Welcome to INAUDIBLE’s third installment of 5-10-15-20 in which we blatantly lift a feature from Pitchfork and use it to ask fantastic people about their torrid and varied musical love affairs at five year intervals of their lives thus far. This third edition features Montreal based music pundit Michael Ellis having visceral auditory flashbacks of the albums and artists that helped shape him into the man he is today.
AGE 5
Some of my first memories of being on this big gay earth are connected with family vacations to Rice Lake. I looked it up recently and I can’t figure out why my parents would drive all the way there with four sons fighting and shouting the entire time. We hauled balls down the ‘Highway to Forever’ in our Chrysler K-car and I always had to sit in the front between Mom and Dad. Being too small to peer over the dash, all I ever saw was the digital clock and tape deck. Before my parents fell for Billy Ray’s “Achy Breaky Heart”, they listened to cooler shit. Mostly Motown. They also listened to American Fool by John Cougar. So the summer my oldest brother chucked my snowtrooper G.I. Joe figure into the lake, promising it would come back with the tide (it didn’t), was also the summer I really listened to music for the first time. I guess you could say it hurt so good.
AGE 10
How can this exist?
This song smells like raked and rotting leaves. I found a German guy on Discogs selling an unopened LP and considered buying it.
AGE 15
My friend Glenn used to live a latch-key existence. His mom would gather the wash, claiming she was going to the laundromat, and then disappear for weeks at a time. While this lady was undeniably a piece of shit, her absence gave my friends free reign of the house. It was our club house. Glenn had a little brother he basically had to take responsibility for, making sure he was watered and fed. Being 16 or 17, and understandably not very mature, he let all kinds of shit go down in that place so long as he got something out of the deal. Stolen wares stored in his basement? Sure, but you had to buy him some Little Caesars. Having someone come over to grab a lil bag of weed? Fine, but he always got some of the money.
One day I was glazed and watching some kids play Twisted Metal 2 on a stolen Playstation, when between the couch cushions, I found a flyer for an upcoming show in Detroit – The Wu Tang Clan. We mostly listened to Eazy-E and N.W.A. like so many dumb kids, but the image on the promo was just so different than all that. The sheer insanity of nine members, all drawn in cartoon on blue photocopied paper, with these fang-grills. FANG-GRILLS! I didn’t even need to hear them rapping about Spiderman and kung-fu and goddamned Richard Dawson, I already knew I loved it.
I’m pretty white.
AGE 20
Fuck you Richie Hawtin. We peaked at the same time. It’s just that I was on acid listening to Consumed and knew I would eventually come down. But you seem like you never got over it. Concept 1, Decks, EFX, & 909, Consumed. What a run.
AGE 25
I was leaving home and ending a long lasting relationship and “Shine a Light,” “I’ll Believe in Anything,” and all the rest resounded with me. After moving to Montreal, I saw them with my tallest friend at Metropolis and fuck if it wasn’t devastating. I’m still not entirely sure what Spencer Krug is singing about in “I’ll Believe In Anything”, but at the time I felt that same desperation.
AGE 30
Ed: Thanks Mike!
If you’d like, read the first and second installments too. Cheers.
Tags: 5-10-15-20, how to dress well, inaudible, john cougar, michael ellis, montreal, plastikman, richie hawtin, wolf parade, wu tang clan
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