Break Like The Wind

In the early 90s State Street in Madison Wisconsin was quite the spectacle for a small-town teenage kid filled with the angst of being locked into a vacancy. It was a place to let your hair down. There were restaurants, art galleries, head shops (long before they were accepted and cool), record stores, clothing stores, and most of it had a New York punk meets San Francisco hippie kinda visual vibe. With a sprinkling of new wave and a whole lot of sexual energy.

The awesomeness, however, came from the people. The shop clerks, the patrons, the loiterers, the artist and the musicians. Everyone had their own style and statement to make. Sure, you could put small handfuls into subgroups, but even within the subgroup there was distinct individuality, not a homogenized version of the collective.

If you were brave enough (and I was) to strike up a conversation, your mind would be opened to a whole different culture and perspective. I tended to gravitate towards musicians. That’s how I learned what was hot in that particular moment of time within the music scene. It’s how I learned about Butch Vig and Smart Studios before he was famous. (I actually called there a couple of times and talked with the guys to get rates and other info)

That’s how I learned where the best record shops were and who had “bootleg” cassette and VHS tapes (if you knew how to ask). I never bought any bootlegs though; I was to chicken to ask. I didn’t want to get myself involved in some type of illegal bootleg sting operation. Looking back, I should have just went for it.
My favorite characters were the holdovers from the original punk scene who were still raw, slightly feral, and wild. At the time I didn’t know they were a quickly dying breed soon to be washed out by the grunge and modern punk era. I was experiencing the punk underground subculture before its actual demise. Real Mohawks, real leather and denim, real attitudes, and real punk music passed around on cassette tapes with handmade j-cards. Real punk chicks with real fishnets… Well, I mean probably not real nets for fishing… and probably not all that punk, but fishnets none the less.

The wealth of information I gleaned from the spontaneous conversations was enormous, albeit so was the wealth of bullshit drummed up by Ganja guru halfwits, but it was after all, still educational and oddly entertaining.

Madtown really was a hot bed of musical genius and new frontiers. For young rock musicians growing up in rural Wisconsin, it was the place to be. A place to fill your eyes and ears far beyond the primitive rural cultural boundaries. Especially, the State Street area, which was completely taboo according to our local villagers. For sure if you set foot on State Street you would become a dope smoking heathen, burning patchouli incense whilst fornicating with witches and pixies (I’m still waiting for the fornicating part). I recall one of our band’s first trips together to the Forbidden Zone. It went something like this.

So, there we were the three of us bandmates, maybe four of us…I don’t really recall everyone involved. I know James and Chad were there but I’m never really sure about the others. Nick, Dustin, Pete… We had a revolving door of musicians and assorted roadies, fans, and groupies… Ok, Chad was the only one with groupies. James and I were way too cool… or just too into being intense musicians … or maybe just too nerdy for groupies.
I think it was Dustin who was with us that day, I recall a conversation about rotary engines on the way back…

Ok back to the monologue… So, there we were, the band mates skipping school and driving an hour and twenty minutes to Madtown, the capital city, the land of milk and honey, for a day on the infamous State Street. Our mission on that day was to hit the premo record shops and eat Gyros on the second story rooftop veranda of a Greek restaurant and then get back to school before anyone noticed we were gone.

James was nervous as hell that his parents would find out we skipped school… AND drove to Madtown … AND hung out on state Street. I didn’t give a shit. I was free from the insulting institutionalization of rural youth by way of public education.

We had made our way through downtown traffic, visited some street shops and finally landed at The Exclusive Company, but not before witnessing two very lovely looking girls rollerblading in nothing more than huge smiles and blaze orange cage strap lingerie that left very little to the imagination.

The Exclusive Company was THE record store to be at. They had it all, especially the older heavier stuff, and they had it on CD. And if they didn’t have it, they ordered it. The place was usually popping with punks, jocks, burnouts, early versions of granola girls and other assorted appreciators of fine music, who, by and large liked to converse. On this day however I think the bus to Boring Ville took a wrong turn at Albuquerque and dropped off all its passengers right at the Exclusive Company’s front door. The patrons of that day, contributing to the air and atmospheric demeanor, could not have been more stiff, stuffy, or lackluster.

I recall an Ozzy song being blasted from the in-store stereo system at the same time I was paging through the Ozzy CDs. “Serendipitous”, I thought and at that very moment the Greek gyros we had for lunch were gurgling and getting ready for a blasting of their own. I knew the song being pumped out through the in-store sound system very well and began calculating the exact time to release the beast from my churning innards safely into the air without detection… at least audibly.

So, with plenty of time left in the song, and people in the vicinity that I wasn’t interested in keeping peace with their nasal passages anyway, I prepared to break wind. Feet firmly planted on the floor, knees slightly bent, my eyes intently fixated on the CD in my hand, I gave an ever so slight push and quite unexpectedly I violently unleashed the beast within. To my horrifying dismay, at the exact instant my derriere began to destroy the atmosphere the clerk behind the counter had stopped the CD player. The snappy slapping crack sound reverberated obtrusively off the walls and caused quite the ruckus. Over my left shoulder I see my band mates bolting for the door, ass over tea kettle in a panic, so I quickly followed suit.

Once we were outside and I was able to catch my breath from running and laughing so hard, I asked them why they ran out. I got the “Dude, that was so embarrassing” speech. Mind you, I’m still dying of laughter just from the sound of that thing. I tried to explain that no one in there even knew who it was, and that those people had no clue that we were in there together, and furthermore, we would never see these people again. They just didn’t see the comedic timing of the universe the way I did. How could that clerk possibly know that his action of stopping that CD player at that exact moment would result in exposing the sounds of hell being released into the stratosphere with the force of 1000 Marshall amplifiers all cranked to eleven. Ok maybe a little dramatic with the description but it was a classic frat house movie gag being played out in real time in real life. I’m still laughing thirty years later as I type this.

(Incidentally, the song that was rudely interrupted to expose my delightful thunderous waft was S.A.T.O. by Ozzy Osbourne)