six albums

Sixth grade.

I had the coolest big brothers in the world, and this is what they listened to. It rubbed off hard. I learned big words and I used them. “The swath endogenous of ourselves will be our quandary,” yeah.

Eighth grade, I think? which was closer to contemporaneous with The Downward Spiral, but let’s be honest here, I had a head like a hole. I had a heart like a hole, and a hole like a hole, and if I had a soul, well… you know.

I avoided the trap of idolizing my idols. Maybe I was too shy, even in my daydreams. In the cafeteria a friend detailed her destiny to someday be with Trent Reznor, as in, BEEEEEE with him. And it made me feel bad, embarrassed and sad, that he couldn’t just be her fantasy big brother, like he was to me.

Times seen live: 3

Where to start. Well see that’s the thing. Where do any of their albums end and I begin sounds overblown, but how else can I put it? the way their music folds time, an instant wormhole, an aural ouroborus. It’s not a place I always want to go. It demands your full attention. But when I’m there I never want to leave. Not till I’ve worked through everything. And if you’re wondering WTF are you talking about, Meg, you clearly don’t listen to Tool.

Times seen live: 4. Most memorable was in St. Paul in the early aughts. I’d just gotten my wisdom teeth out and thrash dance drank torrents of my own blood.

There was no YouTube or Napster, and the radio didn’t play what I wanted to hear. I bought Second Toughest based on a one-line description in a Wax Trax promo because that’s what you did, you paid $17 sound unseen and so many times it was total crap. Did I really like KMFDM? Meat Beats Me Manifesto!

But Underworld, yeah, that sounds promising — I coughed up my minimum wage earned from washing dishes at the fanciest restaurant in the Fargo mall. The rest = history, a decade of raver pants and 16 minute songs on repeat for days.

Times seen live: 1 glorious time.

I have the remarkable OG status as a North Dakota kid to have seen AFI in a basement in 1996, which would have been Very Proud of Ya era. The less remarkable fact is I had no idea who they were and didn’t care. I went to the show to see my crush, who I never spoke to once, then or ever.

Three years later AFI popped into my head at Media Play, and I saw Black Sails. Song titles like “Porphyria,” “Exsanguination” and “Malleus Maleficarum” were all dog whistles to Dark Meg. What I found were fast, melodic, shouty songs about being a weirdo, but not alone in being in a weirdo, in fact, there was a whole tribe of weirdos who couldn’t wait to see how fierce I could dance and how hard I could punch. My voice joined the chorus for years, in a delicate balance of tongue in cheek and deadly deathly seriousness.

Times seen live: I don’t remember. 8 maybe?