From REM to Slo Burn and back

Slo Burn: Hope the flame burns a little lower and a little longer.

1997: the year I graduated from high school. I had a job as a furnature removalist, drove a HR Holden, could do 100 push-ups, run six kays on the beach. I surfed, and got drunk on weekends.

I didn't smoke tobacco and weed only occasionally. I had a nice girlfriend. My mum still did my washing and cooked my tea, but had given up asking questions about what I got up to with my mates on weekends. I lived in a makeshift room in the back shed.

My favourite bands were U2 and REM.

Although by then my record collection included most of what Primus had put out, and some Sepultura, Metallica, Beastie Boys, Dead Kennedys. It was also the year I discovered Led Zeppelin. So the seeds of dissent were there.

Fast forward to now: I smoke a pack a day, drink way too much, still would smoke weed if my missus didn't get that look on her face, have stick arms and pot belly, couldn't run to catch a train, and drive a 600cc van that might as well have three wheels.

My favourite bands are no longer U2 or REM, but are ones most people who don't frequent this website would not have heard of and would probably hate if they did.

Why has my life been lived in reverse? And why is rock music so interwoven with rebellion and intoxication?

Most people take up smoking when they are 15 and have quit by the time they've finished uni. For me, it was only then that it finally clicked that smoking was a cool, adult thing to do. Most people experiment with all sorts of different drugs when they are 17 or 18. I didn't eat my first pill till I was in my early 20s. Most 15-year-olds listen to music that would make a school counsellor blanch; I would talk to the school counsellor about how great Simon & Garfunkle were. Now I'm pushing 30 and get my kicks listening to Blood Duster.

Most people my age have a deposit on a house or are at least renting something decent. I live in the outlaws' ceiling in a foreign country, escaping the sizable debt I owe the NAB back home.

Most 30 year old professionals go to gyms and worry about their ab muscles. They fret about stock prices and seek investment advice about their superannuation. They shop on weekends for new ties, soft furnature, exotic coffee and wonder what colour to paint the nursery.

Surely by now I should have all this teenage foolishness out of my system. Why is it that it is only coming into full flower now, in my late 20s? Why do I continue to worship at the foot of irresponsibility? Why is it when I hear this Slo Burn song, from their 1997 four-tracker Amusing the Amazing, I want to get absolutely out of my tree and behind the wheel of a fast saloon and mash the pedal into the firewall?

What will happen next? Will I slowly regress back into my teenage form (assuming my body can survive the body blows dealt it over the past decade), into a spry little man on a step machine gamely pressing the pedals up and down with a walkman on playing old REM ballads, thus completing the Circle of Life?

Or, will my tastes keep diverging more and more into the obscure, in some sort of a ridiculous quest for purity and originality, that I'll only listen to icelandic whale-gut string lutes played by Tibetan virgins while on some kind of mind-altering herbal drug? That sounds quite good now I think about it. I hope I don't wear sandals though.

I can't answer that question, but I hope my fondness for this kind of music never pales with age. Just like the Zeppelin and Zappa and Floyd we all love, Slo Burn had called it quits long before I was ever aware of them. However, bands are as fresh, relevant and immediate to you, regardless of their antiquity, the moment you hear them for the first time. And from that moment they cease being art and become part of your own personality.

Please enjoy Muezli by Slo Burn.