About 8 years ago, I turned 16 and my uncle came round to give me a present. It was a cd. To be precise, it was The Darkness first album Permission to Land which had just been released a few months earlier. I spent the entire next day wandering around the house on my own, and sometime during the afternoon I remembered I had a new record to listen to. When I put it on, and those first few chords of Black Shuck started, I was immediately intrigued. I hadn't necesarrily expected anything one way or the other, just that going by what I'd heard about this new retro glam/hard rock band I'd probably enjoy their music at least a bit, but I certainly hadn't counted on the fact that this album would change every single thing about my life. I listened to the album a few times, and I just really, really, really liked it. I looked up stuff about the band on the internet, developed a crush on their guitarist Dan Hawkins, and from then on when someone asked me who my favourite band was I would say 'The Darkness!' without skipping a beat.
Gradually this appreciation turned into a fully fledged obsession. When I had finished high school, I took a year off because I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, and within the first few months of this rather boring time, my high school sweetheart dumped me. It's fair to say I was going through a proper identity crisis. If I wasn't going to uni, didn't have a job beside delivering mail 2 mornings a week, lived with my parents and didn't have a boyfriend, WHO ON EARTH WAS I EVEN? I cried for a while, and then one day I was working and had a stack of Oor music magazines to deliver. On the cover was my good old favourite band The Darkness promoting their second album One Way Ticket To Hell... And Back. As soon as I'd finished my round, I cycled to the local record store and bought the album, and I listened to it as I was laying on the floor in my parent's living room. I had found my new identity, it was that of Darkness-fan, and from then on the only thing that mattered to me was this band. I'd wake up and think 'why is it again that I'm so happy? OH WAIT THE DARKNESS EXISTS.' In the next few months I underwent a complete transformation. For the first time in my life I felt like I was doing something entirely because I wanted to, not to please people or to overcompensate for my low self-esteem, but just because I thought it was fucking awesome. On the day I ran away from home to fly to Liverpool on last notice to see the band, I wasn't the ever embarrassed victim of bullying, the ridiculous idiot that people only hung out with out of pity, I was the fucking star in my cowboy boots and black eyeliner, I was exactly where I wanted to be and as far as I was concerned I was going to stay there forever. In England, in a dark alley behind a music venue, with my favourite band.
In the following years The Darkness broke my hearts by splitting up, but they continued to influence everything I did in one way or another. Dan started a new band with whom I had some of the most amazing adventures any person on earth has ever had, I met some dear, dear friends, I got into various other bands like The Answer and The Ark who all changed my life in their own way, I went to fashion school and quit again, I travelled to England on my own several times, started studying English in uni, moved to Amsterdam, made more dear friends, fell in love a million times, I had amazing times and awful times, but unlike Before The Darkness, I felt that I was in control of my life. It certainly wasn't always easy defending my dearly beloved glamrockers to 'serious people who know a lot about music', but to me they were never a joke band. Their funniness, their humour and the way they are serious about being silly is what has inspired me so much, they taught me that it's ok to be a bit flamboyant and outrageous, to be a bit retro and a bit modern at the same time, to wear insane outfits and glitter and make stupid jokes, and if people don't understand what you are about then hey, it's their loss, they're missing out on the party.
The two things I've constantly wished for in the past years were always 1. for The Darkness to reform, and 2. living in England for a while. I'm listening to their new album right now, and moving to Southampton in 5 days. Within the first 2 weeks of living there I'll go and see 2 Darkness gigs. Sometimes, life can turn out at least a little like you want it to :)
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