Victoria Williams “Summer Of Drugs”

What thrills you as a kid, terrifies you as a parent.

The first time I heard “Summer Of Drugs” I was living post-collegiate, single, and responsibility-free. I mean, I had a job, but there was no reason not to be up until 4am, indulging in whatever entertaining activity (or vice) floated my way.

Victoria Williams is the perfect vessel for this song, in that she is perhaps the most non-threatening voice to sing about the perils and pleasures of recreational drug use. She speaks of her square parents, in an almost pitying voice, smiling at how quaint their notion of fun is (a tally pull!). Meanwhile she’s having a high time with her friends, knowing that Ma and Pa are completely unaware.

I can remember thinking, “If my parents only knew what I was doing right now . . . “

Now, what seems like just a couple of years later, I have a kid, and I look at her and try to imagine her as a young woman, inserted into some of those scenes I was a part of in that big farmhouse/bachelor pad.

And I want to tell her, trying to remain non-hysterical: “Sure, Victoria Williams seems innocuous, and gentle and sweet and hippie-dippy with her tossled hair and rickety voice and bohemian attitude, but that’s poison in her mouth!”

And I think about my parents, wondering if they actively worked at not-knowing, not-thinking, not-imagining their son’s 20-something years. I imagine it’s the only way a parent survives it.

Hear a live version of Victoria Williams “Summer Of Drugs”

See the Victoria Williams and Dave Pirner of Soul Asylum on David Letterman, here