Underscore, our new feature series that surveys undervalued artists, eras, and scenes of the musical past, kicks off with a deep analysis of Portland punks Wipers by Nick Sylvester.
My dad knows these guys. In fact, they’ve collaborated musically in the past. Greg Sage is (from what I remember) a strange, slightly eccentric genius of a dude. I remember him being around here and there when I was a little kid. I have a lot of early, random punk rock memories, like watching my dad’s band (The Stiphnoyds) practice in a basement with big headphones on as a toddler, and going to shows at Satyricon and the X-Ray Cafe in Portland.
Anyway, The Wipers and their music are so interwoven in my childhood memories that I’m always surprised and thrilled when I remember that they existed to the rest of the world, too, at least to those cool enough to discover and appreciate their music. Maybe some people have memories of taking roadtrips in a Buick listening to Journey at full volume and I do too (I’m looking at you, Mom!) but I also have these awesome memories of my dad’s vinyl collection and of driving back and forth between my rural hometown and Portland with my father, maybe in his seafoam green Volkswagen bus or one of the old Subarus he had listening to punk rock. He would teach me about Oregon geological history, like the Bretz floods, about politics and current events, why 1968 was the worst year of his life, or whatever else was on his mind that day. We’d stop at Burgerville and I would always get a root beer.
I’m not sure if all these were intentional lessons or if he just rambled the tale of the day unaware that the words would stick with me for years afterward but either way I’m glad we had those weekend drives. When I grew up enough to have a driver’s license and a car I started making the trip to his house and back on weekends by myself and sort of missed those drives we used to take, even the ones where we ran out of gas.
2012 is getting off to an amazing start.
To be continued…..
Google street view is creepy. Useful, but unsettling.
Tonight, on a whim, I decided to look up my great-grandfather’s house in a tiny rural desert town on the California/Mexico border to see if I could find it. Sure enough, I did, and even though I haven’t been there since I was 17 or so it looked exactly like I remember. Papa died in 1992 but his second wife Loretta lived in the house until her death a few years ago. It’s perched on a dusty hilltop with a wrap-around porch and porch swing overlooking acres of land more abundant with granite rocks and dirt than any real plant life. There used to be a fenced-in area next to the house where two rescued desert tortoises lived. Their names were Sam and Baby.
It just totally weirds me out that my mental childhood memory is on the internet for anyone to find. I think I still like to imagine that the house on Alice Lane where I spent summer vacations sits untouched, compartmentalized for my own memories. The people who live there now don’t know that my great-grandpa, a weather-beaten rancher named Clancy, built that house himself as an anniversary gift to his wife, my great-grandmother Alice. She looks like an old Hollywood movie star in all the photos I’ve seen of her.
Anyway, tl;dr, etc.
Memories!
