Drinking and Driving

I owe a lot of my musical education to KSPB, the radio station of Robert Louis Stevenson high school in Pebble Beach. I came of age in the pre-internet days, when you had to really search to find music that wasn't top 40, and KSPB used to play punk and hardcore. I first heard Black Flag, Flipper, Dag Nasty, the Descendents, Gorilla Biscuits, 7 Seconds, Minor Threat, Nomeansno, and a lot of other bands on KSPB. I would tape the shows and listen to them over and over again.

One song I heard on KSPB was Black Flag's 1985 "Drinking and Driving." I can still remember the stoned DJ announcing the song (they were always stoned). It's a great song, and one of one of the better late Black Flag tracks. It's basically a burly metal song, way more Sabbath than hardcore. I never bought In My Head, the album it's on. Check out my post on My War from a few months ago.

I was straight edge as a kid, but I didn't know what straight edge was. I just didn't drink or do drugs, and thought drinking and doing drugs was stupid. "Drinking and Driving" was something of an anthem to me, because it called out the stupidity of getting drunk in a macho, tough way. Henry Rollins was a big, buff dude and he made being straight edge seem a lot cooler. Listening to the song now, the lyrics seem really clunky and embarrassingly self-righteous. At the time, though, it was nice counter to the sex, drugs, and rock n' roll being preached by buttrock bands like Motley Crue (whose singer ended up killing his friend driving drunk). It's all fun and games until someone gets hurt.

Man, I just got a flashback of driving in San Tomaso, Mexico, on a surf trip for my brother's 18th birthday. We were in my dad's friend's bronco, and he was downing beers, blasting the radio, and zooming down a dirt road screaming "I LOVE DRINKING AND DRIVING!" (My dad and he are no longer friends). That was a good trip. We went surfing at a break in Mexico where we were camping, and saw shark fins. We got out of the water and asked the local boys, "Hay tiburones?" and they said, no, no tiburones. right. Then we went down this crazy cliffside dirt road on a quest for surf, and ended up at a fishing village. I was convinced the broncos were going to tumble into the ocean and we'd all die. Good times. Don't tell my mom. And don't let your babies grow up to be surfers.