Cellular Smoke Signals

1976.

The United States Celebrates is bi-centennial. I was born. Punk Music b**ch slaps the music scene.

Not coincidence I assure you. Oddly enough, as punk music beat on the brat over in England, the US was celebrating a couple hundreds years of beating on England. The irony isn't lost on me. Assuming there's irony there... maybe the irony comes when you realize that the Ramones had to go to England to become famous to get famous over here.

As things go - I had two musical influences growing up that stick out: My father with Roy Orbison and my mother with Led Zeppelin. Between the 50s and 60s I got a good indoctrination in blues, rock, and all the inbetweens. Naturally, the first thing I bought when I was turned loose in a record store for the purpose of getting a cassette I wanted was.... London Calling (circa 1983? I was like 7 or 8). Ok, my dad bought for me.

The guy was about to smash a guitar on the cover? How could I *not* want that.

Rudy Can't Fail is probably one of the greatest tracks ever, and I'm likely still lost in the supermarket. . . Or try to be, but they label things pretty clearly these days. I stumbled through the 80s being battered by a collection of pop music, new wave, rock, British metal on MTV and whatever my parents had on the radio (oldies or classic rock). So, it took a while for me to find the truly alternative stuff (if it's played on a clear channel station it's not alternative). When someone handed me KMFDM my mind kind of popped. Sure, I heard Ministry and Skinny Puppy, and Front 242 had found its way into my brain. But it didn't register.

Anyways... here it is my birtherday and the wife goes "Get your Amazon wish list, we're buying it." - "The whole thing?!?" - "Mostly." - "Uh..." - *wife grabs me and I drive us to the music store*

Sadly, they had very little from my wish list. Not entirely surprising, but a little as we didn't go to a chain store. So as I wander through the mecca that is a music store I realized that while I could sing along to pretty much every Ramones song ever, I owned none of it on CD. How the f- did that happen?! So I got some today. Ramones and Rocket To Russia. mmmmm.... Ramones....

And a ton of other stuff... Queensryche covered Scarborough Fair - I had no idea (B-Side to the Anybody Listening single). Some John Lee Hooker was acquired (Mr. Lucky). Meldrum, Filter, Qntal, Reverend Horton Heat, and yet another Gothic Rock box set were all thrown in the mix.

And an Amazon order came in with Dirty Wormz and and a pair of Angelspit albums. I'm about to add over 100 tracks to my iTunes library.

Hey Ho, Let's Go.