Impossible to talk about my adventures in State College in the 90s, including the marriage to Jennifer, without mentioning Big Star. All the extra time in Gulph Mills in the summer of '96, as Oasis peaked and the Smashing Pumpkins Mellon Collie plateau remained a lofty one, I also consolidated an obsession with Memphis and the 70s scene around Big Star. This began when my friend Steve Kurutz visited me in Pollock Halls, State College, in the summer of '95. I heard Third for the first time, and my musical world shifted on its axis. The entire State College indie rock scene, it turns out, was bonkers about Big Star. By the summer of '96, me being, and remaining, a mid-level player in the State College indie scene was in the pocket. The nimrods in Hollywood who created That 70s Show also certainly noticed. My birthday being February 7th and all that. And Jen's being March 22nd. In any case, by the time we made it to the Atherton Hilton (or maybe we'd stay at a Holiday Inn), the fractured landscape of my own brain was perma-dented in the music sector, by the collision with Alex. Who, as I later had leave to notice, was not the kind of guy to give a shit about such things. It didn't matter. The rock bottom of the ocean, where Jennifer and I were here, has much in common with the decay/decomposition aesthetic of Third, and "O, Dana." Even as the blonde, standing before us with the magic wand, is not Jennifer, it's...
P.S. The video template here is, of course, Abby Heller-Burnham. If you think there's no Center City Philadelphia in Mid-Town Memphis, think again. Remember who showed at Alex's house...
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