A little catharsis of my younger years

As I go through chapter 3 of the dissertation for edits and cleanup tonight, I've been listening to a video of that dog.'s reunion show at the Troubadour in West Hollywood, CA from 26 August 2011.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 of the show are here.

Of the bands of my younger years, there was no band that I'd placed as much emotional baggage (in some ways) as that dog. I'm not sure why; I didn't discover them until about the time they had broken up. I had Gerry Dolan, one of my classmates from Johns Hopkins, for the hat tip. He sent "Never Say Never" on a tape (and later, their cover of "Midnight at the Oasis" from the compilation disk Spirit of '73) while I was in Kuwait for an INTRINSIC ACTION exercise in 1997. There was a certain hopefulness to "Never Say Never" that for some reason really stuck with me. It was a a statement of love that, being unattached at the time, I sure wanted to visit on someone else.

I remember a fair amount of disillusionment after I came back from Kuwait. In retrospect, I realize that life in a deployed cavalry squadron task force had a certain degree of intensity that was lacking when I came back to the United States. I returned with a fucking shitload of expectations for what I thought my life was going to be like and realized very, very few of them. It wasn't until much later that I realized that those adjustments were normal and I just didn't take to them well. That level of dislocation wasn't shit compared to what I felt after I came back from Iraq and Afghanistan.

I still consider Retreat from the Sun one of my favorite albums ever. It was one of the first albums I ripped to disk (at 128k CBR) when I bought my first computer that could rip MP3s back in 1999. I guess I need to cart out my that dog. disks and rerip those tracks at 256k VBR.

I'm not sure why listening to that dog. had so much more significance. I can only conjecture that it was because the three women in that band were within months of my age. Petra Haden is a violinist (as am I) and had a note in the liner notes of Retreat from the Sun that she uses Dr. Thomastik Dominants as her primary string. First time I used Dominants was sometime in 1985 and they're still my string of choice, even though I haven't picked up the violin in months. I had a tremendous crush on Petra Haden back then.

It's been 14 years since that deployment to Kuwait and I am older, fatter, slower, and maybe even a bit wiser rather than the dumber that I occasionally claim to be. I'm married now, and have children.

I have far, far more anger than I used to have, even compared to that summer of unfulfilled dreams.