12 Mar 2012
Little Wing - Stevie Ray Vaughn
In my last two years of high school I added on part time community college classes via the “Running Start” program. Between the two it was a lot of school. It was kind of ridiculous. For some reason I didn’t really question the sanity of it.
It was the one time in my life that I ever really drove. I had delayed as long as possible before getting my license, and only a year or two later when I arrived at college I ditched personal transport for public transit. But when I was doing high school and community college at the same time there was no other way to get it done. One of the few things I liked about driving was the excellent acoustics. There was something just truly personal about being sealed in with music all around you.
I have a distinct memory of driving to class at the community college when “Little Wing” came on. It created a dilemma. If I were to get out of my car right then (which is what I needed to do to be on time for class) I would miss the rest of the song. But this song was too good. I hung out in the parking lot to let the song play out. Finishing that song was clearly more important than my education.
The thing is, that wasn’t even my first time with the song. I had heard it plenty of times before, and knew I would again. That was kind of the problem; I knew exactly how good it was. It’s pure bliss, beginning to end, and on a level that manages to make Jimi look he was barely scratching the surface with the original.
Lie in Our Graves - Dave Matthews Band
This unassuming song takes me a couple places.
First is to an empty parking lot with my friends Kristin and Dave. We’re listening to Dave Matthews on the car stereo, windows down, and dancing outside. We probably look like total idiots, but we don’t care.
Next is at a church Young Life function, where Kristin is going through the song lyric by lyric in some presentation on the power of secular music. Dave and I are in the back, dancing in our chairs, and being thoroughly distracting.
Finally is me by myself, playing the song on the guitar. This was one of the few songs I actually learned how to play in its entirety. That may sound like it’d be a more common occurrence, but unless you’re actually performing music it’s far easier to just learn the main riffs of songs and leave it at that. This song has many different forms and transitions, and I decided to learned them all. I could play it from beginning to end, or at least I could back then.
It’s not my favorite Dave Matthews song, but it is one that’s special to me through some set of oddly personal events.
All-Star - Smash Mouth
This song is Dave. He was a totally charismatic guy that would go through the halls and somehow be friends with everyone. I’ve never known anyone with as much school spirit as Dave. During Senior year he called everyone “All-Star”. He was kind of a catch phrase kind of guy, but he somehow managed to make it sound personal for each person.
We eventually became pretty good friends. We’d been around each other for all of high school and earlier, but it wasn’t until Senior year that anything clicked. This was largely the result of shared proximity to Kristin, but Dave and I found our own ways to bond, like Starcraft.
Later we had a sort of a falling out. There was an incident involving a girl that Dave didn’t approve of, but we never talked about it. We just allowed things to drift apart. When you’ve both left to different cities for college it’s incredibly easy to just let things fade and die naturally.
Sugar Craft - Medeski, Martin & Wood
Later in life Jessica (we’ll get to her, but not quite yet) would be worried about exposing me to Morcheeba because of the record scratching and general mixed and/or electronic elements. I had become pretty strongly acoustic in my music listening habits, and she was worried about offending my gentle sensibilities. But she had nothing to fear, because years earlier I had been listening to the continually evolving and experimenting music of MMW. Although it was dormant then, I’d already adopted stuff like this to my vocabulary years earlier.
Do What You Have To Do - Sarah McLachlan
I never owned this album. I say this not in an effort to protect my manliness (although this is probably the girliest entry on this list). I say this because it’s noteworthy how well I know the album given that I never had personal access to it. This is the result of dating someone with a different musical history; you get a deep dive into their music tastes without even realizing that it’s happening.
As I built this list I often do research by listening to albums I remember being exposed to at the time. Sometimes I come back with memories, sometimes I don’t. This one was a bit of a late addition, something I didn’t even consider until a week ago. But I’m glad I acted on that idea. This album sounds like high school to me. It sounds like prom. And it sounds like the relationship I was in.
I didn’t go out of my way to select a song with any lyrical significance. But in listening through the album this song oddly stuck out to me, and then I noticed the lyrics of what I had chosen. “I don’t know how to let you go.” Wow, okay. Um, did I mention that this was a doomed relationship? It was the end of high school, and we were each going away to colleges in different states. The experiment had an undeniable fixed end point. It didn’t really matter if it was going well, it was going to fall apart. It had to. That creates a very particular brew of emotions. And this song stirs those up.
There were less heavy aspects to this album. “Ice Cream”, for example. But I’m going to stick with my first instinct and go with the melodrama.
09 Mar 2012
I Could Be Wrong - Seven Mary Three
There is a drum kit in my basement. There isn’t normally, but today there is. That’s because there’s music brewing in the basement. Me and a collection of friends are recreating “I Could Be Wrong” to the best of our ability. Including drums. Including horns. This shit is happening.
I don’t think we did a terribly good job of covering the song. But we tried, and it was fun. I remember going through the shared guitar/horn solo with Andy. I remember that feeling of a group of people working together to co-create. For as much time as I’ve spent on music in my life, not very much of it has been spent making music with other people. That’s probably not very wise of me.
This motley crew of half-committed musicians also attempted some original works. I have a cassette case labeled with one of those recordings. Cruelly the case is empty; the tape that goes with it got lost in the shuffle. I still hope that one day I’ll stumble upon it and unlock a window into this time period.
Born on the Bayou – Creedence Clearwater Revival
In Freshman year my social studies class required a presentation on a scale that blew my middle-school mind. The teacher wanted us to talk for how long? In front of everyone? It was supposed to be about some modern nation, but I had Egypt and totally cheated by talking about pharaohs and mummification the whole time. I spent more time on the rendition of Anubis on my oversized poster than I did on planned talking points. When my presentation was over my teacher made some comment about my radio voice. I barely heard it over my relief to be finished. But it turns out he was slightly prophetic, as that I ended up being a radio DJ for my final high school years.
Okay, so it was only the local student station (KGHP). And it’s not like I was selected for my voice - I just got the gig as a hand me down from my friends Phil and Ethan after they graduated. But I had a fair amount of fun with it.
I played a selection of music that sourced from all the things you’ve read about here, but more than anything I played classic rock. And Creedence Clearwater Revival is about as classic rock as it gets. So why “Born on the Bayou”? Sure I could put on something like “Fortunate Son”, but that song’s only like two minutes long. Since I needed to manually transition every song change I found myself subconsciously preferring the longer songs that gave me more time between. Plus “Born on the Bayou” has a great groove.
Shelf In The Room - Days of the New
My dad has acquired a rental property. I’m there to see the units for the first time. For some reason there’s an odd thing in the wall that also acts as a radio. I don’t think there was a callbox, so this wall device can’t be related to that. I feel like it was a thermostat, but what’s a thermostat doing with a radio? I remember thinking this was odd, but nonetheless tuning the radio and picking up this song. The speaker sounded awful, but there was still something nice about filling the empty apartment room with some raw acoustic music.
That wasn’t the first time I had heard the band or the song, but I think it was shortly after that that I picked up the album. It was exactly the sort of thing I needed: a celebration of the acoustic guitar. There are other instruments at work here, but there’s no denying the aggressively foreground guitar. It’s got a full and varied sound that makes you question why you’d ever need to electrify and distort such a powerful instrument.
I was excited to try to learn these songs. I bought the guitar tablature, but it turned out almost every song on the album had a crazy unique tuning. That killed the ability to pick up and play songs like these in a mixed rotation. It was hugely disappointing because I had been so excited to try to learn this style. Oh well, it was still inspiring to listen to.
Paran - John Zorn
So my friend Kevin had already been this great source of music influences. This one time I was hanging out at his house and he was playing… this. It catches my attention. I got the name from him and later bought a copy of the album. It’s the most Jewish thing I own.
I believe Kevin found the album as a result of the involvement of John Medeski, one of the M’s in MMW. It’s a strange album compared to the rest of my collection. I didn’t know exactly what to make of it, other than that there was something I liked about it. And because of the purely instrumental nature it was something I could listen to alongside all sorts of things. This gave it some legs.
There’s something about this album that makes me think of Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption, a PC game that I would be playing later in college. That association exists, but I’m not exactly sure they are things I experienced overlapping. It’s true that this album feels like a good soundtrack for the early sections of the game in Prague and Vienna, but logistically I just can’t imagine myself setting up custom background music. There’s always been a mental connection between Kevin and Vampire (both the pen and paper game and the card game), so it’s possible that my brain just connected these two things up all on its own.
#41 - Dave Matthews Band
Eventually I took a deeper look at The Dave Matthews Band. I can’t remember what song brought me in, but it’s safe to say that Crash was the album. I listened to Under the Table and Dreaming around this time too, and very much enjoyed it, but for whatever reason it didn’t manage to form concrete memories like Crash did. Crash will have more contributions to this timeline than any other album, and that’s on a list where I try hard to only pick one song per album unless absolutely necessary.
Once I discovered The Dave Matthews Band I got into them a big way. The band was capable of a diverse sound from its unique combination of instruments, which I appreciated. But something that was particularly important to me was that Matthews could actually play the guitar. Well. And it was an acoustic guitar. These were not simple three chord jams hidden behind waves of distortion. Playing along to these songs demanded that I make significant growth as a guitarist.
I can’t imagine “#41” being played by any other band. It’s a song that defies description, which is probably why it never got a name. It was most likely “Crash Into Me” that caused me to pick up the album, but it’s the complexity behind something like “#41” that caused me to delve deep into this band for years.
Although I also have a loving memory of my dad dancing around like a monkey to “Proudest Monkey”. That’s good stuff too.
07 Mar 2012
Under the Bridge - The Red Hot Chili Peppers
I put this song far later into the timeline than when I first experienced it (which would have been 1991-1992). That’s because to me it goes with a very specific memory, one which eclipsed whatever previous attachment I had for the song.
I’m on the return trip from my one and only experience ice skating. I’m riding in the back seat with a girl. I’ve been seeing more of this girl at school lately, and I’ve decided I like her. Somehow I muster the courage to sing this song to her. I’m sure it must have been along to the radio, not unprompted a capella, although over the years my voice has grown louder and the radio has grown quieter. Following this there was some head-resting-on-shoulder action. Apparently it wasn’t so terrible as to make her run away. She must have liked me, because it’s not like I can sing.
Three Marlenas - The Wallflowers
I remember a discussion about what was the best song on this album between myself, my brother, and my brother’s girlfriend Francesca. The decision made (at least by that vote) was that it was “Three Marlenas”. It’s a good song, sure, but I think perhaps my brother may have been unduly influenced by the fact that the song mentions Chevrolet; he was a bit of a fanatic back then.
I’m sure my brother only has vile things to say about her now, but I really liked my brother’s girlfriend. It was like having a big sister. She could give me advice that I very much needed.
At this moment in time I had a viable prospective love interest. A first. As in a girl that seemed to like me back, and I thought we might kiss. Which I have never done before. Oh crap!
Francesca gave me the invaluable tip to practice kissing on my hand first. This is the sort of thing you need a sister to tell you to do. I felt more than a bit silly, but it better to work out the kinks well in advance. I don’t know how awful I was, but I’m sure I would have been way worse without that advice.
Comedown - Bush
For me this is the point where we transitioned from calling it “grunge” to calling it “alternative”. I mean, this is a pretty man. How can the music made by pretty people be called “grunge”?
This was an influence from my newfound girlfriend (!) Cambria. It wasn’t a lasting impression musically, but it was nice that we could listen to the same things. I recall her not having a problem with the lead singer being a pretty man.
I had an image in my brain from the music video for this song. In my head I see a guitar cord that’s a big tube and someone aggressively thrusting a guitar towards the camera. The particular image coincides with 3:33 in the song, where the music lands after drifting away a bit and is celebrated with a masterfully singular guitar hit. It’s the powerful return to form that “Lightning Crashes” didn’t have. Anyway, I had an image in my head of what that looks like in the music video. And I just watched it again and it’s not there. Clearly I remembered the video, but in my head the details are incredibly different. The edit of the song for the video is shorter, so the same moment happens at 2:47. I don’t know when my memory drifted apart from reality. The specific image I have doesn’t occur anywhere in that video. It’s weird to have a concrete image in your head that is provably wrong.
Lucky - Seven Mary Three
This album is the greatest musical takeaway from my relationship with Cambria. After my general dissatisfaction with the previous Seven Mary Three album I hadn’t followed up on the band. I should have, because the next album, this album, is great.
Well, great-_ish_. The correct way to experience this album is to listen to the first track (“Lucky”), and then skip ahead to track 4 (“Honey Generation”), and after that move to 6 (“People Like New”) to ride out the rest of the album. I believed this so strongly that years later when I ripped the CD (digital music, crazy I know) I deleted those tracks (2, 3, and 5) entirely. Right now, as I’m writing this, I’m listening to them for the first time in at least a decade.
It’s not that those songs are the worst ever. They’re just wrong for the album. I feel like I’m repeating myself here, but the B-side of this album is the album. It has a sound, and that sound is good. That stuff at the beginning just gets in the way.
So why “Lucky”? Well, there would have been an easy way to bypass my problem entirely: always start at track 6. But I could never listen to the album without “Lucky”. That would just be wrong. I would rather tolerate the pain of having to wait for the song to end and then quickly skip ahead past the bad stuff. The song was (and is) that good.
Soldier’s Daughter - Tonic
Here we have another album brought to my attention by my first girlfriend. Shortly after hearing this song I decided I was going to attempt to learn how to play it for her. But playing it wasn’t enough, I was going to both provide guitar and vocals. This is not something I actually could (or can) do, mind you. I don’t know if it’s the guitar playing or the singing that takes more concentration, but what matters is that the combination requires more than I have. So this was a doomed desire from the outset and thus never fully materialized.
One key thing made it even possible to attempt in the first place. That thing is the internet. Yes, we have an internet now at this point in the timeline. I know this because I looked up the guitar tablature for this song on the internet. Back in ‘97 with some pre-Google search engine.
The end result of all of this is that I know the song rather well. Not well enough, of course, but well. And I still like it, because it’s a great song. I like the album as a whole, actually. It’s something I only really listened to during this time in my life, but I feel like deserves more.