I remember a trip to the Keys with my parents and a big group of our friends. We all stayed in the same hotel, and during the evenings our folks would go out and get hammered while us kids were left to fend off boredom in the hotel rooms, with the eldest member acting as babysitter. All of us were sitting on the floor around the TV making fun of each other while intermittently checking in on MTV, waiting for our favorite music videos to play.
Jackpot.
“Plush” was manufactured rock’n’roll - built off trends and plagiarisms and insincerities - but it didn’t matter to this twelve year old. The hooks were on point and the video contained all the supercool imagery one kid could ask for. It was the summer of 1993 and the apex of grunge; the genre had me hook, line and sinker. My dad took a quick break from the drink a day or so later and took me to the record store, probably in hopes of a new record momentarily stopping my whining. But soon even I realized the rest of Core sucked; it would not see the Discman many times thereafter. “Plush” however would easily sit near the top of a list of my favorite guilty pleasures to this day.
In 2001 my record collection was running on fumes. Most of that great music I had collected from the 90’s had been destroyed or stolen. All that was left was a tattered lot of punk and emo records, most of which were perpetuating my frequent foul moods. The mainstream landscape, being inundated by shitty “bling”-rap, bubblegum pop and agro hard-rock, was even worse. MTV was dying, the radio had been dead for years -- my one true hobby was becoming warily dull.
But then, in one of MTV’s last redeeming moments, a buzzworthy video unlike anything they had played in over a decade was aired. The quintet, ragged and dirty and appearing on a stage resembling classic bandstands or Ed Sullivan shows, seem a bit aloof, a bit distracted, some might even say a bit lifeless. But they looked cool as shit. And once Julian Casablancas begins with his distorted voice and nonchalant cadence, you realized rock’n’roll hadn’t been this danceable in decades. Nodding your head as Albert Hammond, Jr. throws us back with a great solo and Casblancas comes in with one last chorus -- “Last Nite” was a reminder music is supposed to be fun. In songs like “The Modern Age” and “Someday” Casablancas tells tales of heartbreak similarly to most of the sappy shit I was listening to, but he does it with sincerity instead of superficial earnestness, attitude instead of whiny self-pity. Perhaps The Strokes' strongest trait, the guitar interplay between Hammond, Jr. and Nick Valensi isn't necessarily masterful, but it's incredibly melodic and expertly written, my favorites of which can be heard on “Soma” and “Take It or Leave It.”
A whole new realm of music opened for me with the release of Is This It. I rediscovered a lot of great 70’s rock they had borrowed from. It turned out music didn’t need constant drum beats, hard rock breakdowns, or electronic blips and beats after all. Although, as Chavez stated in his Albert Hammond, Jr. solo post, The Strokes aren’t one of the most original bands, they completely reinvigorated the sound they pay homage to. I hadn't had that much fun listening to a record since being a teenager. I think most everyone felt the same way, and perhaps it wasn’t pretentious himpsterism that set The Strokes and indie revivalism in New York City in motion, but a conjuring of excitement for good music again.
Easily one of the best records of the past twenty years.
(Guided by Voices appearance in this video for extra hip points)
★★★★★Tracks:
Set Phasers to Stun
A Decade Under the Influence
I remember buying Where You Want to Be at Best Buy in the $9.99 section soon after it came out. It hit #3 on the Billboard charts in the first week, signifying emo’s takeover of the mainstream, an unthinkable feat to me at the time. But with the look of all these sensitive gloom-rockers, their black-painted nails, black-bobbed haircuts and black eyeliner, they were essentially the natural next step in manufactured boy bands. I always dug this type of music though, it’s typically not your typical 3-chord 4/4 rock in a major scale, and it’s refreshing to me to hear groups try and break out of the status quo. But then emo turned itself into the status quo of the early 2000s, churning out countless dopey teen rockers taking themselves entirely too seriously; rock’n’roll is supposed to be fun after all. And so a trend being a trend, MTV latched on and that marked the death knell of the ‘M’ ever being associated with the ‘TV.’
The first couple of tracks on Where You Want to Be I can’t help but still like. I never make it through the entire album though, and I’d rather disassociate the music from the images. However that would be untruthful. They are who they are.
No One Else The World Has Turned... Buddy Holly Say It Ain't So In the Garage
I was introduced to Weezer when most everyone else was, tuning to MTV and seeing that goofy Spike Jonze video for "Undone - the Sweater Song." It was refreshing to see a group of normal, somewhat nerdy guys playing such a great song at a time when rock music was all about long, dirty hair, ripped jeans and flanel. I bought the CD soon afterwards and immediately warmed to tracks "Buddy Holly" and "Say It Ain't So." Both to eventually make it as singles and videos as the record continued to sell. Not a lot of the other tracks appealed to me as a 14-year old, and "Buddy Holly" got so played out I shelved the Blue Album for quite a while.
When I went away to college, I lugged my 300-plus CDs with me to my dorm room and began playing the Blue Album all over again. It was there I realized how great "No One Else" and "The World Has Turned and Left Me Here" were. Cuomo sums them up best himself: "No One Else" is "the jealous-obsessive asshole in me freaking out on my girlfriend" whereas '''The World has Turned and Left Me Here' is the same asshole wondering why she's gone." I couldn't wait to put them on the next mix tape to my girlfriend. Now some ten years later, I find the escapism in completely opposite fashions of "Holiday" and "In the Garage" something entirely new to relate to. And so this record continues to hold up.
While it's unfortunate the Blue Album spawned a lot of those Get Up Kids / Dashboard Confessional-type pop-punk emo bands (I listened to my fair share of them for sure, and I still listen to Saves the Day!), I don't think they necessarily meant to. Weezer just wanted to take that whole quiet-loud, verse-chorus-verse approach that the Pixies and Nirvana perfected, throw in some simple Ramones power chords, and write some poppy, harmonizing Beach Boy vocals to make rock'n'roll a little more accessible again. And this album united everyone, even the friends of mine who could only stand to listen to 2Pac and Biggie were jamming to Weezer. "Say It Ain't So" is one of those 1am bar anthems that nearly everyone will be screaming along to regardless of where you are. "Buddy Holly" was one of the best MTV videos in its existence (yes, it is dead to me now). Meanwhile those self-loathing, over-dramatic emo-rockers claiming Weezer as their primary influence completely polarized the rock landscape a few years later, sort of the antithesis of what the Blue Album is all about.
Soon after the moderate success XTC experienced with their single from 1982, "Senses Working Overtime," the band was to embark on a major tour, but it was cut short due to Andy Partridge's battle with anxiety issues, which crept up during their very first show in Paris. The band decided to stop touring indefinitely, and would never play a live performance again. But that wouldn't stop XTC from writing and producing more records.
This is where Fossil Fuel's disc 2 begins; when, in 1982, XTC transformed from live performers to strictly studio songwriters. The increased time spent on writing and production might have given their music more complexities, but for me, the songs here are less enjoyable. And less to do with XTC specifically, the overall production trends during the era, quickly becoming overkill, are mostly responsible for my waning interest. With the overuse of synthesizers and silly vocal effects, the trebly, twangy bass guitars, and the manipulation of the snare drum mix to give it an echoed, booming sound; 80's production was taking a lot of those innovative ideas from the New Wave and Punk Rock genres and running them in to the ground. In an attempt in sounding cutting-edge and futuristic, musicians and producers were actually accomplishing the opposite, leaving pop and rock from the era to sounds dated. XTC songs are often no different, and "All You Pretty Girls" is the track that best serve as a testament to this.
Putting aside my dislike for a lot of the trendy studio techniques from the 80's, after repeated listens I found a lot of songs I enjoy on disc 2, but only one I love; "Mayor of Simpleton." A breath of fresh air from the sound that defined them for much of the decade, the song represents a change in direction for XTC. It also reminds me a lot of those Gin Blossoms singles MTV would rotate (to death) a few years later.
Being a bit disappointed with Fossil Fuel's disc 2 after being completely blown away by disc 1, I am still very much looking forward to delving deeper in to XTC's discography. After sampling all the songs from Fossil Fuel many times over, I'm almost certain I will love their first few albums, and maybe as I work my way up the latter half of their catalogue, some of those records will surprise me. I might write more on XTC at another time, but for now it's time to move onwards (or backwards) to artists beginning with the letter "W."
