The story of John Frusciante goes something like this: Fan of band becomes member of band, band breaks bigtime, fan of band (and now band member) thinks band has sold out, fan of band quits band, becomes heroin junkie, releases some albums, nearly dies, rejoins band, band releases more albums and enjoys more success.
The band that John Frusciante was and is currently a member of is the Red Hot Chili Peppers, a band that was my favorite over about a year span during my college years. I'm not sure what my thinking was back then, because I don't really listen to the band at all now. I do know that the story of John Frusciante was one I found highly interesting, enough so that I joined an email group dedicated to him. And this lead to some interesting email discussions.
I also struck up a sort of pseudo-friendship with a fellow out in San Francisco because of the email group; when I first put my name in the ring he responded by telling me I wasn't invited, so I continued to send him harrassing emails until we struck up a more rational conversation. I can't recall his name now, oddly enough, but in the early days of the internet and email, he was someone I greatly looked forward to hearing from. Because my knowledge of music and film at the time was quite limited, his suggestions were always taken with the highest regard. He told me about Tricky and Breaking The Waves (if you click this link and are unfamiliar with the movie, be sure to read the plot summary), and really sort of opened my eyes to a lot of things.
As I recall, he eventually said he was taking a new job and/or new drugs, and then all of a sudden his emails just stopped coming. I may have even pleaded for further contact, but nothing ever came.
I find the whole thing really funny now, and I can't see how I ever thought any of our "friendship" made any sense; he probably just thought I was some naive kid, and I'm sure the way I paid attention to everything he wrote was quite the ego boost. He probably wasn't more than 3 or 4 years older than me. I guess our email conversations kind of started a pattern for me... You had to be there.
Anyway, back to the John Frusciante song. I've always enjoyed this song for the absurdity of the whole thing; a voice that turns into a UFO, words that fall like water, a millionaire junkie living in a filthy hotel singing into a tape recorder... When I spent a semester at college living in the dorm, I used to play this song whenever we had visitors that didn't know me very well. I guess maybe I thought it sort of defined where I was at, or maybe I was using it as a beacon. In any case, all it ever managed to do was annoy people enough to where they'd ask me to turn it off.
I guess I'm (or was) a weird kid.
PS. If you are downloading these songs, I'd appreciate your thoughts in comment form, even if it's just to say "that was horrible" or "quit wasting my time".
1 comment:
I wanted to say "I like that" but feel that "I dig that" is more appropriate, despite it sounding wrong in my British accent.
Yeah, that was good and I shall now go download some stuff. Thanks :)
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