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.
04 Mar 2012
Billy Breathes - Phish
Throughout all my musical explorations over these years Phish was part of my vocabulary the whole time. It’s not something that really any one else I knew was listening to, and it’s not like Phish got much play on the radio, but I kept on listening.
The album Billy Breathes felt like a significant departure for the band. For a band known for their live performances, it was clear that this was a studio album through and through. From the first couple songs you could hear that the band was trying to create something tighter. The songs are reasonable in length, there are some lyrics that actually try, there are nice vocal harmonies, and there’s a distinct lack of meandering jams. This music was designed to be listened to in this way, recorded, not live. Which for Phish was… different.
Those first couple tracks felt more like singles, and they just don’t stand up to repeated listening as well. But the B-side of this album is solid. Can I still call it a B-side when I’m talking about the remaining 10 of 13 tracks?. It just all sounds like a B-side. It’s got a gentle consistent sound. It’s actually hard to pick out the individual songs, because everything flows together so well.
I’ve mentioned before a habit of preparing for sleep with music; finding albums that had good endings so that I could just leave them on to play me out. This was definitely one of those albums. Maybe the last one, as that the habit didn’t last beyond high school.
I was going to nominate “Prince Caspian” to represent this album in the timeline. It’s the last song on the album, and would always bring me back awake a bit (albeit in a happy gentle kind of way). But after further reflection it’s the title track, “Billy Breathes”, that really sums up the whole run for me. It’s understated, mellow, soothing, vocally compelling and musically diverse. And I love how it leads into “Swept Away”, which then is turned slightly nightmarish for “Steep”, which sets you up for the fresh breath of morning that is “Caspian”. Many albums ago Phish had tried to do a dream concept album, Rift, but Billy Breathes pulls off the same idea so much better.
Three years later I would begin dating the woman who would eventually become my wife. That first year I gave her a Christmas gift, which was a bowl I painted for her… and this album. Billy Breathes had stayed in my head space that whole time, and really felt like something that showed a key part of my musical experience.
Bubblehouse - Medeski, Martin & Wood
Remember MMW from before? Groovy organs, maybe sometimes a little crazy? Well Shack Man brought a little more of that groove out. And my friend Kevin, who introduced me to the band, was not just listening to this, he was working on emulating it. Piano was taking a bigger role in his life, and he was starting to work towards the musician/composer that he would eventually become.
I think it was a school talent show, but I can’t actually remember specifically. I just remember Kevin performing “Bubblehouse”. Which is a bit of a gimmicky song. It increases in pace until it gets to unmaintainable place. Then some random stuff happens that doesn’t really work well before it drops right back into the original riff at exactly the right speed (at 2:50, again at 3:33). It’s one of those moments where departing from center makes center more valuable. Contrast. But the cost on this contrast is slightly unbalanced, limiting my enjoyment. Still, it was much fun to see my friend frantically hammer away at those keys. I don’t know if he considers it a turning point in his life, but from my perspective it felt like it was.
I’d be remiss without mention “Dracula”. Not because it’s tied into another specific memory, but because it’s a great MMW song from this album.
Too Much - Dave Matthews Band
I’m in my bedroom, playing with LEGOs. I’m too old to be playing with LEGOs, but LEGOs are awesome, so I don’t care. I still don’t. A song comes on the radio. It sounds kind of like “Sledgehammer”. When the song is over the DJ says it’s by some band called “The Dave Matthews Band”. I remark to myself that this is a stupid name for a band. I return to my LEGOs.
That stupidly named band will become a critical part of my musical experience from late high school to early college, but at this moment they leave almost no impact whatsoever. I have the memory, but in no way did I rush out and buy the album, or even look the band up.
Disco Inferno - The Trammps
The older we got the less my brother and I hung out, but there was still overlap. Some of his friends I liked, some I didn’t. Some of them also became my friends. One of those was Ethan.
At our high school, seniors had to put together some sort of senior project as part of their graduation requirement. Ethan was interested in film making, so he decided to make a movie. More specifically, a stop-motion animated movie. I ended up being involved as the character creator and animator. The title: Timmy and the Space Creatures.
In the movie aliens come to Earth in response to receiving an “audio delight” that reached them as radio waves after traveling through space for decades. They capture a young boy and demand he produce more. There’s a dance sequence to “Disco Inferno”. Forever that song for me is hours spent in Ethan’s garage painstakingly moving small clay figures. It was a lot of work, and it was also incredibly fun.
Wake Up - Mad Season
Outside of the movie, I did get a more contemporary music reference from Ethan. I only remember two songs from the album: “Wake Up” and “River of Deceit”. Those are the first and third tracks, but I have no memory of the second. I got this as a copy from Ethan on cassette, so I think that means he actually saved me the trouble and just edited that out.
I don’t know about you, but I got pretty much no sleep in high school. The staggered transportation schedule with the other school tiers (middle and elementary) results in high school students having to get up ridiculously early. School eats up a large section of your day, and then you’ve got the remainder to find out who you are as a person. By the end of all of this it’s late and you’re exhausted.
As mentioned above, I would go asleep to music. But waking up to music can be nice too. I took the suggestion in the title “Wake Up” and for awhile I used that song as a gentle wake up progression. It starts soft and builds into something harder to ignore, making it a good fit for the sleep deprived student.
Freaks - Live
As far as I can tell, this is the last album I ever had a copy of on cassette. Yes, there were some mix tapes after this, but this was the last time I remember getting a copy of a full album on cassette.
In hearing this song I experience two concrete sensory memories of friends singing along. At 1:40 I see Mary, at 3:13 I see Andy. I think these memories are from the same sitting, but I can’t place where. But it’s startling how clear the image is.
29 Feb 2012
When the Music’s Over - The Doors
If I hadn’t done my research I would have placed this much earlier in the timeline. But thankfully my sketchbooks are littered with timestamps. They’ve been invaluable at times for ironing out these fine ordering details. I don’t think anyone else cares if this is strictly autobiographical order, but it is important to me. Anyway, the point is that the music I listened to had a tendency to creep into the art I was making. I found some pretty random sketches related to The Doors, and specifically “When the Music’s Over”.
I don’t think The Doors would be the same without the rampant substance abuse of Jim Morrison. Even though I was about as straight-laced of a kid as they make, there’s something that appealed to me about Morrison’s bat-shit-crazy forays off into the deep. I was oddly attracted to stupid bullshit like “The End”. I don’t know why I was so damned weird, but I was, and I liked weird things. Even though I was dead sober.
I wanted to appear somewhat normal and pick something like “Riders on the Storm” for this list, which is a song that I love. There are actually plenty of Doors songs that I both adore and are perfectly listenable. But they didn’t punch through in the way that those lyrics about “the screams of the butterflies” did. Seriously, looking through my sketchbooks I appeared to be a very disturbed kid. I don’t know why they didn’t lock me up.
Ramble On - Led Zeppelin
I actually don’t have a concrete time to put in Zeppelin. We’re at the point in my story where I’m really delving into classic rock, but it’s not like I can point to a Zeppelin record in the way that I can with The Doors. All of my exposure was via the radio, which makes it almost impossible to place.
What I can concretely pinpoint is The Lord of the Rings. The moment I started reading those books the evidence was legion in my sketch books. I can give exact dates for when I had hit Weathertop, Moria, Amon Hen, pretty much the whole journey to Mount Doom. I had finally got around to reading what Dragonlance and pretty much anything fantasy I had ever consumed was sourcing from, and I was not disappointed.
So, what does this have to do with Zeppelin? Almost nothing, except the some lyrics in this song punched through to me over the radio. Did he just say “Mordor”? Is this a rock song that has a verse about Gollum? Awesome. Also, this song is great.
Oye Como Va - Santana
At this point should I just say “I discovered classic rock” and leave behind the prose. There are just too many influences washing over me at this point. Delving into a single one seems like giving it undue focus. It’s not like I turned into a Santana nut. It’s just that this song makes me feel like a particular time in my life. I don’t even have a story for this one. I unfailingly think of Noah, and of riding along in the car. It’s just a light, fun, happy song that makes me want to dance. Not that I ever would have danced at that age, god no.
Iris - Live
Okay, enough of me blissfully exploring my rock roots. Time for something contemporary. Time for some melodrama.
I was making friends. Some were rediscovered, but some were honestly new high school friends. Some of them were girls. And I didn’t know it at the time, but I was totally going to develop some asymmetric crushes. Alas, no reciprocation for me quite yet. It will come eventually, don’t worry.
I don’t know how it is you get to associate a particular band or album with a particular set of friends, but it happened all the time back then. I guess when you’re young you don’t really have that much else to talk about. Music is powerful, and something you can bond over. Well this small group of friends that I’m thinking of are somehow are wrapped up in Live and Throwing Copper.
I combed through the album, which was intensely familiar. “Iris” felt like the right pick to represent how the album made me feel, and how I think it resonated with that group. But honorable mention here goes to “Shit Towne”, and the memory of trying to convince Mary’s younger sister that the lyric was “Ship Town”.
Dishonorable mention to “Lightning Crashes” for completely petty reasons. So the song’s pretty good, don’t get me wrong. It’s got that slow build-up which I like. After lots of natural build it transitions into a bridge at about 3:30. We’re still fine at this point. It’s how it comes out of the bridge that creates problems. At 4:06 it jumps right back into the chorus, but it feels oddly… deflated. It sounds like when mastering the track someone turned down the volume right at that point. The idea being that the song needed to go quiet again before the finale. But it feels forced. It feels artificial. It drives me crazy every single time I hear the song. And it’s in the final part of the song. There’s no time for me to recover and feel good about it. I just get dumped at the end of the song feeling used.
There’s an underlying note of rejection for me in this whole album. I had a friendship that felt like it should go to another place to me, but the feeling wasn’t mutual. Thankfully the friendship survived that. So it’s still something I can listen to (although I hadn’t in ages), but it’s a tad melancholy because I can’t quite separate what I was feeling from what I was hearing.
One Headlight - The Wallflowers
There are a couple of things wrapped up in this album. Namely, a hat, a girl named Lisa, and a girl named Francesca.
It’s summer break. Not this one. Earlier, I think. I think between 8th and 9th, but maybe 9th and 10th. I’m anxious about the coming year. I have become keenly aware of how volatile friendships are in this scary new world. My mood is poor, but gets immediately turned around by one phone call. The person on the other end is Lisa, who I’ve known since middle school. I don’t have the slightest clue how phone numbers got exchanged and under what excuse a call was initiated. My guess is that it’s the only time a phone number dropped in a yearbook got used for the powers of good. Anyway, I don’t know how we got to that point, but I ended up chatting with Lisa on the phone. Not in any sort of romantic way, or about any particular topic. Just the idle phone chat that I could do back then that I can’t now. The point is I could feel a new friendship being forged. The future all of the sudden looked brighter. Just talking to someone else put me back on an optimistic path.
I remember walking around the house while on the phone. I remember finding a funky old-man hat and wearing it around. I remember feeling self conscious about the idea of wearing it out, but Lisa being totally supportive. Of course I never did. I really wanted to be the sort of person that could, but I wasn’t. But I’ve never forgotten the support from that voice on the other line.
Later Lisa and I actually began to hang out. In school we became math partners. And at some point in there I remember us adopting this song as our anthem.
Many years later I was able to see Lisa again at my high school reunion. I really enjoyed catching up with her. She was one of the only two people there that I realized I probably shouldn’t have let drift apart.