I couldn't tell you when I first became interested in nineties music and, more importantly, what it represents to me. First nineties band I really listened to consistently was System of a Down, which all started with, of course, Chop Suey. I was at an "Eighth Grade Lock-In". In case you, dear reader, don't know what that is, it's exactly what it sounds like. Unless it sounds like a bunch of eighth-graders being locked in somewhere and hunted down one by one, which would have been awesome, but that's not what happened to us. Unless it sounds like an eighth-grader with locked-in syndrome, which is not very awesome, and is actually tragic and horrible. That also didn't happen, thankfully. Unless you think it sounds like being locked into the body of an eighth-grader, which would also be fucking terrible, especially if you couldn't control what the eighth-grader was doing and you were forced to just watch through their eyes as they ran around being retarded eighth-graders. The "Eighth Grade Lock-In" was not this either. What it was, and what I'm pretty sure it sounds like, is the eighth grade gets to stay at the school overnight and there's a fuckton of sweet activities. Actually, a couple of them were pretty lame, but they were fun because everybody was there, friends or otherwise. It was... a really surreal night, because of this. Not so much because everyone was there, but because everyone was there AND, for once in our eighth grade lives, no one was a dick to anyone else. For that reason alone, what was basically a guided activities fair was made awesome. Or, shit, maybe I'm just looking at this all through rose-colored glasses and it was actually pretty abominable. I really can't remember. Relating to the first sentence of this obnoxiously long paragraph, my memory has more holes than... than uh... something with a lot of holes in it.
So when the hell did I hear Chop Suey in any of this? I'm glad you asked! One of the activities, which took place in the band room, was drumming! Not on a real drum set though. We all got these different sorts of tribal drums, which was pretty cool. We were seated in I think three semi-rings around the front of the band room, where there was a real drum set. Seated behind this real drum set was an alum of our middle school, who was now in high school. Oooooooooo. Some dude who I think taught at her music school introduced the activity, told us who she was (I don't remember her name at all; not like I'd put it up here if I did), and allowed her a demonstration. Then this random chick drummed to Chop Suey. And it was fucking awesome, and I probably got a boner, cuz that girl, who I'm pretty sure was like a solid 6.5 in my eighth-grade eyes (my standards were ridiculously high back then for no good reason) rocketed up to a 9 because, let's be real, playing an instrument alone, no matter the kind of music, gives you a one-point-minimum bonus.
Unfortunately, we didn't get to drum along to Chop Suey, even on our silly tribal drums (like we could have).
So the night wore on and we dicked around there was a dance and shit and stuff happened, I don't really remember/care. That's a lie, I do, it's a good memory, it's just important to the general thingus of this entry. I slept through the next day, since I hadn't caught a wink the night before (not that I'd wanted to). All through this, through the way-too-much soda, through the bouncehouses in the gym and the dance and the next day's power-nap, I remembered one phrase in particular: "my self-righteous suicide". Soon as I woke up, I was googling it.
And holy fuck was I confused. I kept getting results for "Chop Suey". What the fuck? Bitch, I'm trying to look up the title to a world-thrash masterpiece. I am clearly not interested in Chinese food. Not at the moment. That's how powerful this song was to me (well, still is). My constant interest in a heaping, steaming plate of General Tso's was temporarily put on the backburner by this one goddamned song that I needed to find the name of. Seriously, it was starting to get to me. The links I was clicking on kept talking about putting on makeup and putting keys up on tables and I knew for a fact that the song I'd heard had no mention of Chinese food, nor could it be about that. Actually, knowing System of a Down, that could very well be the case. They're quite sneaky. Like a song about pizza called Chic 'N' Stu. Who thinks of that shit?
So I must not have been reading the full lyrics it showed online, because for whatever reason, I didn't see/notice the "self-righteous suicide" that all the kids were talking about. Finally, I relented and plugged this "Chop Suey System of a Down" into the YouTubes. And lo, it was the first taste of nu-metal and ergo the nineties that my pubescing angry mind had been secretly searching for this whole time. After listening to Chop Suey at least a dozen times, I wiled away the rest of the day listening to whatever else YouTube had to offer me in the way of these four Armenian gentlemen that wrote what is, to this day, some of the most arresting and ball-grabbing music I've heard on more levels than just "Hey, this is pretty heavy". I wasn't a happy kid in middle school. But for once, I'd managed to have two great days in a row. And that was a wonderful feeling.
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