It seems like my whole life has revolved around music. Yeah the good times have always had a lot to do with music and the bad times? Music has always been there whether it be as an additional dagger...or an invisible blanket of comfort to get wrapped up in. No matter what, through thick and thin, music has always been my friend. Caring when needed, sharing when prompted, honest even when the truth hurts the most. In 1981 I was forced to deal with my final move as an official military brat. For years my life not only revolved around music but also a circle of seemingly never-ending upheavals as my family moved from base to base every two to four years. When I was younger it didn't quite seem as much a big deal as it was another new exciting adventure. Eventually the whole migration process turned into a chance for me to improve myself with an entirely new group of kids who never knew my past faults and shortcomings.
My father's last assignment before our move in 1981 was a three-year stint in Hochst, Germany just outside of the city of Frankfurt. I'll have to admit, for the first time I was heartbroken to be somewhere new and terribly missed the hills and valleys and friends of Fort Riley, Kansas. I can still remember lying in my bed on the top floor of our temporary apartment listening to music with my super-sized 1970's headphones on and crying while I stared straight up at the angled ceiling that covered my room. I'm not sure if this is the first time I ever felt alone but I still remember it being the most lost I had felt up to that point in my life. I was a few months shy of my eleventh birthday and the only friends I had in this strange new place were a AM/FM cassette recorder, some store bought cassettes, a mixed tape of KISS tunes that a friend had made me in Kansas, some pencils, and a drawing pad. I only left that room to eat, shower, visit the latrine, and go to school.
After a few months passed we finally moved into our regular apartment in Hochst but while it was another move and another new set of neighborhood kids, it was close enough not to make a change in where I went to school. I spent the next three years transforming from a little snot-nosed kid into a typical teenage boy. Gone were the thoughts of comic books and gadgets replaced with a larger obsession with music and of course girls. Despite a few "issues" I had found a place where I belonged. It was like I had discovered a magical place where time and space met head on and merged perfectly. The friends were good, the girls were great, and the music? even better. Life was close to perfect...until...the inevitable happened.
I had just started to kick off what was to be another great summer wandering around the expansive area that was Frankfurt and all of it's "burgs." There would be sports, swimming, going to the movies, camping out, riding the train into Frankfurt on the weekends to chase girls around the floor at the skating rink. I was on such a high that I was sure that I could never be knocked back down. That's when Dad gave me the news.
When it was told to me that come October we would be moving back stateside I pretty much just became numb. I can only compare it to getting the greatest gift in the world only to have someone yell "psych!" For three years I had pretty much forgotten those months alone in temporary quarters and all of a sudden here I was again...lying on my bed with my headphones on listening to music with a multitude of thoughts rushing through my head. I remember my Dad once coming in and telling me "I know it's rough but you're wasting what little time you have here and now." Putting my headphones back on was my reality. Perhaps Dennis DeYoung of Styx said it best - "Welcome to the Grand Illusion..." My illusion of anything grand was shattered.
Fast forward to later that year in our new digs in Atlanta, Georgia. New bed, same radio, more tunes, different ceiling. For the first time in my life I found myself in a school not made up of military kids. I was a shaggy-haired denim clad teenager in a building full of Izod wearing privileged kids. Where once I was used to a mixed bag of friends from all nations, creeds, and colors, I suddenly found myself in a mostly all-white school of well-off spoiled kids that I had nothing in common with. But just as soon as I had latched onto the naive notion that I was the sole outcast in this school of what I deemed aliens, I came across a pair of similar oddballs in a white kid who lived in a trailer park just up the street from me and a tall black kid who looked kinda like Rog from "What's Happenin'" and who just happened to also play a mean rock guitar.
Now going to Rog's house was cool. Very cool. Rog's Mom was always cooking up some fine southern vittles while a myriad of kids came and went swapping back and forth between listening to the local rock radio station, playing records, and jamming on cool rock covers. All of a sudden in what I thought was a desert of hopelessness, I found a musical oasis filled with every tasty note possible and Rog never failed to make me a new cassette to take home with me each time I would visit. The first two Blizzard of Oz albums with Randy Rhoads, Journey's "Escape", lots of AC/DC, the Rolling Stones "Tattoo You", Joan Jett's breakthrough release "I Love Rock & Roll", not to mention cool tunes by Van Halen, April Wine, and my personal fave at the time, Aldo Nova's debut, were my bible. All of a sudden being surrounded by snooty pointy-nosed kids with too much cologne and perfume didn't matter. I would just smirk and stroll on by when encountered with a snarky remark or dirty look. I was an individual in a sea full of look-a-like guppies and I was proud of it.
I had entered prep purgatory and became saved by a musical interlude. Now I have the pleasure of doing what I love...through music. Wonder how many of those Atlanta lemmings have gone on to do the same.
Music...my friend for life.
Boom!!!!!
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