NOBODY LIKES YOU OHIO//A man crush on Rob Harvilla
For at the least two weeks I have had a single unifying thought enter my mind at some point every day. It started not unlike other words that I have awoken to, but really it’s more of a thought. A truth I can’t deny. An absolute certainty.
“Nobody likes you Ohio. “
Full disclosure, I was, for the first 5-7 years of my life, influenced heavily by a love of the University of Michigan, my godfather Bob Harrison, a graduate. I knew the fight song by 3 or 4 and even went down the path of attending later in life. To be a U of M fan was to hate Ohio State with the heat of 1000 suns. 5 year old me obliged.
The reality is that I could care less about Michigan, their University, their underachieving football team, or Detroit and it’s suburbs, where I spent 6+ years. I don’t bleed blue or maize. I don’t wax poetic about the auto industry. Michigan is no more important to me than Iowa, and really, nobody cares about Iowa.
And yet. I still hate Ohio.
This brings me pleasure, though really I know little about Ohio. Other than the I-75 corridor that runs South to North along its Eastern border, I’ve spent very little time there. I’ve never been to Cleveland or Columbus and the path through Cincinnati and Dayton on the aforementioned I-75 isn’t especially traumatizing. And yet. I think Ohio is…trash.
This certainty is a little disheartening because while I know that state is terrible, I have an immense man crush on one of its inhabitants. One Robert (middle name unknown) Harvilla, the writer and presenter of my favorite podcast, 60 Songs that Explain the 90’s.
Let me state for the record by that I am not a journalist and despite my violent opinions on music, I’m also not a music critic. I am also not one of those people who are asked to be on podcasts as guests who have their name announced with a litany of “he’s written for…” followed by “Pitchfork, Salon, Vice, Rolling Stone, Spin” etc. I am a voracious consumer of nostalgia. What I mean by that is to say that for some, nostalgia is a thing. For me. It is everything. It’s syrupy coating like Linus’s blanket, ever calming with a slight familiar odor that immediately takes me somewhere. Everywhere. Anywhere.
A month or so ago I stumbled upon 60 Songs that Explain the 90’s by the aforementioned, Rob Harvilla. He does have a list of places he’s written articles for that include all of the ones above and likely a lot more. To me this podcast is brilliant. Maybe it’s the Zima talking or perhaps just my 90’s oozing out but I truly love it.
I started with The Gin Blossoms episode and stayed close to home with all of the alternative leaning stories, but after I had meandered through almost all of them, I have listened to them on any genre of music, because the writing and delivery makes them all worthwhile.
I have dabbled in the podcast world and have heard the sound of my recorded singing voice for multiple decades. It’s always alarming. Writing something is one thing. Delivering it is another. This is what I think makes 60 Songs so good. The enthusiasm and delivery of well a written story (?). It makes me envision Rob at the dinner table eating and having his wife ask,
“How’s everything?”
And him replying, “The potatoes were devastating, Pixies good, or really Breeders good, do you believe that I believe that? Who am I really? They are in a word, incandescent.” No. That doesn’t seem to make sense, but I want these fucking potatoes. I want to listen to Rob talk about what I am learning to understand is my decade. For years I’ve been an 80’s kid despite going to college and being in my 20’s throughout the 90’s. It’s confusing. Incandescent.
This got me thinking about music (more) and about the bands that molded me. Which ones moved me as a kid, before I was a musician? Which ones moved me to start playing? Which ones molded me into the musician I’ve become? What would I say about it all and could I approach “Harvilla-ness” in saying it?
We all really know the answer to this is only found one way. Through picking a band (or six), and digging in. The list and the parameters are what’s hard. Unlike some folks I’m a whore to the hits. I make no bones about it. I don’t need to love 7 albums by a band. One was probably enough. Three, two too many. I care little for some of the backstory until I hear it. Then I’m glad I did, just not glad enough to buy or re-buy any Pearl Jam record past Vs. You can tell me that each of their other 78 albums have merit, I’ll choose to listen to the first :32 of “GO” in my car as loud as I can.
In defiance of this staunchly me stance, Rob makes me flip back and forth between what he’s saying about say Brandi or Selena, and their music. I am at once alarmed yet not surprised that I don’t recall a lot of this music. Sure I knew the players. I knew they were a big deal, but I was driving to Oxford, MS to catch Uncle Tupelo, clearly a much more significant band than say the Geto Boys. Like everything. This is just the world living under the bill of my ironic trucker hat. All of these genres were coming to be in real time with each other. I was just too impressed with my own breadth of 22 year old experience to care or listen.
Rob’s making me listen.
Somewhere in Ohio, he sits listening to Pavement, followed by Paul Simon, followed by Bjork. I know this because via the power of the internet l can look for things about people and find them. Like their Spotify activity. This is comforting and creepy as fuck, alas. I’m just a man. A man who can’t pass up following a guy I admire on Spotify, and who is rewarded with a 75 hour playlist called the Rolling 90’s Terrordome.
A simple opinionated music man, with an unexplainable hatred of a state and a boyish crush on another man.
Fuck you Ohio. Nobody likes you.
#hugsandhi5s
