Just back from my Saturday morning work out and I'm all sweaty and starving, so this will be quick. On my way home, I had an urge to hear the School of Fish song Three Strange Days. When I checked the video out from that link I saw this comment: "the 90s was my favorite decade for music - and i've been alive since 1952".

Generally speaking, I try not to think in those terms when it comes to music and art because these are things in constant flux: an artist is inspired by something personal, something happening in the wider world, something some other artist did and there always seems to be something of value there to appreciate even if it's not your favorite thing. Having said all that: man, I miss the music of the 90s, too! I've really been struggling with this lately because my daughter is into the Top 40 kind of music right now and I swear so many things sound the same to me. I tell myself every era has its sound, its quirks, its exceptional musicians who will stand the test of time and the ones who merely move things along in very (very!) small ways.

I remember reading a Newsweek article around the beginning of the 90s about how rock-and-roll was limping along and the music industry was struggling to find a way back to the heyday of growth in sales they experienced in the 80s (I'd like to see that article again; wonder if I can google it?). The gist of it all was that rock was dead, killed off by the soft rock that did so well in the 70s and the New Wave and hair bands of the 80s. And then grunge hit. I know for a lot of people, it was Nirvana that kicked all that off. For my husband and me, it was more Pearl Jam, Temple of the Dog, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, et al; Nirvana were pretenders to the throne and we bought Nevermind because people kept telling us it was so good, not because we had come to that conclusion ourselves. Plus of course U2 kicked off the decade with Achtung Baby and it's one of the best rock albums. Ever.

So now the 00s are nearly over and for me the 90s have it all over this decade of music. On the one hand, I think it's probably natural to have strong feelings about the music that got you through the years before marriage and kids and career take over your life; the years of relatively little responsibility coupled with lots of free time. But on the other hand, I truly believe - objectively speaking - there was some damn good music going on back then. Don't get me wrong, there's still lots to love going on these days. But that era will always hold a special place in my heart.

And so, off to the shower where I expect something from the 90s will be on the set list.

Tags: music

I was watching a lecture from iTunes U the other day, this one on the topic of the intellectual landscape during ancient “classical” times. One thing the lecturer talked about was how it’s kind of a myth that the great break in the storehouse of ancient knowledge was the burning of the library at Alexandria. In fact, it was the development of new technology that caused a lot of old information to be lost. The new technology was the development of the codex, which was a superior system for storing written documents in comparison to scrolls of papyri. As use of the codex format took off, people had to choose what was important enough to warrant the expense and hassle of transferring from papyri to codices. Many things were lost because people at the time made judgment calls about what was worthy of keeping and what didn’t need to be kept for future generations.

I first became familiar with this very concept as the music industry embraced compact discs over LPs and cassettes. CDs have a superior sound quality, but replacing an entire library of cassettes and LPs with CDs is a large expense, so the process takes time, consideration and prioritization. The essential music was replaced nearly immediately. Thereafter it was a matter of whether the music company put the item out on CD, and if they did, which ones should be purchased next. This process of replacing cassettes with CDs is still an ongoing one for me.

( A side issue for the musicians and manufacturers )

For many years, when I’ve perused the shelves where we store our CDs, I’ve had this feeling that there is an important CD missing. It was always like a hole in my heart that I couldn’t find. I also couldn’t figure out how, if it was so important that I knew it was missing by the feeling I had in my gut if not the knowledge in my mind, I couldn’t remember which one was missing. Last night I figured it out.

You see, the reason it took this many years is that it’s an album by INXS. It’s been over ten damned years since Michael Hutchence committed suicide and I’m still not over it. Listening to INXS now is always just about equal parts pain and joy: there’s that happiness and love of hearing a music that hits you just right mixed with overwhelming sadness. I loved that band like crazy from the very first night I heard them as the opening band for the Stray Cats. To my mind, INXS was far and away the better act that night; I went out and bought Shabooh Shoobah immediately thereafter (on cassette). Since 1997, every time I’ve wanted to hear their music, I’ve ventured over for a look at our music shelves and thought “there’s something missing”. But I shied away from thinking too much about it because I almost couldn’t stand to listen to their early albums – the ones I had listened to the most over the years, the ones that meant the most to me – and thus almost always picked out something from later in their career. It was like a protective instinct to immediately reach for the later ones which had little to do with what I think of those albums as artistic efforts.

But last night I had a craving to hear a particular song and I realized I don’t have the CD the song originally came on. Once I figured that out, I found myself somewhat amazed I hadn’t ever bought The Swing on CD before Michael Hutchence’s death, but not surprised at all that I hadn’t bought it since. The Swing came in between Shabooh Shoobah and Listen Like Thieves and back in the day, those three albums were like Boy, October and War to me. In fact, as much as I listened to those three U2 albums around the time of their releases, it is very possible I listened to Shabooh Shoobah, The Swing and Listen Like Thieves more. It was kind of weird, actually, how U2 hit the public consciousness with The Joshua Tree in nearly the same way and around the same time as INXS did with Kick. They both went from being these bands it seemed like only I and a few others knew about to being huge sensations. But for whatever reason, when U2 went on to “chop down the Joshua Tree” and create Achtung Baby (arguably going from a height to an even greater height), INXS didn’t hit the sweet spot with their next album (X) in quite the same way. Thereafter, public consciousness of the two bands went on different trajectories, and a few years later Michael was dead.

Given that it’s been ten years I obviously need to accept that thinking of INXS is always going to be like poking at a particularly tender bruise. I’m determined to get The Swing on CD, and I will listen to it even though I know the whole experience will have a shadow over it. Somehow I need to get to a place where it’s not so painful; I want more of the joy back. I’m not sure if the path to that place is via listening to more of their music more often, but I suppose it’s worth a try. It may be a path paved in tears, but I think it’ll be worthwhile to take it and see where it leads.

::Deep breath::

Wish me luck.

Tags: inxs, music, u2

Way far back in time, when I was in grade school, I took classes at my local high school. I took two classes: computer science and algebra. (No snickers on the nerdiness of that, please.) The computer science class was taught by your prototypical aging hippy: Birkenstock-clad feet, long hair, yogurt-and-granola smell. You name it, he had it. The school year was spent with the class broken up into two groups (let's call those groups "boys" and "girls", shall we?) with the same goal shared by both groups: write a program for playing Craps. I was the youngest in the class and one of the boys was a Mormon - an 8th grader who really resented my presence and made it his goal in life to make me as miserable as possible - and the two of us represented the greatest storehouse of knowledge about the game. That is to say, we knew nothing. But the teacher taught us somehow, both how to play Craps and how to write a program using Basic. During our free time we were allowed to use this brand new thing called the Internet to play Oregon Trail (dial up the number with the rotary phone, get the squawky sound, put the receiver down on the machine connected to the dot matrix printer, hope it connected so we wouldn't have to start over). Our teacher espoused the wonders of what the Internet would one day be while we listened with that particular brand of eye-rolling skepticism that middle and high schoolers can do so well. He raved about the idea of the collected works of Shakespeare being housed at a remote location - or on a stack of floppy disks - that any one could access for free. No big, heavy books! Free information. It would be a marvel.

Fast forward and all those ideals our hippy teacher talked about have come to pass. But humans being humans, of course it's not *quite* the Utopia of high minded intellectualism he was so excited about. Still, there's lots to love. Tonight it all started over at Doug's blog on the subject of re-makes. Now, this is a touchy topic in my house. More often than not all we can do is lament with the tears and the woe when we hear a re-make of a beloved song because so often the re-makes are so terribly awful. All they do is ruin the song and make us wish for a time machine so we can go back to a moment *before* something so lovely became so ruined. Well, you can see a few examples of what I think are good and bad re-makes over at Doug's if you are so inclined. I'll be circling back round to this topic, you can rest assured on that.

But for now I have to take you down the bunny trail I went on tonight. Thinking about bands like Tears for Fears (boy did I love Mad World back in the day; hearing that song now brings back springtime memories in technicolor detail) had me searching for other songs I adored and didn't think I'd ever see in video form again. But thanks to the magic and wonder that is the Internet, they're on YouTube. It's like some kind of miracle. Seriously. Ages ago I looked up things like Two Hearts Beat as One, The Unforgettable Fire (love and adore that song like...well, there are no words), New Year's Day and of course I looked for that Conspiracy of Hope Tour moment when The Police handed off the Biggest Band in the World honors to U2 (didn't find that moment, but did find this rendition of Maggie's Farm, which is interesting from the perspective of realizing they were on a break from recording The Joshua Tree when they did this tour for Amnesty International. Well, ok, maybe it's only interesting to the U2 fan. Ahem. Moving on.)

No, all that U2 look up is old news. What I did tonight was look up things like The Motels Suddenly Last Summer, Joy Division's Love Will Tear Us Apart, The Cure's A Forest, The Smiths How Soon is Now (one of the coolest guitar performances ever), Information Society's What's On Your Mind, Talking Heads Burning Down the House (houses courtesy of Portland, Oregon), 'Til Tuesday's Voices Carry & Coming Up Close, Soft Cell's Tainted Love (who can resist that song?), and INXS's The One Thing (it was love at first concert with that band - they were so very, very good) and Kiss the Dirt (because I have a particular college experience associated with this song that I love remembering; it's like the sound of freedom, in a nutshell).

Hours passed happily. Some might say too many hours.

Then I decided to go really out there and see if I could find two favorites of my friends and I. Obscure songs not heard since approximately 1988. Songs few outside of our little circle had heard of even at the time. And they were there! Unbelievable! So without further ado, I'll now bring you a little time capsule from the 1980s. Never heard of these songs? No worries, hardly anyone has!

First, a little English band called Vitamin Z:


And last but not least, a catchy little number by Bourgeois Tagg (who? yeah, that's right - Bourgeois Tagg):


Isn't the Internet amazing? Like, seriously amazing? Yeah, I think so, too.

Tags: music, u2

Here's something made of awesome: Wil Wheaton has 3 hours of MTV recorded in 1983 over at his blog. The funny thing is, most of the music (not to mention the commercials) are things I'd ignore back in the day. Now? I feel like I'm half archeologist studying cultural artifacts from Days of Yoren and I'm half sniffly from nostalgia. A few random observations: albums don't cost much more to buy now than they did 25 years ago (crap! 25 years!). It's true, they really did use to play music on MTV (that "M" standing for "music"). You had to work to get information back then...like, say, when a band was coming your way for a concert. And when they were coming, you had to go to the venue, stand in a line (perhaps overnight) and buy your ticket in person.

And here's something made of that oogly-woogly feeling: I went out looking for something on Google, one thing lead to another (as it does) and the next thing I knew I discovered there's another fiveandfour out there in internet-land. On the one hand, it feels totally weird. On the other hand, perhaps this means I can start being a real jerk online then say, "It wasn't me!" when I get called on it. Oh sweet, sweet alibi-in-advance: it almost makes up for the oogly-wooglies.

Tags: music

We have a new competitor in the Annoy Your Co-workers sweepstakes here in my department. A very nice person with a very annoying habit of listening to music at a volume that's not loud enough to complain about, but just loud enough to DRIVE ME INSANE. If I have to hear freaking Dream Weaver one more damned time I don't think I can be responsible for my actions. It's a never-ending stream of Billy Joel and Chicago, Crosby Stills Nash + Young, Beach Boys, The Kingsmen, Lynrd Skynyrd, Rolling Stones, ELO, guitar, flute, piano, bass and drum by every American rock band that's had music on the radio since the 1970s to an extent that I know each and every song without ever having consciously decided I'd actually LIKE to know these songs.

Part of the problem is the construction of our cubicles which seem to carry sound in such a way that a person sitting right next to a radio hears it at a lesser volume than a person one or two cubicles away. Combine that with a few of the voices I'm surrounded by and some days I get very grouchy indeed. Today is probably going to be one of those days.

I can't quite put my finger on when these office sounds started to get on my nerves to this extent, but I think there's something about the particular neighbors I'm surrounded by at the moment that have me utterly nuts in a way I never was before. My husband will tell me it's just me getting old, and hey - he could be right, but I've been annoyed like this at various stages in my life before now - it's just never felt like such a seige on my sanity.

I don't know how much good I've done any of us by complaining like this. But if you hear something on the news about an officeworker going berserk for no apparent reason, you can look back here and know there WAS a reason. That whole music-as-torture thing is looking like a more and more effective way of driving people out of their trees: simple and cheap but undeniably effective.

Tags: music, work

I don't think I mentioned that I had yet another iPod stolen. This one out of my desk at work. For those counting at home, that makes two: one out of my car, one out of my desk. This week my husband's cell phone was stolen (though that wasn't as strange as someone stealing nearly all of his lugnuts a few days ago). Needless to say, I'm up to here ::motion above head:: with thieves just now.

Thing is, I really miss having an iPod. Not only was it useful for blocking out certain people's voices at work when I JUST COULDN'T TAKE IT ANY MORE, it was also helpful for waking up on the way to work, for doing chores around the house, for listening to just whenever, helping to create or ride a mood to get where I needed to go. It's amazing what a couple of weeks without music can do.

On 4th of July my husband and I upheld what I realized is a kind of accidental tradition of watching a U2 concert video. Back in the day it was Under a Blood Red Sky then out to the street to do some fireworks with friends. Last year (I think it was last year) it was Rattle and Hum (Bullet the Blue Sky, especially live, is the perfect thing to listen to on 4th of July while we're at war). This year was Zoo TV Live from Sydney (hmmm....there's Bullet the Blue Sky again). Perhaps next year it'll be the PopMart tour from Mexico City since they're finally releasing it on DVD soon. Anyway, it came to me while watching how much I missed listening to music these past weeks.

It also kicked off a need to hear songs with bass. Seeing and hearing Until the End of the World, Dirty Day and Love is Blindness was like experiencing drops of moisture hitting a dry sponge. I'd gotten onto Dirty Day last week at work (listening from U2.com), annoying one of my cubicle neighbors, I'm sure, but then getting the live version was...wow...kind of like getting a picture in digital color after seeing the grainy black-and-white version.

Since then I've been cherry picking dark beauties with strong bass from our iTunes library while here at home. You can get a lot of those from the techno world, so there's been lots of Crystal Method, Fatboy Slim, Dirty Vegas, Orbital and like things going on. I want more, though I'm drawing a blank on where to get it just now.

On a tangent related to music, here's something I find terribly clever (hang in there for the first 50 seconds or so, I swear it gets better) Better, Stronger, Faster Hands. I can't decide if this speaks to an abudance of creativity, too much time on one's hands (heh, accidental pun), obsessive-compulsive behavior, or some combination of all of the above*. But it is amazing how little one really needs to create absorbing entertainment, as this clearly shows.



*I've been lately pondering where that line is that separates someone from being labeled "one note" instead of "inspired" or "dedicated" or "deeply committed to ____". When and how do we decide whether we can't pay any attention to someone any more because that one thing that is so important to them has gotten old for us to listen to? This here might be the most I'll do on a posting on that topic though it's been on my mind a lot, that "what separates the great from the lame" question. It probably can't be answered in any concrete way, but I like the question all the same.

Tags: music

Hearing remakes of songs I love makes me feel old. Realizing said songs are a good 20+ years old, so in the sweet spot for remaking as far as time goes, doesn't really help the matter.

It's even worse, of course, when the person who bought the remake doesn't even realize it's a remake and gives you that head-tilted-to-the-side look, like a dog attempting to identify a strange sound its never heard before, when you mention something about how you always loved the original.

(For the record, thus far the only remake I approve of is Gary Jules' rendition of the Tears for Fears song Mad World; he really brought something new to that song. Everyone else...no. Just...no.)

Tags: music

My daughter's softball practices are going to be on the days and exact times of the classes I've been taking at the gym (natch), so I tried a new class out tonight. It's been available for awhile, but I'd avoided it because I took this same class once on a day off and I hated it. And you know, it's reeeaaallly hard to be motivated to exercise when you hate the class. But I figured I'd try this one out and I kinda' liked it. Different instructor from the one I had before, which makes a big difference. This class was more like interval training than the other one, which works for me because it's got motivation built right into it with every section lasting a small amount of time. Quick feet on the step for 2 minutes followed by slower lifting of weights? Yeah, I can do that. Much longer with the quick feet, and I can't make any promises. Anyway, when it was done my muscles were twitching with fatigue, yet I didn't feel tired. We'll see how the pain is tomorrow - if I can walk, I'll call it a success.

Towards the end for the cool down period, she put on a Bachman-Turner-Overdrive song and I immediately had the notion that I could smell dust and mold. It took a minute for it to occur to me that I associate BTO almost exclusively with the basement of the house I grew up in. It's amazing how certain things can trigger your senses so strongly, isn't it? My brother loved BTO and had their stuff on vinyl. I remember one day I became fascinated with testing out how "not fragile" their Not Fragile album really was. I was curious to know if that name meant it could handle some extra rough treatment. Would the title imbue that vinyl with some super-strong properties that were put there secretively, like how the Six Million Dollar Man was extra special thanks to his hidden hardware?

Turns out the vinyl itself was as fragile as every other record. Much to my dismay and disappointment. Though I must say *my* dismay and disappointment was nothing on my brother's when he found that record, broken up into about 8 pieces.

But if you don't mind, let's just keep that little secret between you and me. I don't think I ever told him it was me and this is probably one of those things better confessed to him when he's good and liquored up sometime.

Tags: family, music

Every Friday morning my local radio station plays a little set of songs from the 1980s. It occurred to me today that music gets segregated to different memory banks so that when I hear a song I haven't heard in awhile, different memory responses are evoked.

( Sorting memories like laundry... )

This whole thing is another one of those forehead slappers for me because it's so obvious that I've always done this, and yet I never noticed it until this morning when I found myself running the gamut of emotions described above as 6 or 7 songs were played on the radio. Well, there was all that plus the realization that U2 really did have a sound akin to punk back then, which again, I never noticed before now -- at the time I didn't think of them as part of that genre due to the lyrics and the fact that you could understand them, but the prominent guitar and drums and up tempo rhythm and straight-ahead cleanliness of the tunes: punk all the way.

Tags: music, u2

I can't sleep. I'm tired, but when I lay down my mind does everything but wind down.

To add insult to injury, I got an unbearable craving to hear The Smiths song That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore and that was like a chigger under the skin, burrowing further and further in. So I gave in: I got up, dug out the CD and the song is playing as I type. There are no words for my adoration of that section of the song "I've seen this happen in other people's lives and now it's happening in mine": the melody, the guitar, the vocals. Clearly Morrissey is no deep lyricist, but the music...the music... And I don't care how cliche it is to like How Soon is Now because it's just the same for me. I mean, there are other Smiths songs I like, but these two slay me every time and it's nearly impossible for me to hear them just once when I do hear them.

This song reminds me particularly of a couple of tendencies I have: one is to lean to darkly beautiful music (The Smiths, The Cure, Depeche Mode, Siouxsie, Mud Honey, Alice in Chains, Audioslave) during the winter months and the other is to lean towards songs with guitar hooks that are melodic. My husband always accuses me of trying to depress myself when I listen to the "dark beauties", but that's not what I feel when I listen. It makes me happy, it reminds me that it's not only poppies and tulips and bright things that are beautiful, but ferns and ivy and dark things are, too.

But anyway, it sure would be great it I could freaking get some sleep now. ::Sigh::

Perhaps I should watch the Lost episode we taped tonight - it seems to have several people stirred up so there must be something about it that's unexpected.

ETA: 3am, people. 3am. The sandman has not been kind to me this week. I didn't watch Lost but instead a movie I hadn't seen in awhile called Playing by Heart - and I have to say Jon Stewart and Gillian Anderson are terribly cute together.

Tags: music