Tag Archives: music

I Had My MTV

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I’ll freely admit that I’m firmly on the Gen-Xer side of ‘remembering MTV back when it played music videos’. We’re talking the early 80s here, back when my family signed up for cable TV via Warner Amex. I’d heard about the channel via its mention in music magazines like Rolling Stone and its occasional “I want my MTV” commercial showing up here and there. The first videos I remember seeing on the channel was .38 Special’s “Hold On Loosely” and The Police’s “Spirits in the Material World”. It was sometime in 1982, and I was already well entrenched in rock radio and American Top 40, even at eleven years old. I was completely hooked.

I think what appealed to me, even as a preteen, was the fact that the channel tried so hard to be at the forefront of music culture, yet also felt like one of those low-budget community access channels where the production teams and the on-air hosts really didn’t know what the hell they were doing half the time. That was part of its charm! They knew enough to replay all the music videos that got a positive reaction from its viewers, but they weren’t afraid to insert weird things like Blotto’s “I Wanna Be a Lifeguard” or Yello’s “The Evening’s Young” to keep us on our toes. Hell, I even loved those one or two minute bumper fillers that were basically public domain films set to nameless instrumentals.

I bring this up following the recent news that the channel has chosen to shut down all of its UK channels by the end of the year, with the possibility of more channels in other countries going the way of the buffalo as well. Not that anyone is surprised these days, considering that the original channel plays reality shows and the tertiary smaller channels are mostly available via cable TV packages.

Most music videos show up on YouTube and TikTok these days, and that might be a good thing when you want to watch the new Taylor Swift video now instead of waiting for it to show up at some point in the next hour or so. But what we miss, just like streaming versus terrestrial radio, is two-fold: we miss out on the slow anticipation that our favorite band or singer will show up like some kind of mini-event, and we miss out on the potential discovery of music we might otherwise not have noticed on the way there.

I don’t necessarily miss those MTV days of yore. I’ve got a lot of great memories, and I’m glad I was there to witness the world premieres and the unscripted moments and the holiday countdowns. I’m thrilled that I was part of the era that got to see all those amazing bands and singers grow and evolve into world-dominating celebrities. I’m especially thankful that it played an extremely influential part in my life when I discovered 120 Minutes.

It was a specific point in time, just slightly ahead of the curve and unafraid to take chances. It was an era of two completely different iterations of pop music — the US and the UK — crashing into each other, influencing each side of the Atlantic and reaching out into the cosmos with something new and fascinating. It influenced the sound of rock and pop for decades to come, allowing it to evolve in unexpected directions.

Now that we have instant gratification at our internet fingertips, having that kind of cable channel doesn’t quite have the power and the reach that it once did. Sure, had they the budget and the creativity and less of the stakeholder influence, MTV itself could have evolved into something unique. Instead, it slowly faded away into yet another benchwarmer channel playing innocuous reality shows and viral videos of people doing stupid things.

That’s the one thing I wish had been different about the channel as it got older and less influential: it could have gone out on a high note rather than limping along well past its lifespan.

It’s been a while…

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Shocking revelation: I haven’t made a mixtape since the year-end collection back in December.

To be honest, part of it was due to prepping and packing and moving and unpacking and banking and settling in and everything else that goes along with buying a home while still juggling the Day Job. I put my mixtapes (and in effect, this blog) aside for a little bit while I got my life back in order once more.

I’d been tempted multiple times, but I just didn’t have the time or the inclination. Similar to my putting aside the journaling and the word counting and the whiteboard schedule, I felt it was time to properly step away for a bit to recharge. Aside from the book-centric mixes I’d been creating for my writing, I hadn’t been listening to the ones I’d made over the last couple of years, and that started to annoy me. They’re good mixes, they’re just not getting played, and that’s because I needed the brainspace.

We’ve been living here for at least three months now, and that itch to make mixtapes is returning. Sometimes I think about where and when I’d actually listen to them, considering I can’t really do that at my Day Job, and my commute is a seven-minute, sixteen-block drive. Days off and during writing sessions, then. And it occurs to me — that kind of thinking is exactly what’s turning me away from it instead of towards it. Mixtape listening isn’t about setting aside a specific time to put in that latest volume of Walk in Silence or Untitled or Re:Defined. One of the main reasons I chose to disconnect from mixtape-making was the same reason I’d stopped the whiteboard schedule: I was making myself too regimented, and that was taking all the fun and the spontaneity out of it.

As expected, the time away has given me time to connect (or reconnect) a bit closer to my music library, especially now that I’ve managed to back away from the mad frenzy of discography completism and obsessive listening to KEXP (which I still do, just to a lesser degree). I’m relearning how to just enjoy the music I hear, and I’m glad about that. I’m feeling a lot more connected in the right ways once again.

Interestingly, the outcome of this is that making any mixtapes now feels a bit like when I started making them in earnest back in May-June of 1988. I’d made a ton of mixes before that of course — what I refer to as my ‘radio tapes’ era for obvious reasons — but I hadn’t made any personal sourced-from-records/tapes mixes before, at least none made with any seriousness, up until that point. Those original first mixtapes were not about making seasonal mixes at all — they were about collecting my favorite songs at the time, songs I didn’t have in my collection that I could borrow from others, and most of all, they were mixes I could enjoy at any time.

And I think I’m finally getting to that point once again, for the first time in years.

Reset

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Okay, so I have to remind myself that sometimes I don’t need to listen to the entire broadcast day of KEXP when I happen to have the time and access to it. It’s great background music, but by mid-afternoon I start feeling that I’ve lost the plot of what I need to get done. No offense to Larry Mizell Jr — he’s a great afternoon DJ and I pick up a lot of great tunage from him, but sometimes I really should focusing more on, say, my writing session or getting a blog entry done. And I can’t always do that when my favorite station is dropping new things that capture my attention. It’s too easy of a distraction.

This constant connection not only distracts me from my writing work, it also takes away from my ability to occasionally deep-dive into my own library sometimes. I mean, it’s not as if I’m missing out…KEXP stores their show streams for two weeks so I can always listen to that if need be. Point is, I’ve been visiting the old Songs from the Eden Cycle mixtapes and realizing there are some great tracks there from albums I haven’t played in years! I feel it’s far past time to give them another spin.

I know, I know…I’ve been talking about doing this listening habit reset for years and never quite doing so. But considering my decision to make this year about Following Through, perhaps now is that time. Even if it means I have to work out a schedule to create some kind of stability (hey, that’s what my whiteboard schedule is there for). That might not be a bad idea, considering I’ve been feeling the urge to get back to Doing All The Things. Not just the writing projects, but revisiting the 750Words site as well as returning to my drawing. I have the drive and the inclination, I just have to, y’know, do it now.

So let’s reset and follow through, shall we?

Dust & guitars

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My friends circle on Discord has come up with something nifty as an alternative to the dreaded New Year’s Resolution that never seems to stick. Instead of declaring I will quit a bad habit or I will learn a new craft or I will lose weight or what have you, the idea is to come up with something you already like (or love!) to do but don’t always give yourself a chance to do it for one reason or another. Do it once a week for fifty-two weeks simply for enjoyment!

I got to thinking about it and I thought: I have four guitars collecting dust because I don’t pick them up all that often. I’d even bought new strings for the two six-strings (one acoustic, one electric) about six months ago but never got around to putting them on! So I figured, why not? Once a week I’ll pick up the guitar and either learn a new song, or write a new one! I do enjoy doing both, I’ve just not given myself the time over the last few years.

Sure, I’ve mentioned how annoyed I am with myself guitar-wise because when I do pick them up I end up playing the same handful of songs, and that gets boring really quickly. My dad used to do that on his piano and he enjoyed it, but I also really enjoy the creativity of learning or writing a new song and I haven’t done that in a LONG time. I want to do more than just play the same songs, I want new sounds to surface, just like when I write my novels!

So for the first two weekends, I allowed myself a related option: let’s start by putting on those new sets of strings. The acoustic was relatively easy, but restringing the Gretsch electric (see above, and pardon the dirtiness of the frets) was a bit of a chore, given that they’re held on there via the Bigsby bridge (aka the built-in vibrato bar) and a lot of tension, but it got done and it sounds great!

And just to make sure it was in tune, I taught myself the basic chord progression to REM’s “Radio Free Europe”, inspired by having just finished reading Peter Ames Carlin’s biography The Name of This Band Is REM. Learning that Peter Buck is self-taught and figured out his style by playing along with records — exactly how I did it — gave me the inspiration to keep going with this.

The aim here is not to be professional, or even release anything on Bandcamp or whatever (although I won’t rule it out if it sounds halfway decent), but just to revisit what I loved best about playing with The Flying Bohemians and jeb!: the pure enjoyment of musical creativity. Anything more than that will be a bonus.

Coming up on year’s end…

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I never got around to creating an end of year mixtape for 2023 — or a best-of list, come to think of it — and to be honest, I had good reason for it. While it was a good year for the most part, there were other personal things going on that took precedence, and it just fell by the wayside. I just didn’t have the spoons for it. It is what it is, though. It’s not the end of the world.

Now that we’re a month and a half away from the end of 2024, I’m pretty sure I’ll have something to go in the last week of December. I caught up on mixtape-making this year by reviving the Re:Defined series that I’d created back in the early 00s for similar reasons: changes in music tastes, changes in personal life, changes in outlook.

And there’s definitely been a lot of good stuff out there this year. I don’t always get to listen to it as frequently as I’d like (and I’d like to change that habit in the new year), but on the other hand there were quite a few albums I’ve been returning to on a consistent basis. Songs that get stuck in my head for days at a time.

We’ll see where this all leads in the coming weeks!

New Mixtape — Re:Defined 2404

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Making the new Re:Defined mixtapes have definitely been an interesting experience, as I’ve given myself a reason to work not just with tracks that are getting a decent amount of play on KEXP but deep cuts that catch my attention when I’m listening to the albums at other times. I think I’ve finally hit a groove with this mix, as there’s a certain vibe that I hadn’t reached in quite some time. Have fun and give it a listen!

Track listing:

SIDE ONE
1. Hinds, “Boom Boom Back” (feat. Beck)
2. Mavis Staples, “Worthy”
3. Orcas, “Under the Milky Way” (a lovely cover!)
4. Cassandra Jenkins, “Delphinium Blue”
5. Liam Gallagher & John Squire, “Just Another Rainbow”
6. DAIISTAR, “Tracemaker”
7. The Softies, “23rd Birthday”
8. Jane Weaver, “Love in Constant Spectacle”
9. GIFT, “Going in Circles”
10. Bastille, “Emily & Her Penthouse in the Sky”
11. Ride, “I Came to See the Wreck”

SIDE TWO
1. Orville Peck & Beck, “Death Valley High”
2. deary, “Selene”
3. BADBADNOTGOOD, “Last Laugh”
4. GIFT, “Later”
5. Quivers, “Apparition”
6. Yannis & the Yaw with Tony Allen, “Rain Can’t Reach Us”
7. Wand, “Mistletoe”
8. Glass Animals, “Wonderful Nothing”
9. The Softies, “I Said What I Said”
10. beabadoobee, “Take a Bite”
11. Iress, “Mercy”

I’ll take hip-hop with a side of punk rock and some country-western to go

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I’ve told many already that I am absolutely thrilled that the independent station that I’ve been listening to religiously online for the last six or seven years, KEXP, is now on the air here in the Bay Area, having snagged the 92.7 FM frequency in a bankruptcy deal and gone live last Tuesday. They truly are independent, relying not on commercial breaks but fund drives and listener donations. [I’ve been ‘powering’ the station since at least 2019.] Their playlist remains the same for the moment, though they’ve already made plans to add some shows focused on the local scene in the near future.

What’s the appeal? Good question. Several of the daily shows come very close to free-form radio, a sadly now-rare style that does not rely on numbers and algorithms or rotation schedules. DJs like the Morning Show’s John Richards (pictured above, who is also currently the station’s associate program director) connect with their listeners on a personal level, whether it’s in celebration like their International Clash Day, or in mourning like their Death and Music talks. These DJs aren’t putting on an act, they’re simply music nerds that love what they play and want you to share it with you.

My tastes in music have definitely changed in those past six or seven years, having gone from the very commercial Live 105 to the indie KEXP. [I’ll listen to Live 105 now and the difference is extremely telling, to be honest.] Several bands I’ve seen at Outside Lands are bands I heard first on that station. Pretty much most of my music library over the last several years comes from their playlist.

From what I’ve heard, the response to their Bay Area presence is overwhelmingly positive. They’ve always had a strong fan base thanks to their online streaming, and their base is already global. And yes, I’ve already added them as a preset in the car, heh.

Check ’em out here! —> https://kexp.org/

Show Me How

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There are many different ways I could go about relearning how to listen to music that resonates with me, and I’ve been thinking that perhaps it’s to do it like I did before: one song, one resonance at a time.

My old-school style of finding writing inspiration in music used to be like this. A song that attracted my attention would then make me think okay, how can this song inspire a scene in the novel I’m writing? I haven’t done that in decades actually, but that’s how it used to work. It evolved in the 90s to ‘Belfry Soundtracks’ — the albums that would get heavy rotation during my writing sessions. They weren’t so much inspiration as they were setting moods, or simply pleasant to hear while working.

Life encroaches sometimes. I lack the time or the patience to pay attention. Or maybe the style or the genre evolves in a direction that doesn’t sing to me for a time. There are many reasons for that disconnect, and other reasons for trying to catch up afterwards.

Relearning sometimes requires unlearning. Stop focusing on the bulk of the chronology and the discography, and focus on the immediate that’s coming across. Discover something that passed me by, or be the first one in, it doesn’t matter, as long as we listen to the single song at that moment, and relate or react with the resonance. Pass it by if there’s nothing to feel, or hold onto it for a later time.

Just allow it to resonate, and that’s the most important and the most true emotional response.

Twenty Years On: Songs from the Belfry 2003, Part X

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I finished The Persistence of Memories in one marathon session on 11 November, having realized I’d started it exactly one year earlier. That’s not something I normally do, but considering that it had been my first novel to be finished in under one year I wanted to see if I could pull it off. It was Veterans Day and I had the day off from work, and if I’m not mistaken it was an extremely lengthy six-hour session (my longest ever to date, with the occasional break for food and whatnot, as well as a few FreeCell games to keep my eyes from crossing).

Thankfully, clearer heads won the day and I didn’t start Book 3 until early January 2004!

Lamb, Between Darkness and Wonder, released 3 November 2003. This duo’s last album before going on an extended hiatus (and not returning until 2011) is a quiet and somber affair, more about contemplation and comfort than their previous experimentations in electronic pop.

P.O.D., Payable On Death, released 4 November 2003. Their follow-up to their mega-selling Satellite may not have been able to reach the same heights, but it certainly had its share of great alt-metal tunes.

Guided By Voices, The Best of Guided By Voices: Human Amusements at Hourly Rates, released 4 November 2003. I’d known about this band for ages thanks to my HMV years but never got around to picking any of their albums up, primarily because they seem to drop four or five records a year! I figured this was a good place to start. And yes, there were a few “oh, that song!” moments upon first listen.

Explosions in the Sky, The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place, released 4 November 2003. Another post-rock band to add to my collection, this one got some considerable play during my writing sessions when I needed background but not necessarily mood.

Loveless, Gift to the World, released 11 November 2003. A Boston group comprised of singer Jen Trynin and members of Expanding Man and Letters to Cleo, their one album is full of crunchy fun indie pop.

Mixtape, Re:Defined 07, created 16 November 2003. This is an interesting one as it’s more of a ‘favorites so far that didn’t make it to previous mixes’ tape than one of new songs. Still, it’s another one of my favorites.

The Beatles, Let It Be…Naked, released 17 November 2003. An interesting compilation that kind of flew under the wire, it’s pretty much all the major songs from the 1970 original minus most of Phil Spector’s, er, mishandling by overproduction. Mostly released for completists like myself, it also contains a twenty-minute bonus track of chat and soundbites from the sessions.

Blink-182, Blink-182, released 18 November 2003. The meathead-punk band of the 90s seems to have chilled out a bit on this record, writing some surprisingly intelligent and straightforward tracks, a few of which have become radio favorites.

Various Artists, Feedback to the Future, released 25 November 2003. A single-disc collection of shoegaze and Britpop I discovered on the pages of CMJ and had Newbury Comics special order for me. This is only a small sampling but it’s a great mix nonetheless. This one got a lot of play in the Belfry.

+/- (Plus Minus), You Are Here, relesased 25 November 2003. The band follows up their fantastic EP with a full record of twitchy indie rock that’s kind of hard to pin down into one style yet worth multiple listens.

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Next up: End of the year releases and mixtapes!

Twenty Years On: Songs from the Belfry 2003, Part IX

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The days at Yankee Candle were already getting busier by October, the sign of Q4 starting with extended hours (aka ‘mandatory overtime’) and larger volume to move. This was the second year with heightened volume thanks to our recent acquisition of Bed Bath & Beyond as a seller. The downside was that YC’s hiring of seasonal help always started a month or so late (they’d come in November when we really needed them earlier), and by then we’d lost one or two members of our team for one reason or another.

And yet at the same time, I was kicking ass writing. I was just about wrapping up The Persistence of Memories and about to start in on Book 3 and I wasn’t about to take any time off in between and lose that momentum. Perhaps that wasn’t the best of ideas in hindsight, but at the time I felt it was better to just keep riding that high while I could.

Mono, One Step More and You Die, released 2 October 2003. This Japanese instrumental post-rock band was a critic favorite from the beginning, and while it took me a bit to warm up to them, I found their music perfect background for writing sessions.

Soundtrack, Lost in Translation, released 3 October 2003. Sofia Coppola’s second movie was a surprise hit and featured quite a few great bands on its quirky and unique soundtrack, including a few rare solo tracks from My Bloody Valentine guitarist Kevin Shields.

Belle and Sebastian, Dear Catastrophe Waitress, released 6 October 2003. These Glaswegians broke out of their bedroom twee sound with this perky and often funny bedsit pop record. The new style fit them really well and they’ve evolved in that direction ever since.

Living Colour, Collideøscope, released 7 October 2003. This band returned for their first record after their 1995 split, and while it’s not as heavy and funky as their previous records, it’s just as topical.

Jet, Get Born, released 7 October 2003. “Are You Gonna Be My Girl” was my favorite track of 2003, containing so much power, swagger and energy that was lacking in so many other songs and records of the day. The entire record is full of fun Stones-y rock with even a few forays into Beatlesque psych pop.

Paul Van Dyk, Reflections, released 7 October 2003. A name I knew for ages as a producer and remixer, his fourth album took him in interesting directions, showing that he wasn’t just knowledgeable in electronic music but in full-band rock.

Death Cab for Cutie, Transatlanticism, released 7 October 2003. Their last album for indie Barsuk Records and a few years before their major-label breakthrough Plans, this album paves the way for their well-loved brand of intelligent, slightly quirky alternative rock, and is considered one of their best.

Laika, Wherever I Am I Am What Is Missing, released 7 October 2003. This may have been their last album, but it doesn’t feel like it; instead it feels like what the band’s sound would have evolved into had they kept going. The twitchy electronics are still there but muted to reveal beautiful melodies just underneath.

Mixtape, Re:Defined 06, created 19 October 2003. This mix in particular got a lot of play in my car as well as its previous volume, containing quite a few of my favorite songs at the time.

The Strokes, Room on Fire, released 28 October 2003. I had a love/hate relationship with this band at the time; I thought their music was interesting and kind of fun, but at the same time I disliked the way Julian Casablancas’ voice always sounded tinny and mixed as if with zero bass whatsoever. I’ve come to appreciate their sounds over the ensuing years.

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Next up: one novel down, one more to go