Within each gateway resides another; a step before the step, leading back to something resembling an original source. The beginning of it all. In this case, the gateway to the gateway came in the form a song on my local classic rock radio station – CJAY 92, 92.1 FM in Calgary – or, as will be a recurring theme with this series, a music video on MuchMusic. One or both of these portals opened my eyes "I Was Wrong" from Social Distortion's 1996 full-length release, White Light, White Heat, White Trash. This album, itself, would prove to be another gateway: This time to an entire reservoir of back-catalog material from the band, wonderfully encapsulated by a live album released some two years later simply titled, Live at the Roxy.
Growing up, I rarely saw live music. The number of concerts I'd been to by the time I turned 18 could be counted on a single hand, but live albums served a particularly critical role in my life. This was particularly true early on for me, before I was of age or had access to see more live music in person, particularly around the late-'90s, particularly around the time I was honing my chops as a Social Distortion fan.
I was a great student until I reached a point where I stopped caring. In the wrong hands, stubborn indifference can become a dangerous trait. Prior to starting high school I was introduced to the idea of a work study program students could enroll in as an alternative to classroom work. Once I got to high school that became the path forward for me. In the 11th grade I started working in a chef's apprenticeship rather than attending school; or, I should say, I worked part of the year and went to school part of the year. That's less important than what it provided me, which was an early introduction to adulthood.
For good or bad, I was exposed to a new way of living that suited me well at the time. Loaded with a fragile ego and a desperate desire to find acceptance I found a group of people in the kitchen that felt something closer to a tribe than anything I'd experienced at school. It was an eclectic group of misfits with varying degrees of behavioral and emotional issues; the type of which almost serve as a pre-requisite for working in a kitchen. For whatever experience I was missing out on by not being in a school, and making friends with people my own age, I felt I was more than making up for by rolling with this crew of barely employable kitchen staff. They invited me to house parties and smuggled me into bars as if I were just one of the gang despite my age. It was as close to a feeling of belonging as I'd felt in a long time.
I worked in that restaurant for about two years and during that time was introduced to a vast array of music that would stick to my bones like sap to a tree. Of all the people that have come and gone in my life, I still remember many of those cooks' and what they were into in those years. There was Adam, who I worked with as a prep cook for several months, who would many times show up to work not having slept, still physically humming from the previous night's rave. He and I would bond over stuff like the Prodigy, despite him being more into happy hardcore; a sub-genre that never remotely endeared itself to me. Then there were the two line-cook openers who both stood well over six feet tall and would trade off between playing opera and the Dead Presidents soundtrack. The one artist they could both agree on, however, was Wesley Willis, of all people. There was Rick, the closing kitchen manager, who reinforced my blossoming appreciation for Henry Rollins, and the daytime manager Steve, who I worked directly under for my apprenticeship. Steve was, if memory serves me right, largely indifferent to what was being played on the food-encrusted boombox, but I remember one particular exchange with a friend of his that impacted me immensely. One day I was back in the prep kitchen listening to Live at the Roxy while studiously julienning onions (or some such task) and a friend of his who'd recently started working as a line cook (after being released from jail, I want to say – though I'd hate to cast aspersions) came back and asked by how I knew about "Social D." I think I said I'd heard them on the radio and he was blown away. Social D was on the radio now. What a world. But more importantly, this left me feeling like I was part of some sort of secret society. I had passed a cool test. Man, if that isn't a moment I've been chasing my whole life since, I don't know what is.
Things progressed from there. I loaded up my collection with whatever tapes and CDs of theirs I could find, and learned to love the sonic blend they presented, straddling a line between punk and twang. It wasn't rockabilly, but it wasn't what I understood to be punk at the time, either. "When She Begins" was an early favorite of mine, and remains a song indicative of the band for me despite their earlier sharper sound.
Several years later when I landed in college I picked up a White Light, White Heat, White Trash t-shirt from a Hot Topic. I held onto that one for a while and in turn it continues to hold a strange space in my memory. It was what I was wearing for my one and only mugshot, for example, and in some ways the shirt began to represent a specific way of living for me, beyond the music. It represented a period of time or, knowing the band's catalog, you might say, another state of mind. The shirt made the trip back up to Calgary with me when I returned to the city for a brief stint in early 2010. I wasn't there long and disappeared like a ghost in the night six months later, leaving behind a trail of broken relationships and a smattering of personal belongings. The shirt hung there in my living space, pocketed in the corner of a friend's unfinished basement where I was staying. Similarly, it was probably around that era where I grew detached from the band's music. All of it felt akin to where I'd been, not where I heading.
Live at the Roxy isn't something I return to often, nor is Social Distortion a band that still remains in heavy rotation for me, but my god this album is an emotional time capsule. In 2007 I typed up some thoughts about the album for someone else's blog, but looking back on those words now I feel like my view of the album and why it continues to mean something to me have changed. Today, listening to the cigar-chawing t-shirt salesman flap his mouth in the introduction, or hearing Mike Ness verbally stroll through a politically incorrect memory lane, I'm filled with very specific brand of nostalgia. Where this album once served as a window into a renegade lifestyle, with Ness' magnetic presence welcoming me into a world of "junkies, winos, pimps, and whores," the music now bears an unmistakable level of fun for me. It's a celebration of survival.
That sound – that feeling – was never replicated for me despite trying to find a similar connection to Ness' solo albums, or Social D's late-career releases. Much of the band's music helped pave a path forward for much of what became "alt-country," and no longer feels dangerous to me, but instead feels somewhat dated. I don't mean that in a negative way, but in the sense that it feels emblematic of a different time. To a large degree Social Distortion was the soundtrack for a past iteration of my life and a different version of myself. Despite the details of the songs' content, Live at the Roxy captures a victorious feeling of solidarity, with Ness taking a mid-set beat to bask in the success of the album that exposed many like myself to the group, celebrating White Light's gold record status in a room full of fans, sharing his appreciation and reflecting on the hard road the band took to get to that point. Sitting in my room around the time it came out, I remember listening to those moments of recorded stage banter ramblings feeling like I was on the inside. What a feeling that is. When you find something that feels so welcoming, no matter how much time changes things, and we change with time, it can be hard to let go.
[This article is part of Best of the Best - an ongoing series reflecting on and ranking my favorite music and movies.]
