France Tales

Hopefully this won’t be another trite post to be added to the lengthly list of posts about how people get back in touch with people from their past. Maybe instead I’ll list a few of the people who in the last week I have made contact with and simply say something funny about something I remember or how they influenced me.

Devorah Bunton
I seriously would have gone mad(der) if I hadn’t met you in Liverpool High School. We were the freaks, it bothered us a bit back then but we really wore it as a badge of honor, as I still do, even though I am no longer a freak, just someone who doesn’t fit in easily. Remember when we used to go to school, slip off campus before it began, take the Centro bus downtown, and walk up the Hill to Chucks? What were we thinking, Hungry Charlies during the day and on a school day. It’s hard to believe we thought we were cool. When that got boring we’d hang out on the wall, go to Down Under Leather, then Modern Records, and by noon we ran out of things to do. I remember thinking a few times it might have been more interesting just to go back to school. I’m glad we didn’t though.

Adam Felleman
I remember how you loved Reggae even when no one thought it was cool. I think you gave me the license to listen to uncool things as well, although not quite as noble things. While you were listening to reggae I was in the closet or under the covers rocking out to Prince and Michael Jackson, Kajagoogoo, Styx, and who knows what else. I also remembered how sad your face was when Paul, Krissy, Jennifer, you, and I played together as a band in your parents house. You looked so pissed that I kept making mistakes, unhappy with Jennifer’s voice, annoyed that Paul was wearing sunglasses at night inside, and I have to make something up about Krissy because I don’t think you had a reaction to her, maybe it was because her amp was so small. you were wise to ditch us and bring Milton’s back.

Paul Dalton
We knew each other well in CA and played in bands etc, it hasn’t been as long out of touch as with the others. You were all politics all the time and I loved it. I remember you talked about some Public Policy class at SU that was supposed to be an easy A. The guy wrote position papers for the CIA or something and you had to write a few short papers and that was it. I felt so stupid because I had gotten a B+ in the class, Public Policy 101. I did much better in my Music Theory class for non-music majors, I think we called it clapping for credit. A casual observer would have thought they were training a bunch of seals. Arhythmic seals. I got an A, an A for arhythmic.

Remember when we, Among the Thugs, were playing in Reno with Avail? I had to work until 6 PM and you picked me up at work in that Taurus and drove to Reno. We had to be there by 9 or so. You were driving so fast that I started to get sick to my stomach in the car. You gave me some Marinol pills that you said would calm my stomach. I took two. It calmed my stomach but made me a babbling giddy idiot. I think by the end of the drive you wished you hadn’t given me any because I was driving everyone crazy with my giggling. I was so relieved when we arrived but instantly became terrified because we had to play a show. I couldn’t imagine playing in the state I was in.

What about when we had that 24 hour access practice studio in San Francisco out on 3rd Street. We practiced at like 1 AM. Why did we do that? I can’t even remember.

People I haven’t made contact with but have fond memories of

John Taylor
I will never forget the first time I saw you with Liberty Spikes. You stepped off the bus and the whole world was looking.

You introduced me to the Subhumans and really political music. While I don’t listen it much anymore it had a profound impact on my global outlook that I still have today.

I don’t really remember particularly funny things because everything you did was funny.

I remember you writing a paper for a college class the Fall before I moved to CA and you were writing it by hand. You said it was due in 2 hours. I said you’ll never have time to type it. You said you weren’t going to. I thought I wished I had the guts to turn in a handwritten paper or I wish that my paper was so good that my professor wouldn’t care that it was hand written. Yours was.

There are so many I’d like to hear from. I don’t know why all of a sudden but it has really hit me lately.