My parents were Deadheads. Sure, they had jobs and a house and drove a Ford Windstar in lieu
of a psychedelic bus, but when I was growing up everything was suffused with endless,
searching guitar solos and the pot-drenched drone of "Drums in Space." Summer touring season
entailed a weekend spent with my grandparents while my mom, dad, aunts and uncles camped,
grooved and lived on grilled cheese sandwiches. The first concert I ever went to was a Grateful
Dead show at Chicago's New World Music Theater -- my parents got me the tickets for my 10th
birthday -- and when Jerry Garcia died, we held a wake at our house, with a T-shirt featuring his
face flown up on the flagpole and looping live sets giving us space to mourn.
I, on the other hand, always wanted to be a punk rocker. The difference between the two
demonstrates exactly what music does for us. Buying a ticket to a concert the first time is like
shipping that first rent check off to the landlord -- it's an investment in independence. The
reason music has such a hold on us, particularly the music we listened to when we were young,
is because bands and albums serve as some of the first building blocks used in the construction
of our own identities. While you might not be able to choose the town you grow up in or how
much money your parents make, you can say, "This is what I love," whether "this" be Nirvana or
Tupac or G. Love & Special Sauce or Shostakovich. "This is what defines me."
So many of our firsts (beyond the stereotypical one) are associated with music. The first
concert I bought my own ticket to was Tom Petty's. He came to Notre Dame's Joyce Center on
his Dogs With Wings tour when I was 14 years old. I paid my way with paper-route money.
While the concert was great, what lingers most is the freedom of being alone in the dark with
friends, the realization that no one was looking over our shoulders, thus leaving us free to stand
and scream and boast as we saw fit.
The first time I expanded my palate to include Ethiopian food was while killing time on
Clark Street, where I now live, waiting to see Everclear at the Metro. It was after my first drive
into Chicago -- also my first time scrounging for quarters for the parking meter -- and I ate with
my hands, the sting from the spices making me cry. Later at the concert came my first time being
drenched in beer by the jerk standing next to me; unfortunately, it was far from the last time that
happened.
The first time I told my mother instead of asking was when the Stone Temple Pilots
played at Rosemont Horizon. Too young to drive, I'd walked into my trigonometry class with an
extra ticket and without any means of transportation; I walked out having convinced my high
school valedictorian to drive to the show, using her grade point average as a shield against my
mother's worries about the hazards of spontaneity.
The first time I slept out in the open was in the parking lot of a Furthur Festival, a
collaboration of Dead survivors and like-minded musicians, in Noblesville, Indiana. I'd left
home without knowing where I was going to sleep that night (a first) and ended up sprawled out
next to a fire built at a friend's campsite, surrounded by the siren calls of pot salesman and drum
circles. I shivered through the night and woke up to ash at sunrise. It was still early, but it was
time to go home.
All of these firsts combined in my mind to forge the great teenage realization that there
was a life outside my hometown which I could chase down and make my own. Growing up in
South Bend means that Notre Dame is less a place of awe than part of my home, and a dull home
at that, with fundamentalists' letters swelling the local op-ed pages and no outlet for the movies
I'd dream about every Friday after reading the Chicago Tribune. Occasionally a band would roar
in, sucking up all of the oxygen in its arrival and reminding me that, yes, there was more to life
than the place you grew up in. Wilco burned into Stepan Center when I was 16; I've been
scorched ever since.
When I applied to Notre Dame, I wasn't sure if I wanted to go. Beyond the prospect of
being rutted at home while my friends moved on to new places, I was concerned about the
school's character, whether it would be too conservative, too wealthy, too stultifying. As a kind
of test, I decided to write my admissions essay, which was supposed to detail a piece of art that
was significant to me, on the Velvet Underground's song "Heroin." I filled the page
(pretentiously, I'm sure) with drugs and death and transcendence and freedom, figuring that if
they couldn't accept my music -- if they couldn't accept me -- then I didn't want to be there.
They did accept me, though, and I went. On move-in day, all of my music, including a few Dead
CDs, was packed with me. I arranged it carefully in my new space, ready to embrace a whole
new realm of firsts.
James Seidler is a writer living in Chicago, where he doesn't catch new bands visiting the Metro
nearly as often as he should.
(January 2007)
