In 1992, England’s premier music magazine, Melody Maker, highlighted on their cover the ‘Best New Band’- It was a group named Suede. And at the time of receiving this rather distinguished honor...they had yet to release any music. A few singles were released over the next few months with their debut album finally arriving about a year after their cover appearance! Their music was to play a prominent role in my 'musical life' over the next year. Even to this day, their first album is one I return to often.
First- I didn’t subscribe to any music magazines, domestic or overseas. I had never been to England (that would change the following summer) and rarely listened to the radio. So how did I find out about this group? Enter (stage right) the man, the myth, the legend- Jeff Partain. We grew up going to the same church, connected early on over comic book collecting, and were leaders in our church youth group... And we became roommates at Pepperdine for the ’93-’94 school year, my sophomore outing- his freshman. Jeff essentially introduced me to music and I owe my allegiances to R.E.M. and U2 entirely to him (Read my previous post ‘America’- those were his tapes I borrowed.). He introduced me to Suede, but I wasn’t sold on them at first. He and another friend had gotten tickets to their first concert in L.A. (they were doing a double tour with a group called the Cranberries- who subsequently were catapulted to mega-stardom while Suede slipped into relative obscurity in the States). Nikole and I’s first kiss coincided with that concert. Their sound had to grow on me but I discovered that sometimes, the really best things need time to grow on you, while the ‘quick hits’ easily fade into an empty nostalgia. Suede’s guitarist, Bernard Butler, still holds sway in my mind as one of the greatest guitarists of all time.
So here are a couple of songs to enjoy. The first one, “Pantomime Horse,” is one of my favorites from their debut album- a somewhat brooding song but it strikes a chord with me and to this day I still don’t know quite why... The second one, “Stay Together”, has an extended ending that makes me stand in awe of Bernard Butler’s musical genius. And while you’re enjoying these songs you can read some of the memorable moments from “The Year that Was”- a tribute to an extraordinary collaboration between my good friend, Jeff, and I. This one’s for you, bud!
Pantomime Horse
Stay Together
· I worked in the housing office so I was able to hook us up with one of the best rooms on campus- with an impeccable view of the beach/ocean (even though Pepperdine is essentially on the beach- very few of the dorm rooms could actually claim a good view.)
· We’re big Depeche Mode fans so when they came around for a concert we had to go- to the extent that Jeff decided to sell almost all of his textbooks less than halfway through the semester to pay for his ticket. (Having a roommate a year older, who took many of the same classes, and who still had his textbooks proved to be a blessing in disguise.)
· Taking an all night drive up to Hearst Castle, peeing off a rock, and heading back down to Virgin Megastore (open 24 hours)- left around 9:00 pm on a Monday night and got back around 6:00 am on Tuesday- decided to sleep through my Tuesday morning drawing class. (Incidentally, ’93 was a big fire year- those huge fires that have been plaguing SoCal for sometime now- this was one of the early ones- anyways, we saw it’s foreboding glow late at night as we were driving back- before there had been any news reports of it.)
· As the fire swept its way toward campus Jeff decides to try and preserve his CD collection (at the time in the neighborhood of 200-250 CDs). You had to be there, but a series of minor mishaps amidst changing reports of ‘we’ll have to leave campus’- ‘no, the fire changed course, we’re all fine’ – ‘oh, the fire changed course again, we’ll have to leave campus’- etc., etc. made the whole scene quite hilarious in the end. If you want to ask me about it, I’ll be happy to replay it.
· ‘Bootlegs and B-sides’- the title of our radio show. Jeff, the ultimate music fan, had a sizeable collection of singles, bootlegged live or studio performances, and special edition releases that had the rare songs only the die-hards knew about. We decided to share with the ‘masses.’ Only Pepperdine didn’t broadcast over the air so if students wanted to listen they had to get a special connection to hook their stereo to the cable line. So basically we had one or two listeners, one of which always phoned in and requested the same Duran Duran song to listen to while she was getting ready for class.
· ‘Cigar night’- an actual school ‘sponsored’ dorm event. Jeff and I decided to give it the ol’ college try- failing miserably by smoking the wrong end of a Swisher Sweet. (But it made our second one much better once we figured it out!)
· We were unaware that we had a heating unit in our room. We discovered the hard way when one of our dorm-mates decided as a joke to crank ours up. It was a miserable night of extreme heat and sweaty, sticky sheets until the next day when someone said, “you should turn your heat down!” and proceeded to crank the knob back down to an appropriate level.
· We met another new student- a drummer named Davin. During this time Pepperdine was building a new collection of dorm rooms called the ‘Towers.’ At this point it was just the framing and wood paneling that was up. Davin decided he was going to throw the first rock through a ‘window’ in the Towers. So he lobbed a rock through the open expanse where a window would one day go... then we heard the crash of broken glass of something inside. Whoops!
· As I mentioned earlier, I have the extraordinary ability to listen to the same thing (song or album) over and over again without getting sick of it. One night I was really into a particular song so I put that one song on repeat. We feel asleep listening to that one song playing continuously until it drove Jeff nuts, gave him nightmares, and caused him to wake up at an ungodly hour to turn the stereo off. Sorry, man.
· Since I started this post with Suede, I’ll end it on that note. ‘Stay Together’ was being released as a stand alone single in between their first and second albums. It was supposed to be released on Valentine’s Day in 1994-which fell on a Monday. On Friday the 11th, on a whim Jeff decides to call the music store to see if it’s in- and what do you know, they had just gotten it that morning, 3 days early. We (myself, Jeff, and our friend Ian) immediately hopped in the car and drove into L.A. and while Jeff rode around the block a few times (parking was non-existent, I collected everyone’s money and ran into the store and bought 3 copies. It’s always nice to say you got something the day it came out, especially when you catch it coming out early.
As with any stroll down memory lane, especially as it relates to college, the list could go on and on- but I think this is a pretty good sample of probably my favorite year at Pepperdine. Here’s to your own memories of times like these!
