This aired a couple of weeks ago.
I lived there during the height of my hip hop obsession from (definitely started before 8th grade, but that's when i moved there, to roughly 11th grade being when my interests shifted).
The amount of shit I got there for being really into hip hop (99% of it coming from white people) compared to when I lived in Lexington, KY was the complete opposite.
Ironic considering that people in Greenville had some cartoonish conception of Kentucky like it was all part of deep Appalachia (only the eastern part is, plus Kentucky is a border state - in some ways, the western part is almost like midwest state), ironic because I NEVER heard people in Lexington speaking like people do in Greenville (the stronger southern accent and "y'all" etc, it was quite a SHOCK, although it seems like some of that has migrated up now -or did I just not notice the milder version when I was in the thick of it?). Comments in Gville varied from the old chestnut "that's not real music" to much worse like "n***** music" then they would go on and put on their Led Zeppelin in the boombox (I'm guessing they had no idea how much LZ took or outright stole from black music) to force on everyone's ears during bus trip to marching band competitions or wherever it was that we were going. The ONE thing that we did agree about was that the Run-DMC/Aerosmith collaboration was the biggest musical tragedy of all time (but for completely opposite reasons - I was like, what is this redneck shit? which is what I later learned was also Run-DMCs reaction when Rick Rubin approached them with the idea).
What really did my head in was later that year those Led Zep/classic rock loving seniors in the marching band, near the end of the school year, started playing the Beastie Boys first album, Licensed to Ill, which was released that year. I was like, you gotta be shitting me... well, the Beastie Boys are white and some of it is basically like frat party music so of course, of course... *rolls eyes* (nothing against the Beasties though)
gawd, I HATED marching band - I had no business being in marching band in the 9th grade (my parents seriously overestimated my drumming skills when they made me join in 9th grade, and why didn't the teacher a least have me do some kind of rudimentary skills test before putting me on snare drum of all things?! - the hardest to play next to the quad drums, I reckon).
So, here I am this kid with undiagnosed nvld which means a lot of fine and gross motor skills issues AND visual spatial issues AND has trouble dealing with change - here I am at band camp (felt like a prison to me) trying to learn the impossible snare drum parts (motor skills) AND the marching routines for each song at the same time (visual-spatial) - not to also forget our own special drum cadence that we use when marching on the field or wherever else between songs (say like the teacher volunteered us to march in a christmas parade or whatever and we would play that cadence between songs), oh and don't forget football season - ANYWAY - the point is it was a horrible, just HORRIBLE experience for me (topped off by getting drumsticks thrown at me by other kids since I'm obviously ruining the marching band, AND I DID FOR THE WHOLE YEAR). I spent the year just bumping into people because I couldn't get the routines down and usually just holding my sticks slightly above the snare drum (I guess it was the teacher's bright idea that hopefully people wouldn't notice I wasn't actually playing anything unlike the rest of the snare drummers).
I forget if it was that year or the next that gym class was a required subject for the second semester which I REALLY ANXIOUS ABOUT given my experiences with "field days" in elementary school (there's nothing like an entire school laughing at you for your lack of motor skills - it got to where I would get such bad gastrointestinal issues from all the worry and stress when there was a field day that, let's just say, I guess that's one way to get out of it!) The saving grace of breaking my leg over the christmas holidays (slipped on some laundry that was on the stairs - another thing that people gave me shit for though) was that at least I didn't have to do gym that semester.
ummm..... so where was I? oh, yeah - so 9th grade marching band was such a horrible experience that I kind of put my foot down and said I wasn't going to do marching band anymore.
The problem was that I really wanted to get this new Yamaha RX-7 drum machine (it would be one of the first pieces of hardware for my poorly improvised hip hop production plans - it turned out not to have the kind of drum sounds I really wanted, but I didn't know any better - at any rate, I still used it and learned to program it, etc. - I knew it very well... a few years later when MC Hammer (blah...) got popular I knew exactly what brand of drum machine he was using based on the sounds), and to pay off the drum machine, it was both mine and my parents bright idea for me to work at the grocery store over the summer - it was to be my first job and it did not go great (just like the others later)! I was told that I was an idiot and got moved from one position to another (oh, sure, let's try bag boy next - I'm sure that'll work out great! I get to interact with customers (nvld social issues, HELLO) while I pack their bags (nvld visual-spatial and motor skills issues combined!) and take their groceries out to the car where bag boys get tipped on how well they do (let's just say that I wasn't exactly raking in the cash... if anything I would get stern lectures from older ladies about how I did socially, etc. - something that I would encounter a lot in my life from strangers - almost always women - why?))
so................... anyway, the grocery store job didn't go as planned so my parents told me they would get the RX-7 drum machine if I went back into marching band that upcoming year, 10th grade. I mean, at that point it was really my only choice so I practiced like hell to be able to play the cadence (if I could play the cadence, I could basically play other stuff, too) which, for the snare drum, besides the sextuplets which I also found really tricky (I finally figured it out by basically just thinking of two triplets combined - the problem is that it's played at such a speed that I thought it was a drum roll when I first heard it! never mind when it's a section where it's one sextuplet after the other) involved a lot of 16th note patterns with accents occuring during different points which means you have to get coordinated enough to not lose the flow while playing different accents with different hands depending on where the accents fell. I practiced and practiced and practiced and practiced to where I could finally play the cadence (the sextuplets still caused me problems sometimes and throughout the rest of my experience being in marching band (I could never get beyond a certain speed, but whatever, close enough)
The funny thing was that when I returned to that year's band camp, people asked me why I decided to come back and I told them it was because my parents said they would get me an RX-7. Little did I think that people would think that I was talking about the Mazda RX-7 car (I didn't give a shit about cars - I was actually terrified of learning how to drive).
Anyway, since the drumming finally came together for me I was able to focus on learning the marching routines instead of going into a complete spaced out meltdown brain fog.
The interesting thing is that I got good enough on the drums that year that I didn't even need to march the next year as I was just given a whole drum set to play on the field - and no marching.
I would constantly be playing it after school hours while people were waiting outside the band classroom for the bus (the outside door for the band classroom was always open so people naturally heard me playing.. got to where I could play some pretty funky stuff and people started calling me funky drummer and would be freestyling rhymes over top and dancing... I actually played in the talent show with three separate groups of people either on drums or with my improvised hip hop production set-up (by that point i had the drum machine, the crappy casio sk-1 sampler keyboard, and another crappy keyboard... and got kind of decent at scratching considering the shitty turntable I had was not built for that... oh, and a crappy radio shack mixer, but it did the job).
Here's a cringe part of that part of the story - so I'm wearing a lot of adidas at this point (hello, run-dmc) and I had the back of one of my adidas t-shirts printed on the back "DEF JAM CREATOR"- but hey, I must have been doing something right if so many people wanted to collaborate - even went into a proper studio a couple of times to record stuff that they wanted to pay to record with me.
Why didn't I stay in band for my senior year (also the first time I got committed to the mental hospital - terrible, terrible experience - they start with the base assumption that's all on you or that you aren't trying or something like - let's also experiment on him with some drugs), wellllllllllllllllll..... that was because I got the bright idea to study music theory at The Fine Arts Center downtown as part of my school day, and that was a whole other terrible debacle.
