Hello World, Here's a Song That We're Singing! C'mon Get Happy!

What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music? -- Rob Gordon, High Fidelity by Nick Hornby

Kurt Cobain once sang "I miss the comfort in being sad," and without going into too much detail (this is after all, a blog about music, not a makeshift confessional/therapist's couch), I have been going through some minor inner conflicts, been feeling some minor pangs of ennui (does ennui even come in minor pang form?) and I've noticed lately that I can't seem to get enough of bands like Keane and Radiohead and Muse. It may have even gotten to the point where others say "Hey that Jeff Buckley guy, he wasn't exactly the most up person out there, was he?" and I don't even notice. Someone on a website I frequent recently recommended Editors to me, and I like them, even though I think someone's observation that they are quite like Joy Division is spot on.

And I'm not even looking at this as part of that lame ass argument for parental warning stickers where parents without a clue think that listening to Korn or Marilyn Manson makes their children into homicidal killers. I just think I am listening to too much music that is cut from the same emotional (but not EMO) cloth, and I'm wondering if I abandoned my beloved music for a few weeks, what would happen? Instead of listening to a man pine for the father he never knew and listening to another complain about getting old when he isn't even 30, why don't I see what happens to my psyche if in their place I listen to Fergie and Pussycat Dolls and Gwen Stefani? Would whatever is affecting me, those problems, would they become different? Would it be the end of the world for me over something more trivial, as in "My local drugstore doesn't sell blue eyeliner!"? Would I end up going completely bat-shit mental?

I know I go through phases of music, where sometimes I like music that sounds completely ethereal and almost fragile, and then I turn around and want to hear someone screaming over crunching guitars and bashing drums. But I have to wonder now if it really is the music that I am listening to that is making me feel meh.

Any lurkers out there know of any intelligent feel good music? Or am I completely missing the point? If everyone felt safe in their own skin and had plenty of money and a lovely person to come home to, etc, etc, would there even be pop music in the first place?

Musicians I Would Like To Take Out To Dinner (Part 3)

I first heard about Sebadoh in high school. After Nirvana came and turned every high schooler on its head, what became known as "indie-rock" was the way to go and Sub Pop and Matador Records were the record labels that had all the cool next big thing bands.

Anyways, in 1994, a close friend of mine was practically singing the praises of Sebadoh to me, and finally when I bit down upon the hook I thought she had been offering me, she balked and pretty much said to me that she didn’t want me to listen to their music because she didn’t want them to go mainstream. I was a little offended at both what seemed to be her selfishness and the allusion that I was what was (horror of horrors!) mainstream. Looking back on myself then, I sure as hell felt like I was out on the fringe but I didn’t subscribe to the uniform of the fringe sitter. Still the idea that I could single-handedly be some band’s critical downfall and point where they officially sold out boggled my mind. Dejected, I didn’t bring up the point with her again.

In the fall of 1996 I was a sophomore at university and again I came across Sebadoh in the circles I traveled and again I was greeted with indie-rock snobbery. (By the way, in a future post I will be addressing this issue of whether to share the music you hold dear, and why I find it positively stupid to be a royal music snob, as in “My God! My Beloved Iraqi Transistor Tomato just sold 5,000 copies of its latest album Kaleidoscopic Junkie Health Insurance! They fucking sold out! Poseurs!”)

But this time, as I was able to get to the used record stores in my neighborhood, I figured enough was enough and I picked up their Harmacy CD. Instantly, I was hooked. The album was a mixture of poppy guitar rock and harder punkish rock. I've amused myself by thinking of a time where Lou and Jason were jamming in separate bands in apartments above each other until one day they can't take the others noise anymore and start screaming "You got pop in my punk!" "Oh yeah? You got punk in my pop!"

I remember I instantly was taken with how one singer was very confessional, sounded sensitive and a bit wounded, lovesick and mooning over some girl whom he knew was The One. In Willing To Wait, he sang of his Beautiful Friend who had taken a chance on him in the past, and how he wanted that chance again, if only she would give it to him. I also quickly realized that if said woman was going to kick him to the curb then I'd be happy to take her place. (Yes, I admit it, I had a pretty sizeable crush on the semi-dorky looking guy in the forefront of the above photo throughout most of my college days.) The other voice was more like “Hell, fuck it, either you like me or you don’t.” I don't think it really is that far off to call Jason Lowenstein and Lou Barlow the indie equivalent (at that time) of Lennon and McCartney.

And later on, I dig deeper into the Sebadoh library and found the albums which featured what can only be called the sound creations of one Eric Gaffney. Not a singer by any stretch, Gaffney's contribution to Sebadoh was the sound loops he liked to throw together which made these really kaleidoscopish collages which were certainly not like anything else I had heard at the time. (Check out Bubble and Scrape for some later Gaffney works.)

I think I really respect Sebadoh for not really selling out, even though yes, they did sign to a major label for what would be their last album. I love what Lou Barlow did with The Folk Implosion, bringing more dancey beats and loops to his music. But I also remember remarking to myself after hearing The Sebadoh that maybe once Lou had won his girl, there was just nothing left for him to say within Sebadoh. (Lou has not only a wife and daughter these days but also his first ever solo album I want to check out sometime soon!) And is it necessarily a bad thing that maybe the reason why a band dried up is because the underdog won the girl of his dreams? I don't think so.

Top 5 Sebadoh Songs (The hardest one yet! I really want to cheat and go 5 with Jason and 5 with Lou...):

1. Too Pure
2. Think (Let Tomorrow Bee)
3. Rebound
4. Together or Alone
5. Got It

Holy Shit, This is Awesome!

Well, wait. Is awesome really the word for this?



Billy Idol. White Christmas.

Let me say it again!

Billy Idol. White Christmas!

Anyone else getting Love Actually flashbacks?

Hope everyone has a happy, festive and SANE holiday!*

*(Only 27 more shopping days to go!)

Skeletons In My Closet (Part 2)

I'm not ashamed to say I like Led Zeppelin. I'm just ashamed that it's taken me so long to finally get interested in them. So my second publicly aired skeleton is this: I consider myself a big fan of music and fairly knowledgeable about it, but have, for the past 15 years or so, largely ignored the catalog of work Led Zeppelin created. Once I was of the mind they were way too metal for my tastes, and way too popular, too middle of the road rock for me. Now I think, "How can you not like them? How can you not like the chances they took musically throughout their career? How can you not appreciate the power of Robert Plant's singing or John Bonham's drumming?"

Changes that I am anticipating for later on in the year made me decide to download some of their songs online, as opposed to buy another CD. This is a really hard thing to do when some of the song titles are never sung during the course of the song! I plan on buying their CDs at some point (I already own Led Zeppelins II and IV), but right now I'm worried about seriously going berserk in HMV at this point, and while it breaks my heart a little to go in and walk out empty-handed, I am a little proud of my self-restraint!

But Led Zeppelin are one of those bands I grew up with, or I should say, one of the bands my dad listened to while I was growing up. When I was much younger, I was plagued with chronic headaches that would last for 2 or 3 days at a time, ones that would prevent me from sleeping until my body couldn't take the strain and I would eventually pass out from exhaustion. Anyways, during that time, as most TV stations were not in a 24 hour format like they are now, my dad would stay up with me into the wee hours of the morning, and we would watch his video collections of concerts and videos, made from taping MTV overnight, back in the day when the channel actually played music.

One of the specials was the Led Zeppelin concert movie The Song Remains the Same. I vaguely remember Robert Plant's video sequence, where I think it was medieval themed. The one that sticks out the most for me, though is the one featuring John Bonham, where we see him play Moby Dick and cut into the performance are clips of him racing a car, some nitroglycerin fueled funny car. I don't know how this memory came about, but I do remember learning that he had died and then asking my dad if he had died in the car crash. My dad probably thinking I'd grow up to try the same thing if I knew he had actually died from a serious bender of 26 vodka shots in one day, told me "yes."

Then when I got older I somehow associated Led Zeppelin with being like the grandfather of all things hair metal. Yes, I (at the time) saw bands like Poison and Warrant in the same light as Led Zeppelin. I now see that all four members of the band, whether separate or together are extremely talented. This is not the case for Warrant. But at the time, I saw Led Zeppelin as too excessive and flashy and was turned off by the whole thing.

I think they are one of the most musically interesting bands out there. It doesn't matter what part you concentrate on. It's all really interesting and amazing. I tend to pay attention most to John Bonham's drumming. It's amazing how much force he put behind his playing. He just beat the shit out of his drums constantly, both destroying his sticks and the drum heads. He drummed with four sticks on the song appropriately titled Four Sticks.

While Stairway To Heaven leaves a bad taste in my mouth, only because it was the one song they played over and over at my school dances to signal the dance's end and thereby signaling to me another wasted evening where I hung out on the sidelines and never was asked to dance, I am now starting to slowly appreciate the song and especially starting to love the guitar solo for it.

I think the best Led Zeppelin song where they all come together so well has to be The Immigrant Song, which is off Led Zeppelin III. I'm really amazed at just how short that song is, just over 2 minutes long. I guess when I first heard it while driving around with my father, I was pretty dumbstruck at the combined forces of Robert Plant's wailing and the solid rhythm section of John Bonham and John Paul Jones.

Also I learned something kind of funny while trying to research Led Zeppelin completely through the wonders of Google, but you have to wait for it. When Robert Plant's 5 year old son died (not the funny part) he was so devastated that he almost decided to quit Led Zeppelin and music for good (also not the funny part) and become a kindergarten teacher. How awesome would that have been? Former rock god Robert Plant once wailing "Squeeze me baby, till the juice runs down my leg!" on The Lemon Song, now singing very soulful versions of the ABC Song and The Eensy Weensy Spider. I wonder how much the bootlegs would have gone for!

I'm very glad he had a change of heart and decided to carry on, even though John Bonham's death only a few years later would shelve Led Zeppelin for good. Robert Plant's song to his deceased son, All My Love is one of the prettiest songs Led Zeppelin songs I have ever heard and it becomes even more beautiful when you realize that this is not a run of the mill love song between a man and a woman, but an elegy to his son who spent such a short time on this earth.

My Top Five Led Zeppelin Songs (subject to change as I am still figuring them out!)

1. The Immigrant Song
2. Good Times Bad Times
3. Four Sticks
4. Misty Mountain Hop
5. All My Love