Tuesday, February 24, 2004
(6:50 AM) | Anonymous:
I'm Just A Boring Example of Everybody Else
This is going to be an music post. Not just A music post, but AN music post. An being the operative word, because while speaking of music, that word in this instance will encompass many vowel started words, so I just can't bring myself to throw an "a" in front of it. Really, this is all just an excuse because I accidentally typed "an" and my backspace button hasn't worked since Rosemary Cloony was skinny and Rick James wasn't on crack.However, I think I'd like to fulfill the request of Adam Robinson to share what I'm listening to. It should be explained that my main musical experience takes place in the car. I drive some 2 hours a day on a normal day (30 minutes to school, 30 minutes to work, 30 minutes to home..at least 30 minutes of delivery at work, or "about towning"), which, by clicking Start, then Programs, then Accesories, then Calculator, I am able to find out is a minimum of 10 hours in the car during the week. Then on weekends I try to get out and do stuff so that's infinitely more time dependent upon if "stuff" is in OKC (60 minutes round trip) or Norman (100 minutes round trip) or is a trip home to Bartlesville to see the parents (600 minutes). More often than not however, stuff is a trip over to Braum's for some a gallon of milk, some ice cream, and dinner (5 minutes, one way..I normally camp out there through the weekend). Add in church and various other trips to the store, and we're looking at anywhere from 12 hours driving per week to 20. I have a 6-cd changer in my car, so in my terms, we're looking at 2 1/2 times through each cd to 4 times a week..so obviously this is the bulk of my listening.
I don't know why anyone would care about such things, but I feel the need to justify that the cds that happen to wind up in my car get more "play time" than others I play when just sitting around. I prefer silence for when I'm doing homework, and I have 23 hours of class this semester, so most of the time it's silence (except when I get done with a few hours to spare like this morning, and can sit back and POST). Yet, even when I was little it took me forever to get into music because I don't normally feel like just sitting in my room listening to stuff, and I'm not usually a massive fan of background music - I either need a situation to totally focus on the music, or I'm not that interested, which makes the nothing-else-to-do aspect of the car great for bonding with my cds.
However, before I could drive I didn't have much reason for music, and thus didn't really listen to much. This caused trouble when I was in junior high. I remember reading the bands off people's t-shirts to learn what was popular. When this girl I liked once asked me what my favorite band was, I quickly thought back to the last shirt I'd seen and answered "Oh, you know..I'm totally hardcore into the Cranberries right now.." It was not until years later I understood the girl's total lack of interest from that point on.
Another time on the bus, there was a conversation about music, and this girl Latoya asked me what music I liked..always a dreaded question. Well, my dad had been playing the crap out of Christian a capella group Take 6, so I told her about them. She asked me what style they were, and I told her "well..they're pretty alternative...." in my musical innocence I thought "alternative" meant "Christian music..the TRUE alternative." This, of course, led to great scorn when I brought her the tape to listen to the next day.
So, to review - I've pretty much gone from one extreme to the other in a short 7 years, freshman year of high school I started listening to music..got heavily into Christian music..then junior year, I started listening to blessed 105.1 THE EDGE out of Detroit (I think that was the right frequency..I can't remember), which pretty much caught me up on all things "good music" in the 90's combined with good stuff coming out at the time that mainstream radio didn't play. Then they up and turned into a Soul station, which I continued to listen to through high school..but I was forced to just go out and buy cds, which launched me past the "mainstream". Through college I experienced the normal discovery of other bands and what not, but probably took it to another level to where now I am back to where I started - unable to speak to anyone in real life about music, ever.
Now that we have my musical history and current state out of the way, let me speak some specifics. Normally there are a few select CDs that I listen to all the time at home when I get a chance..if I can't be completely focused, I like familiarity. So, for what I still listen to here, you can revisit my "best of 2003" list (I'd link..but the permalink is no more) , add some Sufjan..and The Decemberists, Broken Social Scene, Cat Power, and Songs:Ohia and you pretty much have everything I listen to here at home. Not much change there. However, the car is a place of constant rotation. I change cds out on tuesday, and have a pretty ridiculous formula for exactly which CDs are added to the car. I'd describe it, but I think any concoction you can come up with will make me less of a dork than the truth.
So, for the time being, perhaps the best way to tell what I'm listening to is to give a brief description or the 6 cds in my car. This is a good time for discussing such things, since I change the 6 out every tuesday night, and thus am pretty familliar with them on monday nights. (CD Change day was monday, which made more sense being the start of a new week and all, but my cd player went out for a day a while back, and I had to move it to make sure each cd got its fair play).
It should be noted that 1.) I've recently been in a full tilt classical swirl. This is great, because the music itself is awesome..but bad for the wallet. The classical is..um..a lot less easily "obtainable" than other stuff, and I keep having to buck up 30-50 greenbacks for the box sets. 2.) I have decided in recent weeks to make efforts toward re-visiting my entire cd collection. This was made mostly to combat my mom's constant prodding of "You never even listen to half those cds!" but also partially because I feel a certain sense of obligation. This means a lot of Christian cds. I mean, A LOT. I have 3 Avalon cds, and was music manager at a Family Christian Store, if that gives any indication of the level I'm speaking of.
So, with that..here's a brief discussion of the 6 cds currently in my cd player:
1. Glennwood - "Where Do We Go From Here?".
I'm not too certain how I wound up with this one. Well, yeah I am, I got it because Amazon has it reccomended for those who like Death Cab, The Wrens, The Postal Service, The Strokes and The Shins...we should have been a match made in heaven. But..it's really just marginal emo. It really might even be pretty good emo (which equals "doesn't totally suck) if the singer wasn't all...trying to sound classically trained or something. I'm not sure what, but something funky is going on with his voice. The CD is not exceptionally bad or anything, I'm just not sure how in the heck it got a national release...if I were to go see some local band, $3 show and heard this, it'd be pretty decent. But, with such high hopes propped up by Amazon, I am desperately disappointed. It should have read "Customers who bought titles by Glennwood also bought titles by these artists: Your friend's band that's just starting but is so "totally sweet" and "totally gonna get signed soon." I also lost all hope for America upon seeing that this cd was the 7th most popular on Amazon under rock.
2. Steve Burns - "Songs For Dust Mites"
I first discussed this album some decades ago. I'm not sure Steve Burns is THE God..but he is a God. When I saw him in concert, I was awe-struck by the fact that he was the guy from Blues Clues. The guy in the green striped shirt talking to salt shakers made of felt was suddenly up on stage rocking my soul. What's more..he had an EXTENSIVE multi-media presentation in the background featuring freaking DOMO-KUN of god killing kittens for masturbation fame. Then I bought the album, and found it equally great. There is a good heaping of Flaming Lips on here, by virtue of the fact that their drummer plays on the album, and the guy who produced Soft Bulletin also produced this album, and Wayne Coyne seems to be Steve's best friend. Wayne Coyne was at the Steve Burns concert too, in case you've forgotten or I didn't mention it. The crowd's jaw collectively dropped as he came in the side door and stood there, being so impeccably cool. I'm pretty sure I saw several scenesters rearrange the way they were standing and listening to the music to try to make their posture more like Wayne's posture. Seriously, Oklahoma City may not love many things, but the Flaming Lips we undeniably do. Love. One thing we undeniably do love.
Anyway, like I was saying, in a lot of ways, this could have been packaged as a second cd with Yoshimi. However, it is undeniably amazing in its own right as well. I really feel for the Steve Burns. Do any of us know what it's like to be a star of one of the most popular children's television shows of all time, to have those goofy teens who wear Spongebob Squarepants shirts as your most cognizant fans? To have MOMS wanting your body all day and all night, and emailing you as such, while knowing that the only way you came to their attention is because their LITTLE KID really likes you? AND THEN to go out and make a rock record so incredibly better than the rest, and have to have every review (including this one) spend at least a paragraph explaining that you used to be on Blue's Clues, rather than discussing the rock?
We all owe it to Steve to purchase Songs For Dustmites. To be this good under such situations is incredible, and I am definitely looking forward to his next cd.
3. Radiohead - Lost Treasures (Disc II) -
I'll make up some time lost on my Steve Burns rant here. Radiohead is freaking brilliant, you know this, I know this, little boy blue knows this. This album is the B-Sides from 93-97. It is great, and particularly wonderful is when they make fun of Oasis while playing "Wonder Wall." Radiohead is really about as far as I go in the experimental category..I'm sure there's something a little further along I might like, but it's strange to me that I love the last 3 Radiohead albums while I hate Sonic Youth's more experimental stuff, and pretty much anything else I've heard from bands that do stuff like the "no fun festival" of experimental rock. But, again, my greatest failing in life may still be my inability to like Pavement's Slanted & Enchanted, coupled with my great love for Terror Twilight. I don't know what to say, I love my hooks. All that to say..Radiohead is strange, because, based on these presumptions I should like this early stuff a lot better than the new stuff, but I like the last 3 albums better on the whole..though I think OK Computer is still my all time favorite. I don't know what this says about me..maybe it just reveals what a poser I am since it is cool to like the experimental Radiohead. So, yeah, this cd is really good.
4. USSR Ministry Of Culture - Shostakovich: Two Pieces From Scarlatti, Symphony #4.
This CD would be a heck of a lot better if everyone in the concert hall would stop coughing. But, to that extent it's a bit of history - how many recordings of a bunch of pinko coughs are there in the world? Seriously, throughout the whole thing, it was like the concert was played in the Gulag as a wake for the dying rather than whatever lavish concert hall it was played in. That said, I'm going to show my poser-dom again here. I don't like Shostakovich nearly as much as your Beethoven, Haydn, Bach, Mozart crew. I'm sorry, I can't get into the ear-piercing dischord and what not. I'm sure life under whatever russian torment it was that Dmitry suffered under (I'm way too lazy to go back and re-read the insert) was really hard, and I'm sure this expresses that well..but I still don't like the general feeling of "God..someone really IS going to kill me" that this music creates..especially not while driving. It's a bit like a long horror movie soundtrack, though obviously better..but not up to the hype that the intellectual crowd seems to throw its way. I'm no scholar in classical music, and I'm sure I sound like a twit here, so I'll stop..
5. Explosions In The Sky - Those Who Tell The Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell The Truth Shall Live Forever.
Another band I've written about here before. EITS is still, in my opinion, the greatest band to come out of the post rock movement. This may have its source in the fact that they are the only one I've seen live..we'll find out when I go see Don Caballero in a few weeks..but for now, I demand that everyone who dares read this blog go buy an album by these guys, or at least contact a friend who has the album and ask them to send it to you. They certainly hit the "rock" part of post rock a little more than Godspeed or Mum or Silver Mt. Zion..there's not really any strings. That's what makes it so amazing to me. Instead of bringing in instruments less familliar to rock and meshing them, they take your standard tools..bass, guitar, drums..and somehow go off and make this thing that is seemingly totally new. That while using just these common place instruments they can make 15 minute epics which never come close to losing your attention, yet don't rely on any of the normal tricks like lyrics or traditional hooks is absolutely amazing. When they came here, they came with this folk-type guy who went under the name Lazarus. As the crowd was definitely a rock crowd, he took quite a beating from the local heckling flavor. Turns out he was on tour with them because he is one of their best friends..so they came up on stage, told the hecklers to "get their money back at the door and f-ing" leave" and watched to make sure that they did just that..then proceeded to just straight out go amazing for an hour or more. They didn't pause between songs or anything else..they just laid it on and floored everyone. Incredible..God bless them.
6. Rose Blossom Punch - Ephemere.
So, I was going to, and still might, make this list of what is good about Christian music. Or what my favorite Christian artists are..or something to make known the fact that I'm not embarassed of all this Christian music past (well..except the spanish-language Carman tape "Quien Es Aqui? HAY SOOS!"). I think it's a good topic, and I'll probably utilize it some day, but for now it is enough to know that Aaron Sprinkle and all his projects would and should be at the top of any list ever made about quality Christian-labeled music. From Poor Old Lu to his solo work, to this band, Rose Blossom Punch, he's never made a misstep (okay..discounting the pre-Sin Poor Old Lu stuff..). The fact that I happened to pick up this album is worth the hundreds of crappy cds I bought by bands with names like "According 2 John" and "Synkronized Brothaz of the Faith" and music like snot. I would try to think up a better comparative phrase than snot, but that music simply isn't worth the time it would take me. However, Aaron Sprinkle and Rose Blossom Punch are worth any time you choose to alot to them. It is a shame that Mercy Me sells 8 million albums while all the Aaron Sprinkle albums combined have probably sold 50,000. I'm very grateful that the Leave No CD Behind Initiative brought me back to this somewhat forgotten Christian classic.
So, there you have it, that's what I've been listening to this week. Oh, and for the completist, this post was written while listening to The Dandy Warhols - "The Dandy Warhols Come Down". And I also ate a ham and cheese sandwich made with Oscar Meyer brown sugar-cured ham and Mrs. Braid's Homemade Potato bread, and some miracle whip, and some Kraft American single slice cheese.
