Tuesday Tuneage

Corrosion of Conformity - "Goodbye Windows"
1996

Ozzy’s Boneyard — the classic hard rock and heavy metal station on SiriusXM — is my go-to listen when it comes to crunch time on the elliptical, for blasting out distractions while writing, or while descending into a living room happy hour on a lazy afternoon. You get a run of Deep Purple, Scorpions, Led Zeppelin, Black Label Society, and Blue Oyster Cult going on a Friday afternoon with a glass of Larceny bourbon and your troubles are behind you. Lately they have Corrosion of Conformity in regular rotation, which is cause for celebration.

COC became a late nineties/early aughts favorite upon stumbling across a copy of Wiseblood in the used CD racks and circa 2000 I saw them on the America’s Volume Dealer tour at First Avenue. This was the show where I was standing on the main floor and two huge linebacker-size metalheads standing behind me (kindly? gently? it seemed that they had more humor in their intentions than bullying) pushed me into the mosh circle. I made moves like Barry Sanders and bid a retreat out of the pit and found a place further back behind two even bigger guys. But there was another reason for this show being written here in my history, my memoirs, my back pages — and it’s that at some point before the show some skinny little metalhead inadvertently bumped me and spilled part of my beer. He stopped and looked and me, shocked and sheepish, and said: “Oh dude! I’m sorry! I’m sorry.” Then he gestured at my beer and stammered: “Can I buy ya? … Can I buy ya?” I assured him that not much had been spilled and eventually he made his way on. I told this story to a couple of my friends a few days later and soon after “Can I buy ya?” became our shorthand for getting together for a beer. … “Can I buy ya?”