fall 2007
Turntable Generation
In a shoebox of cassettesthe scrawled-in-pen names of DJ’s
are spelled-out on thin, white stickers.
These faceless heroes
of our forgotten scene
have taken day jobs
or managed to tour Europe
with only their decal-covered
travel case of vinyl records
to spin in still-happening clubs,
like minstrels carrying
pairs of turntable needles
instead of guitars.
Either way, the hiss of tape
with layers of dated beats
blend disco and “Planet Rock”
with James Brown hooks
and hip-hop samples, mixed
into a tuneful soundtrack
that reaches out from my youth
to remind me of lost friends
and mythic parties.
I am no longer psychedelic
in the genius of 1994,
the one who rarely worked
and never paid bills.
I have evolved into a fact
of my bank statement,
a truth I awaken
each morning with a shower,
making ready to toil in the mundane
world of service.
There are ghosts of that time
in living rooms throughout Oakland,
where they haunt second-hand couches
and smoke the weed of that precious age,
joking about the dreamless years ago,
happily in the frequency of a moment,
the precious commodity of my people.
Fred Shaw lives in Pittsburgh and is an MFA student at Carlow University. He has had poems published in the Pittsburgh City Paper and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He is currently working on a poetry manuscript. He is also a long-suffering Pirate's fan.
"Turntable Generation" was
inspired by a box of cassette tapes. This
outdated medium seems like a kind of dusty audio scrapbook, especially
with the less than crisp sound of second and third generation dubbing.
The poem was also inspired by remembering good times and realizing how
young I once was and how our priorities change or don’t.