Songwriters Are Douchebags

I had this guitar.  It was a no-name brand 'flying V' style thing that I spray painted flat black then took my box of acrylic paints and made a large multi-colored nuclear explosion up on the big big pointy part there with a red smiley face on it and wrote underneath it "FUCK OFF AND HAVE A NICE DAY" and of course made all the As into little Anarchy symbols.  I was 14.  I had already popped the lock on Mom's liquor cabinet and had scored a few nickel bags of pot from some scary black dudes who hung out all day on their porch.  I had purchased my first Black Flag album and was just learning the evil ways of the Dirty Rotten Imbeciles.  The appeal of punk (as most stuffed shirt revisionist history ass hole rock writers will surely tell you) is that anyone can do it.  Or at least anyone will think they can.  At 14 I thought I could.  So me and my trusty flying V rocked one out.  These are the lyrics to my first song: "Too Baked To Skate"  - written in 1987 at age 14:


It's Saturday afternoon
Had too many bongs
Try to thrash around
But you're too far gone
The road starts to spin
Board begins to shake
Do a 'skull grind'
Because you're fucking baked
You are bleeding now
But you do not care
Time to go home
And put superglue in your hair


Spike your fucking mohawk
Spike it three feet high
Need some money for more weed
Tell your Mom a little lie
"Mom, I need some money
for a school trip.
Yeah, maybe tomorrow
I'll bring home the permission slip."
Your Mom gives you the money
For a nice fat dime
Time to start the whole fucking thing
Another fucking time


This time on a half-pipe
Going 'round and 'round
Do a hand plant 
You're fucking upside down
Your wasted friend comes at you
Rail slide on your head
You should've known you were too baked to skate
Too fucked up to shred
Fucking Nazi punk
Shouldnt've smoked that reefer
Now you're in a wheel chair 
Watching reruns of Leave It To Beaver!


Not exactly world shattering stuff but considering the time and the age of the writer it's fairly edgy I guess.  And really, how many songs have you heard with a Leave It To Beaver reference?  The music was a bouncy thing performed as fast as I could spit out the words somewhat legibly.

Here's how it sounded when recorded by my shitty band in 1991 in my friend's basement by the drummer's Dad who had a primitive recording rig.  We had a lead singer/yeller, but this was always the song where I stepped up to the mic and belted it out.  Here's 18 year old FM at the peak of his angsty testosterone-fueled rage:





I ultimately became the driving force behind this anarchic underage booze fueled Connecticut Hardcore punk garage band called "Chemical Persuasion."  In those days it was pure shocking rebellion.  I used to bring my songs to band practice with lyrics written on a wadded up piece of paper in my back pocket and a rough tune in my head.  Generally the guys would read it through, laugh and then see how many times they could fit the word FUCK into the lyrics without messing up the phrasing too much.  I was now officially a 'songwriter.'

The term 'songwriter' fills my head with images of thin, pale young men in black, skin tight and long-sleeve turtleneck shirts with wisps of stringy beard hair and bad skin with a chain smoking habit and an air of superiority.  Simply put: douchebags.  And I guess in later years I fell into a douchebag songwriter phase.

I have spent the past few days converting a bunch of songs I wrote and sang solo acoustic into my beat up boom box in the early to mid 90s after the band fizzled out and I slipped into married working life.  I've never performed a single one of these songs live or in front of anyone - not even my wife - and only shared them with a few pals (who generally were nice enough to tolerate my shit).  But listening to them almost 20 years later, some of them are quite good and mark a few rather momentous events in my life.  The time has come for me to bring them out of the box.  You're welcome to join me for what will surely be an uncomfortably revealing and potentially embarrassing display over the next few weeks.  For the record, I'm a little freaked but mostly excited.