Rock Trauma: On the Endless Harmful Power of Electrified Music
I Sing the Genius of Myself
Last year I concocted a proposal for a book titled Rock Trauma 86: Four Score and Half-a-Dozen Humiliations, Heartbreaks and Utter Defeats With a Good Beat You Can Dance To.
The idea was to ruminate over 86 particular rock songs, of varying types and qualities, that I immediately and directly associate with bad times from my childhood and adolescence.
The narrative would end in my late teens - 1986, specifically (hence the numeric figure in the title) - as, once I participated in regular chemical inebriation, the patterns of my life ruptured profoundly - for the (way, way) better at first (and for a good, interesting while), then for, well, the absolute pits.
And, thereby, so did the music. 
Alas, several professional book-world cold shoulders prompted me to launch Rock Trauma as a blog, which I promptly forgot all about once this McBeardo project got going.
This may be a shame, as I dare say the stuff that made it to Rock Trauma online is a bona fide hoot.
You read it. You decide. Am I a mere Visionary (please note the capitol “V”) or merely The One True God (please note the capitol “T”, “O”, “T” and “G”)?
Click the following headlines for instant highlights of my rambunctiously scored low times:
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HOT CHILD IN THE BUNK BED <–CLICK HERE
Fall 1978
Laid bare: How Nick Gilder’s “Hot Child in the City” inflamed my fourth-grade Catholic school dreams of child pornography stardom.
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YOUTH GONE MILD: WHY CAN’T THIS BE METAL? <–CLICK HERE
June 1986
I graduated high school, lost 100 pounds, had gotten recently laid, and grooved to a wicked trinity of FM rock station heavy-duty devil-horned power-pop: “Why Can’t This Be Love” by Van Hagar, “Who Made Who” by AC/DC, and “Dancin’ in the Ruins” by Blue Oyster Cult. Then the shit really hit the fan, and the fan was me.
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TOP 10 ORIGINAL BOTTOMS <–CLICK HERE
1968-1977
Ride a downward-spiraling childhood careen into lifelong depression that connect Clint Holmes‘ “Playground in My Mind” to “Little Willy” by The Sweet to “Half-Breed” by Cher to “Live and Let Die” to “Pretty Vacant” by the Sex Pistols to 10cc’s “The Things We Do For Love.”
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Now I have to ask: I’ve got 83 more such gems, should I revive that blog?
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Comments ( 3 )
[...] documented on myriad occasions my all-consuming childhood drive to get inside New York City’s tug-yourself temples, which included my imagining I’d pay a sailor to smuggle me past the box office in his duffel [...]
McBeardo’s Midnight Movies » Year of Our Exploitation 1979, Part 2: Hardcore added these pithy words on Oct 05 09 at 12:07 pmI’d read it. But then again, the fact that I tend to indulge in such ruminations of my own is one of my less charming qualities. So anything I say should be taken with a grain of salt.
Seriously, I would find it interesting.
Lily Strange said at
Aug 28 09 at
12:15 pm
In 6th grade Catholic school we were working on a project which somehow involved playing music on a tape recorder. Someone in my group asked Sister Margaret Lillian if we could use “Hot Child In The City.” She thought a moment and replied, “Well let me ask you this: In what sense is she ‘hot’?”
Chris Herzog said at
Aug 28 09 at
12:24 pm
