Level Ground

Acoustic Bad Religion fixes everything.  The hint of a scratch in Greg Graffin’s voice, the pensive lyrics and the melodies laid bare are the perfect cure for frustration.  It always brings me down from snarling and climbing the walls.  Part of it is also that I like hearing my favorite songs re-imagined.  Bad Religion is my second favorite band in the world, which means I spend a lot of time listening to the the regular studio versions of their albums.  Switching to the acoustic ones is like discovering them all over again.  It gives me something else to love.

The Bad Religion love started a couple of years ago after crash landing into the world of punk.  I’d read about them somewhere and decided to buy Stranger than Fiction.  There wasn’t any particular logic to it; I just liked “21st Century Digital Boy”.  Several listens and some more research led me to New Maps of Hell and later The Empire Strikes First.  From there it basically snowballed.

Now they’re one of the few bands I’ve fallen very hard for.  I absolutely love the bleak determination of “Bored and Extremely Dangerous”.  I know every word to “You Don’t Belong Here”.  The best way to explain it is to say that music is my closest thing to religion.  I love it and I depend on it to keep me from going crazy.  I get lost in an especially gorgeous refrain or the most rabble-rousing riff this side of a riot.  It’s funny that I should be comparing a band called Bad Religion to religion itself.  That’s the beauty of it, though, proving that there are other ways to find a sense of calm in all the madness.

In the end music is about feeling good, whether by celebrating a happy moment or conquering a sad one.  It’s direct and simple without a hidden agenda.  There is the goal of record sales.  It doesn’t bother me most of the time because selling records is how bands communicate with people.  Complaining about having to buy music is a bit like complaining about having to buy a newspaper.  If you want to know, you have to put in some effort to find out.  Random people on the subway aren’t going to take the time to fill you in on the latest housing crisis.  Not that you would want them to, because they’d likely tell you it was all a conspiracy devised by the alien emperor Zodd.

Anyway.  The point is I think Bad Religion is one of the best bands out there.  That’s especially true on days like today, when all I want to do is pull my hair out.  They just make things better.  That’s all I could ever ask for.

Exhibit A:

 

Polite Ambush

“Hi, would you like one?”  I looked up through my sleepy haze to see a middle aged lady and a guy with a video camera.  The lady was holding out a red book that looked like some kind of bible.

“Uh, sure, thanks,” I said, hoping fervently that whatever the footage the guy was getting would never be shown to anyone, ever.  Unless it was to highlight my stellar impersonation of a zombie.

“Enjoy your day!” the lady called as I walked away.  After a moment the cover of the book came into focus.  It was The Origin of Species.  Very much not the bible.  I still have no idea what it had to do with anything.

Speaking of non sequiturs, here’s some cool stuff I’ve found around the Internet lately.

• Calvinball, the band.  With a name like that, they have to be good.  They are too.  They did an interview with Punknews.org about their latest album Live fast, Go to Bed Early.  It’s a mixture of oi punk and hardcore, but at the same time it’s very melodic.  They recorded it live over two days in true punk style.  When you can make out the words it’s really fun to sing-shout along.
• An article in the LA Times about the Fender manufacturing plant in Corona, CA.  They have eight master builders who will wind the wire around the pickups by hand if you ask them to.  They’re so faithful about reproductions they’ll even put in toothmarks.  (I don’t want to know either).  Then, at the very end, they give each guitar to a musician who plays every single note looking for a flaw.  Call me a pushover, but I love stories about companies who really care what happens with their products beyond shoveling them out the door to make money.
• I forgot how much I love this song.  It’s “Into the Dark” by the Juliana Theory.  The chorus gets me every time, and the whole thing is hauntingly beautiful.  It’s good for really frustrated moments, because then it becomes sort of uplifting.

Off to class…maybe this time they’ll be handing out cupcakes.  Less subversive than evolution, but more tasty.  One can only hope.

 

 

 

 

No Artificial Flavors

Gerard Way said recently that My Chemical Romance’s next album will be a kind of “love letter to rock ‘n roll”.  I really like that idea.  This whole blog is basically a love letter to music.  I love being torn to pieces by a song and then put back together.  I love sitting here 4 am watching random videos on youtube, zeroing in on the performers’ faces and getting swept along to another world.

The other day I was walking someplace with the music cranked up loud.  Just the kind of volume your mother always said would ruin your ears, if only you could hear her over the thundering bassline.  It was amazing, like having the band playing right next to me.  That’s why I don’t get it when I watch a live video and everyone is watching the band…from behind their cell phones.  I realize the video I’m seeing had to come from somewhere, though my favorites are the ones taped officially.  Then I know the person was doing it for a reason and there’s less shaky camera work.  Either way that accounts for one or two people.  What are all the rest of them doing?

I honestly do not see the point of spending time and money to come see a band, with extra hours of waiting to get a good spot, only to sit there and video tape it.  There is no earthly reason to restrict your view to the 3×4 screen of a camera when you have an alternative.  The best alternative, that of actually watching the band play with your own eyes instead of across the miles and wonky data connections.  The facebook pictures and youtube hits just aren’t worth that much.

Admittedly I don’t remember the concerts I’ve been to in crystal clear detail.  It takes me a moment to recall what songs were sung, or when the attempt at an arena-wide wave happened.  But I do know what I was doing.  I was singing my heart out the whole time.  I was totally focused on the music and the fantastic thrill of being there.  I was laughing my giddy butt off at the lead singer’s random jokes.  I was so happy I think my brain exploded.

I would not trade that for all the scratchy videos in the world, or even the nicely edited ones.  They just don’t give you the same crazy rush.  It’s sort of like the difference between sugar and artificial sweetener.  The chemical stuff will give you a little boost, while the real thing will convince you to climb walls.  By running straight at them and up like frogs with sticky feet.  Gravity?  What gravity?

If I were a rock star, I’d be tempted one night to make everyone check their video camera interwebnet phone junk at the door.  Each one would be tagged with a number, and each person would get a matching tag to pick it up at the end.  I’m not in the business of stealing people’s stuff.  Then they would all be sent through the doors into the arena, or club, or dive bar.  Here’s the truly draconian part: they would then have to watch the show without electric anything, apart from the lights and equipment (including instruments, naturally).  They would just be there, standing on their own two feet watching with their own eyes.  All to remind them that the point is the music, not the social media buzz.  If you let it, a really good song will bowl you over.  You’ll remember that long after the glory of youtube has faded.

In the end nobody can really force you to put down the gadget if you don’t want to.  But music is there to be loved, and it’s sad to see so many people miss that point entirely.  The future shouldn’t be like the one in Wall-e.

 

 

For You

Nobody really knows who you are.  You’ve broken hearts and set the world on fire.  Down the rabbit hole and back again you’ve wandered, chugging through the miles between here and there.  You’ve seen wastelands that would put even the desert to shame.  You’ve spun out of control in that awful white space where the walls give no context, quarter or time.  You’ve fallen in love with thousands.  They have showed you more joy than you ever dared imagine, to help with the pain you never forgot.  You’ve traced footsteps over schoolyard haunts, watching across time as something made the world break in half.  You’ve led rallies on a rampage until your very lungs hurt from screaming.  You’ve said a wrenching goodbye and waited, waited for them to come back.  You are all and none of us dancing just out of reach.  We give you our faces, the ones that surround our lives.  You have borne it all as a matter of course without a thought of abandonment.  In return we give you the strange quiet glory of the one behind the scenes.  We lay bare our admiration because we know you deserve it.  That’s why they always say “This one’s for you”.

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.