1981: The Unguarded Moment

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In doing some recent research for Walk in Silence, it dawned on me that the debut singles (or at least their first important singles after a the first few misses) of some major alternative bands–bands that would become historical in the genre–all came out within six months or so of each other in 1981. I’m sure this is common knowledge for some music journalists, but I’m fascinated by this idea nonetheless, especially in the context of the book I’m writing. This could very well be the moment in time where college radio in the US started to gel into what would later become the “college rock” sound. The late 70s and early 80s alt.rock were an interesting mix of UK synthpop, American hardcore, German krautrock (itself the inspiration for synthpop), and postpunk, but it must have been around 1980 or 1981 when it all came together and started making sense.

To wit:

(date unknown) February: Hüsker Dü, “Statues”
In the cold and snowy midwest of Minneapolis MN, while a diminutive funk singer named Prince Rogers Nelson grooved to his own brand of sexy soul, a trio of guys–one college student, one record store employee and one hanger-on–got together and started playing a fierce brand of postpunk that was nothing like anyone else had heard. It wasn’t the sloppy, breakneck speed of hardcore, and it wasn’t the regular rock and roll you’d hear anywhere else. It was a hybrid of everything–it was Ramones meets Velvet Underground meets Byrds. “Statues” was a hastily-recorded track that didn’t do too much of anything, considering it was recorded at the very start of their career, but by the following year and the years beyond, they’d record some of the best postpunk out there.

2 February: Duran Duran, “Planet Earth”
Come on, who doesn’t know Duran Duran now? They’re ridiculously famous, and they’re currently on tour supporting their All You Need Is Now album. But back then, these dandy-looking Brits had lucked out by being one of the original handful of videos playing on the fledgling music channel MTV. They were a part of the New Romantic scene in London, which mixed the surge of synthpop sound with Bowiesque glam fashion. Their debut single was an instant hit in the UK, and thanks to its rotation on MTV, they picked up a sizable fanbase here in the states. They may not exactly be the true “alternative” some fans think of, but they certainly played their part in its evolution.

20 February: Depeche Mode, “Dreaming of Me”
Basildon is a postwar hamlet very much similar to an American Leavittown in its planned creation as a “new town” for British citizens wanting to leave London, and four local guys with a love for Krautrock and owning cheap synthesizers were bored and in need of excitement. Vince Clarke rounded up his friends Martin Gore and Andy Fletcher, snagged local hanger-on Dave Gahan, and started writing music and playing local community centers. After a stretch of tightening their chops, writing poppy, danceable songs, and playing an endless run of shows, Daniel Miller, head of Mute Records, fell in love and signed them right away. The infectiously simple “Dreaming of Me” was their first single, and the rest is history.

(date unknown) February: Thomas Dolby, “Urges”
We all know him from 1982’s “She Blinded Me with Science”, but he had quite the background before that. He’d been a session musician for all kinds of bands and performers including Lene Lovich and Foreigner. This track was his first single, released a good year or so before his hit solo album The Golden Age of Wireless. Though his solo recording history is sparse, he continued to be an in-demand session musician. He just released his first solo album in nearly two decades just last year.

6 March: New Order, “Ceremony”
Joy Division was no more when their lead singer Ian Curtis took his own life in May of 1980. However, the three remaining members of the band soldiered on, adding drummer Stephen Morris’ girlfriend (later wife) Gillian Gilbert, and changing their name to New Order. Their debut single contained two songs that had originally been songs written as Joy Division tracks: “Ceremony” and “In a Lonely Place”. Both tracks hold traces of their previous incarnations (especially the low rumbling of “Lonely Place”), but also contained a much richer, more positive vibe that would become their trademark.

14 March: The Church, “The Unguarded Moment”
Well before their genre-defining hit “Under the Milky Way”, this Australian band had a small but dedicated following since the early 80s. After one single that went nowhere, this track became their first minor hit and a fan favorite. This track is indicative of their poppier origins as part of the Australian Neo-Psychedelia scene, which would be their sound until a few albums in, when after an aborted session (which became the Sing-Songs EP), they embraced their now-trademark sound of acoustics, jangly guitars and heavy reverb.

27 March: U2, “I Will Follow”
U2 had been around for a good few years, and had an album and a number of singles out in the UK, but they never quite made it stateside…that is, until a fateful run of shows at the Paradise in Boston MA, a big push by various radio stations (and an especially frenetic push by one DJ, Carter Alan), and the debut American single of “I Will Follow”. The rest is history.

(date unknown) June: Mission of Burma, Signals, Calls and Marches EP
Speaking of Boston…the collegiate town has quite the history of indie bands since the 60s, thanks to the rabid fanbase and the large number of places to play. Three guys got together and formed one of the loudest postpunk bands in the city, and in a surprisingly short amount of time (and with only one album, one EP, and a few singles in their first incarnation), became one of the most important postpunk bands in the genre. This EP contains their seminal hit “That’s When I Reach for My Revolver” (the link above goes to that track) as the first track, introducing the band to even more fans outside the Metro Boston area. They broke up soon after due to guitarist Roger Miller’s tinnitus, but have since reunited and released new albums, including one last month, Unsound.

8 July: REM, “Radio Free Europe”
Meanwhile, four guys with a love for jangly guitars and the collegiate sound of Athens GA’s nightlife (including Pylon and The B-52s), got together and started playing their own unique brand of folk rock with intellectual, perhaps even philosophical lyrics. REM released the original version of “Radio Free Europe” on local label Hib-Tone in summer of 1981, while still perfecting their chops. It would be nearly a year later when they’d drop their next release, the Chronic Town EP, and you can definitely tell they’d improved by then. The band would become critics’ darlings and have an extremely loyal fanbase well until their breakup in 2011.

7 August: The Replacements, “I’m in Trouble”
Meanwhile, on the other side of Minneapolis, four losers dropped out of school and started playing in their parents’ basements, hoping something would come out of it. Some people loved it, some people hated it–it really depended, honestly, on how much the band had to drink beforehand. But all that aside, their debut single, released around the same time as their debut album (fittingly entitled Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash), was a sloppy yet catchy piece of postpunk that would become their stock in trade. They’d last almost ten years before breaking up, but during their tenure they’d release a startlingly large number of genre-defining songs and albums.

Each of these bands have a decidedly different and unique sound and you would not be able to confuse one with another, which makes this bit of history all that much more fascinating–each band was traveling their own road without the influence of one another (even if they had known each other in passing or from hearing them on the radio), and yet each of the above became bands that defined the alternative rock genre, especially during the “college rock” years.

Radio BDC: The new Westinghouse model?

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This past Monday, four former WFNX deejays returned to the airwaves (so to speak), premiering Radio BDC: an online-only station created by and featured on the website Boston.com. For many WFNX fans, myself included, it was like a rebirth: our favorite deejays from the late and venerated Boston area alternative rock station were back on the air and playing the new and old indie rock we know and love so much. At noon Eastern Time (I heard it at 9am out here on the west coast), they counted down to go time and celebrated with Julie Kramer’s excited “Guess what…we’re on the air!”. Champagne was served, cheers were given, and the listeners rocked. The first song, “I Want My City Back” by the Mighty Mighty Bosstones (chosen by listener poll and a very apt choice, given its lyrics) was prefaced by Dicky Barrett of the Bosstones giving the station his blessing.

It’s certainly exciting to hear Julie Kramer, Henry Santoro, Adam 12, and Paul Driscoll back on the air–I knew these four via WFNX for years, and the demise of that station hit me pretty hard. Sure, it’s just a radio station, and all radio stations come and go (and a lot go the way of buyout or sale, but that’s another post entirely), but I’d discovered that station my freshman year at Emerson College, and a goodly portion of my music collection was informed and influenced by what they played. The new station is, for all intents and purposes, the same as the old one; the same alternative rock is being played, old and new, and the deejays are well informed and lovers of the genre. They play this stuff because they’re obsessed with it, they love the fanbase, and they’re having a hell of a lot of fun. There’s no better reason for this station to exist than that. And as a fan, I’ve been listening for hours on end while working at home. I haven’t listened to a radio station, terrestrial or digital, for this long in quite some time.

It wasn’t until yesterday that it occured to me–this station is being hosted by a website originally created as the online presence for the Boston Globe newspaper. Though the Globe now has its own dedicated website, it still runs Boston.com as a regional free site for news, entertainment, and other Bay State information. Radio BDC is essentially a broadcast extension of the site. [CAVEAT: I haven’t done any serious homework on this, so I don’t know if Radio BDC is actually owned by Boston.com or if they’re merely hosting the station; that, and I’m not familiar with the current broadcasting rules for websites and/or companies owning stations. As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t really matter; all I care about is that they got the permits and went live as quickly as they did.] So it occurs to me that this is just like the old radio stations of yore–I’m talking the birth of radio as we know it, close to a hundred years ago. Specifically, it made me think of those stations that were the broadcasting division of major manufacturing companies, such as Westinghouse. Unlike today, where stations are often owned by conglomerates and media companies (and are usually one of a number of same-genre stations in a collective), back in the day pretty much anyone with money, room for a broadcast tower, and a good business plan could start up a radio station. A number of businessmen actually came to the conclusion that having a broadcast arm of their business a great idea, especially if they were selling or manufacturing radios and radio parts. Pretty soon stations were popping up at hotels and department stores, where people could come to watch live broadcasts of orchestras, plays, and shows. This would be the norm for quite a few decades, with the addition of politicians and celebrities making the occasional visit to the station, and the birth of broadcast advertising. Even the advent of FM radio pretty much followed the same route, until it evolved and mutated into the radio field we know today.

So this got me thinking…will Radio BDC, and other online-only stations take the same route as the old Westinghouse stations? Well, probably not the exact same route, obviously. They share the same building as the Boston Globe out on Morrissey Boulevard, and they’ve had a few sports reporters popping in to talk about the Red Sox, but other than that, you wouldn’t know that this was a station connected to the Globe at all. In fact, the station is a broadcast extension of Boston.com, and that’s pretty much it. But I’ve been seeing this a lot over the past five to ten years…stations leaving terrestrial radio and going purely online. Part of it is the funding–running a radio station is expensive, and it’s not a high-revenue business. Considering that a majority of the revenue is from advertising, sometimes it’s easier and cheaper to go digital–this way your advertising can be visual pop-ups on the player and click-throughs on the website rather than intrusive thirty-second soundbites. You don’t need an expensive broadcast tower or an assigned frequency, either–you have routers and servers. There are even apps that listeners can download to their phones so they can listen in. As long as you follow the basic broadcasting rules, you’re golden. WBCN went digital-only because it was cheaper; WFNX was sold to Clear Channel for much the same reason. The stations as we once knew them are dead; their online footprint, often under new management and/or ownership, is now the norm. Le WFNX est mort, Vive le Radio BDC.

It makes me wonder if, sometime in the future, we’ll see more websites extending into the radio field like Westinghouse did so many years ago. I’m not talking about the streaming “stations”–the websites like Spotify which are generally just a giant mp3 server on a genre-defined shuffle–I’m talking about actual stations like Radio BDC…radio stations in the real sense of the term, with actual deejays, live events and the occasional commercial break. It also makes me think of regulation, but that’s another post entirely. For now, I’m curious to see if, how, and when these new versions of old radio stations might come into being via the websites that are hosting them.

Outside Lands: Day 3

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Sadly, we didn’t make it to the end of the day, so we’re going to miss Bloc Party and Stevie Wonder, but we did get a few more great bands in today before we called it a weekend:

First up was a band called Infantree that we’d heard of but didn’t really know, but we ended up really liking. Kind of moody indie rock and really great musicianship.

Infantree at the Panhandle stage

Soon after we stuck around at the Panhandle stage and saw Birdy. She’s known for doing some pretty interesting piano covers, including Phoenix’s “1901” and The Naked and Famous’ “Young Blood”. Not exactly my cup of tea, but she and her band were quite enjoyable.

Birdy while playing “Young Blood”

Then to the big afternoon deal–Franz Ferdinand! This was A.’s big name she was waiting to see, and they did not let us down. They kicked off with “Matinee” and hit all their biggest hits like “Do You Want To” and of course “Take Me Out”, and also performed a lot of new songs that may be on their next album. They all joined on the drummer’s set for the final track. Excellent show.

Rocking out on the Polo Fields stage. Yes, that’s Gavrilo Princip as the background picture.

Nick McCarthy and Alex Kapranos dueling it out

Alex rocking out

Lastly we headed back to the Panhandle stage to catch Electric Guest. Sadly I didn’t get any good pictures of them as we sat near the back and the crowd filled up surprisingly quickly, but they put on a fun show.

…and that’s pretty much it for us. We called it a day after that. We are definitely thinking of going next year, however!

Outside Lands: Day 2

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We only stayed for half the day today (I went against my former plan and am not staying for Sigur Ros, as they aren’t going on until nearly 9pm), but we did get to see a few great bands today, including a local “gypsy swing” band called Beso Negro, who were playing in this little hideaway in the woods:

The “gypsy swing” of Beso Negro

Soon after we headed over to the Panhandle stage (we seem to be checking out all the bands that hang out there) to check out Animal Kingdom that we really like. They were absolutely thrilled to be there, as they’d mentioned this was not only their first show in San Francisco, but their first show in California as well, and put on a fun and poppy performance:

Drummer Geoff Lea and singer/guitarist Richard Sauberlich having a grand time in the park

Bassist Hamish Crombie was smart enough to wear a hat in our SF weather!

After that show we headed over to the Sutro stage (where most of the folk groups are playing) to see The Be Good Tanyas, who had just gotten back together after a long hiatus and just came out with a new cd of old and new stuff. They played some wonderful folk including ‘The Littlest Birds’. I’d forgotten how great they are!

Samantha Parton, Frazey Ford and Trish Klein of the Be Good Tanyas

A little after that we headed back to the Panhandle stage to catch Michael Kiwanuka, who I hadn’t heard of but A. had heard a few times. He had a full band rather than being primarily acoustic, but he did put on a great show as well:

Michael Kiwanuka (center) and band grooving to his unique soul/folk hybrid of music.

And a few other pictures, just to show how many people were there today:

This one’s from near the front of the stage while watching the Be Good Tanyas:

A sea of humanity hanging in Lindley Meadow

But this one’s interesting…it’s a large crowd heading towards the Twin Peaks stage to go see Big Boi (aka the other half of Outkast), and pretty much what it was like down in the Polo Field last night:

Incoming!

Apparently it was for the best that we headed out early, as the crowds are supposed to be ridiculously large tonight for Metallica, Passion Pit and Sigur Ros, and despite me living about a half mile from the festival, it would have taken me forever to get home! We are looking forward to a few great headliners tomorrow too, with Birdy, Franz Ferdinand, Electric Guest, Santigold, Bloc Party, and Stevie Wonder. Looking forward to tomorrow!

Outside Lands: Day 1

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So A. and I went to Outside Lands this afternoon (we’re also going tomorrow and Sunday), San Francisco’s own music and craft festival that takes place in Golden Gate Park–in this case, about four blocks south of us. In the past couple of years we’ve been able to hear the bands from our apartment…not loudly, but just enough where we could recognize a few songs playing. Last year we were amused by the fact that we could hear Arcade Fire’s “Wake Up” (and the attending crowd going wild). We decided this year that we should go, considering the number of great headliners for this year.

A. got to see Tanlines (I ended up getting there late because I had to work until just after lunch), and we met up to see a silly local band called Wallpaper. After that show, we headed to the polo field to get some food and check out a few of the major acts.

The Polo Field, from the back forty

First off was Fitz and the Tantrums, who put on a phenomenal show, and they definitely know how to do it. Their sound was tight, and they knew how to work a crowd with their retro soul sounds.

After that was one of the performers I’d been waiting for: Beck. I’d last seen him live at the old Foxboro Stadium in (I think) 1998 or 1999, so it would be interesting to see him perform songs after that era.

Sometimes the best shots were of the monitors, but hey, why not?

I LOVE how this one came out.

Beck’s band was quite eclectic–a lot of older guys who, despite a few sound problems in the first few songs and a few flubbed lines, really enjoyed playing his warped style of indie rock. I did enjoy the few Odelay tracks they played, and loved that he played “Gamma Ray” (I’m not sure, but I’m convinced they were playing Danelectros on that), but I was quite pleased when they played not one but three songs from Sea Change, quite possibly my favorite of his albums.

And then came Foo Fighters, who kicked all kinds of ass and did not let up once. Dude, these guys fucking ROCK, and I’m not saying this because I’m a fan…they’re just THAT good live.

Dave Grohl rocks your ass.

Somehow I got all six guys in shot and somewhat in focus here!

Thank you and good night!

So tomorrow we’re looking forward to Animal Kingdom, Geographer, The Be Good Tanyas, Explosions in the Sky, The Kills, Passion Pit, and Sigur Ros. Metallica is playing on the Polo Field tomorrow night, and we’re iffy on that one, but we may just pop in on the back forty just to check them out for a song or two. More pix to come!

It’s beginning to and back again

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One of the pleasant and unexpected side effects of working on the Walk in Silence project is being able to see the cyclical nature of things.  Well, let me rephrase that–I did expect to see certain patterns emerging here and there, but I’ve been amused and entertained by how they emerge…how new things are often mutations of the original, and others are similar or reverential to its inspiration.  I see it most clearly through the indie music that we’ve been listening to on the Sirius stations as of late…I now make it a game to find similarities between the songs being released nowadays and those of the 80’s–the “[current band] sounds like [80’s band]” meme.  Some of them are more obvious: Beach House’s “Myth” certainly picks up where Cocteau Twins’ “Crushed” left off, for instance; others are more of a nod to the past, such as M83’s “Midnight City” being a perfect fit on a John Hughes soundtrack.

One of the other ways I see this is in the evolution of indie rock (as it’s called nowadays).  Since I’ve done quite a bit of homework on the subject (well, at least coming up with a theory on how it evolved from punk to New Wave and post-punk to “college rock” and so on, at any rate), I’ve come to the conclusion that the genre is now at the point where it’s back to where it started: mostly aural and closer to its origin.

To elaborate:  by “mostly aural” I mean that this music is mainly listened to on streaming websites or online radio stations now, rather than visual, considering that the video outlets of yore (MTV, VH1, etc.) have moved past the music video as its main programming.  Videos are relegated to YouTube and Vimeo and elsewhere, where we can check them out whenever we want.  The video has always been a four-minute jolt of caffeine to the music lover, a visual layer to add to the aural layer–the icing on the cake.  Back in the 80’s, us kids used to watch MTV for hours on end, gorging ourselves on these things.  We couldn’t get enough, partly because it played so many things we never heard elsewhere.  That, of course, changed years ago.

By “closer to its origin”, I mean that indie music has always, at least in theory, been about the tight link between the band, its output, and its fans.  It’s no secret that the big labels have always latched onto the Next Big Thing, colluded with the radio stations and the video channels to get as much airplay as possible, leaving the less commercial music to fall by the wayside.  Agreed, a lot of the less commercial stuff you can take or leave, but the subgenre of indie rock has always been different–it’s the weird cousin that you’re never quite sure about, who seems to be in a completely different movie altogether.  I say “closer to its origin” because a lot of the early indie music, the DIY punk and the small-label creations, embraced the musicians rather than using them for a profit.  When the Big Label consolidation started in 1998 with Universal and Polygram, and later Sony and BMG in 2008, a lot of otherwise creative bands either flew the coop or were unceremoniously dropped (or worse, ended up dissolving).  Even despite some independent labels’ short lifespans, many labels at least tried to keep the focus on the band and its output.  And thanks to the power of the internet, computer software and sites like Bandcamp, a lot of bands are foregoing even signing to a label, choosing instead to record and mix their music on their PC, convert it to high-bitrate file formats, and sell it themselves, reaping much of the profit in the process.  And because of that, a lot of the creation is purely of the band, with no outside influence from the labels or radio.  It’s all about what the band laid down.

Ultimately, at least for me anyway, this marks the return of music listening as a purely solitary event.  Indie rock has gone through quite a lot of changes since the 80’s.  It slowly started infiltrating the commercial side sometime around 1986-87–John Hughes’ soundtracks, and REM’s Document are but two major points off the top of my head–eventually finding its own chart in Billboard in 1988 (under “Modern Tracks”), and finally becoming hip and mainstream in 1991, thanks to Nirvana’s Nevermind and other albums of the time.  The 90s iteration of indie rock was an interesting shift: it became the mainstream due to the drying up of the old guard, hair metal and hard rock.  But in the process, the radio stations that had prided itself on being truly alternative–namely, the college radio stations–were at a crossroads.  Should they play the same alternative rock song being played on a commercial station, and should they even entertain the thought and risk being seen as a sellout?  And thus indie rock evolved again–the commercial alt.rock becoming the normal rock, and the more leftfield indie taking on different influences, from rap to world to jam and everything in between.  I could go on, but this would take awhile, and I’ll be covering it in WiS anyway.  Point being–come 2012, indie rock is about as prevalent as hip-hop, bubbly pop, dance, and every other genre under the sun, thanks to the power of the internet.  We have infinitely more ways to listen to music than we ever did in the past.

Which brings me back around to the beginning:  listening as a purely solitary event.  Ultimately, we’re no longer listening to the boring and harmless “listen at work stations” (as I call them), prevalent as they may be, because we don’t have to.  Unless I’m stuck in a supermarket or in an office, I can:

–listen to multiple websites streaming new releases so I can see if I like them before buying them.

–listen to multiple online radio stations.

–listen to one of the multiple Sirius music channels on our TV.

–listen to the stations that I used to listen to on the east coast, while living on the west coast–including the college stations that influenced and inspired me years ago.

–go to the band’s official site and listen to their new and as-yet-unreleased album, and even order it directly from them.

–simply start up Media Monkey on my PC, or turn on my mp3 player, and listen to any one of the thousands of songs in my collection.

In the end, this is what listening to music has been all about, at least for me:  listening to music on my own terms.  It lets me enjoy it as a purely aural treat and as a personal soundtrack.  It inspires moods and writing sessions.  College rock was my genre of choice back in 1986 because it was so unique and catered to my teenage geek years.  Indie rock is still my genre of choice now because, despite its evolution, at its core it’s still all about originality, creativity, and recording something true to yourself.  Despite all these new outlets and thousands of new bands, genres and subgenres, it’s still all about my own personal enjoyment with a song or an album or a band, and maybe discovering something new in the process.

And in this day and age, it’s blessedly easier to achieve that personal nirvana.

 

Once upon a time…or maybe twice…

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I always say my music collecting officially started at Christmas of 1978, when my mom bought me The Beatles’ 1967-1970 album…but how did I come to chose that album, of all things?  I mean, barring the fact that the collection really started a few months earlier with the Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band soundtrack, there has to be a reason I’d become obsessed with the Beatles at the tender age of seven.  Well, there’s two reasons:  the aforementioned 1978 movie that we went to see that summer, and another movie that had been playing on one of the local independent television stations:Yellow Submarine.

I don’t remember exactly when I first saw this animated feature, but I know it was on WLVI, Channel 56 out of Boston.  They played it at least once every summer, their own worn copy with all the pops and skips and edits, sometimes as a double-bill with Help! afterwards.  I fell in love with the movie instantly and looked forward to watching it every time it came on.  They played it in December of 1980 when John Lennon was murdered, and that was the year I grabbed a few blank cassettes and taped the entire movie onto tape.  (I remember it was this year because I taped a Lennon tribute show hosted by Casey Kasem that they played afterwards.)  I listened to that recording through 1981, and by the time WLVI played it again, I knew the movie by heart.  To this day, I can still quote nearly most of the movie, given a prompt.

This movie, the Sgt Pepper soundtrack, and the Beatles in particular, were major influences on how I listen to music.  I’d been a radio listener probably since I first noticed specific songs playing on the car radio during our family vacations–the fact that I had all older siblings who latched onto music before I did probably helped me do the same–but the Beatles were probably the first band where something clicked, and I stopped being a passive listener and became an active one.  And by active, I mean that I’d actually paid attention to the songs, learned their lyrics, and explored their sounds.  The original songs fascinated me, especially when I’d come to know many of them through the Sgt Pepper versions.

A few months ago, Yellow Submarine recieved a second remastering and release onto dvd.  Both times (1999 and this year), the release was prefaced by a short tour of select movie houses, and I of course had to go.  The first time they played it at the Brattle Theater in Cambridge MA, and that was the first time I’d ever seen the movie on the big screen, after having watched it on tv for years.  Back then, it had been remastered to Dolby Digital 5.1 and the movie sounds and visuals cleaned up considerably…plus, it was the first appearance of the “Hey Bulldog” sequence that had been edited out of the US version and later UK versions.  A new soundtrack was released, Yellow Submarine Songtrack, which to this day remains the only songs by the Beatles that are remixed to 24 tracks.  [Nearly the entire Beatles oeuvre was recorded on a 4-track mixer, barring Abbey Road and a few singles.  Think of that bit of info next time you listen to the brilliance of “A Day in the Life”.]  A second remastering took place recently and this latest version just came out a few weeks ago on both dvd and Blu-Ray.  I could not pass up going to see it at our local theater around the corner, and I was not let down.  The colors and sounds were vibrant and exciting, and the mix was clear enough that I could actually catch pretty much every line of dialogue effortlessly.

The interesting thing about watching Yellow Submarine every few years or so is that I still pick up on new things, or at least see things in a somewhat different light.  I remember watching it in high school and being surprised when it finally clicked in my head that war-torn Pepperland held a gritty parallel to WWII-era Europe.  Or finally catching the ridiculous number of puns (“Can’t help it, I’m a born Leever-puller”), Beatle song references (In the Sea of Holes… J:”Hey, this reminds me of Blackburn, Lancashire.” P: “Oh, boy…”) or sly music references (“Four score and thirty-two bars ago, our forefathers…”) hidden in the dialogue.  Or the fact that, this current time, how Chief Blue Meanie really needs to go on meds and maybe even take an extended stay in a psych ward, given his completely-off-the-rails psychosis.  Even the little bits of animation are brilliant, such as the pan-down of the Liverpool skyline right before “Eleanor Rigby” starts, or the initial panning across the Sea of Holes in incredible detail, or the clever use of rotoscoping in many scenes.  It’s not a perfect piece of animation, as you can definitely see slight mistakes throughout, but it’s sure as hell a creative one.

Yellow Submarine is definitely one of my Top Five movies, and one I’ll never get sick of.  Watching it as a kid defined who I was and how I listened to music, and despite its psychedelic roots, it still holds up as a quirky but extremely fun movie that everyone should see at least once.

Walk in Silence…The Singles

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Listen in Silence. Sure, kind of a goofy name for a compilation (let alone a series that’s still going strong to this day), but the aim was this: these are the songs I listen to, in silence. They’re not aural background, they’re songs I actually pay attention to. It’s a compilation I’d listen to at night on my headphones, after everyone’s gone to bed and the rest of the world is fast asleep.  Starting off with the well-known snotty guitar riff of Violent Femme’s “Blister in the Sun”–itself one of the very first tracks I’d ever heard on college radio a few years previously–and filled with album tracks and songs I’d heard on 120 Minutes over the previous month or so, LiS may have been the fourth “official” non-radio mixtape I’d created, but it was the first one that I was proud of. It was also the first compilation in which I’d consciously chosen all college rock tracks.

I don’t have a specific date when it was made, but I can safely say it was sometime around August of 1988. There are some current tracks, but there’s also quite a few older tracks as well.  They were all from cassettes I’d purchased in the past year or so, all of which were rotating through my Walkman and being borrowed by my college-bound friends for dubbing.  In retrospect, I also think this is also the one compilation that wasn’t created out of any specific theme (like the three before it) or mood (like the countless mixes thereafter).  It was the last gasp of being close to all my friends of the previous year and a half, who’d graduated just a few months earlier–and this compilation was sort of a ‘greatest hits’ of that time.

The first Walk in Silence compilation on the other hand, was created to fit a mood a few months later.

By this time I was back in school, floating through senior year, trying to get through this last bit of hometown residency so I could get the hell out of Inkspot and on to college in The Big City of Boston. I put WiS together in October of 1988 to combat the frustration and annoyance of all my closest friends having left Inkspot already, as well as having no real girlfriend at the time. It started out very similar to LiS in that it was to be another collection of “college rock greatest hits” but soon ended up containing quite a few tracks reflecting my mood at the time.  It starts off strong and angry with Depeche Mode’s “Stripped” and ends exhausted and resigned with Joy Division’s “Atmosphere”.  Many tracks were actually taken from promo singles that had been lying around at the radio station where I was working. The station had still been receiving the occasional promo single and album, mostly from Warner Brothers affiliated labels, but since the station ran via satellite feed, these gems were gathering dust.  I’d taken it upon myself to borrow them between shifts and dub them onto compilations so I would have them in my collection. By this time I think I understood the “flow” of a compilation, having innately picked up the trick while listening to various concept albums I enjoyed. I’d discovered quite early on that I enjoyed an album that had continuous ebbs and flows, as well as a nice strong bell curve as if it told a story. [This is why I thought John Cusack’s diatribe about making the perfect mixtape in High Fidelity cracked me up, because it’s so true.]  Whereas LiS sounds like a jumble of tracks that flow together well and sound like a shuffled playlist from a typical weekend afternoon in the late 80s, WiS deliberately starts out strong, comes to a relatively positive peak at the switch of tape sides, only to show the breaks in the wall and ending up with the stark minimalism at the end.

The title actually didn’t come to me until midway through making the compilation, when I’d realized that “Atmosphere” would be the perfect track to end it with. I’d toyed with various titles that afternoon, but somehow I knew that using that lyric would be perfect.  The bit at the end, “…The Singles,” is something I stole from Chris, who’d been making his own compilations around the same time; we’d both borrowed it from the couple of greatest hits compilations that were floating around at the time, specifically The Cure’s Standing on a Beach – The Singles. Giving it the name Walk in Silence also ties in with why I called the previous oneListen in Silence…if that one was for listening, this one was for when I felt I was truly alone.  It was a compilation to drive the point home that I was on my own, for the most part.

Compilation-making was about borrowing and dubbing someone else’s tapes and records, especially when one of us was heading out of town for the long haul. We’d make copies of these albums, but we’d also create these ‘albums’, sometimes with themes and sometimes just a mix, while we still had all the source material.  We always called them compilations, not mixtapes…or at least I did, at any rate, as for some reason I always thought of ‘mixtape’ as an unorganized jumble of tracks, like my old tapes of stuff I got off the radio. I treated them as full albums, like the K-Tel albums we used to buy years before, only with music suited to my own tastes. And like the K-Tel albums, each one would be given a specific name.  It was something I’d do on a Sunday afternoon before my shift at the radio station, finishing it just in time for it to have its premiere listening that Monday on the bus ride to school. Walk in Silencewas the first one–the first of many, really–to capture my moods on a ninety-minute tape and truly give me a soundtrack to my life.

Twenty-four years on, I still make these compilations, and still use some of the same names as well, including the two above.  The creation isn’t nearly as time consuming, since for the most part I’m making copies of mp3s, putting them in a new folder, adjusting the running order, and editing the tags.   In essence, instead of creating a playlist that can be deleted or lost, I create a new album, just as I did in the past, only digitally this time.  The blank cassette is gone along with writing on the c-card, and debating how much I can fit on each side without anything getting cut off or wasting blank space.  It’s quick and painless, and I can even re-edit the running order if need be.  Some of the magic of getting everything on tape–listening to each track from start to finish, listening to it evolve organically, and doing the best we can to catch the entire song without a bad edit–a lot of that’s gone, but the output is still the same, especially when it comes out a lot stronger than you’d expected.

Middle of Yesterday

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I’ve been listening to albums from 2001 over the last few days, and I’ve come to realize that a good number of them are a lot better than I remember them being. I’m quite certain that the main reason that year’s music doesn’t quite stick with me is due to the events of September 11th of that year.  An event like that will pretty much trump any other memories you might have milling about in your cranium.

Still, that’s why I listen to music, and why I’m not afraid to listen to music from that year.  Thankfully, I don’t have many albums or songs that deliberately trigger memories of that day–just the few titles that had the bad luck to come out on that day, and the few songs that are on a personal mixtape dedicated to that event (some people had different ways to process what happened–that was mine).  I chose not to let my emotions tied to music and other media get tainted by that.  If anything, music was what got me through it. I’m listening to these albums and songs by deliberately not tying them in with that event.  Instead I’m listening to them as what they are–releases from bands I happen to like.

I’m also listening to albums I felt were merely okay and not remarkable or memorable, and doing two things: first, I’m taking them for what they are, despite their critical acclaim or panning.  Secondly, I’m listening to them in the context of where that band was at that time to explain why they sounded like they did. For instance, I listened to REM’s Reveal today and found myself actually quite enjoying the album, despite remembering I wasn’t as impressed the first time out.  Back in 2001, I was still a big fan of early REM (read: everything up to and including Out of Time–I liked but didn’t get excited over everything after that), and this newer, mellower sound didn’t quite gel with what I wanted them to sound like. I think that’s one of the issues right there–as sometimes passive listeners, we often want our favorite bands to have the same sound all the time, but write new songs.  It’s a double-edged sword; they get the continuous hits, but eventually they burn out, or we get burned out on them.

On the same token, some bands go in a different direction where I initially feel they’re just not as strong.  REM and U2 are good examples of this.  I once derisively described their later work as “stuff you’d hear on VH1.”  It wasn’t until I moved past that and listened to this music again that I truly appreciated it and gave a true opinion about it.  I like their later stuff now; it’s just that it took me a while to get used to it.  They’re not as adventurous or ‘alternative’ as they once were, but that’s fine–they’ve gotten older and moved on, and finally, so have I.

Another good example is Radiohead, in terms of changing sounds.  I loved everything up to OK Computer, but their double-whammy weirdness of Kid A and Amnesiac kind of threw me off, and I never quite got into them after that.  It wasn’t until just recently that I “got” what they were doing, and find them fascinating again.  A. and I stayed up late a few weeks ago when they were livestreaming their Coachella show, and man, did they kick ass!  I gave up trying to shoehorn them into the pre-2000 alternative rock sound they had, and embraced their adventurous musicianship.

This isn’t to say that 2001 was filled with weird, slight, or dud albums; there are some true gems in that year, many that don’t get nearly as much due as they should.  Skindive’s one album, despite its low sales, is an excellent album on par with Curve’s earlier music.  Our Lady Peace’s Spiritual Machines is still my favorite of theirs, even though it didn’t quite get the airplay or the push it needed.  Elbow’s debut Asleep in the Back is a great start for a brilliant band.  Not to mention big hits like Jimmy Eat World’s Bleed American and POD’s Satellite, which were absolutely huge.  Despite all that went on at the end of the year, a lot of great music came out that still stays with us.

I think on a more personal note, one of the reasons the music from 2001 may not have gelled is that it was a transitional year for me.  I’d acrimoniously left HMV the previous fall, and was now working at Yankee Candle–not only a change of position, but a complete change of surroundings, going from Central Massachusetts to the Pioneer Valley.  I was driving west to work instead of east.  Added to that, I’d finished The Phoenix Effect and done some revising, and after a small number of failed submissions, I’d decided to completely rewrite the story as A Division of Souls, the first book in what ended up as a trilogy.  I was also now writing almost daily down in the Belfry (my writing nook) at that time.  And lastly, because of my defection from the record store, I’d stopped being as obsessive and overly eager to buy and listen to every damn thing that came out, and started to become more particular about what I bought.  I would give myself a limit to what I could spend on a weekly basis at Newbury Comics–about seventy dollars was the maximum, most of the time–so I would often make note of things I’d buy at a later date, or find used somewhere.  By 2002, I’d gotten back into the swing of things, writing daily and listening to all sorts of music, and of course moving on with my life.  I was in a good place by then, regardless of what was going on in the world.  I’d at least achieved some form of inner peace, which meant I could branch out and listen to new things with a clear mind and ear.

Listening to these albums now in 2012, along with all the other albums and songs I’ve procured in the last decade, is a lot like listening to them for the first time.  This is especially true when I haven’t listened to some of them for at least four or five years, such as with the REM album.  Songs I’d completely forgotten about or hadn’t bothered to pay attention to the first time around come shining through as new songs to me.  Some of them sound only slightly dated, but others haven’t aged a bit.  It’s a learning experience, immersing myself in this music again.

Songs in the key of life

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I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ve gone past the point of being a music collector and should now consider myself an archivist.

I say this, having gotten to the point where I am now fulfilling my eMusic points by downloading albums that I’d never gotten around to buying in the past.  More specifically, I’m downloading a handful of pop albums from the 70s and 80s that I once listened to as a teen, as well as a  handful of recent pop albums.  Just the other day I downloaded the three Wham! albums, two Billy Idol albums, Robert Palmer’sRiptide(the one with “Addicted to Love”, for those playing along), and Mr. Mister’sWelcome to the Real World.  And just today, thanks to Amazon’s one-day 99-cent mp3 sale, I now own Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream.

But the willing forfeiture of my IndieCred™ card isn’t the point here.  My point is that my music collection has grown quite absurdly large, thanks to the ripping of purchased cds and downloads over the last eight or so years, building complete discographies (sometimes down to the single level).  I’ve always been a completist, ever since the days when I searched for all the Beatles band and solo albums and singles as a kid.  Sometimes I’ll just buy a few tracks of the band if I’m not a big fan, but more often than not I’ll eventually end up buying their entire catalog.

There’s something to be said about buying an album that I’ve always wanted to pick up, or finding a sweet deal on an album I’ve been curious about, but why am I grabbing all of these tracks?  Am I ever going to listen to any of them any time soon?  I actually did a quick tally to see how many tracks I have and how long it would take for me to listen to all of them at least once, and came up with just shy of one full year.  Suffice it to say, I have a ridiculous amount of music.  At present I probably have over 100,000 tracks.  A good many of them are doubles or even triples (or more) due to my creating the mp3 version of the band’s single release, or its presences on one of my many mixtapes recreated as a playlist.  There’s also the box sets, soundtracks, and compilations, and albums owned by my wife.  Still, that’s a lot to contend with.  I’m surprised I still have some space left on the drive it’s on.

But again, why do I have so many, and why am I still collecting? Well, why not?  It’s a hobby–not quite a full-blown obsession, at least not as bad as it once was–and it’s one that I truly enjoy.  There are always new bands coming out with new releases, and old bands that I’m finally discovering, and records I used to have on vinyl and never transferred to digital.  Part of the interest comes from the creativity of music and the emotions it can evoke.  I love it when a piece of music moves me emotionally, be it classical or alternative or rock, and I especially love it when a song blows me away.  Even more so when a whole album can do that.  Part of it also comes from the history of not just the band, but history itself.  The story of how a song was created as an emotional response to an event is fascinating–such as Neil Young’s heartbreak and anger over the Kent State shootings causing him to write “Ohio” as a form of both protest and release.  The history of the many genres of rock music are fascinating as well, as is the history of radio, at least to me, at any rate.  That’s why I’m currently writingWalk in Silence.

Then there’s just the fact that I love a good life soundtrack.  I love having music playing in the background, and it definitely comes with my upbringing.  My mom always had the radio on in the kitchen when she was cooking, and my dad always had the radio on downstairs in the basement when doing research.  My sisters also listened to the radio quite a bit when I was a kid.  Added to the fact that nearly all of us have a bit of musical ability to some degree, it’s hard to stay away from it.  Our family was always surrounded by it.  It only made sense that I’d eventually bring it to its logical conclusion by collecting the things I listened to.  It wasn’t enough for me to be a casual buyer of music, I had to go the whole hog.  I could never understand how others could just own a handful of tapes or records, most of them in sad shape.  They were missing out!

As I continue to download more songs and expand the collection even more, I realize that I’m at the point where I’m coming close to being an archivist.  My father collects information about our home town as a local historian.  I’m collecting music to create an ongoing library much in the same way now.  I’m no longer thinking of music collecting as a way to feed my urge to buy the latest thing or keep up with the hits; I’m actually at the point where I’m collecting them to make sense of my life, and life in general.