I never considered the possibility that someone else in my class might beat me to the punch. My friend Glacial Spain (not his real name) recently gave me a copy of a book titled Perfect From Now On by one John Sellers.
The book, subtitled "How indie rock saved my life" is a breezy memoir of the author's belated discovery and eventual headlong plunge into the world of independent rock music. It's an enjoyable read, made more so for me because I recognize Sellers' Midwestern hometown, repressive middle school and dorky classmates -- because, well, I was one of those dorky classmates.If you pick up Perfect From Now On expecting -- as I suspect many of you will -- some hidden insights into my own origins, however, you will be disappointed. Although he mentions several of his schoolmates by name, I am not one of them. My exposure in the book is limited to two tangential references: On page 60, the author compares listening to New Order's Substance to getting drunk for the first time, elaborating in a footnote:
Natural Light, with two geeky friends, in early 1987. In involved drunkenly making snow angels.I was one of the geeky friends. This happened at my house while my parents were out of town.
The other reference is more telling: On page 19 Sellers notes, "Examining my current preferences, I can scarcely believe that my second concert was Huey Lewis and the News." Then, in another footnote (Sellers loves footnotes):
My two friends and I sat in the sixth row, mere feet away from a drunk pip-squeak in a jean jacket who hurled halfway through "Hip to Be Square." A reaction to the music?I was one of the two geeky friends again (Sellers mercifully left out the adjective this time). What he neglected to mention is that we had wheedled our way into the sixth row because our assigned seats sucked. Thanks to people like us, the sixth row was so crammed with unwelcome immigrants that security came through checking tickets. Sellers was so convincing in his indignity at the people who had illegitimately snuck into the sixth row ("We're supposed to be here!") that the security guard didn't even bother to check our tickets.
The interesting thing to me is that Sellers' jumping off point in his musical odyssey is something that still defines me as a person today. For Sellers, Huey Lewis was part of a corporate pop culture to be rebelled against, but for me, Huey was -- and remains -- the quintessential rebel and a personal hero.
Sellers and I (I'm not being formal; even as kids we just called him "Sellers") were similar in a lot of ways. Quirky and bright, we were bored with school and spent a lot of our time reading comic books and writing bizarre stories.
The difference between Sellers and me was that Sellers was what I call a "crossover dork." That is, although he was a dork at heart, he was capable of faking normalcy well enough to fit in with the cool kids most of the time. Sellers was a good student, reasonably athletic, and could speak intelligently about professional sports teams.
By contrast, I was small and uncoordinated, couldn't force myself to fake an interest in spectator sports, and wore thick, fantastically uncool glasses. But as Matthew Broderick says in The Freshman, "There's a kind of freedom in being completely screwed." I never bothered to try to fit in because I knew it was hopeless. This wasn't much fun for me -- if it weren't for crossover dorks like Sellers and Glacial Spain, I would have been completely ostracized. But at least I was free to be who I was.
Sellers, on the other hand, lived in constant fear that he would be exposed. In the book he paints this fear mostly as a result of circumstances:
Any antisocial or disturbingly eccentric behavior would have got you singled out as a mutant by the kids you had to see in class every day, year after year, and, considering how pious the school administrators were trying to appear, it might even have got you expelled. Why make your time there even worse than it already was?This is essentially true; I've written about our ass-hat junior high teachers myself. But he goes on to say:
There were no rebels at [our elementary school].This is a backhanded defense of Sellers' own lack of rebelliousness, but I would argue that it's not true. Bill V., who once broke into and vandalized the school, was surely a rebel. Kyle D., who used to jump from desk to desk when the teachers weren't in the room (and who was eventually held back because of his failure to complete assignments) was a rebel. And then there was the kid who studied D&D rulebooks during class, called out the creepy math teacher for tickling the male students, and skated by with C's and D's despite his obvious intelligence. That was me.
Sellers' fear of standing out intensified as we grew older. In high school he used to play dumb when the topic of Dungeons & Dragons came up, as if he had no recollection of the many Saturdays we spent in my parents' basement killing goblins and drinking Towne Club soda. To his credit, though, he never dumped me as a friend -- which is somewhat remarkable considering that I was pretty much uncool incarnate at that point.
At the same time Sellers would make absurd and arbitrary claims, as if setting up straw man personalities to see who would knock them down. It was impossible to tell which of his obsessions were real and which were fabricated: He was the first person I knew who embraced rap music, but I also clearly remember him telling me that Oliver North was an "American hero." Meanwhile, I did my best to reserve judgment on both fronts.I don't say any of this to denigrate Sellers; I'm quite certain that the social pressures he felt were very real, and his journey out of the wilderness of Huey Lewis and Duran Duran to indie bands like the Smiths and Guided By Voices is genuine as well. There's also no doubt that Sellers has a deeper knowledge of music and appreciation of the indie music scene than I have.
On the other hand, I wonder if Sellers' current musical tastes are still dictated to some degree by what the cool people are doing. Sellers' complex, obsessive and (I suspect) only partially tongue-in-cheek formula for rating the greatness of a band smacks of someone who still has never quite learned to listen to music purely for the joy of music.
In 1987 I listened to Huey Lewis because I related to a guy who didn't feel the need to wear leather pants or trash hotel rooms to prove his coolness. A rock star who could sing unabashedly about how uncool he was ("Now I'm playing it real straight/and yes I cut my hair/you might think I'm crazy/but I don't even care/There is no denying that/It's hip to be square") was validation of my own square rebellion. Today I still howl along with that song while barreling down I-580 on my way to work. There's simply no explanation for this behavior other than the fact that I love the song, and that it takes me back to a day when I too suspected, despite the crushing pressures of adolescence, that it was okay to be a dork.
Now Sellers writes entertainment articles for Spin and GQ, and I have the ultimate dork job: writing computer software. So I suppose Sellers is still cooler than I, but there's a lot of pressure that goes along with being cool. As for me, I've come to the conclusion that Huey was right all along: It really is hip to be square.
*Not long after this, that teacher made me cough up $12 for my share of a car window that Greg K. broke when he inadvisedly threw a rock near another teacher's car. A group of us had been playing in an off-limits area behind the school, so we were all held equally responsible. Always one for semantic exactitude, I pleaded not guilty on the grounds that we had been told "not to play tag behind the school." We were not, in fact, playing tag, and therefore not in violation of the rule. So my 4th grade teacher can take that $12 and buy her own damn copy.
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