One of those flashback moments

Christina, the kids, and I were driving to Sonic on Monday and what should play on the radio but "Everything Falls Apart" by Dog's Eye View. I was immediately transported back to the summer of 1995 where I decided that I was going to get into music in preparation for high school. I was back on the old green recliner in my room in the basement, listening on my new JVC stereo, writing down all the names of bands and songs, flipping through my brother's BMG catalogs, and circling or putting question marks next to every album. After the song finished, the DJ freaking took a phone request that was dedicated to some girls that broke a dude's heart. I laughed, just like I would have laughed 20 years ago. If they had followed it up with some Better Than Ezra or Collective Soul, I don't know if I ever would have come back.

Appleseed Cast: Two conversations. Another late review

Cleaning up the last of the reviews I haven't finished:

I will not give this one much space.

Times I have started the album: At least 15.

Times I have finished the album: Never.

I am a sucker for an album that has a good beginning. Not just a good track that begins the album, but an actual album intro, that feels bigger than the first track. Like Sgt. Pepper's or Zooropa. Two Conversations has a great beginning. Really great. As in, I get a giddy rush every time I listen to it, which explains why I have started the album many times. In fact, I am starting it again right now and I am pumped. Oh man, here we go, the roller coaster is at the top. And here we gooooo...aaaaaaand, it's all about juvenile love. Again. Every freaking time. To quote Morrissey: "It says nothing to me about my life."

(Somewhere inside me, there's an emo kid yelling at me that I am a hypocrite. That emo kid gets smaller and smaller every year. I feel less sympathetic to the Cast with each passing month. Each listen is shorter. Sorry emo kid.)

Decemberists - The King is Dead: An everlastingly too late review

I think the reason why I have those dreams where I am in high school and it's two-thirds through the semester and I have only been to class once and I know there is a giant assignment due and I haven't done it yet and I wake up in a cold sweat and realize that I must not really have not gone to English class because I am thinking in run-on sentences and that the way I think is the way I am going to write...is because I never completed my assignment to review the Decemberists' The King is Dead.

I come at this album as a fan of the Decemberists, not some dispassionate outsider who sniffs and says things like: "I find them too fanciful" (i.e. Josh). In my early twenties, they represented what indie could be, a genre where intelligent people could write intelligent and witty songs about obscure and historical topics. There were times I would daydream in French class about being in a band that could write about ANYTHING and not be scorned by an audience of jocks, but celebrated by other nerds. (The end of every concert in this imaginary band would be to play The Phony King of England from Robin Hood and have a major ten minute hoedown. If I head that the Decemberists started doing this, I would not be surprised in the least.) I had no faith that such a band could exist because I didn't think there would be enough fans who would want something like this. This is why Picaresque and The Crane are such important albums to me. They are what I always wanted to hear, but never expected could happen. And when they played for something like 100K people in a Portland park during the run up to the 2008 election, it felt like the world had come around and decided to be a better place.

But, I don't like the King is Dead overall. I wish it didn't exist.

Colin Meloy doesn't traffic in American hominess, but in complicated words and complicated worlds. Americana evokes hominess. Too many of the songs are stuck in Meloy trying to shove too many complicated words into a tune that demands homespun plainness (like Don't Carry It All, This is Why We Fight) or trying to be too homespun and sounding completely artificial (Rise to Me, All Arise!, January Hymn, and the dreadful June Hymn).

To me, the successful songs are their attempts to sound like Fables-era REM (Calamity Song) or when they pull off something that sounds that whalers in New Bedford would have played in their bars during their last night in port (the unfortunately-titled Rox in the Box, Down by the Water).

I hate the "hymns" more than anything. The funny thing is that if I had come across January Hymn when the world was stuck in sludge rock in the early 2000s, I would have welcomed lines like "stuffed in strata of clothes" because it would have represented something different. But I am so spoiled now, that I look at that line and say: "He's singing a freaking James Taylor song and larding it up with fancy words." I don't like James Taylor, but if there's something worse than James Taylor, it's trying to sing laid back with fussy lyrics. June Hymn is the nadir of the album. This is one of those songs that works if you think that Colin Meloy has actually been outside in June and reveled in the bursting forth of nature which I just can't believe based on the man's track record. Reading a book inside in June, yes. Lazing outside and being in awe of ivy and the panoply of song? Yeah, that's Mercury Rev's bailiwick.

History is written by the winners and the winners are the Beatles

Stephen Hayden of Grantland had a really great series last summer where he talked about 7 bands who were popular but not critically popular. Because they were not critically popular, when people wrote about the history of rock and roll, they tended to ignore these bands that moved tons of records and sold out stadiums. All of the bands he talked about were bands I had heard of: Led Zepplin, KISS, the Black Keys, etc.

I think I have a pretty good idea about the relative popularity of bands. When I hear that James has sold 15 million albums in their lifetime I think, "Yeah, that sounds about right." If you told me that U2 had sold 75 million albums (I have no idea the number), I would believe it. 

This brings me to Saturday night when I watched a PBS documentary/propaganda piece about the Dave Clark Five. I have heard of the DC5 only because my dad would mention them every once in a while. I thought they were one of these run-of-the-mill bands from the 1960s with a couple of hits like the Animals or the Zombies. But, in this documentary, I am watching thousands of girls welcoming them at JFK, people fainting at their concerts, appearing on Ed Sullivan and being drowned out by the screaming, selling out venue after venue after venue. And then came the kicker. They released something like 15 albums between 1964 and 1970...and sold 100 million albums. 100 million!! In the 1960s, when the population of the world was only 3.6 billion, when the population of the US was something like 150 million, when there were so many fewer foreign markets with populations interested in their music. 

I would guess that roughly 0.5 percent of people born after 1970 have heard of them. 100 million albums and then suddenly they are gone off the face of the earth, scrubbed clean out of the history of rock by the critics. This has thrown my musical world off of its axis. Who else is out there in the annals of rock that was enormously popular and also completely ignored? The obvious 1990s equivalent is Stone Temple Pilots who sold 40 million albums and who are only referenced in rock critic circles as being completely derivative of Pearl Jam. And, yeah, I thought Plush was a Pearl Jam song for a long time because Weiland was trying to sound like Vedder. And yeah, I thought Do You Love Me? by the Dave Clark Five was a Beatles song for a long time because the lead singer sounded like Lennon on Twist and Shout.

But I just don't think that a band that wrote this song and caused this reaction should be forgotten. Let them be critically savaged for all time, but don't forget them.

Reaction to the Vid of the Day

I am utterly confused by this video.

First of all, I never have heard the original (because it apparently came out during my mission which means, in my alternate timeline of the world, it never happened) so I am approaching this all backwards, listening to this version first and then the real version second.

Second, I don't know who these people are who are playing the song. Are they the original band? Are they two people on a couch? And why are they wearing Christmas sweaters? Is it even Christmas where they are?

Third, this song reminds of the time when I was an 18-year-old teenage dirtbag at BYU, I won two free tickets to see Better Than Ezra at Club DV8, and couldn't find a girl to go with me. I have often thought that the nadir of my dating life was when I had a nosebleed while fast dancing at prom and drops of blood literally landed on the dance floor in front of my date. But not even finding a girl to take a free ticket to a concert might be the lowest point.

Fourth, I just listened to the original and could only make it about halfway through. It's terrible. It in no way reminds me of when I was an 18-year-old teenage dirtbag. It makes me hate teenage dirtbags and wish that they would have a freaking shower, get a haircut, and go to school instead of wasting their time listening to Iron Maiden and getting stoned with their friends. I want everyone in that band to get shipped off to military school.

Vid of the Day?

Songs That I Thought Were Literally Perfect Part I: Space's Money

There are times in my life when I feel like I have stumbled across the perfect song. One of those times was when I was in London when I was seventeen and discovering indie British music. I bought their debut album Spiders from HMV in November 1997 and was blown away by the track Money. I remember having what I considered to be a very important conversation with a girl named Tracy about how it was a perfect song. Subversive lyrics, a great melody, a pre-chorus that you think is the chorus and then BOOM, an awesome ascending chorus. (Yes, I still remember my arguments for the song.)

I don't have Spiders any more and I have no idea what happened to it in the post-mission haze. For some reason, it came to mind tonight and I had to revisit it to see if that precocious American in Britain knew what he was talking about.

Prognosis: It's a funny novelty song and nothing more. So much for that.

Dang it.