Friends Don't Mean A Thing

I need to stop these thoughts. 

They come like an annoying internal voice.

This voice always whispers to me.

All day long, it whispers negative things. 

It is a hard habit. 

It is present in all the aspects of my life. 

It makes me sick. 

It makes me see the dark side of everything I do. 

I'm about to go to a birthday party.

I have to travel across the city.

It sickenings me, too. 

I've been thinking why I avoid this type of meetings. 

There is always a guy who appears out of nowhere and starts to say silly things about me -or about what I do- and I am unable to give a smart answer. 

It's a dilemma. 

Should I ignore him, or should I explain him why he's wrong?

When I decide to explain him, he just changes the topic. 

Should I laugh and pretend he's funny as hell? 

Maybe I should nod and smile. 

I am a slow-minded man. 

I am a troubled man. 

I always have. 

I guess I just need to don't care about what people say.

They always speak about things they barely know.  

However, they make me feel uncomfortable. 

Sometimes I wish I could be as simple as them. 

They seem to be happy having kids and cars.

Nonetheless, they need to go to the church each Sunday morning. 

They need someone to tell them how to conduct their own lives. 

They need to find a mystical force to have a reason to work all day long. 

They need a mystical force to tolerate their miserable existences. 

Maybe they don't even have time to realize how much they hate their jobs. 

They find happiness on TV. 

They find happiness on loud music.

Always the same song, or any song. 

They don't even have a favourite band. 

They go with the flow. 

It's OK. 

But I can't ignore them, when they speak about things they don't understand. 

I can't ignore them when they assume each one around them is the same. 

We're not the same.

Even when we f**k it all. 

These thoughts increased yesterday. 

I feel kind of dizzy and I have a stomach ache. 

I would prefer to stay at home. 

I'm sleepy and nauseous. 

I would prefer to employ my time in a different way. 

I can't stop these thoughts.

They are like an uncontrollable disease. 

I've been thinking how will it be when someone appears out of nowhere and start to say silly things. 

It seems likely that I am going to be breathless and speechless. 

Like I frequently do. 

Later, when I arrive home, I will be complaining about it and the response I should have given will appear and I will regret to be such a slow-minded man. 

On the other hand, it is possible that nobody speaks to me. 

Look at the bright side. 

(My whole existence is for your amusement.) 

Creep

It's A Story Of A Man Who Works As Hard As He Can

It must be the autumn of 1994, when I heard Duff McKagan's So Fine. 

Kurt Cobain had recently been found lifeless in the greenhouse of his house of Lake Washington, but I didn't even know of Nevermind success.  

I was so childish. I was so alienated by soccer. 

For three years, I had been dealing in Junior High School with guys who didn't really care about punk rock. 

There were more into Beverly Hills 90210-like sitcoms, basketball and rap. 

The craziest music they heard at parties was the 1990's What's Up? hit of 4 Non Blondes.

A few months later, Michael Jackson's Dangerous World Tour had arrived to Mexico City and a friend of mine had invited me to the show. His grandparent owned private boxes in the stadium. It was an event nobody wanted to miss. 

Then Michael Jackson represented my closest connection to music.  
Since I was a child, I had watched almost all of his music videos. 
They were so elaborated and they appeared on TV like a movie.
I knew a lot of his songs. 

Though I enjoyed his music and his videos a lot, and though the way he danced was so contagious, there was something about Michael Jackson that didn't seem right to me.

I was a confused teenager and so I believed that Michael Jackson didn't look so defiant and rebellious as a musician had to be. 

It was weird that even my grandparents adored him. It was unacceptable that I had the same musical preferences of my grandparents! 

I wanted to change my mind and I was looking for another options. 

Besides, I really didn't feel that I wanted to dance like he did. 

Though my friend and myself never found the private boxes of his grandparent and we had to watch the entire show in one of the corners of the stadium, standing all the time, so far away from the stage, it was awesome.

I still remember myself walking thru the alleys of the stadium before the show started, lights were hypnotizing and people were freak out. Beatles' songs sounded as loud as I haven't ever heard them.

Everything changed when I met Guns N' Roses. 

Those were my last vacations before High School and I saw a lot of TV.
Dunno why, but there was a fever for rock n' roll videos.

Estranged was a pretty impressive video. I saw it for entire weeks, wondering who those irreverent and hairy guys on the video were, wondering what kind of music was that.

It didn't sound like King of Pop's music at all. 
They looked defiant and rebellious on the video. 
The singer even wore a T-shirt with Charles Manson's face. 

A few days before my first day on High School, I bought Use Your Illusion II.

So Fine precedes Estranged on the album.
I was so excited and very expectant.
I was about to hear Estranged with high quality sound for the first time!
I was about to meet different people in High School. 

The association between these songs was so intense that it still gives me the creeps each time I hear So Fine. 

Now that I think about it, So Fine it is kind of a conditioned stimulus. 

Except that, for more than twenty years, it hasn't suffered extinction, nor has suffered habituation. 

So Fine

Touch Me, I'm Sick

I started to listen Mudhoney in 1995.

It had just came out a bootleg from Nirvana's Reading Festival show.

It included an almost complete soundboard source recorded on August 30, 1992.

Back then Nirvana was the most popular band of what journalists around the world had called the Seattle sound. 

The show started with Kurt Cobain mumbling Some say love is a river... 

It was a cryptic phrase. 
I felt attracted to find out where those strange lyrics came from. 

For months, I didn't know it was the first verse of The Rose. 

I was fifteen years old. 

A friend of mine got The Money Will Roll Right In from the same show, except that it was from an audience source.

Although it was originally performed by The Fang, this song would introduce me to Mudhoney. 

Since my friend and I were interested on having a band, that song drove us wild. 

It sounded like a song really fun to play. 

Back then, it was really difficult to get albums from Seattle's underground scene.

In Mexico City, we barely got albums  from Nirvana or Pearl Jam.
It was almost impossible to get albums from Soundgarden and Alice In Chains.

Imagine how difficult it was to meet someone who had already heard Mudhoney.

On December 5, 2014 they played at El Circo Volador. 

A year ago, they had just released Vanishing Point, their sixth studio album. 

The venue was so small.

It looked like an average small bar from the 90's, like those that appear in the movies or music videos of the time. 

A couple of garage Mexican bands played before Mudhoney. 

The crowd was so enthusiastic.

The band came out and started to play Sonic Infusion. 

As the hypnotic patterns of the guitar went by, the audience started to crowd surfing.

Guy Madisson told us that Mark Arm was ill.

He had sore throat and he often coughed, but it was one of the best shows of my life. 

From the beginning, the audience went crazy.

I particularly remember when they played In N' Out Of Grace. 

Can't take out of my mind Dan Peters' prolonged drum solo, while Mark Arm and Steve Turner seemed so impressed by the surfing crowd. 

The band played almost all the songs I wanted to hear, except Mudride and Suck You Dry. 

That show ended up with The Money Will Roll Right In. 

On these days, it was the 30th anniversary of Touch Me, I'm Sick