Buried by the Blues

Last winter, we barely got 6 inches of snow combined. In the massively hyped Snowpocalypse 2013 that slammed into the Northeast yesterday and overnight, we easily quadrupled that.

We were supposed to get close to a foot a couple of weeks ago and then the storm completely missed us, so I was skeptical of this one at first. But as we got closer and the forecasts got definitive, I made sure we at least had extra beer in the house. And I'm glad I was able to get a good 7-mile run in yesterday morning before the storm hit. I worked from home yesterday so I wouldn't have to deal with the traffic, and they closed the office at 11:30 anyway just as the snow started to fall. The governor banned all "non-essential" motorists from the roadways, ridiculously threatening anyone who dared drive with jail time.



By the time I went outside with the girls around 6 p.m., we had about four inches on the ground and it was blowing hard out there. I got both driveways shoveled and came in for dinner, then went out again after 11 to find almost a foot on the ground. I shoveled a little but it seemed a little pointless at that time so I came back in. Our house was shaking from the winds and we were hoping the power wouldn't go out; the lights flickered around midnight, but that was it.

This morning I went out to find close to 2 feet of snow everywhere. Deb's mom had to work today at Salem Hospital, so I cleared out her driveway and car, and then got the end of ours before I was pretty close to exhaustion. The snow drifts were crazy in our backyard; in one corner, there's a 5-foot drift and just a few feet away you can see the grass. The fence creates some serious swirling winds back there. It's supposed to warm up on Monday, getting into the 40s and raining, so there could be some flooding around here. Tomorrow we're going to try out the snowshoes we got two Christmases ago, so that'll be fun. And knowing New England weather, I fully expect it to be in the 50s by next weekend.

Mixology: Pure Rock on Wheels

Mixology is a recurring feature in which I take a look at one of the many mix tapes I made over the years. Some are better than others, but all of them are fun to revisit.

Pure Rock on Wheels (3/6/93)

The name of this mix came from an ad I saw in the Beverly Times for a party for Christian teens being held at the local roller rink. I'm guessing the "pure rock" part meant wholesome God-lovin' rock from the likes of Stryper, Petra, etc. I really should've gone down to check it out, but that would have involved actually having to listen to that crap, and probably getting baptized and/or hypmotized in the middle of the rink against my will.

It wasn't long after I made this tape that I broke up with my girlfriend of nearly four years. We had a pretty good little domestic thing going, but we had been drifting apart for a while. I didn't move out for three more months as I tried to find somewhere to live. It was awkward, but we were working completely opposite shifts at the paper and subsequently rarely saw each other anyway. Had we not broken up, there was a good chance we would have gotten married in the next year or so. As it turned out, I wasn't ready for that. Sure enough, it took me another seven years before I finally settled down.

A week after this mix was made, the "Storm of the Century" hit the entire U.S. East coast, dumping over a foot of snow on this area, but also all the way down to Florida. This was back when we had sustained cold weather and snow all winter long, so it wasn't a total shock to New Englanders. There were a few bigger storms in the years to come, like the 30 inches of snow dropped on the Northeast in January 1996 (I happened to be in Montreal at the time and missed the whole thing) and the April Fool's storm of 1997, which unexpectedly plopped 2 feet of snow on us. All I really remember about this March '93 storm was having to drive around Beverly interviewing people shoveling out their driveways. How many times can you ask people what they think of all this snow? My editor would lose his mind during snowstorms; he literally sent everybody in the newsroom out on similarly stupid assignments.

Musically, I was getting into bands like Dinosaur Jr., Sonic Youth, Helmet and Buffalo Tom, as well as Cracker and the Jayhawks. As you can tell from this tape, my musical tastes were all over the place, in a good way. I was listening to WFNX and watching a lot of MTV's 120 Minutes, where the mellifluous tones of Dave Kendall was introducing the latest alterna-icons. It was a fertile time for rock.

Alas, I was about to enter a prolonged period of depression, living on my own (sort of) in Middleton and working a shitty early morning shift at the paper. These tapes (and steady doses of Beavis and Butt-head) were pretty much the only thing that kept me going for a while there. Ozzy said it best: You can't kill rock n' roll.

Side A
Start Choppin' - Dinosaur Jr.
Leave It Alone - Living Colour
Give It - Helmet
Take the Power Back - Rage Against the Machine
Youth Against Fascism - Sonic Youth
Rain When I Die - Alice in Chains
Asshole - Denis Leary
Black Gold - Soul Asylum
Courage (for Hugh M.) - The Tragically Hip
Surround - Dada
Beautiful Girl - INXS

Side B
This is Cracker Soul - Cracker
Paint It Black - U2
Long Way Down - Michael Penn
Jacksons, Monk and Rowe - Elvis Costello and the Brodsky Quartet
Everybody Hurts - R.E.M.
One of These Days - Neil Young
Crowded in the Wings - Jayhawks
Just a Loser - Robert Cray
99% - Soul Asylum
Go Away - Living Colour
Out There - Dinosaur Jr.
Drunken Butterfly - Sonic Youth


Start Choppin':


Jacksons, Monk & Rowe: