The History of Music: A Personal Story (Part 1)

The First Band

Infatuated, we were.  Luis would spend most classes writing the band’s name over and over, filling entire pages of his notebook, like a madman carving out the walls of his cell.  Carlos grew out his hair, like the guitarist, and tried in vain to roll the locks into dreads to no avail.  Guti bought an expensive and flamboyant Puma track suit, like the one the lead singer would wear.  And everyday, after school we would make the pilgrimage to Guti’s house to watch the band’s documentary, a collection of the band’s music videos and clips of the members goofing around while drunk.

The group was KoRn, and nothing else in our lives moved us like Jonathan Davis’ whiny, tortured growl.  It encapsulated perfectly the frustration, latent rage, and self-pity of our preteen years.  The loud bursts of heavily distorted guitar, and the unabashed screams embodied our boundless energy and repressed freedom.  We were at a pivotal stage in the system’s process of domestication (puberty), and we needed an outlet for our boiling animal needs.  A desire to jump, to push, to scream at the top of our lungs.  I remember being in my room, turning the volume up until the speakers rattled, and pretending to be up on that stage, and yelling out the lyrics, pumping and flailing my arms around, and running erratically in circles (then someone would walk in and I would feel the same sensation as if they had walked in on me masturbating).

The first CD, their self-titled album, was their best.  The opener, “Blind,” was brilliant; the drummer (David something, who was one of the first to go) starts the song by taping the ride cymbal in double-time, as the guitar waits in silence; then there are a couple of false starts, like the guitarist isn’t sure what song they are playing, and then after many seconds of just taping and false starts, the opening riff comes crashing in, only to be outdone by Jonathan Davis’ powerful roar, delivered slowly, sounding like a cassette player that’s run out of batteries: “Are you READY?!”  The first single, “Clown,” had something to do with being bullied, and the video was set in bully’s paradise: the showers at a high school locker room.  The other track worth mentioning from their first album is, “Daddy,” which features Davis describing, in complete agony, a child’s relationship to their (sexually?) abusive father.  At the end of the song, after the music has stopped there are several seconds of dead air where you can listen to Davis sobbing in the recording studio.   It’s completely theatrical and over-the-top, but at the time I found it to be honest and disturbing.

Through KoRn, we learned about Limp Bizkit, which also became a favorite of ours.  Then there was Rage Against the Machine, Deftones, Insane Clown Posse, Slipknot (not for me, but Guti liked them), Incubus, Rammstein.  They formed part (or most of them did) of a new wave of music that was to be known as Nu-Metal.  For us, it all started and ended with KoRn, those other bands were good and all, but KoRn was different.  KoRn was our first band.