Blake Babies History 1

Note: Below is the first chapter in my personal history of Blake Babies. I wrote an intro that I ended up cutting on Freda’s suggestion. She said get to the point, tell the story. She’s right, of course—I’ll write about my approach after I’ve published the whole thing.

I’ll paywall this after the first one, including a second chapter later today once I finish my chores. For anyone I’ve promised to comp a subscription, I’m going to figure out how to do that today.

Chapter 1

I’ve read enough books by musicians of my generation to know my origin story is typical. Perhaps the one unusual trait is I had wonderful parents who provided my brother Jake and me with everything we needed. Nevertheless, for a time in my early childhood our house became a nightly war zone as my parents’ marriage fell apart.

I found it deeply unsettling without any context for the near-nightly battles. When they had “the talk” with my brother Jake and me when we were eight and ten, I felt nothing but relief. I didn’t know about separation or divorce. I just knew they couldn’t live together anymore. Or perhaps I couldn’t live there anymore if things didn’t change.

Neither my parents nor my brother had any musical ability. What they lacked in musical talent, however, they made up for by appreciating and valuing music. My dad had a killer record collection that he let me pillage from a young age. I wore out all the Beatles and Stones albums. I listened to everything—probably 500 albums—in search of the weirdest music. Trout Mask Replica won the contest, with the bizarre music matching the insane cover image of a man with a fish face. I listened to that album for clues about the stranger sides of life. I wanted to understand why someone would choose to make such a record. Were they trying to be weird, or did it come naturally?

Music played constantly in the house, everything from Dylan and the folkies to Delta blues to modern jazz to classical to my favorite, rock n’ roll. Most of the music faded into the background and seeped into my subconscious. Other music lit me up like a Christmas tree and had me hauling certain albums to my room to play on my Mickey Mouse console record player with the needle at the tip of Mickey’s finger.

Starting around age four, I listened to certain Beatles songs obsessively on repeat. I favored the songs I like the least as an adult—Yellow Submarine, The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill, basically the kid-friendly fare. I watched the Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour after The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. My parents bought me the albums Wichita Lineman and Hey, Little One. The songs on those albums haunted my young musical brain. In a different way, they still haunt me.

By third grade my parents split up and my dad, an English professor at nearby Indiana University, moved into an apartment in a building with mostly students. I spent a lot of time listening to AM radio, where I developed a taste for sugar-sweet pop confections. I found I could fall just as hard for Sometimes When We Touch by Dan Hill as Rock and Roll All Nite by Kiss.

My dad got really into California country rock, which really caught my ear. The first album I bought with my own money was Eagles Greatest Hits. The second album was Kiss Alive. Those became my two favorite albums by my two favorite bands.

Kiss and Eagles got me through fourth grade, and then the hard rock floodgates opened. I made some dirtbag friends and then it was one musical obsession after another: Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, ZZ Top, AC/DC, Pink Floyd, Rush, Black Sabbath…on and on.

By the time Freda and I met in tenth grade I’d discovered hardcore punk. I first heard The Ramones and The Sex Pistols from my brother Jake around eighth grade. Like a mind virus, punk quickly took over my life. By 15, I had a “punk” haircut (really a mullet) and an army jacket with the logos of my favorite bands: Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, Sex Pistols, Circle Jerks, and probably a few I’d never even heard before.

My hometown of Bloomington, Indiana, has two high schools, North and South. I knew of Freda, but we’d never met. I clipped an article she wrote in her school newspaper on the punk scene and pinned it to my wall. She interviewed some of the punks at North who were semi-legendary in their extreme punk fashion and their willingness to get beaten up by the country kids who despised punks.

Freda and I met at a video arcade in downtown Bloomington. As I played my favorite driving game, Top Fuel, I could see the reflections of two pretty girls standing behind me in the glass. I could see them smiling and whispering to each other. I crashed on purpose and turned to see two pretty, punkish girls about my age.

When I didn’t recognize them, Freda said, “Are you Jake Strohm?” They’d met my older brother the previous weekend and they took me for him. “No,” I said. “I’m John Strohm, Jake’s brother.”

She introduced herself and her friend Dee, who I realized had briefly been in my fifth-grade class. “Do you want to go with us up to Discount Den and look at records?” From that instant, we became each other’s world.