Look At Your Game, Girl

It could've been in November 1994. I just had bought the cassette. I put it in the recorder of the Jetta. Dunno exactly why or who, but John & Yoko were looking for someone in the streets, and they had left us inside the car. Ringo and George were making some silly jokes, or so. Probably they were excited for the video game they'd just bought. Probably it was another one of the style of that Flintstone's video game they'd played for entire weeks in the summer. 

In the same store they'd bought the video game, I'd bought The Spaghetti Incident?, the eight or nine cassette I'd bought in the same store in the last months. I was crazy about Guns N' Roses. I'd heard them for the first time in the last summer. On TV, they frequently showed the videos of “Estranged”, “The Garden”, “Live And Let Die”, “Don't Cry”, “November Rain” and “Since I Don't Have You”. I was almost 14 years old, a nobody, a teenager, and 'the most dangerous band in the world' blew my mind.

With their fifth studio album in my hands, I had their entire discography –in record time!, two-three months!

It was cold, dark and windy. 

Slash's guitar riff came out from the tiny music speakers of the Jetta. It gave me the chills. 

Dunno knew anything about the album or that song in particular. 

As the song progressed and my brothers made silly jokes, I just watched the photographs and read the lines in the booklet of the cassette. They were photos of the awesome logo of the band, of Duff, of Slash, of Matt... of the famous Axl's white & red Converse... and a sentence: 

A great song can be found anywhere. Do yourself a favor and go find out the originals.

Or something like that.

Then, after drums and bass and some sort of weird synthesizer's sounds, Axl's voice appeared. It sounded so soft, so warm and so sad. A thousand miles different from the ferocious screams of “Welcome To The Jungle”. 

The song made me think of 60's rock n' roll, and I liked it. The next song was a lot more punk rock. I guessed it was from the early 70's, or so. 

It was titled “New Rose” and it started with a little bit to understand words of Duff McKagan. Milliseconds later appeared the drums and then the guitar. Duff sang that awesome song. 

I was so excited! I was about to discover some old cool songs! 

Then John & Yoko got back to the car. 

John looked at me, he sighed, smiled and lowered down the volume of the cassette recorder. Then he turn on the Jetta's engine machine and drove us home. I took back the cassette from the recorder and put it in my walkman –I carried it everywhere– and then I put on my headphones and listened to the album all the way back home.

I should have heard it a thousand times.

Now, almost 30 years later from that first-time experience –the album was released on November 23, 1993–, I am listening The Spaghetti Incident?, again. And, again, I have headphones on. And I would like to write about many things –the origin of the album's title, the addiction issues of Steven Adler, how fun it is to play Slash's guitar riff of the Skyliners' song, how fun it is to play “New Rose” on guitar, how weird and cool and creepy it is to listen to the hidden track with that Charles Manson' song at the end of the album–, but I can't get you out of my mind. 

I got the flu and I am a little bit tired. For two-three days, I hadn't been able to sleep, but I finally could, and I woke up from this dream In which YOU appeared. It was so intense that it pulled me out of bed.

Then I wanted to read but I turn on the Mac, started to write in this blog –my wife & cats are asleep– and put The Spaghetti Incident? on Amazon Music –I miss so much those times in which we were not forced to pay any rent per month to streaming platforms– and put my headphones on, and, as music and words and hours elapsed, I couldn't get you out of my head. 

In my dream, we were so young and we were inside a bus. It was a sunny day. As the bus moved thru the streets, I couldn't stop looking at you. You were enigmatic and beautiful. Perhaps you were some sort of Frankenstein of all the women I have felt attracted to. Also, there was some sort of chemistry between us. I wanted so bad to ask you out. Our eyes met, and finally I asked you out. You smiled and I felt so attracted to you. You said Yes!, and, in an old-fashioned love movie style, we got closer and closer, seconds were like eons, and then we kissed. 

It was so intense! It seemed so real! It was so vivid!

I even have the feeling that my chemical senses are overloaded.

It is cold, dark and windy. I woke up like an hour ago, but I'm still some sort of dizzy.

Dunno know who you are. Nor why did you appear in my dream. But you made me feel I was 14 years old again.

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