Michael Des Barres and the Art of Aural Obsession

Listening to music inspires us to take action. Upon hearing an I.E.-Instant Earworm-we must then determine the best way we can go about listening to it again (and again) at our convenience.

- MIKE METTLER

Prior to the free-for-all streaming era, our I.E.follow-through measures typically meant seeking out a specific playback medium for our favorite music, initially based on budgetary constraints. In those formative, preemployment preteen years, 45s-and/or, depending on how far back we're talking here, possibly even 78s-fit the literal dollar bill before we could afford to move up the media ladder and begin purchasing LPs en masse. Our then-limited playback options tended to start with those self-contained, close-and-play record players and/or our parents' livingroom consoles before we could afford to acquire separate components for more personal, higher-fidelity listening sessions. We were, to be blunt, obsessed.

Across the pond, hungry young listeners were eager to do the exact same thing. Take garage/punk glam-pop vocalist Michael Des Barres (aka MDB), who had duly been shuffled off to Repton School in Derbyshire, England, as a lad in the 1950s and found his initial aural inspiration by listening to his mates' records, since he couldn't yet afford to buy any of his own. "A friend of mine at boarding school had a Sonny Boy Williamson record, and I just lost my mind," Des Barres recalls. "That's how it began for those of us who grew up in England in the '50s and '60s. It was all blues-based and Motown to start, because American music was what turned us on. And then it was dressed up in velvet and mutated into something else."