posters remorse.

I tried to ask the woman for the recipe, but she was nowhere to be found. One of the translators said she collapsed and was dragged away by a pack of dogs. So it goes. Guy Fieri gets two TV shows and a TGI Fridays deal for adding Tobasco and cheddar cheese to refried beans and this lady fights a dog to create the best meal I have ever eaten and then dies in an alley. I don’t blame God, I blame the Food Network.

-Anthony Bourdain 

Dammit.

I always want to post more but then I come here and look around, smh, and leave. 

#1 Ryan Adams - Love is Hell pt 1 of 2

The record label initially rejected this record, but eventually agreed to release the work as 2 EP releases. Eventually, the label did a re-release as an entire LP, remixing and adding an additional tune. 

I won’t pretend to not be a Ryan Adams superfan. I don’t really know why I am at this point, but whatever. I found him (or his music found me) at the perfect time in my life and the music and I shared so many things for so many years I almost have a hard time partitioning the different stories and moments into actual facts. It’s like some super concert from a decade ago that never actually happened, but you’ve convinces yourself it did, so it did. I will try and not do that. 

A quick primer; Ryan Adams left New York City with a batch of songs and relocated to New Orleans to make a record with producer John Porter, known for his work with the Smiths. What Ryan ended up submitting to his record label was Love is Hell.  This was the official follow up to his previous record, Gold, which made Ryan a star and the beacon of hope for modern country-inspired rock and roll. Not only did the record label not like Love is Hell, but they flatly refused to release it. 

In the end, Ryan appeased the label another cool, but not as affecting album (Rock N Roll) and Love is Hell was released as two separate EP releases. Eventually, the label did some re-mixing, added a tune from a previous session, and released the album proper as a full-length LP. But, to die hard fans of the songwriter and this record in particular, owning each EP means you were there when it happened. 

There is much information available about the inner details of the record, and finding that information has only made me more of a fan of the collective work. The artistic stance Ryan Adams took, and what it means to simply fight for something because it’s fucking art, and it’s not ever fucking commerce is worth the price of the record alone. What I learned from this entire saga is that when you feel something and you choose to chase that muse, you must chase it all the way. Anything less is going to sound like something less. 

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To be considered someones favorite record of all time, I truly think the music itself is really only a portion of the equation. 

Sure, you have to first and foremost love the tunes and what they do/say/sound like, but, there must be something, or in this case, many things, lending themselves to the overall mystique of the work as a whole. A time frame, a personal issue, the artwork or the musicians or the city where it was recorded. There has to be some serious voodoo behind something for it to become your favorite, and if you think it doesn’t work that way, you don’t like music.

I was more or less escaping the first real relationship trouble I had encountered up to that point in my life. I think I was 20 at the time, so I wasn’t big on sleeping on things; the romantic version of this is “free spirit”, but the actual term is fucking irrational. I had just started college and I was hanging on to the flawed idea of a hometown girlfriend and trying to figure out how to make everything work out, driving back home all the time to try and live in 2 places at one time. None of that really matters now other than it helps frame my relationship with this album, because I basically spent the next 2 years of my life deferring to it emotionally, constantly. I also have not deferred to it musically in every song i’ve written in one way or another. 

I fled in self-imposed agony to central Florida; a true beacon of hope and progress. So I am stuck in fucking Sarasota in the middle of August, sweating, unable to do any of the things I thought I was going to do to “clear my head”. It’s like 110 degrees in the shade in Florida that time of the year, consequently making it one of the most miserable places on the entire planet. I was attempting to run from a bunch of things, and really all that happened is I went somewhere else to constantly think about things happening somewhere else. Flawed logic.

I tried to spend time with my brother, meeting girls and going to the movies and playing basketball and trying my best to recall any semblance of normalcy in what was quickly becoming a very not normal entrance into the world of adulthood. I was fucking up and I was fighting the future and I wanted to remember what it was like to be 13 and live with my folks and have no responsibility and to just be. 

I ended up in a record store with my brother on an afternoon. It was the kind of record store where everything is 18 dollars and the employees all wear matching shirts and flat-front chinos. My brother liked things like subwoofers and music whose creators have a Lil’ in their stage name; We do not share the same musical preferences. So I spot these discs, and with my self loathing at a critical all-time high, seeing these records titled Love is Hell just seemed to make perfect sense to me. I bought them having read nothing about them (this was 2004) and having not heard them yet in some sort of leaked form (this was 2004).

That process of just buying something almost has a nostalgic air (this is 2011).

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I am unable to tell you that the second I put the first disc in the player, I was transported off on some sort of musical journey or some other magical thing. That was not the case. I was not instantly drawn to the sounds and I didn’t want to admit it was what it was. Like I mentioned before; I wasn’t ready. 

So I end up coming home from some sort of high school party with my brother. I felt uncomfortable the entire time we were in attendance and all I could think about was going home and putting on my headphones. I was recalling the sounds I had heard in passing in the car and in the house as I let this record kind of play, absent minded, in the background. Typically this is how I first take in new music. It’s a placebo of sorts; you’re not entirely sure if you’re hearing what you think you might be hearing. I like to recall things I had heard in passing and allow myself to expound upon them when i’m a little more mentally present. 

So the first time I was alone, in the dark, outside; because the middle of the night is the only time it’s truly safe to be outside in a Florida summer. I was basically in that kind of state where you’re violently fighting the effects of whatever substance(s) you have chosen to allow into your body, trying to keep it together even though your entire purpose hours before was to completely lose it and fight nothing.  I still was using a discman.

I didn’t know where to find inside information about music. I wasn’t yet able to traverse the internet for the little lockets of information that exist about the things we all ingest. All I knew is that I had, on a whim, purchased an album with an absurdly sad title, without any prior conceived idea as to why I should (or, should not) have purchased said music. I simply went with it. It felt right.

The second I let it have me, I was awash. What I heard was something I have yet to hear again, and what I felt was something i’ve now been chasing since that very moment in time. Absolute validation? Your guess is as good as mine.

I heard this thick wallop of fucking sad and it sounded like the greatest sound in the world to me. It still kind of does. 

From the first note of the first track on the first EP, the despair just permeates and leaks from the speakers. Its not only palpable; it’s impossible to feel anything but that when you’re listening and that absolution has since come to define what I want in all of the music I hear. It never happens.

The first song that made me try a repeat was This House Is Not For Sale; I felt like I had heard it before (melodically) and also felt like it was the most profound yet obvious way to set up the idea of being alone. I sat on that song for probably 6 or 7 spins, just going back and forth and back and forth and trying to understand it. I now doubt it was even written; I like to believe it simply happened. The notes, the unhinged sorrow and just the awkward nature of some of the lyrical content. It couldn’t have come from pen to paper.  

“Tell them the house, is not for sale. We could grab a couple sheets, yeah; give them quite a scare”

Every songwriter with a past and a guitar has written a song about someone being a ghost. But no one has told it like that. Essentially, that line encapsulates, for me, the genius that is Ryan Adams. It simply sounds clunky and perfect at the exact same time, and I can’t tell where his ability ends and his emotion takes over. No money-grubbing songwriter could do this because it’s not factory-generated; you have to fucking feel something to put words like this out there for others to wallow in. 

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There is this resonant key throughout the entire album that acts like a blanket hanging. A melodic arc, showing us where his mind was without being able to show us. He lets us listen. This tone sits on top of the songs and just watches them, all of them. I think the producer, John Porter (A member of Roxy Music and producer of arguably the finest and most permeating Smiths records), had something to do with this as well, having been selected based on his discography of thick, sad music. This damp, saturated, spooky and almost effervescent mess of haze that comes and goes from the instruments and the voice will eat you alive if you let it. 

There really is not a second of hope on the entire first EP. The songs melt and blend into each other with that afore mentioned gob of reverb and minor-key bliss. The sound never becomes contrived because it’s just so present and in your face, you can’t ignore it. It’s not a coincidence that it all kind of sounds that way. It is a deliberate method aimed at a certain kind of person. Luckily, I was (am) that kind of person. 

The title track, based on it’s relative tempo to the rest of the other 7 songs it sits next to might lead you to believe it is a fun song. But, it’s titled Love is Hell, lest you forget. The chorus plainly states that sentiment. It’s not profound songwriting or clever wordplay. It’s literal to the very core of the word and it just stares at you. Plinking piano, acid-honkey tonk guitars washed in reverb and a set up telling you the truth. 

“Its raining, I can see it outside, funny i’m still in it. Just sitting here with Johney and Raff, oh, until the room starts spinning. I could be serious, but i’m just kidding around. I could be anything, anything but, sticking around. Love is hell”. 

It’s like every single fucking word of the record makes perfect sense to me. THATS WHERE I WENT AND WHAT I DID AND WHAT I BELIEVED. I couldn’t fathom that someone I had never met and probably won’t ever meet was saying these things to me. 

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There is a very popular cover of the song Wonderwall, written by Noel Gallagher and originally performed by Oasis on the first EP. I don’t mind it’s inclusion and in fact applaud the guts it must have taken to convince yourself you could pull of such an interpretation. 

“I think Ryan Adams is the only person who ever got that song right, and i’d love to do the Ryan Adams version. But, in front of 60,000 Oasis fans, that probably wouldn’t be possible” - Noel Gallagher

It really is one of the rare examples of a cover transcending the original. In the case of the original, an omnipresent 90’s anthem, it’s not exactly an obscure song from a great bands catalog. Thats all I want/need to say about this tune and it’s space in the Love is Hell universe.

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My favorite track on part 1 has shifted a couple of times since I bought the album, and for various reasons. I’ve probably drunkenly talked about this album a shade under 250 times in my life, and for probably 90% of those conversations, the “favorite track question” has yielded the recipient of my rant a completely different answer. For that, I apologize.

I can however, at 27, tell you without a doubt my favorite, and definitive cut on the first EP is Shadowlands. I always felt something for the song, but as a songwriter, I appreciat it on a level I didn’t have at 19 or 20. The chords are the exact same meditative and deliberate sequence for the entire song. The guts that takes as a musician! To simply add and add to the vibe in an effort to build this beautiful moment. By the time the guitar solo enters the song, you are thinking about things you have not thought about in years. This section has brought me to tears countless times, and still gives me goosebumps nearly every single time I hear it. 

I can say without hesitation i’ve been trying to make my own bands records sound like that section for years. 

It is 5:18 seconds of the most confident playing and producing, and most of all songwriting, available to you.

Part 1 of the EP ends with arguably my favorite lyric on the entire record; 

“If we get too high, we’ll burn this town”. 

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Part two is the other side of the coin, telling the same story. Perhaps a little more subdued and with a touch less self-examination. Characters are introduced, namely “she”. She gets a name, eventually, Mary Louise. 

#2 Saves the Day - Stay What You Are

I’ve mentioned how records take me to a different time before. I’ve framed them against my love life, and i’ve told you how a record makes sense to me because of the place or time I was in when I found it. I’ve gone through intricate dissections of my own life and the music I enjoy, probably less to inform you, and more to talk with myself. I use this as therapy because it’s less expensive than a therapist, more fun, and I assume there might be someone out there who will be able to relate. Maybe this is someones runner-up in their top 10 list also. Maybe they used to get drunk to this. It’s a big fucking world.

I have tried to write this little piece about a half dozen times, and with no progress. I’d sit back and read what I had written and hit delete because it all made me sound like either a self centered fucker, or, so painfully nostalgic it was depressing. I was romanticizing something that did not need to be romanticized. I think i’ll encapsulate that quickly just for accuracy sake.

In high school, my best buddy Michael was really my only source for interesting music. He was the entirety of my good taste. He was my original Napster. 

He loved this incarnation of Saves the Day and he brought this album around a lot to various social gatherings or whatever. Background music, initially. We hung with this ten-cent millionaire’s son, and the ten-center and his wife would leave town for 10 days every summer and leave the son. So, the house became the de facto capital of underage drinking, questionable sexual practices, and general suburban depravity. These were generally the best 10 days of the entire summer. Everyone got some form of laid, drunk, inspired. Someone always saw god and had a breakdown and needed to change their lives. Someone always set something on fire and someone would always clean it all up every morning incase the ten-center and his wife came home early just to say hi. 

So yes, when I listen to this album, certain parts of it remind me of that time in my life. When heaven was a twenty dollar bill, natural light and a sober ride to taco bell. Sure, this fucking album meant a lot to me then. I was overweight, I knew I was a great guy. I couldn’t get a girl to hang out. She was always a friend or some other melodramatic bullshit, and I let this record console me. I allowed real pain from the album be the soundtrack to my fake pain. My self-conceived and wholly untrue pain. 

Ahh, high school.

So eventually, I got into other stuff. I started listening to something different and wasn’t developed enough as a person to look back and try and quantify certain aspects of my life into something else. I could not fathom how one experience led to another, to another, to another to eventually become something much bigger. I actually kind of think that because of the way it sounds and the overall mastery of a genre this record actually is, I think I went the opposite direction. I didn’t think much, at all. I know at some point I ended up in a very testosterone fueled dormitory in the armpit of Indiana listening to a lot of Linkin Park, Primus and guitar playing by a Moroccan import named Malik who lived next door. I think it’s safe to say Stay What You Are did not lead me there.

The guitar playing was jazz inspired however, so maybe this all makes sense.

Eventually, the trials and tribulations of the late teens and early 20’s passed, and I was on into the meat of the decade and I came back to this. I think I was playing in hardcore bands (ill explain why I don’t think i’ve ever played in a hardcore band before, but in a later post), and anyone who has played in a hardcore band knows, it’s generally taboo to stray too far from hardcore for fear of looking less cool. So, this was an acceptable record. I could put this on and appear emotional in front of people. But, I still wasn’t listening. It was still fucking background music, but at this point, had been playing in the background for some of the best times of my life, socially. 

By the time I was 25, I picked this up used at a place called Trax in Bloomington, Indiana and actually started to listen. I was in the car often alone, and I could crank the stereo and let it happen. 

And thats when it started to make sense. 

The songcraft is so clever, and so important. Prior this had been mid tempo music lulling in the background to people trying to fuck someone. Now, I got to understand what was happening inside the songs. I got to hear the interplay with the guitars and the cleanliness of the recording. I got to hear the jazz chords. I got to hear the Beatles influence. I got to hear the little things you miss when you aren’t paying any fucking attention. 

No song by song analysis here. I love this record for an entirely different reason than any record prior on my list. 

This one fucking evolved. 

I loved it when I was 17, fat, sheltered, directionless and hapless in love. 

I love it when i’m 27, less fat, less sheltered, focused and getting married. 

Thats a musical evolution. One man and his band made a piece of music that has managed to make sense to me in different ways, in different places, and at entirely different times in my life. I can’t imagine the 17 year old version of me and the current version of me even having something to talk about. 

Except Stay What You Are. 

I’m losing my fucking mind.

I can’t stop thinking about what we are doing to ourselves and it’s making me lose my fucking mind. I know I will write more on this subject soon, and probably as a form of public therapy. 

We are fucking ourselves up and we are all probably contributing to the end of the fucking world and that sucks. No one is going to stop. 

We are probably doomed. 

#3 John Mayer - Continuum

I have mentioned this belief here before, and I will mention it again before discussing this record in greater detail;

I like it when an artist hits their creative peak.

I am not from the elitist bloodline where the unreleased work is more authentic, or more heartfelt, or more honest, or more important. I believe that, as a listener, the band makes big shiny clear and load records because they want us to hear them and their art in that light. This is the entire reason I have never given any merit to the idea of a band “selling out” or “forgetting where they came from”. That hypothesis is just a lazy way for people to sound elite to other lazy people who want to sound elite. Its complete nonsense, and makes so very little sense it’s almost laughable. No musician I have ever known sets out to be undervalued and/or sound like shit. We all go through that of course, but the end goal, at least as far as I know, is to make the best representation of your songs, your vision, and your music as possible. 

Continuum is that piece of work for John Mayer.

I can say with level zero shame that I love this piece of music. However, I did not always love it. I had to grow up to love it. Upon it’s release, I wasn’t there. I simply wasn’t capable of understanding, or more so, sitting still and sober enough to actually see and hear what was going on inside the music. I didn’t like it, and I had to wait. This is common for me. And, as I get older, I am much more aware of when it is happening. I can hear something someone plays for me and think “yes, I like this. I think I will like it more in the winter when I am 31”. Not to say that specific diagnosis has been handed down, but, that sort of analysis happens for me all of the time. 

I won’t pretend to dissect the possible places John could have been emotionally when this record was written; I don’t know John Mayer. I also will not pretend to have a deep, dark connection to this record; I don’t. I just simply believe it is the peak in a career of one of my absolutely favorite musicians. 

I read someone compare John Mayer and his perceived douchebagedness to that of an onion; think, a douchebag with multiple layers. I disagree completely. I actually find him to be, at least, as a musician and a public figure, heartbreakingly transparent. He has always been extremely honest, or, he is at least exceptionally good at appearing to be completely honest. Never has that been more apparent than on Continuum.

He openly explores themes he had never really touched on before, and with a little more ernest and willing tone. Ideas of mortality, future ownership of this generation and the people we share that with, insecurity, and of course heartbreak are all present here. However, never before and never after has it seemed and felt so authentic. 

I believe this was the perfect combination of city, musicians, time and inspiration. 

Continuum does resemble most other John Mayer records in terms of pacing. There are an equal amount of pop songs, blues-based songs, R&B tinged material, and guitar rock. These are the combined things Mayer does with most accuracy, so it should be of no surprise that they are present. However, those elements, while present on all his records, sound most believable here. They don’t sound like someone trying to interpret their masters and idols; they sound like someone who is a master, and an idol. 

This was the first record where Mayer and his band took the reigns as producers and arrangers, opting to not use outside engineers and producers to help craft the sound. A few of the songs here were recycled from his experiment playing in the John Mayer trio, so I believe that general ethos prevailed as the record and the songs there in were coming into shape. Not to say that anything sounds empty, or hollow, because it does not. But, this album has been stripped of the Jack-Joseph Puig sheen that prevailed on prior Mayer releases. Continuum sounds like it has a funk, a soul and a backbeat, undercurrent and prevailing tone and air of maturity that had been lacking from previous Mayer releases. One can only assume that vibe spilled over from spending months on the road with no one but a drummer and a bassist. 

A few of the songs here are absolute classic songs in my opinion. “Vultures”, “Gravity”, “I Don’t Trust Myself (With Loving You)” and “Slow Dancing In a Burning Room” reek of classic songwriting and vibe. There is nothing wrong with these tunes on any level, and will stand the test within his career as his finest, if not most commercially viable, work.

“Gravity” and “Vultures” most nail this theory. Those songs are the combination of all the things Mayer does best. From the tone of the guitar, the phrasing, the craft as a whole. I don’t think he can top these pieces. There is something real happening in these songs that very few artists in the modern world are capable of achieving. His singing is at it’s finest on these tracks, and I know his voice is a love-hate kind of instrument. It’s a baritone in all honesty, but he chooses to find a frailty in a falsetto that he attempted before, but never solidified. These are perfect songs.

As for the other two I mentioned; “Slow Dancing in a Burning Room” so aptly nails down the idea of the doomed relationship it’s almost frightening. I have been there, and so have you. Where you know things will never be the way they were. Where you know that the whole thing you’ve built and worked so hard for is falling apart and there is nothing you can do but hold on as tight as possible and try and keep the fire lit just to try. You know you are failing, and your partner knows you are failing, and no one can stop it. You choose to take the ride. You choose to make this your destiny.

“I Don’t Trust Myself (With Loving You)” serves as a warning. Don’t fall for me. Don’t let me fucking fool you. I am a bad person with issues, but I want to be different. I want to be better, for myself, and for you, but you need to stay as far away as you can until I get there or I am going to destroy you. He asks the person to find something in him that they can appreciate and to hang on to that and keep it somewhere safe so that it can be revisited when the healing is through. I find it gutsy, I find it honest. It is the opposite of the typical lead-on someone like Mayer sells so effortlessly. It is admitting that he is a wretch, and telling you, in plain english, to deny him entry into your world to avoid the pain it will cause. Who has the guts to do this in this day and age? We all try so hard to sell everyone else on the best possible version of ourselves, and then spend the entirety of our time patching holes and repairing things we do to others. This song taught me to be honest. I gave these lyrics to my girlfriend very early on in our relationship and told her the truth. I told her I was a wreck and I asked her for help. I let this song be my inspiration in that. I didn’t sell her a version of me that didn’t exist; I told her who I was and said “this is who I want to be eventually and I think I can get there; but I need your help. Are you prepared for this?”. She was, and I have gotten there.  

I am not going to look up sales and spins numbers, and I am not going to find out which songs from this record netted Mayer Grammy nods or awards. I simply don’t care this morning. 

I just love this record. The older I get, the more public and honest I feel I can be about the music I truly enjoy and that holds a place for me. As my brain and my heart get a little more cluttered and fucking full, I find I have less room for pretension and things that don’t actually matter. I just simply don’t have the space to fill with information and data on things I don’t like, just to tuck away for the time when I may need to draw on them to sound informed in some bar or at some show to someone I may never see or talk with again. I have finally gotten honest with myself, and thus, honest with those I come in contact with. 

I love what I love, and for me, this is one of the most loved records in my collection. It means something to me, and I find solace in the things it says. I love the way it sounds. Its warmth, and the beauty in which the artist captured a moment in time and rode a wave of inspiration and a belief system that prevailed for him. He captured that and chose to share it, and I am forever in debt. It really is a beautiful piece of work. 

#4 Third Eye Blind - s/t

At this point, you could substitute the next three records in any order and the feelings I have about them would not change. I have been thinking so intently about the order of the final three records leading up to my favorite that i’ve decided to just disclose that information up front.

This list is just as important to me as any memory I have made listening to the music i’m discussing. I have never examined this side of myself with such thought, and it has been a pleasant experience. I honestly made it a point on my end to not try and sit and listen to the records and then write about them. I wasn’t trying to take my mind on some sort of Pink Floydian journey of introspection and post-modern dissection. I don’t need to listen to these albums to remember the way they make me feel. It’s been therapeutic for me to actually tap into that spot, wherever it may lie inside, and recollect those feelings without forcing myself to listen again. 

I can’t remember phone numbers, but I can tell you exact moments in my life; what was playing, driving, or inspiring that situation. I often attempt to make my life play out like a song, both to my detriment, and my joy.

I know it has become a moderate cliche to rave on about a record you can “play front to back and never skip a song”, but I feel like it’s been nearly a decade since I heard something that actually held my attention long enough to even consider drunkenly announcing such a thing. I don’t know if it’s the illusion of history. I don’t know if it’s the human minds de facto ability to distill a bunch of different memories and feelings into one grandiose memory or feeling that never actually happened. I don’t know if it is simply that I nearly enjoy the soft smack of my fingers against the keys as I do to the music itself. I don’t know what it is, but it’s alright; it always is. 

This isn’t to say I don’t like things that have been released in the recent past. I just haven’t felt like listening to it constantly. I don’t consider this a forum to commentate on the state of the music industry or the quality of the songwriting we are being presented, and I am in no position to judge. Believe me, i’m still learning. I honestly believe a combination of excess stimuli, shitty bands, a lack of effort on my part, and a few other varying circumstances are all to blame for not being able to find something great. All in all, it’s a different world we are living in, and not just with music. 

Things just aren’t the same anymore.

I read a quote today stated by Jane’s Addiction frontman and founder Perry Ferrel. He made a comment in a magazine concerning the changes he encountered in popular music from the inception of the Lollapalooza festival in 1991, and the onset of “alternative culture” around 1996. The comment had to do with Third Eye Blind being a “popular band” by 1996, and the context was framed as such as this was the beginning of the end of some kind of revolution he helped create. 

All I can think to say to Perry Ferrel is fuck you.

I met him once at a show, reached out my hand in a small crowd and said “hey Perry!” and he smugly smirked at me, looked at one of his handlers, turned his back and walked off. He made me look like a dipshit outsider in front of friends and strangers alike, as he preached of acceptance for all dipshits and outsiders. This is what the entire ethos of the original Lollapalooza was. I’m not butthurt because Janes Addiction fucking sucks, and anyone who denies that is lying and hanging on to some shitty image of a perfect world from sometime in mid 1992. If he had not founded Lollapalooza, his legacy, in my opinion, would be akin to the asshole from Soul Asylum. Now you want to knock Third Eye Blind? Like I said, fuck you.

So this record is interesting to me for a myriad of reasons. I think the numbers speak for themselves in terms of commercial success; they sold a fucking massive amount of records and spawned 6 singles that charted high in various rock radio formats. It isn’t difficult to hear “Semi Charmed Life” in a CVS buying toothpaste or “How’s it Going to be?” while waiting to get my oil changed. Those songs are everywhere, and they probably aren’t going anywhere. To me, it could be worse and any time I am doing those things and I have hear Staind or the Jonas Brothers, it actually is. 

I believe if you were to ask anyone who openly loves this record what the best part about it actually is, they would all tell you the same thing;

The best songs on the record were never on the radio.

How many records are there in your CD album or rack can you say that about and mean it? Now, I don’t mean some record that no one has ever heard or never made it anywhere. I don’t mean some obscure indie thing, or some fucking band from Sweden that broke up before they ever broke in the states or something. I mean a bona fide rock and roll band, doing blow, dating actresses, having their songs in films and playing the Late Show. I’m talking records where the singles end up being played in a CVS when you’re stopping for toothpaste and spinning in a Jiffy Lube during oil changes. 

This is one of those. I can put this on, and I feel inclined to skip back and listen to a song a second, or even third time. I would never consider skipping something, even those fucking singles i’ve heard enough times to last a lifetime. This record encapsulates such a certain maudlin, introspective and melancholy mood that it is actually better when listened to as a whole. The songs I speak of, we will call them the deeper tracks on the album, take on a grand sound at times that I like to think of as an homage to the Beatles. Nothing here sounds anything like the Beatles, but the abrupt changes in tempo and mood that exist within the songs is very reminiscent there of. The tone of the album, the pacing; it’s untouchable. Things effortlessly bound from amped up and emotional aggression to literal lyrics that tip-toe between corny, and irrefutably honest. 

I am big on romance. This record has a romance no other record in my list has. This record has a certain perfect quality and mystique to it for me that again, no other record on my list has. Of all the bands and albums I have included in this list, all artists have gone on to either top the record I loved, or at least continued to release viable music and continue to build on my most beloved work. 

Third Eye Blind is not one of those bands.

And honestly, it doesn’t bother me. It actually makes me love this particular piece of music even more, because in my mind, it’s all I have. It is a flawless snapshot of a man and his vision at a certain time, and it is a vision that he could never quite find or be able to replicate. I’m sure the record label wanted him to. I’m sure management prayed for a follow up that would do half the numbers. I’m sure even his own bandmates hoped he could tap back into that headspace and try and keep the train on the tracks. But, he didn’t, and he couldn’t. Not to say the records made after this one weren’t “good” inasmuch as you can listen to them and they don’t make you uncomfortable. But nothing even comes close to this self titled record. 

First record. First shot at the mainstream. Chocked full of classic songs that, for better or worse, helped define a very blurry era of boys and girls that were a little too young to be grunge. Believe me, This Third Eye Blind album makes a hell of a lot more sense to me than anything released by Pearl Jam. It especially makes more sense to me than anything released by fucking Janes Addiction. 

I can stay in my own romantic little portrait of so many memories, some good, some not, centered around the music presented here. I have very few things in my life that are as reliable. It doesn’t age and it never feels stale.

I can remember the crush, and the eventual realization I was going to lose in the end and going for it anyway; Burning Man, track #8

I can remember that first  notion of love, the love of my fucking life for so many years and the one girl that got to me in the worst possible ways; Motorcycle Drive-by, track #13

I can remember parties and friends I have not spoken to in a decade and probably wont ever speak to again; Graduate, track #5

I can remember singing a song on stage to the same girl in a veiled attempt to finally get her naked, and it working. Really well; I Want You, track #11

I can remember making the same girl a CD with this song in a veiled attempt to try and get her to remotely understand how fucking heartbroken I became and how said I was the things we wanted never came true; The Background, track #12

I can remember getting over it slowly but surely and playing this song on any jukebox or at any party I happened to be at, and usually around the time I couldn’t have properly spelled my name if asked; Losing a Whole year, track #1

I can remember car rides and smells, and shirts and girls and conversations. I can remember rolling joints on the cover and taking it with me to friends house just to make sure there was a copy available in case the night took that kind of a turn. It often did.

You could sing along to this, or you could quietly just listen and let it make some sort of sense to you. I love that it has never been topped, and I choose to not even give the band a chance to try. Not because I don’t want them to succeed or continue to write good songs that mean something to someone, but because I’m not interested in letting them have a chance to let me down. I am fine with my relationship with this band being a perfect 10, absolutely no let downs or lies or broken promises. 

I’m content to just let this stay perfect in my eyes and ears, and just leave it at that.

Please listen to this entire record, either in a car in some sort of lengthy drive, or in a dimly lit room, preferably alone, and preferably when you need someone who too was young and sad to just fucking level with you about all the shit you probably worry about. 

#5 Queens of the Stone Age - Songs for the Deaf

I did not edit this for any sort of error. Complete stream of conscience writing about a record that changed my life. Fuck you if it bores you. 

I remember the lead single from this record being the first song I figured out how to stream online. I had been downloading music (thanks to Mr. Fanning) prior to this album, but I distinctly remember finding a place online, in high school, where “No One Knows” was available to listen to. So I did. I remember getting in trouble for this.

How rock and roll.

For such a massive, blown out escapade of rock and roll greatness, my story coming to find this record is the exact opposite. Fitting how the world works in such mysterious ways.

In my hometown, our high school hosted an after-prom event called, and aptly titled, “Post Prom”. It was a veiled attempt by the administration of my small town high school to provide some sort of safe haven for the kids of our community to avoid drinking, smoking, and fucking. Believe me, everyone figured out a way to get all of those things done.

The gymnasium and other areas of the high school were transformed into a game area, a cafe, a casino, a lounge, etc. essentially, trying to make the high school appear cool, fun, and the place to be. It wasn’t. Regardless, it was more or less a requirement to attend this or thus run the risk of being exiled by the staff and singled out by the police as a drunk driving motherfucker. 

I found a few games I could play and simply attempted to have a good time. All the friends I had in the world were there so it wasn’t impossible. Knowing there was a stockpile of drugs, alcohol waiting for us at some house in some neighborhood obviously threw a blanket over the mood. Not to mention the constant pressure of attempting to get laid compounding and piling up on us all, bringing our commitment to low stakes blackjack to an all time low. Regardless, I ended up with a giant stack of fake money that I needed to “spend” in some regard.

I can’t remember the assortment of fucking dumb things I decided to buy, but I remember one of the tables being represented and populated with CDs from our local Karma. I assume most of these had been donated or were used records. I can’t remember those specifics. I do know that I bought an unopened copy of Songs for the Deaf from this table, and I used fake paper money to do so. Fuck you, major label.

This is getting slightly more rock and roll.

I didn’t put this right in the CD player with many of the records I have mentioned prior. I didn’t play this at the party I attended after the school fake-party whatever. No one I knew wanted to listen to this band, and thats fine. I actually believe it took me quite some time to even give this its due listen. I know it was summer, it was hot, and I was sitting on a stack of money I really didn’t deserve, and an empty house I was sharing with my best friend Forrest. His parents left town, and left the fucking patients to run the asylum. 

I spent that entire summer absolutely losing my mind with anything I could openly get my hand on. I drank beer in massive quantities for the first time in my life. I developed a taste for Vodka, and typically the cheaper the better. I took up small scale, dumbass bartending for my friends, coming up with concoctions and various drinks of varying levels of disgust. I can remember, sort of, many of my most innocent and drunken, partied out moments coming to me this summer. This was the summer of 2003, the summer I was left to my own devices. My parents left town for Florida to live, everyone in my family gave me massive amounts of cash for surviving public school, and I had zero supervision.

More rock and roll.

Songs for the Deaf became the soundtrack to me realizing the power of rock and roll. It wasn’t just the music, but the ethos involved with the band. They were fucking insane. The whole album is a musical chronicle of a demented, drugged out and sun scorched trip from Las Angeles to Las Vegas.

I was in the right frame of mind to appreciate something like this wholly and fully at the time, as this could have potentially been the most rock and roll moments of my life.

Summer of 2003. I was sun scorched, barely hanging on for dear life, but literally at the doorstep of the rest of my life. Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll, even if in small-town Indiana, were the nexus of my entire existence. I wanted nothing more than to hang out with girls I couldn’t fuck, and attempt to drink every drop of alcohol, both expensive and cheap, in existance. I wanted to lie by a pool, and stare at older girls in their bikinis all day, and then spend a few hours organizing the goings on of my evenings. Finding an older citizen to buy us alcohol, find out which friend had pot, find out where the girls were going, weasel our way into that situation, and then fail miserably at getting laid.

Super drunk, super loud. Putting this record on and playing the fuck out of an air guitar was my thing. I loved this album, because everyone else hated it. I didn’t know anything but my small town, so, I didn’t realize there were people in the real world also worshipping this album like I was. It didn’t matter to me. All I cared about was my small little circle, and I was the outcast. I was learning to be kick ass. I wasn’t kick ass yet, but I was learning, and this record served as the study material. 

I realize I really haven’t talked much about the record as a piece of art, but I am not sorry for that. This thing is more than art to me. Its a part of the fabric of the way I lead my life, oddly enough. My songs have this undertone, and I can still sway myself into a night of absolute madness by saying to myself, go with the fucking flow man. 

I have never taken any sort of psychotropic drug or acid or anything. But, rest assured, if I did ever want to put something on for a fucking bender of tits, coke, acid and booze and drive out to the dessert and attempt to meet god, this would be the music I would listen to. I have no doubt this record will be played, in its entirety, potentially multiple times, at my bachelor party. I will no doubt find a time in my life where I can again drunkenly blast this in an attempt to let everyone know how hard I can party. I’m simply waiting for my opportunity. 

This is the heart of this list for me, and I have had a very difficult time deciding the order of these last 5 records. In all reality, I could have these top 5 in any order and it would be no less accurate of who I am, and what I consider timeless in music and in my life. These last 5 will be the records I will play for my kids one day when they decide they want to get into music. I will run the risk of being an aging rock dad with saggy tattoos and tired stories. And I will give my 16 year old son his first beer, I will put this fucking record on and I will make him listen to it, just like I did. I will re-inforce the comments I will have been making about his chosen music for weeks. I will say “see, your music fucking sucks. Listen to this, blow your friends minds, and try as you may to get laid to this kid”. I really will say these things, because they are the things I wish had been said to me and weren’t. 

I won’t ever beat around the bush. This is my generations defining drug rock record. I don’t even know if the members of the band are as pilfered morally as this music might make you believe, but, I like to think that they are. I like to rationalize some of the more sordid things I have done in my life by believing that the members of Queens are as morally bankrupt as I was at the time. 

If you don’t get what this album has and does, then, I feel bad for you. You need to let go. You need to kick your head back and remember how to say FUCK IT. You need to get laid, join a rock band, dance around, lie to someone. Fuck some shit up. 

Go with the fucking flow. 

Please listen to; You Think I Aint Worth A Dollar, But I Feel Like A Millionaire, The Sky Is Fallin, Go With The Flow, Do It Again.