I have no idea why I've gone song insane this week.  I'm sure it won't last.  This one?  It's for you.
 
 

November 7
 

 
 
 

The part of my head that's dedicated to knowing all of the words to Public Enemy's best album  went into overdrive this morning when I unearthed the tape in the big, formerly frightening bucket of shit in my car.  The frightening bucket of shit, lest you wonder, is not in fact a bucket, but a thing between the driver and passenger seat.  It is a thing you can open, and store stuff.  Perhaps the word I am searching for, the word I reach out to grasp here is "storage space".  Perhaps, one might go even a step further than that, and call it "vehicle storage space", which is what it happens to be and what it does.   In my vehicle.  It stores stuff.

Mostly tapes.  A big purple flashlight.  Some fossilized Fruity Booty.  Mints from year 1932.  Did I mention tapes?  Tapes.  Tapes which have been sitting in the shit bucket since before time began:  point in case:  The Charlie Daniels Band's Greatest Hits.  Right!

So, in the cleaning out of the shit bucket about two weeks ago, I was reminded that 1.) I have kind of horrible taste in music and 2.)  Public Enemy!

Unfortunately, two weeks ago, I was obsessed with a tape.  One I'd listen to over and over again, and HAD been listening to over and over again since September 12th.  Kaya.  I don't know how people cope with tragedy and horror, but I assume that lots of us turned to music for comfort.  Me and Bob Marley were inseparable for about a month.  I can't explain why it was, just that it was.  I sought the tape out of the shit bucket, and that's all I listened to.  Anyhow, this isn't so much a talk about how much I love Bob Marley and how Kaya kept me sane during a bad month for everyone.  No, no! Not at all!

This is just to say that there is a special part of my brain dedicated solely to Public Enemy lyrics and no other rap bands from the 80's are allowed to wander in.  This is not to say I have no other music from rap bands of the 80's memorized, just that Public Enemy, and this album have a space all to themselves.  I'd wondered whether or not now that I'm old and obsessed with things the elderly obsess over, now that that particular album is no longer current, now that Chuck D has become sort of a mellow, middle aged spokesperson for the rage of yesteryear, whether or not I'd still know all the words.  Whether or not some new, upstart rappers would have raided the space set aside for PE.

When I popped the tape into the tape deck, and got past that opening dialogue and into "TOO BLACK!  TOO STRONG!"  I realized that no, I'd never ever ever forget the words.  I also recalled the sort of tentative cool I'd felt when being so in love with PE all those years ago and knowing fully well that my fellow commuters on the B train were also getting to enjoy a little PE.  Again, though, this is not about my white woman's guilt about co-opting an anger I didn't actually have a right to.

It's about how very fucking cool it is to know, now 11 years later, that I still remember all the words! That this amazingly good rap album made that much of an impression. To be fair, I devoted a great deal of time to it, and now when I listen to it, that part of the brain: the one where only ONLY Public Enemy are allowed, is stimulated in a way that travels back to the Dana of 1988.

The story of Dana, 1988 is not an amazing one.  I was fun.  I was happy.  I was 17.  I was a senior in HS and then a freshman in college.  I lived at home. I had friends.  I didn't care so much that I didn't yet have college friends, I still had OTHER friends.  We drank a lot (a  lot!) of beer.  I was like you, or like anyone, but I had PUBLIC ENEMY and I had no idea back then, in 1988 that the day I slapped down my 8.99 for the cassette, that I would be clearing a little space in my brain for The Words and Wisdom of Chuck D and Flavor Flav.

I've no real solid idea of what got kicked out, though I have some suspicions:  Italian?  Once a language I spoke almost fluently, gone after one year in college.  Love for my horrible, retarded HS boyfriend, Evil Patrick?  Disintegrated, two semesters in.  Math?  A week after graduation.  Being a Republican?  A bad idea to begin with, gone right after Pappy Bush became president and saw stuff happening to my student loans and scholarships.  The B1 route in Brooklyn?  Gone.

All, at one time, fairly important things.  Shoved aside for PE.  I think it was worth it, and I was happy to see that not only did I still remember, but I still DON'T remember any of the things I'd forgotten to make room to remember.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

We got to demonstrate, come on now, they're gonna have to wait
Till we get it right
Radio stations I question their blackness
They call themselves black, but we'll see if they'll play this
 
 

 if you want to read what i wrote the other day, it's here. if you want turdmonster, he's here.  if you want to see my links, they're here. if you want to mail me, that's here.