Tunesday : Take the Skinheads Bowling

Take the Skinheads Bowling

(Lowery, D) Performed by Camper Van Beethoven

Everyday I get up and pray to Jah
And he increases the number of clocks by exactly one

Everybody's coming home for lunch these days
Last night there were skinheads on my lawn

Take the skinheads bowling, take them bowling.
Take the skinheads bowling, take them bowling.

Some people say that bowling alleys got big lanes 

(got big lanes, got big lanes)
Some people say that bowling alleys all look the same 

(look the same, look the same)

There's not a line that goes here that rhymes with anything 

(anything, anything)
Had a dream last night but I forget what it was 

(what it was, what it was)

Take the skinheads bowling, take them bowling.
Take the skinheads bowling, take them bowling.

Had a dream last night about you my friend
Had a dream I wanted to sleep next to plastic

Had a dream I wanted to lick your knees
Had a dream about nothing

Take the skinheads bowling, take them bowling.
Take the skinheads bowling, take them bowling.

Take the skinheads bowling, take them bowling.
Take the skinheads bowling, take them bowling.

Yet another song that was a favourite with me and my university friends; such a happy beat and simple harmony, it sounded like the kind of sun-shiney tune from the 60's that I had enjoyed throughout my teens. Yet, with lyrics about skinheads, it had that same ironic hilarity -- as I was talking about last week -- that upped my enjoyment of all these alt/punk rock songs that my new friends were introducing me to. As an aside about this song, my friends and I imagined it was an attack on neo-Nazi skinheads -- like, if you woke up and found skinheads on your lawn, you ought to throw bowling balls at them, and with their shaved heads, they would tumble to the ground, hilariously, like bowling pins -- so it was interesting to me, when I was googling for the lyrics this morning, to find a wikipedia entry for Take the Skinheads Bowling, in which the song's composer insists it has no meaning at all:

We regarded Take The Skinheads Bowling as just a weird non-sensical song. The lyrics were purposely structured so that it would be devoid of meaning. Each subsequent line would undermine any sort of meaning established by the last line. It was the early 80′s and all our peers were writing songs that were full of meaning. It was our way of rebelling. BTW this is the most important fact about this song. We wanted the words to lack any coherent meaning. There is no story or deeper insight that I can give you about this song.

And that is perfect to me; it ups the sense of ironic hilarity. And yet: we were so disgusted at the time by the White Power rallies of neo-Nazi skinheads -- with their Doc Martens and shaved heads, death metal and swastika tattoos -- that I still imagine this song is fighting back against them with a happy beat and simple harmonies; like my generation's version of sticking a daisy in the barrel of an M-16. Like the song itself, my song choice this week has no deeper meaning: I just wanted to memorialise Take the Skinheads Bowling as a blast from my past.

*****

I want to use this space this week to briefly talk about my reading life up to this time: I do not assume this will have any appeal to people who don't know me, so to you strangers I say, "Enjoy the song and don't waste your time on what follows". It would be unsurprising, I suppose, if I said that I didn't do much personal reading during my university years -- what with all the mandatory reading I was doing for my courses -- but, until I moved out of my parents' house, I didn't really do that much reading at all (which just might come as a surprise to those who think that's all I do now). 

The first book I ever remember reading was a collection of Peanuts comics, and that only stands out in my mind because I was so young and the vocabulary was beyond me (I remember having to ask my mother what "nauseating" meant, and in retrospect, Peanuts may have been a comic, but it was never really written for children.) I remember reading (and loving) Black Beauty when I was nine or so, but despite it being an old fashioned book itself, I could never get interested in the "classics" my Mum sometimes brought home for me (the Nancy Drew and Bobsy Twins series that she had loved as a girl). I read Judy Blume throughout elementary school (and the books themselves grew more mature at pace with myself; covering bullying to puberty to sex just before I had questions about these things). I remember reading Darwin's The Voyage of the Beagle when I was in grade six because, for whatever reason, I had an early fascination with the Galapagos Islands. And in grade seven or eight, I randomly picked up a book from a pile that had been dropped off for my Mum by her best friend (these were paperbacks with their covers removed -- I don't know how the friend came into possession of these "remainders") and when I started reading it, I was shocked to discover it was smutty. Shocked enough to know to bring it to my room. I was reading it in bed one night, at some good and juicy part, and when my Mum knocked on my door, I immediately hid it under my pillow and tried to look innocent as she entered. Mum demanded to know what I had hidden, and I reluctantly brought it out to show her. She flipped through some pages, understood what I was reading, and said something like, "Curiosity is nothing to be ashamed of." She wasn't even mad. And I never read another page of it. Other than those books I was expected to read for my elementary classes, these are all that stand out in my memory.

I read a bit more in high school, and in the early years, mostly from my mother's book shelf: she had plenty of mysteries -- like Agatha Christie and John Le Carre -- and I don't know if I ever loved these books, but they were handy and wasted time and I read plenty of them. I remember reading her H. Rider Haggard compilation (with She, King Solomon's Mines, a few others), and despite being old fashioned, I found them to be pretty exciting. This disinterested I'll read a book if I have nothing better to do attitude changed around grade eleven, when I discovered Stephen King.

King's were the first books that I ever bought for myself, and I read all that I could get: I remember Christine, Carrie, Cujo, The Shining, The Stand, 'Salem's Lot, Pet Sematary, The Dead Zone, Firestarter, IT, and the Bachman Books. I was particularly enchanted by 'Salem's Lot, IT, and The Stand: for the first time in my life, I had been transported by literature, and although I haven't loved a Stephen King book in a lot of years now, he was the author who taught me to love reading. 

As I said above, I didn't find much time to read novels while I was in university -- between the required reading and my full social life, I had little time or interest -- but my friend Curtis was a big reader and he was often pushing on me his must reads: I read and enjoyed his Piers Anthony Incarnations of Immortality series, and some Peter Straub (The Talisman, which he wrote with Stephen King, was an easy sell and probably my favourite). My new friend Rob turned me onto Anne Rice, and after I read Interview with the Vampire, I quickly devoured the rest of the series; approved of Rob naming his new kitten Lestat. It's funny to me now that, although it was all I read as a young adult, I no longer have much interest in fantasy or horror. 

And that's about it. Looking at me now, one would probably assume I was this bookish kid; always reading, always off on my own, but I wasn't: I was a bored and boring, TV-watching couch potato whenever I was at home. Before I left university, I don't know if I had read fifty books for leisure in my life -- more than anything, I wish I had been keeping track. After I left university, I started reading in earnest -- trying to fill in the gaps in my education by following my interest trails wherever they led me -- and, oh, how I wish I had been keeping track of those books! If only there had been a Goodreads back then: not only would I love to remember every book I've read, but I'd love to remember what I thought of them; love to rediscover what my voice sounded like back then. 

Ah well, we can only live our lives going forward, and to the best of my abilities, I'll be preserving my thoughts and voice as I go along now. For what it's worth, I offer up this week's post as one more piece of the puzzle that is me.