One good thing about my car

NOTE: This blog originally appeared September 4, 2006

One man's trash... usually ends up in my car.

When my dad sold me the family's black sheep - a teal, 1995 Chevrolet Corsica with well over 100,000 miles under its hood - it would be an understatement to say I was skeptical. But I wasn't skeptical of the price of the car (one dollar), nor was I skeptical of the car's strange, lingering stench that seemed to combine maple syrup and cats (it's gotten a little better). And most of all, I wasn't skeptical of the CD player. Mainly because there wasn't one. There still isn't.

But I'm not bitter. Thanks to rummaging, I've been able to listen to music I never would have discovered had I not been stuck with the CD player's half-wit younger brother, the cassette tape deck.

Do you have any idea what its like to go into a music store and ask to see if they have any cassette tapes? Actually, it brings a smile to my face. If you don't know what cassette tapes are, give Google a try before reading further.

Thanks to this blessing in the form of technology lacking, I've been exposed to some of pop music's greatest achievements.

Here are a couple of my personal favorites from this past summer:


"Purple Rain" - Prince and the Revolution (1984)
Purchased: Goodwill Industries - Bakersfield, CA
Cost: $1.75
Personal All-Time Rank: #3

In all honesty, I bought this tape as a joke when I was home for a couple days. "Prince has been a weird guy," I thought. "This will be good for a couple laughs." But one June day while delivering a pizza for my current/former (it's complicated) employee Pizza My Heart, I figured I had nothing to lose and popped the supposed 1980s legend into my tape deck.

No less than 25 times did I listen to "Purple Rain" that week, and I've probably listened to it close to a hundred times in about three months. It's that good. It's over-poppy and it's that good. It's too-80s and it's that good. It's uber-embellished, super-sexual, ridiculously-raunchy, and sometimes grossly-pretentious.

And it's that good.

Good enough to jump from "Prince is stupid," on my all time list to the number three slot in about 40 minutes.

What makes it so good? What makes it so good is that it is a perfectly balanced album, book ended by the secularly religious (and extremely fun) "Let's Go Crazy" and the opus of the 1980s in the album's title track. "Let's Go Crazy" teases the listener before leading them into the stunningly different "Take Me With U", which contains the best vocal arrangements on the album.

"The Beautiful Ones" took me the longest to fall in love with, but the work's third track epitomizes how Prince could lay down one song after another, all of them good, and all of them different. "Computer Blue" and "Darling Nikki" close out the first side (remember, tapes here) and the songs are eerie, raunchy, and outright disturbing on some levels. I love both of them.

Undoubtedly Prince's most famous song, "When Doves Cry", opens the second side, setting the mood that takes the listener from the album's younger, nastier, yet somehow more innocent side, into a depressed and jaded-by-love side, where we all say things we don't mean and just want that one special person back. (Emo alert).

The song too famous to quote in this blog is followed up by absolutely my favorite song on the album, and that is "I Would Die 4 U". My favorite line: "I'm not your lover/I'm not your friend/I am something that you'll never comprehend." Amen, I've been there too Prince. This song is so good, I am willing to look past the lame 1980s pre-text message text message titling.

Almost by osmosis, the song seeps into "Baby I'm A Star" which stands as the album's rollercoaster, taking the listener all over the place before rolling them into the station to hear the album's title and closing track. "Purple Rain", the track itself, is grippingly reflective, and after listening to it, time and time again, I ask myself whether or not the album's sullen character will ever find what he's looking for, no matter how far he has to drive on his motorcycle to find it.

And while I am asking myself this, the tape has already switched sides back the beginning. "Let's Go Crazy" revs up again.

"I wonder what's going to happen this time," I often think.


"The B52's" - The B52's (1979)
Purchased: Streetlight Records - San Jose, CA
Cost: $2.50
Personal All-Time Rank: #27

You know what bugs me a lot when I bring up The B52's in a music discussion? Two words: "Love Shack." To a lot of people, it's the only song the band has ever done. Let's be honest. That song sucks. Every single song on the band's debut album is 100 times better than "Love Shack."

That being said, this B52s album speaks to me in a lot of the same ways Prince did. Unique songs in their own right, with each one complimenting the other. "The B52's" is also great because it doesn't take itself too seriously. It just has fun.

Take the album's fourth track "Rock Lobster." In all its silliness, the song's opening guitar riff and accompanying bass line would be a sub-heading under the definition of "awesome" in the rock 'n' roll dictionary. Juxtaposing a bit of rock and punk with absurd lyrics is something they do really well.

I can't tell you how much I still laugh every time Fred Schneider screams, "Watch out for that big killer whale!" Haha, you have to hear it.

All the songs on "The B52's" are good, but two more are great.

"6060-842" and the guitar strokes that this track contains caught me off-guard. In a good way. I don't know a whole lot about guitars, but I do know that I haven't heard these kinds of axe riffs in any other song. I haven't even heard songs by Hendrix, Clapton, or Vaughn that contain these types of guitar sounds.

I'm not saying these three aren't as good as the B52's, I'm simply stating that if you want to hear a guitar riff you've probably never thought of playing before, chances are it might be on "6060-842".

"Lava" opens side two of the tape and its a constant, easy to follow rock song that even makes you feel healthy just to sing along to it. The song contains my favorite line in the whole album: "My body's burnin' like a lava from a Mauna Loa/My heart's crackin' like a Krakatoa." Has there ever been a better song about the metaphorical relationship between one's desires and liquid hot, magma-filled volcanoes?

I haven't found one yet.


"Raising Hell" - Run DMC (1986)
Purchased: Streetlight Records - San Jose, CA
Cost: $1.50
Personal All-Time Rank: #24

I am white.

Before he died, Buck Owens and country music ruled my town.

I grew up in Bakersfield, the seventh most conservative city in America, and the most conservative in the state of California. Unfortunatey, one of the grand wizards of the Ku Klux Klan lived adjacent to my neighborhood when I was 10 years old. I have never been to Harlem.

And I absolutely love "Raising Hell" by Run DMC.

Now, I'm not trying to make race too big of a focus here, but I mention it because it shows just how important Run DMC was to popular music. The Civil Rights movements took off and eventually won because not only did black Americans gain support of their own people, but were able to convince many white Americans to wake up and fight alongside their fellow man for justice.

Ok, so I'll get off my soapbox for Civil Rights and back onto my soapbox for why "Raising Hell" speaks to me.

A friend of mine from high school named Stephen Albritton asked me if I liked any rap at all. I told him I liked Run DMC somewhat. He laughed. "All you white people like Run DMC. I guess you guys just aren't threatened by it."

And you know what, I'm not. I recognize the societal situations Darryl McDaniels raps about and I almost feel socially responsible. But at the same time, I see him as a friend while I listen to it. When it comes to the songs themselves, they can be angry at times, but overall it is enjoyable to listen to.

"Peter Piper" opens the album and is the group's way of saying "Yeah, we're here. Get ready." Pretty good cruising song, I must say. Me being an expert on cruising and all. Anyways...

I sometimes skip the second track, "It's Tricky," only because I heard it before I ever bought this album. Don't get me wrong, it's still an awesome song, car volume level on high is necessary for this one.

"My Adidas" is my favorite song on the album, and one of my life goals is now to memorize it, and sing it at a karaoke bar some day. I'll give everyone a heads up if that ever does happen. Video cameras ready, people.

I found myself singing "Is It Live" in the shower the other day, and the tape's title track is probably the second most powerful song on the album. The most powerful? "Proud To Be Black" ends the album, and it's a history lesson within music. I actually learned some things about black American history I never really understood before I heard this song.

Seriously. Here’s a sample from "Proud To Be Black":

There was a man - an inventor - who invented so well
He invented a fortune - for a man named Bell
George Washington Carver, made the peanut great
Showed any man with a mind, could create
You read about Malcolm X - in the history text
Jesse Owens broke records, Ali broke necks
What's wrong with ya man? How can you be so dumb?
Like Dr. King said, we shall overcome!

And not to brag at all, but the other day I turned to my friend and said, "The name's McDaniels/It's not McDonald's/These rhymes are Darryl's/And these burgers are Ronald’s." He had no idea what I was talking about.

How cool is that?