The Music Made Me

Music has shaped and informed my life more than anything else.  All of history has a soundtrack and the musical trends of the time reflect the political and socioeconomic climate as well as the popularity and effects of every drug known to mankind.  Most of us are able to associate our most significant life experiences with specific music.  Do you remember what was playing on the radio when you were dry humping your boyfriend/girlfriend in the back of your dad's big Buick?  What was that anthem you would crank up and play loud as fuck the summer you graduated from High School?  What was the first album you bought with your own money?  What did you listen to the first time you smoked pot or dropped acid?  How many albums can you sing every word to, air guitar every solo perfectly and even tap out every drum fill with? 

The soundtrack of our lives is endless and as varied as each of our personal life experiences.  Sleeping Horse Pills documents some of our most memorable music milestones in The Music Made Me.  Eric Karg (Nam Diaries, A Milwaukee Mugging) begins the first installment with First Albums, where we learn about his discovery of Combat Rock by the Clash.

Please comment freely and share the album/artist/band that will permanently reside in the inscribed, modulated spiral groove of your life.  As always, if you would like to submit something more in depth contact Sleeping Horse Pills at shpestamuerto@gmail.com.

First Albums by Eric Karg 

There are so many firsts all jumbled together stammering for a spot on line.  Several loom large as first albums for me.  The Who's Face Dances, The Go-Go's Beauty and the Beat, but today the one that stands out the most is The Clash's Combat Rock.  All allusions to the side, this was the album that felt as if it were written for me.  In matters of fact, it wasn't even mine.  I borrowed it from the library when it came out.

I played it as all the records were played in my household, on my father's Panasonic turntable, a model that had an accompanying tape deck and tuner. I brought it home one afternoon and set to listening, surrounded by the blue flowered bedspread on my parents' bed and the white motif of the rest of the room.  Before this, I would listen to the radio there. You know, Lipps Inc. Funky Town where I would sing along (with strong conviction) the chorus.   Tattoo You by the Rolling Stones.  They were the choices of whatever the local DJ's were playing at WSPT.  Or conversely, my sisters' albums; the Divinyl's, Duran Duran.  But the Clash was something I could call my own.  The musicians bedecked in camouflage fatigues on a train track for the album cover.  Bold, but unlike the posters of REO Speedwagon or Bad Company. Those other bands took the positions of musicians in the sales pitch.  They were arrogant and flagrant in their stances.  The Clash were standing, trying it seemed to share something to the person with the right kind of ears.  I (as instructed by my older sister) gently plied the needle to the record and with total inexperience and anticipation, absorbed the content.  I still do it the same way today despite years of accumulated cynicism.   I can't recall interpreting any distinct messages at the time.  I just listened to it this afternoon and it has lost no power.   Listening today, I can still see how my personal acculturation during that time made this such an important album.  And this day I posit to you that the Clash was so far ahead of their time in the sense of political rock, it has existed almost unnoticed in that arena.   MTV was just a baby at the time and you can forget the inclusive Rock the Vote. 
 

In no particular order:

Rock the Casbah:  It's seemingly casual with the topic, pitting the Muslims against the Catholic in a combat situation while lyrically being almost playful.  “The jet pilots listen to the catholic radio blare, as soon as the Sharif was out of there, they began to wail.”  Wail in this case suggesting that it's at this point where the pilots were to drop “bombs among the minarets”.

Straight to Hell Boys:  This was the most emotional for me.  The inner sleeve photo of the band set in a hut somewhere in Thailand.  With the punk style fatigues suggesting more in the way of combat, looking world weary.  This, coming on the heels of America's involvement in Vietnam stood out strong.  This was years before Oliver Stone did Platoon, and as a country we were still a little new at this kind of war.  A war in which every engagement can be won and the people you're fighting to save don't care.  Forty years later I still can't bring myself to say we lost the war.  But that's what it says in the books and it's a focus for rock and roll Brits.   The cover of the album itself was provocative while the song again, not in a judging way, calls into question the very nature of the human psychological involvement in a war assumed to be just.

Should I Stay Or Should I Go?:  A lot could be said about the inner workings of the punk social-cultural scene of the early eighties, but I'll leave that for a more qualified scholar.   For me, I spill more pounds in sweat dancing to this song than any other!  I'm including Ballroom Blitz!  Punk meets Pop in the repetition of the music with a demanding query in the chorus.  The song fit nicely with a boy who was good at football but not good at model airplanes.   I could gyrate as violently as was my want, while in tandem with overwhelming hormones, put the ball in the theoretical other persons court.  God I miss punk.

Sean Flynn:  Does this one speak to me because of the beautiful intro suggesting the Irish countryside?  Does something sad lurk nearby?   This is one of those songs that always seemed to be playing well into a reflective study after a purgative rock out session.   I have never listened to this song while listening to this song.  I am always lost in a reprieve.  I hope it's the same for you.

Car Jammin':  Pretty tame in my estimation.  A nice intro to the album.   Strummer explores his interest in the migration of island music into America's lower economic class and pairs it with the Raga and Ska that was so popular in England at the time.  I'm probably projecting here, but Strummer made music that reached a wider audience, and it really was inclusive.  He never seemed to judge the humble people of the world while at the same time, pouring it on thick to old people and their crumbling institutions.  So, I feel a little redemptive self forgiveness in this song, but it still maintains my youthful arrogance.

Overpowered By Funk:  Well .….not every song is a hit.  I wonder if looking back, this wasn't just a song meant to get down to without all the mental bullshit attached to politicking.  It kind of says it in the title.

Know Your Rights:  This starts the album off with a frenetic pace but yet it's still just barely contained.  This song is an example of Strummer straight from the heart.   It's a less revolutionary and more sardonic representation of living in a top heavy capitalist society.  Who amongst us has not been hassled by the cops at a traffic stop or been forced into community obligation that costs real money.  It's not about class warfare but rather about the dismissive and arrogant nature of man's behavior against his neighbor.  It's the way the Jones' are behaving while you're trying to keep up with them.

Atom Tan:  Reminiscent of some Adam Ant songs.  Fun.

Red Angel Dragnet:  This is the song that started the memory.  Not because of the content or its powerful message, but rather the experience I had the day after I brought the album home.  Now for those of you who did not grow up in the Midwest during the nineteen eighties, I will fill you in.  As a practitioner of Dungeons and Dragons and a listener of Rock and Roll, the number one danger to the youth was indoctrination to Satanism.   It was a bit of hysteria set up by some enterprising youth pastors without a flock.  I remember sitting in one church youth group after another watching video tapes describing in detail, the pitfalls of Satan worship inherent in Dungeons and Dragons.   Let alone the tsunami of backwards messaging secretly recorded onto the popular albums of the time.  I and my friends spent many an hour in the basements of our respective homes listening to Styx, Beatles and lots of Led Zeppelin!  We really scared the hell out of ourselves.   It was in this environment that my caring and concerned mother found Combat Rock.  After perusing the song titles, she found Red Angel Dragnet.   To my mother, this could mean only one thing;  a task force of the devil was working their way across America, gathering up undisciplined and foolish children who, in their cut off jean shorts were listening to AC/DC and swimming at undesignated swimming holes. 

 

Truth be told, this song is about the inception of a NYC citizen police force protecting people from a dangerous subset of drug using villains who covered New York like lice during the eighties.  Founded by Chris Sliwa in 1979, it now patrols over 144 different cites.  I met the founder in 1989 when I more resembled the persons he was guarding the rest of society from.  But thats another story.  My mother gave me a brief and stern correction and left with the album to the library in the belief that its very discussion was an invitation to the Dark Powers.  Best just to be rid of the thing in short order.  It was years till I was able to listen again in detail.  Unlike most of the music out at the time, or even compared to music today, Combat Rock hasn't lost a thing.  I'm listening to it now.