Hereby Redeemed by Rock and Roll

After I got (almost) old enough to go to shows, I saw Living Colour in Dallas 2 or 3 times, stood in line for autographs during the Stain tour and, the highlight of my teen years, got up close and personal with Corey Glover's spandex once while he floated above me, Vernon Reid, Doug Wimbish, and Will Calhoun filling the warehouse that held us with so much rock and roll noise my ears would never be the same.

I was a crowd-surf girl, one of those sweaty kids with smeared mascara who always had to be up close with the action. To know that I had been there, perhaps, to know that there was life beyond the Nocona city limits, and that I was living it in whatever drunken, exuberant bursts I could steal.

I remember sitting in the living room watching this video mesmerized. It was on heavy rotation, so I must have been about 13. I would have had to get up to turn the silver volume knob to full blast, which I did every day after school. As I sat there in the rough, green recliner, a distant relative walked in. He watched for a minute, arms crossed.

Then he said, "Well, I'd rather see them doing this than all that other jumping around shit." Them. Black men. Hereby Redeemed by Rock and Roll.

I can't remember what I said or even what I did aside from continuing to sit there watching and dreaming, already despising a place that allowed someone to say such a thing and go mostly unnoticed for it. I was already planning my escape.

MTV was my refuge then, a view of the world beyond my own. A key. Sure it led to me wearing a pair of overalls to school backwards once*, but it was more than that. So much more. Kids from the city had their safety pins and their underground clubs and their older brothers' records. I had my MTV.

*I also once wore a flannel nightgown and my prized maroon Doc Martens to a club in Deep Ellum, trying, maybe, just a bit too hard. But that, is another story.