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.