All Over the Map

“Gonna sing the songs of the streets again
Gonna knock me off my feet, so get ready
“I’ll sing a song for the fallen angels
This one goes to all the unsung heroes
We’re going down, down to the streets below
Cause don’t you know, I wasn’t born to follow”

~ “I Wasn’t Born to Follow” by Social Distortion

My good friend is moving away tomorrow, and I’m really going to miss her.  She understands me.  Better yet she understands me and still likes me.  Despite all my stupid awkward tendencies and vintage New England need to wildly over-analyze.  Case in point: that sentence went on forever.  Four descriptive words are always better than one.

When things are good I scoop them up and hold them tight.  I don’t want anything to change or anything to happen that might ruin it.  The little patch of lifetime has to be preserved perfectly.  Except when the world goes on without me.  The rug is pulled out from under me, and all the little glass globes of memories I held in my arms go crashing to the floor.  For a moment I just sit there with my legs in the air and watch them bounce.  A fraction of a second later they shatter.  There I am again in the middle of a great big mess.

I realize more and more that I should have my own way figured out.  I can’t depend on other people because they’ve got their lives to sort.  This crazy tangled mess of academic books and earphone wires is my problem.  I’ll miss my friend, but I needed to learn that the world doesn’t turn on an instant.

Singing to fallen angels.  What a lovely idea.

 

 

But Wait, There’s More

It never fails.  I can’t keep my eyes open during the day and then I’m wide awake late at night.  Hooray, messed up sleep schedule.  On an unrelated note, this December London Calling is getting re-released again, this time for its 30th anniversary.  The last one was for the 25th anniversary.  Clearly a different thing entirely.  Look, I love the Clash like crazy, but can this please stop?  Too much commercialization makes things feel all cheap and sticky.

The way I see it, you can sign to a major label without selling out if you treat them as a large distribution network.  That’s really all they are, aside from the fancy production equipment.  Their business is getting music out to as many fans as possible.  They do it for the money.  Whether or not a band does the same is up to them.  Dedicated bands won’t change their sound while running after dollar signs.  They won’t abandon their values.

But give it a few years and things subtly start to change.  The band isn’t as popular anymore.  They have a family and a couple of ex wives to support.  Large amounts of their fortune have been chucked out the proverbial window.  Here come the reissues.  Classic albums mindlessly paraded about for the general public, dressed up in this and that bonus track and maybe a live dvd.  The Beatles made absolute stacks of money, and even they come out with rare unreleased material every few years.  (The remasters are an exception, those are amazing).  What’s the big idea?

How many copies of Sergeant Pepper do you have to buy before it’s enough?  Can you not stop until you have one in every variant of packaging?  For crying out loud, it’s just music.  Let it build walls of electrifying sound around you.  Go to concerts and have it shoved right through your ears.  Don’t waste time cataloging special editions alongside boxed sets one through four.  That’s missing the point.

So here’s a good stomper to get things started:

“Bloody Minds” by the Briggs

Now to bed, perchance to sleep.  I didn’t say anything about butchering Hamlet.

Dum De Dum Dum

I consider typing a therapeutic exercise.  Two midterms in a row yesterday made all kinds of finger muscles hurt.  All this thinking about school reminded me of something.  In eighth grade I took guitar.  We met in the chorus room, a big open space backed by wide, flat wooden tiers like stretched out bleachers.  We were always dragging chairs on and off the different levels.  I’m still not really sure why.

Anyway once we were a little ways into the semester our teacher often let us grab a guitar from the rack (“Careful!  Those are very expensive!”) sit down somewhere and play.  We fiddled with chords and practiced our songs for the performance.  Oh yes, they invited our parents to come hear us play at 8:00 in the morning.  Horrors.  I always worked on “Hey Jude,” picked especially because I already knew the melody.  You see, I have a shameful secret.  I can’t really read music.  I can look at notes and name them, but I can’t reproduce their distinct sound in my head.  I can’t separate notes from a pattern.  Memorizing a melody gave me a way to compare what I played to a mental reference and see where I had gone wrong.  I had known the words to “Hey Jude” since I was six.  It was the perfect cover.

One morning I sat on my plastic chair, guitar for once settled comfortably on my lap, plunking away.  Usually I slowly mouthed the words along with the notes and it didn’t sound a lot like music.  For a minute, though, my fingers took over the rhythm on their own.  I sat there and played and there was nothing else in the world.  It was such a perfect moment.  Later my teacher made me switch to the other song I was meant to be learning and it all fell apart.  I didn’t know the words to that one.  Bus-ted.

Actually I’ve spent a lot of time shoving whole songs into my head in order to learn them.  It’s backwards, but it works.  Maybe when I go home I’ll dig in the attic and find that guitar.

 

Mystery Cranium Radio

“Don’t want to exist

I can’t persist

Stop me before I do it again”

~ “Infected” by Bad Religion

This popped into my head on the way down the stairs today.  The next lines followed easily while another set of brain cells looked for the title.  Oh, there it was, next to a stack of old history papers.  Move it, War of 1812, you’ve had nearly two hundred years to grace a chalkboard already.

Er, anyway.  I sang the rest of the song as I walked, and it made me feel better, even though I was fine before.  That’s the funny thing; it turned out to be a really useful mental ambush.  This happens to me a lot, almost always with a song I haven’t heard in weeks.  Either it’s a coping mechanism or the work of a tiny master dj.  Truth be told I rather like it.

Does this happen to any of you?

P.S.  Both Bad Religion and Social Distortion are playing Philadelphia next week.  Have fun, lucky people.

Rogue Figment

I wanted to stare that sniveling fear in the face and bare my teeth at it.  I wanted to see it back down, not me.  Instead as each moment crept by it crept closer, closing in.  The comfortable space I had was reduced to nothing.  I couldn’t breathe without inhaling another girl’s hair.  It was even worse when she leaned back to take a picture.  Every shift of my feet would only collide with someone else.  The only way out was up, and I couldn’t see up because of a tall guy and his shoulders.  My world was mere inches of humid air pressed around me.  I felt my face start to crumble.

I took a shaky breath and turned to my friend.  “Hey, um, I think I might have to move toward the back.  I kinda can’t breathe.”  I hoped the din would hide the sharp edge of fear inside my voice.  She looked around to plot a path.  “Okay, yeah, do you want to go back there?”  She was perfectly cheerful.

“Yeah.”  With that she turned and pushed through the crowd, polite but insistent.  I followed determined not to stumble.  A man grabbed his girlfriend out of the way, and I hoped it wasn’t because I had barged like a bull through a china shop.  I didn’t mean it.  I just couldn’t breathe.

Finally we reached a spot where I could see the floor around the people.  Their tall wall-like backs didn’t scare me as much when I knew I could get out.  I started to breathe.

We stayed there between the hot dogs and the sound booth for the rest of the show.  We watched the headlining band across a sea of people, and all of a sudden they seemed very far away.  I wanted to kick myself for giving in right when we got to the main attraction.  My poor friend was stuck here at the back because I couldn’t reign in my own kind of crazy.  The stupid sniveling fear had won, and it had taken us both down with it.  She brushed away my apologies easily, saying she didn’t mind at all.  That’s how I know she’s awesome.  Still it won’t stop eating at me.

We stumbled to the curb to catch a cab.  The driver was tuned in to a self-help radio station, and I didn’t know whether to laugh or scream.  If it were that easy, Mr. Man, nobody would be calling you in the first place.

It was all another reminder that I am a fragile human being.  Someday instead of scooping me up, the world is going to stomp all over me.

Stupid fear.

Transmission

I saw three bands play tonight; two opening acts and a headliner.  The more I watched, the more I realized that concerts aren’t as simple as they seem.  Just getting on stage and playing songs won’t engage the audience.  Sure, they’ll watch, but packed in like sardines it’s unlikely they have anything better to do.  If you really want their interest, you have to have something to say.  The show has to be a cohesive whole.  Otherwise the crowd will nod and wiggle like row upon row of plaid-shirted bobbleheads.

US Royalty were up first filling in for Living Things.  The poor guys in LT woke up this morning in Philadelphia with their van and trailer stolen, completely stranded.  Hopefully they can get things sorted out soon.  US Royalty were an interesting substitute.  I got the sense they couldn’t agree on an overall sound.  The lead singer loved country, harmonicas, and tambourines.  The guitarist would rather shred with the likes of Metallica.  The bassist was too blissfully, er, removed to care.  The result was songs with a country twang that periodically devolved into hard rock.  The kind that rattles your brains and pounds through the speakers.  Some of it was good, but it was really hard to follow.

Next came the Dustys, who also had interesting band dynamics.  The keyboard player would have chatted all night, while the lead singer didn’t say much more than a deadly serious “hi”.  Maybe it was just jitters.  I almost called out, “Hey, it’s okay, we’re not going to eat you!”  They were nice guys with decent music.  (and the bassist is cute).  Their song “Dangerous Little Signs” has a great intro, bouncing between bright and deep guitar tones to create a lovely surreal  landscape.

Then, after more than half an hour, the Bravery came on.  I mean this in the nicest possible way, they put the other bands to shame.  They worked together to wrap the room in sound, rather than wrestling for attention for their own ideas.  Sam Endicott, the lead singer, told stories just long enough to give his bandmates a breather without losing everyone’s attention.  When he got too hot, he just took off his white dinner jacket (complete with red flowers pinned to the chest) and kept going.  The set was easy to enjoy because there was nothing distracting.  The most I had to do was blink to rid the afterglow of some flashing lights.  I’m not saying that the audience should be led around by the hand so they can just stand there while the songs wash over.  You do have to engage yourself in the music.  Your body isn’t going to pogo for you.  But if a band presents itself all messy and scattered, there is nothing for the crowd to grab onto.  They don’t know what they’re hearing, so they can’t react.  They have no choice but to stare vaguely ahead.  That’s no fun for anybody.

I didn’t really know what to think of the Bravery before.  They impressed me tonight.  Maybe that’s why I left with the chorus of “Believe” ringing in my head;

“So give me something to believe/ ’cause I am living just to breathe/ and I need something more/ to keep on breathing for/ so give me something to believe”.

Figure out a message and make people feel it.  Light shows get extra credit.

Duck!

The day Gimme Something Better: the profound, progressive, and occasionally pointless history of Bay Area punk from Dead Kennedys to Green Day arrived, it took every bit of willpower I had to go to class.  I did my best Jean Grey impression and threw myself out the door before I could succumb to temptation.  So naturally I spent the whole class thinking about the book.

I admit I was mostly interested because they promised to talk about Green Day.  That will always get my attention.  This time, though, I was determined to start at the beginning.  It was time to learn the history of the scene that spawned my favorite band properly.  I dug in.

And found myself in the kind of delightful mayhem that happens every time the teacher leaves the room.  Paper planes and spitballs everywhere.  Everybody had their own ideas, and everybody was chucking them at the nearest person who would listen.  Sometimes they aimed at a kid across the room, just to keep things interesting.  They spent a whole chapter extolling the virtues of Flipper only to end it with Kriss X saying “I still think that they are the worst band on the planet”.  That’s punk; you never know what’s coming until it has already hit you.

My favorite part was the debate about punk entering the mainstream.  I’ve always had mixed feelings about it, because while I respect people who want to keep it underground and “pure,” I would never have found punk if it hadn’t come crashing into the limelight.  When you live in a one record store town, you’re mostly stuck with what they sell.  Since they want to make money, what they sell are the popular albums.  The megastar bands.  They wouldn’t know who Crimpshrine was if a copy of Sleep, what’s that? fell out of the sky and onto a sales rack.  I don’t want to take anything away from the underground scene.  I just love it when they choose to share.  The quote from Noah Landis on page 392 says it beautifully: “And to see the world finally catch up, desperate for music that makes you feel something, music with emotion, honesty, truth and aggression.  These feelings that are undeniable in every young person born on the planet, especially people who have had to-god forbid-live through hard shit.  The world finally caught up to that and wanted some”.   Amongst the pitfalls and pratfaces of the mainstream are people who have been waiting to hear punk their whole lives, whether they know it or not.  Then they get a taste and it resonates.  It forms a connection that can’t easily be shrugged off.  Think of it this way: you either give people a chance at punk or you condemn them to a wasteland of Top 40 radio stations.  That’s just mean.

Gimme Something Better is as crazy, vibrant, and mildly horrifying as the music it is devoted to.  It’s a free-for-all in the best possible sense.  Go ahead and ignore class to read it.  Just hide if a teacher is coming.

Gargoyle Face

Did you know that if you stretch out your face as if you were yawning, it makes the music in your earphones clearer?  It’s like the music is going straight into your brain with no middleman.  Amazing.  Also a good way to freak out people on the subway.

I discovered it by accident.  I was dancing around my room, air guitar wailing, whisper-roaring along with the lyrics so as not to wake the whole dorm, when I realized something.  Every time I got to a “Yeaaaaah!”, the music was better.  It was loud and perfectly unobstructed.  There was a tiny band playing on a stage right in my ears.  I tried it again to be sure.  Yep, pushing my cheekbones sort of up and back towards my ears definitely made a difference.  This was great!  Why didn’t everyone listen to music like this?  Oh right, because they would look like a gargoyle.  It would be the best ever, if only it weren’t so weird.

If you need me, I’ll be in my room practicing.  In case it ever catches on.

Uncharted Territory

First things first.  If you haven’t yet, you should go over here and listen to Jozef’s song “Petrov”.  I’ve listened to it several times, and it’s still one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever heard.  It builds and slides, suspended halfway between joy and heartbreak. This is what happens when he just sits down at a piano and plays. Wow.

John Cleese voice: And now for something completely different.

I’ve never told most of my friends that I’m an atheist.  It hasn’t come up, and my school is pretty heavily religious, so I try not to poke the bear.  It keeps everybody happy.

Sometimes, it makes things…interesting.  Through one of those interesting moments, I ended up at a Derek Webb concert on Saturday night.  Derek is a very Christian songwriter with a knack for making his record label squirm.  The latter I loved.  The former made me a little squirmy myself.  Still, I’m a bit of a live music junkie and I wanted to hang out with my friends.  Off I went.

I had no idea what to expect.  Would he quote the bible?  Would he quote “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”?  (That was a John Edwards sermon from the Great Awakening in the 1700s.  The puritans had started to loosen up, so Edwards and other priests went around literally putting the abject fear of God back into people.  I still remember my 10th grade history teacher reading part of “Sinners” to us, on and on about how people are loathsome spiders that God longed to chuck into the nearest fire.  Yikes.)  I couldn’t help wondering what I had gotten myself into.

As it turned out, a pretty cool concert.  My favorite song is called “Freddy Please”.  Derek wrote it as Jesus, asking Fred Phelps how he could be so hypocritical and nasty.  Phelps is known for carrying out his “godly duty” to protest at military funerals and “warn” soldiers that they are going to hell because they are gay.  Derek/Jesus tells him to shut up and stop presuming to speak for him because he’s got it all wrong.  With or without religious belief, you have to love a clever smackdown.

The setlist was all of Derek’s new album Stockholm Syndrome split in half by a 20 minute acoustic set of audience requests.  It was funny to see people teaming up to yell song titles at the stage.  (“1, 2, 3, ‘Marry You All Over Again!’”)  More than once they requested something he hadn’t played in years, so he would pause to run through the chords for a minute.  Then he’d say, “Yeah, I think those are…those are the chords.  Help me out here if I start to falter with the words”.  I respect him for being honest and giving it a shot.  I’m not qualified to say, but it seemed like he remembered the songs well.

There was only one bittersweet part of the whole experience.  We were standing about 30 feet away from the stage, which explains why my ears are still recovering.  I finally got to see what it was like to be right in front of a concert, totally involved.  It was miles better on that point than the shows I’ve spent up in the nosebleeds, and therein lies the rub.  I wish I could have been that close to the action when I saw Green Day.  I’m still totally grateful I got to see my favorite band.  I still loved it so much I grin wildly just thinking about that show.  But man, if I could have traded that seating for my spot this close at Derek Webb, I would do it in a heartbeat.  It just went to show me what I was missing.

Regrets aside, it was a fun thing to try.  I love getting lost in the lights and the music.  Heathens are people too.

Flickering Lights

Last night I watched the movie of Rent for the first time.  I was sitting at a weird angle to the screen, so during the title song all I could see were balls of fire streaking through the air and spreading all over the street.  I loved it, the wickedly gleeful nihilism of it all.  It reminded me of a lot of the songs I listen to.

I can think of several off the top of my head that deal with blazing skylines and people at the end of their ropes.  I understood the destruction, but until now I didn’t see the joy behind it as well.  That’s not to say I’m about to go out and start fires.  Still it’s cathartic to watch something burn, knowing that it’s gone forever.  Why would people burn old photographs, if not because they couldn’t stand to look at them anymore?  Why climb on a car to watch the flames?  It’s wonderful to know you can start over and rebuild things to be the way you always wished they were.

Sometimes it feels like the world is old and creaky.  The same thing happened in ancient Rome.  They got lazy and content, letting things go until they fell apart.  Legend says that Nero wandered the palace playing his fiddle as the flames roared outside.  Not the best tactic.

I see songs about destruction and chaos as constructive criticism.  It’s as if they’re saying, just try something different.  Admit that some things are a mess and move on.  True, the thing that works best might be the one you don’t want to try.  But there comes a point when you have to take the chance.  It’s no fun to keep dragging a ton of baggage along behind you.  Get rid of it, once and for all.