supergig

road trip playlist

2008-05-14T09:16:00.005-05:00

sorry about the absence. i guess i'm really not made to write a blog where i try to force myself into writing something in particular, every day. it was starting to feel really contrived, and i was getting unhappy with it. so, i left it for a while.

i feel ready to come back. i'll still post here when i feel i have something to say about some music...but i won't really promise a schedule ever again. i feel better about it when i restrict it to when i actually have something to say.

***

anyway...i was on a road trip this weekend. somewhere along the highway between kansas city and topeka, i made a playlist on my iPod. i was in the car with two major indie-rock fans...so all the indie-rock on the satellite radio was starting to drive me up a wall. i was hoping i'd get to play it in the car at some point along the way...but never did. however, i listened to it on the way back to st. louis from chicago [the base of the scavenger hunt for which i did this road trip], and realised it's the best mix i've ever made.

it doesn't have much of a theme...it's just songs i really felt like hearing in the car that night. but...it turned out to be a fun, eclectic mix of songs, and a playlist i'm going to go back to a lot. it's got rock, punk, metal, pop [of both american and korean varieties...], and a smattering of wesley willis, because no playlist of mine is complete without some wesley willis. it makes me happy to listen to, and i'm proud of it.

roadtrip playlist

"somewhere on fullerton" by allister
"beast and the harlot" by avenged sevenfold
"minus celsius" by backyard babies
"turkey march" by banya
"hook" by blues traveler
"another white dash" by butterfly boucher
"my favourite game" by the cardigans
"duncan hills coffee jingle" by dethklok
"blackhat life" by dj boo
"through the fire and flames" by dragonforce
"i want it that way" as covered by dynamite boy [originally by backstreet boys]
"stay in shadow" by finger eleven
"remember the name" by fort minor
"mr. walker" by gemie
"kenesaw mountain landis" by jonathan coulton
"mr. fancy pants" by jonathan coulton
"when you cry" by krim
"greenhorn" by lexy
"gas hed goes west" by live
"cigarette lighter lovesong" by the marvelous 3
"monster" by meg & dia
"don't think twice" as covered by mike ness [originally by bob dylan]
"letter from an occupant" by new pornographers
"the way it ends" by prototype
"it's so easy" by shooting blanks!
"sorry illinois" as covered by shot baker [originally by francesco ostello]
"analogue" by spirit creek
"anthem of our dying day" by story of the year
"stars don't shine" by three words to live by
"american psycho" by treble charger
"i'll give you all my love" by wax
"james doo" by wesley willis
"richard speck" by wesley willis
"ricky gott" by wesley willis

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Monday, March 31

2008-03-31T11:14:00.003-05:00

Brian Vander Ark is playing on campus tonight. i have a ticket. i don't know if i'm going to be able to go because of some school commitments i have...which kills me, absolutely kills me. hopefully i'll be out soon enough to go see him, because his solo stuff is really good--and i've never seen him play solo before. this is my favourite solo song of his, "I Didn't Want To Be A Bother." i love songs that are bitingly sarcastic toward people who try to shove their religion on others, and this is a great song in that tradition.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Sunday, March 30

2008-03-30T22:02:00.005-05:00

missed yesterday...so you get two today. i'm overworked and stressing out, so i've got two songs about that.

"Work Song" by Caroline's Spine: [excuse the weird anime sounds at the beginning. it's the only complete recording of the song on youtube...so if you stick it out through the first five seconds, the song will start.]

"Take This Job and Shove It", as covered by the Dead Kennedys:

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Friday, March 28

2008-03-28T23:12:00.002-05:00

"Cat Me If You Can" by Agile Like This is weird. if you like lolcats, you'll love it, because it's basically a lolcat set to music. if you don't like lolcats, you probably won't like this song much.

laughing at cute cats during weird things has helped keep me from going crazy on many occasions. as such, this song holds a special place in my heart.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Thursday, March 27

2008-03-27T13:26:00.002-05:00

Inept's old music, circa 2002-2005, is amazing. i've seen them more times than i've seen any other band--sixteen times, at all kinds of small to medium venues around chicago. this is one of my favourite Inept songs, "Beyond The Tears."

i'm looking forward to seeing them again when i live back in town. i can't say i'm a fan of their more recent songs, but i'd love to see if they play anything from their first three EPs anymore.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Wednesday, March 26

2008-03-26T19:43:00.002-05:00

i tried, i really tried, to get away from the whiny stuff. but, it's not that kind of week.

"Face Down" by Red Jumpsuit Apparatus has a driving beat to it, but the lyrics are sad. it's about a friend who is really, really pissed off at someone who is treating his friend badly in a relationship. it's so weird that such an upbeat song has lyrics that are such a downer...but i like that juxtaposition.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Tuesday, March 25

2008-03-25T10:20:00.003-05:00

no more emo today, i promise.

instead, i bring you nerdity, in the form of "Mandelbrot Set" by Jonathan Coulton. it's a catchy little ditty about the mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot, and his famous set:

for one thing, you'll never forget the formula for the Mandelbrot Set again, thanks to the chorus of this song. i don't know about you, but having that piece of knowledge indelibly marked in my brain makes me feel a little smarter, and helps me sleep a little better at night.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Monday, March 24

2008-03-24T12:59:00.002-05:00

during my senior year of high school, i listened to "Loser" by Three Doors Down every morning when i was getting ready for the day. it's a perfect encapsulation of how i felt about life that year...high school was a vast, friendless wasteland, and everyone was watching, holding the rope while i took the fall. i hadn't realised yet that college would be the closest thing to a magic panacea that i'd ever had. i hadn't realised yet that i'd eventually have a fulfilling social life. this song conveyed hopelessness, and every morning i luxuriated in it, knowing that at least Three Doors Down knew where i was coming from, even if no one else did.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Sunday, March 23

2008-03-23T10:30:00.004-05:00

i'm on vacation, so my computer access has been a bit spotty. so, i missed yesterday...and you get two songs today! lucky you! well, lucky you if you feel like slitting your wrists. i'm in a Really Whiny Emo mood right now, so you're all going to be subjected to two of the whiniest, angstiest songs i know.

"You're So Last Summer" by Taking Back Sunday: featuring the most overblown teenage-emo lyric i've ever heard: "you could slit my throat/and with my one last gasping breath/i'd apologize for bleeding on your shirt." i hate myself for liking this song, but there you go.

"Red is the New Black" by Funeral for a Friend: this is yet another song i discovered on my friend wazee. this has another really, really depressing lyric that i love: "there isn't anything wrong with giving up/and for what it's worth/i still hate you." this song is nothing but blunt about being really frustrated with someone else. he yells, he whines, he's mad, and it's a great song.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Friday, March 21

2008-03-21T23:44:00.001-05:00

Ditchwater was awesome. i saw them around Chicago all the time back in 2003, 2004...around the days of their most excellent Sees Me Through EP. "It's Over" has always been one of my favourite songs of theirs. excuse the video editing that is cheesy at best and dizzying at worst...there's a reason why Ditchwater is a band and not a video production conglomerate. but, the song is a good, straightforward rocker.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Thursday, March 20

2008-03-20T15:12:00.003-05:00

i heard "Deeper" by Keith Varon for the first time yesterday, as the outro song on episode 10 of the sadly-now-defunct Bucket podcast. i love his voice. this song is definitely along the vein of sappy, acoustic, senstive-guy music...something i generally can't stand. but, his voice is like a big hug, and i can't help but melt right into it.

[forgive the mediocre sound quality. you can stream a better version of the song here, on the podsafe music network.]

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Wednesday, March 19

2008-03-19T12:46:00.003-05:00

i love Emmet Swimming. they're a nineties alt-rock band out of the Washington, DC area, and it always confused me that they never made it bigger than they did. their album Big Night Without You was one of my favourites in high school, and i still listen to it frequently ten years hence. "Fist Like A Glove" by Emmet Swimming is one of my favourite tracks on the album. it's a gorgeous song...although really sad; the lyrics are a thoughtful treatment of domestic violence. that's something Emmet Swimming is really good at, taking modern issues and turning them into heart-wrenching musical pictures.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Tuesday, March 18

2008-03-18T22:45:00.003-05:00

it's guilty pleasure time! i can't really explain why i like "Youth of the Nation" by P.O.D. so much...but i do. it's catchy. that's about all it has to redeem such a trite little piece of late-nineties nostalgia, but sometimes catchy is enough.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Monday, March 17

2008-03-17T10:34:00.002-05:00

"Sick of Man" by Cold has one of my favourite lines in a song, ever: "i'll never love you, but i've got words to say." i feel that way about far too many things...people, school, things that frustrate me, things that plague me despite my distaste and disdain.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Sunday, March 16

2008-03-16T17:43:00.002-05:00

"A Gentleman Caller" by Cursive is whiny, screamy, and sloppy. it's music for a specific mood...a very frustrated mood. although, unlike most music that evokes such a specific mood to me, i'm almost always glad to listen to this song--even when i'm not frustrated or angry with anyone or anything.

Bargain Bin Dig: Supervillain Zero

2008-03-15T13:58:00.001-05:00

i occasionally like to spelunk in the bargain bins of used CD stores. sometimes i find random gems...great albums that are half-forgotten, or that flooded the market years ago only to be sold back by all the teenyboppers once they've progressed to their next musical phase. other times, i find albums in the bin that are just so weird that i have to buy them and see what weirdness lurks within.

it is for this second reason that i picked up Must Be Stopped... by Supervillain Zero. i had no idea who the band was or what kind of music they played. all i knew is that their name was awesome, and the album cover art was weird. the band name on the front was in a really cutesie font with lots of stars, and had a big old star in the centre with four or five levels of outlining around it. on the back was a cartoonish drawing of four guys, ostensibly the band: one in a button-down shirt, one in a Slayer shirt, and one in an AC/DC shirt, all doing weird things to a fourth guy in a SVZ shirt. below it was the copyright date of the album: 2002.

i popped in the album...i kind of like it. they're nothing earth-shattering, but they're enjoyable. they fall squarely into the category of snotty pop-punk. they sound like any other band out there that does that kind of music, although the songs are a little better-written, a little more coherent than most. the strongest song on the album is the first track, "Sinking Simon". despite the uber-cheesy title, the song is good, and even almost pretty in places. i'm not surprised they didn't make it big, but they would have been a fun band to go out and see live around town.

i say would have been, because they are quite clearly broken up. i learned this from a little bit of webbernets-fu. i googled them first, but that was almost worthless. there were very few hits, and nothing even resembling a band page. finally, one site at least provided a broken link to a band page--and i used the wayback machine to fill in the details. the biographical information on their website is sketchy, but they appear to have formed sometime in mid-2001. they released two EPs: a self-titled one in July of 2001, and then Must Be Stopped... in mid-2002. they played most of their shows around St. Louis, at places like Hi-Pointe, Creepy Crawl, Mississippi Nights, Cicero's...good, small places that bigger local bands play. they also occasionally toured the midwest in their trailer, but kept most of their shows close to home.

sometime in mid-October of 2003, the band changed their name from Supervillain Zero to Rushmore Academy. they are still together...ostensibly. they haven't played a show in a while, and don't have any more scheduled...but they still have a bunch of music on their myspace, and no melodramatic myspace post about how it's been such a long, strange ride, but the band has gone their separate ways. i hope they're still together, and i hope they play a show soon, because their music is actually really good. it's clear they've grown and become better musicians and songwriters since the Supervillain Zero days. they sound like almost a dancier version of All-American Rejects. it sounds weird, but it really works...go to their myspace, and check out the song "Take This How You Want To". i highly recommend that one.

so...this Bargain Bin Dig was a rousing success. i discovered a decent old band in Supervillain Zero, and its positively rocking descendant in Rushmore Academy.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Saturday, March 15

2008-03-15T13:49:00.003-05:00

"Life is Beautiful" by Vega 4 is far mellower than most of what i like to listen to, but for some reason this song grabbed me. they played it all the time back in 2004, 2005 on radio wazee, that wonderful radio station i keep mentioning because it has exposed me to so many great bands and great songs. this song is spacious...atmospheric...and sweet without being sappy.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Friday, March 14

2008-03-14T16:15:00.003-05:00

"In The Dark" by Tiësto is absolutely adorable. my friend and i would blast this song all the time when we were driving around last semester. it's like a horror movie love song...the lyrics are really sweet, and the music is kind of dark.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Thursday, March 13

2008-03-13T10:34:00.003-05:00

"Guestbook" by Ratbag Hero is a good little metasong. Ratbag Hero was a fantastic, silly Chicago punk band who sang a lot about beer drinking, partying, and girls. this song is about someone posting in their internet guestbook telling them that they can't write another love song, or another song about beer. of course, actually following such advice would be bad, because that's really all Ratbag Hero wrote about...so they wrote a song about how confused they were that those two topics were verboten. it's clever, it's hilarious, and it's Ratbag Hero.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Wednesday, March 12

2008-03-12T18:28:00.001-05:00

"Thousand Mile Wish" by Finger Eleven is the mellow song of theirs that i wish got famous. everyone knows "One Thing", although i'm not crazy about that song. still, sometimes they do mellow really, really well...and this song is gorgeous.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Tuesday, March 11

2008-03-11T18:04:00.003-05:00

i love "Letter From An Occupant" by The New Pornographers. Neko Case's voice sounds really cool in the song, and it reminds me of late-night drunken walks home from Jimmy's Woodlawn Tap, back in college. good times...this song always makes me feel like my days are far more carefree than they actually are.

you've got questions? Supergig's got answers.

2008-03-10T12:49:00.004-05:00

i found a list of questions about music on another blog...it was a long time ago, so i don't remember which one it was. however, i liked a lot of the questions. they prompted me to start musing about various songs and artists. so, i answered them.

1. Which bands/artist do you own the most albums by?
i own 17 Wesley Willis albums. that is my biggest music-collecting goal...to own all of Wesley's albums. i've been working on this for about seven years now, ever since the spring of my first year of college. it's not a likely goal to achieve, since many of his albums were self-released and there doesn't even exist a comprehensive list of all of the albums he recorded. but, i want to try. Wesley is one of my favourite musicians ever, and every album of his that i find contains more amusing, entertaining gems.

2. What was the last song you listened to?
"Dissent" by Linoleum. i just heard it for the first time, and it's a really good song. it's somewhere between alt-rock and indie-rock on that ever-so-nebulous continuum, but we know how worthless those kinds of descriptions are. the lead singer's voice is shiny.

3. What's in your CD player right now?
i don't own a CD player anymore. my last one broke back in 2005, and i have depended on my computer and my iPod for my music-listening needs ever since.

4. What was the last show you attended?
Theory of God, Once Afflicted, and Slugtrail at the Creepy Crawl on February 2nd. it was a show i went to because i wasn't doing anything else that night, and needed to get out of the apartment. i didn't know any of the bands who were playing, but decided a local metal show was just what i needed. i try to write about all the shows i go to here, but there really wasn't enough to say about that show to fill up a blog post. Theory of God was good...solid, instrumental heavy metal. i wish they had a website that was in any way useful, so i could figure out when they were playing in town next...or even how to contact a band member so they could tell me when they were playing in town next. however, Once Afflicted and Slugtrail were both awful. Once Afflicted sounded like a bad Godsmack knockoff come ten years late. Slugtrail? i don't know quite what i was listening to, but i wasn't sure it was music. i've done a lot to put it out of my head in the last two weeks, and i'm not about to google them in order to put it back in my head to give you a better description. i love you, my dear readers, but not enough to listen to them again. you can google them if you want, but be warned. your ears may rebel against you.

5. What was the greatest show you've ever been to?
Cold, Finger Eleven, and Reach 454 at the Metro, on May 25, 2003. okay, so Reach 454 was terrible, but Cold and Finger Eleven were then, and still are, my favourite bands on earth. they both put on such passionate shows...as good as they are recorded, the energy is just so much more when they play live. they also both sounded great...it makes me so happy when bands i love sound good live, because it means they don't need all that slick record production to sound like the band i feel like i know and love. the Metro is also my favourite venue in Chicago. it's big enough to get some good crowd action going, but still not so large that i feel detached from the band on stage.

6. What's the worst show you've ever been to?
see #4. i've never been to a show where every band was awful. but, at that show, it was only Theory of God, who was on stage for a whole twenty minutes, who was good. the two bands that got more stage time, Once Afflicted and Slugtrail, were unlistenably bad. it was the only show i've ever left early because the music was so bad. and, to add insult to injury, my friend and i got mugged on the way back to the car after the show. sigh.

7. What show are you looking forward to?
i've got a few coming up...but the one i'm most looking forward to is Brian Vander Ark. [does that really surprise you, on a blog named after a Verve Pipe song?! didn't think so...] he's coming to Wash U and playing a show on campus on March 31. his solo music is mellower than the stuff he did with The Verve Pipe, but is still very good. the venue is small and intimate, which will be nice. i just really hope he plays my two favourite songs of his: "Didn't Want To Be A Bother" [a sarcastic song about people who try to push religion on others] and "1229 Sheffield" [a Verve Pipe song he reworked as a solo piece...a really melancholy song about a young marriage gone terribly wrong].

8. What is your favorite band shirt?
my Slitheryn shirt. Slitheryn was a local band in Chicago for a few years in the early aughts. they were weird...a heavy metal band in which all the instrumentalists were thirteen years old, and the lead singer was eleven. they were together for a while...until the instrumentalists were maybe fifteen or sixteen, and the singer thirteen or fourteen. they weren't a great band, but they were extremely good for their ages, and have promising things ahead of them if they want to stick with the music thing. anyway, the shirt i bought when i saw them in 2001 is fantastic. it is a black shirt. it says "Slitheryn" on the front. on the back, it has a picture of the band, and the text "DITCHES SCHOOL." i love the fact that the most bad-ass thing they could think of to brag about was that they ditch school.

9. What musician would you like to hang out with for a day?
James Black from Finger Eleven. not only does his band make really good music, but he makes really weird art and poetry as well. he'd be an extremely interesting person to hang out with for a day. i think we'd have some very strange conversations, and i'd enjoy that.

10. Who is one musician or group you wish would make a comeback?
i always hate to answer this question. whenever bands get together and make "comebacks," it never seems to be quite as good as the original music. i always allow myself to get optimistic, and then i'm always disappointed with the results. however, if i were to allow myself to hope a band would get back together and be as good as they were, it would definitely be Cold. they waffled between together and broken-up for a while, and finally broke up for good in November of 2006. they released four albums during the time they were together, all of which were fantastic. they're still one of my favourite bands of all time, and it makes me sad that i will never get to hear them live again, or listen to a new album of theirs.

11. Who is one band/artist you've never seen live but always wanted to?
Wesley Willis. i know i never will, because he died in 2003...but i always wanted to, and never did. his live shows were probably completely weird: him, playing his keyboard, improvising even weirder lyrics to his already-weird songs. he also usually played the Fireside Bowl, which was a fantastic venue. the Fireside used to be a bowling alley, but when it got too old and decrepit to be functional for bowling, they started hosting underground music shows there. i've been to a couple shows there, although never Wesley. it would have been perfect to see the goofiest musician in Chicago play at the goofiest venue in Chicago.

12. Name four or more flawless albums:
flawless albums? that's hard. almost all of the albums i've ever listened to, owned, or even loved have had a flaw on it. even the best albums have that one song that isn't quite up to par. however, there are a few albums i know that don't have even That One Inevitable Clunker on it...and can thus be described as flawless:

Secret Samadhi by Live.

this album stands up to repeated listenings more than any other album i've ever experienced. it always confuses me why people always seem to prefer Throwing Copper to this one. Throwing Copper is good, yes, but the songs aren't as interesting, fun to listen to, or generally hard-rocking as the songs on Secret Samadhi. this album is Live at its best...and, possibly, nineties alternative rock at its best.

Rush Hour by Wesley Willis.

this album has some of Wesley's most deliciously weird music. Greatest Hits Volume 3 may be weirder, but it also has "Love God" on it--which is by far Wesley's worst song. Rush Hour is hilarious from beginning to end, with no songs worthy of being skipped. it has such gems as "The Termites Ate My House Up", which suggests the worst way ever of exterminating bugs [specifically, shooting up a house with a BB gun] and "King of Fire", which i am convinced is Wesley's weirdest song ever.

Eve 6 by Eve 6.

this album is just plain solid from beginning to end. the songs are all fun to listen to, and they're rife with the clever puns and wordplay that make Eve 6's lyrics so interesting. it's one part pop, two parts rock, thoroughly nineties...and made the summer after my sophomore year of high school extra-happy.

Darkest Days by Stabbing Westward.

this album is a concept album, designed to trace the arc of a relationship from being single to meeting someone to becoming infatuated with them, through the deterioration of the relationship and then finally getting over it. it's sixteen good songs put in the perfect order to tell a story. what makes it even better is that they maintain their dark character as Stabbing Westward...there's nothing sunny and sappy in the album. if there had been, it would feel out of place, even during the phase when the relationship described in the album is going well. the love song, "You Complete Me", straddles somewhere between "what did i do to get so lucky?" and "we're both screwed up, let's be screwed up together."

13. How many music related videos/DVDs do you own?
only one. i'm not a big DVD watcher, so even if it's a band i like i never buy the concert DVDs. i'd prefer to just buy a ticket when the band comes through town and see them live. the only music-related DVD i have is The Daddy of Rock and Roll, a documentary made about Wesley Willis a few years ago. it has a little bit of concert footage, although most of it is a portrait of his life. there's actually another documentary out about Wesley, one that came out just this year: Wesley Willis Joyrides. it's still making the festival circuit. i hope it plays here, although it's not likely because the Saint Louis Film Festival is held in November. it's not out on DVD yet, but i'm sure i'll buy it when it does come out. Wesley is fascinating, and i've heard very good things about Joyrides.

14. How many concerts/shows have you been to, total?
i have lost count. i used to know how many i had been to, back when i was in high school. i wasn't able to go to very many back then. but, once i moved out of the house and up to Chicago, i started going to a lot more shows and lost count. in Raleigh, concertgoing was a rare occurrence. in Chicago, it became my life. it became the norm. instead of buying tickets for every show weeks [and sometimes months] in advance, i had the luxury of being able to go see a random local band on almost any given night if i didn't have anything else to do.

15. Who have you seen the most live?
i have seen Inept sixteen times. they're a local band from the Chicago area, and played in the city and the near suburbs a lot. i'm not as crazy about their recent stuff, but their first few releases back in 2003 and 2004 were fantastic. the shows were a lot of fun; they had a lot of devoted fans who jump, mosh, and sing every word. then again, i'm sure they still do...i don't know all the words to their newer songs, but i still know the old stuff like the back of my hand, and miss the days when those songs were the bread and butter of their shows.

16. What is your favorite movie soundtrack?
that's an easy one: Daredevil. i don't know who was in charge of putting together the soundtrack for that movie, but they had to have been reading my mind. otherwise, how would they have known to put so many bands i love on there? Fuel, Seether, Finger Eleven, Drowning Pool. it was paradise! furthermore, i discovered several bands who i grew to love after hearing them on this soundtrack: Revis, Evanescence, and Boysetsfire. i would never have picked it up if it didn't have so many bands i already knew and loved, although the strongest tracks on the album are the ones by these new bands who i had not heard of before then. i've never seen the movie; i'm not a big movie watcher and i kept hearing that it was terrible. but, the album is solid evidence that Wind-Up Records should be doing a lot more movie soundtracks.

17. What was your last musical "phase" before you wisened up?
my musical tastes have been building upon each other since i was 14, and first got into modern rock. before that, though...wow, it's embarrassing. the cool station to listen to when i was in middle school was Mix 101.5: the adult contemporary station. so, that's the kind of stuff i listened to in a futile attempt to have something in common with my classmates. it didn't help me; i still had no friends then. but, i had a voracious taste for anything Celine Dion would put out. that should count for something, no?

28. What's your "guilty pleasure" that you hate to admit to liking?
where do i begin with this one? i'm usually really open with my ridiculous guilty pleasure songs. out of all the songs i feel bad for liking, the one i feel the worst for liking--and even worse for admitting i like--is "Rollin'" by Limp Bizkit. i know, i expounded here earlier upon the fact that there's no excuse for Limp Bizkit. i still don't think there is; this one fun guilty pleasure song of theirs is not worth all the musical havoc they wrought in the late nineties. but, still...if this comes on the radio or a jukebox, i start singing and dancing. i hate myself for it, but i can't help it.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Monday, March 10

2008-03-10T11:37:00.003-05:00

have you ever listened to a recording of someone causing mischief with a pay phone and thought to yourself, "this is great, but i really wish i could dance to it?" wonder that no more. today's song, "Payphone Under a Streetlamp" by DJ Boo, is exactly that, awesomely danceable pay phone mischief.

i know it may sound weird to most of you, and nerdy to all of you, but that's why the song is so much fun.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Sunday, March 9

2008-03-09T23:22:00.003-05:00

someone decided to make a really, really funny video of "Birdman Kicked My Ass" by Wesley Willis. a dude dressed up in a half-assed bird costume and everything. it's fantastic.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Saturday, March 8

2008-03-08T18:53:00.004-06:00

i know. i missed yesterday. i fail at life. hopefully i didn't fail the ethics portion of the bar, which i took this morning.

so, in return, i give you a double feature today. i give you two songs about really bad people, in honour of the Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam:

"Liar" by Henry Rollins

"User Friendly" by Marilyn Manson

Quite Suppresed Yet Quite Revealing: Thursday, March 7

2008-03-06T23:34:00.003-06:00

i know most of what i put here is rock music, and everything i've talked about here so far has been popular music of some vein. but...i love choral music, too. i sing in a choir now, and have been in various ones over the years. i picked this one, "Lux Aurumque" by Eric Whitacre, because i was singing it in practice today, and it's a lot of fun to do. there are a lot of recordings of it on YouTube...some of them are gorgeous, and some of them aren't too good. this is my favourite that i found. the voices blend together beautifully.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Wednesday, March 5

2008-03-05T23:39:00.000-06:00

rock over london. rock on chicago. Wesley Willis is awesome...and "Cut The Mullet" is one of his funniest songs. it's also practical advice for your everyday life. mullets are no good, and should be cut at the earliest convenience.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Tuesday, March 4

2008-03-04T17:14:00.004-06:00

weird covers makes me happy. an acoustic nerd balladeer covering Sir Mix-A-Lot? it's genius...and the first time i heard this song, my friend who was driving almost drove the car off the road.

presenting..."Baby Got Back", covered by Jonathan Coulton.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Monday, March 3

2008-03-03T10:08:00.002-06:00

here, have another sweet, delicious taste of the nineties: "Not An Addict" by K's Choice. it's a bummer they didn't make it any bigger in the states; i never got to see them in concert before they broke up. this was the only song that got much play here. however, if they were going to have one song get popular, this was the song...they have a lot of solid tunes, but this has always been my favourite.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Sunday, March 2

2008-03-02T19:54:00.003-06:00

Cold is one of my favourite bands of all time, and "Go Away" is one of my favourite songs of theirs. it's raw, it's angry, and it's Cold at its best.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Saturday, March 1

2008-03-01T19:58:00.001-06:00

Weird Al Yankovic is brilliant...and "Trapped In The Drive-Thru" is a spot-on parody of "Trapped In The Closet". it's a long song (over ten minutes), but well worth it for the hilarious treatment of the absolutely mundane.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Friday, February 29

2008-02-29T22:02:00.002-06:00

i always loved "Tired" by Matchbox20. it was the B-Side to the "Push" single, and wondered why it never made it on to an album. the vocal lines during the verses are awesome...it's almost like he's rambling, but it's a little too rhythmic for that.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Thursday, February 28

2008-02-28T08:07:00.003-06:00

no more rap. no more disco.

instead, it's a song that fifteen-year-old girls love: "Sugar, We're Going Down" by Fall Out Boy. this is one of the times the fifteen year olds got it right. i'm not a fan of most of Fall Out Boy's stuff, but this song is fantastic. the tune is catchy, and it's fun to sing along to. plus, the line "i'm just a notch in your bedpost/but you're just a line in a song" resonates with me. it's a theme of mutual use.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Wednesday, February 27

2008-02-27T17:33:00.002-06:00

i know. this place has been cracked out this week. but, what can i say? i'm cracked out. i have a huge paper due at school, and it's making me crazy. [a life outside of this blog--how scary that!]

it's making me crazy enough to post disco.

i'll be sane again by saturday. i promise.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Tuesday, February 26

2008-02-26T10:20:00.002-06:00

this song is one of my ultimate guilty pleasure songs. when i was in high school and this song was on MTV all the time, i would harass my brothers relentlessly for liking it so much. then i got to college and realised that the song was hilarious. i caught myself liking it too; listening to it puts a stupid little smirk on my face. it might be the beat, it might be the smugness of the lyrics. i don't know.

anyway, enjoy..."Forgot About Dre" by Dr. Dre and Eminem.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Monday, February 25

2008-02-25T13:35:00.004-06:00

today's song is a brilliant and clever rock and roll theme and variation: "Time To Waste" by Alkaline Trio.

i love the incorporation of motifs throughout this song. the piano starts with a melody and builds...then the guitar picks up a close variation of it that pulls it squarely into the world of rock. all of a sudden, the verse starts, and the music is completely different from that piano bit at the beginning. it sneaks up on you, though, because each part seems to flow so naturally from the last. conversely, you never notice how similar the chorus is until right before the bridge. the second repeat of the chorus ends, and the piano comes back during the bridge. it's a reworking of the beginning of the song, leading back to the final repeat of the chorus.

whenever i listen to this song, i think of a french braid...it's a gorgeous and coherent whole that picks up new pieces here and there all along the way and integrates them flawlessly.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Sunday, February 24

2008-02-24T14:03:00.004-06:00

i'm having one of those days where i'm sick, i'm tired, and all i want to do is complain. instead of complaining here, i'll just post the most complain-y song i can think of: "King for a Day" by Caroline's Spine. musically, it's actually a really fun song...but the lyrics are full of complaining.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Saturday, February 23

2008-02-23T12:02:00.003-06:00

i didn't list these guys on my list of the best Chicago music you've never heard, because this song did come out on a major label release. however, Beyond The Calm of the Corridor never got the airplay it deserved, and the band broke up soon after. "Thicker" is one of my favourite songs on the album. it's angry, the kind of song that is very therapeutic to wail along to when you're having a terrible day.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Friday, February 22

2008-02-22T09:43:00.003-06:00

i've been told several times that this is heresy, but i don't care. "How Soon Is Now" by Snake River Conspiracy is better than the original. it's far more sarcastic, and i appreciate that.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Thursday, February 21

2008-02-21T10:23:00.003-06:00

i had forgotten all about "B.Y.O.B." by System of a Down until this morning, when a clip of it was played on a podcast i was listening to. System of a Down is very hit or miss with me. some of their songs are more melodic than others, and i really only like the melodic ones.

i like this song a lot; the slow parts have such a danceable groove to them. even though it was just clips, i was making a moron of myself dancing down the sidewalk as i walked. it's a good early-morning song.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Wednesday, February 20

2008-02-20T09:22:00.002-06:00

it still makes me very sad that Memento only released one album, Beginnings. i stumbled upon the band because one of my friends kept talking about it in the spring and summer of 2003. he wasn't sure i'd like them, but i was sold when i heard their song "Shell." i bought the album...and realised that i had hardly scratched the surface. the last song on that album, "Figure 8", is twelve minutes and forty-eight seconds of pure bliss. the song ebbs and flows. it has specific, discernible movements that all fit together to make a coherent, beautiful whole.

some extremely long rock songs just seem gratuitous, but not this one. "Figure 8" by Memento needs to be as long as it is to completely fill the world it creates.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Tuesday, February 19

2008-02-19T11:32:00.002-06:00

"We Don't Care Anymore" by Story of the Year: nothing like some whiny, apathetic, St. Louis emo for a whiny, apathetic, St. Louis day.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Monday, February 18

2008-02-18T10:22:00.004-06:00

after the bitchfest that was yesterday's 74 Minutes or Less, it's time to go back to some music i really, really love. i found out yesterday that Eve 6 got back together in October. that makes me so happy...they were one of my favourite bands of the late nineties and early aughts, and i only had the chance to see them live once before they broke up. two of them formed The Sugi Tap, but they were never quite as fun as Eve 6. Eve 6 were the kings of fun, clever wordplay in their lyrics...and their music put me in such a good mood whenever i listened to it.

so, in honour of this momentous news...here's "Bring The Night On" by Eve 6.

74 Minutes or Less: When Good Bands Go Bad

2008-02-17T22:53:00.000-06:00

welcome to the sixth installment of 74 Minutes or Less.

74 Minutes or Less is the weekly supergig playlist. the concept is simple: i pick a theme, i choose at most 74 minutes of music that fits the theme, and i discuss it here. if you, or i, or anyone else thinks the playlist is so awesome that it deserves to be compiled and burned to CD for posterity, it won't be a problem--because it's no longer than 74 minutes.

this week is a special week. usually, i choose music i really like; i'm turning that on its head for now. this week's theme is When Good Bands Go Bad. it happens with almost every act...as much as you love any particular act, there's always going to be a song, or a handful of songs, that don't quite grab you the same way as the rest of the music. it doesn't mean you like the artist any less...it's just that the song is either not the artist's best work, or it's just not something you relate to in the same way as the rest of their music.

i love all of these acts in the list this week, and i have a tendency to be extremely harsh when i have high standards for people. so, take whatever i say this week with a grain of salt. my goal is to provide some honest criticism of the songs. if i'm too harsh on a song you like, remember it's just one fan's opinion...but, if you really feel like leaving an angry comment, go ahead. i take constructive [and not-so-constructive] criticism decently, and don't normally go postal. :-)

on that note...i present 74 Minutes or Less: When Good Bands Go Bad.

"Gravity" by Angie Aparo (4:01)

Angie's not a hard rocker...he's a singer-songwriter type. he's a very good one, but this song sounds like something you would hear on early- to mid-nineties easy listening radio. [trust me. that was the cool thing to listen to in middle school. i know early- to mid-nineties easy listening radio far better than i should.] also, the theme of car wreck as thing that makes a person appreciate life is so overdone.

"Corporation" by The Blank Theory (3:15)

there's nothing in particular that The Blank Theory did wrong with this song. i'm just offended because it's so boring. it sounds like any other song that could have been on the radio circa 2002 or 2003. it would be a solid tune from a band i was unfamiliar with...i wouldn't pull up their website, but i wouldn't change the station either. the only reason that i can't just ignore it is because it's The Blank Theory, and i know they can do so much better than this.

"Say It To You" by Caroline's Spine (3:23)

Caroline's Spine is one of my favourite bands of all time. they have several songs that are so moving that they make me cry. this is not one of them. instead of creating an emotional mood, something that they were so good at...the music is repetitive, and the lyrics make trite, strained rhymes.

"Kill The Music Industry" by Cold (2:55)

Cold is one of my very favourite bands ever. but, this song has two strikes against it. first of all, it's just not pleasurable to listen to. it's repetitive, and it has random cheerleader-types screaming into the microphone for no apparent reason. even worse than that, it's insincere. you could be the greatest band ever, and if you're singing a song about killing the music industry on a major label record, i can't take it seriously. it would be okay to release a song critiquing a label for doing something specific, or to release a song about how there's so much schlock on the radio or in the record store, but a blanket admonition to kill the music industry when it's a major player in the music industry that is paying you to record that song just doesn't sit well.

"Love God" by Wesley Willis (2:50)

this is one of the songs he did with the Fiasco...i don't like the Fiasco stuff nearly as much as the Wesley-and-a-keyboard stuff. still, there are some fantastic Fiasco songs..."He's Doing Time In Jail" comes to mind. however, Wesley Willis should never, never, ever sing songs with lyrics that explicitly discuss the subjects of penises and ejaculation. that's just foul. unlike anything else he ever sang, this song turns my stomach.

"Satisfied" by 8stops7 (3:05)

thanks to this song, i almost missed discovering 8stops7. i heard the song on the radio, and i thought it was terrible. i still don't like it. the singer just yells a lot with no real direction, and it never quite feels like any of the ideas in the song are explored to fruition. that's a pet peeve of mine, when a song leaves me feeling that way. at that point, since that song was all i had heard of theirs, i wrote them off. luckily, we all know what happened a few months later: "Question Everything" hit the airwaves. it was gorgeous, i had to know who sang it--and i was shocked to find out that it was the same band as had annoyed me so badly with "Satisfied." i gave the album a chance...and luckily, "Satisfied" was the exception and not the rule.

"Sunblock" by Emmet Swimming (4:07)

my junior year of high school, i listened to this show called "Shock Therapy" late at night every sunday. it was the only time that one of the local stations, G105, ditched their top 40 format for a couple of hours and played lesser-known rock music. every week for a couple months, without fail, they would play this song. it's an annoying, substanceless little ditty about going to the beach. it would stick in my head to no end. one week, though, the deejay said she was going to play Emmet Swimming, and i started yelling at the radio because i just knew it would be that stupid Sunblock song again. shockingly enough, it wasn't...it was a new song, "Motorway," which was sad and beautiful. after they started playing that and "Turnstile" instead, and i learned that Emmet Swimming was capable of writing interesting, moving songs.

"Never Hear" by Escape From Earth (3:10)

there's too much rhyming in the verses. i can't tell what he's trying to say, because there are so many random rhyming pairs of words that he sacrificed theme for rhyme. then there's the prechorus, which admonishes people to get up and move. then, there's the chorus, in which he gets pissed off at people for not listening to him. the song isn't bad musically...when i see them live, i start jumping around and moshing. it's that kind of song. but, the lyrics are some of the worst i've ever encountered. they just don't make any sense.

"Nightmare" by Eve 6 (3:08)

i can never pinpoint why i don't like this song. i'm listening to it now and trying to figure out exactly why. and...i'm still failing to come up with anything more substantive than that it doesn't grab me the way the rest of Eve 6's music does. i don't particularly want to listen to it, even now, and i don't remember the last time i listened to Horrorscope and didn't push skip when this song came up.

"Damaged Goods" by Fastball (3:02)

the refrain of this song drives me nuts. "i know...i should just...leave you alone...i should just leave you...alone..." it just sticks in my head. it obscures the rest of the song. granted, the rest of the song is easily obscured anyway...the entire arrangement just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. maybe that was the point, since he's singing about being hooked on someone he can't have. that's something that leaves a bad taste in anyone's mouth. but, there's a difference between feeling like the song was made to be difficult to listen to and just not enjoying it, and the song is so characteristically poppy that i can't honestly believe the discomfort is intentional.

"Conversations" by Finger Eleven (3:34)

so, this technically doesn't fit into the theme...because the entire album Them vs. You vs. Me was full of clunkers. but, this song sticks out on Finger Eleven, which is otherwise such a brilliant album. even on Them vs. You vs. Me, the problem is that the songs were boring...but, they did have melodies. there was some idea realised in each song. this song, on the other hand, doesn't seem to have a melodic idea at all. it's weird, Finger Eleven is always so good at making a point and conveying some kind of point through the music. there's always a cohesive whole. but, this song doesn't seem to have that. it comes in out of nowhere, it exits out of nowhere, and doesn't seem to convey any coherent idea in the meantime.

"See You" by Foo Fighters (2:29)

this song is the one lag in the momentum of The Colour and the Shape, an otherwise engaging album. it's not a terrible song...it just feels out of place. the rest of the album is so decidedly Late Nineties Modern Rock, and then this one feels like it came out of a 1960s sock hop. it's cute, but it should have been released on an album or compilation where it wouldn't have been such an anomaly.

"I'm Losing You" by the Marvelous 3 (3:19)

i don't know why they felt the need to put this song on the album twice. it wasn't any good the first time. the rest of the album has such a fun, arena rock feel...and then this song just feels like disco gone horribly wrong.

"Last Card Down" by 19 Wheels (3:23)

i love Krista Johnston's voice. i'm always a little suspicious when a band decides to feature a member's wife to sing on something, but her voice is fantastic...at once gritty and ethereal. i just wish her talents were featured in a better song. the song feels tacked on at the end of the album. it has no beat to it. it's such a tired-sounding song...the sonic equivalent of floating down the lazy river at the water park. if you're going to evoke that mood, fine, but do something interesting with it.

"Look Right Through Me" by Revis (6:15)

this is the classic Lazy Last Song. it feels like it was thrown together. i can't tell if they were trying to be experimental or just mellow, but either way it was an extremely unsatisfying ending to an otherwise enjoyable album.

"Swing Life Away" by Rise Against (3:20)

Rise Against can't pull off slow, soft ballads. they're good at loud, fast, punkish music. they're good at music that flirts with hard rock or heavy metal. but, they have no business making ballads. the singer's voice doesn't sound good singing in that style...he sounds like exactly what he is, a hard rock singer trying to show his softer side. it's okay if that softer side exists somewhere in his voice. but, it doesn't exist in his, and he needs to stick to rocking out.

"Broken" by Seether (4:20)

in the tradition of several songs on the list, this is a final track on the album that just wasn't up to snuff with the rest of it. often bands that can't do slow songs well will put a slow song as the last track. Seether doesn't have that excuse. they can clearly do slow songs well--"Sympathetic" is one of my favourite songs of theirs, and "Got It Made" is even better. "Broken" is just dull...lyrically, musically, it doesn't have anything special. for some reason, though, people ate it right up, and it was remade with Amy Lee and everything. i never understood it.

"High" by Stabbing Westward (3:21)

unlike many Stabbing Westward fans, i liked their last album a lot. it was a lot less raw and biting than the rest of their albums, but it showed a less angry side of the band. some of the songs were happy, some of the songs were unhappy...but in a way that was resigned rather than angry. most of the songs worked. i say "most," because "High" didn't. musically, the song isn't awful...there isn't much of a hook to grab me in, but there's nothing in it to grate on my ears. the lyrics, however, are terrible. "i've never been so high as i am with you/you're the perfect high"? really? that's about as trite as trite can be. from a band that wrote songs like "Waking Up Beside You" and "Red On White," i expect so much better than that.

"4 Degrees" by Tool (6:03)

i know what they're trying to do with this song. they're trying to make a building, driving, pounding, escalating soundscape to evoke the topic of the song: anal sex. it works for what they're trying to portray. the idea comes out effectively. but, the song drags on too long for my liking...i'd be okay with the song if it were three minutes long. it doesn't need to be six.

"L.S.D. [Lucifer's Stained Dress]" by Videodrone (3:11)

i mentioned this song briefly in an earlier post about Videodrone. whereas the rest of Videodrone's music has interesting melodies woven amidst the anger, this one doesn't. it always feels like someone is just screaming obscenities, and they felt some impetus to record it and pass it off as a song. i don't care how good the band is; they can't get away with that.

total time: 72:11.

that was 74 Minutes or Less #6: When Good Bands Go Bad. if you've got a thematic idea for a future playlist, comment or email me at superherogirl@gmail.com.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Sunday, February 16

2008-02-17T12:26:00.002-06:00

i love The Rasmus. i go back and forth with which song of theirs is my favourite...there are about five of them that contend for the title. this is the one i've been loving lately..."Lucifer's Angel." it's really fun to listen to--so fun, in fact, that sometimes i'm known to start dancing down the street when it comes on my iPod.

[note: the video isn't an official video by the band...a video never was made for this song. but, unlike most fan videos on YouTube, it's actually decently edited]

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Saturday, February 16

2008-02-16T10:40:00.002-06:00

"Shout 2000" by Disturbed: file this one under covers that are far more awesome than the original. i'm not a big fan of Tears for Fears' original, but i love what Disturbed does with it here. it doesn't sound like a knockoff of the original...they made it their own, and it sounds like a Disturbed song.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Friday, February 15

2008-02-15T12:12:00.003-06:00

"Paperthin Hymn" by Anberlin has one of my favourite lines ever.."i just want one more chance to put my arms in fragile hands." i've never heard a more eloquent way of describing a feeling that you need someone to depend on even though you know that the connection is tenuous as best.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Thursday, February 14

2008-02-14T10:21:00.003-06:00

whether you're single or in a relationship, valentine's day sucks. it's a hallmark holiday full of obligation. couples are pressured to be schmaltzy, and singles are pressured to be bitter about their state. really, it's enough to make a person bitter about all the unnecessary pressure associated with the day.

"Anti-Love Song" by Cold is a bitter little gem. Scooter screams, yells, curses...it's pretty clearly the angriest song on 13 Ways to Bleed on Stage. he's mad at his ex, he's mad at his friends, he's mad at the world, and he's sick of it. in short...it's a perfect theme song for such a ridiculous holiday.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Wednesday, February 13

2008-02-13T00:22:00.006-06:00

sometimes the right song comes around at the right time. i've been feeling very unmoored lately...as if time is passing me by so fast that i'm getting disproportionately far removed from everything that meant anything in the past. i'm just floating around, not doing anything with the time i have. i need to get my bearings back, find meaning in what i can, but it's harder than i expected.

these feelings have made it very difficult for me to pick music to fit my mood. none of my current addictions felt quite right. but, i heard "Somewhere on Fullerton" by Allister for the first time today. it's a few years old...i'm shocked that i missed it, because Allister is from Chicago. but, it was like a big hug from a pair of loving, pop-punk arms.

the lyrics are a huge part of why i picked this song...if you're curious, i put them below:

"Somewhere on Fullerton"
by Allister

somewhere down on fullerton
there's a place that meant
so much to everybody like me
somewhere down on fullerton
there's a place that meant
the world to everybody like me

but i'm still trying
just to figure out why
this feels so wrong
when it felt so right
felt so right four years ago

so please don't go away
won't this feeling stay with me forever
forever i said
please don't go away
i just want you to stay with me forever

somewhere down on fullerton
there's a place that meant
so much to everybody like me
somewhere down on fullerton
there's a place that meant
the world to everybody like me

but i'm still trying
just to figure out why
this feels so wrong
when it felt so right
felt so right four years ago

so please don't go away
won't this feeling stay with me forever
forever i said
please don't go away
i just want you to stay with me forever

but i'm still trying
just to figure out why
this feels so wrong
when it felt so right
felt so right four years ago

so please don't go away
won't this feeling stay with me forever
forever i said
please don't go away
i just want you to stay with me forever

forever i said
please don't go away
won't this feeling stay with me forever
forever i said
please don't go away
cause all i want is
you to stay with me

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Tuesday, February 12

2008-02-12T10:11:00.002-06:00

"Almost Easy" by Avenged Sevenfold is an anthem for anyone who has done awful things that are finally catching up with them. it's about wanting redemption, but being unsure whether redemption is deserved.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Monday, February 11

2008-02-11T10:41:00.000-06:00

this morning's song is "Blue Lights" by Pretty Girls Make Graves. it's a song about obsessively overthinking your attraction to somebody. she repeats the same three quatrains over and over again, getting more and more agitated each time. the imagery in the lyrics is really good; that's one of Pretty Girls Make Graves' strengths.

and...it's a great song to have in your emotional arsenal if you're admiring someone from afar, and trying to work up the nerve to do something about it.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Sunday, February 10

2008-02-10T12:08:00.000-06:00

i know it's not Monday. it's Sunday. but, "Every Monday" by The Marvelous 3 is a great song no matter what day it is. i especially love the lines, "talk to the city that knows me by name/and all the bad things that i do." that's how i feel when i'm home...i doubt they're singing about Chicago, because they're from Atlanta, but that line always reminds me of Chicago.

i would have posted a video, as i do most days, but somehow there's not a video of the Marvelous 3's version of the song on YouTube. instead, there's a five year old strumming away at a ukulele and attempting to sing it. it's a disgrace, really.

74 Minutes or Less: Canadian bands

2008-02-09T13:20:00.000-06:00

welcome to the fifth installment of 74 Minutes or Less.

74 Minutes or Less is the weekly¹ supergig playlist. the concept is simple: i pick a theme, i choose at most 74 minutes of music that fits the theme, and i discuss it here. if you, or i, or anyone else thinks the playlist is so awesome that it deserves to be compiled and burned to CD for posterity, it won't be a problem--because it's no longer than 74 minutes.

this week's theme is songs by Canadian bands and artists. there are a ton of good Canadian bands out there...in fact, if given the choice between listening to an American rock station and a Canadian one, i'll take the Canadian station any day of the week. they seem to do a better job at sifting away the schlock, and i'm more likely to hear bands that i don't here on the same old same old American rock radio.

some of these songs are along the lines of the rock that i usually talk about here. some, however, are different. a few aren't rock at all. some weren't from the nineties or the aughts like almost everything i listen to. a few are are random guilty pleasure songs of mine. still...for one reason or another, i like every one of these songs--and they're all from Canadian acts.

"Summer of '69" by Bryan Adams (3:32)

Bryan Adams took a carefree, youthful summer afternoon and spun it into a song. this song is pure ear candy. i didn't really know it when it came out; i really discovered it my senior year of high school when an a capella group came to my school and sang an arrangement of it. i find the genre of college a capella insufferably obnoxious, but at least i owe it for pointing me in the direction of this song.

"Insensitive" by Jann Arden (4:16)

i loved this song when i was in middle school. it would come on Casey Kasem's Top 40 on Sunday mornings when my family was driving to and from the bowling alley. the verses are longing, but the chorus is surprisingly sarcastic for a pop song of its type. in addition to the lyrics...i really like Jann Arden's voice. it's sultry.

"It's All Coming Back to Me Now" by Celine Dion (7:37)

this was my favourite songs when i was 13. it was before i got into rock music...in middle school, adult contemporary was the thing to listen to, and i listened to more Celine Dion than i should admit to. this song is still a great one, though. it's epic, it's overblown, and it's what Diva Music ought to be. i even like to channel my inner diva once in a while and sing it at karaoke...i don't do it justice like Celine does, but it sure is fun to belt out.

"Cold (But I'm Still Here)" by Evans Blue (3:57)

i love songs that seem inoffensive on the outside, but the lyrics reveal something far more sinister. this song came on the radio all the time throughout 2006, and although it sounded a little dark [even Earshot-esque...i swore it was them until a deejay set me straight], it took me a while to process what the lyrics were doing. i keep reading the lyrics over and over, and the song could only be a story, told from the perpetrator's point of view, about kidnapping one's ex. it's scary stuff, and i love how it lurks under such an accessible, radio-friendly outer shell.

"Costume for a Gutterball" by Finger Eleven (4:39)

this was one of my teen angst anthems in high school. however, unlike most teen angst anthems that i can dismiss as such and consider as either guilty pleasures or a part of my past, this songs stays with me. it does such a good job of conveying the tension between the dangers of putting on an artificial face to the world and the temptation of making that artificial face when you're not quite sure who or what you are.

"Stay In Shadow" by Finger Eleven (3:15)

so, i try to avoid putting a band on a playlist more than once. but, Finger Eleven is a special case. they're one of my two favourite bands of all time, and this song shows a different side of them. where "Costume for a Gutterball" was slow, introspective, and a bit subdued, this one falls squarely into the realm of Push People And Throw Things Music.

"American Woman" by The Guess Who (5:10)

i'm not quite as much of a fan of this song nowadays, but i loved it when i was a little kid. it was fun to sing along to. i also appreciate the fact that "American Woman" was performed by a Canadian band; i didn't know The Guess Who was Canadian for a very long time. also...i'm still pissed off at Lenny Kravitz for covering it so badly. he took a fun song and made it into a caricature of its former self. if i were to do a Worst Covers Ever list, that would be on my top ten.

"Goodnight Goodnight" by Hot Hot Heat (2:10)

mmm. short, bouncy, and poppy. not the kind of song i normally like to listen to, but no matter. my roommate the year after college was a big fan of these guys, and i got really annoyed when he kept playing "Bandages" all the time. i never liked that song much. but, then he got on a kick of playing this one, and it grew on me.

"Brackish" by Kittie (3:08)

the chorus of this song is so cool. there's the one voice that's singing sweetly, and then the other one that's growling over it. i mainly listen to Kittie for the vocals, and this song does an even better job than any of their others in showing why. some of the singing is ethereal, some of it is gravelly, and some of it ranges in between. this song showcases their vocal range.

"Sweet Surrender" by Sarah McLachlan (4:03)

i have a soft spot for this song. when i was in high school, this was my go-to song if i ever had to sing in a talent show. i like quite a few of her songs...i didn't like her voice at first (when "Possession" came out), but eventually it grew on me and i have a handful of her songs in my music collection now. i had a hard time picking...this one, "Angel," and "Adia" are all gorgeous. but, this one is even more fun to sing than it is to listen to, so it won out.

"The Safety Dance" by Men Without Hats (2:41)

i can't believe i'm putting this on here, but there you go. this song is silly. this song is eighties. i can't listen to this song without a straight face, and that's part of the fun of it. it also provided the foundation for an inside joke with my friend in undergrad...although the story behind it involves absurd amounts of mock trial geekery, which is a little beyond the scope of this blog, and probably not interesting to most of you. the moral of the story is...yes, this song is a guilty pleasure and a little atypical for my [rather anti-eighties] musical tastes, but i love it anyway.

"Leader of Men" by Nickelback (3:30)

i know. i said the N-Word. you all thought i was better than that. the schlock they put out now isn't worth the plastic it's etched onto, or even the bits and bytes it takes up if you download it. it's boring.² but, i still enjoy their album The State. it came out in 1999 in Canada, and in 2000 in the States after "Leader of Men" and "Breathe" got some radio play. "Leader of Men" is my favourite song on the album. the stripped-down music fits the lyrics perfecty; it captures perfectly the mood of inadvertently falling into a long-term relationship and being too apathetic to end it even though it has flatlined.

"One Man Army" by Our Lady Peace (3:22)

this is my ultimate driving song. i don't drive anymore, but this song was always on the radio during the short few-month period my senior year of high school when i did drive. i remember flying down the Beltline with this song blasting from the speakers, driving home after dropping my mom off where she lived. sometimes my little brother would be in the car...he didn't know the song or particularly seem to like it given his hip-hop tendencies, but didn't get to turn it off because i was driving. even though the lyrics are really bitter...the song just makes me feel so free.

"Fist Wrapped In Blood" by Silverstein (2:59)

i don't really know why i like this song as much as i do. like most of Silverstein's stuff, it's pretty cliché, but this one doesn't bore me. it's fun, fluffy, catchy screamo-pop. i know it's fodder for those annoying teenage "mall-punks", but every so often they're on to something.

"We're All To Blame" by Sum 41 (3:39)

here's another band i'm almost embarrassed to have on here. most of their songs are early- to mid-aughts pop-punk gone wrong. even the verses of this song are reminiscent of the tuneless shouting characteristic of most of their music. but, the chorus redeems it. the chorus keeps me coming back to it. i know "pretty" is an odd word to use to describe the chorus of a rock song, especially a rock song about political annoyance, but it fits.

"Home" by Three Days Grace (4:22)

Three Days Grace is rather formulaic. i'm the first person to admit it. however, it's okay in my book if you do the formula so well that you remind me why some pattern became The Formula in the first place. nothing in isolation would denote that there's anything special about this band: the lyrics tend toward the trite, and the vocals and instruments don't actually add anything new to the Screaming Alt-Rock genre. however, it's so rare anymore that anything in the genre comes in such a well-executed package of unvarnished angst.

"Christ Is On The Lawn" by Treble Charger (4:23)

most of Treble Charger's music occupies the grey area between pop-punk and late-nineties/early-aughts alt-rock. most of it is upbeat...and good. this song is a lot slower, almost a ballad, but it's my favourite one of theirs, and the one i keep going back to again and again. i'm still not quite sure what the cryptic lyrics to it mean, but the music conveys such emptiness and yearning.

total time: 66:43

that was 74 Minutes or Less #5: Canadian bands and artists. if you've got a thematic idea for a future playlist, comment or email me at superherogirl@gmail.com.

***
¹ i know...i missed last week. i fail at blogging and i fail at life. angry comments are welcome, and i won't even yell you out for making them.
² except for "Animals." i can't call "Animals" boring, because it's the worst song i've ever heard. i've heard a lot of songs, but that one makes me ill. no song with lyrics about Chad Kroeger giving some jailbait girl cunnilingus should ever have been written.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Saturday, February 9

2008-02-09T12:04:00.000-06:00

whoever said songs about suicide aren't supposed to be fun hasn't heard "Dr. Online" by Zeromancer yet. if nothing else, check out the bridge of the song. it's a suicide hotline gone horribly, horribly wrong. it's hilarious in its tongue-in-cheek-ness.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Friday, February 8

2008-02-08T10:27:00.000-06:00

KRIM is a great band from Sweden who i discovered on radio wazee five or six years ago. their songs are catchy...and their lyrics are blunt and biting. they don't beat around the bush trying to paint obscured emotional landscapes. they just tell you what they're feeling, and i appreciate that.

"Can't Talk To You" by KRIM is a perfect example of that. it's a song for any mood...the beat gets your adrenaline going if you're in a good mood, and the lyrics are bluntly angry, perfect to concentrate on and scream along to if you're in a bad mood.

it makes me sad that KRIM seems to have dropped off the face of the earth. their band website has not been updated in almost two years, and they haven't released any new songs in at least that long. i've never had the chance to see them live; they're from Sweden, and never have played the States. i hope they're all well, and i hope they're still making music.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Thursday, February 7

2008-02-07T09:47:00.000-06:00

i love Benjamin Burnley's voice. it's gorgeous. he can sing. he can scream. i can listen to him all day...he is what makes Breaking Benjamin so good.

and "Breath" is one of my favourite songs of theirs. unless you were living under a rock last year, you have probably heard it...but listen to it again. it's stuck in my head today.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Wednesday, February 6

2008-02-06T11:07:00.000-06:00

occasionally there's a song i like that isn't from the nineties or aughts. it doesn't happen often...but it happens. i'm sure you know this song. it's long. it has crooning, screaming, and everything in between. i'm sure you've sung along to this song at least once when you've been goofing off with your friends--it's just that kind of song. push play, reminisce...it's "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Tuesday, February 5

2008-02-05T09:50:00.000-06:00

"Monster" by Meg & Dia: i love this song. it's alt-rock meets pop-punk meets really, really snotty teen pop. the combination is adorable--and addictive.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Monday, February 4

2008-02-04T09:09:00.001-06:00

few songs are written about baseball commissioners. even fewer songs take the character of a totalitarian, reactionary baseball commissioner, change a few details, and turn him into a slightly anachronistic folk hero.

in fact, the only song i know in that latter category is "Kenesaw Mountain Landis" by Jonathan Coulton. Jonathan Coulton is the master of acoustic internet generation nerd-rock, and this is my favourite song of his. he turns Kenesaw Mountain Landis into a hero, Shoeless Joe Jackson into a villain, and the Black Sox story into a folktale.

here's hoping that in a hundred years or so, everyone is telling the Black Sox Scandal story like this. i think dear Mister Coulton is onto something.

can you see the sunset from the southside?

2008-02-03T11:03:00.000-06:00

i just discovered can you see the sunset from the southside? last night. it's a chicago-centric music blog written by a local musician with a good sense of the history of music in the city, specifically punk and old-school emo. i'm learning a lot of random tidbits about chicago music, and discovering a bunch of new and old bands that i somehow missed along the way.

i know this isn't a music review...but sunset just may be my new crack, and i feel i owe it to each and every one of you to point you in the right direction here.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Sunday, February 2

2008-02-03T09:24:00.000-06:00

today's song is "It's Against The Law" by Wesley Willis. it's not too hard to figure out the meaning of this song--don't commit crimes, it's against the law. the line in the second verse, "don't stick up people for money," is especially relevant as part of the song of the day. there's someone i want to find, shake by the shoulders, and impart this message to--specifically, the rectal haberdasher who mugged me and my friend last night. that wasn't very nice of him.

here's to songs with simple messages. don't steal, don't kill, and don't threaten. "It's Against The Law".

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Saturday, February 2

2008-02-02T11:07:00.000-06:00

usually it's a disappointment when a band re-releases an album with a couple of new tracks on it--because usually, all the new songs suck. even if they aren't that bad, they're usually not as good as the other songs on the album, because they didn't make the cut the first time.

Disclaimer II by Seether was a pleasant exception to this pattern. two of the added songs are just as good as, if not better than, the best songs on the original release of Disclaimer. [that's right, you get a bonus this morning: two songs for the price of one!] the songs portray very different moods..."Sold Me" is angry and driving while "Got It Made" is sad and introspective. both, however, are my addictions.

"Sold Me" by Seether:

"Got It Made" by Seether:

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Friday, Februrary 1

2008-02-01T09:27:00.000-06:00

"Real" by The Verve Pipe is a short song, clocking in at less than two minutes. the lyrics don't make a lot of sense...the song is over ten years old, and i still don't quite know what they're supposed to mean. but, the song sounds so good. it's very atypical of The Verve Pipe; it's loud, fast, and almost punkish unlike any other song except for "Bullies On Vacation."

it's friday. we all need a song to get our pulse racing and get our energy up for the Mardi Gras weekend. "Real" is that song.

***

74 Minutes or Less will probably not be up until this weekend. between the long nü metal entry and ridiculous real-life stuff, i don't have it finished yet, and doubt i'll be able to finish it and do a good job with it by the end of today. but, rest assured...i have a theme and i have all the songs picked out. i have to finish writing about them.

in defense of nü metal

2008-01-31T00:40:00.000-06:00

i have never seen anyone say anything positive about the genre of nü metal, as such. this has irked me for ten years. i've never heard people use the term "nü metal" as anything but pejorative, but there is some very good music that is popularly described as such.

people deride the music that falls under that umbrella as boring. meaningless. repetitive. dull. sure enough, there is a lot of subpar music that qualifies as nü metal. most people view Korn and Limp Bizkit as the standard bearers of the genre. Korn isn't my favourite band in the world. i always found them to be extremely boring, and many of their songs sounded the same. "Freak on a Leash" was a good tune, though...it was an apt anthem for a misunderstood teen, and i was a sixteen-year-old high school loner when the song came out. furthermore, they were one of the first bands to hit the mainstream with a detuned amalgam of rock, metal, rap, and funk. they weren't the best of the bunch, but i respect their role in beginning to clear out a place in the music scene for the genre...and even though they were usually boring, they never made me want to weep for humanity.

[as for Limp Bizkit...well, there's really no defense for Limp Bizkit. they were one of the worst bands of the nineties, if not the very worst. that's one point, probably the only point, on which the nü metal haters and i see eye to eye. their music sounds like party pop-rap with guitars.]

the term nü metal is a fairly vague one, to be sure...it started as almost a synonym for rap-rock, and then started to refer to bands who were in that same grey space between grunge and metal, but didn't necessarily have as many rap influences. by the early aughts, very few popular nü metal bands [save Linkin Park...] had or retained much rap styling at all. the term is less than specific...but none but the broadest terms for music have very fuzzy great areas, and i'm going to stick with the nomenclature because its spectrum is familiar to anyone who knows a bit about nineties music.

anyway...there was a lot of schlock promulgated under the umbrella of nü metal, and people bring that up to disparage every band with that handful of influences. but, the fact remains that there's a lot of schlock under any given musical label. just like wheat and chaff coexist under any musical label, there is good nü metal and bad nü metal. from here on out, we focus on the good; there are a lot of gems that people roll their eyes and dismiss because it happens to be nü metal. there are a lot of songs in that style that honestly portray emotion, that have compelling melodies, and prove that the flak that people give the genre as a whole is very often unwarranted.

Disturbed

their first album was full of rap influences which have faded away as time has gone by. although their first album, Down With The Sickness, remains their best to date, they still put out solid music and they're one of the few late nineties or very early aughts bands who remains recognizable, about as good as they were. my favourite song of theirs is "Remember"--it sets the mood of being fixated on something that happened in the past, and the melody haunts.

Drowning Pool

Drowning Pool is not the same band they were back in the early oughts. Dave Williams, their lead singer, died in the summer of 2002...that's the only time i've ever cried when a famous person has died. the new singer isn't nearly as good. his voice went from screaming to growling to singing so seamlessly, and Sinner rocked from start to finish. i'm sure you all know "Bodies" already...this is the video for "Tear Away," which is a little more like the rest of Sinner and a better song to boot.

Finger Eleven

Finger Eleven is one of my two favourite bands [the other being Cold]. even in their earliest music they never had much of a rap influence, but the grunge, metal, and funk influences pervade their music.¹ [in fact, before they were Finger Eleven, they called themselves the Rainbow Butt Monkeys, and were more of a funk band than a rock band.] their first three albums were fantastic...really, the only dud on any of them was "One Thing." everything else, fast or slow, was good, solid rock--like this, their song "Quicksand" from their first album.

Linkin Park

i got into Linkin Park my first year of college. that was right when Hybrid Theory was coming out and "One Step Closer" was on the radio all the time. i caught more and more flak for liking them as they got more and more popular, but i don't care. their songs are catchy, they have great beats, and back in 2000 they didn't sound like anything else that was on the radio. maybe it's the sulking emo kid in me...but my favourite song of theirs has always been "Numb." it's a little less peppy than most of their stuff, but it's a great song all the same:

Orgy

Orgy was the first rock band i ever liked who features techno beats prominently. i'm not sure if their music actually falls under the outer fringes of nü metal or not, but between the time they got popular [1998], their close ties with Korn [they were on Elementree Records, Korn's imprint], and the music styles they fuse...i include them here. they had a little more techno-goth and a lot less grunge than most bands in the category, but they definitely smoothed the path to the radio airwaves for clearly nü metal bands like Linkin Park. this is my favourite Orgy song, "Dizzy"--the last song on their album Candyass, and one i recently mentioned in 74 Minutes or Less:

Staind

okay, so their later music consists of attempts to reproduce the success of "It's Been Awhile." they morphed from the realm of nü metal to the realm of...well, almost adult alternative. that doesn't make Tormented, Dysfunction, or about half of Break the Cycle any less awesome. back then the songs were raw, and Aaron Lewis had the sexiest, breathiest heavy rock voice i knew. this was the song that got me hooked on them: "Just Go."

finally, four more bands who have done something compelling with the genre have been recent subjects of posts on this blog: 3^rd Strike, Lifer, Flaw, and Videodrone.

so, the next time you hear some music snob dismiss nü metal offhand, take him to task for it. for every Limp Bizkit, Crazy Town, or Hed(PE) who makes your ears bleed, there is a Finger Eleven, Drowning Pool, or Videodrone to bring the rock.

***
¹ if the only songs of theirs you've heard are "One Thing" or anything on Them Vs. You Vs. Me, you're going to be wondering what i'm talking about when i say there's a funk influence. that stuff is dross. i'm as bitter about Them Vs. You Vs. Me as i am about Underneath by The Verve Pipe. the whole rant is too long for a footnote, though; don't be surprised to see a full entry about it at some point.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Thursday, January 31

2008-01-31T00:17:00.000-06:00

"No Light" is one of my favourite early-aughts one-hit-wonder songs. i still need to get Lost Angel, the album it's on; one of my friends in undergrad would play it in his car sometimes, and it had a lot of solid songs on it. despite the fact that this was the one big single from it, this was always my favourite song on it. it has more rapping than most songs i enjoy, but it doesn't sound forced or unnatural like way too much of the rapping in rap-slanted nü metal. it feels like that's how the song is supposed to go.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Wednesday, January 30

2008-01-30T08:31:00.000-06:00

back in the late 1990s, MTV did a cover band competition. there was a band on there called Strangers With Candy who did a rollicking cover of "Take On Me" by A-Ha, and they won the competition. i watched, and thought it was a shame that they weren't putting out original songs.

a few years later, they did put out original songs. they renamed themselves Lifer, and in 2001 released their self-titled album. seven years later, i'm still addicted to their song "Swallow." the tune is low, thick, and atmospheric. the lyrics...well, it took me a few years to figure them out, but they're a bit on the naughty side. the song is blatantly about a carnal need for sexual release.

this song wasn't a single off the album, and no one has made a video for it. [well, on YouTube, anyway...i'm sure i may have had some luck on PornoTube, but i'm trying to keep supergig PG-13.] i'm sure you can provide your own visuals mentally, though...just listen to "Swallow" by Lifer.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Tuesday, January 29

2008-01-29T08:32:00.000-06:00

Blue October is a great band, and Justin Furstenfeld has one of the most gorgeous voices i know. This song, "Amazing," was the last track on their 2003 album "History For Sale." last tracks on an album always seem to be long, winding, and introspective...sometimes the experiment works, and sometimes the experiment fails. i'm almost never ambivalent on the final track of an album; i either love it or hate it.

this song works...to say the least. it's the best of their best. it's such a sad song; i can't decide of the person speaking knows he's a schmuck or is just going through a self-esteem crisis, but he's crying out for someone to love him. with a song this beautiful, it would be hard to resist.

Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing: Monday, January 28

2008-01-28T09:08:00.000-06:00

Welcome to the newest regular feature on Supergig: Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing.

in short, it's the song of the day. i will make a few comments about it, but it won't be the extremely long kind of post that i usually make. [hence, quite suppressed.] then, i'll post a song that means a lot to me. [hence, quite revealing.]

for any of you who are wondering...yes, the title of this feature is a song quote. it's a title from the song "I've Suffered A Head Injury" by The Verve Pipe, a song that snarks on the music industry for producing schlock. the goal of Quite Suppressed Yet Quite Revealing is to imbue your life with a little less schlock...and a little more rock.

we'll start this with a song that has been stuck in my head for days now: "My Letter" by Flaw. it's a song about being confused about where things stand with someone, so confused that it destroys any hope of a future. luckily i've never been in that situation before...but it's a scary idea, and Flaw treats it powerfully.

the band never made a video for it...so this video shows the lyrics on the screen.

74 Minutes or Less #4: The Best Chicago Music You've Never Heard

2008-01-25T10:42:00.000-06:00

welcome to the fourth installment of 74 Minutes or Less.

74 Minutes or Less is the weekly supergig playlist. the concept is simple: i pick a theme, i choose at most 74 minutes of music that fits the theme, and i discuss it here. if you, or i, or anyone else thinks the playlist is so awesome that it deserves to be compiled and burned to CD for posterity, it won't be a problem--because it's no longer than 74 minutes.

this week's theme is the best Chicago music you've never heard. some of these bands are still together, some of these bands have broken up, and some of these bands are somewhere in between--they have the same name as before, and one or two of the same members, but the music is so different nowadays that they're hardly recognizable as their former selves.

over my five years living in Chicago, i racked up a lot of music by just picking up demos at the many, many local shows i attended. most of it was unremarkable. some of it was really, really bad. but, there were the occasional songs that were good enough to make me take notice. they were good enough to get me to start following the band, and good enough to stay on my regular playlist even though the band may be long gone.

to get on this list, i had to have first heard the song on a demo, an independently produced and locally released album, or at a concert in the Chicago area. [obviously, the band also needs to be from the Chicago area.] if there is a link from the song title, then the song is still available online for free download on their band page or MySpace...so check it out there. most of the other songs were distributed freely to me on demos--so if one of the descriptions intrigues you, leave me a comment or an email, and i'll share the love.

so, here it goes--74 Minutes or Less of the best Chicago music you've never heard, in alphabetical order by band.¹

"Maybe" by A.D.D. (3:27)

i don't like a lot of female-fronted rock. i like the sound of a man's voice screaming and growling a lot better than i like the sound of most women trying to do it. i say "most women," because Margie from A.D.D. is a refreshing exception to the general precept. the song is snarky, angry, and powerful. i wish i could have a karaoke track of this song, though...not that i could do it well [my own voice is far more suited to art songs than to heavy metal], but i have spent so many years singing along to this song that i'd love to try it in public at least once.

"Hole In His Head" by The Burbanks (2:09)

this is the only song a band has ever played for me in a concert...the singer knew it was my favourite, so at a show at Hogs Head McDunna's back in the spring of 2004, he dedicated it to me. i don't know what this says about me, since it's not a happy song lyricall. but, never have i heard a more fun, exciting, and energetic song about a guy shooting himself. i don't know what happened to The Burbanks, though...their bad website is still up, but they haven't played shows in years. that's a shame, because they were so good at simple, straightforward, and fun punk rock songs.

"Urban Tragedy" by Charleston Dueling Society (5:09)

this song is a sad story, almost gratuitously so...it's about a guy who wants to propose to his girlfriend on new year's eve, and finds out a week later that she died in a drunk driving accident. in fact, the only dead lover song that i can think of that's more gratuitous than this one is "Tell Laura I Love Her" by Ray Peterson. i don't care...i'm a sucker for that stuff sometimes.

"It's A Stick-Up" by Dead Man Holiday (4:24)

in a moment this band appeared, and in a moment they were gone. they rose from the ashes of Red River, played two or three shows, and disappeared. luckily, i caught one of those shows, a show at The Metro on August 15, 2003...with Escape From Earth, Empyrean, and Inept. they were full of energy, and one of their songs really made an impression on me. i didn't know what it was called, but it was that song that made the crowd jump around and start yelling about a stick up. i managed to grab a demo on the way out, greedily opened it, and looked for a track listing. sure enough, track #4 on the four-song demo was "It's A Stick-Up." success. Dead Man Holiday did re-form about a year after those first few shows, but the lineup was almost completely different, as was the music, and they got very angry on the message boards if any of the fans brought up old Dead Man Holiday songs like this one. it's a shame, because so few songs have ever gotten my adrenaline running like "It's A Stick-Up."

"Bad Human" by Disonic (3:56)

this song has one of my favourite quotes of all time: "how can i explain the feelings and the thoughts within...when every word deserves another." it's how i feel most of the time...i can't express anything without rambling on and on. [hence, the extremely long entries here!] the song always gets me in a self-reflective mood.

"Blister" by Ditchwater (3:08)

this song makes me want to push people and throw things. there's screaming, growling, and heavy guitar riffs. it gets my adrenaline flying. the lyrics are just as straightforward as the song...someone's making fun of him behind his back, and he wants to beat the offender up. Ditchwater was never good at being subtle; that was always part of their charm. what they were good at was making me want to scream and mosh. and, sometimes...that's really all you need.

"Bottled" by Dysception (4:38)

the entire Three-Thirteen EP by Dysception was gold: it had this song on it, as well as "Inside My Cage" and "Pity." lyric writing was never their strong point; the lyrics are as trite as the song titles make you think they would be. but, no matter. if i'm having a bad day because i'm stressed out with or pissed off at someone, screaming along to Dysception's songs is such a tension reliever. as a side note...when i saw them in concert, Tim always had the best shirts. during the concerts, he would wear a shirt that said "will drum for food." after the show, when it was time to go out drinking, he would wear a different shirt: "will drum for beer." i loved those shirts, and would have bought one if they had sold clones at the merch booth.²

"Beautiful" by Escape From Earth (4:14)

i never understood why Escape from Earth never made it big outside Chicago. they're on hiatus now, but circa 2003 or 2004 they were one of the biggest bands on the local scene. they played a ton of shows...and regularly played The Metro, the holy grail of concert venues for local rock acts. their music was so radio-friendly that i sometimes feel a little bad for liking them as much as i do...i still have that lingering teenage discomfort with the idea of laying back and enjoying a well-crafted pop song for what it is. in short, Escape from Earth wrote a lot of well-crafted, fun, interesting pop songs. the best of them were their two ballads: "Beautiful" and "Without." i always liked "Beautiful" a little better; whereas "Without" is mourning the loss of a lover, "Beautiful" turns inward and considers the tensions brought about by the fickle monster, self-esteem.

"These Days" by Inept (3:31)

i have seen Inept more times than any other band...sixteen times, to be exact. and, they only played this song two or three times out of those sixteen. that always frustrated me...because not only does it have an interesting melody, but the lyrics eschew the traditional emo-rock themes of most of their songs in favour of being an extremely thoughtful protest song against the Iraq War. at least this one was recorded, though. my other favourite song of theirs, a tearjerking acoustic number called "Didn't Know You Well Enough", never was...and i only heard it once, at an acoustic show they played at The Fat Bean coffeehouse in Naperville.

"Nerve Gas" by Kill Hannah (3:44)

i know...Kill Hannah is a little out of place here. this is supposed to be the best Chicago music you've never heard, and you've probably heard Kill Hannah before. but, you've probably not heard this song or anything else off of American Jet Set...and i first heard Kill Hannah back in 2001, when someone in my dorm told me i needed to hear them, and brought me out to the Metro to see them play with Caviar and Ashtar Command. most of the album is very good, and i had trouble picking one song to put on this playlist. it was down to this one and "Get Famous"...and i've been more into this one these last few months. i still can't figure out what the lyrics mean [although i do see that they evoke an inscrutable post-apocalyptic fantasy world], but the song is Kill Hannah at their gloom-pop best.

"Schizome" by No Fate (4:49)

local Chicago bands wrote some very good songs about being insane in an evil way--this is the first of two on this list. this song is about being aware of the fact that you're the evil kind of crazy, and portrays that inner fight between honestly acting on it and tactfully hiding it. the band was all high school aged when they wrote the song, which makes it even more impressive because they don't sound nearly so young. the guitar solo at the end is a little overdone, but other than that, the song is very well put together.

"Cook County Sheriff" by Ratbag Hero (2:29)

it takes a special kind of band to write a tongue-in-cheek song about drunk driving. it takes a special kind of band to write a song from the perspective of the drunk driver who died as a result of his own folly...and then have the gall to blame the cop who didn't ticket him for drunk driving and therefore prevent the death. it takes a special kind of band...and Ratbag Hero was a special kind of band. all their songs were about things like booze, girls, partying, and the south side of Chicago...and the songs evinced the same mood as hanging out with them offstage. they weren't serious, but that was the beauty of it. they kept it real more than any other band i ever knew.

"Koo?" by Red River (4:47)

if "Schizome" was the contemplative song about being crazy, "Koo?" is the song about embracing the insanity. Red River was Chicago's horror-metal band in the late nineties and early oughts. they took the stage dressed in bizarre costumes, complete with fake blood, fake chainsaws, and mannequins that had seen better days. this song fits that picture perfectly...it's about blaming everyone else for your being crazy, resigning yourself to it, and going on a murder spree. there's nothing happy about this song except for the way the groove makes you feel. this is one of those songs that makes you feel a little bit bad for liking it so much, but it's so catchy and fun despite its macabre subject matter that you'll go back to it again and again and again.

"The World Is Ours" by Reforma (3:37)

you may recognize the name Reforma from the reference i made during my discussion of the Madina Lake concert; Dan and Mateo from Madina Lake used to be in Reforma. it seems as though all references to this band have disappeared from the internet save the occasional Madina Lake fan desperately begging message boards for any of their music. it's too bad, because they were so good--better than Madina Lake, even. rock, dance-pop, hardcore...they mixed it up with panache, and made the crowds go wile. this song came in two versions: the recorded version titled "The World Is Ours", and the live version which they called "Sorry." i wish they had recorded "Sorry"; the lyrics are almost the same, but the singing features a lot less melody and a lot more yelling. i could never decide which version i liked better; it depended on my mood. but, either way, it was my favourite Reforma song.

"The Nurse With Amnesia" by Shades of Fiction (3:12)

Shades of Fiction just broke up about two weeks ago...and that makes me sad. they didn't say why; they just put up a one-sentence MySpace bulletin saying they were done, and left it at that. they put on such passionate shows. the lead singer, Picasso, was always stellar...and it always made me so sad that i missed his band before Shades of Fiction, Crash Poet. they played Chicago a lot, but i just never got the chance to see them. at least i saw Shades of Fiction two or three times during their lifespan. and...this song was the best of their work. Picasso's voice just soars throughout; no other word suffices to describe it.

"Simple Song" by Shooting Blanks! (3:38)

Shooting Blanks is so much fun. they call their music "drunkPunk," and this song is exactly that. it's a fun little ditty about being drunk at a party, seeing a cute girl...and being too shy to do anything about it, and resigned to being happily oblivious in a few minutes after passing out. they broke up back in early 2007, but reunited for a fantastic show at The Mutiny back in november of last year. hopefully they'll at least sporadically reunite for shows, because the Chicago scene just isn't as goofy without them.

"Sorry Illinois" by Shot Baker (2:40)

this song is a cover; Francesco Ostello performed the original. the original is a slow, lilting piece of acoustic folk. Ostello presented the idea...but Shot Baker made it awesome. they took the song and morphed the melody into a loud, fast punk rock song. the songs evoke two different moods about leaving...the original makes you feel like the speaker is just rambling on, but Shot Baker's cover makes it feel like the speaker is frustrated, restless, and needs to leave to maintain his sanity. as someone who finds it almost too easy to feel trapped or frustrated, i find Shot Baker's mood far more relatable. even if you are a little more easygoing, Shot Baker is worth listening to if you appreciate raw punk rock.

"Fallen" by Synikal (4:01)

it is strange that this band has dropped off the face of the earth...four years ago, they were everywhere. they were never one of my favourite bands in Chicago, but they played with everyone i liked, so i ended up having to watch them perform a lot. they were also one of the few bands on the scene who had a promoter...this guy Dmitri who was always talking them up, passing out flyers, posting about them on internet fora, and otherwise getting the word out about them. sometimes i wonder if that guy had any other job than promoting Synikal. as boring as most of their music was, they had two songs that were fantastic: this one, and "Someday." "Fallen" is remarkable because of its total disconnect between music and lyrics: the music is upbeat and exciting, whereas the lyrics discuss growing apart from someone. it works, though...the excitement feels like a desperate attempt to push past the frustration.

"Stars Don't Shine" by Three Words To Live By (3:20)

i know nothing about this band. i never did know anything. i never saw them, although according to Metro History they played the Metro once, almost exactly four years ago. that's all i can dig up about them now. i picked up their demo CD from somebody on my way out of another show at the Metro one day, and then lost the CD in the shuffle. i listened to it a few times later in 2004 or early in 2005, and then forgot about it again. i just rediscovered this song last week when it came up in shuffle play on iTunes, and i wonder how i let it slip under the radar for so long. it's a lot more low-key than most songs i listen to; it's not loud, fast, or hard. but, it's a great song for a sad day, or even just a pensive day. it broods about a missed opportunity, a mistimed attraction...and does it honestly, without being overblown.

total time: 70:53.

that was 74 Minutes or Less #4: The Best Chicago Music You've Never Heard. if you've got a thematic idea for a future playlist, comment or email me at superherogirl@gmail.com.

***
¹ and...if you have heard any of these tracks before you read this, please tell me. i apologize in advance for disappointing you by promising music you've never heard. however, i also congratulate you for having discovered one of these hidden gems.
² ...despite the fact that i can't drum for food, beer, or anything else. when i was singing in a band in college, the drummer in my band tried to teach me a very simple drumbeat. i failed miserably at it when i started trying with both hands--and let's not even talk about when i tried to use my feet as well.

we connect like puzzle pieces. look into my eyes, no words are needed. where have you been all my life?

2008-01-22T00:28:00.000-06:00

few people ever gave Videodrone enough respect in the 1990s. they were signed to Elementree Records and lumped into the same corner of the music world as Limp Bizkit, Staind, Orgy...specifically Korn and the bands that they [or their progeny] popularized. Videodrone always seemed to get swept under the rug. they didn't fit in...they were still just a little too rough-edged to gain much mainstream appeal, and their music wasn't easily adaptable for such tastes.

i first heard them in the summer of 1999, when they opened for Orgy. even though Orgy had the more memorable stage presence, Videodrone had the better music. i bought the album soon after the concert, and eight and a half years later it still remains in regular rotation. i always thought it was a shame that the self-titled album was the only one they released, because it was so good.

the group did release a few other recordings under the name Cradle of Thorns, but the music under that name was so different from the music that Videodrone put out that they can hardly be considered the same band. i didn't find the old Cradle of Thorns music very interesting. it had a lot of anger and a lot of edge, and featured Ty Elam's strong voice, but the band had not yet learned how to put together a compelling melody.

that all changed with Videodrone. one member of the band left so the band renamed itself...and exhibited a previously unreached level of songwriting prowess. the only song that reminded me much of Cradle of Thorns was "L.S.D. (Lucifer's Stained Dress)." to this day, that's the one track that i still skip over. i listen to everything else. it's just as angry as the Cradle of Thorns stuff, and just as emotional...but it expresses the emotions more melodically than the older songs.

this is the only song for which they ever made a video: "Ty Jonathan Down."

that's one of my favourite tracks on the album...but to hit the highest points, you need to listen to two other songs: "Faceplant" and "Alone With 20 Bucks". "Faceplant" is a song about cheating, but from the cheater's point of view. the speaker is an asshole, a commitment-phobe...but there's enough there in the song that is so human that even someone who is not slimy can relate to the fears expressed. "Alone With 20 Bucks" is most likely about someone who is out looking for a prostitute...but focuses less on the act and more on how artificial and detached it can feel to have grown up in modern society.

that's the beauty of Videodrone, and another thing that sets it apart from Cradle of Thorns: even though the topics of the songs range from horrible to just sleazy, they portray the topics in a way that any person who isn't hiding behind rose-coloured glasses can relate to. even though the album came out near the end of the decade, their self-titled album is easily one of my top records of the nineties.

Videodrone has been dead and gone since 2000, but technically Cradle of Thorns has been revived. i say technically because it lacks any original members other than Ty Elam. musically, it lies somewhere in between the old Cradle of Thorns and Videodrone. it's a little more melodic than the old stuff, and features fewer attempts to be scary for the sake of being scary.

however, the music isn't quite as interesting. they've got four songs posted on their myspace to listen to: two songs from 1990, and two songs from the new incarnation of Cradle of Thorns. as for the new songs, i'm disappointed. both of the new ones have a melodic idea that feels like it's building somewhere, but never seems to get there.

the melody in "All Over Again" is especially engaging at first listen. after about a minute and a half it gets disappointingly repetitive. the verses are so promising; the melody tantalizingly builds, and feels like it's going somewhere interesting. however, the chorus and the bridge do not feel like the places where the song is supposed to go...on the contrary, they lack the energy of the verses, and hinder the progress of the song.

in other words...Ty has a gorgeous voice, but was obviously not the only force behind Videodrone's music. it doesn't matter if it's new Cradle of Thorns or old Cradle of Thorns...i'd rather have Videodrone any day.

74 Minutes or Less #3: 1998

2008-01-17T16:33:00.000-06:00

welcome to the third installment of 74 Minutes or Less.

74 Minutes or Less is the weekly supergig playlist. the concept is simple: i pick a theme, i choose at most 74 minutes of music that fits the theme, and i discuss it here. if you, or i, or anyone else thinks the playlist is so awesome that it deserves to be compiled and burned to CD for posterity, it won't be a problem--because it's no longer than 74 minutes.

this week's theme is 1998. 1998 was the first year during which i was a music fan from beginning to end. i had my awakening in the middle of 1997...but by the time 1998 rolled around, i had a decent idea of the lay of the musical land, i had a handful of bands i liked, and was building on that through such groundbreaking sources as the internet and MTV's 120 Minutes.

[of course i mean "groundbreaking" sarcastically. i was fifteen, sixteen years old. what do you expect?]

i determined what music was from 1998 by album release date. it's the fairest way to do it...my memory is a little fuzzy about what songs are from specific years. some 1996 or 1997 songs i did not hear until that year, and some 1999 or 2000 songs i sometimes think are from 1998, because everything just lumps together in my brain as "songs that i really, really liked in high school." furthermore, even though i discovered some of these songs significantly later than 1998, it's still a testament to the wonderful state of music that year, and it was my folly that i didn't hear the song until later.

i decided to go by first album release date and not by single release date or album reprint release date. this may mean i miss out on some great songs that hit the height of their popularity in 1998, but if i do lists for other years, they have a fair shake of getting on the list for the year the album first came out. i had to draw the line somewhere, so there's the line. it's a little heartbreaking, because i have to exclude "Flagpole Sitta" by Harvey Danger. that song defined the summer of 1998 for me, but Where Have All The Merrymakers Gone? was originally released in 1997. it was re-released by a major label in 1998, but since the album in its entirety was released by Arena Rock (an independent label) in 1997, it is a 1997 song by the rules i laid down for this project.

i also don't include songs from greatest hits albums, also to avoid double-counting. seriously, though? that's just cheating. a song compiled on a Greatest Hits album in 1998 is not a part of the musical landscape of 1998 by virtue of that coincidence. it still belongs to the year during which it was first released.

with those ground rules, i present: 74 minutes or less of the best music from 1998, in order by album release date.

"Meet Virginia" by Train (Train, released February 24, 1998) (4:00)

ten years ago, this was an anthem of my teenage frustration. i scared one of my classmates with a quote from this song that was written on my backpack: "well she wants to live her life/then she thinks about her life/throws her hair back as she screams/i don't really want to live this life." he thought i was suicidal. it wasn't that...i was just frustrated, as any high school loner was. and, the plaintive screaming, almost crying, in this song was anthemic. i'm only sometimes so disillusioned anymore, and find it easier to see Virginia's beautiful side. it's not the defining song it was in high school, but i still really like listening to it.

"Airport Song" by Guster (Goldfly, released March 4, 1998) (3:13)

there's no deep meaning behind why this song is on here. the bongo drums have a good beat, the harmonies are tight, and it's catchy enough to pop into my head at the weirdest of times. it's just a fun song. they played it quite a bit on the radio over that summer when i was at nerd camp...and then i didn't hear it again for a few years afterward because they never played it at home. i missed it.

"Untitled" by Fuel (Sunburn, released March 31, 1998) (3:58)

forget the singles; this song is Fuel at its best. it's so simple: the song has very few lyrics, but they all go to the heart of being stuck in a rut and feeling frustrated. the music fits the mood perfectly...it's a simple, repetitive guitar motif that just feels like banging on that wall that you're trapped behind.

"I Got The Hook-Up" by Master P (I Got The Hook-Up (original motion picture soundtrack), released April 7, 1998) (4:14)

some songs are so hilariously awful that they stick with you. this is one of them. sure, it's one more piece of that ubiquitous pabulum that Master P's No Limit Records put out during the late nineties. but, this song made me laugh then, and it still makes me laugh ten years later. it's repetitive, it's ridiculous, and that's all part of its charm. it's the title theme to Master P's movie about a skeezy stolen cell phone schemer...and if that subject matter can't underlie a song so bad it's good, i don't know what can.

"Waking Up Beside You" by Stabbing Westward (Darkest Days, released April 7, 1998) (6:34)

i'm not prone to the emotion conveyed in this song: this song is about profoundly missing an ex, whereas my general practice is to cut an ex loose and never look back. still, this song is gorgeous...and a perfect ending to Darkest Days: a concept album about the psychological process of getting through a breakup. in this song...the speaker is done being shocked, he's done with his unrealistic expectations of moving on too soon, he's done being mad...and he is just sad now that he is finally coming to terms with the fact that it's over. it took sixteen songs to get here, and it's a worthy ending to a powerful cycle of songs.

"Open Road Song" by Eve 6 (Eve 6, released April 28, 1998) (3:17)

i hate driving, but i love driving songs. i love the feeling of being in transit...being neither here nor there. it feels like i'm progressing and improving, but since i'm moving i really don't have to do anything about my cares until i get to a destination. most driving songs just make me feel happy and carefree. this song is sort the meta-driving song: it's a great driving song about driving with a great driving song on the radio.

"Give" by Cold (Cold, released June 2, 1998) (3:50)

i didn't get into Cold until 2000 or 2001, but i remember reading a review of this album in a guitar magazine when it came out. i ignored it, but realised later that i was an idiot for ignoring it. i had cheated myself out of two years of quality time with this album. this song is the best of it: the guitars drive forcefully and the lyrics convey honest, unbridled anger. it's a perfect anthem for those bad days when you don't want to throw a pity party, but just want to slap people or break things.

"Stay Awake" by Dishwalla (And You Think You Know What Life's About, released August 11, 1998) (4:15)

everyone knows Dishwalla for "Counting Blue Cars"...a song i think is a rather boring example of nineties pop-rock. i never much liked it. that's why this song took me by surprise. it has a little bit darker feeling to it, and an almost techno-sounding use of guitar feedback.

"Dizzy" by Orgy (Candyass, released August 18, 1998) (3:21)

i always feel so bad for liking this song. the lyrics verge on the misogynistic ("you're just another pretty face in a roomful of whores/no, you don't mean much"). but, i always end up ignoring it because the song sounds so cool. Jay Gordon's voice sounds like a robot in the beginning, and as he repeats the same lyrics over and over again, he sounds more and more like a person...it's as if he realises what's going on and moves from robotic detachment to human indignation. the effect of the transition is interesting, and stays just as fascinating after many listens to the song.

"At The Stars" by Better Than Ezra (How Does Your Garden Grow?, released August 25, 1998) (3:43)

Better Than Ezra's greatest songs are all their melodramatic ballads. "Desperately Wanting" is probably their best one, but this one is not far behind. it holds it own. it's the second of three driving songs...although, unlike the other two, it doesn't have the vibe of driving to take advantage of freedom. it's a very atypical driving song. instead, this one encompasses the opposite feeling: driving because things where you should be are so bad that the road is the only place to disappear. it brings a feeling of freedom...but freedom through avoidance, and not because you're actually carefree.

"Keep Away" by Godsmack (Godsmack, released August 25, 1998) (4:50)

this song stands the test of time far worse than anything else on here. it's a bit boring, and extremely trite--a teen angst anthem that only a teenager could appreciate. but, i loved this song so much in high school that i had to put it on here. i have such a soft spot for it because i went to such great lengths to hear it. it came on a radio station that only came on in the car, not in the house. so, if my parents ever needed an errand run around 9pm when the countdown on this station was on, i would beg them to let me drive, because it was the only way i would ever be able to hear this song.

"Coma White" by Marilyn Manson (Mechanical Animals, released September 15, 1998) (5:38)

most songs by Marilyn Manson are spooky in an overdone way...they try to be scary and shocking. that's why i don't care for a lot of their music. it sounds forced. however, this one is genuinely spooky. they didn't try to tell a story about death and destruction and apocalypse...instead, they painted an honest picture of a drug addict falling further and further away from reality and human connection. no one was preaching anything. no one was glorifying anything. the song is very well-done: it taps into a real human fear of disconnection with other people. for that, it's spooky.

"Black Balloon" by Goo Goo Dolls (Dizzy Up The Girl, released September 22, 1998) (4:09)

this song is just pretty. there's very little else to say about it...the song itself is very simple, although every time i think of harmonies that could be added to it and start trying to sing them. they're nice enough and they make harmonic sense...but they don't ever work as well as the original. the sparse arrangement works; this song doesn't need glitter or flair.

"My Favourite Game" by The Cardigans (Gran Turismo, released October 1, 1998) (3:36)

this is the last of the driving songs on here; 1998 was a great year for driving songs. everyone associates The Cardigans with that awfully annoying "Lovefool" song. i couldn't stand that song; it was far too cutesie for my tastes. this song is a far better use of Nina Persson's voice. instead of sounding simpering, she sounds sultry. unlike the other driving songs on this list, the subject matter has nothing to do with driving a car...but the song is so perfectly suited for flying down the road that i can think of nothing else when i listen to it.

"Every Monday" by The Marvelous 3 (Hey Album!, released October 27, 1998) (3:23)

i had heard "Freak of the Week" back in 1998, but i didn't hear this song until several years later. i love the part in the first verse where the speaker "talked to the city that knows me by name/and all the bad things that i do." most of the song is just a really catchy breakup song...but that line does such a good job of portraying how a place can feel like home. a home city really is like a good friend...you can do all kinds of awful things there, and still feel close to it. that's how i feel whenever i'm in Chicago...i've been at my best there, i've been at my worst there, and i feel a personal connection to the place no matter what.

"The Kids Aren't Alright" by The Offspring (Americana, released November 17, 1998) (3:00)

the lyrics are a pointed description of failed teenage lives, but that's not why it's one of the best songs of 1998. the guitar riff at the beginning of the song is. it smoothly braids together the elements of the song in one interesting soundscape before the verses unpack it. many introductions try to do this, but few succeed nearly as well as this one.

"Turn the Page" by Metallica (Garage, Inc., released November 24, 1998) (6:06)

Bob Seger originally did this, but Metallica found a good thing and improved on it. i was never a fan of Bob Seger's version; i always found it to be far too languid for my tastes. Metallica put some much-needed energy into the song. the basic melody is the same as the original, but what they did with it was far more interesting. they did exactly what you need to do when making a cover: they put their own take on it. it wasn't Metallica trying to copy Bob Seger. it was Metallica taking Bob Seger's melodic idea and turning it into one of the best Metallica songs ever.

total time: 71:07.

that was 74 Minutes or Less #3: 1998. if you've got a thematic idea for a future playlist, comment or email me at superherogirl@gmail.com.

marooned.

2008-01-14T20:15:00.000-06:00

King Steve was listening to the radio this morning, and the deejays posed an interesting question.

If you were stranded on a island and only had 3 albums (that aren’t greatest hits) which 3 would you choose?

i used to think a lot about finite lists of CDs that i would take with me, because it used to be an issue. which five CDs am i going to take to this party? which twelve albums am i going to toss in my CD book to take on the car trip this weekend? what three CDs am i going to put in my CD changer to provide the soundtrack to my afternoon?

i don't think about that very much anymore. my stereo [with a three-CD changer] kicked the bucket when i mailed it from Chicago to St. Louis back in 2005. that was about the same time that i got a shiny new laptop, with sufficient hard drive space import my CDs. i downloaded iTunes and used my computer as my stereo. last summer, it got even easier to take my music around with me, since i finally bought an iPod. my iPod has more memory than my laptop does. i can take my entire music collection with me.

it's an amazing thing. i used to be out of luck if i got a hankering to listen to something later in the day, and hadn't tossed that album in my bag that morning. that was a common annoyance. now? i've got sixteen and a half gigs of music sitting in my back pocket right now, and if a song that pops into my head is anywhere in my music collection, i can turn it on instantly. in other words, i'm spoiled.

the concept of only be able to bring three CDs to a desert island is absurd. if i knew i was going to be stranded somewhere where i couldn't use my iPod, but could somehow play CDs...i'd stuff as much of my music in my bag as possible. if i didn't know i'd be stranded on a desert island...i'd just have my iPod with me, and would be sore out of luck.

but, it's an interesting gedanken experiment. what three CDs would be the most satisfying to listen to over and over again...as my entire musical universe. i'm most concerned about the music having a broad emotional range. i need things i can listen to when i'm happy, sad, angry, alienated, and any mood in betweeen.

so...these are the three albums i'd take with me if i were going to be stranded with only three albums.

ReadySexGo by The Marvelous 3

yeah, i know. the cover is kind of scary, in that it verges on pornographic.

but, it's the most fun album i have ever heard. it stands up to repeated listens like no other album. i listened to this album over and over and over again when i was working at the law library as an undergrad...it was a very good friend of mine while i barcoded books. Butch Walker is rather popular nowadays as a songwriter, but the stuff he performs solo doesn't hold a candle to the music he wrote and performed with this band.

"Get Over" and "Grant Park" are fist-pumpers that combine grandiose eighties arena rock puffery in the choruses with catchy, silly stories in the verses. "Radio Tokyo" is an interesting ballad...and the lyrics would keep me thinking on the desert island, as i still have not figured out what they mean. even the song they wrote to make fun of big, sweeping rock ballads, aptly titled "Cigarette Lighter Love Song," is a very well done rock ballad in its own right.

by all logic i should not like this album a whole lot. by all logic it would be a train wreck. the Marvelous 3 generally made catchy, intelligent power pop. this album, their last, was a middle finger to their record company who was about to drop them--they deliberately made an arena-rock album to piss them off. but, it doesn't matter if he's writing power pop, acoustic music, or arena rock--Butch Walker is a brilliant songwriter, and can write anything he wants. and...not only is the ironic, sarcastic arena rock is the best of what he is written, but it is one of the most interesting, enjoyable, and repeatable albums i've found in my life as a music fan.

Pop Smear by The Verve Pipe

thematically and musically, this is probably the weirdest compilation of songs by one band on one album, ever. to hit a few of the most interesting points...it has a lullaby ["Sleepy Town"], a folk ballad about a Waco-like cult leader ["Out Like a Lamb"], and a song that snarks on politicians by stringing together a deliciously confusing thread of puns and wordplay ["Senator Speak"].

it was a close call between this album and The Verve Pipe's self-titled album, since i love them both for such similar reasons and they both stand up to repeated listenings very well. it would also be a bummer to be marooned, never to hear the song "Generations" [my favourite song from the self-title] again. but, The Verve Pipe contains a bit more in the way of sappy, wistful love songs. they're well done, but i'd prefer an album that's a little more lyrically sarcastic in its treatment of love, in the songs that treat the subject. Pop Smear is.

Secret Samadhi by Live

conventional wisdom says that Throwing Copper is Live's best album. conventional wisdom is wrong.

sure, there are some really good songs on that album. but, there are still a few that i skip past. that's not the case with Secret Samadhi. it's hard to believe with the light adult-contemporary albums Live has been releasing for the last five or seven years, or even from the fact that the most popular single from this album was "Turn My Head": but Secret Samadhi rocked. hard. "Century," "Insomnia and the Hole in the Universe," "Freaks," "Heropsychodreamer"...that album contains so many songs that are full of energy and make me just want to push people and throw things.

the final track on the album, "Gas Hed Goes West," is one of the most interesting road songs i've heard. sonically, it has the same freedom as a classic road song. the music, the melodies...it's all perfect to blast when you're flying down the road. but then, you listen to the lyrics--and they are jaded. it's sung from the point of view of a cynical guy who is intrigued and yet almost disgusted that someone can still feel any sense of wonder in life.

so...those are the three albums i would take with me if i were stranded on a desert island, or anywhere else where i was somehow restricted to three albums to listen to for an extended period of time.

what are yours?

the supergig guide to rock and roll etiquette

2008-01-13T03:59:00.000-06:00

last weekend i saw Madina Lake, Every Avenue, Good 4 Nothing, The Shower Scene, and Evident Phase at the Creepy Crawl. the concert was good...well, at least three of the bands were. one was mediocre. one was awful.

and, the behaviour by some of the rockers and some of the fans was just inexcusable.

Madina Lake is one of my favourite bands from Chicago, and they always put on passionate shows that make the crowd go nuts. they're a little bit emo and a little bit rock. i've known them all since they were in their previous bands...Mateo and Dan used to be in Reforma, and Nathan and Matthew used to be in The Blank Theory. Madina Lake's music is significantly different from either of these old bands, but just as worth listening to. their song "Adalia" is one of the defining songs of my law school life...what can i say? law school can make a girl feel really emotionally disconnected sometimes, just like the subject of this song. furthermore, even though this band has gone further than any of their previous bands, they haven't gotten too big for their britches. they're still really nice guys off the stage, and act exactly the same way now as when they were playing much smaller venues to much smaller crowds.

Good 4 Nothing has an awful [and awfully trite] band name...but their music was amazing. they played fast pop-punk with tight harmonies and fun stage presence to match; i'm glad they made the trip over from Japan to play. The Shower Scene is a local band from Carbondale, Illinois, who plays really solid emo. they're a fairly new band, but i'm expecting really good things from them in the future.

i wasn't too crazy about Evident Phase. the instrumentalists were competent enough, but their original songs were not all that interesting, and their singer couldn't sing. they weren't the worst band i'd ever heard, but i have no desire to hear them again.

and then...there was Every Avenue. they were one of the worst live bands i have ever seen. their music stole every cliche that Fall Out Boy uses, but performed them significantly less competently. furthermore, the lead singer had a terrible attitude. so terrible, in fact, that he inspired me to create:

the supergig guide to rock and roll etiquette!

1. do not act entitled to the crowd's adoration.

merely standing on the stage does not entitle you to the crowd's love and adoration. you must earn it by playing good music.

this sounds like a simple enough principle, but Every Avenue didn't quite get it. during the show, the singer and one of the guitarists kept asking for the crowd to cheer. their noses stayed turned in the air, their body posture haughty. they carried themselves liked they owned the stage, the club, and all of the people inside the club. that may work in Michigan, where they are from, and where they doubtless know enough people on the music scene that they might be able to get away with acting like they're hot stuff. they may be big fish in the small pond there.

but, they didn't know anyone here. they needed to work for their cheers, and they didn't. they played extremely boring music, and alienated the crowd some more by acting the way they did. they complained about how dead the crowd was, and told us we could do better than that when we did manage a lackluster noise.

it was rather impressive, really, how quickly they lost the crowd. they were the fourth band to play--they played right after Good 4 Nothing and right before Madina Lake. Good 4 Nothing had the crowd jumping, moshing, and going nuts despite the fact that almost no one there knew who they were. the crowd was buzzing--enjoying the high from a really good punk band, and excited to see Madina Lake next. we didn't need much to keep the high going, and Every Avenue failed to deliver even that marginal bit of interest to keep the crowd's pulse going.

and yet, they acted entitled to everyone's love. it wouldn't have been so bad if they didn't act so full of themselves. we would have cheered at least a little if they had just gone up there, been earnest, and played what they had without giving us an attitude. but, they didn't. a rock crowd knows phonies when we see them, and Every Avenue was a bunch of phonies.

2. don't spit water on people.

splashing fresh water on the crowd is okay. it gets hot in the mosh pit. water is refreshing and cool. fresh water is clean. Madina Lake knew this. a lot of the crowd got wet during their set, but this is because Nathan kept opening fresh bottles of water and then tossing them into the crowd. this was very nice of Nathan to do.

but, the key word is fresh. the fact that water is refreshing does not mean that you should take a big swig of water and then spit it out on the crowd. this sounds like a pretty obvious rule of etiquette, but somebody didn't quite get that. and by somebody, of course i mean the lead singer of Every Avenue.

several times during the show, he spit water out on the crowd. i was in the middle, a few rows back from the stage. this means that several times during the show, i had his nasty saliva-tainted water raining down on me. this did not make me happy. i was already frustrated enough at his band because their music was boring and their attitude was haughty. the fact that the lead singer was spitting on me did not endear me any more to them.

if these two rules of etiquette went a little long for you, i'll shorten it. Rocker Etiquette For Dummies? don't be this bagga doucha:

the fans at this show are not off the hook, either. a few bad apples in the crowd necessitate a third rule in this guide to rock and roll etiquette:

3. don't chuck ceiling tiles at people.

this one should be obvious. since i had the occasion to think of such an admonition, it was clearly not obvious to a few people at the Creepy last saturday night.

during Madina Lake's set, the crowd started bopping large balloons around. this is no problem at all. balloons are light, safe, and don't have sharp edges.

the problem is that the Creepy Crawl is a major dive, and the ceiling tiles aren't securely anchored to the ceiling. when the balloons hit the ceiling tiles, sometimes the ceiling tiles would dislodge and fall to the floor. i wasn't worried about this at first. i assumed the people would have the good sense to either keep the tiles on the floor or to whisk them away to the sides of the room as soon as posslble.

but, a few morons in the crowd did not have this good sense. instead, they decided that the proper thing to do would be to chuck the ceiling tiles at other people in the crowd, as hard as possible. of course, no one threw them like frisbees so they would even have a chance of flying out to the sides and staying there. no. they threw the tiles overhand, from overhead, the tiles perpendicular to the floor...so they had the best possible chance to hit people really, really hard.

this meant i got a faceful of ceiling tile.

i was looking in one direction, trying to keep my eye on multiple ceiling tiles. suddenly, from the other direction, a ceiling tile hit me in the face: its edge smacked right down the left side of my face. it hurt! a lot! and even worse, the entire underside and edges of the tile were covered in fibreglass insulation. thus, not only was i sore--i was picking prickly little pieces of fibreglass out of my face for twenty-four hours solid.

there are certain things that are known, anticipated hazards of going to rock shows. i was expecting my ears to be ringing for a day or two. i was expecting a few bruises from being down in the pit. i could have possibly even foreseen the nasty spit-laced water showers. but, a ceiling tile? a day of picking fibreglass out of my face? that came out of nowhere.

74 Minutes or Less #2: Wesley Willis

2008-01-11T12:33:00.000-06:00

welcome to the second installment of 74 Minutes or Less.

74 Minutes or Less is the weekly supergig playlist. the concept is simple: i pick a theme, i choose at most 74 minutes of music that fits the theme, and i discuss it here. if you, or i, or anyone else thinks the playlist is so awesome that it deserves to be compiled and burned to CD for posterity, it won't be a problem--because it's no longer than 74 minutes.

this week's theme is Wesley Willis. i love Wesley Willis. a lot. he is one of my favourite musicians. his songs interest, intrigue, and amuse me. his music is bizarre: it basically consists of his incoherent, schizophrenic rantings over a keyboard. he is a true Chicago original; he was originally a street musician, until Dale Meiners discovered him and encouraged him to record and sell his songs.

almost all of his songs follow a very simple format...although not all of them do. most of them are done over a clunky Casio keyboard, although he did record a few albums with the Wesley Willis Fiasco--the Fiasco songs had full rock band instrumentation. the topics of his songs run the gamut. Wesley himself said it best when he stated, "I write songs about people getting killed. I write songs about people getting beaten up. I write songs about people getting taken to jail by the police. But, I also write songs about love and happiness."

my goal is to collect all of his music. he was prolific...he released at least fifty albums. i doubt there exists even a comprehensive list of all of the albums he released; i have been looking for years, and not yet found one. many of his albums were self-released, and he would sell them on the street in Chicago.

i don't have all of his albums yet. i have seventeen of them...a good start, although not exhaustive. so, this may not be the best 74 minutes or less of Wesley's music...but the following songs are best of what i've found in my first seven years of being a Wesley Willis fan. it was almost impossible to whittle my favourite Wesley tunes down to that length, but somehow i managed to do it.

"It's the End of the Western" (3:14)

this song makes no sense whatsoever. i have no idea why he wrote it, or what he's trying to get at. it's absurd, even for him. all the verses follow the same theme, the end of certain Old West stereotypes.

"King of Fire" (3:03)

this song makes even less sense than "It's The End of the Western." the first two verses kind of tell a story...albeit one of a dragon flying around and eventually getting mad at Wesley for no reason. that would almost make sense...as a dragon can be seen as a king of fire. the third verse, however, abandons the dragon story altogether and talks about a guy shooting at a target...or Wesley...or something. this is another song that is great specifically because it is absurd.

"The Termites Ate My House Up" (3:11)

this song proposes the most unorthodox pest extermination method ever: shooting up a house with a BB gun. not very effective, but you can have an A for effort and creativity.

"My Mother Smokes Crack Rocks" (2:28)

this song provides one of the most absurdly humourous mental images of any Wesley Willis song. he claims, "my mother smokes that crack like a cigar." even though that's not exactly what it says, the line gives me a mental image of a cigar full of crack. it's stupid and wonderful.

"Firewall the Throttle" (2:48)

this is another song i like just for the random observations he makes. driving at fifty-five miles an hour? being a safe driver? those things are not really what i think of when i think of firewalling the throttle, but at least he advocates doing it responsibly. i also like his naming of random vehicles like gasoline trucks. it's like a musical rendition of Wesley Willis' urban art.

"Rick Sims" (2:22)

Wesley Willis likes writing songs about singers and bands. usually he sings about a specific show, although sometimes he just raves in the abstract about how good a singer is. this one falls in the latter category. he passes some very weird compliments in this song. my favourite? "i love the way you cuss the crowd. this means you are telling them something. i love the way you tell those stupid sons of a bitches to fuck off. right on, brother!" in other words, he loves how insulting this singer is to his fans? brilliant!

"Medley" (2:48)

most of the songs about shows focus on one show for the entire song. this song, however, contains several mini-songs of that variety--each song covers one band's show. fittingly, he called the song "Medley." it's...self-aware Wesley.

"I'm the Daddy of Rock and Roll" (2:54)

Wesley Willis occasionally wrote songs about how awesome he was. this is the best of that subset of songs. the final verse, in which he tells the story of his rise to stardom, is quintessential Wesley Willis stream of consciousness: "this is my rock and roll music career God gave me. God gave me this rock music career to keep me busy. back in 1991, i used to hit old people with folding chairs. suddenly i moved to the north side of Chicago in the summer of 1992. it made the rock star out of me at last." it's true...Wesley Willis is the daddy of rock and roll.

"I'm Going on a World Tour" (2:52)

this is another song Wesley wrote about his music career. it captures the unabashed joy of travelling around, playing music, and making music fans happy. it's such a simple song...but Wesley's best example of really happy mood music.

"Suck A Caribou's Ass" (2:50)

another one of the Wesley Willis archetypes are what he called bestiality songs. these are his schizophrenic rantings at their most...schizophrenic. "suck a cheetah's dick" is the one most people know...but this one is better. the keyboard accompaniment is cheesily futuristic, and he mentions llamas.

"Suck a Polar Bear's Dick" (2:07)

another bestiality song, of course. it's not lyrically as amusing as "Caribou"...but he sings it through some kind of processor that makes his voice sound like a robot! that's enough to get it played over and over.

"Beat My Ass" (2:51)

this song sounds expansive and majestic. that's hard to do with a clunky old Casio keyboard, a song formula, and a request to be beaten up...but he does it.

"Birdman Kicked My Ass" (2:59)

Wesley Willis sings a lot of songs about getting into fights with superheroes. in most of them, he beats the stuffing out of the superheroes. he beat Batman, Superman, Spiderman...but was no match for Birdman. [really, the only way it would be funnier is if he had been vanquished by Aquaman.] this song has it all: second-tier superheroes, O.J. Simpson references, trespassing, pistol-whipping...all the best elements of a funny story.

"Kris Kringle Was a Car Thief" (3:24)

this is up with "The Twelve Pains of Christmas" by Bob Rivers as one of my favourite holiday tunes. [can you tell i hate the holidays?] this is a song about Santa Claus doing some unsavory things: stealing a car, cruising West Fullerton Avenue for hookers, and eventually getting caught by the cops. merry christmas!

"Cut the Mullet" (2:55)

this is one of Wesley's most popular songs for good reason. it's just Wesley Willis telling it like it is: mullets are awful, awful hairstyles, and no one has any business wearing a mullet. it's true..."nobody wants to look at you with that mullet on your head." call it fashion advice for all people.

"Wrigley Field" (2:48)

the first two verses of this song are overly optimistic--just like every Cubs fan i've ever met. they sing about how the Cubs are on their way to victory. but, unlike most Cubs fans who make these proclamations with a sense of entitlement, Wesley Willis delivers the lines with an almost childish naivete. however, where this song really shines is the last verse. he sings about a game against the Phillies, and ends it with a hearty "Holy Cow!", á la Harry Caray.

"Ricky Gott" (2:44)

one of Wesley Willis' basic song types is the criminal song: he sings about a person committing a crime and then getting convicted and sentenced for the crime. this criminal song is notable because of the crime he sings about: robbing a grain elevator of $13,000. what a strange place to sing about robbing!

"Russell Chintell" (2:23)

this is another criminal song notable for the crime that he chooses. this one is about a guy hijacking an airplane. he refers to the hijacker as "an airplane troublemaker." oh, Wesley...you do have a way with understatement.

"He's Doing Time in Jail" (3:33)

this is another criminal song. it's a song Wesley Willis did with the Fiasco. this song is the best of his several pieces about the time he was slashed with a box cutter after he got off the #4 Cottage Grove bus. not only does he go through the details of the incident in remarkable detail, but he sounds so satisfied at the end when he sings that the perpetrator is doing time in jail.

"Jadroplov" (2:51)

this is another criminal song. however, it is one of only two criminal songs of his that i know in which the accused is found not guilty. the alleged crime in this song is rather bizarre, as well: robbing a pulpit of $9,000. his descriptions of the angry preacher are priceless: at the end of the song, he states that "Reverend Henry E. Miller was mad as a mother fucker." the way he over-enunciates that phrase makes it perfect.

"Larry Nevers/Walter Budzyn" (2:42)

most of the criminal songs are fictional...or, at least, refer to crimes so ill-documented that the best google-fu will reveal no information about the underlying crime. occasionally, however, he sings about real, well-documented crimes. this song is apt, lucid social commentary: it discusses a real incident of police brutality, when Nevers and Budzyn fatally beat a suspect outside a crack house, and takes the cops to task.

"Richard Speck" (2:26)

this is another nonfictional criminal song. it covers an infamous Chicago crime: when Richard Speck broke into a house full of nurses and killed eight of them. it's amazing--Wesley Willis gets his facts straight on this one. Like "Nevers/Budzyn", he did his research, distilled the story down to its most salient points, and sang about it. call it...an absurd permutation of the folk song.

"I Broke Out Your Windshield" (2:33)

this is almost a criminal song...but a very strange variant. this is one in which Wesley claims to have committed the crime. [of course, it's fictional.] this one is about breaking into a car and eventually setting it on fire and killing someone. that's the fundamental absurdity of the song--it's about committing all sorts of heinous crimes with reckless abandon, and yet he continues to brag about the lightest offense in the litany: breaking out the windshield of the car.

"Fuck You" (1:54)

call it "Take This Job and Shove It" for the next generation. if you've ever been overworked, underpaid, and subjected to a jerk of a boss, this is the song for you. it's a straightforward, angry string of insults...and i dare anyone who wants to quit a job in a blaze of glory to play this song for their boss and then storm out of the office.

"Move Your Ass" (2:57)

call it "Hit The Road, Jack" meets "50 Ways To Leave Your Lover." it's a string of angrily delivered commands for someone obnoxious to just go away. i love when he screams, "hit the Dan Ryan Expressway, jerk!" usually when telling someone to hit the road, you don't tell them which road to hit.

"You Better Find My Pistol" (2:49)

this is probably his angriest song. sure, he has far more violent songs and far more vulgarly insulting songs, but never does he scream and growl as angrily as he does in this song. it's enough to make you jump up and start rifling through your closet and your dresser drawer for his Smith and Wesson, just so he stops yelling at you. i also appreciate all of the references to a "karate stick." it's an endearing misnomer...i'm assuming he's referring to a bō, like Donatello of the Ninja Turtles used, but using the right name would violate the entire aesthetic of the song...and of Wesley Willis' music in general.

total time: 73:26.

that was 74 Minutes or Less #2: Wesley Willis. if you've got a thematic idea for a future playlist, comment or email me at superherogirl@gmail.com.

74 Minutes or Less #1: Guitar Heroes

2008-01-04T15:18:00.000-06:00

welcome to the first installment of 74 Minutes or Less.

74 Minutes or Less is the weekly supergig playlist. the concept is simple: i pick a theme, i choose at most 74 minutes of music that fits the theme, and i discuss it here. if you, or i, or anyone else thinks the playlist is so awesome that it deserves to be compiled and burned to CD for posterity, it won't be a problem--because it's no longer than 74 minutes.

this week's theme is Guitar Heroes: music from the Guitar Hero video games. i love playing Guitar Hero. a lot. i'm not particularly good at it...i'm a solid Medium player, but my fingers still can't handle Hard very well. the premise [for anyone who has spent the last two years living under a rock] is fantastic: pretend to be a guitarist, follow the dots on the screen, push the right buttons on a guitar-shaped controller, and rock out to your favourite songs despite your lack of guitar-playing skills. instead of living vicariously through my favourite rock stars, i can suspend disbelief and pretend that my rendition of that intricate guitar solo is awesome enough to make the crowd roar. it's genius.

there are a lot of good songs on the Guitar Hero games, but here are the best of the best.

"Arterial Black" by Drist (3:15)

some of the unlockable tracks from unknown artists are amazing. i can thank Guitar Hero for exposing me to several great yet underrated bands, including Drist. this wasn't the first Drist song on a Guitar Hero game; "Decontrol" could be unlocked on Guitar Hero 1. it rocked pretty hard, but "Arterial Black" was the song that put Drist on my musical map for good. "Decontrol" had loud guitars going for it...but "Arterial Black" had the memorable melody and vocal lines to back up all that shredding.

"Avalancha" by Héroes del Silencio (3:59)

somehow i missed this song when it first came out back in 1996. i owe it to Guitar Hero 3, and to my friend Phil's insistence on playing this song a lot, that i finally discovered it eleven years later. i vaguely remember the existence of the mid-to-late 1990s "rock en español" scene; maybe i would have paid more attention to it if the snippets from it that i heard were as good as "Avalancha." i love Enrique Bunbury's voice...it has almost the same plaintively pleading tone as Cool for August's Gordon Vaughn. Gordon Vaughn has one of the best rock voices i've ever heard...so that's an amazing compliment.

"Beast and the Harlot" by Avenged Sevenfold (5:41)

unlike most Guitar Hero players i know, i had heard this song before i ever started playing Guitar Hero 2...the song was a morning mainstay of mine back in the fall of 2005. i didn't have a radio, so sometimes i'd turn on MTV2 and this song would be on. i got to the point of turning on MTV2 in the mornings specifically to hear this song while getting ready for school; rarely was i disappointed. the chorus is catchy, and the key change at the end of the song is perfect--every time i listen to the song, i spend the entire second half of the song in giddy anticipation.

"Godzilla" by Blue Öyster Cult (3:40)

imagine Webster's Dictionary had an audio version. you pick up this dictionary and look up the word "groove." the dictionary would play the main riff from this song. go ahead, give it a listen. not only does it anchor the song perfectly, but you also feel ten times cooler than you felt before you started listening to the song.

"Hangar 18" by Megadeth (5:12)

it's a song about aliens. the guitar part sounds like machine guns. in other words, this song makes testosterone supplements obsolete. it's even more macho than a song about drinking beer and scratching your balls--it doesn't need to stoop to such obvious depths. it's comfortable in its manliness, and exudes it with pride.

"I Wanna Be Sedated" by The Ramones (2:30)

this song is pure, distilled fun. even though the lyrics are a sarcastic indictment of apathy in modern society, the song still makes the sillier side of me want to forget about everything that matters, jump around, and act like a frivolous goofball. plus, whenever i hear it, i remember when my littlest brother was eight or ten years old, running around the house singing the "bam bam bam-bam" part. that was just funny.

"Minus Celsius" by Backyard Babies (3:35)

i was over the moon when i found out they were putting this song on Guitar Hero 3. i first heard this song back in 2004 on radio.wazee, the internet radio station that kept me sane through my mind-numbingly boring job barcoding books in a law library. the lyrics are trite, but the music makes up for it. it's the kind of rock that begs you to scream along while you are flying down the highway at eighty miles an hour. i should know...my friend Megan and i have done exactly that many times. the song [and, really, anything on their album Tinnitus] is enough to convince me that grunge isn't dead...it just moved to Sweden, crawled under the bleachers with arena rock, and had a sleazy bastard son.

"Monkey Wrench" by Foo Fighters (3:54)

this is my favourite Foo Fighters song, and has been since high school. it's a quintessentially 1990s masterpiece of angst. it makes me want to push people and throw things...in fact, i'm pretty sure it's the song that made me start referring to particularly aggressive songs as "push people and throw things music." also, anyone who can scream their way through that bridge section without taking a breath must have the most miraculous lung capacity.

"One" by Metallica (7:40)

i didn't appreciate Metallica very much until i was older: maybe age 20 or 21. still, even when i was a teenager, i knew this song was something special. it's still my favourite song of theirs. it impeccably captures the anger and futility of being alive but not actually being able to live...listening to the song, you feel trapped in the impenetrable fabric of the steadily pounding guitars. it's not guitar virtuosity for its own sake: it's guitar virtuosity that sets a difficult, powerful, and captivating mood.

"Paint It Black" by The Rolling Stones (3:45)

i've loved this song since i was in kindergarten, when i listened to nothing but the Oldies station. if it came on during the day, it was fine. i could appreciate it for the great song i knew even then that it was. but, at night, the song was a different animal. i'd keep the Oldies station on all night, and sometimes it would come on in the wee hours. the song scared me. i would look at the clock radio, so old that the digits were flipping cards and not digital lights. it would read three, four, five in the morning. i would hide under the covers, shaking in fear and covering my ears until the song was over. only then could i catch my breath, listen to the next song on the radio, and fall back asleep.

"Story of My Life" by Social Distortion (4:44)

i can never decide which Social D song is my favourite: this one or "Ball and Chain." i waver back and forth. both of them are brilliant showcases of Mike Ness's voice, which finds a happy medium between gravelly and melodic. his is one of the few voices i know that manages to be both without sacrificing either quality. both songs also lyrically strike a chord with me as i grow older and realise that my youth is less what is happening to me than it is years upon which i'm left to reminisce. "Ball and Chain" isn't on any of the Guitar Hero games, so i wasn't forced to make a decision about which song i like better.

"The Way It Ends" by Prototype (5:22)

most songs that impress me for their beauty impress me because of the vocal lines. this is unsurprising--i'm not a guitarist. i'm a singer. however, this one has a gorgeous guitar part. the singing isn't terrible...i could take it or leave it. the guitar , however, is brilliant. it is fast and heavy without losing its continuously ebbing and flowing melodic line. this is what melodic heavy metal guitar should aspire to. the music is just as suited for a daydream as it is for a mosh pit.

"Through The Fire and Flames" by DragonForce (7:21)

the merest thought of this song is enough to give me post-traumatic carpal tunnel syndrome--i have only ever attempted the song on Medium, and at that level it's still a virtually insurmountable screenful of dots. this unfortunate effect aside, it's a fantastic song. it sounds like really good 1980s speed metal--except that it's not from the eighties. the band has only existed since 1999, and this song came out in 2006. again dusting off that audio version of Webster's Dictionary, this song would play if you looked up the word "victory." if i ever win some kind of award and have to stand on a podium to accept it, this is the song i want playing.

"Thunderhorse" by Dethklok (2:32)

Metalocalypse is an amusing show. it's a hilarious take on heavy metal stereotypes. but, the people who make it clearly kid because they love; why else would the original music for the show be so good? this song is the aural equivalent of Nathan Explosion with a Viking helmet and a battle axe...and therefore perfectly suited to the section of the cartoon that it originally accompained.

"War Pigs" by Black Sabbath (7:55)

no song on any of the incarnations of Guitar Hero is more fun to play than this one. the outro riff [from 6:34 through the end] is probably my favourite guitar part ever. the song is timeless...it's hard to believe that it's almost forty years old. the music is strong and heavy even by today's standards, and the lyrics are [sadly] as topical as ever.

total time: 71:05.

[if any of you who happen to read this are Guitar Hero completists, i know--there's nothing on this list from Guitar Hero Rocks the 80s. there's a reason for that: the game sucks. i'm not a fan of most eighties music anyway, and it's like they didn't even try to find the good stuff for that game. they neither went for the fun, popular party songs...nor any underappreciated diamonds in the rough. it was thrown together, and it was terrible.]

that was 74 Minutes or Less #1: Guitar Heroes. if you've got a thematic idea for a future playlist, comment or email me at superherogirl@gmail.com.

the sinners that surround you

2008-01-03T21:06:00.001-06:00

my usual idea of a night out to take in some music involves a cramped bar, or maybe a small theatre if the band can actually draw eight hundred or a thousand people to the performance. the concert attire ranges from ripped jeans and ratty t-shirts at the most casual to motorcycle boots, studded gauntlets, and heavy black makeup at the most formal. the music invariably features guitars, drums, and lyrics about the most disappointing moments life has to offer. the dancing includes little other than headbanging, moshing, and jumping around.

in other words, i don't club.

sure, i have been to clubs a few times. i went out clubbing most weekends during the ill-fated summer of 2002 when i lived in DC. however, i didn't go because the club was where i really wanted to be. i went because i didn't want to be in my room with my obnoxious seventeen-year-old roommate and her squeaking seventeen-year-old friends. i wanted to get out of the building, and this club was one of the few places with late-night entertainment for people under twenty-one. the music was terrible. the people stayed in their little cliques. every week was the same: i went, paid the cover charge, tried to dance, tried to meet people, failed, felt dejected, and caught the last train back to tenleytown.

if i had been older, the entire city would have been my oyster, and i could have gone anywhere i wanted. at age nineteen, i had an unsavory buffet of post-9pm entertainment choices: the 18+ club, an even worse 18+ club, or a late-night run to the 7-11. usually the 18+ club won out...although once i did opt for a cool, refreshing slurpee.

since that summer, i can count on one hand the number of times i have been to a club. the few times i have been, i have felt out of place. i'm not crazy about dance music. i'm a terrible dancer. i look terrible in shiny club clothes, and i have far too much self-respect to pretend otherwise. add to that the obnoxious crowds that clubs often draw, the exorbitant cover charges and drink prices, and the wider range of late-night entertainment options available to me at the age of twenty-five...i lack any real reason to go clubbing.

setting the stage

last sunday, i had reason to enter a club again. they had just built a new addition to the Ameristar Casino out in St. Charles: Home Nightclub. the club was having a five night grand opening extravaganza. four of the five nights involved slates of DJs who may have been well-known in club circles, but i had never heard of them. each of those four nights also featured a celebrity host. that's a phenomenon that i find to be completely absurd: i would be less likely to want to go to a club if the best thing they could offer me was the chance to party in the same room as Fez from That Seventies Show. then again, as became painfully clear the longer i was in that club, my brain does not work the same way as that of your average clubgoer.

the other of those five nights of grand openings involved a DJ whose music i had heard: Tiësto. he is most familiar, at least in circles i hang around, for doing one of the remixes of the Pirates of the Caribbean theme, although he also played the opening ceremony of the 2004 Olympics in Athens. he is widely regarded as one of the best trance DJs in the world--a claim i am well-prepared to agree with, since people who do not normally listen to dance music (myself, my friend Megan who told me about him, Megan's mother, Megan's aunt...) all enjoy listening to his music. Tiësto's album Elements of Life has been a regular soundtrack to mine and Megan's myriad car rides over the last few months. his song "In the Dark" has rivalled "Calling You" by Blue October as my Quintessential Sappy Song of the Semester.

as neither Megan nor i are regular clubgoers, getting ready for this performance involved jumping through a lot more hoops than i normally bother with. we went out shopping the Friday before the show to get new shirts and to get makeup, and met an hour before we left to finish getting ready and make sure that our outfits worked. our outfits may have been a lot more goth-like than club-like...but getting ready for the show was a lot of fun.

my concert attire:

Megan's concert attire:

getting in

the wait to get into the show began to remind me all over again of the absurdity of the clubgoing experience. large signs were posted outside the entry area: DRESS CODE ENFORCED. these seemed particularly absurd given that the nightclub was in a casino, and the entryway was mere feet from all those shabbily-dressed suburbanites thronging to spend the evening with their favourite one-armed bandits. it also became obvious that the accepted dress was completely different for men than it was for girls. i didn't see anyone denied admission for what they wore, but whereas skimpy dresses, clingy tops, and stiletto heels were de rigeur for the girls...the boys around them all showed up in wrinkled button-down shirts and jeans.

the club staff was a confusing institution. the manager must have been under the impression that the more hoops people had to jump through to enter the club, the more prestigious it felt to be there. there were two club staff in black suits at the entry, checking tickets, ID cards, and dress. fifteen minutes later, three more club staffers [two more men in black suits and a woman in a gaudy gold dress and stilettos] checked everyone in line. they checked IDs again, scanned the tickets, and stamped everyone's hands. when they finally opened the club, ten to fifteen minutes after the advertised 9pm door time, two more besuited men were checking hand stamps. around the corner and ten feet down, yet another club staffer in a suit was checking hand stamps again. around another corner, there were more staffers standing guard at the entry of the anteroom...but, strangely enough, not checking any more entry credentials. we were finally in.

that entry procedure didn't make me feel prestigious. i just felt like they were jerking me around.

the opening act

Tiësto didn't take the stage until sometime after 11pm. there was a DJ, Michael Fuller, who spun before him:

he wasn't bad. he had some fun songs in his mix...it was music i would have been perfectly happy to listen to at a dance party, at the rare times that i feel like going to a dance party. to be fair, i really don't know what is supposed to be the difference between "good," "bad," and "middling" dance music. either it makes me dance, or it doesn't. either i'm interested enough in it to care about listening to it outside of a dance bar or a house party, or i'm not that interested in it. Michael Fuller's music was definitely danceable, but nothing that i'm dying to buy or even download.

clubwear

the fun part of his set was looking around at what everyone was wearing. the club wasn't very full until 10:30 or so, and the dance floor was so empty until then that people could walk across it easily, without fighting through the crowds. megan and i were on the dance floor the whole time, up near the DJ booth. we wanted to be up front for Tiësto, and we didn't actually have a place we could sit down and drink. some of the tables were cordoned off with velvet ropes, and all of them were guarded fiercely by club staff. every so often a group would swagger into the club like they owned the place and say a few words to whoever was guarding a table. the rope would magically open, and women in tiny skirts would start bringing sickeningly overpriced bottles of alcohol to the table. the people at the tables almost never deigned to look at the peanut gallery strewn across the floor, those poor souls who had to belly up to the bar to get drinks, those poor souls who didn't have pompous club staff to provide every little thing they whined for.

but Megan and i in the peanut gallery? we were looking at them. i'm still not sure what was worse: the attitudes of the people with table reservations and bottle service or some of the outfits the women were wearing. the stiletto heels that almost every woman there was wearing were bad enough: they were impractical for walking, and downright dangerous once Tiësto took the booth--and these women in stilettos deigned to get on the floor, push through the crowd, jump to the music, and land mercilessly upon the toes of anyone near them. but, the outfits? they left me scratching my head. many of the people there had garden-variety Bad Clubwear: too-tight dresses, too-shiny tops, and the like. a few, however, were so bad that they deserved dishonourable mention.

there was a woman wearing a short purple dress made out of shiny spandex--the kind used in biker. there were two women wearing the exact same baggy baby-doll dress. despite the fact that both of these women were very skinny, they both had breasts--so, of course, the baby-doll dress made them look fifty pounds heavier than they actually were. there was another girl who looked like Snow White Gone Wrong. her white blouse and Snow White Blue skirt hung on her frame like pillowcases; apparently no one had told her that tent-like clothing does not make a big girl look better. another girl wore a fedora, a pinstriped shirt, and pinstriped pants--which wouldn't have been so heinous if it weren't so obvious that she was trying to ape a late-model Britney Spears.

one woman who kept passing back and forth was wearing the biggest fashion mistake of the night: a gold lamé giraffe-print dress that was so short and tight that whenever she took a step, she was showing off her girlie bits. that was more of her than anyone there wanted to see, except for possibly whichever snotty boy at her table she may have happened to be sleeping with. yuck.

unsportsmanlike conduct

Tiësto finally took the stage close to 11:30. by then, the dance floor had gotten extremely crowded: it was no longer possible to cross it, and people were trying to push their way as far forward as they possibly could. i'm used to this pushing around and jockeying for position from all the rock shows i go to...although, usually, it has started by the time the opener is on stage.

another difference between the rock crowd and the club crowd is that the rock crowd is far nicer about getting as close to the front as possible. most rock fans will push people forward to get close, but they will not shove their way in front of others in order to get closer. the people at rock shows get packed more and more tightly as the show goes on. however, if you start in the second row, you're in the second row for the rest of the show.

clubgoers are different. specifically, many of them are douchebags with no respect for the hours that people on the floor had spent waiting so they could be near the booth when Tiësto began to spin. they sauntered up from their little tables after he took the stage and started shoving their way through the crowd. they shoved people left, they shoved people right, they didn't care who was standing where--as long as they could force their way as far forward as they could.

Megan and i dealt with this two completely different ways. i'm afraid to cause any sort of physical altercation--i was repeatedly beaten up as a kid, and never acquired fighting skills. i was afraid that if i elbowed the wrong person, they'd try socking me in the face, and i'd be hopeless in defending myself. therefore, i lost a lot of ground. Megan, on the other hand...she was perfectly content with her "don't mess with me" attitude. if one of those disrespectful crowd members tried to elbow her, she'd elbow them right back until they realised that they were not getting through the crowd, at least not there. it didn't matter who was trying to mess with her...be it the schmoozer who claimed he was in with every musician from Tiësto to Marilyn Manson, the photographer who thought that his big shiny camera and his business card were reason enough to be entitled to a good spot, or the random little drunk guy who acted as if he was going to beat Megan up. she wasn't moving. she wasn't ceding her position. i wish i had the moxie to have stood my ground like that...but i was just so bamboozled by the discourteous clubgoers, and so conscious of my inability to fight if it did actually come to that.

the music

those people's disrespect for all of us who were on the floor first...for all of us who were treating this as a live music event as opposed to an excuse for posturing and acting better that everyone else detracted significantly from my ability to enjoy the show. i was spending a lot more time worrying about getting shoved, elbowed, jumped on, and tugged at than i was actually dancing to and appreciating the music. Tiësto plays trance, and that's a good description of what i wanted to do during his set. i wanted to listen to the music, dance to it, and just let my mind wander wherever the music guided it.

Tiësto was definitely doing his part to make the show a lot of fun.

although he didn't do "In The Dark" [his set focused a lot more on the music on his latest album, In Search of Sunrise 6], the music never once faltered in the three hours he was up there. it was always fun, danceable, interesting, and seamless. the tempi changed, the volume changed...but it's got to be part of the skill of a master DJ, being adept enough at changing the music that you're never quite sure if it's a song change or a layering of beats within one piece until it has completely run its course. it felt less like a set of songs as it did one three-hour soundscape that was really good for dancing and daydreaming.

the end

after Tiësto finished spinning, they let Michael Fuller on for another song or two. it was very weird...Megan and i hung around to see if there was going to be another few sets; we hoped against hope that Fuller would spin for a while, and then Tiësto would return. that hope was dashed after just a couple songs, when they started dismantling the equipment in the DJ booth and playing absolutely awful music over the speakers. i didn't recognize what it was, but i think it was from the eighties. it wasn't good dance music, it wasn't good background music...it was someone's cruel, unpolished idea of "everyone get out of the club, now!" music. that surprised me...after all of Home Nightclub's attempts to seem so polished and cooler-than-thou, this just shattered the image they were trying to create. no amount of bouncers in suits could lead me to ignore such cheesy exit music.

so, in short...getting ready for the concert was a blast. Tiësto's music was superb. Michael Fuller wasn't bad. but, the venue was a farce, and the crowd was obnoxious. there's a reason i stick to rock shows and not clubs to provide me with my musical entertainment, and this show did nothing to make me any more of a clubber than i was before coming in. give me my smoky little bars and my black-clad headbangers any day.

presenting...the Bestickered Concrete Pylon of Excellence!

2008-01-01T18:19:00.000-06:00

[this was originally published in my other blog on november 30, 2007.]

the delmar loop is a strange place in parts. the main drag is all student entertainment district: shiny bars, shiny restaurants, and overpriced shops. the western fringe is where the loop bleeds into suburbia, that stretch of university city where all the streets are named after prestigious universities. the eastern fringe is where student apartments and hangouts start to mingle with the vacant lots, vandalism, and various urban decay so common a few blocks north and east of the loop.

i was walking past one of these eastern corners toward my apartment a few days ago, when i saw a very strange promotional bumper sticker affixed on a squat, useless concrete pylon.

i've heard of some very strange and unflattering stage names that rappers go by. i mean, a guy even went by "old dirty bastard." i've heard names that are dubious, but never enough to truly wonder what possessed them to choose a name. i've always chalked it up to macho posturing, or at least the desire to sound as hip as possible.

but...da baby daddy? sure, being a "baby daddy" implies some level of sexual prowess...if by "prowess" we mean fertility and promiscuity, with a side of disrespect for any and all women he may have impregnated. "baby daddy" implies deadbeat. "baby daddy" implies nondescript, replaceable...as if it could have been any sneaky, uncaring man in the world who could have impregnated the mother and then skipped away merrily into the sunset, never to return again. a baby daddy is only called that because he's too immature or disrespectful to perform the responsibilities of a father.

call me a feminazi, call me out of touch with the hip-hop world of today, but with all that baggage attached to the term i really can't see why anyone in any culture would want their public moniker or image to be that of "baby daddy." there's nothing cool, hip, with-it, or bad-ass about that image.

i should have left well enough alone. i should have looked at the bumpersticker, boggled for a minute or two about who would actually want to be known as "da baby daddy," and moved along with my life. however, my car-crash curiosity got the best of me, and i decided to pull up kingwingo.com, the website for this aspiring local rapper.

a gaudy picture greeted me, accompanied by a sample of his song "money talks." there's nothing special about the music: it's garden-variety gritty rap over a poorly-produced beat. however, the lyrics are what really grabbed me. as you'd expect from "da baby daddy," however, they didn't grab me in a good way.¹ in his artist bio he claims that "[h]is lyrics have a conjunction of humor and seriousness with a flow that is different and versatile on all his recordings."

his claims of humour come closer than anything else...please, dear readers. tell me if you could keep a straight face if you open up a website and these are the first words coming out of your speakers:

"yeah, this is baby daddy!
a.k.a. king wing!
and i'm gonna tell you, you need to listen to your money sometimes.
money can buy you anything or anybody.
money lets you know if you can afford that shit or not!
you know what i'm sayin'?"

i sure couldn't keep a straight face....and then the lyrics continued on a similarly absurd yet hackneyed vein, with king wing da baby daddy ranting about how "money told me i could buy that lexus/house on the hill way down in texas." this song made two things extremely clear:

money never said anything to da baby daddy that he couldn't have just told himself.
there is nothing new or clever you can say if you're trying to brag about your money, so don't even try it.

i wondered if these lyrics were a fluke, or if our hero had the capacity to come up with equally insightful lyrics in his other songs. luckily, finding the answer was easy. elsewhere on his website, he features samples of more of his music. i soon found his musings about other topics to be just as interesting and incisive as his musings about money. observe:

from the song "drink wit me": "smoke wit me/drink wit me, smoke wit me/drink wit me, smoke with me/drink, smoke, drink, smoke, drink wit me/drink with me, burn somethin' that stink with me"

hey, at least he eventually found a metaphor for smoking.

from the song "shit starter": "if you don't start no shit/there won't be no shit"

thank you, captain obvious.

also from the song "shit starter": "when you see me cutting rocks on the table/or trying to steal cable/what you talking 'bout/you iced up a jury/where you from/you can't wear that shit in missouri"

there you go. doing coke and stealing cable makes you so cool. just keep telling yourself that. that makes you about as cool as calling yourself "da baby daddy," but you've already done that. and, furthermore, is he really singing about intimidating a court by wearing bling-bling?

from the song "cars/tha clothes": "cars or the clothes/rims or the hoes/what could it be/to make 'em hate on me yeah/what's wrong with you, boo boo/you mad 'cause i wear fubu?/mad because these hoes hang around me like flies on doo doo?"

that's one way to say that women like you, although i doubt the quality of these women if they stay anywhere near you after an analogy like that.

so, congratulations mr. baby daddy. not only do you have the worst rapper name ever, but you also have some of the cheesiest song lyrics in existence. i hereby award you the Bestickered Concrete Pylon of Excellence. i'm too lazy to bring it to you, though, so you'll have to retrieve the trophy yourself. it's sitting in a parking lot at the corner of delmar and eastgate.

***
¹ i'm trying to resist making the obvious joke about da baby daddy's lyrics grabbing me inappropriately.

there's nowhere to go after the show...but that's alright.

2007-12-31T14:01:00.000-06:00

this past thursday night, i had the chance to do something i had never done before: see The Verve Pipe in concert. they were my favourite band through high school, and they were the band who got me into music back in the summer of 1997. i still listen to them a lot, and count two of their albums [The Verve Pipe and Pop Smear] among my all-time favourites. but, even though i've been a fan of the band for over a decade, i had never been able to see them live.

i finally saw them, and it got my mind racing.

the scene

usually "bar with a stage" is my way of describing the best concert venues ever: the most intimate places. a "bar with a stage" is a cramped little bar with a tiny stage in the corner around which the band's faithful must crowd. everyone is close together, and everyone feeds off of the energy of everyone else.

the Voodoo Lounge in Maryland Heights is a bar with a stage, alright. but the Voodoo Lounge is not a concert venue. instead, it takes the concept to its opposite, most impersonal extreme. it's a bar with a stage situated about twelve feet in the air: over the bar and up a wall.

the seating area is expansive. most of the people are sitting at tables; the place is more often used as a restaurant than as a concert venue. what would be the standing area, the floor between the bar and the booths, was full of chairs, the same kinds of chairs a convention centre drags out to seat large crowds at faceless business conferences.

the place was empty. as the concert started very few of the pit seats were taken, and less than half of the tables were occupied. the room abounded with a feeling emptiness: most of the space that could hold people was empty, and even if the crowd area were full there would have been all that empty open air overhead, between the fans and the band.

at least the Voodoo Lounge had the pre-show music down pat. the pre-show music over the PA system was mostly 1990s music: Stone Temple Pilots, mid-career 311, old Audioslave.

the band

The Verve Pipe is a quintessentially 1990s band. to me, they represent the decade. their song "The Freshmen" was my gateway into nineties rock, their rove of little-known music is the kaleidoscope of what great and diverse rock music was made to be, and the too-brief trajectory of their fame is a testament to the narrow scope and the attention deficit disorder of nineties radio, music television, and tastemakers.

i have never shaken the feeling that if people gave the songs that didn't sound like "the freshmen" a chance that The Verve Pipe could have been one of the best-loved band in america. they went in many musical directions on their first four albums [especially on their second and fourth], and did it all well. from fast and bitter ["Bullies on Vacation," "Television," "I've Suffered a Head Injury"] to deep and introspective ["She Has Faces," "The River," "Acting as Your Slave"] to downright youthful ["Generations," "Real," "Even the Score"]--the band never got hopelessly tied to any mood or style, and could do all of them well. the lyrics, as well, were masterful: they were intelligent, and they painted honest emotional pictures.

a lingering disappointment

i'm still very bitter about their fifth album, Underneath, and have been since it came out in 2001. that was the last real studio album the band put out--and it was terrible. it symbolized capitulation. it was pop of the worst kind. instead of testing the stylistic and emotional expanses of the form as the band did in Pop Smear and The Verve Pipe, it contained an attempt to release an album full of radio-friendly "adult alternative" hits. just as any attempt to crank out an album full of palatable music fails...this album failed. sure, the band chanced upon a huge adult radio hit with "The Freshmen," but it was just that: chance. the song was a heart-wrenching portrait of something very painful. it had genuine emotion. it wasn't written way back in 1992 to please millions of listeners: it was the product of some inspiration. it just happened to strike a chord with a lot of people a few years later.

Underneath abandoned the interest, the excitement, and the sense of genre-busting adventure that made the self-titled album so brilliant. on the other hand, it also failed to produce the radio hit that the entire album was so clearly a plea for. "Never Let You Down" got a few spins and "Colorful" was in the movie Rock Star, but nothing ever even skirted the commercial success of "The Freshmen." the songs didn't contain the emotional power of the band's previous work. many of the songs dripped with sap. they felt like love songs for the sake of love songs, as opposed to love songs because the person who wrote it was really that moved by love. and...the album disappeared. as dumb as a lot of the music-consuming public may be, people instinctively know the difference between a truly sentimental song and a song that is sappy only because someone behind it thought it would play well in the top 40.

maybe that album just took me by surprise. i thought that if they were ever going to release That Pandering Album, it would come out right after Villains. it didn't. after Villains came The Verve Pipe--an album just as varied, edgy, and devil-may-care as Pop Smear, the genre-spanning indie release from 1993. the self-titled album was a masterpiece, a collection that, if i didn't know better, i could have sworn had been made by several bands that specified in several kinds of music. i thought the band didn't care about convention. i thought they'd keep ignoring the whims of the music brass and keep making the diverse music they had been making for nigh on ten years by then.

i don't know what happened, or why. maybe i neglected to take into account the feelings of immortality that fame brings and the feelings of desperation that can set in as fame fades. The Verve Pipe didn't produce any real radio hits. "Hero" got played a few times because it was the first single, but it never really caught on. the album wasn't very accessible to radio. maybe someone thought that they needed to recapture that radio success, and do everything that was within their power to try. i don't know...this is all conjecture from a fan who holds the bands she loves to a far higher standard than the bands she does not love, because she knows what they can do.

that's enough about that album: in short, Underneath disappointed me, and i am still bitter. i'd be less bitter if they had just charged on and continued to make studio albums after Underneath. it would have softened the sting, or made me forget it altogether, if they had released another rich, interesting studio album at some point between 2001 and now. but, they haven't. they haven't released any true new album since then.

the show

i finally have something to salve my frustrations of the last six years. The Verve Pipe is mostly broken up: they get together every december and play some shows around the midwest, and that's it. this year i finally managed to make a show on that tour: my first Verve Pipe concert ever. and...it was wonderful. the band sounded great, at least as good as on any studio track they ever put out. the songs had more than enough energy to reach from their unfortunate perch above the bar all the way out to every member of the crowd. Brian Vander Ark's voice had not aged a bit. Doug Corella, the keyboard player, had a rig perfectly suited to the brilliant jack-of-all-trades that he is: a keyboard, a large cymbal on each side of the keyboard, and a drumset off to the side of the keyboard.

they played these songs:

Photograph
Cup of Tea
Hero
Spoonful of Sugar

at first i wasn't sure about having a harmonica solo in this song, but strangely enough...it worked.

I Want All of You
Gotta Move On
Villains
Drive You Mild
Colorful
a sarcastic medley of covers

most of the snippets i didn't recognize. there was a snippet of "Hotel California" in the middle. also...the final snippet was hilarious: Brian Vander Ark as Carol Channing trying to sing John Mayer's "Your Body Is A Wonderland." i wish i had gotten a video or audio clip of that, because only in hearing it can you really appreciate how funny that was.

Never Let You Down
The Freshmen

after "Never Let You Down" i jotted down in my notebook that i would give the band a cookie if they played any songs from I've Suffered a Head Injury. they then played "The Freshmen": a song which was retooled and put on Villains--but was originally on Suffered. i remarked that they could have a cookie on a technicality--but gratefully, they played the song Villains-style, with electric guitars and a rich full-band arrangement.

Happiness Is
Take the Long Way Home

in the middle of this song, Brian turned his back to the crowd and stood in front of Doug's rig. he had a tambourine in one hand and a drumstick in the other. with the drumstick, he was whaling on Doug's cymbals. it was fabulous.

encore: Local Boys

i had a few little complaints. the setlist was very heavy on songs from Villains and Underneath. i was hoping for more songs from the other three albums, but the only songs from other albums were "spoonful of sugar" and "hero." on some of the songs, especially the stuff from Villains, Brian was taking some weird liberties with the rhythms. some of them worked, but most of them didn't. [then again, i'm a traditionalist: i'm almost never a fan of singers adding weird melismas and syncopation to their songs, even if the songs are their own.]

the show did teach me a valuable lesson: not every song from Underneath was a clunker. two of the songs on there can, at least live, hold their own with anything else The Verve Pipe has ever performed. "Gotta Move On" was haunting; the lead guitar alone was enough to rip my heart right out of my chest. i could just feel the heartbreak, and there was nothing boring or merely palatable about that song. it was real. the encore, "Local Boys," just rocked. it had a great beat and energy to it...and the lyrics made the song feel like a less-jaded, more mature sequel to "Supergig" from the self-titled album. i'm still no fan of Underneath, but the concert did make me appreciate those two songs a lot.

i got some pictures of the set...although most of them are not very good. the stage lighting was terrible for anyone who wanted to get pictures of anyone who wasn't right up front, since there was almost no light anywhere else. i couldn't get near enough to the stage for the flash to make much of a difference, since the stage was twelve feet in the air. so, i got some almost-clear pictures of Brian and of Griff the Harmonica Solo Guy, but no one else came out very clear in any of them. this made me sad: i wanted good stage pictures of Brian Vander Ark, Donny Brown, and Doug Corella, the three band members remaining from when i was in high school. Brian was right up front, but Donny was back on drums and Doug was back on percussion. they never looked like anything but shadows in any of my shots.

the people

the band was mostly, although not completely, intact from the old days. as i said, three members remained from the early nineties: Brian, Donny, and Doug. Brian and Donny have been in the band since its inception in 1992 and have co-written and played songs on every album. they have been the driving creative forces behind the band, and it would just not be The Verve Pipe anymore if either of them left the band. Doug was not in the band for I've Suffered a Head Injury, but joined for Pop Smear in 1993 and has been in the band ever since. he has played keyboard, percussion, drums...he's the bands brilliant multi-instrumentalist jack of all trades.

the rest of the band is new. it was very weird seeing someone other than Brad Vander Ark playing bass and someone other than A.J. Dunning playing lead guitar. they were played instead by two guys i did not recognize. i didn't know their names. they were never introduced during the show, and i can't even seem to find them on the band's website or in the message boards. i couldn't complain at all about their instrumental proficiency--the songs sounded just like the songs i knew and loved. i was just a little unsettled by not recognizing all of the faces on stage, the same way i always am when a band i have loved for a very long time has a personnel change.

and then, there was Griff, the harmonica guy. that was weird. i was a little confused seeing a harmonica player up there because The Verve Pipe never had harmonicas in any of their songs on the studio albums. even though some of the solos dragged on far longer than they needed to, they were well-done...there were harmonica parts in four or five of the songs, and each worked nicely with the original idea of the song and what the rest of the band was playing.

concert as context for self-overanalysis

the harmonica player brought me my first realisation of the stark difference between my outlook in seeing The Verve Pipe at age twenty-five compared to what it would have been when i was in high school. during one of the songs about midway through the show, i got up for a drink. i picked it up from the bar, turned back toward my seat, and then saw him near the door talking to someone. i strolled over there and told him he did a good job with the "Spoonful of Sugar" solo.

he cut me off as i was finishing, and asked me what my shirt said. i told him--i was wearing my "feelings are boring. kissing is awesome." shirt. he then leaned in to give me a kiss. i guess i was asking for it by wearing that shirt, so i let him give me a chaste peck, and then i quickly shuffled back to my table to take in the rest of the concert in peace.

i then got to thinking: in itself, the event was totally forgettable. i wore a snarky shirt, someone reacted to it in the expected way, and then i went along with my life. but, my high school self would not have reacted that way. if some guy who had been on stage with the verve pipe had tried to kiss me when i was in high school, even if he had not been a full-fledged or original band member, i would have been over the moon. it would have been a defining moment for me. i would have written endlessly about it in my notebooks. there would have been copious amounts of bad teenage poetry about the event. i would have written excitedly about the event to my pen pal and to all the TVP-loving teenagers i talked to online every night. everyone i knew would have been very sick of my ranting and raving.

but, it happened at age twenty-five and not age fourteen or sixteen. it was only remarkable for pointing out how i have changed over the last ten years. i've become far more jaded and realistic about certain events. if there is no real meaning behind them, i am willing to admit that...whereas, when i was fourteen, the slightest eye contact, hug, or anything else from a person in a band was enough to make me read everything into it.

the aftermath

after the concert came one of the most surreal moments of my entire life. most of the band went over by the merch booth to meet fans and sign autographs. even when i was a teenager, i was never prone to being starstruck in front of rockers. there's a difference between being starstruck and the actual problem of blowing incidents out of proportion that i had when i was a teenager. when i was at the concert venue, i was fine: i could meet musicians i loved, carry on intelligent conversations with them, and only later become too giddy about the event to function. i would later run the encounter through my head so many times that it became an almost fictionalized paragon of the actual event--but during the encounter, i was level-headed. i wasn't a gibbering idiot.

thursday night after the concert, i finally fell victim to being starstruck. i met both Brian and Donny after the show, and all i could think of to say was that i had been a fan for over ten years, that it was my first show, and that their music got me through so much in high school. i was nervous, i was shaking, and i kept repeating myself. i did have the presence of mind to ask if they'd be in pictures with me...but, as you can see from the ear-to-ear grin on my face, i was completely overwhelmed with glee from finally meeting members of The Verve Pipe:

me and Brian:

Brian, me, and Donny:

Brian and Donny were nice...i just wish i could have thought of something intelligent to say to them after the show.

the end

so, i have spent most of this time dwelling upon the negative, the absurd, and my bizarre reactions to finally seeing my favourite band from my teenage years many years later. i didn't mean to do that, because it downplays the overwhelming feeling i had when i left the Voodoo Lounge on thursday night: that the concert was amazing, and something about my life finally felt complete once i got to see them. it made me proud all over again to be a fan of The Verve Pipe. i just don't think i had ever completely hashed out my feelings about them since i left high school, so my last seven years of intermittently thinking about the band never really congealed or came flowing out in any coherent manner until now.

welcome.

2007-12-31T13:34:00.000-06:00

my other blog isn't much of a music blog, and many of my readers there are not particularly interested in my long discussions about concerts, musicians, and my long, strange history as a rock fan.

i'll probably copy some recent music-related entries from there, since i have written a few pieces that already pulled in this direction. for the most part this blog will contain material that the last refuge does not. it will contain concert pictures, discussions of music both live and recorded, and reminiscences of long-forgotten musical epiphanies.

to anyone who finds this? welcome.

me? i've got a supergig, got a brand new rig, and i'll crank it for you all.

[with acknowledgments to The Verve Pipe: for getting me into music in the first place, and whose song i have borrowed as the title and nascent theme of this blog.]