{"id":143399,"date":"2019-07-08T05:04:48","date_gmt":"2019-07-08T09:04:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=143399"},"modified":"2020-02-20T07:39:09","modified_gmt":"2020-02-20T12:39:09","slug":"music-monday-50-best-albums-by-brendan-omalley-26","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=143399","title":{"rendered":"50 Best Albums, by Brendan O\u2019Malley, #26. Nirvana, Nevermind<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"

My talented brother Brendan O’Malley is an amazing writer and actor. He’s wonderful in the recent You & Me<\/i>, directed by Alexander Baack. (I interviewed Baack about the film here<\/a>.) His most recent gig was story editor\/writer on the hit series Survivor’s Remorse<\/i>. Brendan hasn’t blogged in years, but the “content” (dreaded word) is so good I asked if I could import some of it to my blog. He did series on books he loved, and albums he loved. I thought it would be fun to put up some of the stuff here. So we’ll start with his list of 50 Best Albums. I’ll put up one every Monday. <\/p>\n

Brendan’s list of 50 Best Albums is part music-critique and part memoir and part cultural snapshot. <\/p>\n

I have always loved these essays, because I love to hear my brother talk. I am happy to share them with you!<\/em><\/p>\n

50 Best Albums, by Brendan O’Malley<\/h1>\n

26. Nirvana – Nevermind<\/i><\/h2>\n

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\nQuelle Chanson, Non?<\/strong><\/p>\n

My fifth year of college (!) was spent abroad in Orleans, France at L\u2019Universite d\u2019Orleans. Up until that point, I\u2019d lived in Rhode Island all my life. From the time I was 15 until that year my main contact with the world outside of Little Rhody was through various punk rock bands.<\/p>\n

This is what \u201983 to \u201991 looked like for me\u2026<\/p>\n

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\n7Seconds<\/a> were from out West and toured relentlessly, singing melodic breakneck hardcore punk that thematically took on “important” issues like racism, sexism, and “the-world-doesn\u2019t-understand-our-mohawks-ism”.<\/p>\n

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\nMinor Threat<\/a> were from D.C. and not as upbeat as 7Seconds. They were more attuned to the forces that lay behind the ills of society and therefore less inclined to sing passionately about being able to change it. They later morphed into Fugazi, another of my all-time faves<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\nThe Midwest was represented by a two-headed hydra of searing punk rock, The Replacements and H\u00fcsker D\u00fc. The Replacements<\/a> were the ill-advised Thursday night booze-off before a big test and H\u00fcsker D\u00fc<\/a> was the all-night study session for a political science exam that devolves into a meth-fueled rage against some machine. <\/p>\n

All these bands were connected to other lesser lights. Before the internet, there was DIY (Do It Yourself) punk rock. They started their own record labels, they printed their own LP\u2019s, they drew their own posters. They toured the country in vans sleeping on the couches of their biggest fans. <\/p>\n

Rolling Stone<\/em> didn\u2019t write about them, radio wouldn\u2019t touch them with an any length foot pole, MTV was already in the business of creating megastars, and the majority of the public winced at anything that was LOUD. I vividly remember playing a Replacements song for a friend of mine in high school. This guy was a musician, a guitar player who liked heavy metal for Pete\u2019s sake, but he simply COULD NOT HEAR THE SONG. All he heard was noise.<\/p>\n

This scene would be replayed throughout the late \u201880\u2019s for me, both in high school and in my first few years in college. I had my circle of like-minded friends. There were four of us. Tom, Justin, Joe, moi. We were occasionally a band, but more often than not we were intense spectators. To be a fan of this music meant a certain level of danger. Concerts were rag-tag affairs in which the crowd threw itself against itself as ferociously as possible. There were violent elements who were attracted to this kind of freedom and we often found ourselves rescuing punk maidens from slam-dance circles and avenging uncalled-for elbows with punches. Skinheads, completely missing the point, weren\u2019t dancing so much as they were trolling for conflict. Depending on our mood, we either gave it to them or didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Outside the shows this underground element would collide with “normal” American life. The leeriness of capitalism was astounding. The feeling of “us vs. them” was overwhelming. Restaurants would refuse to serve you. Store owners would deny you their products. Business owners would REFUSE YOUR MONEY. I could romanticize that whole aspect as having added some level of enjoyment, but, to be honest, it just sucked. I had thousands of “what is the deal with THAT” conversations with my co-conspirators. The justifications we concocted on behalf of our oppressors could never quite be pinned down into any certain set of criteria. Suffice it to say, we were, by definition, outsiders.<\/p>\n

Did this status affect my view of said mainstream? In other words, was I as much of a douchebag to the world as the world was a douchebag to me? Of course not. I bought Thriller<\/i> like everyone else. I rocked out to Van Halen\u2019s “Runnin\u2019 With The Devil”. I lusted over Sade. I never cared for Madonna, but I didn\u2019t SPIT at people who did. I even had some classic rock in the collection. My tastes ran towards punk rock but I could appreciate Duran Duran, perhaps the weirdest boy band ever. And Prince was from Minneapolis like my other two favorite bands. What wasn\u2019t there to like<\/a> about Prince<\/a>?<\/p>\n

But my open-mindedness was definitely not reciprocated. For some reason the music that meant the most to me was not just disliked, it was seen as a threat.<\/p>\n

So, college happened in there somewhere. In between punk rock concerts, I did a ton of plays at the wonderful University of Rhode Island theater department. I had a series of disastrous relationships and abused alcohol. I HAD A BLAST.<\/p>\n

I kept three majors. Theater, English, and French. My youthful enjoyment of Inspector Clouseau had improbably turned into a major. Thus everything about my French studies seemed vaguely comedic to me. The opportunity to live in France for a year was going to be a laugh riot. I\u2019d completed 4 full years of college and only needed 9 credits to graduate. 5 classes per semester equals 15 credits, so you do the math. Over the course of my two semesters in France, I only needed to do less than one semester of work. France was in trouble, people.<\/p>\n

That summer wasn\u2019t exactly a victory lap of an exit. I got Lyme\u2019s Disease and went through a horrific breakup. I left the country an emotional wreck and very unhealthy. In fact, I took the last of my antibiotics right before I got on the plane, hoping they\u2019d done their work. I invested in an expensive CD Walkman and a small set of speakers. I brought two notebooks of CD\u2019s with me, perhaps 20 of my favorites. <\/p>\n

My first couple of months in France were primarily recuperative. I went to classes with my other Foreign Exchange students, I ate pleasant dinners with my host family, I went to every movie in town to get used to listening to French when I didn\u2019t have to respond. I read in my little dorm room. I ate the same meal twice a day at the cafeteria. Slowly the language unfurled itself to me and social situations became bearable.<\/p>\n

Two of my American friends had joined a local American football team and made some French friends. This was what I was after. Instead of hanging out with my classmates, other non-French-speaking foreigners, I began hanging out primarily with French people. But America was about to reach out to me.<\/p>\n

The campus of L\u2019Universite d\u2019Orleans is a 20-minute bus ride outside of the city of Orleans. We all began to spend far more time in the city and very little on campus. On one of these excursions, we stopped in at FNAC. FNAC (said as one word by the French, hilarious) was the French version of Tower Records. In a “holy shit I feel old” side note, Tower recently disappeared off of the face of the planet.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d been in France a couple of months and I\u2019d yet to buy any music, preferring instead to start smoking. So I wasn\u2019t all that into going to FNAC, to be honest. I loitered, looking at French chicks. A song came on over the in-store stereo system. <\/p>\n

I AM NOT EXAGGERATING ANYTHING THAT FOLLOWS.<\/p>\n

My memory of this moment is like one of those long unbroken movie shots … the camera starts up in the very highest corner of the store. The song begins and slowly the camera begins to swoop, capturing the silly French fashions, the funny haircuts, the multi-colored crazily-buttoned jackets, the pointy shoes, late \u201880\u2019s American culture re-appropriated back to Europe and funneled inappropriately into Mass Appeal. The focus of the shot narrows in on the face of an obviously American post-teen. As the music builds, the camera nears his face as his mouth opens, his toes tap, his head bounces. He is obviously AMAZED at this sound. The sound obliterates everything else.<\/p>\n

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