Àâòîð | Îòïðàâëåíî | Ñîîáùåíèå |
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ginsoakedboy | 05.12.2004 23:58 | My First Time I have enjoyed reading all the “My First Time “ posts , so thought I’d chip in with mine. It's a a bit too long so apologies in advance :-( I had ordered three NME (New Musical Express –British Music Paper) cassettes in one of their offers . One of them was a mix of new music “Mad Mix II”. I think one was a reggae and one a blues compilation. About late 83. Anyway I remember vividly playing darts on in my bedroom with a mate one evening ,with the “Mad Mix” tape on in the background when “Frank’s Wild Years” came on. I stopped the tape and replayed it . It was so different to anything I’d heard before. It wasn’t the music alone, I’d heard vaguely similar stuff, but the lyrics – the story and the way it was told, the voice and that almost throwaway line at the end –“Never could stand that dog” – with that little laugh to finish it . I was heavily into reggae (still am ,despite Ribot calling it “shit”  ) and the only album I had bought was Boomtown Rats “Fine Art of Surfacing”. Anyway, I was up in the nearest city to me , 30 miles away (I am a country boy) and browsing through a record shop which didn’t happen very often. I picked up a Black Uhuru ( reggae group) tape and was just going up to the counter when I saw a section that rang a bell. "TOM WAITS" There were three or four albums there and I looked through them for the one that had “Frank’s wild Years “ on . I couldn’t decide between which one to buy. Now, as far as I can recall , an album cost something in the region of IR£4.49. I was 15 at the time and could only buy one. I bought the Black Uhuru tape. Walking out of the shop, I thought ‘When will I be back up here again? I know what Black Uhuru sound like, let’s find out what this Waits fecker is all about’ I went back in and exchanged the albums. . I didn’t even know which man on the “Swordfishtrombones” cover was Waits. I thought it had to be the heavy guy in the middle , because he was the most prominent and the big voice suited him better than the others. When I got home I was blown away. I would have been happy if the whole tape was like “Franks Wild Years” , but no it was all different music - each song different to the next , and different to anything I had heard before. Nobody else got it, it was noise, it was weird , he couldn’t sing. I loved it more each time i heard it. I bought more albums when I could, going back to Closing Time. By the time I got to University I had near enough everything I could lay my hands on. Every night I played a tape to sleep to. I carried themup and down fthe 100 miles from home to college on the back of my Honda 100 bike. I still don’t know the name sof a lot of the songs, they wore off the cassette and I lost the cases but know them off by heart as the internal soundtrack to my growing up. "Raindogs" , "Franks Wild Years" each was more brilliant than the last . My mate thought he was getting weirder- I thought he was getting better. My wife too has suffered , I met her six monts after seeing The Man in Dublin in ’87. She always put up with the ‘weird’ stuff , as long as I played some of the early stuff she liked. Every albumhe brought put , she would like 3 or 4 tracks, the more ‘ traditional ‘kind of stuff. In time though, she enjoyed the new stuff more and “Murder in the Red Barn “ and “What’s He building in there” are kind of “Our “ songs. This is probably a cause for concern, now that I think about it. Anyhoo, after much trouble getting in, myself And Mrs Ginsoakedboy wne tto the Apollo to see him (Him??) and she came out full of awe and has driven me bloody mad playing “Hoist That Rag” ever since. Now she is no longer scared of the creepy stuff she is mad into all his new stuff and reckons he is the best things he has ever seen. So anyone who is still with me at this stage, sorry about all that rambling. Aren’t ye glad ye never met me for a drink before the show!! |