So... Alright - Life Changing Moments

Episode Date: December 26, 2023

Have you ever thought about the moments that changed the course of your life? The ones that set on you on the path to who you are now? Sponsored by FIRST Go to http://roosterteeth.com/signup to get FIRST for $5.99 a month or $4.99 a month on a yearly plan! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So, I've been thinking a lot about, I don't know, how I got my start in life in a lot of different ways. And I talk a lot about music on this and other podcasts because music is really probably the most important, I guess, like, the most important release that I have in terms of letting off steam or enjoying something. I prefer it to video games or books or TV or movies or anything really. And I like the awesome thing about music is the awesome thing about music in the modern age is that you can take it anywhere. If listen to music on my bike ride, listen to music in my car, listen to music, walking, listen to music while I'm brushing my teeth in the morning. It wasn't, it wasn't the case a hundred years ago. You'd have to,

you had to go through a lot of effort to go hear music or make it yourself via the piano or whatever. But now we have it on us at all times. And it has definitely become the biggest form of entertainment that I have consumed throughout the course of my life. And I was thinking the other day about how I got there, like how it became so important to me. And so I've been trying to retrace the steps of my musical fandom to the beginning of my life to today. I think I can pinpoint the moment it all began to a pizza inn in Beaverton, Oregon in, I want to say 1983 or so. In my head, it's a little earlier than that, but I was looking at release dates and so it can't be. But apparently in 1983,

I remember I used to love to go to this pizza inn. It was one of those glorious 80s sit-down pizza restaurants like Pizza Hut used to be, Godfather's Pizza used to be, Pizza Inn used to be. It really was a different experience to get pizza in the early 80s and late 70s than it is today. And there was this Pizza Inn in Beaverton, Oregon, where we used to live that I would beg my mom to go to. And I would save up my money

and there were three places that I could spend my money that were so exciting to me. It was the only three things in the world I cared about in 1983. It was a gumball machine. Easy. That was my dessert after pizza. There was a sit down arcade machine that had joust in it. And I think I was actually playing. I lived in Oregon from 1980 to 1983. And so I remember I was around, I think I was around seven when they got the joust machine in the pizza in by our house. And it was one of those sit down where you were two table, two chairs and you look down on it. And it was the first video game I ever played. And I did not like it. And to this day, I still do not like joust. like Joust. But when you're seven years old and you've got a dollar fifty burning a hole in your pocket and very limited ways to spend it, you make do right. So I played a lot of Joust, even though I wasn't a fan of it. I certainly wasn't good at it. Eventually, they replaced that Joust machine

with a Pac-Man machine. And I was very happy. And then I discovered I really did like video games. I just didn't like Joust. The other thing they had was a jukebox. And I'm assuming I used to play songs before this album came out. I just remember getting so excited to go to the Pizza Inn because they had Quiet Riot's Metal Health album on the jukebox. And this would have been probably early 1983, early to mid 1983. And I absolutely absolutely as the first music i remember like really loving they had a bunch of just absolute at least for seven-year-old jeff they had a bunch of awesome awesome songs that i was super into songs like if you if if you don't know who uh quiet riot is you should probably it was founded by randy rhodes if you don't know who randy is, you should probably. It was founded by Randy Rhoads. If you

don't know who Randy Rhoads is, he's dead now, but he was a guitarist and he was instrumental in Ozzy's career. Anyway, on this album, they had three huge songs. And I think I should actually get into the history of Quiet Riot at some point, because like I said, it was founded by Randy Rhoads and Kelly Garney. And then they broke up at some point and got back together i think they were together from 73 to like 81 and then they reformed and then had metal health metal health came out and that was a huge hit and kind of gave them new life uh however that album had three just absolute bangers on it it had metal health bang your head which was their song, and then it had Come On, Feel the Noise and Mama We're All Crazy Now. Those three songs were the

only three songs on earth to me. Come On, Feel the Noise being by far my favorite. I learned many, many, many years later that Come On, Feel the Noise and Mama We're All Crazy Now were actually both covers. I didn't know that. They weren't actual Quiet Riot songs. They were from a glam rock band called Slade. And I've heard the original versions, and they're pretty fucking awesome in their own right. I wonder how Slade feels about the success that Quiet Riot had with their songs, because I think that Metal Health album went platinum like six times in the US. It was a way bigger hit, I think, than anything Slade had. Anyway, these were awesome songs. And they're the first songs I remember really identifying with and loving. And so much so that I would get excited to go to this pizza in in

Beaverton so that I could get gum, suffer through joust, and then listen to hopefully my three favorite songs. Three favorite. The only three songs I think I liked at that point. Anyway, so it turns out my love of video games, candy, and music probably all cemented in a little pizza restaurant in Oregon in the early, early 1980s. But it did not stop there. I remember that year, that Christmas, I had enough money. I wanted to buy my first album. I was really excited about it. I really wanted to go get it.

So I begged my mom to take me to the mall, to the Camelot Music in the mall. And she took me and I bought the vinyl of Metal Health. And I think I still have it. I've held on to it my entire life. I've carried it around with me. I don't have it at my fingertips at the moment, but I'm pretty sure it's in my vinyl collection right behind me. I'm going to go look for it at some point. And I wore that thing out. The next album I got that changed my life was Hall & Oates Rock & Soul Part One. And I don't know if you are familiar with Rooster Teeth and Achievement Hunter, but Hall & Oates was actually a big part of Achievement Hunter in the early days. Hall & Oates and Genesis and Phil Collins and Randy Newman were all... That was the soundtrack

of the first 10 years of my work in Achievement Hunter. To this day, I absolutely love Hall & Oates. It breaks my heart to see them having this very public flame out of a relationship right now. I think it's been tenuous for years. I get the impression that Daryl Hall is quite difficult. I don't know. That's just what I'm reading in the trades, as they say. Real bummed out that they're suing each other right now. But anyway, that album changed my life. It was actually the first concert I ever went to in my life was to see Hall & Oates on my birthday when I was 11. I think it was the big Bam Boom tour. And so that was a foundational moment for me. But there was another, the first tape I ever got, I remember I got a tape player. And it came with two tapes. It came with John

Cougar Mellencamp, American Fool, which I really only loved for Jack and Diane, which was a song that I would listen to when I was a kid. And it made me want to cry in a good way. Like it was I was discovering nostalgia. I was like a seven, eight, nine year old kid. Right. And I'm listening to this nostalgic song at about a guy looking back at this, you know, looking back at this high school first love and telling this story about this, this sweet relationship that they had as they were growing up. And, you know, I'm like, I haven't even hit puberty yet. And I just, I remember just being so taken aback by the emotion and I could just feel like the song made me feel things. And I didn't, I hadn't had that yet. I mean, I'd been pumped listening to Quiet Riot, right? And I had absolutely been blown away

by just the beauty of Hollow Notes music and how much I love to sing it. And I think Hollow Notes was probably the first band where I actually bothered to learn the lyrics to, right? But there was just something about that Jack and Diane song that just stuck with me. It was so like, it was so sweet and bittersweet and just like emotionally evocative and i think that's the

song that taught me that music can can be a little bit more than just background noise right but the other tape i got and i looked it up to see if i could find it to see if it still exists and it i was so happy to say that it does it was called called Party Time 50s. And you can actually buy it on Amazon still. I'm looking at the tape cover. It's blowing my fucking mind. It had like an old pickup truck on the front of it. And it says baby. It's on the front of it. It says Baby Boomer Classics Party Time 50s Chrome Tape. 12 all-timers for rocking around the clock, and it had Let's Have a Party by Wanda Jackson, which is still one of my favorite songs to this day.

I would listen to that song over and over and over and over again. And if you've never heard Let's Have a Party by Wanda Jackson, you really should. I'm gonna put most of this stuff up on the So All Right playlist, so if you wanna hear any of this music and you don't wanna bother looking for it yourself,

just go to Spotify, look for the So Alright playlist. The podcast is on there as well, but there's also a music playlist that you can find. I'm going to put all this on there, but it had the great Wanda Jackson on it. It had That'll Be the Day by the Crickets. It had Wake Up Little Susie, which I also loved. It had Teenager in Love by Dion and the Belmonts,

which I remember my stepfather was a drag racer and every weekend we would have to go out of town and we would go to Gainesville or wherever to go to the drag races. Like we used to go to, the Gainesville had the Gator Nationals. I remember we'd go there all the time. And I, this was the tape I would take with me and I would just listen to Why Must I Be a Teenager in Love over and over again and just dream of the day when I would be a teenager and then I could fall in love. I'm like 10, you know, but I was so excited to understand

what that felt like someday. I remember hearing the song and just being so excited about the, about being old enough to experience those things, right? It had Mac the Knife by Bobby Darin, which I ended up, I mean, it's an awesome song, but it ended up becoming kind of important to me in different ways down the road as I learned about Three Penny Opera, as I learned about the Pyrogene, as I learned a lot about theater, as I learned about Bertolt Brecht, who I actually am a big fan of. He wrote Three Penny Opera. Anyway, that's a whole...

I'm going to get far too distracted talking about Brecht and Three Penny Opera and Pyrogene and all of that. So this episode of So All Right is brought to you by Rooster Teeth First. To put it simply, a first membership is the best way you can support this podcast. Well, I guess the very best way you can support this podcast is just to listen to it. But the very second best way you can support this podcast is to sign up for Rooster Teeth first. And it's also the best way to hear the ad free version of this guy. If you don't ever want to hear me give this spiel to you again, you don't have to. You can sign up for first.

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See what we have to offer. If you think it's interesting, if you think it could provide value, if you want to support So Alright, maybe sign up for a first membership. I'd sure appreciate it. Thanks a lot. All right. This episode is brought to you by Peloton. Forget the pressure to be crushing your workout on day one. Just start moving with the Peloton

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like that one song by uh by john cougar mellencamp but it was really this party time 50s tape that got the most play for me, this and Hollow Notes. And I never, I didn't have a Hollow Notes tape. I only had them on vinyl. So I listened to this Party Time 50s tape over and over and over again. I remember going on road trips with my mom, or I would just be listening to it in the back and just flipping the tape every 45 minutes or whatever, constantly just running down batteries, listening to the same like 12 songs over and over and over again. And that was what music was to me. I think I was still listening to party time 50s pretty consistently going into high school. And I remember high school is when things kicked

into another gear for me. It's when I discovered counterculture. It's when I discovered that music could be provocative and evocative and different. And I owe all of that to a guy, I'm not going to dox him, but a friend of mine in high school, a guy named Brian, who but a friend of mine in high school, a guy named Brian, who was a really, really smart guy. Really, really smart guy. He went on, grew up very poor and humble in Alabama.

I think that's why he and I hit it off. We were both kind of misfits, kind of outsiders. I had a different friend group. He had a different friend group. But for something about, there was just a connection between us, I remember. I remember when I first started writing short stories, I would give them to him to read and no one else. And to this day, I don't know why. I think I just respected him. I knew he was a lot smarter than me. He was a straight-A student. He grew up, like I said, very humbly, had one of those situations

where he was raised, like he had a sister who lived in town that he would go visit every once in a while. And then I think he was in high school when he found out that his sister was actually his mother and that he had been raised by his grandma and was still being raised by his grandmother his whole life. Like that kind of situation. He taught me a lot. He taught me about Dun counterculture. And he did that through music and literature and really through punk rock, which was awesome. Because when I was seven or eight years old, talk about formative memories. When I was seven or eight years old, I remember I was on a trip to Annapolis, Maryland, visiting some family. And I was with my grandfather at the time, my stepdad's dad. And we went to a bookstore on just like a sunny summer day. I was a big, it was a big reader, even at a very early age. And he took me to a bookstore. And in the back in the magazines, there was a kid who was, I don't know, probably 17. And he had Liberty spikes. And he had leather jacket with, I don't remember now, but with bands on it. It had, he had a spike collar. He was wearing combat boots and bondage pants.

And I just remember thinking, who is this and what is he doing? And I asked my, I remember asking my grandfather, what is that guy? And he was like, I was just a, just a, just a young guy. He didn't give me some bullshit answer. And I just stared at that kid. He had no idea. I just remember being behind him, like pretending to look at a book and just staring at that kid and thinking like, I don't know what's going on, but I want to be a part of it. I don't know what that is. I don't know what he's doing. I don't know what he's representing, but I was so attracted to it. And I was fascinated by it and him. And I remember after he left,

I ran over to pick up the magazine to see what he was even reading. And it was, I think it was probably too early to be maximum rock and roll, but it was some sort of a zine. I have no memory of it. I remember it was like Greek to me. I didn't understand it.

I put it back and then I went about my business and then about my life until high school when my friend Brian was getting into punk rock or already into punk rock and he kept wearing band t-shirts that excited me and I wanted to know more about it, you know? And we would hang out and talk about books and D&D and stuff, but I was like,

you gotta let me borrow some music. Yeah, I wanna get in on this. I wanna see what this is. I think I was like ninth grade and he let me borrow the first Bad Brains album. A lot of people call it the yellow album or the yellow tape. Technically, I think it's called

Attitude, The Roar Sessions. A lot of people say Rock for Light is their best album. It's a really good album. But Attitude for me is the fucking album. That along with the next album just to talk about changed my life just there were three bands at this point in my life that just flipped everything on its head for me this fucking bad brains album where they're talking about being banned in dc they can't play music in dc anymore because it's too dangerous and so they move to new i started

to learn about them they moved to new y, because they're getting shut down in DC, left and right, and it's this like furiously fast, hardcore, if you've ever heard, if you've never heard Bad Brains, they are the quintessential, the best hardcore band of all time,

I'll die on that hill, they were so just blisteringly fast, and there were these crazy Jamaican dudes, with dreadlocks, and they were just so out there,. And there were these crazy Jamaican dudes with dreadlocks. And they were just so out there. And here they were singing this like just like insane music where I can't understand what HR is saying as he's singing it. And I'm having to look at liner notes to learn the lyrics. And they're just all these songs that just like just blew me away. And I remember thinking that I had never, I didn't know music could sound like this, right?

I didn't know music could be this. Like it just sounded violent and dangerous and edgy and scary. And above all else, it sounded important. Like it sounded like something that I needed to ingest. Like I needed to know everything there was to know about it. And I, to this day, to bad brains weekly and i probably will hopefully will until i die the other album which was almost as formative to me uh

very close was 13 songs by fugazi and if you're not familiar with fugazi ah what am i saying of course you are everybody's familiar with fugazi but uh the song obviously the song waiting room blew me away just like it blew everybody else away but that album just songs like margin walker and obviously waiting room bulldog front bad mouth give me the cure suggestion the fucking song suggestion i i can't even like it just it changed how i saw the world it really did that that whole album both of those two albums absolutely changed how i saw my not in a bad way i don't want to make this sound bad but they changed how i saw my parents they changed how i saw authority it changed how I saw the school and school administrators. It changed how I saw

it didn't change. It helped me see the world in a way that I hadn't been paying attention to at that point. I'd lived in a very insular, I think it's a typical childhood where, you know, you're the center of your own universe and you interact with what's around you. But and you think the world kind of, I think, revolves. I think every kid thinks the world kind of revolves around them until they learn that it doesn't. Right. And this was how I learned. This is how I learned to distrust grownups, which sounds terrible.

But I think we all need a healthy level of skepticism and distrust. And it's how I learned to challenge ideas. It's how I learned to challenge about things where when when people especially with authority figures when i was told to do something or told something uh was the way it was i accepted it without fault as a kid growing up you do you just listen to people that are older than you because they're older than you and they're infinitely wiser right that's the impression you get until you you start to learn a little bit about the world right and i started to learn about the world through this challenging music. And it really did help me start on a path to become the person that I guess I am today. The other album that I'll throw in there, after 13 songs and Attitude, though, the kid gloves are off. I was ingesting as much music as I could.

I was listening to the Exploited constantly. I got deeply into Bad Religion and the Misfits. And I just went on Descendants. Obviously, I fell in love with and I absorbed everything. Minutemen, anything I could get my hands on. Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks, The Damned, all of it, right? But then there was that other third formative album I've mentioned. It was actually a compilation album by the Dead Kennedys.

It was called Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death. And holy shit, if that song didn't speak directly to me, I was this kid growing up in backwards ass, racist, dumb Alabama. And there were songs like Police Truck and Too Drunk to Fuck. California Uber Alice, just blew me away. But then I heard a song that I thought was to me. I thought Jello Biafra wrote the song about me and to me. And it was called Biafra wrote the song about me and to me, and it was called Insight. Originally off the Kill the Poor album, I think. And I don't know if you've ever heard the song Insight,

but it's essentially about a kid in high school being bullied. It's about an awkward, loner, punk rock kid in high school being bullied for being different. And I'd never heard anything in my life. I had heard the music that was important. I'd heard music that I identified with. I was starting to find music that I identified with. But at that point in my life, I was 15 maybe, I had never heard a song that was written to me for me. At least that's what it felt like. And that, holy shit, man. I remember sitting in that room in sitting in my bedroom in Alabama and just feeling really seen for the first time in my life.

piece of a puzzle clicked into place and I and I'll never forget listening to that and and and thinking this is where I belong this is who I am I gotta continue in this direction and I really do owe a lot of who I am when I look back on it to a friend that I had in high school that I haven't spoken to in 30 years, who I hope is doing very well in life. He ended up getting a full scholarship to an Ivy League school, and he moved out, and I don't think he ever looked back, and I hope he never came back, and I hope he is as successful as he deserves to be and also a pizza restaurant in Beaverton, Oregon so thank you to Pizza Inn and thank you to

my friend Brian and thank you to the kid who wore Liberty Spikes in Annapolis, Maryland in, I don't know, 1982 you three entities really helped put me on a path helped put me on a path that felt like for the first helped put me on a path, helped, helped, helped put me on a path that felt like the, for the first time I was on a path and the right path. And I have genuinely

never looked back. I'd be fascinated to know what did that for you? What set you on your path? What music or book or movie or play or spoken word or like what set you, what opened up the world to you? Email eric at jeffsposs.com. Tell me your story. I'd love to hear it. And I guess I'll see you next time. All right.