Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time by Rob Sheffield Page B
Authors: Rob Sheffield
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brightly colored plastic tube dangling from a hook. It was our first encounter with Grunge Gunk or, as it proclaimed itself on the label, “The Alternative Hair Styling Mud!” Of course we took it home ($1.75) and Renée nailed it up on the bathroom door.
It was a Grunge Gunk kind of summer.
As Lionel Richie once warned us, there comes a time when we heed a certain call. For us, that time was the summer of 1993. Our first redhead summer smelled like hair dye and nail polish. Renée had only been a redhead for a few months, but she was already burying her brunette past, and the apartment filled up with cosmetic fumes. Renée had a new job at the Fashion Square Mall, working as the Clarins girl at the Leggett makeup counter. At work, she became instant best friends with the Clinique girl, Susan, a Waynesboro muscle-car aficionado. She was fond of dispensing wisdom along the lines of: “The bullshit stops when the green light pops!” I’d go to the mall to pick up Renée, take them both a couple of coffees, and hang out while they chattered in their hot white coats. Susan would take Renée to hot-rod shows and run-what-ya-brung drag races. She brought out sides of Renée I’d never gotten to see before, and it was a sight to behold. After a night out with Susan, Renée would always come back saying things like, “If it’s got tits or tires, it’s gonna cost you money.”
That year, the music we loved had blown up nationwide. It was a little ridiculous how formerly underground guitar rock was crashing through the boundaries. More guitar bands than ever were making noise, and more of them than ever were worth hearing. The first sign of the apocalypse had come during the Winter Olympics when Kristi Yamaguchi, America’s gold-medal ice queen, was doing her free-form routine to Edith Piaf’s “Milord,” and TV announcer Dick Buttons said that Kristi psyched herself up backstage by listening to her favorite band, Nirvana, on her Walkman. Renée and I just stared at each other. For her, it was an epiphanic moment—punk rock was now music that even figure-skater girls could listen to. The door was open. Our turn had arrived. Here we are now. Entertain us.
Now we lived in a world of Grunge Gunk, where the bands we loved had a chance to get popular, or half-popular, or at least popular enough to get to keep making music, which is all most of them asked for. One night, before a special Seattle episode of
Cops
, the announcer said, “Tonight . . . in the city that gave us Pearl Jam . . . the cops are taking out the grunge!” Pathetic? Depressing? No. Awesome, we decided. Why not? We were easily amused. Maybe it was all the nail-polish fumes, but we were buzzing with energy. Our apartment flooded, so we just moved to the couch. For dinner, we cut across the train tracks to Wayside’s Fried Chicken. On weekends, Renée and I drove out to the Fork Union drive-in to see cinematic masterpieces like
The Crush
and
Sliver
. MTV spent the whole summer blasting the video where Snoop Doggy Dogg wore his “LBC” baseball hat. Renée asked, “Snoop went to Liberty Baptist College?”
We both had raging crushes, which we loved to dish about together. Our big summer crushes were a couple of rookie grad students in the English department, named River and Sherilyn after the movie stars they reminded us of. Thank God neither of us was the jealous type, or the insecure type, or for that matter the cheatin’ type, since sharing our crushes was one of the major perks of being married. Renée would catalogue my crushes. There was Bassist Cleavage Girl (from the Luscious Jackson videos), Tremble-Mouth Girl (Winona Ryder), Mick Jagger Elastica Girl (Angelina Jolie in
Hackers
), Painted on a World War II Bomber Girl (Jennifer Connelly), My Eyes Are So Big You Could Fuck Them Girl (Susanna Hoffs), and Madonna (Madonna). She introduced me to her own seraglio, from the Braves’ Javy Lopez (“He sure is put together nice”) to Evan Dando
It was a Grunge Gunk kind of summer.
As Lionel Richie once warned us, there comes a time when we heed a certain call. For us, that time was the summer of 1993. Our first redhead summer smelled like hair dye and nail polish. Renée had only been a redhead for a few months, but she was already burying her brunette past, and the apartment filled up with cosmetic fumes. Renée had a new job at the Fashion Square Mall, working as the Clarins girl at the Leggett makeup counter. At work, she became instant best friends with the Clinique girl, Susan, a Waynesboro muscle-car aficionado. She was fond of dispensing wisdom along the lines of: “The bullshit stops when the green light pops!” I’d go to the mall to pick up Renée, take them both a couple of coffees, and hang out while they chattered in their hot white coats. Susan would take Renée to hot-rod shows and run-what-ya-brung drag races. She brought out sides of Renée I’d never gotten to see before, and it was a sight to behold. After a night out with Susan, Renée would always come back saying things like, “If it’s got tits or tires, it’s gonna cost you money.”
That year, the music we loved had blown up nationwide. It was a little ridiculous how formerly underground guitar rock was crashing through the boundaries. More guitar bands than ever were making noise, and more of them than ever were worth hearing. The first sign of the apocalypse had come during the Winter Olympics when Kristi Yamaguchi, America’s gold-medal ice queen, was doing her free-form routine to Edith Piaf’s “Milord,” and TV announcer Dick Buttons said that Kristi psyched herself up backstage by listening to her favorite band, Nirvana, on her Walkman. Renée and I just stared at each other. For her, it was an epiphanic moment—punk rock was now music that even figure-skater girls could listen to. The door was open. Our turn had arrived. Here we are now. Entertain us.
Now we lived in a world of Grunge Gunk, where the bands we loved had a chance to get popular, or half-popular, or at least popular enough to get to keep making music, which is all most of them asked for. One night, before a special Seattle episode of
Cops
, the announcer said, “Tonight . . . in the city that gave us Pearl Jam . . . the cops are taking out the grunge!” Pathetic? Depressing? No. Awesome, we decided. Why not? We were easily amused. Maybe it was all the nail-polish fumes, but we were buzzing with energy. Our apartment flooded, so we just moved to the couch. For dinner, we cut across the train tracks to Wayside’s Fried Chicken. On weekends, Renée and I drove out to the Fork Union drive-in to see cinematic masterpieces like
The Crush
and
Sliver
. MTV spent the whole summer blasting the video where Snoop Doggy Dogg wore his “LBC” baseball hat. Renée asked, “Snoop went to Liberty Baptist College?”
We both had raging crushes, which we loved to dish about together. Our big summer crushes were a couple of rookie grad students in the English department, named River and Sherilyn after the movie stars they reminded us of. Thank God neither of us was the jealous type, or the insecure type, or for that matter the cheatin’ type, since sharing our crushes was one of the major perks of being married. Renée would catalogue my crushes. There was Bassist Cleavage Girl (from the Luscious Jackson videos), Tremble-Mouth Girl (Winona Ryder), Mick Jagger Elastica Girl (Angelina Jolie in
Hackers
), Painted on a World War II Bomber Girl (Jennifer Connelly), My Eyes Are So Big You Could Fuck Them Girl (Susanna Hoffs), and Madonna (Madonna). She introduced me to her own seraglio, from the Braves’ Javy Lopez (“He sure is put together nice”) to Evan Dando
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