Day 01 - Your Favorite Song
This is the most annoying question anyone could ever ask me..."what is your favorite song." What are the boundaries? Rock? Alternative? Hip-Hop? Rap? Pop? Country? Blues? "There are far too many songs and genres and sub genres and generations to possibly distill down into one definitive favorite song," I would say! Ask me what my favorite chill wave song of the last five minutes or my favorite classic rock anthem, but my favorite song of all time? Surely you jest.
But going on that rant would mean that I would have to cop out on the very first post of this endeavor...and then I would be a failure.
This one may require the most explanation of them all...not because you give a shit, but because I guess I have to convince myself. This is the guy who at age 12 (or was it 11) walked into Wal-Mart with 30 bucks and purchased his first CD's (Boyz II Men, II; Guns and Roses, Appetite For Destruction; and Pearl Jam, Ten). I am just as musically confused, check that, eclectic now.
Ok, so favorite song. Favorite songs must have a story. Luckily, mine does, and the story goes a little something like this:
One Thursday early in the spring of my junior year of high school, my parents went out of town leaving me home alone. The next morning, rather than go to school, I was to be on a bus headed north to Tuscaloosa for a yearbook competition. The bus was to leave the parking lot at 5 am and using typical high school logic, Thursday became the new Friday and on Fridays we drink. Therefore, I called my friend Hunter and we proceeded to kill about a case of Natty Lite whilst playing Gin Rummy (I liked to combine the nerdy with the hardcore back in HS).
Really, the rummy was cause I was just nervously waiting on a girl. This particular girl would be the inspiration for lots of songs and stories to come, but back then she was just a friend. This "friend" and I had been pushing that label hard...to the breaking point, if you will, for weeks. This Thursday night before the yearbook trip was where I intended to push it to the brink. She was coming from a tennis tournament in Dothan...she was expecting to get in late and had told her parents she was staying at a friend's house. She never made it to that friend's house. She came to mine instead. So here I am, 17 years old, 8 or 9 natural lite courage boosters in, and my super duper high school crush is taking a shower in my bathroom! Just through that door! Hormones man...ain't they a kick in the pants?
I was going absolutely bat shit crazy by the time she came back into my room, hair wet...smelling all good and girly from the shampoo she brought with her. She crawled into bed beside me to, ya know, get some sleep before we had to be awake and on the bus.
Push the line: spooning.
Push the line: playing with her hair!
Push the line: tickling, leading to her breathless on top of me!!!
Aaaaannnnd FAIL!
Rejected.
She got up, went downstairs...it was time to go.
We boarded the school bus in the still dark morning and sat beside one another as we pulled out of town. Somewhere in the murky dark of Highway 55 north, we managed to get horizontal for the briefest of moments. And finally Zap!! Almost just as I had planned we had our first, bumpy, sloppy makeout! It. was. glorious.
The weekend continued on a crazy trajectory, but everything else that happened, (tornados, bus breaking down, getting lost on a college campus, getting kicked out of Wal-Mart) while all somewhat worthy of full stories themselves, paled in comparison to that moment!
"But wait !" you say, "what in the hell does this have to do with your favorite song?"
Well that weekend I began another journey. On the way home from Tuscaloosa, the illustrious KevDan (more to come on him later) was playing his guitar in the back of the bus. An insidiously infectious melody grabbed hold of me and drew me in like a Siren's song. He had some lyrics...I added more. He had a melody...I sang a harmony. By the time we got back to the high school, we had the entire yearbook staff singing along with us. That song was called Touche'. It grew to epic high school proportions. KevDan and I started a band...we recorded a cd...we got the song played on Dothan's WKMX...we played house parties... the Cheerleaders did a pep rally dance to it...freshmen hung around my locker to get an autographed copy! I was a high school rock star.
Now you might think it's cheesy that I would pick one of my own songs as my favorite, but honestly, it's mostly KevDan's song, and by damnit, I love it! Every time I hear it, it takes me back to that ridiculous weekend, and all the great things about high school...it's like a musical yearbook. Not only that, but it embodies the very first time I felt the rush of being in a band, something I still yearn for today. So in a way, it's not only my favorite song, it's a genesis as well.
Luckily, we put up a myspace page for Steal Daylight (yes that was the ridiculous name of our ridiculous high school band) as a joke a few years ago cause there is no way there is a youtube video of this gem.
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