Nissan 240SX Coupe | Nouveau Bohemian

I took a trip home last week to visit with my family and have dinner to celebrate the birthdays of both my dad and sister. They were born on the 12th and 21st respectively, while my mom and other sister were born in January. I am the lone October birthday outcast. I like being a Libra, though, so no skin off my nose.

It was a gorgeous day and perfect for driving so I flipped it to Lithium on Sirius XM and had about an hour’s worth of flashbacks from the 1990s. It amazing how much of that music I have forgotten about, as well as how many of those bands just fell off the face of the earth after the music scene changed sometime after 2000, when electronic music began to creep back into the US.

So long, grunge. Say hello to Herr Synthesizer.

Me and some friends post-graduation (1998) celebrating never having to "go to school" again.

One of the songs that I heard was “Standing Outside A Broken Phone Booth With Money In My Hand” by Primitive Radio Gods. This was one of my favorites. It came out right around the time I got my first car (Nissan 240SX). I can still smell the interior and the semi-busted speaker in the back that rattled whenever the bass hit too hard. I loved being able to come and go as I pleased (no more riding the bus to school) and carting people with me to basketball games was actually fun. Becoming the family taxi and grocery runner, not so much.

Almost exactly what my 240 looked like. I felt like a total bad ass.

I had never really gotten into blues in high school but since then my music scene has expanded exponentially. When I heard that song from my past played again I instantly recognized a line from a BB King song called “How Blue Can You Get”. I was lucky enough to have gotten to see him back in 2007. He had to sit in a chair through the whole show but he can still play and sing like a man half his age. It’s less like he plays guitar and more like the guitar is a part of him.

The line goes, “I’ve been downhearted baby, ever since the day we met.” It actually opens up the song by Primitive Radio Gods. It was kind of nice to have grown enough in experience to be able to know the origins of the line. I always wondered but I never had a frame of reference.

Then some crap song by Smash Mouth came on and I had to change the channel. Barf.

Primitive Radio Gods