ashtray floors, dirty clothes and filthy jokes
Toy Soldiers and Red Dawn
These movies made me want terrorists to invade my school so Devin and I could run roughshod on their sorry asses. They are possibly why I give sideways glances to people of Columbian and Russian descent.
Wolverines!!!
They Are The Lanterns and You Are The Light
I have a fairly short attention span caused by a lifetime of watching television and what I tell my physician is ADD. As a result, I occasionally drift into another dimension during Grooveshark marketing meetings that tend to last about half an hour too long. This is not to say that I don’t enjoy them or feel the need to contribute, there just always seems to be a very defined moment where the meeting should probably end so we can all clear our heads. C’est la vie.
The last few marketing meetings have been different. Some of them took place on the office balcony, which is advantageous for the fresh air, beautiful view, and easy access to cigarettes. These meetings consisted primarily of about 4 people trying to ascertain everything we can about how to effectively make you, my loyal reader, enjoy the veritable shmorgazboard of brilliant features we have to offer. As the meetings progressed, the question changed from “What Is Grooveshark”(more of a philosophical thing, rest assured that we all know what it is) to “What is it that makes people react so passionately to music?” This is a conversation I can certainly get on board with, and the fruits of our labor provided incredible insight not only into the way we all think, but who we are as people. Ideally we will find a commonality between all of our responses, which we are currently working diligently on.
Enough with the standard “Grooveshark Marketers are actually a cagey bunch of rabblerousers so shut the fuck up” thoroughfare. The discussion inspired me to think about some of my greatest, or even worst experiences listening to music. I’ve decided to omit the latter examples as they tend to involve me sobbing uncontrollably to a forlorn country song. I take enough flack about being “sensitive” as it is. So without further ado, I present you with…
The Decidedly Insensitive (but slightly emotive) List of My Favorite Experiences Listening To Music”.
1. “The Story I Tell Way Too Often About Bruce Springsteen”.
I’ve told this story about 78,000 times(and possibly on this blog) so I’ll make it brief. Basically, I was 15 years old and thus not allowed to drive a car according to the state of Florida. My dad and I were traveling back to Gainesville from Atlanta when he became tired. His fatigue contributed to his admittedly ill-advised decision to allow me to illegally operate his 1998 Toyota Camry. I was more than happy to oblige. “Years of practice on Mario Kart will finally pay off” I thought. So, as my dad slept obliviously in the passenger seat I careened down I-75 going about 45 miles per hour. My dad had left Neil Young’s album “After The Goldrush” in the cd player and while I (still) enjoy that record very much I had rapidly grown tired of Neil’s caterwauling. I carefully ejected the disc, never allowing my eyes to leave the road and the subsequent line of cars honking in the rear view mirror. I reached under the seat to find my dad’s cd case but failed to locate it. As a result, I was reduced to grabbing the cd in the side panel of the car. It was “Born To Run” by Bruce Springsteen. Despite being raised by a music journalist, I had never heard the album. I put the disc in the cd player. It opened an expressway to regions of my brain I never knew existed. Without digressing into bombastic statements(although it might be fitting considering the album), let’s just say that I had only been using 5% of my brain until that point. I now use at least 7%. I attribute that to Born to Run.
I played it 3 times while my dad irresponsibly slept. I think I went 90 miles per hour the rest of the way home, as it is physically impossible not to drive fast and recklessly when listening to that album.
2. “A Bunch of Cool, Sarcastic Guys Listen To The Most Depressing Album Of All Time”.
My friends from high school tend to be of the snarky, sarcastic ilk. Part of their charm is that they scrutinize every thing you say in hopes of finding something to mock you for. They’re princes(cue them mocking me for saying that).
My first year out of high school found us all at my friend Jon’s beach condo for a week of revelry and delight. Naturally, it rained almost the entire time. During a particularly thunderous storm I decided to play “Love Is Hell” by Ryan Adams, a record I had been listening to and enjoying with an alarming frequency. It is not an uplifting record, and entirely innappropriate for that audience. It’s themes of suicidal, drug addled paranoia are not what anyone wants to hear during a merry beach jaunt. Basically, it’s the music equivalent to Schindler’s List.
So I put the album on fully expecting it to be turned off in a nanosecond due to it’s melancholy nature. Much to my surprise, nobody moved to turn it off. As thunder cracked on the horizon and the waves ravaged the shoreline we sat in total silence as we listened to the album in its entirety. Nobody exchanged words, we just immersed ourselves in the seemingly limitless pain of Ryan Adams’ vocals. It’s a great fucking record, and I think every one of my friends have since purchased it.
3. “The Record I Bought To Look Cool and Ended Up Playing Over and Over Again”.
2006 found me working in a used record store in Tampa, Florida. If you haven’t been to Tampa, don’t make plans to go. It is quite possibly the worst place on earth short of Detroit. At least Detroit gave us MoTown, Tampa just gave us terrible traffic and a metropolis for old people.
Now that my Tampa diatribe is completed, I’ll describe the record store I worked in. To put it bluntly, I was incredibly uncool in a sea of ridiculously cool people. It happens fairly frequently. One of my coworkers was extolling the virtues of The Replacements, a band I’d heard of but never listened to. Since I was tired of looking like an undeducated doofus, I lied and said that “Let It Be” was one of my favorite albums. When work end I drove to the mall and bought “Let It Be” thinking it would be some sort of punk-grunge fusion that would make me abhor hipsters even more.
It didn’t. One of the few good memories I have of Tampa consists of me driving down I-275 blasting Let It Be at a deafening volume. Big buildings, fast speeds, Paul Westerberg=potent combination.
Teenage Dirtbag? Pssshaw
3 or 4 years ago I was working at a local record store in Gainesville. My somewhat monotonous duties entailed cataloguing over 140,000 cds and making sure that bums didn’t steal Jimmy Buffet vinyl. It was a hard knock life indeed.
So one day I was working in the back room when I overheard an inquisitive young man asking about a local venue called Common Grounds. I knew the venue well, so I stepped out of my dark, dank, dust filled lair and asked what he wanted to know. The conversation went as follows…
Guy: So, what is Common Grounds like?
Me: Well, it’s your typical college venue. Skimpy on the AC but enjoyable.
Guy: Any good shows coming up?
Me: Well, I think Wheatus is playing there tonight. They had that really shitty “Teenage Dirtbag” song a couple of years ago.
Bass Player for Wheatus: I’m the bass player for Wheatus. I wrote that song.
(Shotgun blast reverberates about the record store. I lie dead of embarrasment).
A Song for You
It never ceases to amaze me how much a musical composition can directly affect my mood. I’ve been in a fairly decent state of mind all day, but not great. Sort of just floating in the purgatory of existence. On a whim I played “Bar Lights” by whiskeytown on my computer and was overcome with pure, unadulterated joy. Caitlin Cary’s fiddle drips like honey out of the speakers and Ryan Adams whiskey stained voice has never sounded more honest and real. It’s a joyous homage to a bar as a means to avoid loneliness, and despite the sort of melancholy subject matter it never fails to make me want to run outside screaming and extolling the virtues of whiskeytown. I could listen to this song every day for the rest of my life and feel pretty good about it.A Groundbreaking Idea for a Video Game Spin Off
One of the most succesful video games of the last few years has been the wildly popular GuitarHero. I’ll abstain from summarizing what it is, because unless you’ve been living as a hermit for the last 4 years you probably know what it is.
My idea is to market a video game for these hermits. Hippies don’t really have a video game exclusive to them. My idea appeals to them and a more international crowd.
Should I get an edorsement from Ravi Shankar, I don’t see why SitarHero wouldn’t take off. Even the controller/joystick/thing would look cooler than Guitar Heros. It could emit colorful kinds of smoke and randoming quote the Maharishi. Think you can play “Tomorrow Never Knows” on GuitarHero? Psssh! Pick up your copy of Sitar Hero and you’ll be able to play all those weird, hippie George Harrison penned Beatles songs you know and love.
Just a thought.
Last Words on the Subject: Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers
I feel the need to offer a disclaimer before anyone should read this. I’m listening to Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers self titled debut album and then comparing it to Tom Petty’s newest solo album Highway Companion. It is making me angry. As a result, I’m fairly sure this post will digress into a vitriolic, obscenity filled diatribe. You have been warned.
Between the ages of 12-16 I listened to Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers exclusively. My dad used to cover them for the Gainesville Sun and would always return from the band’s live shows with incredible stories. I would go to bed at 10pm(I was kind of a nerd) and stay up till 2 in the morning playing Long After Dark, Damn The Torpedoes, and Hard Promises until I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore.
I once went on vacation to Wyoming for 13 days and only brought Pack Up The Plantation to listen to. Long car rides and television free nights were filled with that incredible version of “The Waiting” and the brilliant cover of “So You Wanna Be a Rock and Roll Star”.
Of course, thanks to Springsteen, I grew out of it. With that being said, I still hold those first albums in pretty high regard. There’s still nothing like driving a thousand miles per hour with Pack Up The Plantation pounding out of your speakers. I’ve gotten more than one traffic ticket at the expense of that album.
My one complaint was that I never got to see the band play live. They never seemed to play Gainesville when I was old enough to go see them. That changed when they played a much publicised “reunion show” in Gainesville on my birthday last year. Unfortunately, I had tickets to see Sufjan Stevens in Atlanta at the time so I couldn’t attend. My (now ex) girlfriend at the time weaseled her way into a ticket and promised me that she’d give me enough details after the show so that I could live vicariously through her. I could kind of live with that.
After the breathtaking Sufjan show in Atlanta, I called her for the full report. I found her credibility suspect when she said the Strokes “sucked because they were too loud”. The Petty set was “unimaginably awesome”, and he even beckoned everyone’s favorite bleeting sheep Stevie Nicks on stage with him. I was officially jealous when she told me they played “Insider”, one of my all time favorite songs.
Fastforward to last week. Because Gainesville’s incarnation of PBS suckles from the Tom Petty teet with a creepy amount of regularity, they played the “Homecoming Show” I couldn’t attend in its entirety. I had plans to go out, but I immediately cancelled them in hopes I could reconnect with the music I had loved so much in my youth.
It did not work out that way.
After completion of the show, I concluded that nothing could have made me want to advocate record burning the way that show did. I felt embarrassed for ever liking the band’s music and immediately regretted anytime I put a song of Petty’s on a mix cd for a friend. How they must hate me now.
Now, I know Tom Petty is getting old. I know Tom Petty has done a lot of drugs. THIS DOES NOT GIVE HIM AN EXCUSE FOR BEING A WATERED DOWN VERSION OF JIMMY BUFFET WITH A BETTER BACKING BAND!!!!! The show’s setlist wasn’t bad, but the delivery was so contrived and terrible that I wanted to scream, cry, or punch someone in the face. Petty is a consumate showman, but he seems to have come to the conclusion that his fanbase now consists of 45+ people who have one night of the year to let their hair down and cut loose. Apparently they do that at a Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers show.
Their music used to be dangerous, vaguely sinister, raw, passionate, gritty, and insert any other adjective you want that describes an amazing ROCK band. Rock is the operative word, because now the band is like AOR Lite. It’s like a fucking Chicago reunion tour…uneccesary and terrible.
Petty made GRATUITOUS references to marijuana and his hometown throughout the show. This shameless pandering couldn’t have been neccesary in 1978 when the band was blowing the doors off of some club with “Strangered in the Night”. The fact is that Petty can’t sing anymore, and has used his stoner hippie charm to create a “mellow vibe” for the old people who want to feel like they rocked out without hearing loud music. THIS MUSIC SHOULD NOT BE FUCKING MELLOW.
Don’t get me started on Stevie Nicks. She flailed about like an epileptic…I just wanted her to stop singing so I could give her a fucking EKG.
It was possibly the most disturbing thing I have ever seen. “Learning to Fly”, a decent song on a shit record was vomit-inducing, Petty’s halfhearted attempt to sing on American Girl was embarassing, and Steve Ferrone is possibly the most boring drummer on the planet. I’m sure he doesn’t have the permission to improvise, but still…
BEING AN ICON DOESN’T GIVE YOU LICENSE TO SUCK.
Another Unnecessary Homage to Springsteen
Interlachen, Florida will never be described as a booming, cultural metropolis. Truth be told, it’s generally regarded as a fine place to stop for a bathroom break on the way to the beach. The rancid smell of septic tanks permeating around the town seems oddly fitting.
While Interlachen is not terribly exciting on paper, it will permanently hold a place in my heart for two reasons. The first, which may strike people as slightly irrelevant is that I hit the only homerun of my high school baseball career there. It was after my heroic, towering blast that my 2nd favorite Interlachen memory occured. I was regailing my dad with slightly exagerated tails of my baseball supremacy as we barreled through the darkness of rural Florida when he subtly put on the Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band album Live 1975-1985. There are few things in the world that can stop me from touting my own accomplishments once I get going, but the snarling brilliance of The E Street Band tearing through “Adam Raised a Cain” is one of them.
The roads from Interlachen to Gainesville are especially condusive to listening to Springsteen while you drive. There is very little light and even less traffic, so the urge to drive 110 while singing “Badlands” at the top of your lungs is damn near unavoidable. Listening to all of those songs for the first time, and even the slightly cheesy(yet lovable) stories behind them I couldn’t help but think that I somehow knew every word.
Springsteen is like that for me now. I can listen to versions of songs I’ve never heard and instinctively know when he’s going to yell or change the arrangements. A lot of people find that a little unnerving to the point of creepy, which it might be but I don’t really care. Try listening to “Thunder Road” or “Growin’ Up” from the box set and you’ll get it.
I’m also incredibly excited about the upcoming film “There Will Be Blood”. Completely irrelevant, but still worth mentioning.
In regards to moonlighting as The Stills 3rd guitarist...
I feel the need to preface this by saying I have absolutely no musical talent whatsoever. Ben and I tried recording some demos of our original songs (“My Zombie Suicide Note”…featuring the classic line “Don’t Eat My Brains Like Ray Liotta”), and my shocking inability to play instuments ranging from harmonica to “Phoenix Suns Notebook” rendered our studio time useless.
With that being said, last month I was *KIND OF* in the band The Stills. By “in The Stills” I mean I bamboozled an unsuspecting group of concert goers.
Ben and I had somehow weaseled our way onto the side of the stage after The Stills played and before Spoon’s set. As a result, legions of girls who were only just arriving saw our “indie rock garb” and assumed we were in The Stills waiting for Spoon to take the stage. Because indie rock girls are extremely sycophantic by nature, they made it a point to tell me how much they loved my “set”. Initially I felt the need to set the record straight which had the undesired effect of said girls rapidly losing interest in my witty banter. It tends to happen.
However, when the 5th person in 10 minutes lauded my musical virtuosity I just decided to run with it. Anyone that complimented me was greeted with a 10 minute longglorified mission statement about how being in a rock band wasn’t as easy as it seemed. My shpeel went something like this…
Faceless Music Fan: Hey man, you guys were great. I really loved that set, especially the last one.
Me: Well, you know, we’ve been doing this for several years now. I sincerely appreciate the compliment…we put in a lot of time to make sure we really hone in on the sound playing in our heads. A lot of people assume that being in a touring rock band is just one long stream of booze filled nights of debaucherous glory, but it really takes its toll. I mean, our bus is kind of a ramschackle piece of machinery that we’ve affectionately named “Gloria”…ha ha ha…but you learn to hate it. It’s just really taxing after a while, but when people like you respond so passionately it really makes it all worthwhile. (Dramatic Pause)…So buy our record.
Towards the end of the night people were coming up to me and handing me notes to give to Spoon frontman Britt Daniel. I told them I’d oblige them if I could find the time.
In summary, I’m an asshole.