Tumbling Like Alice

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See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna
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Twenty years ago today.

Twenty years ago today I walked into Music Warehouse in Downers Grove, Illinois. After months of anticipation, the tape had finally arrived. 

Music Warehouse was one of the few places in the suburbs one could find truly good music and each week when we walked in the store we would stare at the handwritten new/upcoming releases board they had posted on the wall. 

I remember unwrapping the tape before I even got back to my car in the parking lot. I popped it in my tape deck and drove as slowly as I could back home. 

I remember thinking some of their best work was on that tape but overall, it wasn’t as catchy or solid as their previous songs and I was disappointed at the glossy over-production. Well, what was perceived as “over-production” in those days. 

And weeks later, I remember being seriously bummed out that Basketcase was in heavy rotation on the radio. See, I came from that inclusive and underground era of “punk.” Before the internet, it was almost a secret club. One where if you saw someone wearing a shirt of our community it was a basis for an instant conversation. So when it became accessible to the jockbros of the world, part of me felt like I was losing my secret world to the people I fought against. 

Sure, there were a couple of “punk” bands that hit the radio before them but when Dookie came out, it blasted the doors off of our subculture. Writing this now sounds extremely childish, but try and understand that it was a different time. When having two-colored hair and carrying a skateboard meant you could and would get assaulted on a daily basis. It was like intentionally making yourself a target for being bullied. See, we actively wanted it. We wanted that exclusionary aspect of that civilian culture so of course when I heard the band that I had just seen play in a tiny bar the year before now on the radio, sure, it bummed me out. But now it’s 2014 and those emotions seem like they came from a different person.  Because twenty years later, I can now recognize what an impact that band had. If it wasn’t for that record, the albums I came to love years later would never have sounded the way they did, so I have to appreciate that.

I saw them again that year on the Dookie tour at the Vic Theater in Chicago. It was fun enough and I remember being on top of the crowd and being dropped on a metal railing and busting my balls so hard they bruised red and purple almost instantly. 

So yeah, that’s pretty much all I have to say about that 20 years later. 

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