Victor Infante
Portrait of an Adolescence in Record Reviews
“Suicidal Tendencies” (1983) Discordant and too young for this, this is the sound of
after-school fights and punched walls. 13 years old, my friend and I replayed
“Institutionalized” until the needle wore a groove in the vinyl. It was vinyl back then.
Everything seemed so fragile, like if it slipped form your hands it was gone forever. I’m
not crazy … you’re the one that’s crazy. This was the metal scraping on the inside of my
head, the sound of the impact of bloody knuckles on a bully’s face.
Oingo Boingo, “Only A Lad” (1981) Everyone said if you don’t get straight you’ll
surely go to Hell, but no one explained the difference between Hell and junior high
school. No one would explain why I was the bad one, why my clothes were cheap and
tattered, why I was on the outside. Why there’s an outside at all. What this pent up
resentment meant. You’re just a middle class socialist brat/from a suburban family and
you’ve never really had to work. Danny Elfman is laughing when he sings. Not
everybody can hear it. I can hear it. First awareness of orchestration and theatrical scale.
First awareness of changing time signatures. I don’t want to hit things anymore. I don’t
want to see people as things. This is where it all begins.
Talking Heads, “Speaking in Tongues” (1983) This. This is what it feels like to be
outside the body, outside classifications gleaned from some John Hughes movie, to move
in free space unconstrained by the opinions of children and the culture you suspect they
reflect, no visible means of support/ and you have not seen nothing yet. There is gospel in
the distance, looming closer and louder like impending high school. There are girls
ahead, and sex, the taste of arson in my mouth. The vocals are thin against the grandness
of the music. The voice works in counterpoint to melody, ahead of the beat. The off-kilter
voice is transformative. It reduces the divine to human scale. I’ve replaced the album
three times from overplaying. It keeps developing scratches partway through This Must
Be the Place. I come to find a sort of comfort in that. Home is where I want to be/ but I
guess I’m already there.
Prince, “Purple Rain” (1984) I bought the album for the same reason every other
teenaged boy did: I met her in a hotel lobby masturbating with a magazine. Bought on
vinyl, Darling Nikki was the first track I listened to, and indeed, for a few days, it was the
only track I listened to, feeling all the while like I was getting away with something.
Music filled the absence where the body thinks sex belongs. Listening to this on my
headphones was like having Playboys stashed beneath my bed. Hiding in plain sight. It
was only later that I discovered the freedom of Let’s Go Crazy. First awareness of funk. It
was only later when I listened to When Doves Cry alone in a room. Maybe I’m just like
my father/ too bold. First time I connected that constant, simmering rage to absence. The
epiphany haunted me for years. Still does, sometimes.
“Story of the Clash, Vol. 1,” (1988) Time-traveling, now, and I suppose I always had
been had been. 16, and old enough to understand the magnetism of music older than I
was. This compilation is new. I bought it on cassette, more manageable in our tiny
apartment, more portable since I was rarely home. Increasingly claustrophobic, I become
a ghost. The Clash haunted me, band I missed until it was too late. I took to playing the
Crickets version of “I Fought the Law” on the jukebox of the local coffee shop. It’s on
the B-side of “A Sweet Love,” which I never played. It was a joke only the local Mods
and I seemed to get. I drank coffee with them, and they introduced me to The Who. More
time travel. Joe Strummer’s guitar is the sound of my pulse. I hear it when I try to sleep.
It’s almost unbearable.
The Damned, “Phantasmagoria” (1985) Reinventing myself daily, sometimes multiple
times within the course of a day. At school, I was crew-cut hair, OP shorts and T-shirts. I
blended, but perhaps too much. Perhaps it was obvious I was trying too hard. Tried sports
for a bit, then stopped. Bought a black trench coat and adorned it with Elvis Costello and
Stiff Little Fingers pins. Goth one Saturday night, New Wave the next. No one seemed to notice.
Or maybe everyone noticed. It doesn’t matter. It’s all theater, playing parts until one of them
fits correctly. A friend played Phantasmagoria in the office of the gas station
where he worked, and I sunk into it, lost.
“Tracy Chapman,” (1988) The Columbia Record club sent this by mistake, and I failed
to return it. Fast Car is on the radio constantly, so ubiquitous as to be invisible. One day,
I put it in my walkman, just to listen. The cassette still smelled like plastic. I left it on in
the background as I did my homework, but soon, I was overwhelmed by the awareness of
poverty. She and I are in no way similar, and her poverty is not my poverty, but I forged a
bond with her need to escape, and its impossibility. Sobbed for hours. I told no one. I
promised myself to leave as quickly as I could. Didn’t know where I was going. Didn’t
know exactly what I was running from.
Elvis Costello, “Spike” (1988) Does all this blood-boiling youth converge to a purpose?
Does it forge us into the adults we will eventually be? Spike was the first Elvis Costello
album I bought newly released. It seemed older than its predecessors, the sound more
full. I was enraptured by the horn sections, the bitter politics. I could hear the loss of
youthful folly fade away, without any absence of edge. But it was difficult for me to
listen to, sometimes. I could feel my older self, on the other side of the song, singing
quietly to me, as though I’d be able to hear. Some day you’re gonna have to face/ the
deep, dark truthful mirror/and it’s gonna tell you things that I still/love you to much to
say. I still don’t know what it is about myself I have to face. Maybe it’s the sort of thing
you spend your lifetime unraveling.
Victor D. Infante is a music and pop culture columnist forThe Worcester Telegram & Gazette, the editor of the online literary journal, "Radius: Poetry From the Center to the Edge," the author of the poetry collection, "CIty of Insomnia," from Write Bloody Publishing, and a co-editor of the "Best Indie Lit New England" anthology. His poems and stories have been published in numerous periodicals, including "The Collagist," "Pearl," "Chiron Review," "Word Riot" and "The Nervous Breakdown," and anthologies such as "Poetry Slam: The Competitive Art of Performance Poetry," "Spoken Word Revolution Redux," "Aim For the Head: An Anthology of Zombie Poetry" and, most recently, "The Incredible Sestina Anthology." He lives in Worcester, Mass., which probably explains a lot.
Portrait of an Adolescence in Record Reviews
“Suicidal Tendencies” (1983) Discordant and too young for this, this is the sound of
after-school fights and punched walls. 13 years old, my friend and I replayed
“Institutionalized” until the needle wore a groove in the vinyl. It was vinyl back then.
Everything seemed so fragile, like if it slipped form your hands it was gone forever. I’m
not crazy … you’re the one that’s crazy. This was the metal scraping on the inside of my
head, the sound of the impact of bloody knuckles on a bully’s face.
Oingo Boingo, “Only A Lad” (1981) Everyone said if you don’t get straight you’ll
surely go to Hell, but no one explained the difference between Hell and junior high
school. No one would explain why I was the bad one, why my clothes were cheap and
tattered, why I was on the outside. Why there’s an outside at all. What this pent up
resentment meant. You’re just a middle class socialist brat/from a suburban family and
you’ve never really had to work. Danny Elfman is laughing when he sings. Not
everybody can hear it. I can hear it. First awareness of orchestration and theatrical scale.
First awareness of changing time signatures. I don’t want to hit things anymore. I don’t
want to see people as things. This is where it all begins.
Talking Heads, “Speaking in Tongues” (1983) This. This is what it feels like to be
outside the body, outside classifications gleaned from some John Hughes movie, to move
in free space unconstrained by the opinions of children and the culture you suspect they
reflect, no visible means of support/ and you have not seen nothing yet. There is gospel in
the distance, looming closer and louder like impending high school. There are girls
ahead, and sex, the taste of arson in my mouth. The vocals are thin against the grandness
of the music. The voice works in counterpoint to melody, ahead of the beat. The off-kilter
voice is transformative. It reduces the divine to human scale. I’ve replaced the album
three times from overplaying. It keeps developing scratches partway through This Must
Be the Place. I come to find a sort of comfort in that. Home is where I want to be/ but I
guess I’m already there.
Prince, “Purple Rain” (1984) I bought the album for the same reason every other
teenaged boy did: I met her in a hotel lobby masturbating with a magazine. Bought on
vinyl, Darling Nikki was the first track I listened to, and indeed, for a few days, it was the
only track I listened to, feeling all the while like I was getting away with something.
Music filled the absence where the body thinks sex belongs. Listening to this on my
headphones was like having Playboys stashed beneath my bed. Hiding in plain sight. It
was only later that I discovered the freedom of Let’s Go Crazy. First awareness of funk. It
was only later when I listened to When Doves Cry alone in a room. Maybe I’m just like
my father/ too bold. First time I connected that constant, simmering rage to absence. The
epiphany haunted me for years. Still does, sometimes.
“Story of the Clash, Vol. 1,” (1988) Time-traveling, now, and I suppose I always had
been had been. 16, and old enough to understand the magnetism of music older than I
was. This compilation is new. I bought it on cassette, more manageable in our tiny
apartment, more portable since I was rarely home. Increasingly claustrophobic, I become
a ghost. The Clash haunted me, band I missed until it was too late. I took to playing the
Crickets version of “I Fought the Law” on the jukebox of the local coffee shop. It’s on
the B-side of “A Sweet Love,” which I never played. It was a joke only the local Mods
and I seemed to get. I drank coffee with them, and they introduced me to The Who. More
time travel. Joe Strummer’s guitar is the sound of my pulse. I hear it when I try to sleep.
It’s almost unbearable.
The Damned, “Phantasmagoria” (1985) Reinventing myself daily, sometimes multiple
times within the course of a day. At school, I was crew-cut hair, OP shorts and T-shirts. I
blended, but perhaps too much. Perhaps it was obvious I was trying too hard. Tried sports
for a bit, then stopped. Bought a black trench coat and adorned it with Elvis Costello and
Stiff Little Fingers pins. Goth one Saturday night, New Wave the next. No one seemed to notice.
Or maybe everyone noticed. It doesn’t matter. It’s all theater, playing parts until one of them
fits correctly. A friend played Phantasmagoria in the office of the gas station
where he worked, and I sunk into it, lost.
“Tracy Chapman,” (1988) The Columbia Record club sent this by mistake, and I failed
to return it. Fast Car is on the radio constantly, so ubiquitous as to be invisible. One day,
I put it in my walkman, just to listen. The cassette still smelled like plastic. I left it on in
the background as I did my homework, but soon, I was overwhelmed by the awareness of
poverty. She and I are in no way similar, and her poverty is not my poverty, but I forged a
bond with her need to escape, and its impossibility. Sobbed for hours. I told no one. I
promised myself to leave as quickly as I could. Didn’t know where I was going. Didn’t
know exactly what I was running from.
Elvis Costello, “Spike” (1988) Does all this blood-boiling youth converge to a purpose?
Does it forge us into the adults we will eventually be? Spike was the first Elvis Costello
album I bought newly released. It seemed older than its predecessors, the sound more
full. I was enraptured by the horn sections, the bitter politics. I could hear the loss of
youthful folly fade away, without any absence of edge. But it was difficult for me to
listen to, sometimes. I could feel my older self, on the other side of the song, singing
quietly to me, as though I’d be able to hear. Some day you’re gonna have to face/ the
deep, dark truthful mirror/and it’s gonna tell you things that I still/love you to much to
say. I still don’t know what it is about myself I have to face. Maybe it’s the sort of thing
you spend your lifetime unraveling.
Victor D. Infante is a music and pop culture columnist forThe Worcester Telegram & Gazette, the editor of the online literary journal, "Radius: Poetry From the Center to the Edge," the author of the poetry collection, "CIty of Insomnia," from Write Bloody Publishing, and a co-editor of the "Best Indie Lit New England" anthology. His poems and stories have been published in numerous periodicals, including "The Collagist," "Pearl," "Chiron Review," "Word Riot" and "The Nervous Breakdown," and anthologies such as "Poetry Slam: The Competitive Art of Performance Poetry," "Spoken Word Revolution Redux," "Aim For the Head: An Anthology of Zombie Poetry" and, most recently, "The Incredible Sestina Anthology." He lives in Worcester, Mass., which probably explains a lot.