Good afternoon, one and all.
Apparently my the weather deities have decided that Minnesota hasn't had nearly enough rain. It should stop sometime by next week, though, which is nice. On the one halfway decent day we had last weekend I tried to sneak in a quick run, the first one I would have taken outside in almost six months. Alas, my knee decided that would not be the case, and about halfway through the ol' Illiotibial Band Syndrome reared its ugly head. Limped home. Lame. Puns! But not all is lost. Days like this, the weather undoubtedly has an affect on mood - if yours happens to line up with the weather in the right fashion, it can be okay, despite the unrelenting dreariness of it all. I know I've written about my love of trip-hop and subdued, down-tempo music before, but it has yet to scare away readers in droves, so what the h, right? Let's roll up our sleeves and dig into a little Peace Orchestra, shall we?
So I looked it up.
Turns out the song was just one track on a mind-blowingly awesome album by Peace Orchestra, a trip-hop outfit that really is only a single person. This person would be Peter Kruder, or half of the Austrian electronic group Kruder & Dorfmeister, best known for their downtempo, dub compositions and remixes. After a bit of hemming and hawing, debating with myself about how many trip-hop albums one man can have need for, I bought it and have never looked back. Seriously - I love this album. I love it so much I actually have to force myself to listen to other things just so I won't burn out on Peace Orchestra. I don't want to learn every single intricacy about it just yet; I want some mysteries to remain.
Hey kids! Back into the work week. I know, I think so too. BUT! It'll be Friday again before we know it, right?
In the meantime I want to remind anyone and everyone who reads this about a fantastic song that I absolutely adored when it first came out, then forgot about, then rediscovered, then forgot about again and have only recently discovered it for a third time! Just what is this elusive, mysterious song that is constantly escaping my mental grasp? What could it be about this song that keeps bringing it back, every time it slips out of my mind's eye? What is so special about '6 Underground' by The Sneaker Pimps that is so damned unique and remarkable?
Before I try to get into the minutiae of the song itself, a brief word about The Sneaker Pimps: Sadly, they are no more. Formed in 1994, the group was at the forefront of the trip-hop movement in England. While their debut album Becoming X was a thing of uneven yet inspired beauty, the remixing of the single by Nellee Hooper got it wider notice. Having initially been released in 1996, after the remix it started to appear all over the pop spectrum, from the soundtrack to the awful Val Kilmer vehicle The Saint to modern radio to teen rom-com ensemble flick Can't Hardly Wait, to skater film Dogtown and Z-boys. See how Nellee Hooper keeps popping up? He's like an Other in LOST - always emerging from the background at unexpected times, and when you see his handy work you nod and say "Ohhhh, I get it....right?" Anyway, their next album wasn't as big of a success, despite the excellent single 'Sick', singer Kelli Dayton having left the band by this time. Nothing they've done has paralleled the success of 6 Underground, which is too bad for everyone. It's a phenomenal track.
How did the weekend come to a close so quickly? Was it something I said? Oh well.
Time quickly got away from me this weekend and in my rush of obligations and time spent with family in another state, what would normally be in this space has yet to be written. Long story short - I'm exhausted and have nothing prepared. Sucks to have to cop to being caught with empty pockets, yet at the same time it was unquestionably worth it to spend time with my family and see my godson for once. He's adorable, in case you're wondering. Like, heart-stoppingly cute. But I digress.
In the interest of filling this space with something relevant and appropriate, I'll direct your attention to something I had hoped to touch base on last week. In the process of writing about 30 Seconds to Mars I was scrolling through my iTunes library and one of the things I wasn't able to incorporate into the post was the excellent video for the lead single on the follow up album to A Beautiful Lie, This Is War. The single, Kings & Queens, is an epic, sprawling track that features throngs of the band's fans singing part of the hook. The song is a bit of a growth for the band, showing their development and refinement of their sound as they matured in their songwriting process. This album further developed their articulate nature and 'Kings & Queens' shows that refinement of style. The anthem-like choruses and crowd-aided wailing add a sense of grandiosity to the tune, while the verses and bridge are exercises in building and fostering energy and momentum. It's powerful, effective writing.
Oh dear, it's the weekend, isn't it? It is. Crap.
Too busy with a life spent doing errands and errant obligations. Oh well, such is our duty. I tried to sneak in a run today, the first in a while. My knee didn't perform as reliably as the rest of Having little free time and ever increasing traffic, there needs to be something here. Have I told you about The Alkaline Trio? I haven't? Well, I suppose you're old enough to hear this.
They're insane, both in the positive and negative connotations. Long standing favorites of mine, this Chicago based band has been grinding away for years, establishing a solid and expansive canon of work that defies easy categorization. Early material fell more squarely under the Punk heading, while the relentless march of time has seen them branch out into stranger sounds, their current style almost being that of a hard, modern take on New Wave. No doubt this description will bring disagreement and clucking of tongues from their die-hard fans but hear me out - look at the evolution in their sound. Look at the ever-increasing diversification of instruments on the band's albums - synthesizers keep popping up, as well as more intricately tracked guitar parts and even horns. Look at the fact that the band plays in more measure tempos, not as often falling into wild abandon but working more with focused restraint. Sound like a punk band or a bizarre, hard-edged version of modern-day New Wave? Yeah, I thought so. But while I could make my case all day about this genre shift, I would rather encourage you to listen to the album wherein I first really noticed the change in the band's sound, titled Crimson. 
Released in 2005, the album was a more practiced, intentional effort by The Alkaline Trio. Their previous albums had been more of a in-record-out modus operandi, without a great deal of deliberation. Crimson, in comparison, saw the band sitting down and examining their process more, considering different arrangements and guitars and basses for each song. This more measured approach not only allowed for more nuanced production but also brought out a side of the band that had not seen a great deal of expression. Whereas the band had previously put out punky, riff-rocking numbers that often referenced medication and alcohol, Crimson was indeed more focused on dark, blood related imagery. Gone were jokes about getting drunk and being miserable - they were replaced by eerie, unsettling lyrics about serial killers, double suicide and the band claiming themselves to be "the things that go bump in the night that you can't see. Yeah, we're the mishaps that always happen in threes." This shift had started on the previous release, Good Mourning, but didn't hit full tilt till Crimson. 
The songs themselves are topnotch. While the energy is still present, the band refined their notoriously aggressive sound into a smoother more evocative attitude and tone. In an excellent twist on convention the album opener 'Time To Waste' is actually begun by a melancholy piano motif. When the Trio burst into the track, it's almost business as usual - the tune is classic Alkaline Trio, albeit with this new sound peeking through. 'Burn' is a sprawling, lurching jam that shows the band breaking their tight sound open a bit, with Dan Andriano's churning bass lines propelling the heavy number into a piano-driven chorus which actually fits Matt Skiba's vocals quite well. When the light chorus reprises as a coda it's put on with the full band behind it and it sounds fantastic. The build to it makes it a standout track. 'Sadie', about Manson Family member Susan Atkins, is another haunting, mid-tempo number that feels like a fresh direction - the overdubbed guitars and wailing at the end of the song feel like new moves. 'Dethbed' is one of the slickest, most New Wave numbers on the album, all droning guitars and thumping kick drums. The band makes what could easily pass as a pop song with 'I Was A Prayer', the lead guitar lick feeling strangely and enjoyably out of place with this band. Another indication of the evolving sound is the creeping, contrapuntal 'Prevent This Tragedy', a song that puts unique parts together in a way that demonstrates they were able to really take their time in the studio to construct these songs, not just bang them out. 
While there have been several albums to come out after Crimson, none of them or any of their earlier work has really grabbed hold of me like Crimson. There's something about their sound and mindset here that just speaks to me in a way their other work hasn't quite. Their energy is still present but they aren't just banging away - I feel like this is when they went from being in a punk band to being professional musicians in the career and mindset of artists who don't worry about day jobs. A weird, crummy thing to say, but I do so in the most positive connotations. I really think this is some of the band's best work and a fantastic place to acquaint yourself with the excellent music produced by The Alkaline Trio. Take a listen.
Happy Friday. Made it through after all.
In the interest of continuity today's post is not only about the nature of musical exposure but also about one of my favorite albums when I was younger. Of the myriad ways I've examined exposure, the one I have yet to hit on seems like an obvious choice yet I sadly have not written about it due to my own circumstances. Once upon a time the primary way people were exposed to new music was through live shows. As I've gotten a little older and mellowed a bit, the number of concerts I attend has declined sharply. When I was young and brimming with energy and free time I had absolutely no qualm about heading out on a weeknight and seeing whoever was playing, accompanying friends to shows on little more than some encouraging words and the promise of a comped drink. Now with a legitimate career and more responsibilities than hours in the day I take joy in finding what little time I can to just relax with my better half. Whereas I used to put on grody concert gear and a pack of smokes on the way out the door, I now find myself thinking I'd rather be able to go running in the morning and if I absolutely have to go I'll sport ear plugs. At some point my internal barometer shifted and I can only attend a handful of concerts a year, on the rare occasion I have a free night and a devotion or curiosity that cannot otherwise be sated.
This was not always the case.
When I was still in high school I was trapped in a small town with a dearth of relevant live music. Basically if I wanted to hear music I liked I had to play it in my own band. That embarrassing little endeavor is a post for another day, though. Point is, if I wanted to see a popular band I had to go to great lengths to do so, often literally. Par example - seeing The Smashing Pumpkins on their last tour? Two hours to Minneapolis on a school night, two hours back past two a.m. Green Day at the Xcel center during their Warning Tour as a gift from my older brother? Pretty much had to make a weekend out of it. So when Weezer was touring seemingly inexplicably far in advance of the Green Album, my group of friends all decided we simply must attend. It was so far in advance of the album that we had to do a bit of research to see that "Oh, there's a new album?", having witnessed the career-gap post-Pinkerton. So we all piled into rusty vehicles and caravanned to Milwaukee to see the band we all loved before the resurgent explosion of the second half of their career. To give you an idea of our technological mind-set at the time, while my better half had a phone at this point in her life, no one in my circle of friends did - we (in all honesty) used walkie-talkies to communicate between cars. Kinda badass but also a little sad. Cell phones were available. I don't know what our problem was.
Anyway, hindsight aside, we made the 5+ hour trek to Milwaukee to see our beloved Weezer, rocking out to Pinkerton and reminding ourselves of just what a great band had been tossed aside, there were two others on the bill - Ozma and The Get Up Kids, both bands that complimented Weezer's brainy, emotional alternative sound. While Ozma were certainly engaging, if a bit shoe-gazing openers (again, a post for another day) when the Get Up Kids took the stage in support of their freshly released 'Something To Write Home About', our collective jaws hit the floor. Sure, we had a sense of what the emo scene was like at the time but here was a band playing so full-on and desperately, brutally honest that we were taken aback at their intensity. Launching their set with the anthemic riffage of 'Holiday', The Get Up Kids were an unrelenting force of emotional furor. Playing (what became) crowd favorites 'Red Letter Day' and 'I'm A Loner, Dottie, A Rebel' the band instantly had me hooked to the point of Weezer simply being icing on the cake. I was so sold on The Get Up Kids that anything coming after was almost overkill - I just absolutely clicked with what they were doing. When the show was finally over and we left, exhausted and covered in other people's sweat, we trekked slowly back to our humble small town. I'm sure I wasn't the only one feeling the discombobulating dichotomy of witnessing something amazing yet knowing nothing like it will pass close for a long time, just the briefest glimpse into what the wider world held out of reach.
Heyoooo.
How are you? You good? Me too.
In the continuing interest of examining the nature of one's exposure to music, today we're looking at forgotten things. In specific, I want to look briefly at the idea of being exposed to something, forgetting it and then having the massive head rush of recollection. It is essentially this core idea of the elusive remembrance that started this very blog - I was growing frustrated with the constant conversations I would find myself having with friends and family saying "Oh man, I totally forgot about that! It was so awesome, do you still listen to it?". Instead of becoming an overbearing presence at dinners and happy hours with these passionate diatribes regarding media both adored and neglected I decided to collect those thoughts here. 100+ posts later, I feel like I've done a fairly successful job of exorcising some of this pent up mix of enthusiasm and nostalgia. Nostalgiasm? No, enthusialga. Yes, much better. So what is this specific bit of music that elicited such a reaction? A song I hated at first but have now experienced a contradictory appreciation for, a prime example of 90s music and culture, in a further display of synergy with recurring themes in this blog. Today I write of the excessively titled 'Standing Outside A Broken Phone Booth With Money In My Hand' by the long-dissolved Primitive Radio Gods.
Let's face it - you either know this song or don't, and if you know it you either love it or hate it. There's defiantly a divisive nature to the song and yet I can't put my finger on exactly what it is. Maybe it's that it wears its heart unabashedly on its sleeve. Maybe it has to do with the prominent use of the (then) controversial art of sampling (how quaint). Released as a single in June of 1996, this song was all over the radio in a big way. It was almost as though it was designed for success, arriving just before our current culture of crass commercialism and conspicuous consumption really gained momentum. Centering around a piano sample over a heavy drum loop, the song is a soft but contemplative and moody piece of work. In it, singer Chris O'Connor softly sings/mumbles the nonsensical lyrics about missed connections and old friends. The most well known feature about the song, though, is the B.B. King sample, taken from a 12-bar blues song released in 1964 called 'How Blue Can You Get?'. This short snippet of King wailing "I been downhearted baby, ever since the day we met" serves as a sort of refrain and thematic center to the song. All of these disparate elements serve to create a fantastic mish-mash of styles, the result being a sleepy, trip-hop-ish bit of mid-90s alternative music that feels perfectly at home on the radio even today. If you dig back through past posts I've written you could quickly discern that this single is right up my alley, given the tone of the song. What's odd for me, however, is that the song drove me absolutely up the wall when I first heard it.
Years go by. 10 years, if I count accurately. I'm having a drink with my better half on our small deck above Uptown, enjoying the sunset and each other's conversation, her iPod playing quietly through the window. One song ends and then this one begins. It starts off just a bare drum track, with a bass line joining soon after. When this happened, some small part of my brain buzzed and my Spider Sense tingled. My eyes went wide and I sat back in my chair in wonderment. I looked at my better half and admitted "Oh dear god, I completely forgot about this song. I used to hate it so much."
She smiled, bemused and asked "Really?", her head turning slightly.
I nodded, answering "Yeah, I can't believe how wrong I was. This is so serene." She smiled and agreed.
The real lesson here?
She has better taste than me.
Moving along, let's hustle.
How goes it, kids? It's been another round of nasty weather in Minnesota and coupled with finally getting a prescription to get me over this funky business I am going to abstain from prattling on and on. Instead, I'll just do a short bit that falls nicely in line with the current trend in posts, that of the nature of discovery and exposure to music. While I've written a great deal about wonderful surprises and personal treasures, today's post flips the idea on its head. This is not about discovery but rather the ubiquity of a song and how I stubbornly refused to let it take hold for years. This particular song had to practically beat me over the head in order for me to pay attention, only for me to be completely oblivious. When I caught on, though, I was in love for sure.
The song I'm referring to is the wonderful and fun 'Heartbeats' by Swedish electronic duo The Knife. This brother-sister team of popsters had been making music in their homeland and having success across the sea, meanwhile America paid little attention. It was only when the single from the 2003 album Deep Cuts was covered by Jose Gonzalez and licensed by Sony for a commercial did anyone in the U.S. sit up and take notice. This acoustic cover was a thing of beauty, a simple, stripped down recording of just Gonzalez and his guitar, softly crooning the song. The commercial was very popular, due simply to the use of the song, putting the cover into rotation on the radio. In cultural relevance to my own life, the local station Cities 97 had it in their regular playlists, with me being none the wiser. At some point my better half had heard the song and fallen in love with it, downloading it from iTunes and adding it to one of her numerous "Sunday Morning Cleaning" mixes. Still, I remained oblivious. One of my favorite sitcoms ever, the medical and musical Scrubs, even featured the song in an episode of their sixth season, before the show's quality took a nose dive (which seemed to coincide with the infamous and much contented Writer's Guild Strike, but we don't need to re-examine our painful memories of that season of TV). At this point the song had no doubt popped up in my life no less than three times which I must have heard it - I'm sure I saw the original commercial, I watch tons of TV, my better half's iPod certainly sees more action than mine and I've watched Scrubs so much I can call out the punch lines before they happen and spot character inconsistencies like any obnoxious fan. So what gives? Why couldn't this song take hold?
Simple.
It wasn't the right version.
Rather, it wasn't the original version. You see, as fantastic as the acoustic cover can be, it's not necessarily my preferred version of the song. I certainly appreciate mellow music - look no further than the post three days ago about Joey Cape and his subdued solo work. I can dig a laid back track for bumming around my condo or having contemplative thoughts. But in this particualr instance it took something more vibrant to connect. When out for drinks with a close friend, he made passing reference to the original song. Being a clueless oaf, I admitted to never having heard it, which necessitated his rectifying that problem immediately via YouTube. Maybe it was the cocktails, maybe it was his suggestion or maybe it was the subconscious nostalgia of hearing-it-yet-never-having-heard-it-before, I was in love. The original popping and bouncing electronic version of this song makes my heart leap in my chest. There is simply a quality to the arrangement of the notes and the synthesizer tones The Knife chose that absolutely make me go blank when it comes on. I immediately bought the song and put it into all my mixes, starting and ending my day with this track. There's an intangible feeling the song conjures, a kind of elusive joy that I can only partially grasp when I hear those opening fuzzy notes. Like with any song it can dull with repetition and yet it can roar back to it's original levels with only a small break. It's really hard to get sick of this song, I've found. I think it's just that good, on some basic, foundational level. Having realized this, I do have an appreciation for the wonderful, relaxing cover that Gonzalez did of this song. It just operates on a different level, is all.
I have no idea how I could be so oblivious to this amazing song for so long. Maybe I wasn't in the right headspace. Maybe I had my ears closed. How many of us have learned to just tune out the hip music constantly oozing from our TV sets and commercials? Still, one would think the warm charm of Jose Gonzalez' version would warrant my attention, yet I never really noticed it. My better half and I had a funny moment wherein we had to clarify via Wikipedia which version came first and we were both surprised that The Knife wrote it and not the other way around. It's funny how expectations and inattention can shape your world. I'm glad I woke up to this amazing song. I hope you find something like it, or just enjoy it on any level approaching mine.
Week day, weak day.
So lately I've been branching down paths of recollection, looking back at the circumstances of which I am exposed to different musical acts. I find it both fascinating and enlightening to examine these circumstances, as I feel it gives greater context and understanding to why I love the things I do. For example, I've written about the influence older siblings have, the impact a friend's insight can have and how solitary exposure can be beneficial. Today's post, along these lines, is one of curiosity and surprise.
After college I was living in an apartment in Uptown, the gentrifying land of hipsters, fixies and condos. My better half had a place just two blocks away, much nicer than my own. While I had access to the internet, I had no cable, while she had both. Being in possession of a steady stream of shows, a much nicer TV, a much cleaner apartment and just in general being the better half, we ended up spending much more time at her place than mine. One Friday night while preparing for an evening out with friends, I was paging through the content on her cable box's On Demand programming. As is often the case, I was relaxing while she prepped and primped. Neither of us content to simply have the TV drone on in the background as white noise and both being tired of our usual iTunes playlists, I asked if she minded me playing some music videos that were available. Having missed the heady days of MTV and the actual music videos they showed in my childhood, I hoped for some hip content to bring back that feeling of engaging new culture via the format. There was, unfortunately, a great deal of mediocrity - bands I won't shame here for their unwitting involvement in corporate synergy. Not all of them were bad though. Indeed, there were old Beastie Boy videos, in particular the excellent 'So Whatcha Want' that has the trio hopping around in the woods while rocking the requisite mid-90s flannel and knit hats. As I flipped through the titles I noticed a name that rang a bell far back in my mind. I knew the name of the band but couldn't remember what was special about them. So out of curiosity I pressed play. Instead of a video I was watching a seven minute short film, titled 'From Yesterday'. Half a minute in, I remembered.
Hola, kids.
Back into the work week we go.
Yesterday I wrote a short bit about how great Joey Cape's solo debut is while only barely mentioning his career with Lagwagon. What I may not have expressed fully in that brief aside is the simple fact that I love Lagwagon. Not to the extent of my obsessions with Nirvana and The Smashing Pumpkins, mind you, but in a simpler manner of really enjoying the band without going overboard into blind devotion. My appreciation for Lagwagon mostly stems from the short but sweet album Let's Talk About Feelings, a release that turned me on to their simple yet passionate style of pop-punk music.
When I was in the early part of high school I had been enamored with various radio-friendly pop-punk bands, the usual fare for the time such as Green Day, The Ataris, MxPx and Blink-182. Nothing too deep in the scene, the very fluff of it really. I previously wrote about a friend slipping me a disc of Thrice's music and how it brought me into another vein of musical appreciation. This same friend had, just a couple years earlier, grown tired of my playing the same bands over and over and decided to do something about it. When exiting my car after school one day he turned and said "Oh yeah, this is for you" and tossed me a burned disc. No explanation, just tossed the disc on the seat and walked off. Sometimes that's the best way to be given a new piece of art or media - no long explanation to set up expectations or tell you how to interpret it. Just take it and listen. That introduction, a casual one-off gesture, may well have been the reason I received the band so well. To completely miss this point, I'll now ignore my own advice.
End of the weekend. Bummer.
The weather kind of improved, but not much. Had a nice walk in the fading sunlight down to Fuji Ya, which is hands down the best sushi in Minneapolis. They're doing a Summer Roll on special right now, it's an exquisite inversion of their Winter Roll. Both are insanely good. If you have a chance you really ought to give it a try. But I digress. A quiet Sunday night like this I like to wind the weekend down with a bit of laid back music while getting ready for the week. I sound like a party animal, don't I? Screw it, I'll do what I want! Point is, if you're looking for an album you can put on while kick back on a Sunday night look no further than Joey Cape's solo record Bridge.
