#3 - Girl Talk - All Day

For information on my writing style and how this blog will work from here on out, please read the post directly below this one. Thank you.

It’s no secret that the way we consume music has changed drastically in the last ten years. The Internet has had a hand in it to be sure, not to mention the continued blandness of commercial radio and MTV slowly turning into a cesspool of reality television. These and other business-side reasons have contributed to the diverging of people’s listening habits: there simply aren’t any truly big musical acts around anymore (that are relevant, anyway) along the lines of The Beatles or Elvis, or even Michael Jackson or Madonna. Don’t get me wrong; I know there are plenty of people who have eclectic tastes in music. There just aren’t any artists that unite music fans the way those artists I just named did.

Enter Gregg Gillis, a.k.a Girl Talk. He is a mash-up artist extraordinaire, and his latest album All Day -- despite mash-up music being a relatively new thing -- is a sort throwback to the days when MTV still played music (and not just heavily-edited videos on TRL).

But I’ll get to that in a bit.

(Yes, I’m going into self-indulgent mode here.)

In my senior year of high school, 1999, I was heavily into the modern rock scene. I willingly bought albums by Creed. Korn and Limp Bizkit and Godsmack blasted from my stereo. This is not all I listened to by any means, but that was modern commercial music at the time, therefore that’s what I was into. Then I moved away to college and met guys on my floor who liked Weezer and Alkaline Trio. I worked at the campus radio station and was introduced to indie rock. I read rock criticism voraciously and probably learned more about (and was more interested in) the past than I ever was in the present. Downloading music -- both legal and illegal -- made this a hell of a lot easier than it was in 1999. Getting a full-time job after college helped me satisfy my curiosities even further without being an outright thief. I’m as modern a music consumer as they come now, albeit with a penchant for physical media.

With that in mind, hearing an album like All Day is quite interesting to me. It offers a little bit of something for everyone, whether it be pop, R&B, classic rock, modern rock, punk rock, indie rock, or hip hop.

The best short description I can come up with for the album is that it is dance music for the ADD generation. Instead of a track with maybe two or three songs, the entire 71-minute running time is filled with one set of mash-ups after another, sometimes with layers four or five songs deep. Transitions from one to the next are pretty seamless, which it pretty much has to be as the intention of the album is for it to be listened to all at once.

The vocal parts skew hip hop and R&B heavy, and for someone who doesn’t listen to that kind of music that should be an immediate turn-off. Except that it wasn’t. So often I found myself thinking “Did I just rock out to a Rihanna or Beyonce song?” or “Who the fuck is Gucci Mane and why is it so catchy?” Sure, it helped that Rihanna’s “Rude Boy” was backed up by Fugazi’s “Waiting Room,” but “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It) was backed up by something called M.O.P. Still, that combination of songs was pure exhilaration.

90’s alt-rock and hip hop (Skee-Lo!) is also featured heavily on the album. As someone who got into music at that time, I always got a kick when “Possum Kingdom” or “Closer” or “Thunderkiss ‘65” came on.

Part of the fun was discovering things you haven’t heard before, or at least are hearing in a new way. The second track, “Let it Out,” has a section that features ELO’s “Mr. Blue Sky” with “Twerk” by Project Pat. I’ve never heard either of those songs before -- what can I say, my parents stopped listening to music in 1970, and none of my friends are into classic rock -- yet they worked so well together. And it led me to getting “Mr. Blue Sky” on iTunes. The album is full of moments just like that one, so many in fact that I don’t want to name them all here.

But here are a few:

Gillis kicks the whole thing off with a bang by matching “War Pigs” with “Move Bitch” by Ludacris. A few tracks later the riff from Radiohead’s “Creep” kicks in while Ol’ Dirty Bastard warbles some “Shimmy Shimmy Ya” -- the combination of “But I’m a creep” with “Oh baby I love it raw” is particularly inspired. Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life” works wonderfully with the Beastie Boys’ “Hey Ladies.”

Of course, what I love most about All Day is also kind of its weakness. Too often I found myself waiting for the parts I liked and ignoring the ones I didn’t. On that level, the album isn’t greater than the sum of its parts; the parts are what I remember most. Then again, All Day isn’t intended to be listened to repeatedly on headphones; it’s supposed to be a sort of instant dance party. On that level, it does succeed. In fact it succeeds so much I wish this sort of music existed when I was in college and going out to the bars. Think about it: instead of struggling to like the latest rap single, my theoretical partner could move to the drumbeat from Outkast’s “B.O.B” (or even better, the absolutely filthy “Room Service” by Pitbull) while I rocked the fuck out to the guitar riff from Nirvana’s “Aneurysm.” It’s a win-win situation for everyone.

Ultimately All Day is a one-stop shop for the past 40 or so years of popular music. It pulls off the rare feat -- at least for today -- of bringing all kinds of music fans together for what Pitchfork rightfully calls “a communal listening experience.” If you can’t find something you like on the album, you’re not listening closely enough. Or you hate mash-ups or rap music or both. In which case you just wasted precious minutes reading something you already knew you hated. Good job.

Rating: 3 Mashed Potatoes

To download the album (free and legal!) go here.
To listen to separate and notated tracks (and some cool video mash-ups) go here.

The Taste Validator Manifesto

When I was a junior in high school, I wrote music reviews for the school newspaper. They probably weren’t very good, but that didn’t really matter; I enjoyed what I was doing. I went so far as to daydream about going to NYU to major in English -- it was a book of classes in the guidance counselor’s office -- and maybe one day be able to catch on with Rolling Stone or Spin and write reviews for them.

I ended up going to UW-Whitewater (still majoring in English), not writing for the newspaper (or anything but classes, for that matter) at all and the dream died.

I never really stopped writing about music, but I’ve never thought about it as anything more than a hobby. Furthermore, I’ve read more music criticism than I care to admit over the years, whether at mainstream publications like the aforementioned RS or Spin, rock-centric magazines like Hit Parader and Circus, and more recently at indie-leaning web sites Pitchfork and Onion A.V. Club. I’ve come to the conclusion that I just don’t have what it takes as a writer to do what those writers do.

For instance, the vocabulary of music is foreign to me. I don’t know what “angular guitars” are. I couldn’t identify a coda or an arpeggio or even the “middle eight” of a song. And let’s not even get started on major and minor keys. The pros know this stuff inside and out (or at least pretend that they do). I am decidedly amateur. I’ve reread a lot of my music writing and most of it comes across less as a thoughtful critic and more as a dorky fan regurgitating things I’ve read somewhere else. Any idiot with a blog can and already does do that.

Placing music in its proper context is also a point of contention with me. I am completely serious when I say I listen to all kinds of music, but my knowledge of most artists or genres is admittedly entry-level at best. Perhaps more damning as a wannabe critic is that I really don’t care to dig much further than that. Sure, I’ll always be willing to listen to new music or if something’s really good I’ll search for the back catalogue, but my passion for music only runs so deep. There are only so many hours in day, and I don’t want to spend all of them looking up influences and contemporaries, as rewarding as that might be.

So I’ve just explained (perhaps a little too much) why I am a shit music writer. Why should you read me?

If you’re looking for how an album sounds, you should probably read those other guys. I probably won’t add much to the equation. If your interested in how listening to an album feels, you might be in the right place.

In planning out what I wanted to do with this site after letting it sit dormant for two years, I discovered that aside from the music itself, there were stories connected with music that I wanted to tell. I envision it as a hybrid of rock criticism and memoir. I might not be able to place an album in musical context, but I will try to place it a context of the world at large or at least my world at the time of hearing that album for the first time or even today.

Taste Validator (I still love that name, by the way), I hope, will be just as much about the music as it is the man writing about it.

#2 - Various Artists - Ken's Mix CD

Format: CD
Released: Summer 2010
Label: A&H Records
Genre: Modern Rock
Length: Approx. 77 minutes

There was a time, maybe 11 or 12 years ago, when my best friend Ken and I shared pretty much the same musical tastes. They weren't identical to be sure. To his credit, he did introduce me to classic bands like AC/DC and Guns N' Roses, not to mention the mighty Metallica. Over on my end of the spectrum, I showed him Weezer, Blink-182, and Everclear. (Yeah, go ahead and say how much more important his bands are. It's okay.) But for the most part our musical tastes met somewhere in the middle.

The difference between then and now is that now I feel like we're much more dismissive of each other's choices in music. This is not to say that when we were teenagers we were completely receptive of what the other was listening to; in fact, we resisted quite a bit. I can remember our first concert together, Stabbing Westward. I had convinced him to go with me even though he wasn't very familiar with the band's music. They started with a slow, synth-laden number, and he gave me a look like "Are you fucking kidding me?" before proceeding to enjoy the rest of the show, particularly the mosh pits.

To say that we were and are (mostly) musically at odds with one another is an understatement.

Last weekend, Ken handed me a CD with music that he wanted me to give a listen to. Being as such that he is now a bigshot music reviewer -- albeit for a magazine no one has ever heard of -- I thought that maybe he would throw me a few curveballs in the mix and have some songs that I would never expect from him.

My girlfriend was watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer when he came over, so they sort of bonded over that as I previewed the CD. What I found was modern rock song after modern rock song after modern rock song. So much for the curveball.

He demanded, perhaps jokingly, a review of his mix. This is that review.

* * * *

I will start by saying I tried in my heart of hearts to listen to the CD without any sort of bias. This was impossible. Even when Ken puts his critic hat on, I would think that he would carry his preconceived notions of a certain genre along with him during the listening. You can go into it with an open mind all you want, but those thoughts are still there percolating in the back of your mind.

I slogged my way through all 77+ minutes of the disc without skipping a track. I listened with an ear out for stereotypes, and was rebuffed on them for the most part. There were no songs about how shitty the singer's childhood was. The vocals were, for the most part, not Cookie-Monster-esque.

However, most of the songs sounded pretty much the same. This is the biggest problem I had with the disc, and a problem that I think modern rock as a whole. You can say what you want about indie rock -- no balls, it's boring, derivative from the past, whatever -- but at the very least their heavy hitters, the best and brightest don't sound like one another. The White Stripes don't sound like Death Cab for Cutie, who don't sound like Arcade Fire, so on and so forth. I understand that bands in a certain genre tend to sound like other bands in that genre. That is what makes it a genre. However, I think modern rock sounds, if not unimaginative -- I cannot say this for certain as I have not heard any full albums by these bands, only the songs presented here -- then most certainly incestuous. 12 Stones sounded like Three Days Grace. 2Ccnts, Nonpoint, and Bloodsimple sounded kind of like Disturbed. We Are the Fallen ripped off Evanescence completely. None of these songs were inherently terrible, but none of them made me want to listen to the full albums either.

I want to allay any feelings about "oh, you just don't like loud, aggressive music anymore." That may be a small part of it, but it's more that I just can't relate to it. This is not to say that I don't get angry or feel angst anymore -- you vs. everyone seemed to be common theme throughout the disc -- because I do, it's just that I feel it because of different things. I feel angst because I wasted my early 20's in college and now have a job that barely pays the bills. Or I feel it because I'm a mediocre lover, or because, at nearly thirty, I wonder what the hell I'm doing with my life and where it's going.These things, of course, are my fault and my fault alone, but it doesn't make it any less easier. None of the songs presented here deal with that. That isn't to say that everything I listen to now deals with those things, but it's more likely that a song will resonate with me emotionally if it deals with similar subject matter.

My final problem with these songs, which goes with my previous points, is that I've pretty much heard these songs already. Modern rock hasn't changed appreciably in the past 10 years. Godsmack, Disturbed, and System of a Down released debut albums that pretty much covered what I've heard here tonight. Even though they're mostly the same, the reason I connect with those "old" songs and not these new ones is because I, like everyone else, experience music autobiographically. Much like punk rock -- another genre that I have stopped listening to far as modern music is concerned -- certain songs take me back to certain times and experiences in my life. I have no use for Three Days Grace or Breaking Benjamin because I already have memories of cranking "fuck-you" anthem "Whatever" by Godsmack in my dorm room, or screaming my lungs out to "Down With the Sickness" by Disturbed at karaoke.

Lest you think I was just going to shit all over Ken's CD, there are some things that I liked about it.

An obvious point to make would be the energy involved. Too often indie rock can get bogged down, but modern rock has no such problems. I won't lie, I lost my patience about 15 songs in (as my notes that grew sparse with each track will show) but the relentless fervor in most of the performances was undeniable.

I liked some of the lead guitar work in songs such as "Cowboy Way" by Hellyeah and "Get What?" by 2Cents.

"Your Betrayal" by Bullet for My Valentine had some good dynamics, even if it was just an emo song in metal clothing. Hawthorne Heights, probably close to 'Bullet' in genre, had the only song on the disc that didn't really sound like anything else. In a world of same-tempo, same-vocal songs, this was a plus.

Machinehead, a band I have heard of, wins the award for most throwback sounding band. I feel like they could have played with Metallica, Megadeth, or maybe even Iron Maiden. (They may or may not have been around that long. I did no research for this.)

* * * *

I come to the conclusion of this post with no conclusions at all. I can't dismiss most of the music out of hand because the music wasn't bad and the vocals and subject matter weren't completely off-putting. However, I'm not going to be listening to Madison's WJJO (the nearest true modern rock station) anytime soon. The music doesn't resonate with me. Simple as that.

Like most things in our lives, I will agree to disagree with Ken. However, Ken can expect a disc full of indie rock for him to rip apart someday soon. I'm sure his analysis will be captivating.

Rating: 1.5 Devil horns.

* * * *

My listening notes, for anyone interested...