SOML: True Love Edition

Awww… Look at that title. Valentine’s Day must be right around the corner if ol’ Trevor is writing a post about love and all that shit. Well, I promised the next in this series of Soundtrack Of My Life would be about the Courtship Of Eddie’s Father myself and Happy Fun Ball. As I thought more about this, I decided to double up and cover the two true loves of my life in one fell swoop.

(I already cleared it with the missus, so she can’t get pissed reading about a former girlfriend. Besides, she’s got me locked into an airtight commitment I swore I’d never do (marriage), so she fucking won.)

THE ALBUM(S):
Siamese Dream & Mellon Collie by The Smashing Pumpkins; Damnation by Opeth; Fantastic Planet by Failure; The Thirteenth Step by A Perfect Circle

MINI-REVIEWS:
Honestly, if you haven’t heard any Smashing Pumpkins albums by this stage in your life, you really need to take a look at yourself and figure out what the hell is wrong with you. If you came up during the alternative 1990s, like I did, you were bombarded with grunge and alterna-bands constantly. If you aren’t familiar with SP for any reason, be sure to avoid their latest, Zeitgeist, like the fucking plague and instead start with Siamese Dream. This album is guitar-driven perfection from start to finish, with some of the greatest songs Corgan ever wrote. Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness, the ambitious follow-up double album, is strong as hell but a bit on the pretentious/overwrought side. Much like any other double-album, there’s a lot of filler, but the gems on the set help you overlook those songs.

Failure’s Fantastic Planet is, quite possibly, my favorite album of all time. I’ve preached the genius of Ken Andrews & Co. before, but suffice it to say that this is one of the greatest and overlooked space rock/alternative albums of the mid-90s: epic song structures, overdubbed guitars, and a concept album to boot. Anytime I try to get someone into Failure, I always start with this disc.

Opeth’s Damnation is definitely a shocker for fans of the band’s previous death metal albums. Sounding more like a lost 1970s prog LP, Damnation is truly a work of art. Michael Akerfeldt stuns longtime Opeth fans by singing (no death metal screams/howls to be found here), creating a surprisingly gentle, soft, and melodic album perfect for falling asleep to.

The Thirteenth Step was a complete surprise to me. I’d bought APC’s debut, Mer De Noms, the day it came out and was somewhat disappointed. So much so that I ignored this album for a long spell, finally downloading it on a whim months after it was released. The minute “The Noose” kicked in, I was hooked. Many Tool fans aren’t APC fans, and vice versa, but I dig both groups. Where Tool is aggressive art-metal, APC plays the kind of swirling spacey guitar rock normally handled by bands like The Cure and My Bloody Valentine.

WHY THEM:
Back in my formative years, mainly the 1990s, I was just beginning to discover the world of non-radio music. I’d been your standard pop fan as a lad, but soon found the burgeoning college rock/alternative scene to be more my taste. While my peers were taken with the staples of the grunge community (Nirvana, Alice In Chains, etc.), I’d set my sights on Billy Corgan. “Today” was getting massive radio airplay and MTV rotation, and I immediately fell in love with it. I soon developed my obsessive collector mentality, trading online for bootlegs and buying import-only singles.

This was the early days of the Intarwebs, with dial-up AOL being my only connection to the rest of the world. My high school had recently jumped on the email bandwagon, and I used this avenue to join “Listessa”, the Smashing Pumpkins mailing list. See, back before chat rooms really took off, mailing lists and online Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) were the only way to converse with a group of like-minded individuals. It was on Listessa that I met my first true love, connecting on our mutual adoration of all things Pumpkins.

Darcy (name changed to protect the, um, innocent?) lived out in San Francisco, a world away to me and my small midwest hometown. We began emailing frequently, slowly moving away from Pumpkins-related topics while forming a friendship. After exchanging pictures, we took the next step and began phone conversations. These calls, often hours-long, brought us closer together than we’d thought. We managed to meet each other in person, and the relationship continued to grow. Once we’d met though, the distance became achingly difficult to deal with. Listening to Siamese Dream’s “Soma” and Mellon Collie’s “Thru The Eyes Of Ruby” and “Porcelina Of The Vast Oceans” helped dull the pain somewhat.

As a high school graduation gift, I managed a trip out to San Francisco with a friend, and our love blossomed again. Upon returning, the distance again proved almost unbearable. We maintained a close friendship/relationship for the next several years. I entered college and she was on the verge of graduating high school. Our phone calls continued, but soon became less frequent as we began maturing. I managed another trip out San Francisco in 2000, and the relationship took a nasty turn. Things were said and emotions raged and, after a miserable week out west, I returned to Ohio where friendship faded away.

Life went on and I went to college in Athens. An introduction at a party, at the urging of my father, is all it took for me to find love again. Don’t go thinking that I remained chaste or some shit between these two moments… far from it. I’m, like, a fucking pimp and shit. Mad sex. Seriously. Love, though? Not so much.

As I was saying, meeting HFB was a complete act of chance. I was playing darts at a buddy’s party, listening to random hard rock CDs and drinking cheap beer. A stunning blonde approached me and asked to play a game with me.

“Are you Trevor?” she asked.
“Yeah, who are you?” I replied.
“I’m Happy Fun Ball. Your dad told me to come over and play darts with you,” she said.

I looked over at my pops, sitting at a table with a shit-eating grin on his face. We started playing and conversing, forming an immediate connection. I was really digging her, until I heard:

“What the fuck is THIS shit?”

She was talking about the music at the party. More specifically, Chris Cornell’s crooning on Audioslave’s “Like A Stone”. I told her who the band was, to no avail. She didn’t dig the same music as me (which is pretty common with my tastes), but her reaction to a semi-decent song cost her some points in my book.

HFB told me that she and her roommate had to attend another party, but she’d try to swing back by to talk with me some more. She gave me her phone number in case we missed each other, entering her contact as “The Old Ball And Chain”. If she only knew what would come…

Fast forward through several dates, a month-long breakup, and the relationship was soon cemented. I managed to get her into a few of the bands I listened to. She took a particular liking to Damnation, an album that played constantly in my bedroom as we’d talk for hours.

Thinking she was the real deal, I attempted to get her into Failure. I’d tried to tactic with other girls in the past, to no avail. Much to my surprise and satisfaction, HFB was soon singing along on car rides. She even had a favorite track, “The Nurse who Loved Me”, and requested it at every chance she could.

After our eventual graduation from Ohio University, I decided to stay a summer, working at a pizza place and just relaxing before attempting to enter the real world. HFB took a job in Cincinnati, and our relationship was soon tested again. We alternated weekends, each suffering through a three-hour drive to see each other. After a particularly nasty argument at Macaroni Grill (we’ve never eaten there again, due to the bad karma from said argument), I drove back to Athens unsure of where our relationship stood. For those three hours, I listened to Fantastic Planet on repeat and contemplated the future. When “The Nurse Who Loved Me” came on, I couldn’t help but think of how much I loved HFB and the bond we shared. I resolved to make things work.

I soon moved to Columbus, halving our commuting time. It was around this time that I finally got into The Thirteenth Step (after ignoring it for whatever stupid reason I had at the time). Lo and behold, the album contained a sparse “reimagining”/cover of “The Nurse Who Loved Me”. Needless to say, HFB immediately latched onto the disc and made it hers. When her lease was about up, I found her a job and we moved in together. During this period of time, Damnation made a resurgence in our mutual playlist as HFB attempted to learn air guitar/drums (to mixed reviews).

Fast forward to 2006, and a chance email from Darcy. After not thinking about our situation for almost five years, I was immediately transported back to the days of Smashing Pumpkins and long-distance phone calls. We managed to catch up a bit and sporadically corresponded for several weeks (all with the approval of the future Mrs. Danger, thank you very much). She’d found a love of her own and was in the process of settling down with the girl.

Yup. Lesbian. We’ll move on…

Around that same time, going through a stash of shit from high school that I’d amassed in my parents’ basement opened the floodgates again: I’d stumbled upon the letters/photos/notes she’d written me. Gutted, I sat and listened to “Soma” while re-reading them and remembering every painful detail., In the end, the memories of our past was too much for me to continually revisit with each email. I couldn’t hang out in the past when my life was going so well in the present (with the true love of my life, Happy Fun Ball, by my side). I shredded the notes, ended communication and moved on, yet again.

Oh yeah, we got married. How could I not love a woman who took something as cherished as Fantastic Planet and made it trigger memories of her? I guess I don’t need to remind you what song played at our wedding…

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Most people don’t luck out and have a SINGLE love of their life… I lucked out and managed two. As painful as the first one ended up, the memories triggered by the music of that time will always be with me. The memories and experiences with HFB-D, however, will continue for years to come and the songs that occur with them will become touchstones in their own right. I’ll have to do an update in five years to see what albums have been added to the HFB-D Playlist.