Downer

 
Just over twenty years ago today, I returned to the communal flophouse I was living in at the time after a particularly stressful day at school only to be told that my favorite musician was dead.

"Yeah, it's all over the news," Mike said, pointing a lit cigarette towards the twenty-five-inch cathode ray beast propped up on our milk-crate entertainment center.

I hadn't even had a chance to take off my coat and backpack yet. For a while I just stood there, gaping dimly at the lurid, flickering images on the T.V. screen: police crawling all over a nondescript gray garage/greenhouse, all-too-familiar videos in heavy rotation, interviews with tearful fans, a grassroots gathering of lost souls in Seattle Center Park which would eventually coalesce into a massive candlelight vigil and then culminate with a stirring public address. It didn't make sense yet it made perfect sense.

Eventually I became aware of several sets of eyes trained on me, waiting for some sort of reaction.

"Mmmm, yeah...whatever," I shrugged, then turned on my heel and trudged slowly upstairs to my room. I was exhausted and needed sleep desperately.

As written these words look bitter. Or jaded. Or angry. But nothing could be further from the truth. I just recognized this latest dollop of bad news for what it was: the purest example of inevitability you could possible conceive of.

I've always had a really hard time recognizing when something good is well and truly over. When we moved away from Sydney I couldn't cope with the idea of never seeing my friends again. When High School was over the thought of permanently losing contact with my core group of hometown peeps was totally inconceivable. But thanks in some weird way to the grimly-decisive action of a chronically-depressed and blatantly-suicidal rock star, the permanence of change was finally beaten into my thick skull.

Indeed this was mutability's finishing move on my naive consciousness. Back then I was just weeks away from polishing off my final exams and in another three short months I'd be faced with convocation. At that moment I was finally forced to realize that nothing lasts forever. My third wave of friends would soon be scattering to the wind like matchsticks and, once again, I'd find myself virtually alone. But at least this time I'd be ready for it.

Now, before I go on, I must confess that I wasn't enough of a music nerd at the time to have already heard Nirvana's debut album Bleach. Indeed, like so many others, my first exposure to the band came with their album Nevermind. I distinctly remember sitting in my dorm room sometime in 1991, trying to make some headway on a massive term paper while "Good Rockin' Tonight" dangled the tantalizing and anarchic imagery of the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" in front of me. It immediately hijacked my attentions and then kept me permanently distracted for the rest of the night.

Not long after Nevermind went into heavy rotation in residence, played incessantly by my floor-mates Rod and Mike. I didn't rush out and buy the album right away; why would I? If I ever wanted to listen to it all I need to do was open my door.

To be brutally honest, I really didn't know what to make of it at first. Kurt's own admission that "we sound like the Knack and the Bay City Rollers being molested by Black Flag and Black Sabbath" was actually a fair description. It sounded a bit too poppy and overproduced to me. Thanks to my narrow-minded definition of music at the time, warped by a small-town alpha/omega audio bath which consisted exclusively of heavy metal and classic rock, I was much more apt to gravitate towards Temple of the Dog and Soundgarden at the time.

Forced to return to Stephenville for economic reasons, I bought Nevermind as a consolation prize for myself in the summer of 1991. I then proceeded to play the ever-lovin' bejesus out of it. Loneliness and isolation was a major theme in Kurt Cobain's music and my exile back home and separation from my newfound brethren was just one of many reasons why I loved it so much. That and the fact that it kicked Herculean amounts of ass.  

During the following academic year it continued to be the omnipresent soundtrack for everything we did, whether it was eleventh-hour compositions, besotted four-day benders, road trips, or as an alternative score for our 16-bit video games. Just about the only way I could be lured onto a dance floor is with the promise of slam-dancing to a Nirvana track. With Mike's assistance I soon discovered their first album Bleach and my transformation from disillusioned metal-head to indie punk music snob was complete.

Now, I've already talked about the incendiary effect that Nirvana had on pop music here and here so I won't presume to rehash that. Just suffice to say that even back then we had the distinct impression that Nevermind didn't get released, it escaped. By my estimation it was the last time a genuine voice for youth was properly represented in the Zeitgeist of pop-culture, as opposed to the industry-approved swill that gets served up to kids today.

I wish I'd had more money back then. Or, more accurately, I wish that I knew that I had enough money to travel to Toronto or Montreal to see them live. Then again, at the time I thought I'd have an entire lifetime to do that.

Regardless, I just wanna say: thanks, Kurt, wherever you are. First off, thanks for the obvious: for all of the amazing music that affected a positive change in me.

But also thanks for a darker, more inadvertent reason.

Thanks for finally convincing me that change is very, very permanent.

EPIC TUNE  No, my favorite Nirvana song is not "Smells Like Teen F#@king Spirit", thank you very much. In fact, it could very well be this hauntingly-beautiful unreleased track called "Do Re Mi", which was included on the With The Lights Out boxed set. Apparently the song was earmarked for Nirvana's next record. No words can describe how sad that makes me feel.

EPIC HOPE FOR THE FUTURE  Dear industry pin-heads: please start giving kids more music of their own that they'll want to listen to past the age of twenty!

EXPLOITATIVE FAIL Really? Does every single thing have to be a conspiracy now? Cripes.

Overdue Revolution

http://www.theshiftstudios.com/wp-content/uploads/musical_revolution.png 

Greetings, Audiophiles!

While everyone else is having kittens over Miley's MTV Video Music Award "performance", I was much more disturbed by the dubious overall quality of the musical guests as a whole.  Here's a list of the acts that performed live last Sunday night at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York:  

Miley Cyrus
Robin Thicke
2 Chainz
  Kendrick Lamar
Kanye West
Justin Timberlake
N Sync
Macklemore
Ryan Lewis
Mary Lambert
Jennifer Hudson
Drake 
Katy Perry

   

And just for comparison's sake, here's the roster from back in 1992:
    

Black Crowes
Bobby Brown
U2
Def Leppard
Nirvana
Elton John
Pearl Jam
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Michael Jackson
Bryan Adams
En Vogue
Eric Clapton
Guns N' Roses 

From this I'd like to derive a few conclusions...

1. Although pop and R&B music was reasonable represented in 1992 by Bobby Brown, Def Leppard, Elton John, Michael Jackson, Bryan Adams and En Vogue we also had blues rock (The Black Crowes), alternative rock (U2, Pearl Jam), punk (Nirvana), rap-rock funk (Red Hot Chilli Peppers), classic rock (Eric Clapton) and metal (Guns N' Roses).  Okay, so Axel Rose warbling "November Rain" along side Elton John isn't exactly metal, but you know what I mean.  There's some variety here.   
2. Not all of the pop music was disposable crap.  Well, except maybe for Bobby Brown.  And Def Leppard.  And Elton John.  And Bryan Adams.  Seriously, does anyone listen to shmaltz like this anymore? 
3. Elton John was forty-five years old at the time and Eric Clapton was forty seven.  They don't exactly appeal to the optimal consumer demographic, do they?      

So, I hear you asking, how did our musical options become so hideously curtailed?  Actually the better question to ask is: how in Lemmy's name did bands like Stone Temple Pilots and Tool manage to chart back then in the first place?

The music industry may be a blatantly mercenary enterprise but they're also supposed to cater to public demand.  Right away that puts them in a very precarious position.  Although they want us to unquestionably consume the safe, polite, non-threatening, marketable gruel they manufacture for us, sometimes we turn up our collective noses and push the wooden bowl aside. 

For example, in the Seventies, the radio was chock-a-block with cornball easy listening crap, soulless disco, prog rock wankery and in-bred southern rock.  But then a coupla D.J's who still had a semblance of autonomy made the bold choice to play this:

Were the Sex Pistols the first punk band ever?  No.  Credit for that probably belongs to MC5 and / or Iggy Pop and The Stooges.  But an entire generation of disenfranchised kids who were railing against the mediocrity foisted on them by the music industry heard "Anarchy In The U.K." one time and their ears immediately perked up.  They wanted to hear it again and again.  They wanted to own (or steal) a copy of Never Mind the Bollocks.  They wanted to hear more bands like the Sex Pistols.   

Horrified by this unexpected blip of rebellion, the corporate pinheads scrambled to cater to this grassroots movement whilst and at the same time, attempting to steer public opinion back towards something that was much easier to produce, package and sell.  After all, who wants to see their investments go rogue during a press junket and end up narrowing their commercial appeal?

Aren't those interview clips gloriously awkward and sweat-inducing?  Well, guess what, kids?  That's what rock n' roll is all about.  It's about danger, passion and an outward contempt for the status quo.  It's about rebellion and horrifying your parents.  It's about giving the younger generation a chance to say "F#@k, yeah! Tell those oblivious reporters where they can cram their microphones!"      

Regardless of punk's groundswell popularity, music was safety back within its industry-approved box by the time the mid-to-late 80's rolled around.  Once again radio stations and music videos channels were awash with sappy ballads, nauseating pop pablum, shitty glam metal and aging irrelevancies.  But then, in September of 1991 a few remaining D.J.'s and V.J's who hadn't yet been neutered started playing this:

So was Nirvana the first alternative band to create a buzz around that time?  Nope.  Early innovators include R.E.M., Jane's Addiction, Violent Femmes, Fishbone, Faith No More, Hüsker Dü, The Cure, Sonic Youth, The Flaming Lips, The Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Bauhaus, The Tragically Hip, Guided By Voices and, by my estimation, about a hojillion other bands.  But, much to Kurt Cobain's chagrin, Nirvana was in the right place at the right time and they became the de factor spearhead for a musical coup d'état.

The best thing about this: the record industry was completely blindsided.  They didn't see this coming, at all.  A few autonomous souls had the balls to spin "Teen Spirit", kids heard it, dug it, adopted it as their generation's anthem and then demanded to hear more music like it.  The industry weasels scrambled to feed this rogue demand, signing any flannel-clad band that could simultaneously scream and produce feedback.

I'm convinced that Kurt Cobain could see the writing on the wall from day one.  Even though alternative music had been dragged kicking and screaming out into the mainstream, Kurt knew that it was only a matter of time before corporate morons got their mitts on alternative music and ruined it forever.  As influential as Nirvana and their contemporaries were, they couldn't halt the inevitable.

Terrified that he'd eventually become a part of the problem, Kurt decided to opt out in the most permanent and tragic manner possible.  Even after his death, decent music lingered in the charts for a few more years.  For example, here's what the MuchMusic Top 30 Countdown looked back in 1995.

But slowly, inexorably, things started to swing back towards homogenized, manufactured mediocrity. And thank goodness, too!  How are you supposed to market a band when they act like they have Asbergers during interviews?

By the late 90's the charts were once again choked with detritus.  And this time, the suits made sure that there wouldn't be any more nasty, unexploitable surprises.  They lobbied the government for sweeping deregulation and thanks to the Telecommunications Act of 1996 we went from having thousands of independent sources for music to about around eight.  And as we all well know, he who controls the medium controls the message.

Thanks to bands like The White Stripes, The Strokes and Franz Ferdinand there was a whiff of garage rock rebellion back in the early 2000's but it was largely ignored by the mainstream media.  Instead, the Big Five...er Four record companies continued to jam our collective noses down into the trough of their choosing.  As such, here's what the Much Music Top 30 Countdown looks like today.

Granted, it's not all dire.  Serena Rider's "What I Wouldn't Do" exhibits genuine passion.  Tegan and Sara are great but I'm genuinely distressed by their poppy and overproduced turn.  And although I'm loathe to stroke Kanye West's already-inflated ego, he does exhibit signs of inspired brilliance from time to time.  The balance of the chart, however, is pretty fugly.  It includes Simon Cowell's latest musical swindle, Hannah Montana's desperate attempt to create an anthem and Alan Thicke's creepy, nearly forty-year old son delivering the rapiest-sounding "song of the summer" I've ever heard.

Most of all I feel sorry for kids today.  They deserve to have a legacy band that they can be proud of, not a bunch of garbage they'll want to purge from iPod as soon as they turn twenty.   

I'll leave you with a positive story, one which serves as a perfect parable for this entire post.  For years the city of Halifax suffered under a blight of terrible radio stations.  If kids turned on the radio they had two choices: either classic rock like AC/DC, the Allman Brothers and Steve Miller or pop diva droppings from Beyonce, Brittany, J-Lo, X-Tina and the like.  Naturally, if you grow up thinking that these are your only two options, you tend to pick the lesser of two evils and then grudgingly apply your selection to the soundtrack of your existence.

But a few years ago Live 105 decided to roll the dice and offer a modern rock / alternative music format.  For the first time ever, Haligonians could finally hear The Smashing Pumpkins, Billy Talent, Arcade Fire and Queens of the Stone Age on the radio.  And, go figure, they responded very positively.

So well in fact that the other dinosaur rock stations had to contend with the horrifying possibility that young people aren't particularly interested in Fleetwood Mac.  After years of playing the same tired 70's and 80's music, Kool 96.5 changed their format this past week to "honest and real" singer-songwriter type music like The Lumineers and Mumford and Sons.  Now, I know I'm probably not going to hear something like The National or Band of Horses on this station any time soon, but at least it's an incremental move in the right direction.

My point is: the music industry has to stop acting like the tail that's desperately determined to wag the dog.  Why not put a little bit of everything out there?  Why not let people choose what they like and then cater to them?  Stop trying to convince people that rock attained perfection in 1974 or that autotune is a legitimate musical instrument or that bubble gum is the only flavor of ice cream.    

Go figure, you may actually end up making some filthy lucre in the process.

EPIC DOC  Before the Music Dies is a powerful examination of the devolution and homogenization of the music industry.  Highly recommended. 

EPIC PERFORMANCE  Nirvana at the MTV MVA's back in 1992.  I love how they start by playing a few bars of the verboten "Rape Me" just freak out the sensors.  Bonus points: bassist Krist Novoselic beans himself with his own bass, drummer Dave Grohl cat-calls Axel Rose and some crazy mother-f#@kers decide to indulge in some prime-time stage diving.  Honestly, when's the last time you saw someone stage dive at the VMA's?  Bring back the danger!!!      

EPIC DEBATE  A few month ago a bunch of us got together to listen to the Billboard Hot Top Ten.  This was the inevitable result. 

FAILURE OF PERSPECTIVE  ♪♫ "Just don't look, just don't look..." ♪♫

FAIL-ING TOO HARD  Some people have compared Miley's VMA performance to some of Madonna's live television appearances over the years.  Now, I'm no Madonna fan but even I know the difference between making a public statement about sexual morays, religion or female empowerment and trying to stir up controversy by going your best Gene Simmons impersonation and then using a forty year old douchebag as a stripper pole.  Unlike all of you pearl-clutchers out there, her act didn't shock or scandalize me.  I won't join you in a round of self-righteous "slut shaming".  I just feel embarrassed and kinda sad for Miley.  Obviously this is the only way she thinks she can get our attention and that's as sad a comment about us as it is about her.     

"Dude, the soundtrack for your biopic sucks!" Part III

Good day, fellow music mavens!

Way back in the early Eighties a gent by the name of Mark Arm (later of Green River and Mudhoney fame) used the following colorful descriptors to characterize the sound of his then-current band Mr. Epp and the Calculations:

"Pure grunge! Pure noise! Pure shit!"

When an original, independent music movement emerged from the Pacific Northwest woods like a sonic Sasquatch, the industry and the media freaked out, unable to package, label and market it.  "Grunge" seemed as good a term as any, but frankly I hate that description.  Regardless of what you call it,  we had our own modest musical revolution to be proud of in the late Eighties and early Nineties.

The first band of that ilk that I heard of wasn't who you'd think.  It was Temple of the Dog, a tribute band assembled by Chris Cornell in memory of Andrew Wood, a close friend and lead singer of the glam/metal outfit Mother Love Bone who died of a heroin overdose.  Andrew's early demise would prove to be the most galling, cliche and wasteful characteristic of the movement and it was repeated an-nauseum over the next few years.  Here's a sample of Temple's ruminations:



This led me to the works of Cornell's own band, Soundgarden.  Here's a particularly nasty little musical punch to the mush:



In this I'd finally found my ideal music.  This "Seattle Sound" (for lack of a better term) possessed the aggression of metal, a surfeit of lyrical relevance and considerably better musicianship than punk.  I was in a pure state of bliss, of rapture, of...

No.  I won't say it yet.   

This became even more pronounced in late 1990 when alternative was dragged kicking and screaming into the mainstream.  Now this wasn't accomplished by the media, record executives or market research.  It was done in the most democratic way possible: by one earnest, timely and talented band and hordes of fans desperate for genuine music.

To illustrate, here's a chart of top singles in 1990:

http://www.musicimprint.com/Chart.aspx?id=C000161

Minus a few aberrant examples (such as Sinead O'Connor, Faith No More, the B-52's) the lion's share of what's on this chart is pure product: safe, neatly groomed musical mcnuggets that can be imaged, produced and marketed like any other mediocre commodity designed for easy consumption.

And here's the same chart two years later:

http://www.musicimprint.com/Chart.aspx?id=C000164

Now, granted, there's still tons of crap (like Boys II Men, Kris Kross, and Lord of Mullets Billy Ray Cyrus) but isn't the difference amazing?  Do you see what can happen when we collectively thumb our noses at musical gruel and embrace better things?  Of course, in order to do that, we do need some incentive...

Now, don't get me wrong, I really think these charts exhibit something totally aberrant.  Alternative music, is supposed to be, y'know, alternative.  But for a few shining years in the Early Nineties, everything made sense to me in this crazy world.

And we owe it all to Nirvana.

As soon as I saw the video for "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on Good Rockin' Tonite I knew at once that my generation would finally have the sort of  musical legacy that folks from the 60's were proud of.  One single, one album and one band managed to give a big 'ole enema to the bloated music industry and a giant "f#@& you" to record executive weasels who wanted to keep feeding us a constant intravenous drip of audio diarrhea.

The Music Business Program ad for "AI International" that Nirvana spoofs in their  "Live!  Tonight!  Sold out!" video is a perfect example of what I'm talking about:


Nirvana is so beloved to me, here's another live clip of them performing one my favorite tunes of all time:


As I said before, this grassroots movement was a bit of an anomaly, but it was great while it lasted.   L7, Brad, Screaming Trees, Mudhoney, Hole, Blind Melon, Alice in Chains, Stone Temple Pilots, Screaming Trees, and the following  enterprising lads all had unprecedented exposure:




But all good things must come to an end.  Haute couture fashion shows began to sport flannel-bedecked runway models.  Employees at Sub Pop made up fake "grunge-speak" just to get the scene-obsessed media (see FAIL below) to go away and pay attention to something more vapid.  Every crap band with a pulse that lived on the West Coast was getting signed by corporate pinheads in the hopes that they'd become the next Golden Calf.

It was as if Kurt killed himself because he just didn't want to preside over the inevitable.

In the aftermath of such loss, the mid-to-late 90's were a dark time.  Easily interviewed, attractively packaged and completely talentless divas, boy bands and novelty acts began to dominate again.  If not for acts like Sloan, Pearl Jam, Beck, No Doubt, The Beastie Boys, The Red Hot Chilli Peppers, A Perfect Circle, U2, Hole, Foo Fighters, Stone Temple Pilots, Tool, Rage Against The Machine, and Monster Magnet, I would have cracked up.

A few bands deserve special mention.  I'd missed our very own Tragically Hip during their Up To Here phase but as they got progressively weirder and found their own unique sound, I sat up and took notice.  Here's their historical Saturday Night Live performance of "Grace, Too" from 1995:




With their copious references to KISS, Kitty Pryde and Dungeons & Dragons, Weezer's self-titled debut album as well as Pinkerton and Maladroit provided tremendous sustenance during this time.  Here's "The Good Life" from Pinkerton:



Dogged survivors of the Seattle scene Modest Mouse also kept me duly entertained:



Radiohead was also there for me, taking me into paths barely tread.  Here they are performing "Fake Plastic Trees" at Glastonbury:



And finally Built To Spill convinced me that alternative and indie music was still alive, well, and doing just fine away from the wilting glare of the zeitgeist:



Well, that's all for now, kiddies.  In the final installment of my musical odyssey I'll cover exciting times as hope springs eternal, popular music is hits terrible new lows, prove that today is the best time to be a music fan and finally explain why Nickelback should eat a bowl of d!@%s.

EPIC:

    


 
FAIL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grunge_speak