Have you ever had one of those musical breakthroughs whe you finally get into an artist? It’s like when you’re young and everyone talks about how great Dylan and The Beatles are but it just doesn’t jive with you. And then on your 20th time trying to make it through The White Album there’s a snap, and suddenly Bungalow Bill is on repeat for a week.
Today I had that moment with Wilco. Having been labeled an indie nut (well, an indieb0i to be specific), it’s somewhat surprising that I’ve never really been into the alt-country darlings that seem to top almost every hipster and wannabe hipster’s playlist. Sure, Summerteeth had a spot in my collection, but it’s been years since I’ve given it a real listen. They remained a band that I had only casual interest in - pleasant enough, but nothing to queue up with intent.
But today that changed. For some reason when I started up Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, I was captivated from the first track. So A Ghost Is Born quickly followed (a tad overindulgent, but still pretty good) and then onto Sky Blue Sky (low key, but still engaging). Why did I not hear this before? Great Americana-influenced, modern music - that’s right up my alley.
Sometimes missing out on the “next big thing” can be disappointing. There are no shared stories of looking forward to any of these classic releases or heading out to see Tweedy perform live. Nevertheless, the music is the most important part. And even if it takes you 20 years to finally “get” a band or an album or even just a song, it’s still worth it in the end. Because you’re still left with even more great music to get you through the day.
If you paid attention to my listening stats over the past few weeks, you would have noticed a couple artists staking a claim in the weekly top 10. One of those would be the absolutely delightful St. Vincent. One of my recent acquisitions thanks to eMusic, Marry Me is an album that took me a few tries to get into and now captivates me. I’ve listened to it just about every other morning for the past couple of weeks.
Annie Clark seem to get a lot of comparisons to Bjork, but I just don’t get it. Yes, she’s quirky. Yes, her music goes all over the place. But her voice has a far more intimate tone than Bjork’s, and her music feels more like that of a modern singer/songwriter than an operatic experimenter. Her sweet cry of “Mary me, John / Mary me, John / I’ll be so good to you” on the title track makes you want to wrap her up in a blanket and take her home - not put her up on a stage and idolize.
While she is difficult to pigeonhole, the video for “Jesus Saves, I Spend” will give you a fairly good impression of the album:
Isn’t that a brilliant way to start your day? Innocence in music can be a wonderful thing. Now if only that innocence could score me some tickets to Bowery Ballroom…
So I’m sitting here listening to some classic Soundgarden, and it sure does take me back. It may seem a tad silly to get so nostalgic when you haven’t even made it through another decade, but albums like Superunknown and the unjustly overlooked Down on the Upside came at a major turning point in my life. Grunge… alternative… loud obnoxious shit… whatever you want to call it, this music was the real thing when my life changed in a rather profound and musical way.
Specifically these sounds take me back to November 16, 1996. A Saturday night when a college buddy of mine and I found ourselves debating about a concert across the river in New York City that night. Of course we didn’t have tickets for Soundgarden. We were both rather inexperienced concert-goers at the time. But we were emboldened by our recent trek to the ultimate show at the time: Pearl Jam. Hell, if we were able to make it to such a huge event as that one, why not give this one a try?
And so we headed for the PATH trains and walked all the way up to Roseland (about 20 some odd blocks) hoping that the scalpers wouldn’t kill us. When the first guy asked for over 100 bucks each, our hopes were almost shot. But we pressed on and watched the prices continue to drop until someone let us know that 20 dollar tickets were still available at the box office.
Holy crap! Was it really this easy? Here we were going to college just a 20 minute train ride from The City, and we could just hope over and gets tickets for a band we loved… I think I was hung up on the days of my sisters camping out all night for Peter Gabriel and didn’t realize just how many concerts went on regularly for us to immerse ourselves in the live experience without being forced to sleep on concrete.
But that was it. We were in. We rocked ourselves silly and moshed like there was no tomorrow. We screamed and shouted and even tried to sing along with “Black Hole Sun”. I helped some girl catch a guitar string and high-fived total strangers. Like I said, it may seem a tad silly, just a smidge over dramatic, but that night changed how we looked at music. We were no longer on the outside looking in. We were banging down the doors and joining in all of the fun.
From then on, we were… cool. Well, at least I used to be cool…
If you paid attention to my listening stats over the past few weeks, you would have noticed a couple artists staking a claim in the weekly top 10. One of those would be the absolutely delightful