06 Feb 2012
Roundabout - Yes
In middle school I took a music appreciation class. It was actually pretty fun and covered an extremely diverse set of music. I was at just the right stage in developing my own musical tastes to really be open to all of it. Traditional symphonic, avant-garde, musicals, it was all over the place and all very interesting.
I remember being able to take a cassette home of the music from the class. I can’t remember if this was required homework, or if we were only expected to listen to stuff in class. It’s not like there were real tests or anything… this was a middle school elective. It’s funny, because now all I can think of is how much of a mess distributing copywrited material is. Supposedly there are allowances for educational use, but I can just see poor Mr. Pew getting thrown in prison for trying to “pirate” music for the children. The music business is such an ugly misguided place.
Anyway, there were lots of songs in that class. But I definitely remember “Roundabout”, and feeling that it was cool to have a class where it was my homework to listen to rock music.
Silent in the Morning - Phish
My first real concert was Phish at The Evergreen State College. I was young, so I went with my dad. And my brother, I think? And Kevin? How do I not remember these details? It doesn’t matter, I was going to see a real live band that I was interested in. And apparently I would see them with a whole bunch of hippies, who were getting totally baked. I was completely oblivious to all of this; my dad was not, but gets points for not freaking out.
I had no concept of what this concert would be like. Before going to the show I actually thought there was a chance that I would meet the band. I thought I might be put on the spot and I was anxious about not having anything to say. I had learned how to play some parts of their songs on the guitar, but I was worried about performing them in front of, you know, the whole crowd. Really, my imagination went wild. The reality of course was far less intimidating, as I could just hang out on the bleachers and enjoy watching.
I specifically remember “Silent in the Morning” from the encore. The song has this part where there are four beats at the end of each round of the chorus. Performed live this was combined with a spot light that cycled over the four musicians in time with the beat. It was so cool to see subtle visuals like that tied to the music in small but impactful ways. It wasn’t just watching the music being performed live; there was an effort to somehow enhance the experience in the process.
Slave to the Traffic Light - Phish
This song wasn’t played at the concert I was at, but it was released on the live album that came out shortly thereafter. For me it is one of the best recorded examples of how live Phish felt to me.
It’s a long track, and it’s barely even a song. There are movements through a rough structure, and at points some words are tied in there. But it’s not about being a song; it’s about going on a journey. Around four minutes in the music gets real quiet and turns into something entirely different, and quite beautiful. Towards the end (yes, ten minutes in), it’s built to a glorious climax that feels appropriate and rewarding.
The band isn’t recreating a heavily rehearsed combination of verse and chorus; it’s more like they’re rediscovering the music again for the first time. They’re listening and watching to each other, playing off each other’s ideas, and trying to move in the same direction. Sometimes it doesn’t work out well; sometimes wonderful unexpected things come out. But it’s always very real.
Killing in The Name - Rage Against the Machine
I’m not an angry person. I’ve never needed music as an outlet for my aggression against The Man. But I totally got into my brother’s Rage album. I liked the way it sounded, and I didn’t really care what they were actually saying. Maybe I did find something liberating about someone yelling “Fuck you I won’t do what you tell me” over and over again. I didn’t personally have problems with people telling me to do stuff, but maybe this guy did, and yelling about it seemed to help him. I had no problem with that.
But really I can’t listen to this album and not remember myself playing Earthworm Jim. I think it was a weekend rental, and I sat down and played it with this Rage album as a soundtrack. At some point during this my brother’s friends came by unexpectedly and froshed me by throwing me into the bay. It must have been the summer between 8th grade and 9th grade, where I would become a Freshman. It was close enough for them. I was pretty relaxed about the whole experience - and in turn they were nice enough to let me take my shoes off first. Afterwards I came back in the house, dried off, and played more Earthworm Jim. Apparently Rage didn’t make me angry, even in the face of being hazed and powerless.
Chubb Sub - Medeski, Martin, and Wood
Ah, MMW, a trio of musicians on a path between two places, and another musical gift from Kevin. On one hand they have this jazzy abstract background. On the other hand they’re able to produce something like this, a groovy song that just felt so… cool. It was impossible for me to listen to this and not fall in love with the bite of that organ.
I explored the band deeper after experiencing this song. A lot of their older stuff was pretty unhinged, sometimes feeling more like an avant-garde mess. But at times it would manifest into Music, and when it did it was powerful. As time moved forward you could see the band harness a more modern sound, unafraid of incorporating new music elements. In general this also corresponded with an increase in listenability.
Overall I found MMW to be extremely uneven. But as with Phish I appreciated their experimental spirit and how their chaos made the order that formed out of it all the more beautiful.
03 Feb 2012
Trying to Throw Your Arms Around the World - U2
I keep thinking the first U2 album I experienced was Rattle and Hum. For some reason I forget all about Achtung Baby. I forget it until I put it on and roll into the B-sides, and then it all comes back. This album became part of my nightly cool-down repertoire. I would put on some music, read, and make the transition towards sleep. There’s just this relaxed wall of sound going on here that really works for me.
Seasons - Chris Cornell
I didn’t see the movie Singles until many years later, but I had access to the soundtrack at this point. Actually, it was the first soundtrack I listened to. It provided exposure to so many different artists and sounds. Many of them were challenging to my palate, and I spent a lot of time unraveling its layers.
It was full of firsts. This was the first time I really experienced Jimi Hendrix (weird, I know). There’s a Led Zeppelin cover on this album that I couldn’t stand at first but later grew to like (also, I had never really listened to Zeppelin, what’s with that?). And then there’s the Smashing Pumpkins song that became a bridge to this girl I had a crush on. But I’m getting ahead of myself…
I picked “Seasons” as the takeaway from this album. It has the always excellent voice of Chris Cornell and a clean acoustic guitar sound. There’s a drive to the song that really moves forward so naturally. With the musical history that I had, and combined with my growing relationship with the guitar, this song was perfect for me.
All I Want Is You - U2
My first crush happened in the 7th grade. And it happened shortly after I discovered my brother’s copy of Rattle and Hum (which I devoured - huge unexpected influence). I have memories of playing this song loudly on the living room stereo in the evening when no one was around. At the same time I would contemplate the full force of my love for this girl that I knew nothing about. This was one of the easiest and earliest pick for this list, because the memory around it is so clear and so strong.
Seriously, I was (and am) such a hopeless romantic, and this song is just so damned sweet. And good. It goes on this intense journey. There’s the song, and then there’s this whole emotional instrumental progression for two minutes that has always left me completely drained. After all these years it still works for me.
In these Feel-a-Thon sessions I would sometimes also play “Drown” from the Singles soundtrack sampled above. The girl I was crushing on was into this band I’d never heard of called The Smashing Pumpkins, and this was the only song I had access to (I would later score Siamese Dream, as you’ll see). “Drown” had the problem of being a great song, right up until the point where it goes into crazy distortion masturbation land for an additional three minutes. The radio edit removes this, but I didn’t have that luxury. So I’d listen to the song, be enjoying myself, and then have to rush back to the stereo and shut it off before it drove me crazy.
Numb - U2
This is one of those songs where people don’t know the lyrics. It’s completely monotone, there are a lot of words, and the music mostly plays over them. So naturally I tasked myself with memorizing all of them. Middle school age kids are so weird.
I hear this song and I’m instantly transported to the school computer lab in the library. I’m transcribing the lyrics from memory and putting them into some imaging program so I can apply some weird coloring effect. I remember the program having terrible text layout, and having to retype things many times. I also remember a girl (Lisa) commenting on how weird this all was. Many years later we would become friends, and many many years later she would be one of people I most enjoyed at my high school reunion, although I’m sure she doesn’t remember this library encounter.
Thankfully I don’t remember the lyrics anymore. My brain reallocated that space at some point.
Hummer - The Smashing Pumpkins
I found out that my first crush liked the Smashing Pumpkins, but I had no idea who they were, so I found out. I had to ask my brother. And then somehow I got a copy of Siamese Dream on cassette. It was unlike anything I’d heard before, but “Hummer” was one that really rose above the rest after repeated trips through the album. This song goes through controlled distortion and feedback to a beautiful place. The sound is full and raw but somehow gentle. And I love the place it goes to for those final two minutes.
My crush eventually faded. I never asked her out. I barely even talked to her. She was just cute and to my undeveloped self that was enough for me to completely obsess about her. But then she didn’t follow to the same high school and then that was that. Despite the crush expanding for so long with basically no reason, it died without even a whimper as soon as the target out of sight. But here’s the thing, this girl introduced me to some great music that has lasted me well beyond that awkward, awkward time.
Odd side note: In going back and fitting songs to the timeline this is one place where I’ve reached an internal inconsistency. I have a memory of trying to play along to “Soma” from this album with a thoroughly out of tune guitar. As in this would occur in the timeline right after I found a guitar but before I’d tuned it properly and learned any songs. That puts us somewhere around 1991. Siamese Dream came out in 1993, and according to my memory of how I got to the album it’d more be around 1994 when I was listening to it. These memories are incompatible. By the time I was listening to this album I was no longer friends with the person who I remember playing with on a happily self-tuned guitar. My memory is provably wrong here, and I don’t know how to reconcile that.
02 Feb 2012
Played on Xbox360
I feel compelled to write about Bastion. I mean, I could just say “it’s good, you should play it”, which is totally accurate, or “it’s so good I played it twice”, which is also definitely true, but I think the game deserves more than that. It deserves some gushing.
Bastion is a downloadable game for the Xbox (PC too, although I played it on the Xbox). I guess I’d describe it as an 2D action game with RPG elements, although that’s about as descriptive as filing music under the “rock” genre. It’s got an overhead perspective, you run around and take down the baddies while progressing through levels. That’s how it plays… but that part is pretty irrelevant. I mean, it plays well, but that’s not the point. The point is that Bastion is a thing of beauty.
When I say beauty the first thing that probably comes to mind is its visual presentation. Art direction, graphics, whatever. That’s all strong, but that’s not what I’m talking about. This game is a treat for the ears. It’s an auditory delight. Turning down the volume on this game is a punishably criminal offense.
The first thing you’ll notice is the narrator. You’re dropped in the game with some quick description of your surroundings by some gravelly old timer. Nothing else happens, you just sit there, seeing what is presumably your avatar lying down. Eventually you try to press some buttons and the kid will stand up. As he does the narrator describes what just happened. You continue moving around and this narrator follows describing things as you do them.
It’s a subtle but hugely important addition. It’s like in Mass Effect how they let you select your dialog responses before the other person is finished speaking. It’s about the rhythm of the experience. Having the narrator in Bastion respond to what you’re doing makes it feel like you are living out a story. As if what you’re doing is important, noteworthy. And most importantly, the language, vocabulary, cadence, and tone of the narrator firmly plants you in this world more so than any visual ever could.
The narrator from Bastion has been much applauded in the game’s critical reception. But reducing Bastion to a game that is only interesting because of its narrator is selling it short.
The music. Oh my god the music. There are few games that have caused me to go track down the soundtrack. This is definitely one of them. It feels simultaneously old yet modern, western but eastern. It feels like a future that is firmly grounded in the past. It’s Firefly. It’s steampunk. It’s extraordinarily intentional and extraordinarily good. Again, more than any visual element, the music places you in a fully realized world.
Reading the notes from the composer, apparently he was aiming for “acoustic frontier trip-hop”. Yes! That! OMG yes that!
It’s not my intention to sell the visual presentation or gameplay short. They’re both very strong. The visuals are vibrant, interesting, and unique. The gameplay is simple but tight, and builds in a way that gives you plenty to master. It’s a holistically enjoyable package. But it’s the sweet sounds encircling my brain that make me love Bastion. It’s good. You should play it.
01 Feb 2012
Sweating Bullets - Megadeth
We just went through a rather cohesive set of grunge influences, where’s this Megadeth thing coming from? It’s certainly true that I never ended up a metal-head, but it’s not as if I wasn’t exposed to these things. We’re entering a period here where there’s a lot of divergent influences coming in from my brother and my brother’s friends. I remember this song specifically. Something about the hardcore music combined with the funny voice just stuck with me. That and “Symphony of Destruction”.
Nuthin’ But A ‘G’ Thang - Dr. Dre
I’m guessing when most people hear this song they don’t think of stop motion LEGO movies. Yeah, didn’t think so. Well my brother, his friend Justin, and I made a movie that had something to do with… time travel? I think. Damn I wish I could get a copy of that. It had an awesome driving sequence set to this song, with special effects that make seeing the strings seem professional. And then there were stop motion LEGO-men walking sequences. And then live action sequences of our awesomely awkward selves. Seriously, anyone have a copy of this? I need to see it again.
Take Five - Dave Brubeck
This is what adolescence looks like. From metal to rap to jazz; all of the sudden I’m absorbing all these extremely different things at the same time.
This one in particular is associated with making chili with my dad. It was a company picnic, and there was a chili cook-off. We made an entry and somehow won. I think it’s mostly because people took some extremely creative interpretations on what chili is and I just stuck to tradition. I remember one of the chili competitors having fruit in it, for example. Anyway, winning made me feel kind of weird, because I was the bosses son. I mean, the voting was anonymous, but it still felt odd.
The chili was cooked entirely while listening to jazz on the public radio station, and as a result “Take Five” by Dave Brubeck still sticks out in my head as a song for cooking chili.
Fluffhead > Fluff’s Travels - Phish
In 7th grade I made a new friend named Kevin who conveniently lived just down the road from me. He introduced me to this band named Phish.
As you can see from everything leading up to this moment, this came at a time when I was sorting through a lot of varied influences and trying to find my own tastes. Phish was obscure and weird enough to give me that much needed middle school individualism that we all seemed to crave. The song I remember clicking for me first was “Fluffhead”.
I remember the moment I first heard it pretty clearly, actually. Well, I think I do - I might be collapsing two evenings into one in my head. Details. It was a sleepover at Kevin’s with me, him, and this guy Zach who also rode our bus. Kevin said he wanted to try smoking a cigarette and drinking a beer. I thought he was joking; it turns out he wasn’t. He was the only one to partake, and the evening ended with Kevin falling asleep and Zach vandalizing him with some aerosol cheese. It was not cool, and Kevin and I stopped hanging out with Zach after that.
The point, however, is that Kevin had a Phish tape on during the evening, and it was interesting and different. I followed up later and bought the album, Junta, which ended up being the first album I bought for myself. I proceeded to follow through their discography as money allowed and eventually catch up with current day, which at the time was Hoist.
I have fond memories, but I can’t listen to Phish now like I could then. But they represent a couple things to me. One, as I said, was individuality. I was listening to something completely different from what everyone else was. Sometimes even at the cost of quality.
Phish’s music was as much about the process as the end product, which appealed to me as someone who was diving into playing the guitar. But mostly it was about the moments. Their songs ramble and at times edge on dissonance, but sometimes the band just comes together in a magical way that wouldn’t be as good without the parts that came before. They really rode out the whole musical journey, embracing contrast tones and free exploration. Mixed results, sure, but it sure provided an interesting range.
But I think the most important thing is that Phish will forever be associated with my first real friend, Kevin.
30 Jan 2012
I’m a child of the Seattle area, so even though I was too young and thoroughly uncool I was exposed to grunge music in real time. Of course at this age all music was essentially new to me so it’s not as if I was aware that this particular sub-genre was of the local variety. But this next block of influential songs should show some not-so-subtle commonality. Welcome to the 90’s.
Come As You Are - Nirvana
I didn’t discuss it in my guitar story, but the first song I ever learned how to play was “Come As You Are” by Nirvana. Which was followed shortly by “Lithium”. The odd thing is that I learned these songs on that nylon string classic acoustic guitar - not exactly ideal for playing a genre renowned for heavy distortion. I didn’t really notice - I was still just struggling to actually get the thing in tune.
Alive - Pearl Jam
This song is tied in my head to one Michael Lee, and the experience of the two of us playing guitar together. I remember learning the first couple bars of the guitar solo and quickly getting horribly lost after that. But I pretended to keep up anyway.
Hearing that solo takes me back to the sleepover at that friend’s house where we learned the song. That night (or at least a similar one) we were somehow allowed watched Silence of the Lambs, but I was thankfully still too young to be disturbed by it. It’s funny that this was also the kid whose mom wouldn’t let him play Dungeons & Dragons because of fear of devil worship or something. The timelines match up - 2nd edition of AD&D was where TSR pulled any sort of really controversial imagery from the game, which came out right around Pearl Jam’s Ten. I’m sure most people don’t have that sort of correlation in their head - that’s just how it worked out for me.
These were good times. Later, I would suspect that this particular group of friends had become too cool for me. In retrospect now I think this was partially just in my head, but not completely. I probably made it worse on myself in some sort of self-fulfilling prophesy. However at this moment, for this song, I was happy. Middle school hadn’t sunk its teeth in yet and I wasn’t yet questioning my friendships.
Big Empty - Stone Temple Pilots
Someone gave me this album for my birthday, and I remember being disappointed because I had wanted some other album (not that I can remember which one now). Because of that I resisted and didn’t appreciate the gems on the album at the time, and shortly thereafter I traded it for something else (which I also can’t remember).
In that short superficially dissatisfied time it still managed to plant some seeds that matured later when I no longer had access to the album. As in all of the sudden I’m singing along to “Interstate Love Song” off the car radio and totally loving it. I think there’s something about STP that doesn’t work when your voice is still cracking.
My Wave - Soundgarden
We’re on a family boat trip. For some reason my brother and I are able to split off in his Whaler to go… somewhere. I think we’re somewhere near McNeil island, but I never paid the charts any attention so who knows. Anyway, we’re in this little boat, racing along with a boom box in the back. And on comes “My Wave”. I remember saying that I would never get sick of that sound. Of course the song turned out to be terribly repetitive. But whatever, in that moment, with the sound of the engine roaring and the water slapping the bottom of the boat, it was awesome.
I didn’t go explore Soundgarden properly until a year or so later, when I found songs like “Fell On Black Days” that hold up much better for me. This seems to be a recurring pattern - parting from the raw initial loves and returning a the more constrained sound.
Elderly Woman Behind a Counter… - Pearl Jam
As hinted above, some combination of voice changing and lack of affinity for lyrics prevented me from really connecting to vocal-heavy songs. Some songs transcend that problem; this is one of them. Even in the throws of adolescence this song demanded I sing along. I know this not because I remember singing to it, but because I actually know the words.
My brain processes vocals as just another instrument, so I rarely know the words to songs. But we’re entering a period where album ownership was a new thing to me. I became completely fascinated with liner notes. I remember pouring all over the quirky details, and I think that’s how I actually walked away knowing the words to songs like this and “Daughter”.