Back when I was in high school and everyone was listening to classic rock and jam bands, and inhaling as much pot as they possibly could out at the stop sign* between classes, I was having other ideas about what constituted good music. What I considered good music had an edge, a sense of humor, and provided a suitable vehicle for having a spaz. In those days when I would do things like try to wear as many patterns as I could at once (fishnet, a few plaids, paisley, stripes, and a hat!), my soundtrack was The Dead Milkmen, The Mr. T Experience, They Might Be Giants, and Robyn Hitchcock. When I was feeling mellower, it was The Smiths and Depeche Mode, which brought some heat from my more-alternative-than-thou friends who would make fun of my stereotypically doom and gloom taste in music. What I never told them was that The Smiths and Depeche Mode always put me in a really good mood. Try as I may, I could never take it seriously, and to this day I listen to The Smiths with a big smile on my face.
When I needed to sit alone in my room with my doom and gloom and set things on fire, I listened to The Cure or maybe Dinosaur Jr.. When I was so doomed and gloomed that I couldn’t even be bothered to set things on fire, it was Mozart’s Requiem and Chopin. I was classically trained on piano, so there was that side of things, too.
The point in all of this, is that from the time I knew that there was music outside of the mainstream, that was where I went, on the edge, but on a silly edge. (Granted, They Might Be Giants are now about as mainstream-nerd as it gets, but this was 1990 and things were different. Technically it was still the eighties and dork chic was still a good ten years off.) The musical face I showed the world was one that sat atop a lot of leather and combat boots, and although I no longer shave random parts of my head and pierce my own ears, that part of my musical world is still alive and well.
But, beyond all of this, there has always been a shadow side to my musical proclivities. That shadow is 70s gold. Chicago, Fleetwood Mac, Steely Dan, The Carpenters. It is a long, gold shadow, and it all makes me happy in a different way, a way that is rooted beyond explanation, like the happy of peeling plastic. This deeply rooted happyhappy, coupled with walking into the bedroom one night recently and finding that Scott had fallen asleep watching something about ABBA, plus the instant gratification of iTunes, found me driving around doing some errands today having a damn good time blasting ABBA with the windows and sunroof open.
I am on an ABBA kick now, and you know what? I fucking LOVE ABBA. They made irresistibly catchy songs, their accents are adorable, and I DEFY you to listen to Fernando and not kind of enjoy having it stuck in your head for a week. ABBA. So there. And besides, when has anything bad ever come out of Sweden? Ikea? The Swedish Chef?
Anyway, because I am a nice person, if I have music up loud in my car and the windows open, I will turn it down when I am driving on a residential street or when I come to a stoplight. I figure I don’t want to hear anyone else’s crappy music, and probably no one else wants to hear mine. Besides, to anyone else, the stuff I usually listen to in my car would come out as a big blast of indiscernible noise and that is annoying.
Alas, today as I was driving around blasting ABBA, I came to a stoplight not far from my house, and forgot to turn down the volume until I had been stopped for a few moments. Before I could dial it down, all at once I felt some one looking at me, saw the man in the lane next to me in the convertible grinning, and realized how thoroughly ridiculous I looked in my funny little red car and denim overalls-dress, joyfully bouncing along to what was undeniably and unmistakably Dancing Queen blaring from my windows. Turning down the volume at that point felt like a downer since Mr. Convertible was enjoying my antics, and really so was I. So, I fidgeted with my water bottle instead of the dial, and just sat there smirking until the light changed. The Dancing Queen drove away smiling and so did Mr. Convertible and that, my friends, is pure gold.
*It was illegal to smoke (anything) on school grounds. The spot closest to the building that was technically off school grounds was a stop sign at one of the entrances to the student parking lot, so this is where student smoking transpired. Thus, in my high school’s vernacular, “going to the stop sign,” meant going out for a smoke. And no, as a matter of fact, it did not occur to me until just now the poetry of all of that smoking going on under a sign that says STOP.
my first memory of being sneered at by the popular kids for being severely out-of-touch comes from 2nd grade when a girl in my class asked me who my favorite band was and i said ABBA.
that being said, i’ve been meaning to download all my old ABBA favorites ever since the whole Mama Mia craze hit. the movie was bad but it reminded me how good the music is. perhaps some Knowing Me, Knowing You would help the boxes get unpacked faster.
p.s. my doom & gloom/burning things music was always Pink Floyd. cliche, i know, but i sang/wailed along with all the passion and madness that a 15-year-old middle class white girl could muster.
You should do it. ABBA is great moving music. (And congrats on the house, btw! Post pictures!) Last weekend I was helping my mom sort through her closets in preparation for her move next month, and our soundtrack was ABBA Gold. It worked out very, very well. She generated twelve big bags of clothes, shoes and handbags to give away.
Funny, one of the things I didn’t get to in the post were the countless afternoons I spent listening to The Wall all the way through. It paid off though: the summer after my freshman year of college, my friends and I wrote a parody of the whole album entirely via email. Ah, back in the Unix days. Good old 90s.