“All my life, waiting for somebody.”
When Paul Westerberg wrote that line, I’m quite sure he meant he’d been waiting on a friend, lover, partner…whatever fills in that blank properly for him. When I first heard the song I was still in high school, so “all my life” wasn’t exactly a long period of time, nor was I romantic enough for it to mean anything significant. My desires for a deep connection didn’t go quite that far.
I’d been waiting for Columbia House.
If you read magazines in the 90’s you definitely came across that name before. For the low cost of one shiny American penny, this wonderful/delusional company would send you twelve compact discs of your choice. Such a deal seemed too good to be true, especially for us young teenagers who lived states away from any Tower Records and even if we did happen by one we certainly didn’t have the income to purchase more than one or two at a time. But twelve CDs was an instant collection, enough to show the world that you had unique tastes and sensibilities. There was status and social capital in that, all for a single cent. To complete this worthwhile Faustian bargain all you had to do was fill out the catalog numbers on the mail in card that corresponded with your desired albums (or sometimes there were fun stickers to attach instead), mail it in, and then buy “X” amount of albums at full price over the next three years in order to release your soul. Simple enough deal, but after four decades of living on this planet, I’ve never met anyone who fulfilled their end of the bargain, myself included.
Rarely ever did I actually purchase anything from Columbia House on purpose. Over the course of a decade, which included both their music and movie division, I purchased, at most, five titles. Their little hidden trick, which of course was clearly laid out in their terms and conditions that no one read, was that every month they’d send you a catalog, which was pretty cool, and recommend a title of the month. As a member of the club you had roughly thirty days to return an attached card and if you somehow forgot, which I often did, they’d send you the title of the month along with a bill for it. I got nailed on this from time to time, but because I was under age and without a credit card, I never worried about actually paying the bill. My mother was never happy about me receiving “late notices” with bills but she rightfully assumed that any company irresponsible enough to enter into an agreement with a teenager was likely expecting a lot of those bills to go unpaid. At worst, they’d just stop sending you catalogs, effectively ending your agreement. The easy solution to this exclusion was to simply complete another 12 for a penny card with a slightly different name. I had at least five different alias.
I’m fully aware how unethical this was, but damn I needed a CD collection to be cool and to their credit, Columbia House actually did their best to make me cool.
One day the music gods smiled upon my recently acne troubled face. The aforementioned titles of the month, something that hadn’t excited me when I received the catalog, was Soundgarden’s Badmotorfinger. When this arrived in my mailbox in it’s district cardboard box, I had no idea what was contained within because the so-called “Seattle sound” had yet to happen, and wouldn’t happen for at least another year in backwoods Maine. Oddly enough, the song that would kick off the whole movement, Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was actually released the same day as Badmotorfinger. (September 24th, 1991 should be recognized as a national holiday.) I’d been listening to “hard rock” for some time, notably the hair metal of the late 80’s, so I felt like I’d heard it all and was more than prepared for whatever Soundgarden brought to the table.
I couldn’t have been more wrong. When the opening wail of “Rusty Cage” blared from my speakers I was instantly hooked. This was new, different, and most importantly, loud. I don’t think I stopped listening to that album for the entire weekend, much to my mother’s Billy Joel loving chagrin. For the first time in my life, I had discovered something that was “cool” so I shared it with every friend I had, who thankfully all shared in my opinion that this album was amazing and game changing.
For the first time in my nerdy young life I felt cool.
What followed was an absolute deep dive into everything that was considered “grunge.” I devoured issues of Rolling Stone and the other music magazines that happened to grace the local drug store shelves. I started ripping the pictures from magazines and taping them to my wall, replacing the old Flatliners and Air America posters that once held absolute importance. Before long I was dressing in flannel shirts, ripped jeans, and tshirts, which was easy because flannel shirts were bountiful in central Maine. In those pre-internet days I devoured each bit of information I came across because this is what I wanted to be, not necessarily a musician, but at least someone who looked like that particular scene.
And then Singles came out, the movie that would allow me access to a Seattle I had yet to see or visit. Granted, because small movies like this rarely play in Bangor, Maine, it would be a full year before I saw it, but I did manage to secure a copy of the soundtrack (It would be only the second soundtrack I’d ever owned, next to Rocky IV.) and play it continuously for the remainder of my high school days. At the time I didn’t recognize the name of director Cameron Crowe, but it came as no surprise to see that he made another of my favourite films, Say Anything, and it’s soundtrack was also iconic. (By rule, if you had a significant other in the 80’s/90’s, “In Your Eyes” had to be one of “your songs.”) If I ever manage to meet the man, I will be sure to shake his hand and thank him for creating not just Almost Famous, but a playlist that offered up new music from my favorites (Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam), as well as some gems from bands I hadn’t heard of at that point (Smashing Pumpkins, Paul Westerberg) as well as one song from the band Mother Love Bone.
“Chloe Dancer/Crown of Thorns” is the reason I first became a mansplainer. Right now I’m ever so close to typing up that band’s complete history and their importance, but I’m going to give you readers the chance to Google it instead of listening to me if you so chose. That’s not an option I ever gave any poor girl in high school who would make the mistake of either asking me about the song/album, or offhandedly said they liked it. Such an admission was an open invitation for me to talk at length about something I only understood on the surface thanks to those magazine articles. Had the internet existed at that time, I would have absolutely been insufferable, likely taking over any conversation, more than I already did, and thrown every bit of minutia and trivia at the poor unsuspecting young lady. (This does not seem to be an uncommon occurrence. If you get the chance, please pick up the zine Music Men Ruined for Me by Alison Lang. It’s both hilarious and cringe inducing because I had been guilty of so many of those regretful behaviors in my life. One of the best life lessons I have learned is not everyone loves things as much as I do and learn how to recognize when they just don’t care what I’m talking about.)
But while Singles absolutely released my inner adolescent mansplaining ability, it also did something that movies are supposed to do… show you a time and place and tell a story, and I fell absolutely in love with Seattle because of it. When the time came to look at schools I most certainly sent away for a University of Washington brochure (“Us locals call it UDub”) as well as Puget Sound University, a school I knew nothing about other than it’s desired local. Regardless of my chosen field of study, I knew I belonged in that city. I could imagine myself going to the featured club, listening to Alice in Chains belt out “Would?”, or going to the Java Shop for my morning coffee. Once I found a job delivering flowers or being a maitre d’ at a local restaurant I could move into a building exactly like the one highlighted in the film and have neighbors like Cliff, Steve, or hopefully Janet. (Seriously, we did not get enough Bridget Fonda. Her career was much too wonderful to be that short.) I would live out the dream promised by Cameron Crowe and suffer the same trials and tribulations of his characters.
Sadly, finances ended that part of the story for me. While I would’ve likely gotten enough scholarships to pay for UDub, the thought of moving across the country was too much. Paying for flights back and forth would’ve been an expense I would’ve not likely managed, (plus the only engineering student featured in Singles was that asshole Luis.) But thanks to the film, I knew I had to live in a city with a thriving scene, and thankfully Boston University was an option in a nearby city. (I’ll get more into those early college days in the coming months, but for now, back to the film.)
Another gift that Singles gave me was the gift to see bands that I otherwise wouldn’t be able to see in concert. At that time in my life, the only real concert venues were in Portland, which at three hours away were often a bridge too far to cross. Combine that with the unlikelihood of most of those bands travelling north of Boston for any reason, and my chances of seeing them were slim.
Side Note: Alice in Chains did play in Portland once, opening for Van Halen of all bands, and sadly at that time I didn’t know who they were so I didn’t go. I bought tickets for Woodstock ‘94 solely because Alice in Chains was supposed to be there, but they cancelled. Sadly Layne Staley would die of a drug overdose before I ever got to see them.
But during the brief one hour and thirty minute run time, I was able to watch two brief performances from Alice in Chains, another from Soundgarden, as well as watch the barely competent screen acting debuts of most of Pearl Jam. At least they all got lines, something Chris Cornell was not able to replicate. And believe me when I say whenever I managed to luck out and watch this movie with a girl, I took every opportunity to point them out on screen, as well as share the necessary information that the in movie band, Citizen Dick, was actually another Seattle band Mudhoney, whose song “Overblown” was only briefly heard in the film and “Touch
Me I’m Dick” was not on the soundtrack.
I’m not sure how I ever managed to get a girlfriend, but it certainly wasn’t because of my ability to recognize film director Tim Burton as the director of the video dating service that one of the characters partake in.
Thankfully, I feel I’ve managed to age as well as the film has, managing to somehow be sweet and thoughtful, while holding on to just a bit of cynicism. I recognize the young man I once was, sadly closer to Matt Dillon’s Cliff Poncier than Campbell Scott’s Steve Dunne, but at least have the wisdom to look back at that time with fondness. Cameron Crowe would go on to make better movies, and some terrible movies, but with Singles he managed to capture a time that was important for me and encased it in celluloid so that I can go back whenever I want to revisit.
Some things have changed, and a decade ago I finally got to go visit Seattle and have it live up to the lofty expectations I had held on to since I was fifteen. I visited Hendrix’s grave, looked for a street mime, and hung out at the Public Market. Almost twenty years had passed since Singles, but it felt locked in time for me. What I wouldn’t have given to go see Soundgarden at a small club. Because you know what? Their music still fucking rocks.
