— Adrian Hummel

Look at me in that picture, pathetic. I look like I hated life. I don’t remember what I was thinking when this year book picture got snapped but, If I could reach into that picture and say something to 8^th grade Adrian I be sure and mention that the shoes you had to have are not going to matter in 15 years. Honestly, that’s what middle school was about at the school I went to. First off, I went to school that wasn’t in the best part of town. Everyday there seemed to be fights, and people bragging about how they had sex on the weekends, and there was this huge pressure to be macho, act tough, get in trouble or be the one to get in trouble. In a way middle school is what I imagine prison would be like, except at 3:50 you get to leave to go home.

We’d sit in the gym before class and look at Eastbay magazines and talk about all the shoes we liked, the shoes we wanted to get. We’d talk about music, Tupac and Biggie, and rap music. I was really into rap. Gangster rap. The kind of rap that was rebellious and made you want to physically hurt someone after listening to 30 seconds of it, and I was tough or at least I pretended to be. The thing was is it was all a front. I knew it, and I’m sure everyone else knew it. I remember this one time while waiting for the teacher to show up, some other kid named Adrian who was much tougher then I pretended to be turned off all the lights, and closed the door leaving the room pitch black. All of a sudden I heard something shatter and hit the wall and I knew the battle was on. People started chunking books, chairs, desks, anything they could get their hands on at the attempt to inflict pain on someone else. Meanwhile I sat their huddled under my desk trying not to get hit. Needless to say it was a war zone and people were not showing mercy. Soon after the teacher showed up and turned on the lights, the once neat and tidy room looked like something from the show Hoarders.

This. Was. 8^th. Grade.

On a day-to-day basis something like this would happen. A bomb threat, a fight in the locker room, someone would start a fire, there was always something. I think back on this kid named Shawn Soul and think of how he must of hated life, because the dude would get a swirly in a toilet full of urine and it would happen just about everyday.  I started thinking about all these stories the other day and came across my yearbook because of a new album that recently hit stores. If your asking yourself why does an album remind you of 8^th grade, well let me explain.

Towards the later part of my 8^th grade year there was this kid I met who introduced me a little band called Nirvana. You might have heard of them. The lead singer tragically died way too young and because of his death their legacy is probably much bigger then what it should be.

Opinion.

Anyways before Nirvana my music mainly consisted of Rap and R&B there was Boyz II Men, Salt and Pepper, Mc Hammer, Vanilla Ice, Too Short, Biggie, Pac, anything on Death Row records. Then I started hanging out with this kid Nathan. I’d go to his house watch the Simpsons, listen to Pearl Jam, and Nirvana. I remember one time we went to his uncle’s house, who wasn’t really old enough to be his uncle more like his cousin. He was a bigger Nirvana fan then we were. His room was decked out in black lights, and candles, and walked the boarder line of someone who was rebellious and plain creepy. I remember the day Kurt Cobain died Nathan’s uncle, someone how got Nathan a copy of Kurt’s death certificate. Which to anyone normal this is just plain weird. Mind you, this was before Google, and people were still using dial up modems and those AOL 500 free hours discs you’d get in the mail. Basically that certificate was hard to come by but his uncle somehow got a copy of it.

Once I got a hold of the Nirvana Bleach record my listening preference never went back to rap.  From that point on it was grunge, and alternative rock. Oasis, Silver Chair, R.E.M., The Cure, Pear Jam, Bush etc. Even to this day I listen to more rock then pop, cringe at artificial overly produced music, and despise when I wake up with a Ke$ha song is stuck in my head (yes I will admit it has happened). Regardless, when I picked up the new Cage The Elephant record there was a tinge of something in there that I haven’t heard in years. Something that reminded me of the first time I heard Nirvana in Nathan’s room. I am not saying that this band or this record will be as great as any Nirvana record because honestly it won’t. But I think there is a tinge of something in this new CTE record that resembles the rebellious “I-don’t-care-attitude” that was popularly prevalent in the early 90’s. Grante,d even if it’s only a piece, its there, or maybe I just need to believe that grunge is dead forever.