More strange and mystical sounds from my formative, “hippie” years.
By: Betty Blue
Tags: Memoir, 1980s, Coming Of Age, 1990s

Now Playing: “Cake” + “Mesopotamia” by The B-52's

This one hit me out of nowhere a few days ago. I am in the process of relocating, so boxing up my 1500+ vinyl collection. It may be in storage for a year or more, and I am giving many records one last spin as I pack up. It was a crisp but gloriously sunny Saturday this past weekend, and around the holiday season, I get hella nostalgic. I pulled out 10,000 Maniacs’ In My Tribe. I remembered “Like The Weather” was on that album and got a bug to hear (and sing along to) it. I’d forgotten so many of the other songs on the record: “What’s the Matter Here?”, “Hey Jack Kerouac”, “Don’t Talk”… and Cat Stevens’ “Peace Train”.

You could say I was a highly sensitive child. I cried easily and felt the weight of the world on my shoulders. I was born on a Wednesday, so that might be why (they say “Wednesday’s child is full of woe”). In the process of moving, I am going through personal archives and found a will I wrote at 8 years old. It wasn’t morbid, actually. In it I assure my family that I am in a better place and will be watching over them. I had bequeathed my clothes, my stuffed animals and my piggy bank to my best friend. Its existence illustrates that I was acutely aware that life was fragile, and I didn’t take it for granted.

As a sensitive soul, I was also keenly aware of global issues and vowed to make the world a better place. I drew peace signs on everything and wore eco-conscious t-shirts that said things like “Save the whales” and “Protect Mother Earth”. I recognized injustice. When I was 12, I stopped eating meat for 6 years, because I loved animals too much.

In 1989, my mom was politically active in the abortion rights movement and marched in Washington D.C. Her favorite anecdote is getting an inquiry from my 4th grade teacher, Mrs. Davis, when I wore one of her purple Pro-Choice t-shirts and a pair of wire-hanger earrings to school one day.

I was dark and troubled in some ways, but I was also optimistic and inspired. I knew shit was fucked up, but I felt like I could make a difference.

My older brother and I were very different. He was a popular guy in school with a more mainstream style and status-quo attitude. He was in the band, but he made that cool, too. A saxophone player. As I’ve referenced before, he loved Hip Hop and Rap. He was one of those statistics — the white suburban teenagers that were buying N.W.A. records. I’m not sure who he was influenced by, but clearly someone he looked up to loved that ish. It’s honestly how I started writing poetry when I was little. All of my early poems had the cadence of raps, and I read them aloud as such. It’s what I knew (well, that and Shel Silverstein).

His girlfriends were typically other “cool”, popular girls, the ones with crispy (often blonde) bangs and stylish duds. But one year there was someone who was different. Laura. Laura’s dark hair hung straight and natural, and she wore no makeup. Her attire consisted mainly of tie-dyed shirts and Birkenstocks. She was one of those hippie girls. It was the odd couple, something from an 80’s coming-of-age movie, but it worked (for a while).

She was warmer and nicer to me than any of his other girlfriends. One night she babysat me at her house. Her best friend was spending the night. We drove somewhere, for food or to rent a movie. Also like a scene from a coming-of-age movie, her and her best friend started singing along to the car stereo on the way. They were into a band called the B-52’s. It was a strange song about cake…

“Hey, you know what I’d really like to do?

Say what?

I feel like makin’ a cake

Ooh, what kind of cake do you want?

How about pineapple upside down cake?

Maybe a chocolate devil’s food cake…

Oooh wow, that sounds good

Nothin’ like a chocolate devil’s food cake.

Ooh, how about an angel cake?

Mmm, some cinnamon?

Yea, sure.

Sugar?

Yea, uh huh. I swear.”

They acted out this dialogue between Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson in the front seat. I was mesmerized in the back seat. “Mesopotamia” was the title track of the album, the cassette of which they were playing and car-dancing to:

“I’ll meet you by the third pyramid,

I’ll meet you by the third pyramid,

Oh come on, that’s what I want

We’ll meet in Mesopotamia, ah-ah-ah”

I was into it. So funky! And funny. Laura is the reason I bought the album Cosmic Thing, which I listened to the shit out of in 6th grade. I also started wearing tie-dyed shirts and asked my mom for Birkenstocks. She bought me a knock-off pair, which I was OK with. The real ones were way too expensive for an 11 year-old. They were black leather with a strap in the back.

(The Mesopotamia record is now a staple of my live sets, whether I’m playing a New Wave, Disco or jazzy Lounge set.)

Laura also loved 10,000 Maniacs. It sounded like such a weird band name to me — like they should have been a metal band, but they were the complete opposite, instead socially-conscious but optimistic, melodic and poetic. That year, my mom signed up for a sign language class, and we all joined her — me, my brother and Laura. I have another story brewing about that experience (and more musical tangents), but for now I will say that our culminating project at the end of the 8-week course was to sign a song in front of the class. I chose “Tom’s Diner” by Suzanne Vega (the DNA remix popular on the radio at the time). Laura chose “Peace Train” by 10,000 Maniacs. There is a VHS recording of that final performance in a box somewhere.

She and my brother were pretty serious, but they didn’t stay together. Eventually their opposing dispositions clashed. Rumor has it she punched him in the face on the stairs one day in front of everyone at school. He must have done something very bad to trigger such a peace-loving pacifist like Laura.

Needless to say, she was my idol for a while on many levels.