It's the end of the world as we know it....

Being an avid iPod user since last July, things have sort of, y’know – changed. Many different facets of my listening habits have been altered. But as I sit at my PC and try to write something entertaining and intelligent for my throngs of fans, I ask myself the question:

“Has my topic for this blog already been beaten to death by the mainstream media?”

I’m not sure, but it’s something that I’ve given a fair amount of thought to, since I bought the little life-changer. And since I don’t receive cheques from the good people at blogstpot.com, I really don’t give a rat’s rear if others have already written about this – this is MY blog. Ahem. Anyway, I think it’s far and away the best toy I have ever owned. It’s been money very well spent.

The iPod has completely changed the way I consume music, both at the listener level, and at the buying level. All the while, I’ve been thinking “Is this worrisome for anyone or anything? And the answer to the question you’re thinking is “no, I’ve don’t have anything more important to think about”. I’ve thought about it, and it seems that the more time you spend with your iPod, the more it seems like a manipulative lover - but the kind that you have no desire to divorce or break up with.

At first it’s this total love affair. You can do things you never dreamed about with your iPod: Download, rip CD’s, shuffle, create playlists suited to your mood or who you’re hanging out with, and on top of it all, you can cram a TON of your (and other people’s) music onto this little gizmo and it fits into your pocket while you’re carrying six bags of groceries home from the GigantoMart. You speak passionately about its value & functionality and the utility which you derive from it.

But then, you come to some dramatic (well, fine, not THAT dramatic) realizations - of which you’re unsure of your own true feelings. You panic and decide that there are some conscious decisions which must be made if you and that iPod are going to continue to stay the course and try to live with one another in “harmony” (Whoo! Wasn’t that “pun”?).

Everyone loves the “shuffle” feature that the iPod offers. It is great. It’s like having your own personal radio station. You never know what’s coming up next. My issue with the shuffle, is that it’s killing the notion of what was formerly known as “the album” or the “LP” (these terms have recently been replaced by the catch-all term “CD”). Why is this important, you may ask? It’s important because so many artists wrote and produced their songs which were part of a much greater context, and the entire compilation and order of those songs was sometimes designed to be listened to in a particular way. I chose not to put Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon on my iPod – because a) I just don’t really need to listen to it on my drives to work or on my walking routes, and b) because it’s a total “concept album” which needs to be listened in the previously described fashion. A piece like “Brain Damage” is an instant “skip-over” track. When listened to as part of the flow of the LP, it’s an incredible piece of thematic excellence (I don’t know if you’ll know what that last phrase means, but it sounds good to me, so I’m sticking with it).

All in all, I am trying to listen to songs on albums in the formulaic order that the record company felt might grab the listener. Once I KNOW the album and its flow, I’ll hit the old shuffle button and throw it in there with all my other all-time faves.

My CD shelf which houses all my discs has also become somewhat of a red-headed stepchild in my apartment. Oh sure, it used to be cool: It had all kinds of impressive pieces of music crossing paths with it, and when I had guests over, they would tend to gravitate to it to scope out all my discs. Even my futon and Lay-Z-Boy tried to kiss its ass and be its buddy. Lately, the only thing that wants to go near it, is dust.

How did this happen? You’re probably saying to yourself “That’s so sad. CD shelves need love too”. It’s simple. The iPod killed the need to be continuously heading to the shelf to take out and put back discs.

Buying CD’s (which I still do) and subsequent ownership has become an odd notion. The batch of 3 I bought this past Sunday went right onto the iPod via my PC, and then was banished to the CD Shelf for storage. I never even actually listened to the discs themselves. Of course, the music on those discs has been absorbed by my ears several times each at this point due to the fact that my iPod is always on me.

Which brings me to my next point If I didn’t own it, I would still be shlepping CD’s around in my pockets, in my car, or from the CD shelf. With the iPod, I never have to pick and choose which CD’s to take with me on my walks or my car rides to Montreal. I don’t have to worry about scratching them either I have a good chunk of my entire collection on me at all times (yes – at ALL TIMES). This allows me to listen to far more music far more often. Scary, but a blessing.

The whole downloading/stealing/file sharing thing is another thing that’s been beaten to death. No doubt. I see the arguments from both parties in this debate. Downloading music illegally does hurt smaller acts who are trying to eke out a living between touring from bar to bar, and from the sales of a few thousand CD’s. However, it’s also getting those same acts to the ears of some fans who may otherwise never choose to buy those CDs, thus never hearing their music, and thus never telling any of their friends how much they enjoyed the act’s music. Quite the dilemma indeed. It’s pretty obvious that more of today’s up and coming acts have no qualms with letting fans download their music, and many are even enabling fans to sample the goods via their websites.

As technology evolves, I am sure the folks at Apple or some competitive technology, will create even further functionality which will up the bar even a little further. I plan on upgrading my iPod when it takes pictures, tunes my guitar, and cleans my bathroom. Either then or when my battery dies, which is scheduled to happen a year into my ownership. I’m looking forward to yelling at someone in a "Best Buy" in June.

Finally - the End of This 3-week Long Ramble...

So, I had my wisdom teeth yanked the other day, leaving me in a state of bewilderment and discomfort. There’s some pain to be felt as well. Nothing too severe, but enough to keep me inside on a Friday (and Saturday, Sunday, and Monday) night because I’m doped and can’t even eat solid foods yet. Eating Jell-O and Pudding sounds like some sort of sugariffic rapture, but let me tell you, nothing beats some rotisserie Portuguese chicken with that tangy hotsauce and those little roasted potatoes.

In an attempt to kill some time while awaiting the discomfort to subside, it’s blog time. Last week, we continued to probe deeper into my musical psyche, in a further attempt to learn more about the man behind the blog. How very fascinating.

Last blog, I mentioned how much I learned about music from the melting-pot genre known as “jambands”. I got into them when I was around, say 20, and followed the scene pretty closely until I was 26. During this time, I ignored anything that was mainstream and underground (although, some people consider the whole jamband scene an underground phenomenon). Not only did the jamband genre help you understand different genres of music, but it also helped you learn about the artists behind that music. Jamband fans are a funny breed. They’ll sneer at, say, Aerosmith’s music. The moment that their favorite jamband does a cover version of an Aerosmith song, suddenly all of Aerosmith’s catalog becomes cool to them. Phish fans never heard of Bill Monroe until the Phab Phour covered a bunch of his tunes.

Thus, the artists that the jambands choose to collaborate and associate with instantaneously become cool to their fans. For those of you who have no idea about jamband fans, they’re insane. They are obsessive, travel from show to show, write down setlists, trade every recorded live concert, dress like one another, and will eat dirt for a week just to save enough money to get to know next show).

To illustrate my point, Trey Anastasio from Phish was hanging out with Kid Rock for a period of time. The Kid is just the type of performer (I just cannot refer to Kid Rock as an “artist”) that is perfect for the sake of this discussion. He's mainstream, cheesy, has no purpose or message other than things like "fine bitches", Southern Comfort, and "pimpin' ". I am certain there were tons of Phish fans who were having some sort of inner mental conflict about whether or not to accept The Kid. The dialogue probably went something like:

Pro-Kid Rock Conscience: Y’know, the guy DOES do some cool Southern Rock kind of stuff, and Phish is SO heavily influenced by The Allman Brothers….
Anti-Kid Rock Conscience: Come ON. What’s WITH you anyway? This guy is exactly what were are supposed to be ABOVE liking The guy’s a ham sandwich I once found on a school field trip to the trailer park! He has NO musical talent, he wears a wife beater, and he raps. What is there to LIKE???
Pro-Kid Rock Conscience: You gotta respect him! He’s dating Pamela Anderson…have you seen some of those hippie chicks out there? They’re NASTY, what with the unshaved armpits and the stringy hair….
Anti-Kid Rock Conscience: Dude! He doesn’t even drive a VW OR allow taping at his shows!
Pro-Kid Rock Conscience: Dude! He’s onstage with Phish (9-29-00)!!! This ROCKS!!! He can’t be THAT bad….besides, I really like the stripper chicks he has onstage with him.
Anti-Kid Rock Conscience: Meh, who cares…pass the diggity dank…the dannnnnk!

You get the idea.

So when I read that jamband-favorite Neil Young was jamming with some band called Wilco, I figured I would do some reading up on this band. Turns out they played a lot of Americana-style rock and roll. I had missed a show of theirs at the Horseshoe. I came across their double Album Being There. It immediately struck me as being a very likeable CD with a lot of different types of songs. It had rockin’, good-time music; it had gut-wrenching, depressing songs; it had country-fried finger pickin’ tunes. It had soul and feeling, but was also a lot of fun. Then came came Wilco’s follow-on, Summerteeth, which I think I will leave for future bloggage. I was addicted to both these CD’s, and my tastes were beginning to shift ever so slightly.

I began to realize that you don’t need long, drawn-out jams with incessant wanking to enjoy a band’s music. In fact, it’s kind of aggravating! Who wants to buy 300+ live Phish, Dead, and Blues Traveller concerts on audio tape???

I totally neglected to mention how I barely listened to the radio from the time I caught onto jambands onwards. Who needed it? I was against anything mainstream – for some inexplicable reason. It just seemed so cliché. You KNEW something better was out there for the listening.

Let’s recap: I’m 26, and have missed out on every mainstream and cool underground act that was up and kicking during my formative years. You name it, and I was not into it, from Alannis to Zwan.

Around this time I started a new job where I was working with some people that were linked into and even part of the Canadian indie scene, and introduced me to a ton of new music. They knew I was into jambands and were hell-bent on weaning me off of jambands. They were also quite knowledgeable about some older records from the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s which they felt I could enjoy. The Clash, The Supersuckers, Teenage Fanclub, and The Flaming Lips were just some of the diverse group of artists I was introduced to during this period. These acts weren’t any kinds of underground secret (to those in the know anyway), but they did pull me farther away from the type of music I was used to.

Another friend owns a used CD operation. He too, was hell-bent on weaning me off of jambands (do you see any sort of trend forming?). He lent me a bunch of discs he felt I may enjoy. This batch included Pavement, Ocean Colour Scene, Buffalo Tom, and Guided By Voices (for the record, I enjoyed the 1st two I mentioned, and didn’t like the latter 2).

Brevity was becoming a novel notion to me. And with it followed interest in bands that were putting out catchy tunes in a style that was new, yet not unfamiliar to me. Sloan sounded like the Beatles, The Flaming Lips were writing really catchy songs with some occasionally outlandish production, and I was eating up anything that Jeff Tweedy was involved with. This pattern pretty much stuck.

The last couple of years, I have been sampling of lot of critics picks. I’ll buy CDs that have been lavished with universal praise, or ones that just sound like I may enjoy them based on what one critic says. Either way, I truly enjoy discovering great new music.

So there you have it. From pre-adolescent 80’s top 40 enthusiast, to typical teenage Classic Rock fan, to hippie-rock aficionado, to indie rock scenester wannabe.

Not sure if I got the point across, but if the last 3 blogs have confused you, the main point was to simply explain where I have been with respect to enjoying and appreciating music. The other point is, that no matter how much great music you missed out on when it was current, it’s never to late to dig in and discover it.

As for this blog, I will never pretend that I know everything about everything. There are acts I know and there are tons more I don’t know. I have no clue how paid music critics keep up with all the bands out there. Hopefully, I can enlighten some people on a disc that they don’t know, and amuse the people that do know it with a casual review or recommendation. I’m hoping that if you’re reading this, you can toss a recommendation my way. Can’t promise I’ll pick it up – I’m not exactly made of money. Damn – I sound like my dad.

Me: The Next Frontier

So, I have to finish telling all of you about the history/evolution of my musical tastes. If you haven’t read part I, it’s a sequel on a magnitude akin to that of Miss Congeniality 2 or the proposed “Gigli: Not as Bad as the First One”. If you didn’t read the previous blog, I recommend you scroll down one full column and give it a read. If you have no interest in ME (versus my humble opinions and hip recommendations), then come back when this long-winded saga is over and I am back to sharing my humble opinions and hip recommendations.

As I’ve been writing these blogs, I’ve been trying to solicit feedback from the group of 3 that read this (OK, fine I am counting myself, so it’s more like 2). My coworker friend suggested that for this follow-on column, I NOT get into the Beatles too much, as most rock fans love them, and that when it comes to The Beatles, everything has been already said. He went on to say that I should ramble on more about the 80’s. Not a bad idea, as it would lend to a more original type of analysis -but I just can’t do it. The 80’s was the decade of one-hit wonders and (until recently) obsolete sounds. The Beatles are timeless. They are the first band who had an entire body of work which, no matter how varying their albums were, I loved. From the earliest of singles to the grand finale of Let It Be (or Abbey Road – depending on how you look at it), it all was SO indescribably compelling. In my early teens, I read books and watched documentaries (The Compleat Beatles which I caught on PBS was an EXCELLENT source of information). While a bit of a freak, I avoided the White Album – because it was scorned by the narrator of The Compleat Beatles. Fortunately, I picked it up a couple of years ago. No regrets.

I slowly eased into other classic rock bands. My friend’s brother was into a lot of standard Classic Rock radio fare – the Doors, The Who, Zeppelin, Boston, to name a few. I listened to Led Zeppelin IV SO much via my Walkman knock-off, that I never need to hear it ever again. I kid you not. I also beat the hell out of The Door’s Greatest Hits. There’s a whole BAND I never need to hear again. The Who is a different story altogether. I’ll save that story for a later blog.

How do kids get into music that’s not being played on the radio? Usually through their friends, who may have gotten into it via their siblings. One friend of mine had three brothers, two of which were into every hair band that ever graced the pages of Circus magazine. Such scary-looking buggers. The mere images of their faces on the pull-out posters from that publication made me hate every note all these bands had ever recorded. Hair Bands were an aberration on all pop music. Another Problem was no one in my class was into music that was really different than anyone else’s music (other than a couple of Rush freaks). How could this be? Well, I went to a Jewish high school in Montreal, where if you like anything different than everyone else you’re just not cool. Furthermore, I was part of probably the nicest and best-behaved group of kids in the history of high schools. There was not a single overly rebellious badass with any sphere of influence in my grade. A troublemaker here and there, but not the kind that had sway over any kind of group of followers.

Another factor was the lack of English-speaking radio in Montreal (God forbid we listen to FRENCH radio, but that’s the way it was). There were three stations: The classic rock station, the “adult contemporary” (AKA Michael Bolton and Whitney Houston) station, and one that was somewhere in between the other two. You can guess which one my dial was always tuned to. I would watch some MuchMusic to learn about some new stuff, but not too much stuck. It was a lot of videos of what was already on the radio. I can admit that while I wanted to like some music that was different than everyone else (it was more for the sake of exactly that – to be different), I wasn’t actually THAT adventurous. My idea of trying new things back then was buying a Gap sweatshirt instead of one from Roots. Things sort of had to have been imposed on me for me to latch onto them. So basically, all throughout high school, I listened to a lot of the same crap (which to this very day I will defend to anyone as the best music ever made) as everyone else.

To summarize (and translate) the above full page and up the results of my musical tastes from my adolescence – it’s 1991, I graduate from high school, and every influential underground band from the 1980’s are still completely unknown to me.

Over the course of the next couple of years, I continued to listen to more classic rock, but tried to “expand” my tastes. I got did the whole ProgRock thing (Yes, Rush, Genesis).

I went through a phase where I got into all the one-hit wonders from the late 60’s era, courtesy of the good folks at Time/Life music. According to the narrator on the 30-minute infomercial, the 60’s were an era of upheaval, protest, social reform, and classic rock and roll. To demonstrate they would show clips of, say, The Turtles lip-synching on some variety show, followed by footage of the Watts riots and then some long-haired freak smoking a hookah in the park.

I went through an extreme Eric Clapton phase – but not that Tears in Heaven stuff. This guy was part of some kickass bands in the mid to late 60’s/early 70’s. He then kicked his heroin problem and proceeded to suck for the rest of his career. He helped me get into the blues and some long drawn-out jams, which I heard on some Cream LP that a friend lent me. I would buy ANYTHING from the aforementioned era that had his name on it.

Then one day in University, a classmate suggested to me I might like The Grateful Dead. That begat my interest in Phish, which begat my interest in moe., String Cheese Incident, and Leftover Salmon, etc. etc. etc. Jambands are pretty abhorred by many music fans, so I am assuming no one wants to read about this phase of my life, except the dirty hippies reading this, which I am sure number zero. If you happen to be a dirty hippie, I sincerely apologize, and can’t offer anything to you, as I have but one bar of soap left in my apartment.

However, I don’t want you, the reader, to underestimate how much the jamband scene helped me expand my musical horizons. It taught me that there was more to rock & roll, than three chords, some fun lyrics and blistering guitar solos. Phish was a band that consisted of four hardcore musical geeks who absorbed everything that had ever entered their eardrums. Through their energy and extended jams, I developed a sincere appreciation for jazz, country, funk, reggae, folk, ska, metal, hip hop, TexMex, and countless other genres which I would NEVER have given a chance. They seemed to find merit in every type of music, and when they played it, it suddenly became cool. After all, if Phish can play Bluegrass and 50,000 people can dance to it, it can’t be THAT bad.

After seeing 23 Phish shows, I had seen cover versions of songs by classic rock bands such as The Who, Skynyrd, Zeppelin, bluegrass acts Flatt & Scruggs and Earl Monroe, Jazz acts like Duke Ellington and Miles Davis, Funk acts like Stevie Wonder and P Funk, old-school artists like Sinatra and Mancini, and the list goes on….

It’s DEFINITELY time to sleep. Do you see a pattern forming from blog to blog? To be concluded….I promise.

It's all about context....

It’s been over two weeks since my last blog, and I’m due for a new one. I just cannot – I repeat, CANNOT - let my adoring fans down.

The problem is that, like any good wannabe journalist/columnist/rock critic, perfectionistic (is that a word?) bloggers such as myself need things to write about. Seeing as I haven’t seen any concerts or acquired any worthwhile new music since my last blog (other than the much-hyped “Funeral” by The Arcade Fire, which I will save for another blog once I have fully digested the entire disc 3-4 times), I may as well do something which some will appreciate, and something which will make others recoil in horror.

I figured this blog would be helpful in delivering context to all future blogs, as well as my first two blogs.

“What the HELL is he talking about???” is probably a thought going through some of your minds right now. And that’s fair. Allow me to elaborate…

In order to understand one man’s viewpoint, it is necessary to understand his history and perhaps to walk in his shoes, even if they aren’t the right size. Once you know my history of musical tastes and influences, you will either gain a greater appreciation for who I am & what I am all about, or, you’ll think I’m a complete nimrod. Either way, you’re reading on, and you know it.

I don’t really know how I got into music. One of the earliest pop/rock tunes that I remember really getting hooked on was Billy Joel’s “My Life” (scoff if you must!). It was the theme song for the TV show Bosom Buddies (an early Tom Hanks vehicle), and also popped up here and there. This was not long after I had started to take piano lessons where I was learning NOTHING like it. At that point, I knew that what I was hearing was more my kind of thing. It just resonated a little better than Bach and Hayden pieces. My sister was always watching 80’s pop/dance show Solid Gold, and I guess as cheesy as some of that stuff was, I dug it. Around 1983, I caught onto the fact that every Sunday morning at 10am was a 4-hour radio marathon known as “America’s Top Forty” starring, Shaggy himself, Casey Kasem. I would sit and listen to all four hours, and tape songs that I liked, onto these god-awful type I audio cassettes which my dad had given to me. They had been used to record court cases or legal proceedings which my dad had been involved with (he’s a lawyer, and not any kind of criminal). I would then play the tapes back as I played my Coleco Gemini (a video game system which played all Atari 2600 games). Rockwell, Nena, The Police, The Mary Jane Girls, Wham!, Twisted Sister, Madonna, Duran Duran, The Thomson Twins, Wang Chung, Dire Straits, Bonnie Tyler, DeBarge, Culture Club, Men at Work, etc. all had songs which I enjoyed. What did I know? I wasn’t even an adolescent. The backgrounds of these artists bore no influence on me as to whether or not I should enjoy a given song. Their sex, colour, race, religion, sexual orientation – none of them mattered. What did matter was that their songs were catchy and seemed fun.

I also loved watching those commercials for “best of the 50’s and 60’s” compilations. You know the ones. The records or cassettes (or even 8-track tapes) were available for a limited offer, and only by dialing some 1-800 number. The producers of those commercials made it seem like the only way you EVER had a shot at hearing the songs they were playing snippets of was, by buying their compilation. I guess the concept of “oldies radio” hadn’t yet caught on. Oh yeah, you had to pay these in 25 installments of $24.99. What a deal. However, I was able to pick up on the flavour of what pop/rock and roll was like back in the early days. The melodies and hooks they pump out at you get to you.

One summer when I was 12, I went to a day camp. Our group took a trip to Niagara Falls. On the way home, someone else lent me a tape of the Beatles’ 20 greatest hits. I had heard many of the tunes before (who knows exactly where?). I listened to it 3 times consecutively to kill the rest of the trip. I was hooked. I became a Beatlemanic. With that, the gates to the world of classic rock were swung open, and I entered them….

And with that, I’m going to finish this up another night. There's a lot more to be said about The Beatles. BUT...I’m tired, and your attention span is waning…g'night.