Lake Music

by Chris McGinty of AccordingToWhim.com

Just as an odd aside, which may be more about our Google overlords than about coincidence, I just turned on my Spotify, and as I started typing this blog post the song “Summertime,Summertime” was in a McDonald’s commercial. I don’t think McDonald’s gets how edgy that song is… if it was still the 1950s. But let’s instead turn to the subject of bands like Metallica, AC/DC, and ZZ Top. Yes, we’re talking “lake music,” you know, if it was still the 1990s.

I actually have no idea what music people would play as lake music now. Lake music is the stuff that someone plays at the lake that 98% of the people at the lake don’t object to. This means that it can’t be too new, because new music will always sound awful to a certain subset of people. Lake music has to be something that everyone is familiar with.

I haven’t really been to the lake in recent times, but I have some memories involving lakes.

I mentioned a high school friend in a previous post in the blurb at the end. It was the result of trying to find a blurb loosely related to the blog post, but when I thought of it I knew that it was right, because I would be talking about some lake memories. She lived in a house that was on Lake Worth, so there are a number of lake stories.

The house was on the lake, but it was a part that was shallow and had less movement, so it wasn’t really the best suited for swimming. It was good for a view mostly. The house had a sizable backyard that was good for parties and such. I remember one such party that took place the summer after we had graduated (when I say we, I mean she, but it was my last real year of school so we’ll go with it).

There was a band called Urine Trouble that played at this post-graduation party. I have three thoughts about Urine Trouble.

1. Not everyone saw the flier for the party, so some people were under the mistaken presumption that they were called You’re in Trouble.

2. They were pretty good. I enjoyed their set, and most of the people at the party seemed to also be enjoying their music. They did a cover of “Message in a Bottle” by The Police, but they didn’t know the words, so they offered that anyone who knew the words could sing it. No one did. Even if you actually know the words to a song, you’re used to singing along with a singer, so it’s not so simple to just jump in. Their cover played up the punk elements of the song and increased the tempo a little, so some of us started a little mini-mosh pit. At the end of the song, I jumped up on the stage and started “singing” at a slower tempo “I hope that someone gets my…” and the rest of the crowd sang the refrain with me. It was fun. One of the guys in the band then goes, “You were a bit late, dude.” I laughed. Some girl in the crowd said, “Hey, I thought that was pretty cool.” And then they played their next song.

3. Years later when I was in a local punk band named JAKT, they asked me to write lyrics for the new songs we did, because they felt that the lyrics to their early songs were just a means to have vocals. They liked most of what I wrote, but I wrote some lyrics that were maybe a little bit off to them. It was called “Urine Tensions,” and the title idea was because of Urine Trouble. I figured that most people would miss the play on words. The idea behind the lyrics was being in a relationship where being yourself was met with hostility. I used the analogy of being pee shy. I think the line that maybe threw them off the most was something to the effect of, “It’s just hard to piss with you screaming in my face.” The good news for the guys from Urine Trouble is that you inspired me. The bad news is it wasn’t very well received.

Nathan and Chris have a concept band called Act Like Niles, meaning that in concept, they might one day write some music. Maybe they could just start with a cover of "School's Out."

The funny thing about my friend and her family was that while they lived on the lake, they went to the lake just like everyone else. There was a park for swimming near the Lake Worth Bridge, and they would go there most weekends. I worked most weekends, so I rarely got to go. I think the bulk of my trips to the lake was going over with them and hanging out for an hour or two before I left for work. I think I only went swimming once. The important part was that this was how we came to realize what lake music was.

She was telling me that a number of the people who would go and hangout at the lake were unemployed at that moment in time. There had been a recession that got closer to a depression than most do a few years before (at least that’s the perception that everyone had about it) and I guess not everyone had gone back to work yet. Meanwhile, I couldn’t hang out very long, because I had to go to work. One day, we were driving somewhere on a Monday, and I saw a bunch of people at the lake. I said, “You weren’t kidding about how many people are unemployed.” She looked a little perplexed for a moment and said, “It’s Labor Day.” I said, “Oh. Federal holidays don’t really mean anything to me.”

She had two stepfathers in the time I knew her. The first maybe had some issues. He was there when we were still in high school. I know they had trouble getting along sometimes. He was a nice enough guy, but I didn’t have to live with him. She summed up how she felt about him when she told me this story.

They had spent the weekend up to that point arguing about stepfather/stepdaughter kind of things, meaning that they were just upset with each other for no real reason. She said that he stormed out of the house at some point and she heard the lawnmower start up. As I said, they had a pretty sizable backyard, so she figured that he just wanted to work off the angry energy. He walked into the house when he was done, walked past her, and said, “Look in the backyard.” He had mowed the entire yard except that in the middle he left some of the overgrown grass in the shape of a peace sign.

The second stepfather that she had was a little more even tempered as far as I could tell. He and her mom married on the lake. I seem to remember that there was a boat, but I don’t think it ever went out form the shoreline. During the reception there was dancing, and he had some moves. I told my friend, “I realize you don’t see it because he’s your stepdad, but he’s got some sexy moves.” I walked over to him and put a dollar in his shorts. He laughed, because back in the 90s we had a fucking sense of humour. Other people followed suit and he was out there dancing with a bunch of one dollar bills sticking out of his shorts. He told me later that he made $15 in the course of that one song, which in the 90s wasn’t too shabby.

I have other random memories of lakes that have nothing to do with that family, but that will be for another post.

Chris McGinty is a blogger who misses that era of time when any music over 120 beats per minute was a sufficient enough reason to start a mosh pit.