Tag Archives: personal

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

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I started the spring of 2003 in the best creative zone I’d ever been in to date. I was six months into writing The Persistence of Memories and was hitting at least a thousand words a night without fail. I was having a hell of a lot of fun planning it during the day and writing it at night. This was a novel that was about the soul growing stronger not just on its own but through connections with others, and in a way that’s what was going on in my life at the time. It remains my favorite of my books to date for those reasons.

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The White Stripes, Elephant, released 1 April 2003. After 2001’s breakthrough album White Blood Cells (and its earwormy single “Fell in Love with a Girl” and its Lego-inspired video), the duo’s sound started veering away from the lo-fi blues-garage rock and more towards slick indie production.

Ester Drang, Infinite Keys, released 1 April 2003. I’d heard this one on WAMH — I’d started listening to my once-favorite college radio station during my commutes — and really enjoyed how this band blended their sound between post-rock, slow-core and indie rock. Yet another on the Belfry jukebox.

Front 242, Still and Raw EP, released 8 April 2003. I’d always loved this EDM band but sadly it took me years to finally get around to getting the rest of their discography! This was a new release after many years of live and remix albums, to be followed the next month by a new album.

Yo La Tengo, Summer Sun, released 8 April 2003. A band that’s been around since I was a teenager (and still going strong with a new album this year!), this one was a favorite on college radio, especially the song “Little Eyes”.

Elefant, Sunlight Makes Me Paranoid, released 8 April 2003. This one got some seriously heavy play in the Belfry at the time! This was an NYC band that sadly kind of came and went, but it’s a hell of a fine record full of glossy, smooth indie rock with a touch of 80s sheen to it. There’s a track on it called “Static on Channel 4” that I swear is a Thomas Dolby song!

Mixtape, Re:Defined 02, created 13 April 2003. The first in this series went down so well for my commutes and writing sessions that I continued make them. This second one is a favorite of mine and contains a lot of songs I really enjoyed at the time.

M83, Dead Cities, Red Seas and Lost Ghosts, released 15 April. Years before the game-changing Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming, this band came out with a handful of odd yet fascinating electronic releases that leaned more towards chiptunes and glitchiness.

+/- (Plus/Minus), Holding Patterns EP, released 15 April 2003. This side project of the band Versus could be alternately experimental and full of sugary indie pop, but their song “Trapped Under Ice Floes” nails it with its driving beat, catchy melody and excellent midsong breakdown. Props for their video that’s a direct homage to The Cure’s video for “Jumping Someone Else’s Train”.

Blue Man Group, The Complex, released 22 April 2003. A group known more for their live (and often messy) performances, they would occasionally drop an album of the songs they did for their shows, often with the guest singers that would show up. This record features the vocals of Dave Matthews, Tracy Bonham (who would tour with them for this album), Esthero, and Gavin Rossdale.

Goldfrapp, Black Cherry, released 28 April 2003. After her adventurous and experimental first album, Alison Goldfrapp chose to go sultry, sexy and groovy with this second outing, and absolutely nailed it with a record full of great songs. This one’s a super fun listen!

Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Fever to Tell, released 29 April 2003. This NYC band had been around for a bit, but this was their official debut album and what a hell of a record it is! I admit it took me a while to get used to it, but once I heard the brilliant track “Maps” it all clicked for me.

Soundtrack, The Matrix Reloaded: The Album, released 29 April 2003. After a four-year wait, the second Matrix film dropped in early May, with the third in the trilogy (The Matrix Revolutions, both filmed at the same time) released that November. The unconventional soundtrack featured both the rock/electronic tracks and the score rather than them being released separately.

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Up next: another mixtape, a long-awaited release from an all-time favorite band, and more!

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

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March of 2003 was…interesting, to say the least. On a personal front, the day job had become considerably busier due to Yankee Candle’s new deal with Bed, Bath & Beyond…while the post-Christmas months had quieted down, the volume was still more than before. But on a more serious note…the Bush II administration had chosen to go ahead with its invasion of Iraq, upselling the ‘they have weapons of mass destruction’ message as far as it could go. Those who believed in it (mainly conservatives) leaned heavy on the American Patriotism to the point of absurdity (anyone remember freedom fries?), while those opposed to it (mainly…well, a lot of people, not just liberals) protested loudly and repeatedly.

I suppose this might be part of the irritation I felt and inserted into The Balance of Light. That novel contained a lot of tension between sides that refused to acknowledge the other; the war didn’t make sense to me, and that became Denni’s focus in the third book: Why the hells are we fighting? What are we trying to achieve by it? It also became Alec Poe’s as well: This makes no sense, and it will all end in destruction. I refuse to be a part of it.

Evanescence, Fallen, released 4 March 2003. “Bring Me to Life” was everywhere that spring, having also been in a key scene in the Ben Affleck’s movie version of Daredevil. I could have easily filed this away on the alt-metal/hard rock bandwagon that was becoming rather crowded at the time, but this one stood out with some really great songwriting and production.

The Ataris, So Long, Astoria, released 4 March 2003. I was never the biggest fan of emo, but I was drawn to this band’s amazing cover of Don Henley’s “The Boys of Summer” — quite possibly my all-time favorite cover version at that. [Bonus points for updating the bumper sticker lyric to ‘Black Flag’, heh.] I found myself listening to this one a lot during my writing sessions when I needed a good punchy soundtrack for some heavy action scenes.

The New Folk Implosion, The New Folk Implosion, released 4 March 2003. This iteration of Lou Barlow’s band is far moodier and robust than his previous versions, which drew me to it. The epic “Releast” is my favorite off the album and ended up on a few mixtapes that year.

Kelli Ali, Tigermouth, released 4 March 2003. The former Sneaker Pimps singer’s first solo album is a luscious trip-hoppy chill-out record and a perfect album for writing sessions. “Sunlight in the Rain” is one of my favorite tracks of this particular year.

Cave In, Antenna, released 18 March 2003. This New England band started out as hardcore metal but could also write some wonderfully melodic alt-rock. This was one of my favorite albums of the year and was one of the most played cds during writing sessions!

Longwave, The Strangest Things, released 18 March 2003. This too got a lot of Belfry play with its hybrid of indie emo and shoegazey riffs. Not as loud as most similar bands of the time, and definitely far more adventurous.

Zach de la Rocha & DJ Shadow, “March of Death” single, released 21 March 2003. The invasion of Iraq was not a popular move in the US, and several musicians let it be known how pissed off they were, many uploading songs for free online in protest.

Placebo, Sleeping with Ghosts, released 24 March 2003. In my opinion this is their best album ever, full of tight and driving melodies from start to finish. This was also one of my top favorite albums of the year.

Linkin Park, Meteora, released 25 March 2003. I kinda sorta liked the band at the time, but not enough to go out of my way to buy their first album…until I’d heard several of the singles off this one and realized what I was missing. This is an absolutely stellar record worth having in your collection, especially the new twentieth anniversary edition that just came out earlier this month.

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Coming up: more indie rock goodness, mixtapes and bands whose future started here.

Albums I Haven’t Played in Ages: The Downward Spiral

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KEXP played Nine Inch Nails’ “March of the Pigs” earlier today and it occurred to me that I have not listened to The Downward Spiral in ages. Which is surprising, considering I used to play the hell out of my taped copy (and later the cd) of it in the mid-90s during my last couple of years in Boston. It was even part of my Belfry writing session playlist for a significant time. I’m sure the main reason I’ve been avoiding it is that it reminds me a little too much of a not-so-happy time in my life. Very broke, very depressed, and very desperate.

I mean, “Closer” was everywhere on MTV and the alternative radio stations for months after it came out. [And I’m 99% sure it was because us Gen Xers were proud of the fact we could get a song with “I want to f*** you like an animal” as a lyric on commercial radio. When in doubt and you want to shock, might as well go all the way, right?] Mind you, it’s actually a step back from NIN’s previous EPs from 1992 (Broken and Fixed), though not by much. All three were extremely nihilistic and pissed off, but Downward Spiral seemed to step back just a little bit from the brink to be just this side of listenable.

I remember having a conversation with my then-girlfriend (the one I co-wrote True Faith with) about this album, how deliberate its production and construction was. It started with unbridled anger and violence with “Mr. Self Destruct” and only going…well, downard from there. The album does have a sense of resolution by its finish, however dire. By the self-titled song (the next to last track) the main focus is desperation and nihilism laid bare…followed by the damaged ascendance of “Hurt” as its final track. We’re not sure if the main character (so to speak) has reached the point of suicide or relief — or both — but it’s certain that the pain has finally gone away, one way or another.

I never got around to seeing Nine Inch Nails live except that one time, back in late 1989 when I won tickets to see them on Landsdowne Street in Boston, before their fame skyrocketed to arenas and music festivals. But by the mid-90s I was far too broke to go see any bands other than the free shows on the Hatch Shell anyway, so I made do with the music I could get cheaply. I followed the band’s progress through the years as I could, but I don’t think I quite connected with them as closely as I did with Pretty Hate Machine and The Downward Spiral.

I don’t remember the last time I actively gave this album a full spin, to tell the truth. I remember playing it in the stock room at HMV and in the Belfry when I was deep in writing The Phoenix Effect, but I rarely played it after that. It just struck a little too close to home.

I keep meaning to give it another play one of these days, now that time and age have intervened and the traumas of those years has faded, no longer equating those songs with personal and emotional hells. I can appreciate it as a fan and a listener and audiophile and not just a low chapter in my life.

Waking up early the next few days…

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The head bookkeeper is going on a well-earned two week vacation, which means my work schedule in his place will have me waking up before the dawn and getting me out by early afternoon. I do this on Fridays and Saturdays anyway so I’m used to it, but doing so for an entire week, five days in a row, is going to be tough. Still…I’ve done it before and I love this kind of schedule anyway, so I can’t complain.

Just saying that my music posts might be a bit loopy this next week or so if I’m a bit overtired, is all!

Meanwhile…

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The PC has been fixed and updated (yay!) but in the meantime I’ve fallen a little behind in my writing (boo!) so I’ve been frantically trying to catch up (blerg!). Doing what I can when I can, though, and making sure I don’t stress out over it all. And I’m not stressed! Which is good, right? Even when I’m trying to squeeze some words out before or after a busy shift at the Day Job?

Anyway. Been listening to a lot of new tunes lately, such as the new boygenius record (fittingly entitled ‘the record’), and it’s quite good! It’s been getting a lot of positive press and high-grade reviews. And let’s be honest, a group with Lucy Dacus, Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker in it has no business being half-assed now. Three phenomenal songwriters writing flawless alternapop. I highly recommend it.

Computer Woes

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WELP. Looks like the PC in Spare Oom has gotten to the point where I need to a factory reset. I probably needed to do it anyway as it’s been acting up in various ways over the last several months. Nothing big…until now. Previously the internet would disconnect, or I’d suddenly be super low on memory, but lately weird things have been happening like one single program eating up 98% of the CPU usage, or File Explorer seriously lagging.

I mean, it could very well be that a recent update got hosed (such as a driver download crashing due to said internet disconnect) or I somehow acquired some malware somewhere along the line. Mind you, other than the odd problems, everything ran totally fine once I ran a few cleaning apps. Until it happened again.

So anyways, this means that yesterday afternoon I decided to do take the plunge and do that factory reset after all. I’m not too worried about it, considering that this is the very first time I’ve done it for this PC in the three (four?) years I’ve had it. Having problems at this PC’s age is rather impressive, actually.

Which sadly means that I’ve given you this boring post instead of something about music! Oh well. Hopefully things will be back to normal soon!

fly-by: brb, glitch in the matrix

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Sorry for the lack of quality entries this week! Meant to get something up here today but my PC had an update that didn’t update correctly and it’s causing everything to be kind of wonky. Going to run some diagnostics and turn the unit off while I go to work today to give it a rest. Hopefully it’ll be back to normal this evening.

Let’s try this again next week, shall we?

Twenty Years On: Distance and Time

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Back in the spring of 1986, I remember being excited whenever I heard a Beatles song on the radio, especially if it was one of my favorites like “Rain”. (The song in fact does show up on one of my ‘radio tapes’ from summer of the previous year.) Back then, the idea of a song being twenty years old felt like a lifetime ago, its release five years before I’d been born. When you’re growing up, songs like that just seem so…distant.

Here in 2023, the music of twenty years previous was the music I listened to in the basement of my family’s house while I wrote The Persistence of Memories, what made the mixtapes I’d play on my commute to and from the candle warehouse, what cds I’d buy at Newbury Comics in downtown Amherst. This is music that still shows up on my playlists, like Sleeping with Ghosts and Hail to the Thief and Absolution and The Matrix Reloaded.

I think about this a lot, now that I’m older and especially now that the history of rock music has expanded and evolved since its early days in the late 50s (at least when it was starting to be called that, at any rate). I read a lot of music histories and biographies these days and this sort of things slides into the consciousness of my mind.

The fact that I was around and paying attention when so much popular music history was made, from the late 70s onwards. That when I started paying attention to what was being played on the radio as a preteen, FM had finally sprinted past AM as the most popular radio band (around 1978), music videos became more than just a rare specialized form of promotion (late 1981), and so many of its players and originators were still around, still clubbing and still releasing music.

This doesn’t make me feel old, far from it. Quite the opposite. It makes me feel glad and lucky as hell that I’ve been around to witness as much of it as I have.

I’m sure I’ll have a lot more to say about this down the road, but for now I’m just going to say that this is partly why I’m still as much of an obsessive music nerd as I am. Not for fear of missing out, but because I’m utterly fascinated by so much of this history as it’s happening. New sounds, new productions, new imagery. As well as the circularity of styles; the resurgence of shoegaze, the evolution of electronic music, the new generations of punk, and everything in between.

I’m always looking forward to what’s coming next.

fly-by: brb, taking a few days off…

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I seem to have finally caught a cold and gotten a fever for the first time since I started the Day Job last March. That’s actually a pretty good run! I’ve had a few days where I was running on fumes (these were usually the midday 11:30 to 8 shifts) but this is the first time in quite a while that I called in sick and taken the day off! I also have today off as well, and hoping that the cold/fever has already broken by the time this posts, as A also has the day off and we were planning on going out to do stuff.

Either way…going to take the rest of the week off and recuperate. See you next week!