Dear Friends,
Well, I did not get called an idiot at work yesterday. It felt good. Perhaps redemption is around the corner.
It was a good day. I learned some things in our professional development session, had a nice visit with Granny, and got some writing done. Along the way I had some good conversations with Rhondi, too. I am so happy to be seeing her in a few days.
*****
Today is going to be busy. Lots to do in order to get ready for the trip. I have another article to write and a trip to the store is needed, too. It will all get in there and done. I just wish I had a couple more hours in the day.
We have a team meeting this morning, too. I have had to take a stronger role with my team and I think they are responding well to it, but we shall see how it goes in the meeting today and our planning session tomorrow. I have been a pretty hands off leader for the first few months for a lot of reasons, but I realize now it was not always a good thing.
I like being in charge. I enjoy sharing the spotlight with the team, but I can delegate if I need to and it is the time to delegate. Teachers can be a tough bunch of nuts to crack, but for the most part we all just want to do good. Do the right thing, you know.
Travel night tomorrow.
*****
When I saw Suburbia, my eyes were opened a lot wider to what punk rock and being a punk was all about. One of the bands that stood out to me was TSOL and they happened to be my first show back in the summer of 1985. They were also one of my first favorite bands.
It’s strange to think about, really, but there was a time when I would have told you that, without a doubt, TSOL was the best band out there. It was a short-lived time, to be honest, but it happened. Three things happened during this short stretch of time.
The first was I talked my dad into getting me a TSOL shirt at Vans in Metrocenter that said “Live your life, ignore heroes, fuck the system, wake up silent majority, see the true sounds of liberty.” Then I bought the first TSOL EP, the one with the black cover (soon to be written about), and then I bought the Dance With Me LP.
At that point, I felt like I had all the TSOL I needed. I had the shirt, which I wore a lot. I had the records, which I played a lot. And most importantly, I had scenes from Suburbia to show me what a show was going to look like and how I should act. Looking back, TSOL taught me a lot about being a punk.
Dance With Me is a great record. I feel like a broken record writing it, but again, I have to remind myself and you, gentle reader, that I’ve only picked records I love to write about this year. For much of my teenage years, I loved Dance With Me as much as any other record.
I still love it, true, but over the years, I drifted away from TSOL a lot. There was a show at Prisms with the Joe Wood version that really turned me off to the band. That punk-lite/hair metal wanna be version of the band just blew. I just about got kicked out of Prisms that night for being rude to the band.
Come to think of it, I think I did get kicked out of that show. Mushrooms may have been involved. I don’t quite recall.
Either way, I digress. Dance With Me has some of my favorite bass lines from any punk rock records. Mike Roche absolutely kills it on the whole record. I listen to a song like “Love Story,” though, and I’m just blown away by what he was doing. The way that Thom Wilson mixed the bass was killer, too.
Both sides of Dance With Me are stellar. Side A has the hits with “Sounds of Laughter” and “Code Blue,” but “The Triangle,” “80 Times,” and “I’m Tired of Life” are all excellent. Then there is “Love Story” which I already mentioned. Those six songs just crank, and they are over in 15 minutes.
A couple of things I notice now about Dance With Me that I never realized in the mid-80s was that TSOL were clearly influenced by The Damned. I never heard it before, but I certainly hear the influence of those early Damned records on TSOL. That’s a good thing.
The other thing I notice is that Jack Lloyd is a really good lyricist. I always liked his lyrics as a teenager, but as an adult, I’m impressed by both the words and how he varied up his delivery on on Dance With Me in a way that adds so much to how the record sounds.
I’ve written a lot the last week or so about how singers attack a song and I never realized how much Jack influenced the way I sing songs. I owe that guy a thank you. If you ever read this, Jack, here is a big thank you. THANK YOU!
“Silent Scream” and “Funeral March” really have that Damned influence all over them and then “Die for Me” is one of my favorites of TSOL’s. I miss seeing this song played live. I hope that I get to see TSOL again. We opened for them twice as The Father Figures and maybe The Freeze will get on a bill with them one of these days.
The last two tracks, “Peace Thru Power” and “Dance With Me” are both favorites. The latter kind of reminds me of “Darker My Love” which was one the Suburbia Soundtrack. Back in the day, I got them mixed up for some reason. I think maybe I was always hoping to have “Darker My Love” on something other than the Suburbia soundtrack. Who knows.
What I definitely know is this: the last couple of days of getting reacquainted with Dance With Me have me thinking I should sit down and learn all these bass lines. It could definitely not hurt.
*****
See you tomorrow.
Wake up AI majority.
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