Blurt Music Memories: Crawling in the Dark - Hoobastank and my Grunge and Ska Memories and Record Store Culture
Credit to YouTube offical Hoobastank channel.
This is such a classic for me. In the post-grunge era while Ska and pop punk tunes were all over the radio, I listened to hip hop and rap, and this tune was all over the airwaves in the Pacific Northwest. My experience was grunge and Ska culture shaped my early life and memories. I became enamored with the West Coast hip hip scene and then the EDM scene later, but this song stands out as a transition point during the time period in which alot of different types of music cross-polinated on the airwaves and record stores stood.
I grew up during the grunge wave, and listened to classic bands including the Stone Temple Pilots, Nirvana and Temple of a Dog. These banks from Seattle and the rest of the West Coast defined an era. Movies, music and fashion followed the grunge movement and flannel was everywhere. The internet was young at the time and we listened to Adams Carolla and Doctor Drew when the night fell. Mandatory Metallica came on afterwards and we listened to them thrash as well. We went to many concerts, and would pick a venue oftentimes and just see whoever was playing at the time. So many independent acts with talent passed through the Pacific Northwest, and we didn't know what we were witnessing.
Record stores were huge in my day. Now people go online and stream or download tunes. We had Tower Records, Sam Goody and more. Local independently owned record stores were social gathering places and the locations where local bands formed. We browsed endless records and spent hours discovering new tunes and speaking with people. It was our musical social network. We also needed to purchase albums that dropped the day they came out or we would miss out on 2-weeks of time. We needed to make alliances with the purveyors of sound and friends to get the records early. I mourned the closing of so many classic record stores and think we are missing out for two reasons. Many people don't physically own their music, and many people don't make friends with others around certain genres. It's just streaming content that comes and goes.
Hoobastank came onto the scene when I was in college and I enjoyed listening to them and Trapt at the time. As a young adult I gravitated to grunge and bought all the classic albums including Nirvana's Nevermind. Another somewhat embarrassing thing I need to admit is that I enjoyed Nickelback and Creed and may have picked up some of their albums as well. The lumberjack rock was fun, and I didn't take it too seriously. Bands including the Prodigy and the Chemical Brothers shaped my love for electronic music, and EDM became a favorite in their vein for me during the 2010's. Yes, I was late to the EDM scene, and enjoyed hip hop including West Coast and Horrorcore artists. Being in the Pacific Northwest at the time, we were close to the Bay Area, and alot of the alternative hip hop artists including First Degree the DE, Andre Nickitina and Mac Dre came our way.
There is something about angsty rock when you're young. It matched my mood, and it meshed with my friend group. We would go bowling and hang out in bars just having fun, so Ska and grunge became the background to our fun. Riding the train around and visiting bars by the waterfront were how we spent many Summer nights, and those memories are priceless. This was before social media, and we didn't ever consider that computers and the internet would become so prevalent in society at large. Computers were seen as being for geeks, and no one would purchase anything or believe any claims on the internet.
This song is raw, and despite it's popular acceptance it has meaning to me. It was the capstone to my grunge and Ska phase before I gravitated to hip hop. The Pacific Northwest was an amazing place to grow up in, and college marked the end of the most pure rock tunes of the era. I remember hanging out with college friends in the park barbequing and drinking beers with this song playing on the radio.