No. 987 – Damn Good

Performer: David Lee Roth

Songwriters: David Lee Roth, Steve Vai

Original Release: Skyscraper

Year: 1988

Definitive Version: None

My apartment in New Buffalo was my first real place, that is, it was the first apartment where I paid my own rent. I moved there in January 1988 to start my journalism career as associate editor at the Harbor Country News.

I was a huge Steve & Garry fan thanks to being at Northwestern for a year, and I listened to their show religiously when I could, taping it when I couldn’t and saving the best bits for later re-listening. In February after I moved to New Buffalo, they were talking about this song and how it was a ripoff of Triad by Jefferson Airplane and And You and I by Yes and Dogs by Pink Floyd and God knows what else. They mixed all the songs together and it was a funny extended bit, but the punch line is that it actually got me into this song.

I don’t know exactly why, but when I hear it now, I have a clear vision of my kitchen, which was, by far, the biggest room in the New Buffalo apartment. Just unnecessarily spacious. I had a table and chairs, and I kept my bike there and I might as well have put a dresser there, too. The kitchen had a white linoleum tile floor that was a huge pain in the butt to clean, which I did constantly that winter, because it snows a ton in New Buffalo thanks to its proximity to Lake Michigan. It also pretty much made the summer town desolate.

So you’d drag in the snow, it would melt and you’d mop up the mess after covering the floor in boot footprints. Eventually I bought a sheet of plastic that I used as a walkway to the living room. Fortunately, heat in the apartment was never a problem, so it could have been worse. But all the while, I’d be listening to Steve & Garry trash David Lee Roth for directly ripping off David Crosby (who wrote Triad) and even though I was isolated from everything, I never really felt lonely.