Thrash Unreal, Part I
During the many sexless weekends during my freshman year of college, I would sit in my room with a CD or two and just zone out while listening to the music. During the second half of the year, I had a turntable hooked up to the stereo next to my bed and would play some records from the small stash I kept in a crate under my bed. Every now and then, a friend or two from down the hall would pop in to listen with me. Those friends helped me to develop a taste and appreciation for a new brand of rock music. Well, it was new to me, anyways. Every now and then, after a weekend hang session, Kevin and Nick would send me back to my room with a few CDs containing music from their illustrious music catalogues, the likes of which I had not heard before.
I never thought I would find any appreciation for new bands, being brought up on the classics — Classics like the Beatles, the Who, the Kinks, and others from the 1960s and 70s — but those guys kept the albums coming, burning me CD after CD. We’d sometimes hang out in Joe’s room and smoke some weed while listening to the new Hold Steady album, or whatever new album he got from his buddies on the frisbee team. Even my introverted friend Austin helped me develop a taste for newer punk music, like Against Me! and Billy Talent, in addition to enhancing my taste in the classics, such as the Clash and early albums by the Replacements. We had the same opinions of the parties, and didn’t like to go simply because we thought the music sucked, so he never went anywhere on the weekends and mostly shut himself up in his room watching Arcade Fire videos.
With some money I had gotten from participating in a psychology experiment on campus, I bought my first concert ticket. Stabbing Liberty wasn’t a big name yet, but Austin had let me listen to some of their stuff and I thought it was pretty good. The more I listened to their music, the more I became obsessed with them. I had to see them live.
The concert was on one of the hottest days of the summer. I left my mother’s house and caught a train into New York at the last second. I remember it being the last second because the woman in front of me at the ticket machine took so long that by the time she was done with her transaction, the train had arrived. I had to buy my ticket onboard, where it’s something like three bucks extra. Despite this, I could hardly contain myself with excitement. After I paid for my ticket, I slumped in my seat and put my headphones on, as was customary for me to do on a trip of almost any length. As I fingered a hole in my black denim jeans, I searched my iPod for the perfect song to begin my journey. The way the train wheels clacked on the rails always helped me relax. I calmed down a bit and drummed my hands on my lap in time to the song playing through the headphones.
After about forty minutes, the train approached the Harlem-125th St. station, which is where all three of the Metro-North Railroad merge and is always the last station before hitting Grand Central Terminal. As I slid upright in my seat, I took off my headphones and shoved my iPod into the breast pocket of my frayed denim vest. The last ten minutes of the ride seemed to take a hour. I watched the numbered street signs decrease in number, counting each one until the train tunneled into the station. Lit by the occasional incandescent light, the train trudged through the tunnel until it was met with the platform and a ramp leading up to the terminal.
When the doors of the train opened, I sprang from my seat and jogged out out the door and up the ramp, slowing to a brisk walk as I exited to the main lobby. The ceiling was a greenish-blue color with many different constellations painted on it to make it look like the night sky. I never exactly understood the choice in color. If someone wanted the ceiling to look like a starry sky, why not paint it navy blue or black? It would even make the images of the constellations a little more defined. I walked past the plethora of tourists taking pictures and the information kiosk in the middle of the lobby, glancing at the clock to see how I was doing on time.
The stairs to the subway lied just beyond a set of glass pane doors, which I hastily pushed open, and I walked down the tiled steps down to the turnstiles. I had a few dollars left over on the MetroCard Uncle Fred had bought for me on our last trek to the City. New York has always been our special place ever since he’d brought me to my first concert — The Who at Madison Square Garden (who we ended up seeing an additional 3 times). Every time we found ourselves in the City it was another adventure. One time we took the subway downtown to Washington Square just to check out the local record shops. These record shops aren’t the normal ones where they sell exclusively vinyl, but they contained a certain treasure that made my uncle’s and my eyes light up anytime we saw them: bootlegs. Illegal live concert recordings on both CD and DVD lined the shelves of these shops, who cleverly disguised them under the guise of “IMPORTS”. My uncle would always buy me one and then burn a copy for himself. It soon became a tradition to go to Generation Records on Thompson and browse every time we decided to head down to New York.
Conveniently, the number 6 local subway arrived just as I swiped my card and stepped onto the platform, and I climbed aboard. There were a still few seats available, but there was no way in hell I was going to sit in between two 300-pound men. So I stood by the door, holding the aluminum rail.
No matter how many times I’ve done it in the past, I always feel a little dirty after riding the subway. The floors of the cars aren’t the cleanest in the world, and if you get one of the old cars, there tends to be graffiti littering the windows and walls. One time there was a giant puddle on the floor of a car my uncle and I had been riding. The smell of urine permeated our nostril and we decided to get off at the next stop and switch cars. The maps on the cars are always drawn over with Sharpie and the advertisements above the seats are always vandalized. It makes it hard to see what stops are coming up when someone has written “For a good time, call Sheniqua (212) 555-1195” over the subway route. Even on the newer cars I always feel like there’s some kind of film covering everything that I touch.
A few minutes and a few stops later, a voice crackled over the train’s intercom. “Next stop, Bleecker Street. Once again, the next stop is Bleecker Street.”
After the doors opened, I stood on the platform and looked down each end to see which way the mob was going to the exit. All I knew was that the venue was on Ludlow, so I looked to see if there was any kind of map on the platform. I walked down the platform a ways and finally found one covered in graffiti. Frustrated, I tried (and failed) to find the Bleecker Street station on the map.
“Excuse me,” I said, tapping some hipster on the shoulder who was waiting for a downtown train.
He turned around and removed the clunky studio headphones from his ears. “What’s up?"
“You, uh,” I paused for a second and bit my lip. “You wouldn’t happen to know how to get to Ludlow, would you?”
“You walk down this platform and take the F down to Delancey Street. Ludlow’s like a block away.” He turned back around, and replaced the headphones over his ears, ignoring the world around him — probably while listening to Grizzly Bear — until the next lost out-of-towner taps him on the shoulder.
(To be continued in a later post...)
