented vampire script that looked too much like a John Carpenter movie to one side and my Aiwa boombox with a CD player and a tape deck to the other (yes, I actually owned tapes and, no, not ironically).
It's the gentle opening, the lull...
Foo Fighters- Doll
...and then, with the perfect transition only possible in a format where tracks bleed immediately into the next, it kicks you in the face:
Foo Fighters- Monkey Wrench
I'm in Jon Mankowski's ragged pick-up truck, speeding down small town back roads with the windows down and the music blaring. Maybe we'd been playing street hockey all day or maybe we just came from seeing Fight Club in the theater for the eleventh time. We were aimless. We were outcast. Long hair and Chuck Taylors (again, no irony and, at that point, not even the cool factor). And in that truck, on those roads, with that song, we were untouchable. And we could rattle through the entire post "Temper" scream verse, matching every word from the back of our throats and the bottom of our lungs. And, though we weren't singing about an ex-wife, our rebellion against our small town upbringing matched the final shrieking lyric: "since I was always caged and now I'm freeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!"
And, with it's violent end, the drums immediately snap into place...
Foo Fighters- Hey, Johnny Park
And I'm alone, driving the empty streets. I'm doing nothing wrong, but my eyes are peeled all the same for the small town police. In my mind, they don't understand me. In my mind, they target me for my uncut hair and my concert t-shirts. In my mind, I'm so very complicated and unique.
In reality, they probably only bothered me the one time and I'm pretty sure I crossed the white line that time.
In reality, they were wandering the same lonely streets. Like me.
Looking for trouble. Like me.
Getting by. Like me.
And, unlike them, I had a pretty epic soundtrack.