Influential Albums - Day 8

Day 8

This is the eighth post in a series of ten documenting the albums I consider influential. My first post, found here, provides some insight into the rationale behind this journey. The first album I selected was the Soundtrack to Oliver, which I discovered in 1973 at about age 8. My second choice can be found here and was The Cars Debut album. The third selection was All the World's A Stage from Canadian band Rush (found here). The fourth, Duran Duran's Rio is (here) and the firth, Pink Floyd's Wish you were Here is (here). My seventh post about the U2 album Achtung Baby! is also up.

In 1991/92 I was finishing my degree at the University of Western Ontario (UWO). I was attending King’s College part-time while working more than full-time at East Side Mario’s (the first location, previously at the corner of Albert and Richmond Street, in London, Ontario).

This was one of the most financially lucrative times of my life - In fact, it was one of those financial bubbles of youth that one intuitively knows is unsustainable. Like any bull market or buyer-friendly housing market - you just know it has to end soon … but, as the old adage goes: “Make hay while the sun shines.”

I was managing the restaurant four nights a week for a decent salary, free food and beer. I was also able to bartend for a fair wage and cash tips on busy Friday and Saturday evenings.

At that time, tourists and travelers still used US cash in restaurants (the exchange rate in the restaurant was significantly less than the bank - and I would buy as much of it as I could). My girlfriend, now wife, who was also working at a restaurant, was doing the same. We both opened US savings accounts and in the Spring of 1992 took an extravagant four day trip to Boston that included a massive shopping spree - using only money from that account. Life was good. In retrospect, my parents should have been charging me rent...or I should have been banking more money for a down payment on a home - but, "hindsight doesn’t wear glasses".

Every other Sunday morning, I would pick up an extra shift. My job was to open the restaurant and then run the bar for the Sunday Brunch. Consequently, I needed to arrive by 7:00 to let the prep cooks in. As an experienced restaurant guy, I knew that the cooks were the engine of the operation and you need to keep that engine running as smoothly as possible to maximize output. For night cooks, this meant liquid lubrication (ice cold draft beer at the end of the shift). For prep cooks this meant keeping on top of their coffee demands and allowing them to play their music as loud as they wanted until the restaurant opened for business.

Their track selection became my unlikely introduction to a genre of music that would be a game changer in popular culture for the next five years - “Grunge”. It was loud, raw, fuzzy, unkempt and honest. Like punk rock, it seemed deliberately unprofessional and that was both alarming and refreshing. It was if it was loudly answering a question that I didn’t realize society had asked.

For the past few years, I had accepted that commercial rock, dance and pop music that was full of slick production but void of any real substance or genuine soul. Even the familiar rock bands on the radio lacked ... testicular gravitas.

I was fine with it - I was still buying CD’s and discovering plenty of great stuff from the 60's, 70's & 80's. However, I was increasingly being disappointed by lackluster efforts from bands that I had loved. Sure, We Can’t Dance by Genesis, Roll the Bones by Rush and For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge by Van Halen were okay … but…certainly not high-water marks in their discography.

So, every other Sunday, the restaurant vibrated to the sonic boom of music I had never heard before. Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, Mother Love Bone, Green River, Soundgarden, Babes in Toyland and Mudhoney. Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magik by Red Hot Chili Peppers & the debut CD from Mr. Bungle also made the mix because a dishwasher with the nickname “Boog” was a skateboarder into ska and funk. An unfortunate moniker that he embraced like a rare jewel.

The wait staff would arrive at 9:00 and immediately begin to complain about the racket. Most were female university students who worked there part-time. I realize now that I was being unfairly judgmental - but, at the time, I could only see them in context of every 80’s stereotype for the preppy, vapid, female antagonist - like a Heather from the 1988 Christian Slater/Winona Ryder film.

They were preppy, entitled, vapid and snarky. Obsessed by fashion and pop music trends, they liked Paula Abdul, Lisa Stanfield, Janet Jackson, Milli Vanilli, REM, Michael Jackson … and “Bohemian Rhapsody” (because “Wayne’s World” had launched it back into the popular zeitgeist...along with the annoying tag of “NOT” at the end of every sarcastic sentence).

A little power struggle would always ensue - with me playing the part of referee. Ironically, within a year, many of these Heathers would be dressed in baggy jeans & flannel shirts, romantically extolling the genius and beauty of Kurt Cobain, Eddie Vedder and Chris Cornell.

---So, that was a long tale and, chronologically it seems to be out of place with my last pick, Achtung Baby! There is a reason for this. I was, much like the Heathers I ridiculed - a late convert. I didn’t dislike the music that was coming from the kitchen on those cold and boring Sunday morning. I was just convinced, for a time, that I was too old for it. I was fearful that embracing a “new sound” when I was 26 would make me seem suggestible and needy - worse still, lacking loyalty to the music that I had grown to love. Believe it or not, I was going through a mid-life crisis in my early 20’s. It would get worse - as I mentioned in my last post.

That all changed in 1993. I was getting ready for a job I hated in our apartment in Brampton. I was chain smoking Players cigarettes (pre-nicotine loading for an awful lunch shift) and listening to Much Music on my television. Suddenly, the video for Jesus Christ Pose snapped me out of my funk. I sat down and watched it...rapt. Everything worked with this song. The driving force of an amazing drum groove and a wild, swerving guitar that seemed to careen across my speakers … all punctuated by Cornell’s leathery vocals...and lyrics that landed perfectly on this miserable day ...

“Would it pain you more to walk on water
Than to wear a crown of thorns?
It wouldn't pain me more to bury you rich
Than to bury you poor”

It seemed to bring everything into sharp focus. I still credit that song with my change in direction. A few months later I would be getting three more credits in University in order to get into Teacher’s College.

I bought the CD later that day … “BadMotorFinger” and it was part of my heavy rotation for two years. “Rusty Cage”, “Outshined” “Slaves & Bulldozers” are still three of my favourite opening tracks to get me through the first 15 minutes of a workout...or a long roller blade in 1994...with my walkman in my fanny pack!

Shortly after, I would discover Rage Against the Machine and, in the early 2000’s, members of both bands would form Audioslave (another 2 year aural obsession). Chris Cornell’s tragic passing in 2017 marked the end to an epic discography - One that was started for me in 1991 by a group of chain smoking, skateboarding teenagers whose names I have forgotten … except Boog.