A child of the 70's, I grew up on a diet of Solid Gold Hits. Afternoon Delight, Hotel California, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, and on it goes. I had an AM radio from elementary school onward, dutifully tuning in KLUF and creeping around the dial at night dragging in the AM giants and talk-show kooks from the center of the continent.

Rock music blasted from every crappy car I owned or was a passenger in during the 80's, hoping to impress someone. Looking back, I'm sure we failed. We installed bigger and more speakers, blasting what now passes for Classic Rock to pedestrians and fellow motorists. Despite the volume, I really never had a favorite band, preferring to buy cassettes and some LP's of many things, nothing especially deep or musically interesting. The guy who loved The Cure was a little strange to be sure; "such devotion, how abnormal" opined the conformist teen robots. My friend Doug had every Rush cassette, neat but too intense for me. "Can't we just listen to Tom Sawyer? 2112 makes my head hurt." Music shouldn't be such hard work.

In college, I was freed of that conformity, introduced into a place where the weirdo was welcome, the opinion and preference better for their strangeness. It was cool to be deep about something and to hold forth, someone always listened. Even this guy, Curtis, my Bolshevik friend, wasn't mocked for his Duran Duran collection. He was the first person I ever knew who had real bootlegs and import singles of his favorite bands.

Then I fell.

I'd heard Stevie Ray Vaughan for years, radio cuts, nothing deep. Then Stevie was killed in a helicopter accident and now he became a limited commodity. No more music could spring from that vein, so I lapped up all that existed. I was a man on a mission spending my minimum-wage earnings to learn the tunes and riffs and feel the music. Even today, the hair stands up on my neck to hear Voodoo Chile (Slight Return).

Then I fell again.

Around the holidays in 1994, I picked up a KMFDM single, Bargeld, at Soundwaves with a few other discs. When I finally listened to it, I was blown away. The music was hard and angry but perversely interesting. The guitars, my gawd. Nursing a vicious hangover (damn you, Satellite Lounge), I detoured to find more KMFDM on Christmas Eve while on the way to see my family for Christmas. I felt like an addict of some sort.

But is love to be found again?

I've bought almost everything (or downloaded it) KMFDM has released since then, but the fire has cooled. The overtly political WWIII sort of turned me off and I find myself revisiting the older stuff less and less. Plus, Laura despises it, something like "makes me want to bash my head against the wall..."

I've fallen and now I can't get up.

What's to be said? The meaty guitar, Meg's simplistic drumming, the honest lyrics, what a combination. Who can resist Meg and Jack? One CD yesterday, after a week of rooting around the Internet for tasty bits. The web is heaven for junkies of any sort, and I've had lots of luck finding bootlegs, photos, and articles. Amazon will deliver two discs and a DVD this week. Even The Wife was digging White Blood Cells last night.

Stevie Ray did justice to Jimi Hendrix and Howlin' Wolf. Jack White, in a burst of courage, played Son House's Death Letter on the Grammys last year. Wow, nothing but "wow".

It's all mildly embarassing.

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