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Weekly Dose of Thunder #1
The Soundtrack to Other People’s Lives
Rich Cerow
Hey there, dudes and dudettes, and welcome to the first issue of Weekly Dose of Thunder, from the
Norse God and Marvel Comics’ staple Thor’s hammer to your ears. My name is Rich Cerow, and I’m gonna be
your tour guide each and every week as we take a magical journey into the vast cultural wasteland of pop music
and meet new exciting beasts, from the near-extinct “rock ‘n’ roll star” (ask your dad about it kids, he’ll clue you
in) to the pasty white, slothful “electroclash DJ,” and all the hip-hoppers and, well, mostly hip-hoppers in
between. And that last sentence was a lie; we’ll never talk about electroclash in this column. That trend is
so played. Unless you’re the NME.
I thought I’d start by looking back to the past, to the music that brought us to the glorious landscape we
inhabit now, and make fun of it. Namely, I thought we’d ask that age-old question, that cavemen teenagers asked
their parents when they heard the old grunts belted out, “People used to like this crap?” Oh, young friend,
little buddy, mi amigo, not only did they like it, but it was important to them, nay, defined them. At some point,
somebody who HATED disco was listening to Foreigner’s “Don’t Stop Believing” and thinking, “Yeah, that’s me, I am
just a small town boy living in my lonely world. This speaks to me, I identify with this.” Cause that is totally
how people think about music, in a literal and conscious manner. And even though these thoughts are kind of trite
and eminently laughable today, that probably was a 100% accurate depiction of that guy’s life. It’s just that that
guy’s life was totally boring.
Obviously, not everything related directly to the listener’s life, but still, the words were important. People
bought “Home Sweet Home” by Motley Crue because they were too young to fall in love and they wanted to support a
“so drunk you need to get carried off your drum kit by a roadie, you scamp, Tommy Lee, you” lifestyle, as depicted
in that awesome video. I mean, just because your average Wisconsin teenager wasn’t riding down the Sunset Strip
in a hot tub in the back of a limo with four topless Hawaiian Tropics girls didn’t mean that that wasn’t his ideal,
the life he wanted to live and give others a chance to live. In many ways, those were nobler times, when one man
would lay down $8.50 on a cassette copy of Cherry Pie by Warrant so that Kip Winger or somebody like him who was
in Warrant could once again ravish somebody from the cast of Eight is Enough. Ravish.
Now, don’t get me wrong, if Valerie Bertinelli came knocking on my door, with her magnificently feathered hair
like the plumage of a soaring eagle, circling a mountain side, love lifting us up where we belong, I would obviously
have a go. And I suppose the fantasies indulged by earlier generations are no more ridiculous than the hip-hop ones
modern pop radio listeners live every day. Hell, they don’t have all the guns and violence in addition to the sex
and drugs, so maybe they’re actually better. But they’re now and they’re ours so they don’t seem
nearly as ridiculous. And nobody’s singing about being from Indiana, which helps.
Until the next one, I remain, humbly,
Rich Cerow
All editions of Weekly Dose of Thunder
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