Time is weird and messes with your head.  Of course, anyone can tell you that.

For example:  while I was recently celebrating the twentieth anniversary of when I started working at the record store, I started thinking about some of the music I was listening to in 1996:  Failure’s Fantastic Planet, DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing…, Tricky’s Pre-Millennium Tension, Sneaker Pimps’ Becoming X, Kula Shaker’s K, and so on.  It seems a good long time ago; I was 25 and broke but I was happy because I had a job I truly loved and I had my writing.

And you know me: I’ll still listen to stuff from my youth: the classic rock of the 70s, the synthy pop of the 80s, the grunge and Britpop of the 90s.

So…many years later, and I’m going through my old mixtapes from the early 80s, compiling some of the tracks for a digital version for my mp3 collection.  I think of myself back then in 1986, a spotty kid at 15 with big dreams of being a writer and a consummate music collector (heh).  They’re a mix of old and new rock songs taken from one of the few stations I’d be listening to while doing my homework.  They’d have two-fer Tuesdays (and three-fer Thursdays!), album sides, and ‘wayback machine’ tracks.

And one of the songs is The Beatles’ “Rain”.  One of my favorite tracks of theirs, recorded in mid-1966 in tandem with their Revolver album, both of which would be released the summer of that year.

And it dawns on me:

It was 1986, and I was listening to a song that was only twenty years old at the time.

So for someone of my parents’ age, “Rain” would have been considered a sort-of recent song in their memory, just like “Midnight in a Perfect World” is to me.

In fact, I was on the phone with my mom the other day and she says she remembers hearing “Hey Jude” on the radio when it came out, and being blown away by how long it was.  Radio rarely ever played any songs over four minutes long (and even that was stretching it), so hearing a hit single that’s seven minutes eleven seconds long was indeed unprecedented.  [I believe the only other pop song of similar length that got as much rotation was probably Richard Harris’ “MacArthur Park”, which was released that same month.]

The upside of this?  Once more, chronology puts things into a clearer perspective for me.  In my youth when I’d hear Elvis singing “Heartbreak Hotel”, I’d think man, that song is so ancient.  Now, however?  The song might have been released sixty years ago, but in the general scheme of things, it’s not that far back.  Rock music as we know it is still a relatively new genre.  Just like FM radio (1978), hip-hop (late 70s), techno (80s-90s), music videos (mainstream 1981), and so on.  And we know people who were alive and aware of it all when it was new.

It’s all a bit mind-blowing.  But fascinating.

Not the one I worked at, but very similar in size and shape.

As of 23rd of last month, it’ll have been twenty years since I started that job at HMV Records at the Solomon Pond Mall down in Marlborough.  How do I know the exact date?  Simple:  I had a one-day training day at their Harvard Square store and the very first thing they had me do is price and security-tag a few hundred copies of Weezer’s Pinkerton and Sheryl Crow’s self-titled album, which was being released the next day.

That would end up being my primary responsibility (not including the occasional register jockeying) for nearly four years until I left in autumn 2000.  I’d also go to various shows in the Boston area, go to a few band meet-and-greets, and my music collection would expand to the point that I’d have to move it downstairs due to its size.

My music purchasing during my days in Boston were quite scattershot, as I would rarely have the money, but somehow I managed to dig through the used record shops on a consistent basis.  I’d buy a lot old albums in dollar bins, pick up cheap promo cassettes, and find good deals on new and used cds.  I’d borrow albums from friends and dub them onto cassette, just like I did in the late 80s.  My knowledge of releases was pretty much based on what I heard on the radio and read in the Boston Phoenix.

But when I was hired in September of 1996 to HMV, all that changed.  I was hired as the lone shipping/receiving clerk, partly because I was the oldest of the hires (I was 25 at the time, and everyone else was at least five or six years younger), and partly because I was such a huge music nerd.  I’m convinced I was hired because they could count on me to provide good customer service and upsell like no tomorrow.

The music of those four years influenced and inspired me deeply, as this was when I’d started taking my writing seriously.  A lot of what I listened to between late 1996 and late 2000 would end up being part of the soundtrack to The Phoenix Effect and later on the trilogy.

One of the things that I’d set off to do early on in the job was to listen to as much music as I could. I didn’t exactly need to buy the albums…I would open up a cd and play it in the back room, or borrow one of the store promo copies and give it a listen.  I’d also scour all the music magazines we sold.  That way when I was on the sales floor, I’d be able to help customers quickly and easily.  Each week I’d make a list of all the new and upcoming releases on a whiteboard near the door so all my coworkers would know what to expect.

My listening habits expanded to include all kinds of genres, ones I hadn’t paid much attention to in the past.  I still listened mainly to alternative rock, but I also listened to everything from electronica to classical to new age to prog rock and everything in between.

I also immersed myself in a hell of a lot of imports, as there were quite a few bands out there who weren’t getting any attention stateside but I thought were phenomenal.

I don’t think I have an actual count, but between 1996 and 2000, I’m pretty sure my music collection went from maybe a hundred cds, a few hundred tapes and about five hundred or so vinyl records to maybe around five thousand titles by the time I left the store.  [This was accumulated all over the place, really — the store as well as new and used bins elsewhere.]

And that’s not counting the years after that, when I made it a habit to stop at Newbury Comics in Amherst every Wednesday (alongside my comic book run, which I’d started during my HMV years), which expanded my music collection even further.

It’s been twenty years and my music collection is still growing.  I’m still checking out new music and different styles to this day.  As of this posting, the number of mp3s I own is in six digits.  [This is single songs, mind you, not full albums.  And there’s also A’s collection in there as well.]  That’s about thirty-five years of collecting, borrowing, ripping, and downloading.  I try to keep myself under control and set a decent cap on how much to spend (and reminding myself I don’t necessarily need to buy everything on its drop date), and I usually do pretty good with it.

But yeah…if it wasn’t for that job, one that I loved and still think about from time to time, my collection would probably be a bit smaller.

Probably not by much, though.

You know how it is with commercial radio stations.  Just before a commercial break they’ll tease an upcoming track from one of your favorite bands from the past, and guaranteed, it will always be that same damn song you’ll hear every single time.  Even if the band has twelve albums to their name, including one that dropped just two weeks previous, they’ll still play that one damn song.  [This is why Led Zeppelin’s “Fool in the Rain” is one of my least favorite songs of theirs, because that’s the de facto Zep track for every classic rock station.]

Continuing my 90s theme, here’s a few bands from that decade that are actually worth checking out past their one claim to fame.

Hum, You’d Prefer an Astronaut, rel 11 April 1995.  This album kind of got lost in the shuffle of mid-90s grunge pop and everything else, but it’s an excellent album full of crunchy riffs and great melodies.  They followed this up with a further album, Downward Is Heavenward (released 27 January 1998) which unfortunately also got lost in the shuffle, but is just as great.  [You may even want to go deeper and look for their two pre-major label albums from the early 90s.]  And yes, I will admit that “Stars” is still a kickass track, even if it gets all the attention.

Eve 6, Eve 6, rel 28 April 1998.  We all know the hit “Inside Out” (you know, that “put my tender/heart in a blender” track of theirs), but they’ve released three further albums over the years (including a reunion album) that are just as great.  Second album Horrorscope (rel 25 July 2000) featured singles “Promise” and “Here’s to the Night” (the latter of which got minor airplay on MTV); third album It’s All in Your Head (rel 22 July 2003) featured “At Least We’re Dreaming” and “Think Twice”; fourth album Speak in Code (24 April 2012) featured “Victoria” and “Curtain”.

The Verve Pipe, Villains, rel 26 Mar 1996.  EVERYONE knows “The Freshmen”…even lead singer Brian Vander Ark has accepted that’s his calling card at this point.  But have you heard the rest of that album?  If not, I strongly urge you to do that RIGHT NOW.  While this hit plays to their softer side, there’s a much deeper and darker sound to Villains that you need to hear.  “Cup of Tea” is the creepier cousin to that song; “Photograph” has a badass bassline; and the title track “Villains” is the most sinister track on the album.  Even the album tracks are solid: the lovely “Penny is Poison”, and trippy album closer “Veneer” is the best song ever about driving through upstate Michigan while high as a kite.
But that’s not all — go do yourself a favor and check out their follow-up albums, The Verve Pipe (29 July 1999) and Underneath (25 September 2001), as well as their recent album Overboard (17 June 2014) and their numerous single releases they’ve been putting out over the last two years.  Yeah, you could say I’m quite a big fan of these guys!

Dishwalla, Pet Your Friends, rel 21 November 1995.  Another 90s band I love to pieces.  Yes, this is that “tell me all your thoughts on God/’cause I’m on my way to see her” song.  Singer JR Richards is a stellar songwriter who digs quite deep when it comes to emotional, soul-searching songs, but he’s not afraid to belt it out either.  After this first album (which also includes the funky “Charlie Brown’s Parents” and the slinky “Haze”), they went on a long and grueling tour that kept them busy until the recording of And You Think You Know What Life’s About (rel 11 August 1998) — and the days on the road were evident on the harder, crunchier tracks here.  Unfortunately the album fell through the cracks thanks to a major distributor shake-up at the time (PolyGram and Universal merged, and unceremoniously, a hell of a lot of great bands were either dropped or lost all their backing in the process), but this is by far their most cohesive and solid album.  “Once in a While” was a minor hit, but the elegiac album track “Until I Wake Up” became a fan favorite that JR Richards still performs to this day.  Third album Opaline (23 April 2002) saw the band on a new label and easing back to their lighter side, with great tracks like “Somewhere in the Middle” and the lovely “Angels or Devils”.  Their last self-titled album (15 May 2005) and the last recording to feature JR before he left to go solo, is just as good, with tracks like “Collide”.  There’s a rumor that a new Dishwalla album might surface this year or next as well!

Lit, A Place in the Sun, rel 23 February 1999.  Yeah, that track, the worst-hangover-ever one.  What happened to these guys, anyway?  Like most of the 90s pop-punk bands, their star faded but they never quite went away.  After a minor follow-up hit with “Zip Lock” (check out the brief cameo of a streaking Blink-182 in the video!) and a quick appearance on the soundtrack for the animated movie Titan AE with “Over My Head” (a movie that was sadly much maligned but in all honesty I quite enjoyed it), Lit released their follow-up Atomic (16 October 2001) with the single “Lipstick and Bruises” and a self-titled album (22 June 2004) with the single “Looks Like They Were Right” before sticking to the local live circuit for a number of years.  They’d surface one more time with The View from the Bottom (19 June 2012) and “You Tonight”.  They’re back in the studio working on a new album at this time.

Bush, Sixteen Stone, rel 6 December 1994.  That first album of theirs was insanely huge, enough that they had hits well into early 1996 with the singles “Glycerine”, “Everything Zen”, “Comedown” and “Little Things”.  They were somewhat unfairly written off, being too British to fit in with American grunge, but too grunge to be lopped in with the (now waning) Britpop movement…but MTV loved them just the same.  They finally followed up with the wonderfully weird second album Razorblade Suitcase (19 November 1996) with another wave of great singles: “Swallowed”, “Greedy Fly”, “Cold Contagious” and “Personal Holloway”.  An even weirder remix album popped up at the end of the following year with Deconstructed (11 November 1997), and then….nothing for a good couple of years.
By the time of their next album, The Science of Things (26 October 1999), their sound seemed a bit dated — or more to the point, alt.rock stations by that time had shifted to alternative metal and rap metal, and the more commercial alt.rock stations had shifted to the calmer sounds of Collective Soul and so on.  They had a few minor hits like “The Chemicals Between Us” and “Letting the Cables Sleep”, but their time in the spotlight had waned considerably.  They managed one last album, Golden State (23 October 2001) with another minor hit, “The People That We Love”, but by 2002 they’d broken up.
Lead singer Gavin Rossdale (having gotten in the headlines for marrying No Doubt lead singer Gwen Stefani) released an album in 2004 with his band Institute, and followed that up with a self-titled solo album in 2008, but that was pretty much it until 2011, when Rossdale reignited the band and released The Sea of Memories (13 September 2011) with two more radio hits, “The Afterlife” and “The Sound of Winter”.  After a successful tour he returned once more with Man on the Run (21 October 2014) and another great single, “The Only Way Out”.  And they’ve just released a new single a few months ago, “People at War”, which may hint at yet another new album in the works.

I could of course go on, but I think this is enough to get y’all started.  No go scour the used record bins and find some of these tasty albums!

I know I’ve mentioned this many times before, but here’s the short version once more: in early 2000 I met one of my childhood heroes, George Harrison.  I believe he was visiting a holistic campus a few towns over from the mall where I worked, and one day he came in to the store looking for music.  Suffice it to say, I was a) gobsmacked, b) nervous as hell and c) did my damnedest to make him feel at home.  I even chatted with him about music for a few minutes, which was super cool.

I bring this up as this past Friday was the long-awaited release of some major Beatles archival music:  the almost-forgotten 1977 compilation album Live at the Hollywood Bowl and the release of Ron Howard’s documentary of their live years, Eight Days a Week.  The hashtag #ISawTheBeatles has been floating around Twitter for the last few days as well.

Remembering that unexpected meeting with my childhood hero made me think of what my definition of ‘hero’ is.  I rarely use it to define any of my characters in my writing, as I’d rather write the Flawed Human Who’s Just Trying to Do Their Best.  [I rarely use it to describe someone in the military or someone who saved the day, come to think of it.  Not that I believe it unearned, far from it…more that it’s a word that’s been so overused and abused that it no longer rings true as an adequate descriptor for me.  But that’s another post entirely.]

I think at this point in my life, my kind of hero is someone I admire who’s influenced and/or inspired me, or taught me things I’ve desperately needed to know.  Someone who put me on the right path to where I wanted and needed to be.

Someone like Ray Bradbury, whose Dandelion Wine made me realize that reading is not always a chore — I just need to find what connects with me on a deeper level.  [Met him in 2006 at Worldcon and let him know he inspired me to become a serious writer.  He appreciated hearing that.]

Someone like George Harrison, who aside from being the lead guitarist for my all-time favorite band when I was a kid, inspired me to seek inner peace as a way to calm myself when I most needed it.

Are all my heroes musicians and writers?  No, there are everyday people who have been my heroes as well, like my history teacher in college, Rev. John Coffee, who taught me how to look at history not as a list of facts to memorize for a sememster-end exam but as an ongoing and evolving world story.  But yes, I will admit a lot of my personal heroes are creative people.  They’re the ones that have influenced and inspired me to do the best I can with my own creative works.  They’ve all shown me just how far I can go.

I’m not much of a hero worshiper, either.  Over the course of the last twenty or so years I’ve met with such people, I treat them as they would treat me: ordinary humans who just happened to get away with doing extraordinary things.  Doing meet-and-greets during my college radio and HMV tenures, and chatting with numerous writers at conventions, I’ve learned that meeting my heroes doesn’t have to contain a high level of squee and OMG.  If I ever met Hayao Miyazaki or Rumiko Takahashi in person I would most likely stutter and laugh a bit, but in the end I think I’d be able to thank them for their wonderful works and masterful storytelling.

After all, heroes are like you and I.  We all wake up groggy in the morning and in need of sustenance, and we all go to bed at the end of the day, exhausted by the day’s activities.  Heroes to me are the ones who actively, relentlessly look for answers in between those moments.

Ultra was an interesting album, in that it was their first in four years — an unprecedented timelapse for the band at the time, whose last stretch (between Violator and Songs of Faith… and not including the SoFaD Live set) was nearly three years.  It was also their first without Alan Wilder, who’d provided all the unique industrial sound effects to their albums and singles since Construction Time Again.  And it was also their first album after singer Dave Gahan’s recent health and emotional issues had become public.  This was going to be a make or break album for them.

As if to state the point right off, pre-album single “Barrel of a Gun” was a track of jagged misery and anger that mirrored all the personal issues they’d been dealing with over the last few years.  But it also proved that the more rock-oriented SoFaD wasn’t just a fluke.  The keyboards were still there, but they had truly evolved from a synthetic post-punk quartet to a 90s alternative rock band.  They had retained their dark moods and sounds, but they were now being delivered with a heavy punch.

The follow-up single, “It’s No Good” (released two weeks before the album itself) on the other hand, tripped up fans with its heavy sequencing and lighter melodic touch — hinting at their Some Great Reward era, come to think of it — but it was one of Martin Gore’s best and catchiest songs on the album and became a hit both in the US and the UK.  [And as if to drive the point home that they hadn’t completely lost their sense of humor, the video shows the trio performing as a skeezy lounge act and totally hamming it up.]

Third single “Home” showed that Martin Gore could still write and sing their best ballads, even though it failed to hit the charts.  Gore once again writes about the pleasures of a solid relationship and the reminders that things couldn’t get any better than this…even when things aren’t as good as they used to be.

Final single “Useless” brings the band full circle, sounding both strong and delicate at the same time.  It’s a track that hints at Violator-era songwriting but with a modern production.  The single itself was not a chart-topper, but it proved that they had persevered and remained an extremely popular and inspirational band.

The album itself dropped in mid-April 1997 alongside numerous other big-name alt.rock albums such as Supergrass’ In It for the Money, The Chemical Brothers’ Dig Your Own Hole, Third Eye Blind’s self-titled debut (and just a month after U2’s long-awaited and sadly much-maligned Pop).  They couldn’t have timed it better, as that year was quite a turning point for the genre.  Britpop was dying a long and painful death, commercial alt.rock was splintering between mainstream rock (such as U2 and 3EB) on one side and the alternative metal of Korn, Marilyn Manson and Limp Bizkit on the other.  This gave them a unique chance to release an amazingly strong album — even as they chose not to tour for it due to health reasons.  Numerous tracks would also pop up on American television shows — 90s TV was big on the popular sountracks back then — enabling them to stay in the spotlight.

They would finally return once more to touring for the next album — a second singles compilation — in late 1998, along with a new song, “Only When I Lose Myself”.  A lovely midtempo song, it would be the bridge between their harder rock sound of Ultra and the more acoustic and mellow Exciter album in 2001.  It’s a swan song in a way, a thank you to the fans that had seen them through an extremely turbulent but ultimately successful decade.

So while on my 90s kick, I of course had to listen to Violator, quite possibly Depeche Mode’s best album ever.  It’s an amazingly strong album from start to finish.  I was a relatively new convert to DM, having bought Some Great Reward and Catching Up (their US-based singles collection) in late 1986, with Black Celebration showing up in my collection soon after.

I usually see SGW as DM Phase II, where their songs were less about the synth bloops and more about the moods they could create with them.  This phase would end two albums and a greatest hits later with Music for the Masses, which one could conceivably see as their Joshua Tree — the album that broke them to a much wider audience.  Come 1989, after their highly regarded live show (documented on the live album and documentary, 101), they were back in the studio and creating something new.

DM Phase III started with a single that sounded nothing like they’d released before.  Continuing their habit of releasing a new single six months or so before the new album would drop, August 1989’s “Personal Jesus” was definitely a change of pace.  A country blues foot-stomper that featured a fantastic twanging guitar riff from songwriter Martin Gore, this new track sounded stronger and more current than their previous works.  They’d long grown out of their 80s industrial post-punk image and found their sex appeal.

They followed it up with in early February 1990 with what would become their most popular hit, “Enjoy the Silence”.  Driving, danceable and a hell of a great song to crank up on your car stereo, it’s one of Martin Gore’s best songs in his entire oeuvre.  It’s not a love song about trying to get the girl, or trying to impress the girl; it’s a song about already being with the girl; he’s blissfully happy and knows he doesn’t need anything else in this world to add to that happiness.  [In fact, the rest of the world pales in comparison, come to think of it.]

The third single, “Policy of Truth”, is the mirror opposite of its predecessor, even though they’re side by side on the album.  This is a relationship nearing its end, where trust is all but gone.  But in true Martin Gore form, the narrator would rather continue hearing sweet lies than the bitter truth, given the status of their relationship.  The song also contains one hell of a great last verse, in which nearly all the instruments have stuttered to a halt, underscoring the message: it’s far too late to fix this connection.

Fourth single, album opener “World in My Eyes”, is a quirky choice for the last single release, considering that in the context of the album as a whole it sets the scene: you’re about to hear a whole new Depeche Mode.  Still, it also works as a final single to remind us that we’re not going to be hearing the bloopiness of A Broken Frame or even the gloominess of Black Celebration.  This is the new Depeche Mode, like it or not.

Singles aside, the album tracks are equally as fantastic.  Album closer “Clean” harkens back to their dark-and-dirty dirges like “Little 15” and “Pipeline”, although this time the message isn’t grim — it’s a release, an awakening.

“Sweetest Perfection” employs both sampled and live drums, but it also includes stellar guitar work from Martin Gore.  The song builds from a creep to a stall to a full-on blast of emotion in just under five minutes.

Violator is still considered one of Depeche Mode’s greatest albums, and it’s a well deserved accolade.  They chose to go in a new direction here, one that would update their sound considerably, and Martin Gore is at his top form as a songwriter.  It still stands up well to this day, and their ‘new’ sound doesn’t sound dated at all.  You’ll still hear “Enjoy the Silence” right alongside today’s songs on alternative radio, and it hasn’t aged a bit.

Up next: Depeche Mode in the 90s: Songs of Faith and Devotion

I’ve been thinking about writing one of those writing memoirs over the last few years.  Specifically, I already know the title: Everything I Learned About Writing I Learned from Rock History.

I mean, think about it:

The Beatles, “Love Me Do”:

Their first single, and their first professionally recorded song, back in the summer of 1962.  It’s an incredibly simplistic song: barebones production, moon-June lyrics, and Paul’s vocal fill at the end of the verse is so full of nerves that you’d be surprised how often he fearlessly belted out songs at the Cavern on any given day.

What do I learn from this song as a writer?
–Your first work is more than likely going to be crap, because you’re too nervous about trying to get it right the first time that you fail to get it right the first time.
–On the other hand, if you have something unique and catchy enough, fans will look past that and give you another chance.  Single #2, “Please Please Me”, was released in January of 1963, and you can definitely see the improvement in not just the sound but the songwriting.  That track would end up being their first #1 hit.
–End result:  It’s okay to kinda make a fool of yourself first time out.  As long as you’re going in the right direction and you’re confident from the get-go, that’s all that matters.

Another example:  Woodstock.

The great thing about Woodstock is that it was the ultimate “let’s put on a show in the barn” and it was blessed with an amazing amount of luck and good karma that it ended up being a success (as an event, at any rate — financially I believe there were numerous hiccups) and a defining cultural event.

As a writer?  I learned the following:
–Sometimes the weirdest, craziest ideas might end up being the best and most successful ones.
–Go for it.  No, seriously: go for it.  What are you gonna lose?
–Caveat: At least have a general idea of what you want and how to get it.  Don’t make hasty and questionable decisions that could possibly bite you on the ass later on (yes, I’m thinking of Altamont here).  But trust your instincts if they’re screaming out that this is the right thing to do.  Or the absolute worst thing to do.

Or perhaps something more up to date:  One of my favorite indie bands of the moment, Dirty Dishes:

What, pray tell, did I learn here?
–Going indie is totally a viable career choice nowadays.  I heard about this group via NoiseTrade, and quickly downloaded their entire available discography to date from Bandcamp.  I’m on their mailing list, so I went out and downloaded this new track the day I got the note that it had been released.  They’ve become one of those bands where I’ll download their new works when they drop, even if I haven’t heard it yet.  [Just a few weeks ago, someone wrote something along the same lines as their review of one of my books — and let me tell you, that just about made my damn year!]
–The great thing about indie releases is that you can upload it to all sorts of sites if you wish.  I’ve seen bands on Bandcamp, eMusic, Amazon, and elsewhere.  You can do that with books too:  My ebooks are through Smashwords, but they’re also available through Amazon, iBooks, Kobo, Nook, and elsewhere.  I’ve even put them up on NoiseTrade Books, and I’ve gotten a good handful of downloads from there as well.  Point being: be creative about getting your stuff out there, and keep an open mind.  You never know which avenue is going to bring in new fans!
–If you’ve got a unique voice and you know how to use it, perhaps releasing your work in a way you feel fits best may no longer be via the high-end pros.  I most likely will try selling future stories to agents and publishers, but in the long run, I realized that going indie was the best avenue for my trilogy after all.

The point is, it seems my decades-long obsession with music and its history has influenced my writing in more ways than what I write.  I’ve learned a lot from the music business as well, and I can see so many parallels with the writing business that it’s given me a clearer path to future endeavors.

So yeah…maybe writing a book about that might not be a bad idea…?

Hi there! Currently writing this entry at the Minneapolis-St Paul airport, waiting for our connecting flight home from our Half Pop Musik Tour (aka our vacation to London and Paris). 

The plan is to get a nap in on this last leg, as I will need to get up early tomorrow morning and do a bit of food shopping before we head out to Outside Lands later that day.

Regular entries here at WiS should resume this week!  Thanks for waiting!