My Playlist #9

a personal essay by Allen Gregory

"The best music transcends your playlist or your CD and moves into a different place in your life, It becomes your companion."  - John Mayer

The earliest Christmas I can remember, at the age of four, while most children had a hoard of toys soon to be forgotten, I got a 3x3 inch brick radio that I didn’t know how to tune, my grandfather tuning it to the first station he could find. 

How pivotal that little dial would be.

The heavy rotation of Led Zeppelin, The Who, and The Beatles were the building blocks for a lifelong love of music.

I was getting a musical education from 99.7 The Fox with John Boy and Billy in the mornings, Charlotte, North Carolina’s classic rock station. I listened intently as the sounds of the 60’s and 70’s came from the tiny driver, cracking under the strain of the volume I refused to turn below ‘Max’. At such a young age, I truly believed that Jimi Hendrix was saying “excuse me while I kiss this guy” on "Purple Haze". What I didn’t know at the time is that music would become a huge part of my life, scoring my personal soundtrack and underpinning my sense of identity for years to come.

My great-grandmother passed away when I was 8, and I was bequeathed with her portable stereo, my grandparents understanding that I loved to listen to it when I visited her condo. Reminiscent of the Ghetto Blasters of the 80’s, it was a massive solid state AM/FM dual cassette player that took an obscene amount of D batteries to operate when not plugged in.

To go with this heirloom, my grandmother asked me if I would like a cassette to play on it.  I wasn’t getting a  Kidz Bop mix: she was actually going to let me pick! I struggled for days to try and pick one album as I perused the Columbia Records catalog that was delivered as junk mail every month. 

After careful consideration, I chose The Best of Kansas: a collection of the progressive rock band’s most popular singles, capped with "Carry on Wayward Son", my unofficial anthem as a kid. Having been raised by my grandparents and feeling abandoned by my mother and father, this song was speaking to me at the time. The lyrics hit home: “Carry on my wayward son / there’ll be peace when you are done / lay your weary head to rest / don’t you cry no more” all of the members harmonized on the intro, seeming to sing just to me. 

As I advanced in elementary school, I got into numerous disciplinary situations. My home life was marked with verbal and emotional wounds, which bled over into school. I was repeatedly talking out of turn, not completing work as asked, and refusing to participate in group activities. My continued bad behavior brought my grandmother to her wits’ end as she tried to motivate me to behave. As a last effort to get me headed in the right direction she came up with a reward system. Every week I completed without a negative report coming home, I would be able to get a cassette tape.

The first week I behaved, I couldn’t wait to see what my reward would be. Would it be Nirvana’s Nevermind or Pearl Jam’s Ten? To my utter horror and disdain, it was a kids’ choir singing Baptist hymns. I went off. Why would I act right if my grandmother would present me with such an antithesis to what I was into? In the screaming match that ensued I lamented, “Just give me a blank one next time! You don’t know me at all!”

As I grew taller and entered middle school, I longed to feel like I belonged. My family situation being so different from my peers, I felt that at least I could dress the same and listen to the same music. In the cafeteria, I overheard conversations among the girls on which boy band was the best, the Backstreet Boys winning out since they were the “cutest.” 

This realization had all of us boys in the 7th grade getting frosted tips and putting way too much gel in our hair, trying to emulate the Teen Beat cover stars. I discovered that I couldn’t relate to the upbeat and shallow lyrics of the Boy Band wave. I found a sense of belonging with the skaters and black clad crowd. I was introduced to Korn and Limpbizkit’s deeply de-tuned guitars and angsty lyrics. Before I could immerse myself in the counterculture of the nu-metal movement I was sent to a yearlong wilderness camp. I was with a group of 10 kids who struggled with a myriad of issues, from drugs to domestic violence.

Camp E-Ku-Sumee in Candor, NC  was an hour and a half from my home in Charlotte. The problems that I had to resolve before I could be released were an aversion to authority, negative attention-seeking behavior, and a disinclination to participate in academics. During my first week there, I made a connection with my group’s counselor, Chief Giles. Giles was a slender-framed, bearded, Jinko-wearing outdoors nut with an air of condescension in his voice when addressing us. Whenever one of us acted out, we would all have to stand in a circle until the guilty party addressed the negative behavior and stated why it was wrong and how to avoid it in the future.

On a day when we seemed to constantly be in a huddle Giles reminded us that we were accountable: “Listen, you guys are acting like tool sheds, and if you don’t figure it out soon, you won’t get to eat on time. It’s on y’all to stick to schedule.” Giles was kind as well. He played guitar for us at night to help us go to sleep. One evening, he played "Elderly Woman Behind a Counter" in a Small Town by Pearl Jam, an acoustic character study of a woman that lead singer Eddie Vedder met while touring. The next morning, I mentioned that I knew that song, who wrote it, and what it was about. He was floored and we began to discuss music on a daily basis, each of us trying to outdo each other with our musical knowledge.

Each month we got a weekend at home. Each “homesday” we would be dropped off in the parking lot of Media Play, a music and movie store. My grandparents would greet me and buy me an album from the store for me to listen to until I had to leave again. I kept the booklets from the albums in my footlocker at camp and would sing the lyrics from Linkin Park’s Hybrid Theory and Dave Matthews Band’s Crash records. Giles would test me each time I got back. “You don’t even know what the song 'Crash Into Me' is about, do you?” I tentatively answered “It’s about a crush on a girl, right?” Giles responded, “Something like that” with a knowing smirk.

Because of our connection around music, I was able to show progress with authority. At the same time I realized that my knowledge was a positive way to get attention, culminating in me winning a writing contest among the campers. I was released from the camp early and I began my freshman year of high school in February of 2001.

The first week back in a normal environment with other students, I remember the click-clack of my skateboard wheels over the sidewalk while I was listening to Staind’s Outside: “I’m on the outside/ I’m looking in,” praying that as I went over the cracks in the pavement my Discman wouldn’t skip, scratching my precious album and in a way scratching my very being. Music defined who I was on any given day all through high school. It’s a blur of songs and memories.

Most importantly, freshman year, I heard "Drive" by Incubus for the first time, not knowing it would become my lifelong anthem. My first concert experience was when I and a group of friends went and saw Incubus double headlining with Hoobastank, the smell of sweat, alcohol, marijuana, and Curve cologne sitting in the air. All of us moshing as Brandon Boyd screamed “pardon me while I burst into flames” 20 feet in front of us. As rock music was what my friends listened to, I found myself wanting to explore other genres with hip-hop and rap becoming influential as well.

Being one of the few white kids(based on appearance, I am Native American, African American and white) at a predominately black school, freestyling was a way to become part of the in-crowd. I stayed up until 12AM one night learning Ludacris’ "Saturday" verses to impress the kids at school. Not having the success I had hoped for, I stayed up the next night learning a few verses from Wu-tang Clan’s Wu-tang Forever. I literally ripped off Method Man in a freestyle session at lunch and no one knew, making me believe that I was the most cultured when it came to hip-hop, and I abandoned trying to be a rapper.

My personal style at the time, expressing my taste in music, was pulled from the album covers from Cash Money Records. I walked through the halls with my baggy Girbaud jeans, tall white tee, and fresh Jordans, bobbing my head, not to the latest OutKast double album Speakerboxxx/Love Below but to John Mayer’s "No Such Thing": “I wanna run through the halls of my school / I wanna scream at the top of my lungs.” As my personality and taste in music changed, my personal style couldn't keep up. 

This was made evident one night with my girlfriend. I was at her dad’s mansion on the rich side of town, listening to satellite radio around Christmas. Dashboard Confessional’s "Hands Down" came on and I couldn’t help singing along: “My hopes are so high / That your kiss might kill me / So won't you kill me / So I die happy.” and her saying, I like this Allen, not the gangster one. This led me to rethink my whole clothing style, resulting in me going on a shopping spree at Hollister and Abercrombie for my back to school wardrobe after New Years. High School was full of memories like this, subtlety forming me.

Through high school many musical experiences shaped who I ultimately became. My best friend gifted me a Les Paul guitar for my 16th birthday and I cried for the first time in front of him, showing that emotion for the first time in front of another person. As I learned how to play, I became angry that I couldn’t play fast enough to nail the notes on "Zero" by the Smashing Pumpkins, always seeming to be just a beat behind the rhythm. I caught an entrepreneurial spirit, selling mixed CDs to my friends back in the Napster days. Many times my grandfather became angry that the phone line was tied up because I was downloading the latest unreleased Eminem track.  Albums became obsessions to me.

I can remember doing homework with the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ By the Way album literally on repeat for a week. My thirst for new music to impress my peers was a constant motivator. For days, I would hungrily search the internet for Lil Wayne mixtapes during junior year. As I neared graduation at least once a week I would skip school to go to the local Sam Ash music store. One day I heard someone playing a heavy metal riff and had to find out who it was. This was the first time I was exposed to modern metal, Slipknot’s "Left Behind." The musical education I received from the underachievers at the music store became more important than real school. Who needs American history and calculus anyway when you can shred on the guitar instead?

I ended up getting a GED and working right after high school. Always arriving early to my job at Hollister at the mall, just so I could pick the first song played. It was always O.A.R’s "Crazy Game of Poker." At the time my girlfriend worked there too and we decided to go to a concert after work one day. At the show (a Sublime cover band) I saw her making out with another guy. As the singer crooned “When you grab a hold of me / Tell me that I'll never be set free.” The lyrics from "Badfish"  ringing in my ears for days to come, so ironic and in juxtaposition to my heart. Soon after I had moved on from the break up, I had my first music festival experience.

At the three day concert series at Bonnaroo in the foothills of Tennessee, I lived as I imagined the patrons at Woodstock '69 did - sleeping in a tent, showerless for days, subsisting on snack food and alcohol. On the final night, I watched, entranced, as Tool played a three hour long double set while my girlfriend tripped acid. I was too scared to open my third eye. As much as I loved her, the music, and the vibes around me, I wasn’t ready for the drug culture. I was just there for the music, man. There are many more encounters, with people and music between that muddy campsite back in 2007 and now.

Today with my iPhone in hand, Airpods an extension of my body, I enter my 30’s. I recall all of the preceding pivotal moments of my life - the moments that shaped and molded me as a person - and the songs associated with them. Music has indelibly become a part of my life, scoring my personal soundtrack and underpinning my sense of identity. As I look forward to graduation and with many other major life events to come, I’m always wondering, “What will be playing when it happens?” 

Image credits: "Music", "Ghetto Blaster", "Backstreet Boys", "Campfire Acoustic", "Media Play", "Skateboard", "Rapper", "Abercrombie", "Les Paul", "Music Festival" (public domain images via Shutterstock)