MIDWEST MISERY By Adam Hirschfeld

I do not write like myself. I write by myself. All of the thoughts and ideas you read here are my own, unless I stole them from someone who lacks knowledge in basic copyright law. But I do not write like myself.

I do not have my own writing style. My voice, distinct or otherwise, is a combination of other people whose writing styles I liked. I steal elements from Dave Barry, Tony Kornheiser, Bill Simmons, Philip Roth (the slightly dirty author, not the guy I went to high school with), and very occasionally, the guy who wrote “Life’s Little Instruction Book.” I think that same guy also wrote a couple of songs for “The Eagles” in the 1970s and later beat the crap out of Daryl Hannah.

Once or twice a week for the past two and a half years I have dashed out 1,000 words on topics ranging from “Why Bob Huggins was a Bad Mother” to “I Think it’s a Good Idea to Preview a Baseball Season by Quoting the Spin Doctors.” I tend to write about sports. Sports are what I know.

Randomly, I was supposed to take a cross-country flight to San Diego at the end of October. Despite my general stupidity in making travel arrangements (who on earth is dumb enough to book the first leg of a six hour jaunt at 6:00 P.M. Eastern Standard Time?), my reason for heading out there became no more due to the fact that a large portion of Southern Cali went up in smoke. True, when Snoop Dogg is at home, it must look like certain parts of Long Beach are always ablaze, but this was serious. President Bush even took time from his busy schedule of figuring out which Middle Eastern country to bomb next to pay attention to a local disaster. People in New Orleans probably just shook their heads. Has anyone talked to Kanye West for a quote?

My proposed trip to San Diego meant a ludicrously long flight. So, in search of entertainment and distraction, I did something I rarely do, which is purchase books. It’s not that I am against purchasing books so much as I am against the whole idea of reading in and of itself. As a lover of popular culture and an appreciator of a good columnist, my selections were both works of Spin/Esquire columnist and “Corey Feldman circa 1986” look-alike Chuck Klosterman.

I do not write like myself, but I wish I wrote like Chuck Klosterman. Klosterman is a rock critic who likes sports. I am a wannabe sports columnist who likes music. He lived in Akron, Ohio. I have been to Akron, Ohio. We both are pop culture savants, although I don’t think I could defeat Klosterman on one of those VH-1 game shows where knowledge of useless trivia can win you prizes. In real life, knowledge of useless trivia only reminds you that your brain has limited capacity and, in my case, reminds me that I chose to completely ignore science, most foreign languages, technical grammatical structure, geometry, calculus, and western civilization. I do know all of the words to “Ice Ice Baby.” I bet Klosterman does too. But because I read so much Klosterman, I have been thinking about music.

In my lifetime, there have been very few albums and very few bands that I would describe as meaningful in any way. I have had multiple favorites (multiple being “two”), that we shall discuss, a few bands I disliked but could appreciate where they were coming from, and an even greater number of popular bands about whom I did not see what all the fuss was about. I am a fan of rock and roll; I appreciate and even enjoy other genres (except country; in fact, I believe hatred of country music is the sole inspiration for the invention of in-car music playing devices and satellite radio. If you are trapped in your car on the Pennsylvania Turnpike and do not like country music or evangelicals, absent a technological enhancement, you are screwed). I am also, dare I say, musically inclined. I took drum lessons for five years, during which I acquired competent drum skills and a vast library of dirty jokes. I spent five years in the school choir and did musical productions as well. I did not lose my virginity until I quit the musical stuff and went to college. I am quite certain these facts are connected.

Being musically inclined means that I am predisposed to a preference for bands that, at a minimum, play their own instruments. I also prefer music that puts me in a good mood, maybe because I generally maintain a demeanor that is best described as “cynically realistic” or “realistically cynical.” I’d make an argument any day of the week that Hanson’s “MMM Bop” is better than any Marilyn Manson song ever recorded, and not just because “MMM Bop” is a catchy ditty whereas everything Manson wrote is part of an act. Brian Warner is a complete phony who was expert in manipulating media and scaring your parents. I don’t care if he banged Rose McGowan and Evan Rachel Wood. He is more capitalist than artist.

Of the greatest events of musical importance in my lifetime (supposedly), nearly all of them involved death. John Lennon got shot, Kurt Cobain got shot (by himself, supposedly), and Biggie and Tupac, of course, became casualties of a rap war that was probably more reality and less media creation than a white kid from the suburbs attending a private university could contemplate, even if I did like “The Chronic” and “Straight Outta Compton.” I never owned either of the aforementioned albums, and I somehow believe that Dr. Dre would be happy about that if you told him. I don’t think I’m supposed to “hear” NWA the way I decided I could “hear” Tom Petty and John Mellencamp when I turned 23.

If we’re going to go through the music of my life, we may as well start with Poison. They were the first band that could ever be described as my favorite. Prior to Poison, I had liked the occasional song (including “Karma Chameleon”, “Every Breath You Take” and “Leave Me Alone” by Billy Joel), but never felt any particular affinity to any particular band. And then I bought “Open Up and Say Ahh….”

Granted, I was either 11 or 12 years old when this album came out and to this day, would have to go back and listen to the entire album again to understand all of the sexual references (and I’m a guy who has a dirty sense of humor). But what struck me about this album was that even though it was not the most technically proficient piece of music ever recorded (no one ever confused Bret Michaels with Beethoven), the guys seemed to be having a whole lot of fun making it. Even “Every Rose Has its Thorn”, the power ballad that has held up as the band’s biggest hit, has too catchy a hook to bring down the mood of the rest of the record. No one ever killed himself after listening to “Every Rose Has its Thorn.”

As a child of the 1980s, I was obviously into what the media and music snobs have dubbed “hair metal.” I never had the hair. Other than a brief period during my senior year of high school where I grew it past my ears and almost down to my shoulders, my haircut has basically been the same since my hair sprouted. I didn’t know too many kids who had really long hair prior to 1992, so maybe my choice in hairstyle was due as much to the fact that I grew up in an affluent suburb as anything else. Kids at Orange High School were going to go to college and become proper citizens; they just didn’t look like metalheads, except for the couple who did, and those kids were seemingly exiled to shop class, referred to by the 1980s as “Industrial Arts.”

“Nothin’ But a Good Time” was my favorite song, even though I could relate to the lyrics about as well as I can currently toss an anvil. I never knew what it was like not to have a dime or be unable to pay my rent. I couldn’t fathom the desire to cut loose after a week of blue-collar sweat and labor until I was 19. But that song was fun. It’s on my Ipod, and in the rare days of my adult life when it is played on the radio, there is nothing on earth that could have made me change the dial. It puzzled me that no beer company ever used it in a commercial. “Nothin’ But a Good Time” cries out for use by Coors; it sickens me more than a little that Bill Gates had a choral version made by a bunch of teeny boppers who probably only know of Poison because of “Rock of Love” (as if Bret needed more random vaginas in his life) and stuck in an Xbox ad.

I had already seen the band live two times when they toured in support of “Flesh and Blood”, their third studio release and, at the time, a major disappointment to me and probably the rest of the world. “Unskinny Bop” (supposedly about guitarist C.C. Deville’s dalliance with an adult film star) sounded like a song about doing it with fat girls. That may have its merits, but wasn’t my goal at age 13. I can remember being 14 at Pine Forrest Camp when Eric Feldman, a weaselly little shit of an individual and wannabe Deadhead came up to me and said “I bet you like the song ‘Ride the Wind.’ You probably think that’s a cool song, huh?” I should have beaten the daylights out of Eric Feldman, which I did not do. “Ride the Wind” is a laughable ditty that the band must have composed after seeing the success of “Wanted Dead or Alive” by Bon Jovi (easily one of the best songs ever written, even if Jon and Richie Sambora use it to lay claim that they invented the inconsistent show “Unplugged.”) That was the first moment I realized maybe it was no longer cool to like hair metal.

Speaking of dislike, Chris and Rich Robinson hate each other. Everyone knows this. The brothers have admitted it. I’m not really sure why. You’d think that Chris would have grown to love his little brother if for no other reason then I’m pretty sure Rich could kick the ever-loving shit out of the waif-like Chris. A lot of “brother” groups seem to have issues getting along (For example, Oasis. I always liked Oasis. “Supersonic” was a good tune, “What’s the Story Morning Glory” was an album full of absolute piss and sod, and they sound pretty good live. It isn’t Noel’s fault that his little brother acts like a combination of John Lennon, Sid Vicious, and a three year-old who isn’t getting his way). In Chris and Rich’s case, their hatred basically killed their band for a few years, until Kate Hudson convinced the two to get back together, likely to get Chris out of the house so she could figure out how to start humping Hollywood A-Listers like Owen Wilson.

Look for part 2 soon.