I first heard that Kid Rock song on HOFM, and it made me stop and listen because HOFM (yes, make the Ho joke if you must) didn't really seem to be a Kid Rock kind of station - Kid Rock essentially being about having casual sex, drinking and taking drugs, and of course about rock and roll, and HOFM is about doing good work for charity, pointless phone ins and lists, and knitting in a comfortable armchair listening to Dave Dobbyn. Luckily, the new Kid Rock song is pretty much about curling in a comfortable armchair, as it's a nostalgia song about the summer of 89 when Kid Rock was, yes, drinking, having sex and taking drugs. My favourite line is that one about about "We didn't have no Internet, but man I never will forget" - HOFM held this line up as if it was some kind of great wisdom, but really it's just one of the laziest slack arsed songs with some of the laziest slack arsed lyrics around. However, it is stuck in my head - well it was until the new Pink single leaked - because Kid Rock at least, whatever you think of him, could probably back up that he did spend the summer of 89 down by a lake in Michigan having sex and smoking funny things. Even if it is pointless lazy nostalgia one step away from holding a copy of TV Week from 1977 up and pointing to it going "Oooh, funny haircuts", at least it's believable that he did these things. I, on the other hand, spent most of the summer of 89 reading the Daily Record wondering if St Mirren could hold on to Paul Chalmers, avoiding getting my head kicked in various shopping malls around Ayrshire, discussing whether Kylie and Jason where really an item, playing tennis in the street and then avoiding getting my head kicked in again in the street. It wasn't quite smoking funny things, but my head was just as sore in the morning...
Thinking about the summer of 89, or indeed any summer, I really don't think I've ever had a great summer romance. If I'd had sex down by the lake in Ayrshire, probably a dead body would have floated by. Actually, as much as anything, I forgot I spent a second summer having a miserable time back in Penguin. This was nothing to do with Penguin, which was great as always, but to do with me and my own miserable attitude. In fact, I could have had a holiday romance, if I'd got off my arse. There was an incredibly pretty blonde girl who I could have possibly had some pashes with at the school fort, but I was fighting with everyone I was staying with and so never made it to Burnie to see my old school friends, even though they were apparently keen. I certainly didn't get to stay down by a lake making love to my favourite song (it'd be hard to make love to Indecent Obsession in fairness), but I did sit in a room for a month eating Coco Pops by the bucket load and watching one day cricket and yelling at Craig McDermott to bowl some stock line and length deliveries, before heading down to Cut Price Sams to buy some Sara Lee ice cream. It's a little bit harder to write a song about that kind of experience, not much rhymes with McDermott.
As for the drugs in summer part, well, I've never done that either, short of the obvious experience of buying a bag of candy lollies or Tic Tacs that you think is E, and you buy it and then instantly realise you've been had like an eedjit. I was the one kid in the four hundred that they actually got to with those drugs are wack rap stay in school oh my God adverts that we saw every day in the 80s. I never fell for don't copy that floppy though. Although, in fairness, I was once in a house that was raided, but that wasn't in summer time. That was in the middle of winter, when I was staying overnight at a friends house. I didn't realise at the time quite how different he was from when he was at school, until the house was raided while I was watching an early morning episode of A Country Practice and calmly wondering whatever happened to Penny Cook, and I had to go and hide in the basement for a nice long while. This was actually not a new experience for me, as once when I was young, I had to go and hide in a cupboard because the friend (boy can I pick em) I was staying with had divorced parents, and when a Mummy and Daddy don't love each other very much, Daddy comes round with an axe to sort Mummy out and the kids all have to hide in the cupboard until Daddy gets talked down. Which in fairness is a bit of a trip in itself. It might not be getting off your head on drugs, but there's nothing like crouching in a cupboard listening to someone talking about swinging an axe to really sharpen the senses. I have of course spent many days drinking whisky from a bottle, that's common place. That doesn't make you cool though, no matter what Kid Rock and his whimsy might say - it makes you a hobo. And you'll end up rolling around Salamanca Square getting smacked in the head by the bouncers at Syrup. You know it, I know it...just say no to scotch, trust me, my people invented it...we're evil...
As for rock and roll...well, I don't like rock and roll. I like Pop, and my only big summer rock concert experience was seeing Wolfmother last year at the Southern Roots festival. And I was amazingly bored, to the point where I started counting the stars in the sky. Even worse was the big rock posturing of The Vines, who had a song called Fuck The World which had the worst lyrics this side of Wiggle Wiggle by Bob Dylan. However, I did have a bit of a rock experience - not as much as my friend, who apparently got to grab a handful of Wolfmother singer arse as he postured his Led Zepellin tribute act show around Hobart. As I was bored out of my brain watching someone in the inside bit of the concert, who wasn't Toni Collette, a girl out of nowhere grabbed me, gave me a big pash, and then wandered off. It was probably as good as I was going to get, all things considered at my age. I don't have any really interesting rock and roll stories from the summer of 1989 though...I think I'm supposed to mention that I was really into The Stone Roses or something cool, but in truth, the biggest concert I went to in the summer of 1989 was Trevor and Simon, the hilarious (for the day) comedians from the UK show Going Live. We had to sit through a magician to get to them, and he was really rubbish, but heart warmingly enthusiastic. And musically, the only thing I remember was getting into was Debbie Gibson, which isn't very rock. So while Kid Rock was singing Sweet Home Alabama all summer long (he didn't put the second side of the tape on even once?), we were singing Turn It Into Love...Michigan obviously a very different world to Ayrshire...
Still, I don't know that I'd want to be Kid Rock...I like having the Internet...and I'm not championed by HOFM...it's really all over at that point...
No comments:
Post a Comment