#79 "Girlfriend in a Coma" by The Smiths

Just a few months after I turned fifteen, I got my first job at a local Baskin Robbins. I was so psyched to be making my own money. I remember when the manager told me that she could only pay me the then minimum wage of $3.35, I enthusiastically said, "Great!" I couldn't wait to get a paycheck. Of course, at that high salary I'd probably have to work for a month before I cracked three figures, but I didn't care. It seemed like I was making my first steps toward adulthood and independence.

One of the cool things about that B&R job was the fact that everyone who worked there was a lot older than me. I was barely fifteen, but most of the other kids working there were seventeen or eighteen. It certainly doesn't seem like much now, but when you're in high school a few grades are ages apart. I felt supercool working with mostly seniors. Luckily, I got along with them really well. They took me under their wing and taught me the tricks of the store, brought me to parties, introduced me to girls from other schools... they even took me cow-tipping one night! I thought that jobs were the greatest thing ever invented.

One of the many new things I was exposed to in my first year on the job was music. These guys I worked with listened to different stuff than my brother, different than my parents, and certainly different than the circle of friends I rolled with. Whereas I was more used to classic rock, these guys were listening to the new sounds of the mid-eighties. It wasn't called Alternative back then. We called it Progressive. One of the guys used to bring in his old boom-box and when we were allowed to, we'd listen to tapes of all kinds of stuff. One song I'll always associate with this time is "Panic" by The Smiths. I just remember a bunch of us belting out "Hang the DJ. Hang the DJ. Hang the DJ!" It's funny how songs literally become a soundtrack to your life's movie.

To be honest with you, I really don't worship at the altar of The Smiths. A LOT of people think they were the greatest thing to come out of the 80's, one of the most influential bands, that Morrissey is a god, etc, but I'm not that person. I really didn't like a lot of that early alternative stuff. I've said many times that the recording trends of that decade were just not very good. Many cite the jangly nature of Johnny Marr's guitar work as being so fresh sounding in the Reagan Era, but a lot of the tunes by The Smiths, Depeche Mode, New Order, and all of their peers sounds very "light" to me. It's as if the bass is turned off, the treble turned way up, and synthesizers tried to replace that missing weight. There's definitely no Zeppelin thump there. Jane's Addiction and Nirvana definitely reclaimed that later, but the earlier part of the 80's was a little too clean for me.

"Girlfriend In a Coma" was the first Smiths' single to kind of go mainstream. I never heard "Panic" or "The Boy With the Thorn in his Side" on the radio, but my mom probably heard this song on several different stations that she tuned in. It's nice and short and remains for me as a good tribute to those middle years of my teens.

"Girlfriend in a Coma" is from the album "Strangeways, Here We Come." To hear the song, click on the icon in the widget jukebox along the side of the blog.