Tag Archives: San Francisco

Twenty Years On: March-April 2006

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Even though I’d mentioned previously that I’d disconnected myself from my music listening habits, that isn’t necessarily to say that I quit cold turkey. For a brief while longer I was still listening to Yahoo’s LaunchCast (though that would be going away soon enough, like every other decent internet app in those days), still keeping tabs on new releases, and following various music blogs. And for a few years there we even had cable and would catch up with what was on the charts with VH1 and MTV.

I’d figured out a few places to buy music at the time… there was the Barnes & Noble down the street where I’d buy a few cds and dvds, the Virgin Megastore on Market (where I only went in once before it too closed like the Tower further down Bay Street), and of course the grand vastness that was Amoeba Records in the Haight, which would pretty much be my go-to from there on in. But this was around the time I started downloading more than buying physical, mainly due to storage space, and finding it easier to listen via mp3 player.

Mogwai, Mr Beast, released 6 March 2006. While I didn’t always find the time to listen closely to this band at times, I’d been a fan for a few years by then and always picked up or downloaded whatever came out. This one felt kind of like a transitional album, moving away from their longer and heavier work towards more melodic.

Goldfrapp, Supernature, released 7 March 2006. The same with Alison Goldfrapp; I’d loved her last couple of albums but I never got a chance to latch onto this one, which was very much in the style of her previous record Black Cherry; groovy, sexy, catchy, yet always just a little bit odd.

Band of Horses, Everything All the Time, released 21 March 2006. This was a band that caught my attention with the music magazines I was reading at the time, and I grew to really like their stuff. They were always in that indie folk subgenre that decidedly wasn’t the Stomp Clap Fireside Singalong genre that was getting a ton of airplay at the time.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Show Your Bones, released 22 March 2006. Their second album after the mega-selling debut Fever to Tell from three years previous, the lead single “Gold Lion” was a welcome return and still gets play now and again.

Daft Punk, Musique Vol 1: 1993-2005, released 4 April 2006. I’ll admit I was never the biggest Daft Punk fan — the whole indie disco/electronica think that didn’t really connect with me — but I figured that since I did actually like “Harder Better Faster Stronger” and “Around the World”, why not buy their greatest hits collection? Eventually I was won over.

The Vines, Vision Valley, released 4 March 2006. While I loved Highly Evolved from 2002 (and Winning Days from 2004 to a lesser degree), I was on the fence about this one, and I think it was because they’d started getting a bit samey in their sound. Still, I’d pick their stuff up in hopes that something would catch my interest. Sometimes it would, like 2011’s Future Primitive.

The Beatles, The Capitol Albums, Vol 2, released 11 April 2006. The second in a two-volume series which gathered most all of the numerous US album releases, complete with their distinctive alternate mixes both in mono and stereo — Beatles ’65‘s deep morass of reverb, for instance — this was of course a collection I had to pick up as this was how I’d known the albums all these years.

The Radio Dept., Pet Grief, released 12 April 2006. This was a band I’d known about via the music magazines I read, but it wasn’t until I heard “The Worst Taste in Music” somewhere, possibly on one of the many music blogs I was following at the time, that I finally grew to really like them.

Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs, Under the Covers, Vol 1, released 18 April 2006. Two singers steeped in jangle pop and 70s music influence putting out an album of covers? Sign me up! They’d eventually put out three stellar volumes over the years, all of them full of wonderful tracks that perfectly fit their style. Their cover of The Bee Gees’ “Run to Me” is a joy.

The Swell Season, The Swell Season, released 21 April 2006. This was an interesting side project for Glen Hansard of The Frames — who I knew from way back when he was in the movie The Commitments, named after his favorite book by Josef Skvorecky (and one that I’d read in college). “Falling Slowly” had been a minor favorite but would become a surprise hit in 2007 when featured in the movie Once and would win an Academy Award. They’ve put out a handful of albums since and they’re well worth checking out.

Secret Machines, Ten Silver Drops, relaesed 25 April 2006. This was their follow-up to the brilliant Now Here Is Nowhere from 2004 (one of my favorites of that year), and also the last album to feature guitarist Ben Curtis before he left to form School of Seven Bells. I remember giving this one quite a lot of play during my writing years at Arkham West, especially when I felt the occasional urge to attempt reviving the Bridgetown Trilogy.

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Coming up: getting into the groove

Twenty Years On: January-February 2006

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Hey there, it’s been a while! I’ve been busy with IRL stuff and day job things, but over the last few weeks I’ve been thinking that it’s time for me to revive the Twenty Years On series, as it’s now entered the San Francisco Years. Yes, this means that we’ve been here in this city for just over twenty years now!

I will say that it’s going to be a bit disjointed for a few reasons…after a whirlwind 2005 of several (very positive) personal events, we settled into our new apartment overlooking a busy intersection at the tip of the North Beach neighborhood, just a few blocks away from the tourist trap that is Pier 39. While A spent several days (and months) getting things in order at the office she’d transferred to, I chose to restart with a completely blank slate jobwise. I’d get a temporary position at Bank of America (soon to become permanent), and start getting used to living on the west coast. My writing nook was now a large bay window overlooking said intersection and named Arkham West, and I was writing Love Like Blood at the time but secretly wishing I could return to the trilogy.

Oddly, it took me a while to reconnect with music. I’d somehow drifted away from what I’d been listening to at the time, partly because I no longer had my own private writing nook that wouldn’t bother anyone else, partly because I couldn’t locate any college radio stations that appealed to me…but mostly because alternative rock seemed to be evolving in directions that couldn’t quite retain my interest. The brilliance of 2002-2003 seemed to have retreated and replaced by Pitchfork-rated hipster-influenced indie. To me it kind of felt like the scene was kind of losing its vision a bit. Not that it was all bad, of course, just that it was harder for me to find something I liked.

There was also the fact that I’d gotten rid of an extremely large portion of my music collection before we’d moved. The vinyl and cassettes stayed with my family (I allowed them to do what they wished with it, including selling it off and keeping the money), and after spending the entire summer of 2005 ripping my cds, I found myself unsure of what I still wanted to listen to. I’d purposely disconnected myself from my solace, so to speak, and ended up adrift. Even despite living just blocks away from a Tower Records (which would soon shut down within the year), I’d realized that I really couldn’t spend all my pocket money on CDs as I used to. And we really didn’t have the room for my huge collection.

It would be a few more years before I’d reconnect and find sounds that resonated with me, but those musical times in the Belfry Years were definitely over.

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Morningwood, Morningwood, released 10 January 2006. I’d actually heard this band in mid-2005 during the months I lived in New Jersey. There was an intriguing cable channel called International Music Feed whose playlist was steeped in everything not originating in the US that me, A and our roommates constantly listened to. We loved their two singles from this record, “Nth Degree” and “Jetsetter”, both giddy and goofy pop gems. They only lasted a few years (as did the channel) though singer Chantal Claret followed up with a pretty decent solo career in the ’10s.

She Wants Revenge, She Wants Revenge, released 31 January 2006. I remember hearing “Tear You Apart” a lot on Live 105, the local alternative rock station that was pretty much the closest analogue to the Boston area’s WFNX that became our usual station to listen to in the car. I was of two minds about this album — on the one hand, I liked their Joy Division/Interpol sound, but on the other hand it felt a little too derivative. They’d drop an album a few years later (2011’s Valleyheart), however, that I felt was absolutely brilliant.

Sparks, Hello Young Lovers, released 6 February 2006. I’d been a passive fan of Sparks but never quite got around to buying any of their albums, at least not until I finally took the plunge a few years later and downloaded their discography. They’re still a bit confusing to me but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Belle and Sebastian, The Life Pursuit, released 6 February 2006. Their album The Boy with the Arab Strap was a huge Belfry/HMV Years favorite of mine, and I’d put them on my ‘will buy anything they release’ list. That kind of fell apart around this time, however, mostly due to wanting save money, but at the same time I was having trouble trying to get used to their evolving sound. Their sound was no longer the bedsit twee pop I loved. I’d eventually come around, though.

KT Tunstall, Eye to the Telescope, released 7 February 2006. You couldn’t escape “Black Horse and the Cherry Tree” that year, as it showed up all over the place: music video channels, AOR stations, alt.rock stations, and everywhere in between. It’s a fun album worth checking out.

Elbow, Leaders of the Free World (US Edition), released 21 February 2006. I continued (and still continue) to be a huge Elbow fan ever since picking up Asleep in the Back early in 2002, and while this album is a bit odd compared to the dreamlike Asleep or the pastoral Cast of Thousands from 2003, it remains a wonderful record. “Forget Myself” got a good amount of play on Live 105 at the time.

Arctic Monkeys, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, released 21 February 2006. It’s funny — for a good couple of years I constantly mixed this band up with LCD Soundsystem, who appeared right around the same time. I think part of it was because they both embraced that indie-punk-meets-dance style that had become a big thing at the time, a style I wasn’t entirely all that interested in. I kinda-sorta liked them? But not enough to go out of my way and pick up their work? At least not until their major breakthrough, 2013’s AM.

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Coming up: getting used to the new sounds and finding stuff online

Context

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I’d tweeted earlier this week that one of my favorite things about vacationing in London is hearing some of my favorite songs in their original context.  By that, I mean hearing songs that were big and important hits in the UK that may not have been even a blip on the US radar.

A year or so ago we were at a bar near Smithfield Market meeting with a friend of ours when Manic Street Preachers’ “Everything Must Go” popped up on the jukebox.  It was a top-ten hit in the UK and signaled a new direction for the band after the strange disappearance of their former lead singer months previous.

David Bowie was of course a worldwide success, and his title theme for the movie Absolute Beginners was a very minor hit in the US (hitting #55 on the Billboard chart) but hit #2 in the UK.  The movie itself is somewhat based on the British novel of the same name written by Colin MacInnes — a well-loved coming of age novel set in the hip London of the late 50s.  Heard this one in a coffee shop just outside of St. Paul’s Cathedral one rainy morning.

The Divine Comedy is well known in the UK as an ‘orchestral pop’ band in the vein of Scott Walker (another musician quite familiar there but not in the US), and they wrote a song about the oversize tour buses one sees all around London.  This track would pop into my head every time I saw one of them go by.

 

I love doing this kind of thing wherever I go, come to think of it.  It’s partly to get the feel of the local sound, and partly because I’m just a sucker for rock music history.  Whether it’s getting in touch with with Britain’s quirky rock (most of which became alternative rock here in the states), or Boston’s unique mix of collegiate and blue-collar, or San Francisco’s purposely weird sounds, I love being able to not only connect with the music itself, but the context in which it was written and recorded.  It brings me closer to the real lives behind the music…it lets me understand why the song exists.