Time Capsule

The only friend of mine who was "gainfully" employed (Jeff H., as a mailroom clerk at the GE plant in Louisville, KY) purchased PIL's Metal Box in 1979. At the time, there were 5 of us who hung out together (me, Bob V., Jimmy T., Andy C. and Jeff), all in our late teens, early 20s, unhappy and living on the cusp of the Reagan era.

We were disillusioned in an existential way, anxious about what was next in our undefined lives and generally pissed about it all. We had embraced punk rock because musically it was satisfying, but also a clear "fuck you" to the people around us (high school acquaintances, family, etc.). At this point, through music and literature (William S. Burroughs, etc.), we tried to whittle away at the things that appeared to tie us down. We didn't have another place to go, I think we just wanted to cast off with the dark hope that something else would turn up.
My memory of listening to Metal Box at Jeff's apartment (the rest of us uncomfortably lived with our parents) was that its move away from "rock" was both thrilling and a bit terrifying. We all dug it, but it was an uneasy pleasure. There was madness in the music.

At the time, we regularly flirted with a kind of lunacy that was part of the un-tethering process that we had begun. In addition to a wreckless love of drugs and alcohol, we would play games that involved sitting around in the wee hours drinking beer and smoking weed while we tried to chip away at each other's already fragile identities. The goal was to find psychological weak spots, examine them and test whether the other guy's sense of self was strong enough to acknowledge his own flaws and hidden anxieties. I believe we called these "truth" games.

Good times.