As a teenager in a suburb-of-a-suburb in Upstate NY, the seeds of rock-snobbery were planted early. I also didn’t drink or smoke with the popular jocks as I was “too good for that.” I never stopped watching wrestling like most teenagers are supposed to, so I already knew that I “liked what I like.” This was the first sign of my problem.
I tried hating Pearl Jam, writing them off for sounding the same as always and being derivative, but my devotion never went away. PJ has a new, self-titled album coming out this Tuesday, May 2nd, and I happen to love the material. Seeing that they have developed their own sound over the years, in spite of a carousel of drummers, you can be assured that they won’t suddenly “sound like” another band. Pearl Jam will sound like Pearl Jam; equals parts the Who and Neil Young with bits of Leonard Cohen sprinkled throughout.
I was having a conversation Friday night with a friend. He and I laughed about the fact that being 30 is “just kind of happening.” As it quickly creeps up, I didn’t realize how close I have gotten to this milestone, and yet, I feel like the same 15-year-old kid that is standing out the local Strawberries waiting to burst inside with the 10-15 other people to purchase Vs. Years go by, and I see these fans dancing at PJ shows in Saratoga and Albany, and while they appear to be enjoying themselves, they later remark about how much the group changed, how the sound is different now.
We all grow up, I guess. Even guitarists learn to play the same chords in a different progression. If our tastes didn’t change, I would never have listened to Bob Dylan, which means I would never have heard of Bright Eyes because I wouldn’t love singer-songwriters the way that I do. I would never have fallen in love with Jeff Buckley, and maybe Tracy and I wouldn’t be so happy together without my gushing about the beauty in all the songs he wrote, the covers he did, the people he inspired.
There must be some hidden part of me that won’t let go of my childhood; probably because I have always known that the task of “growing up” is going to suck. Wearing a suit and tie is too stuffy to me, and I would rather wear a Best Buy polo than sit in a boardroom. I like to collect figures and CDs with equal passion , and the only thing that has changed about me since 7th grade is I now leave the toys out on display. I used to hide them in a box. In the basement.
When I first became a “music snob” somewhere in my collegiate experience, I realized that most people stopped following Pearl Jam after Vs. wasn’t Ten, an album the guys wrote in their first 6 months of meeting. Not just playing together; meeting.
I own Vinyl copies of several of the albums, and up until Riot Act was released in 2002, I was purchasing the cassette tapes as well. I am not only a freak, I tend to be a completist as well.
I really can’t be too sure if I am on a tangent or not. Personally, I think I suffered some serious brain damage due to binge drinking the other night. That would explain my lack of an attention span. That and this weed in my hand. I am Steven McTowelie!
After PJ started releasing their bootleg concert series, I couldn’t afford to keep up. Honestly, I was an Assistant Manager at a record store, and while I had a great discount (30%) it’s hard to live and pay bills if you put every check right back into the company. TransWorld wouldn’t have cared if I did that, but I have expenses. College debt. Shit like that.
PJ made it hard to spin their music in my store.. My constant fear was losing my indie credibility because I might tell you about this little band from Fresno who no one has heard of, but I will sing along to Pearl Jam in front of guests? Hell, I was the manager who pushed for the Heavy Metal sections in your local FYE or Coconuts, as Lacuna Coil was just tossed in next to Ladytron, which is a f*cking crime.
(Before anyone writes and tells me that Ladytron should go in dance, I can assure you that I know this. TransWorld just sucks and doesn’t understand music…they are a business first and foremost and insisted for months that this group was Pop.)
We carried NO Century Media artists other than as a special order, as the company believed that metal was a “fringe” genre that didn’t warrant the space on the rack. Back to the point, Eddie made it hard to show my love for the band in public. In this remote corner of the world, if Spin or Rolling Stone don’t push you as the greatest thing in the world, it isn’t great.
Since I am part of this horrid mechanical abomination, I guess I can take pride in influencing a few people here and there. Maybe someone will pick up something I write about and love it. Maybe they will hate it.
The fun of music and entertainment is that there are so many different ideas and programs and movies and bands for every different taste.
Wow, that was a tangent.
Pearl Jam never became unlistenable or God-awful, but a good portion of the world gave up on them. They know that they came out of the Seattle “grunge” scene, but even though they were more successful or popular than some artists (Nirvana) they were an afterthought in music media after Kurt’s suicide. Jamestown residents in the 1700s had a better chance of success: Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Lemonheads, Mudhoney, Pavement, they were all lumped together and they are all gone.
That’s the sad part about all of this, the bands that were tossed by the wayside. There should be memorials for the artists whose careers never took off because they weren’t Nirvana. Spin, Rolling Stone and Entertainment Weekly were too busy pining away over Cobain, they missed out on Jeff Buckley. God, how they missed out. Silverchair became a one-hit wonder when they failed to sound like Kurt on Freak Show and even less on Neon Ballroom.
And people wonder why I hate Nirvana so much.
To close, you should buy Pearl Jam. If nothing else, it will keep me from going on another tangent.
—————————————————————-
.:.Columns from the Week that Was!.:.
Monday: Let’s Rave On: Coachella 2006
Tuesday: Summertime Blues, News, and Views: Can’t Fight the Seether
Wednesday: Letters From Freakloud
Thursday: Mathan = Remote Destination!
Friday: D’Errico is off this week!
Saturday-ISH: The Weekly Music Pulse: Stuff I Think and Shouldn’t Say!
—————————————————————-
There was a HUGE reaction to SITASS 39, but I decided a week ago that one reader said it best. Here is what he had to say on the topic:
First off, I’m a market pluralist, so I’m less than quick to judge what people like as long as I still get what makes me happy, and I even understand if there’s a market for crap and no market for the stuff I like. Do I hate that Beulah folded when real success might have kept them around, while a Jessica Simpson fart would hit number one? Yup. Do I blame anyone? Nope.
Getting to the topic, I think you’re talking about a problem with many roots. I am of the opinion that ET/Extra/I Like Shiny People TV along with People/Us/I Like Shiny People Magazine are like porn for many women and some men. They’re just more out in the open with it right now. Call it celebrity-worshipers lib. We all have to put up with it now to pay for previous attempts to keep it under wraps.
They’re here, they leer. Deal with it.
Some people won’t remember that there was a time when it was acceptible to have Playboy on the coffee table in your nice suburban family room, but we’re going through that stage now with celebrity-porn. Hollywood gossip has gone from hush-hush to star-making just like Playboy became, for a short time, a legitimate vehicle for female stars to increase their – um, recognizability.
Eventually, the market diverged and there were the brown paper wrapper magazines and the lad mags, which still bolster starlet exposure and sit on some coffee tables (but more likely the floors of dorm rooms). I predict a similar trend in the celebrity media, not that it matters.
Following the diverging market theme, you have a far more distributed channel today than even five years ago (getting a little macro-trend on you now) which means more content and more targeting of specific target audiences. Trust me when I say that there are shows you might like on Spike, Fox Sports or USA (or, you know, YouTube) that would offend the average ET watcher.
What’s new isn’t the market for this stuff, but the ability to deliver it with such volume. Still, soap operas and daytime talk shows were the target of similar rants in the ’70s. The more room you have to explore people’s tastes, the finer you can get with your programming. Soaps become Desperate Housewives and Laguna Beach. Talk shows become ET and Extreme Makover.
Back when the channel was narrow and you needed everyone to like or at least tolerate every part of your programming, Ed Sullivan banned Elvis from shaking his hips on TV because they couldn’t lose granny. Now some channels can show Tatu practically, well, they have lots of fun together and most of the world never has to know about it unless it’s scandalized and covered by the mass media.
Finally, I disagree with the idea of a recent onset of crap entertainment. Popcorn flicks are as old as the hills. Good movies are the new comers. Buster Keaton, god love him, was an entertainer first because he had to be. If he made you think, that was good for him but not what the studio paid him for.
Many more movies were made than we’ll ever know about because the bulk of them sucked. I’m sure 1938 had its version of Scary Movie 4. Candid Camera was around when I was a kid and game shows certainly didn’t reward contestants for being thought provoking.
You might even call it progress that we get to know these people over the course of several weeks. At least there’s a narrative and some character development. It’s just done in editing rather than writing.
So to sum up because I’ve nearly duplicated the length of the original article, you like porn, other people like celebrity-driven entertainment. There’s more room for more crap and you won’t like a lot of it, but that’s ok because they don’t need you in order to stay viable, and you don’t want to have to please them in order to keep the crap you like viable. Finally, “no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.” — Henry Mencken.
Thanks for being thought provoking. That’s why I read this rather than People.
IP’s own Greg Wind
Thanks for reading, Greg. You sir, are the shit.
—————————————————————-
brought to you by Brooklyn Industries
.:.Ani DiFranco Salutes New Orleans.:.Last summer, prolific folk singer Ani DiFranco had just begun to record her latest album in her New Orleans apartment when Hurricane Katrina began closing in. Sent packing, DiFranco gathered up the initial recordings and evacuated to her other home, in Buffalo, New York, and watched with the rest of the country as the Crescent City was devastated.
Shaken by the storm and its terrible aftermath, DiFranco has put together Reprieve, an unflinchingly political album, due in August, that expresses her frustration, sadness and sense of displacement. The way she tells it, after Katrina DiFranco could not wait to return to New Orleans, which she did as soon as possible. The serene, crisp sound of Reprieve‘s thirteen-song cycle sonically reflects her travels over the past year.
In New Orleans, producer Mike Napolitano had taken a loose approach, laying down tape of DiFranco and bassist Todd Sickafoose performing. “Mike, my sweetie, recorded Todd and I just playing live in my old apartment,” she explains. “And then the wind picked up and all the shit hit the fan, and New Orleans turned into a war zone. I ended up in Buffalo, stranded for a few months with a cheesy synthesizer and an Omnichord.” So, like everyone displaced by the storm, DiFranco improvised.
“I swear to God,” she says, “I brought all my cool stuff down, and then I couldn’t get back to it. So I fleshed out the record, overdubbing almost entirely on this cheesy synthesizer. It was a challenge, like, ‘Two sticks, rub them together and see if you can make a fire.’ It was like trying to make cool sounds out of something that’s inherently not.”
With DiFranco’s voice front and center — buoyed by lush piano, pump organ and acoustic guitar — Reprieve flows, creating something organic from its live music and the synthesized samples. “From the beginning, I was thinking of building segues,” she says, “not having it just be a collection of songs but a journey, somewhat seamless.”
But the soothing soundscape does little to mask the political convictions underlying some of the songs.
“This record, it really speaks of this time and place: New Orleans, 2006,” DiFranco says. “Like ‘Millennium Theater’ ends with the line ‘New Orleans bides her time.’ That song is a rant about the insanity of the spectacle, as opposed to what’s really happening underneath. It was written and recorded months before the storm hit. So I would say it’s, like, ‘divinely prophetic’ — if we all didn’t know that shit was coming. Including the Levee Board. Including FEMA. Including the government.
“I think it’s funny how easily duped we are by the propaganda machine these days,” she continues. “We’re still connecting Iraq with 9/11, even though that’s a complete fallacy. And it’s horrific down here for many, many people, and people are saying, ‘Katrina, yeah, that was a big one.’ . . . But the flooding — that was the Levee Board. That was the pump stations. That was FEMA. That was the local, state and national government. That was human neglect, racism, incompetence and greed.”
As she prepares to release the album, DiFranco will once again hit the road with a stripped-down band for a series of intimate dates. While an Ani DiFranco tour is not an unusual event — she is constantly on the go — last year, she discovered she had tendonitis and was told by doctors that if she toured or played guitar she’d risk permanent damage. DiFranco, however, is looking forward to the trek, which includes a stop at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. “It’s been weird for me to be quiet and still to begin with,” she says. “So it will feel good to get back in the saddle.”
(credit: RollingStone.com)
.:.Clap Your Hands Ready New Release.:.
D.I.Y. darlings Clap Your Hands Say Yeah are hoping to release their sophomore release in late fall or early winter, and no, they still don’t want a record deal, thank you very much.
The band have finished writing material for the as-yet-untitled set and have been road-testing some of the songs. They’ve made no plans to choose a label to call home, though they are signed to Wichita/V2 in Europe. Whether they sign here or not “remains to be seen,” guitarist/keyboardist Lee Sargent told Billboard.com.
“We’re holding on to this record for a bunch of reasons,” he continued. “It’s not a matter of creative control. It’s become pretty clear that we’ll always have that. We would just like to maintain our release schedule [and] decide what we want to put out there [or] not.”
(credit: Spin.com)
.:.Snoop Bailed, Banned from Brit Airways.:.
Violent disorder was the case that they gave him, but Snoop Dogg has been released on bail.
The rapper was detained overnight in a London jail Wednesday (April 27) night and was released on bail on Thursday after he and five members of his entourage were arrested for starting a melee at London’s Heathrow Airport.
“Snoop has been released on bail,” his attorney, Peter Binning, told The Associated Press. “He will return at a later date.”
Binning further added that Snoop has not been charged with any offense and would not divulge the amount of money posted for his release. He is, however, banned from ever flying British Airways, as are the other five men with whom he was arrested. The melee, which left seven police officers injured, began when Snoop and his posse were declined entry into British Airways’ first-class lounge. After the group became violent, they were told they would not be allowed to travel at all. Several of the men began to push police officers in protest and were arrested on charges of creating a disturbance.
Snoop and his entourage were heading to Johannesburg, South Africa where Snoop was set to perform Thursday. The concert will be rescheduled, but Snoop will make it to his other weekend shows as planned.
(credit: Spin.com)
I am all about getting crunked up and living the rockstar lifestyle. The reason this column is later than I would like is that I was trashed Friday. I mean, consuming shitloads of cheap, cheap beer and passing out for two hours.
Yeah, only two hours.
I had a TV taping to get to, and I was still drunk as Salty and I stood online to get into Ziegfeld Theater. I didn’t think it was that bad, but I will trust Jon’s judgment. I reaked of booze, as I never got a chance to sweat it out over night. It felt as though I had shut my eyes a moment before my head was lifted off of the pillow, I got on the subway and went to a taping.
I am still a bit hung over, not that I have a headache or the nausea, I am saying that I feel off.
Which means I had a great time.
So what did ANY of this have to do with Snoop Dogg? Nothing. Even I like getting messed up. In fact, on a British Airways flight that I took in 2001, I got completely nude in Economy class while I was sleeping. I tend to disrobe when I have been drinking and I thought that I would need some extra courage to get through the transcontinental flight.
Maybe Snoop is scared of flying?
—————————————————————-
Thosquant – Lovelife
Irving – Death in the Garden, Blood on the Flowers
Laura Veirs – Year of the Meteors
Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Show Your Bones
Scar Symmetry – Pitch Black Progress
Sabrosa Purr – Music from the Velvet Room
Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs – Under the Covers, Vol. 1
World Leader Pretend – Punches
—————————————————————-
.:.Jesus and Mary Chain Albums to Be Reissued.:.
The Jesus and Mary Chain formed in 1984 and spent the next 15 years creating an audio blueprint of guitar fuzz and reverb for countless bands to follow…although it could be argued that they only did that on their first album, and then spent the next decade and a half repeating themselves, before calling it quits in 1999.
Long out of print in the U.S., the first five JAMC albums are being reissued by Rhino Records on DualDisc format. 1985’s Psychocandy, 1987’s Darklands, 1989’s Automatic, 1992’s Honey’s Dead, and 1994’s Stoned and Dethroned, are scheduled for release on July 11. The discs offer newly remastered versions of the albums on the CD side, while the DVD side features the albums in high-resolution audio format along with three music videos.
(credit: PitchforkMedia.com)
.:.Lemonheads Return, Sign to Vagrant.:.
Galaxie 500 can’t be far behind. What with the Pixies, Dinosaur Jr., and now the Lemonheads putting aside differences and getting back together, if we all close our eyes, it’s just like being back at Boston’s Middle East club circa 1989, reliving the glory days of college rock. Except we’ve all got better haircuts now. Lemonheads leader Evan Dando cheated though. He’s bypassing all that awkward making-up with former bandmates stuff and just hired a couple of new guys. Although the new guys are actually old guys: Bill Stevenson (producer, drums) and Karl Alvarez (bass) of punk legends the Descendents.
In all fairness, the Lemonheads didn’t have a very consistent line-up over the course of their career, so it’s not like Axl “reuniting” Guns N’ Roses without calling Slash, Izzy, Duff, and Steven. And let’s face it, it’s nice just to see Evan back in action after getting mixed up with crack and the Gallagher brothers in the late 90s and not doing much else since then besides his 2003 solo LP Baby I’m Bored.
Dando has been working on songs on and off this past year at Stevenson’s Colorado studio, and the results will be released by The Lemonheads’ new label, Vagrant Records, sometime in the fall of this year. Perhaps best known as being home to emo faves Dashboard Confessional and the Get Up Kids, Vagrant has been busy un-pigeon-holing themselves of late by signing the Futureheads, Eels, and the Hold Steady recently. Vagrant President Rich Egan enthuses, “Nobody writes songs like Evan Dando, nobody sings like him…the new songs are incredible. He is in top form.”
(credit: PitchforkMedia.com)
.:.Alter Bridge Severs Ties With Wind-Up.:.
Rock act Alter Bridge has split with Wind-Up Records, which released its 2004 debut, “One Day Remains.” Alter Bridge members Mark Tremonti, Brian Marshall and Scott Phillips previously played with Creed, the most commercially successful artist in Wind-Up’s history. Former Creed frontman Scott Stapp remains signed to the label.
“There are a lot of people who believed that Creed would get back together. It didn’t help that some people tried to portray that to the public and even push for it behind the scenes,” Tremonti says in a statement. “But with this termination, I think everyone will realize that Creed is officially in our past. Creed will never exist as a band again. We’ve moved on and we hope that everyone else can move on too.”
Alter Bridge is eyeing a spring 2007 release for its next studio album but has yet to choose a new label partner. The band is also considering releasing a live album beforehand.
This summer, Alter Bridge will visit the European festival circuit, beginning May 31 in Essen, Germany. Two Florida warm-up gigs are on tap on May 23 in Ft. Walton Beach and May 26 in Tallahassee.
“We’d love to be able to share some of the new music with our fans,” Tremonti says. “In the past, we’ve always had to consider leaks and label opinions with new material but there are very few rules for us right now so we’re keeping all of our options open.”
(credit: Billboard.com)
There’s humor in this story.
Wind-Up Records sucks. Alter Bridge was a Stapp-less Creed, and now the world hates Creed. They ruined my life, and I am sure they ruined the lives of many more people with their vaguely disguised Jesus-rock.
—————————————————————-
Ssquared’s Music Pulse Hook-Up!
Directed by Alex and Martin who have done a ton of cool music videos including the White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army”, U2’s “Vertigo” ” and now Wolfmother’s “Woman” video.
The unique look of the video was an effect using color copy; meaning every image is extracted, each and every image of the edit was printed, color copied and then put back in the proper order to make a never seen before look. The result is a graphic and powerfully rich imagery that enhances the hard rockin’ sound of the song. It is like the gritty look of the 70’s but with a modern and sophisticated edge.
—————————————————————-
Well, that’s the it for the 40th edition of Stuff I Think and Shouldn’t Say. It only took 14 months, but I wrote less than one year’s worth of material! My mother is going to be so proud.
Keep it real!
Ssquared
Ssquared @MySpace
