Faster Pussycat!?! Are you kidding me? Though I've included a lot of questionable material on this list, this might be the one that makes you say, "No way, dude... I am NOT listening to THAT!" Give it a chance, people. A great song can come from ANYone.Around the time I was in the eighth grade, my parents' marriage started to crumble. After twenty years and four kids and what I thought was a pretty good life together, it was over. It was devastating, not only because I was losing whatever sense of stability I had in my life, but my parents also had one of those incredibly ugly, bitter break-ups that cast its ugly pall over our home. The fighting was horrific. I was hurting all of the time and yet I was so ashamed to talk to anyone about it. It was embarrassing, as far as I was concerned, and the fact that most of my best friends had married parents made it even worse. I remember trying to talk to one of my buddies about it. His parents had been split for a while and I recall sitting next to him at lunch one day and managing to get out the words, "Your parents are divorced. What's that like?" I couldn't manage any more. If I did, I was going to cry. You can't do that when you're a boy... not in high school.
Though the split started in eighth grade, the bitterness lasted for a really long time. Part of my parents' settlement involved my sister and I staying with my mom in the house we grew up in while my dad moved out. Once my little sister graduated from high school, my mom would have to move out and my house would be sold. As a result, even though they were legally divorced, they were financially tied for another ten years or so. It was awful. The negativity, accusations, and nit-picking just went on and on. As I'm writing this, it's probably been over twenty five years since my parents broke up. They're civil with one another now, but the bad blood is still apparent. That's what all those years of being tied together did to them.
The song "House of Pain" came out in 1989. I wasn't really into glam metal. I thought Motley Crue, Poison, Warrant, RATT, and the slew of other hair bands might have had the occasional decent song, but were ultimately a little hokey to me. Faster Pussycat? Even their name sounded like a joke. But like I said earlier, ANYone has the potential to write a great song and "House of Pain" was one of the more poignant songs from my youth. It's this confessional narrative about a boy waiting for his daddy who just never comes home... not when he's five and not when the boy is still waiting for him many years later. The words, music, and delivery are very powerful and hit me every time. I may have not been deserted by my father, but I certainly wished he could come home again and we could all be together like in the old days. There are some great lines near the end where it goes "I didn't write these pages and my script's been re-arranged." That feeling of your life being out of your hands is most likely true to all children of divorce. As the song is finishing up, the singer speaks softly over the strains of a harmonica. If you listen closely he says, "If I learned anything from this, it's how to live on my own." A sad lesson for a young boy.
"House of Pain" is from the album "Wake Me When It's Over." To hear the song, click on the icon in the widget jukebox along the side of the blog.
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