A History of Taste

Today I was reflecting on the way my taste in music has been shaped over the years and I realized that it all started with an exploration of progressive rock music. My mother has always listened to and exposed me to all of the good staple bands that should influence one to develop a well rounded taste in modern rock music. I was raised on Pink Floyd, David Bowie, the Doors, the Cars and other bands that a lot of people would now classify as classic rock. The first band I stared listening to independent of my mother's supervision was the legendary Black Sabbath (the Ozzy Osbourne years of course, none of that Ronnie James Dio shit). When I was about twelve I was on one of our many yearly trips to NYC during which my mom took me into the large Tower Records outlet and I purchased my first CD: Black Sabbath's hit album, Paranoid. I quickly fell in love with the long, intricate guitar solos of War Pigs and Fairies Wear Boots played by a guitarist I still consider one of my all-time favorites, Tony Iommi. His playing, while it certainly signified a guitarist of great skill, was not as fast as most and focused on phrases rather than just speed (much like David Gilmour) and commanded more attention from me than someone like Eddie Van Halen would have.

I fell in love with long, drawn out instrumentals and started listening to bands like King Crimson, Hawkwind, Tangerine Dream, and Yes. These bands are wonderful but I was disappointed to find that today's Progressive rock bands (and yes, I realize Black Sabbath isn't prog) positively pale in comparision to those of the seventies. Dreamtheater and Trivium made me yawn and I wasn't even drawn in very much by Porcupine Tree or Opeth. These bands were so derivative that I eventually decided to start looking in other veins. I needed to reset my fractured taste so I didn't end up as a helpless metal-kid. I was no longer wooed by the sounds of ostentatious, meandering five minutes guitar solos that hobbled along with no end in sight. While I still enjoyed the bands of rock music's classic era I needed music with more structure and less fluff.

I needed to find bands that would lead me to appreciate good contemporary music. Two major influences: Frank Zappa and Joy Division opened up genres for me that I might not have otherwise listened to. I was immediately taken in by the genius, humor, and eccentricity of Frank Zappa and his many projects. His whole discography is a giant collage of different genres, a palimpsest of ideas and musical stylings and it introduced me to nearly every kind of music that I'd been shutting out during my prog only days. I learned to appreciate jazz, blues, soul, funk, classical music, and avantgarde composition and to boot, he was an American so I learned a lot about music history in my own country.

Joy division introduced me to grittier and more emotional lyric writing dealing with the agony of the human condition but with some of the most restrained song writing I've seen, to this day. Ian Curtis taught me to thumb my nose at whiny, sentimental lyricists who wallow in self pity but have nothing to be upset about. Curtis had real problems, such as epilepsy and manic depression which resulted in multiple suicide attempts yet his lyrics were not pathetic but powerful; this probably is the reason that I feel such contempt for Green Day and bands that sound similar.

This is just a smattering of all my musical adventures but these two bands caused an avalanche of new bands I've come to enjoy and recommend them to all.

Sometimes it's just interesting to map the progression of something as arbitrary as taste. I didn't really know how I listened to what I do now until I sat down and thought about it here.

Man Man does Milford

On the fifteenth of July I saw Man Man play at Daniel Street Cafe in Milford and it was easily the best show I've gone to this summer. If you're not familiar with the Philadelphia band then I can only encourage you to listen to a few of their songs because it's pretty difficult to do their unique sound much justice with any number of words. The press likes to compare them to Frank Zappa and Tom Waits, both artists whose influence I can definitely hear, but Man Man is so much more than a mere synthesis of two styles. The band's ensemble includes horns, saxes, guitars, keyboards, a xylophone, and various other pieces of unusual noise-making paraphernalia; which is, doubtless, the reason for the Zappa comparison (along with the occasional high pitched, doowop background vocals and the singer's unmistakeable resembalance to the man himself). The voice of front man, Honus Honus, whose off-stage name escapes me, is gravelly and crooning like the voice of Tom Waits crossed with that of a hardcore singer's. Most of the lyrics are sung but at times, they're screamed for emphasis, like in the chorus of the song "Top Drawer".

In concert, Man Man plays with great energy and even greater volume. Percussion was perhaps the loudest instrument of the night and was not limited to the drumset but also included things like trash cans and coffee cans.
Within minutes of the show's opening I found myself fighting through a veritable sea of flailing hipsters to get a good peek at the theatrics of Honus Honus. The loud music fomented a regular mosh pit, which I used to my advantage by creeping up to the very front for the last half hour of the set.

Honus was a sight to see and was certainly worth the pushing and shoving. He came on stage dressed at first in a flowing green garb which when combined with his beard and facial hair made me think immediately of the cover of the fz album, we're only in it for the money. It was epic.

Go see them before you die.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Space Truckin'

I love the flaming lips but my first reaction to hearing about Wayne Coyne's nephew fronting a band with the Lips as a major influence was: "great, we're in for a mediocre, amateur ish version of the flaming lips". This is because I'm such an unapologetic, headstrong, music snob but despite my stubborness I was impressed by their first full album; The Birth. The music, while reminiscent of the flaming lips, was certainly able to stand on it's own. Like the flaming lips, Stardeath has a sound heavily influenced by space-rock ; the 70s genre of rock characterized by synthesizers, sci-fi lyrics, and rich dimension-filled production (examples include Pink Floyd and Hawkwind). Bands like Stardeath and the Lips demonstrate a sort of reimagining of space-rock which is just a bit poppier and more accessible to the average listener without making it as boring as most pop music tends to be lately. The album contains a good variety of material from the funky "Those who are from the sun return to the sun" to the catchy "Can't get away" to the melancholy "Country Ballad". This band has such wide appeal to so many different listeners.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Metal Lyrics: huh?

Warning: if you are a die-hard metal-head then the below blog entry
WILL offend you and fill you with anger and compel you to leave and listen to bands with names like bloodfilth and burningvengfulgargoyleballs while you brood in your self-imposed metal kid
angst.

Metal kid, what the hell is your problem? How can you tolerate the lyrics of your genre? With very few exceptions (S.O.A.D for example, and Dragonforce which makes fun of overly dramatic metal lyrics) metal lyrics seem to be a kitschy rehashing of corny, Christian-phobic, wannabe deep and thoughtful, 80's hairband lyrics. While hair-metal can be a lot of fun, I don't think anyone is going to run to its defense as a source of lyrical genius.

My favorite example of faux-philosophical, faux-meaningful lyrics even, is from the Dio song Holy Diver. The whole song is lyrically absurd but here are the most entertaining words:

Ride the tiger!
You can see his stripes but you know he's clean
Oh don't you know what I mean?

No Ronnie, no. I don't know what you mean. I don't know what the fuck you're talking about and anyone who says that they "know what you mean" is living in the same pretentious, metal-head, fantasy-land that you are. Dio and artists like him are hacks! Metal artists should go back to their true proto-metal roots rather than get inspiration from hackneyed 80's nostalgia. Look at Black Sabbath and Deep Purple or even Iggy and the Stooges! They are the true forerunners of metal, not Night Ranger or Motley Crue! If mainstream metal wants to have a shot at originality then it has to break free of all the stupid cliches that make everyone groan and stereotype it as vapid and thoughtless. Metal needs to return to it's roots rather than rely on the period which made it a laughingstock in the first place.

Mobile Blogging from here.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Let them smoke $ 6.50 packs of cigarettes

I am so happy to be back in the US but besides all the tedious class-warfare rhetoric from Barney's Frank and the marginalization of dissenters (something I've anticipated) I have been disappointed in the gov's decision to raise the cigarette tax. A pack of cigarettes in CT cost around 5 and change when I left and now they're an average of 6 and change because the government needs to fuel its bail-out happy budget. Let me offer a hearty "fuck that" in response to the rapacious Obama administration's thirst for more of my money. Thank God for twofer deals. I got 2 packs of Parliament lights for 10 bucks today; a good deal even before I left for Italy.

Yay for the nanny state.

My favorite Bird-influenced indie band from Texas of 2008

Rook is the latest album from the curiously bird-themed, Austin Texas band, Shearwater (also the name of a stiff-winged seabird). I'm not familiar with any of their earlier stuff so I have nothing to compare it to but the first song I heard from Rook (also a bird) was the snow leopard in which Jonathan Meigburg's angelic falsetto made me think immediately of Thom Yorke. Even the music in the snow leopard reminds me of a Radiohead song (Pyramid Song; tell me if you disagree). I've heard people call Meiburg's vocals overly dramatic but seriously fuck them, they're just jealous.

King Ink

Patrick and I went to Swan Song Tattoo in Marconi (a couple blocks past Trastevere) and got inked. He got the Radiohead symbol from Meeting People is Easy and I gave the guy a freehand drawing of an electric guitar. The guy who did mine was really cool, he had Justice playing in background and we talked about them while he worked.