Love is a mix tape: life and loss, one song at a time by Rob Sheffield

Author:Rob Sheffield [Rob Sheffield]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biographie
ISBN: 9781400083039
Published: 2007-12-04T00:26:15+00:00

how i got that look

AUGUST 1994

The spring of 1994 was marked by two key events in rock history: the death of Kurt Cobain and the birth of Zima. In case you don’t remember, and if you drank any Zima you surely don’t, it was a cheap, fizzy, clear, strong, thoroughly rancid malt liquor marketed as a hipster “alternative” beer with a shiny silver and black label that glowed in the dark. Let me reiterate—it was cheap. One night, Renée started rummaging through the kitchen for mixers. She found a sampler box of miniature liqueur bottles—an untouched Secret Santa gift from a day job she’d had a couple years back—gathering dust on our shelves and started trying out recipes to cut the toxic kick of Zima. Cointreau was too bland. Frangelico was too nutty. But then, one night, in a flash of inspiration that rivals the creative energy of Chuck Berry the night he decided to mix country with the blues, Renée poured in some sickly sweet purple syrup called Chambord. With a little Chambord, a longneck of Zima became a handful of flaming violet glass, a bottle that looked like it could be set on fire and thrown at a bus or drunk with equally destructive effects. One Zima-and-Chambord would knock you on your ass; two would knock you on somebody else’s ass. It was the perfect rock cocktail.

It became our drink of choice for a long, lazy, rambling fever dream of a summer, when Kurt was dead but the promise of rock was raging on. The radio was playing hits by Hole and Green Day and Weezer and Sugar and Veruca Salt. I would pick Renée up after work at the Fashion Square Mall, then we would go home and set up our wobbly little hibachi in the backyard, grill some hot dogs, turn up the music, invite some friends over, and start mixing the Zima-and-Chambord rocket capsules. To this day, I still see that precise shade of purple sometimes—on some jogger’s track suit, or on some kid’s Mylar birthday balloon—and it always triggers flashbacks that involve a throbbing headache and the cowbell solo in the Offspring’s “Come Out and Play (Keep ’em Separated).”

Renée made “How I Got That Look” for those nights in the backyard. The title came from a monthly feature in one of her favorite glossy fashion mags, a feature that gave away the secrets of the supermodels. Side One was titled “Pink Chocolate Lipstick.” Side Two was titled “Laminates and Molding Mud.” Her big project that summer was her guitar. With a couple of her indie rock girlfriends, Katherine and Cindy, she started a band called Flirtation Device. Like all girl bands, they spent all their time thinking up cool band names and cool song titles and cool ideas for matching outfits, with only occasional efforts to actually play songs. When Cindy and Katherine had their big falling out over a b-o-y (what else), the band was history—but the songs on this tape still sound great, especially with a Zima-and-Chambord or two for audio enhancement.

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