Send Me On My Way

A staple of any high school experience is your first job. My first job was working at a local mom-and-pop sporting goods store downtown in my hometown. it was conveniently located next to a hippie store and just down the block from an old-fashioned record store. Hours were flexible, it was easy, and one of the perks was that I got to work with many of my friends. My friends and I often worked the shift from 4 to close. We were never really busy and mostly got our "checklist" done early. To say it was a local version of Empire Records may be a bit of an overstatement, but it definitely felt like that to me. One of my fondest memories of working there was the small CD player that we would break out when the owners were gone for the evening. The small sporting goods store suddenly turned into our own radio studio.

Mind you these were the days when all of my friends were driving and having a CD player in your car was essential. We all had those massive binders with the clear pages that you would insert your CDs. You guarded your CD collection with your life. Just think about it, you had hundreds of dollars invested in those small, circular discs. Today we worry about our phones or computers being stolen out of our cars, but back then it was your CDs. We all would bring in our CD binders from our cars and listen away. These were also the days before you could custom make mixtape CDs using a burner. Once you popped in that compact disc, you had to roll with it from to track 1 to track 14. In these days of streaming, how many people really know every track to a newly released album? My guess would be not many.

One of the perks of working at this mom-and-pop sporting goods store was that former employees would come back and work on their college breaks. We had several of them. The benefit - college trends and college music. If you wanted to be a cool high schooler - the easiest way was to figure out what was cool in college. I remember working on these breaks and just soaking up all of their information like a sponge. I suddenly had to have Birkenstock sandals and vintage t-shirts. I wasn't going to the normal stores in the mall anymore, but to Hot Topic for the latest concert shirt. I was engrossed in Rusted Root, Ben Harper, and a new artist by the name of Jack Johnson. I would go home and immediately download as many of those songs as I could on Napster. Like I've eluded to in previous posts, you're always trying to find where you fit in during adolescence. I felt like when I discovered that music it was exactly what I had been looking for.

I have many great memories of working at that sporting goods store. It was therapeutic in many ways. Our own little version of Empire Records. We really didn't get a lot of work done there, but it was a chance for us to talk and lose ourselves in the music of the time. Everything from Stone Temple Pilots to Matchbox 20 to Nelly and Bob Marley - it was all there. I still have all of my CDs from that time and consider them treasured possessions. I'm also very grateful for those that were older than me and exposed me to music I may never have come across. I have been listening to a lot to Rusted Root's When I Woke recently, and it just brings back so many great memories. It definitely defines what I feel is unique about my generation. I feel like we're just all chameleons that could blend into any environment. At least that was always my goal.

A Trip to Garden Grove

When I was a junior at Purdue University, I took an African-American literature class. Purdue is a very, very diverse university, but at the time, African American students were a very small percentage of that diversity. After growing up in a predominantly white community, I was excited to take a class with students from all walks of life. The professor was tough but engaging. She also had a sense of humor and was open to discussing very sensitive topics in a constructive manner. During one of the lectures, she simply asked if racism still existed in our society. A very blanket, general question, but one that garnered some major silence in the small classroom. I remember that we had one Purdue basketball player in our class (he happened to be African-American). He was the brave one that spoke up - knowing that he would be challenged by the professor. He responded that he did not feel that younger generations perceived race to be important. His reasoning - television and musical influences. He cited MTV, BET, HBO, etc. He explained that so much of our generation's influence came from the media - not news sources, but entertainment sources. For one moment our professor was speechless. The media of the 90s was a melting pot of cultural influence. I could not have agreed with him more.

Posts up to this point have had a really broad focus. I've covered years, genres, and trends, but I want to highlight one album that I feel really defined my current musical genre loves. A melting pot of an album that can really be classified into many genres. It's also fitting that this album came out right before I began high school. Everything from the songs, to the lifestyle, to the drama behind scenes really set into motion my high school years and beyond. The album I am speaking of is Sublime by Sublime. Their third and final studio album with their full cast of characters.

Every time a song from this album comes on, especially in a group setting, you can look around the room and see its influence. People mouthing the words and bobbing their heads. It's an amazing mix of punk rock, reggae, ska, dancehall, hip-hop, and dub. Everything that the 90s exuded. I remember getting into Bob Marley and reggae after this album. I remember looking up what Santeria was on Microsoft Encarta (haha). All of the videos associated with the songs are iconic. I remember singing the songs with the team on the back of the football bus coming home from games. It seemed to dominate my freshman year and is an album I continue to go back to over and over. I wanted to be those guys. I wanted to move to California and live that carefree, Animal House lifestyle that they portrayed. It would be later on that I would find out that there was a lot going on with the band behind the scenes and why they never released another album with this crew. Bradley Nowell, the lead singer, would die shortly after from a heroin overdose. A common theme in the 90s. Nowell was even ejected from the recording of the album before it was finished because of his addiction. One of those times as a kid when you realize that some of the people you look up to aren't as perfect as you think.

I would later get into the other Sublime albums. This one is just so iconic to me for many reasons. It blended everything I loved into one compact disc. I'm instantly transported back in time everytime I listen. I'm a huge Jack Johnson fan and his cover of the band's song Badfish is one of the reasons it is my favorite song. I used to teach English and would have my sophomore students complete a 90s research project. The only reason I got one student to turn in his project was because he liked the band and the historical events behind the song April 29, 1992. I think he later dropped out, but I got that assignment out of him :). He made the connection.

That Purdue basketball player was right and is still right. We can become better people with broadened influences. We can exhibit one message to the world through many different lenses. Thank you to Sublime and crew for doing that for me.