An essay for Father's Day

* * * * 

My dad and I were in the car one day – I don't remember how old I was, but I do know I was a legal adult for what it's worth – and he flipped on the country music station. I hated country music, so I protested.

“You know, Kevin,” he said, “everyone goes country at some point.”

At that point I merely took it to mean that I was doomed to a later life of listening to the Toby Keiths and Taylor Swifts of the world. But as I've grown older it occurred to me what he meant: People get old, and as they get old they get more conservative not just in their politics but in their way of life. Things get simpler, and simplicity and directness of country music is the perfect soundtrack for one's twilight years.

Needless to say I'm not old (yet), so I don't listen to country music. Well, I don't listen to modern country music. That music is just pop music with twang; a celebration of guns and God, pickup trucks and patriots.

Little did I know, though, that there would be country music that appealed to me, and that I would find it in the unlikeliest of places.

* * * *

It was 2003, and Johnny Cash had recently released an album full of mostly cover songs, and the lead single was “Hurt,” a song written in 1994 by one of my favorite artists – Nine Inch Nails. Because of this fact, I had to hear it. At first I was flummoxed by the song, not knowing how to feel about a dying old man singing a song originally made by an artist I considered vital. But then I listened to the rest of the album, intrigued by its haunting, morbid beauty.

Then, Johnny Cash died. All at once it both ended and began.

I downloaded an “Essentials” Johnny Cash album. Dopey college-kid me was endlessly amused by the line from “Sunday Morning Coming Down”: “The beer I had for breakfast wasn't bad, so I had one more for dessert.” I watched all the retrospectives of his life on television, which made me feel like I knew the man before I knew the music. It was at that point that I started my way down the wormhole – or is it fishin' hole? – of classic country music.

My journey into country music took some time. I've listened to countless songs and have read an armload of books on the subject. Looking over the artists that have sustained my interest in the genre, it has become pretty clear that they all have one thing in common.

They are the ones who have withstood the test of time – the ageless and the immortals – the ones who are so respected and so well-known that many know them by just their first names: Hank, Johnny, Willie, and Waylon. (And some by their last names, such as Haggard and Kristofferson.) To a man, they all shared a distinct distaste for the Nashville music machine that chewed up and spat out country music stars like spent wads of tobacco.

All of those men had their own artistic visions that didn't always fit in with what the industry wanted. Hank Williams wanted to keep it simple, but also wanted to write his own songs. Johnny Cash wrote about a multitude of things, but the subjects he cared most deeply about – his faith, the downtrodden, the workingman, American Indians – were also the least likely to sell records. He recorded those songs anyway, and his legacy is better for it. Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings believed that both rednecks and hippies could come together and enjoy the same music – and they were right. Kris Kristofferson couldn't sing or play worth a lick, but had such a way with words that some think he was country music's answer to Bob Dylan.

Beyond the directness and simplicity of their music – something inherent in all country music – these guys lived their songs and meant the words that they sang. They wrote the type of music that you can feel in your guts yet still resonates with your brain. From “Lost Highway” to “Man in Black” to “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground” to “Sunday Morning Coming Down,” these men have written classics that have informed my outlook on life. All the heartbreak and loss and despair isn't pretty, but it is life.

Of course, the music is of most importance, but the men behind the music is also of interest. And this is where my dad comes back into the story.

* * * *

I can't claim to know all that much about my dad. But I have seen pictures and have heard stories (some of them over and over and over again, like that one time he saw the Stones and the Eagles, and the Eagles were way better). He had long hair in the 70's and listened to the Beatles and Pink Floyd. He did drugs. (I have no proof of this, mind you, but it was the 1970's. Everyone did drugs then. How else do you explain the fashion and the music?) None of that is terribly interesting, I know, except for maybe that my twenties were pretty similar to his.

But there is one thing from that time period that has always stuck with me. It comes from a half-heard conversation some years ago – there was probably alcohol involved – about the Vietnam War. Essentially the war ended and the draft was discontinued right as my dad was graduating high school. He regretted not being able to serve his country. That in and of itself was fine, but I've come to think of it as more than just patriotism. I think, deep down inside, he supported the war. And though that kills my somewhat liberal (but mostly centrist) heart, it's also kind of subversive in a weird way. Here you have a kid with long hair, full of Dark Side of the Moon and Dylan and god knows what else, ready to go halfway across the world to fight for an establishment that probably couldn't care less about him.

That subversion makes me proud. It is also part of what drew me to certain country stars. Johnny Cash insisted on having black musicians on his television show even though race relations were, to put it mildly, not good. Willie Nelson flaunted his hippie bona fides – the long braided hair and love of pot – but also wrote songs that made you actually feel your feelings when it wasn't popular in country music to do so.

* * * *

My dad is a flawed human being; a jumble of clashing ideals. He supports unions but votes Republican. He believes in God but doesn't go to church. He's been smoking since he was a teenager but told me not to smoke. I cannot attack these things not only because he's my father or because I am also flawed, but because the flaws and imperfections fascinate me. I could get cute and call it the family tradition, but I think it's the human tradition. Aside from empathy, I think imperfection is our defining trait.

* * * *

When putting this piece together in my head, I came to my conclusion first and tried to connect the dots second. The relationship I have with my dad and country music isn't terribly complex, but it also isn't the easiest to put into words.

After some hours of thinking about it, I discovered that everything centered on one point. All of my favorite country stars had singular artistic visions, producers and record labels be damned. They lived life and performed music on their own terms.

My dad never had a father growing up, so when I was born he had to forge his own road of fatherhood. If there's anything I can take away from growing up on that road, it is that I should be an individual, that I have to forge my own road if I want to make anything of this life.

He couldn't hold my hand all the way down the road, of course, but he could give me some tools to help. He taught me to be intellectually curious, to always ask questions and to be wary of authority. (Not to be confused with saying all authority is bad, which is another argument for another day) He encouraged me to be great at everything, whether it was school or sports or writing or girls. He gave me advice whether I sought it or not. He was genuinely sad when he couldn't help me. Perhaps, most importantly, he showed that it was okay to have feelings and to express them no matter what they are.

Maybe this just sounds like a checklist on how to be a good parent. And maybe he checked all those things off and maybe I just failed to execute some of them. But I don't think that's really the point. I think all along he wasn't just teaching me how to be a man or even how to one day be a father; he was teaching me how to be a well-rounded, decent human being.

* * * *

As fathers sometimes are, my dad was right this time. I – to use some redneck parlance – done gone country. Ironically, we've never really bonded over country music the way we did over the Beatles goofy comedy movies. Or did we?

It's true, my dad didn't exactly show me country music. I discovered it mostly on my own. I also fell in love with more current country and folk artists, such as Sturgill Simpson and The Avett Brothers. In some strange way, I found both myself and my father in the music. Neither of us may be genius songwriters (or pill-popping, womanizing drunkards, for that matter) but I think there's a rebel spirit in both of us, and I think of that and our relationship when I listen to the music.

It may have been unintentional, maybe not, but think either way my dad would be proud at what I learned in thinking about all of this: Sometimes the best lessons you can learn aren't the ones passed down from generation to generation, but the ones you learn on your own.

#6 - Radiohead - OK Computer

After my last review, I thought I had it all figured out. I liked the idea of record review as character sketch, so I penciled in the next few in that vein. I immediately thought back to Radiohead's OK Computer and my first girlfriend but for the life of me couldn't find a way to connect the two other than the fact that she gave me the CD when we broke up.

After sitting on the idea for months, I was staring off into space (as usual) and it dawned on me: don't focus on the girl; focus on the breakup and life after it.

No, OK Computer did not get me through the breakup. Quite the opposite, in fact.

If you clicked on the link above, you know the background of the breakup. If you didn't, you might want to. Anyway, I liked the singles “Karma Police” and “No Surprises” just fine. The rest of the record was left mostly unlistened to by me. I found Radiohead's further explorations of uncharted rock band waters just as confusing as my life post-girlfriend.

In 1998 – OK Computer had been out for a year already at this point – I was familiar with Radiohead's work, but only barely. “Creep” was a favorite of mine, and I had at least some of the songs on The Bends. So it wasn't any sort of shock that OK Computer was an immensely sad album. But on their previous albums they sounded like a rock band was supposed to sound; OK Computer challenged that and in turn challenged me – right to the skip button.

Listening to the record now, it sounds like it would have made perfect sense to listen to it over and over again considering the state I was in all those years ago. Instead the (mostly) gentle lull of desolation I turned to the anger and rage of bands like Tool, Marilyn Manson, and Nine Inch Nails. (Certain people reading this are probably throwing up the devil horns, then cursing me for turning into pussy.)

The production is at once lush but sterile, freeing but claustrophobic. I'm not sure how Radiohead pulled it off, but they did in spectacular fashion. For instance, the gentle acoustic guitar opening of “Exit Music (For A Film)” eventually gives way to haunting (what I assume) are keyboard sounds, and then more keyboards and synths – or is it a distorted bass? – and finally a brief drum section until Thom Yorke distantly intones “I hope that you choke.” The song sounds like it's ready to explode at one point, but Radiohead keeps it at bay until the end.

Get all that? Neither did I at the time. But “Exit Music” is indicative of the rest of the album in that a whole lot of things are going on at once and you don't know – or at least musical idiot me doesn't – what the hell is going on. But that makes perfect sense, as I didn't know what the hell was going on when I was 17 either.

But, as 17-year-olds are wont to do, I grew out of it. I'll be the first to admit – and I love the phrase, so I'll keep using it – a petulant little shit at the time. I hated myself for not being good enough, and hated her for not seeing my greatness. It also took a little bit of growing up and figuring out things on my own to appreciate Radiohead in general – and OK Computer in particular – for more than just a few songs.

The noisy guitar squall on songs like “Paranoid Android” and “Electioneering” are energizing and serve as a nice counterpoint to the utter desolation present in “No Surprises” and “Let Down.” The record shimmers at times as on opener “Airbag” and “Subterranean Homesick Alien.” Not to be forgotten in all of this is Thom Yorke's voice, which is an acquired taste to be sure. Sometimes he sounds aloof, uninterested (closer “The Tourist”) and other times he lets it rip like at the end of “Climbing Up The Walls.” The album as a whole is a controlled cacophony of different sounds, emotions, and voices.

It may have taken me ten-plus years for all the pieces to come together not just in my appreciation of the genius of OK Computer but in sorting out my life post-breakup. It took that long to realize she, Valarie, was more than just a teenage fuck – okay, we didn't, but that line sounds way better than the reality – but a girl, now woman, with wants and dreams all her own. Much like my fascination with Radiohead, life after seventeen came with a lot of frustration and confusion but in the end turned out to be just fine. I can sit here now almost 30, newly engaged, with wants and dreams all my own knowing that certain things happened in the past – whether girls or records or anything else – happened for a reason. And I can be happy that they turned out this way.

Rating:

5 Packard Bells.

#5 - Metallica - ...And Justice For All

I knew my best friend Ken in 8th grade, but he wasn’t my friend then. We went to different high schools and I had never really given him much of a thought since grade school. Joe, a mutual friend, brought Ken with him to play basketball in my driveway sometime around the summer between our junior and senior years of high school. Or was it sophomore and junior? I forget. (I kind of hate myself for not remembering the exact time we became friends.) I pretty much thought that would be it; we would shoot hoops and maybe play video games once in a while. But Joe -- and I might never forgive the son of a bitch for this -- must’ve given Ken my number, because he called wanting to hang out. Just me and him.

I’m not always the prick I seem to be, so I said it was cool. We played basketball and video games and talked. And then he called again and wanted to play some more. So on and so forth. It looked like I had a new friend, another addition to my small circle.

What Ken brought to the table, moreso than a shared angst, was music. At that point in time, my friends were more into Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson. Ken liked Guns n’ Roses and Metallica. Especially Metallica.

I was familiar with Metallica inasmuch as I knew they were a popular rock band that some people thought sold out when they cut their hair and went soft. Ken would bring over mixtapes and CD’s full of the stuff, and little by little I got into them. As summer wore on into fall, a clear favorite emerged from the Metallica oeuvre, and that was the mammoth ...And Justice For All.

I liked the majority of their stuff just fine, but something about ‘Justice’ drew me in more than the other albums. It was (and still is) loud, angry, unwavering, and relentless. With years of hindsight I can add another adjective: impenetrable. Seriously: if you’re trying to get someone into Metallica, you don’t have them listen to ‘Justice’ first. Aside from “One,” there’s really nothing else there for the average fan.

But average fan or not, I wanted impenetrable. I wanted to get lost in the wall of guitars, in the Gatling-gun drumming of Lars Ulrich, and James Hetfield’s unmistakable growl. I was newly single and felt alienated and vulnerable for the first time because of it. I needed to retreat, so I retreated with my new best friend into the welcoming arms of Metallica.

From the sickly opening strains of “Blackened” to the frenetic end of “Dyers Eve,” ...And Justice For All had everything I could have ever asked for in an album. Aside from the nearly-ten-minute Cliff Burton tribute “To Live is To Die,” it simply did not let up. Of course, I never really cared for “The Shortest Straw” and “Harvester of Sorrow,” but seven out of nine ain’t bad.

Hetfield was singing about grown-up things far beyond the scope of my life experiences at that time, but his lyrics became my own soundtrack. The title track was no longer about the shortcomings of our judicial system, but instead became a rallying cry about my life being unfair. The censorship in “Eye of the Beholder” was the censorship of my life, the things that I wanted to do but couldn’t. Then again, other songs like -- fuck, I can’t even come up with an adjective for how good this song is -- “One” (suicidal thoughts) and album-closer “Dyers Eve” (more or less hating your parents) were taken a bit more literally by me. (Jesus, was I a petulant little shit or what?)

When I was 17, everything about this album spoke to me. The lyrics, the guitar riffs, and the solos. I couldn’t get enough of it. But time went on and Justice sank further and further down my list of favorite Metallica albums. I found that it no longer said anything to me, and perhaps more importantly I found it to be overlong and boring. (I can forgive a lack of lyrical depth or emotional resonance if the music is engaging.) How could that be?

Usually one falls out of love with a band or album because their tastes in music changes, and on some level this is true. However, I still like Metallica’s music, Napster incident and all. When I started to put together a list of albums (and memoir-y things I wanted to write about), I thought about ‘Justice’ and how maybe how it maybe didn’t actually fit me at the time but it fit who I wanted to be then. I already mentioned it being loud and angry, but it is also a very confident record. It takes no prisoners. To some, it might represent Metallica at the top of their game.

I thought I had my angle all wrapped up, but then I listened to the album a couple more times. Though I still find some songs in dire need of an editor (“To Live is To Die,” I’m looking at you.), they didn’t bore me. I found that my new opinion of the album kind of mirrored my friendship with Ken. We were different then. We were united in our anger. But time washed all of that away like so many basketball games in the summer sun. Only the clarity of mind that comes with age could reveal that there was more to both of us than teenage angst. Our friendship -- our relationship -- grew to be more complex than one emotion from one period in our lives could ever be. It’s that same complexity that I’ve discovered in revisiting ...And Justice For All, and listening to it now is nearly as rewarding as having a friend like Ken.


Rating: 3.5 Pledges

#4 - Arcade Fire - The Suburbs

For information on my writing style and how this blog will work from here on out, please read the post "Taste Validator Manifesto". Thank you.

I’ve been a fan of Arcade Fire’s music since their debut full-length album, Funeral, came out in 2004. Both Funeral and the follow-up, Neon Bible, were terrific records but The Suburbs is the first of theirs that I can directly relate to. It comes along at a time in my life - and one must assume lead singer Win Butler’s as well - when I’m wondering what in the hell I’m going to do with it. Standing on the cusp of 30 is no easy task, at least not for me. Enter The Suburbs, a record that I feel captures exactly ho it feels to be at the crossroads of being a young adult and a full-fledged grown-up.

In the hands of a lesser band, The Suburbs could have been a whole lot of hipster sneering at how unhip living in the ‘burbs can be, or how shitty it is to be an adult. Not so with Butler at the helm. At times he seems wistful and nostalgic about growing up; other times he’s focused on what’s going to happen next. On the gentle, piano-driven title track Butler is all of these things as he remembers learning to drive and suburban “wars, ” then wonders out loud in the second-to-last verse: “So can you understand? / Why I want a daughter while I'm still young / I wanna hold her hand / And show her some beauty / Before this damage is done / But if it's too much to ask, it's too much to ask / Then send me a son.” Those lines hit me straight in the heart; having a child is something I find myself thinking about a lot more these days, at least more than I did in my early twenties.

Staying on the kid thing, sixth track “City With No Children” may sound like heaven to some, but it feels like a prison to the narrator. Not only that, but the narrator also seems to resent a former lover that perhaps didn’t want children. Not really the kind of stuff I expect to hear from one of the hottest indie bands on the planet, but there it is. And it’s not just the lyrics I like in this song; the bass and light handclaps hanging around in the background keep the song humming along at a nice pace.

Of course, having a child isn’t the only thing a soon-to-be thirtysomething (Butler just turned 31) can think about. “Ready to Start” recalls teenage love and reflects on being grown up about it now, and the musical tension within relays that information wonderfully. “Modern Man” is a song about feeling like you’re going nowhere. Three songs in, and I’m thinking Arcade Fire wrote this album about me.

It takes awhile for Arcade Fire to start cranking it up a notch musically, but on “Half LIfe II (No Celebration) they do just that. The synths and crashing guitar chords take it to another level. Another song that may or may not be torn from my diary, it talks about getting to a certain point in your life and not having it be what you expected “Though we knew this day would come / Still it took us by surprise. / In this town where I was born, / I now see through a dead man's eyes.” They get almost punk rock on “Month of May,” and though I appreciate the rawk, it might just be one of the weakest songs on the album.

As you might expect on an album about being a certain age, a lot of the songs address feeling old, and one of Win Butler’s favorite ways of noting that is by talking about “the kids.” My place of employment is right near a college campus, so I vouch for this sentiment rather well. I’ll be listening to Nevermind at the bus stop, watching tens of young faces walk by, and I can’t help but think, “Most of these kids weren’t alive when this album came out!” Goddamn, that can be depressing.

The last third or so of the album focuses clearly on the past. “Wasted Hours” recalls pining for the future, and “Deep Blue,” aside from the obvious reference of the Kasparov vs. IBM’s Deep Blue chess match, is about the turn of the 21st century.

That brings us to my favorite track on the album, “We Used to Wait,” which starts out with persistent piano that gives way to a burbling bassline and a soaring synth in the chorus. A guitar is finally brought to the front in the final minute of the song while Butler sings “Now we’re screaming ‘sing the chorus!” again / We used to wait for it.” The song is every bit as anthemic as previous standouts “Wake Up” and “Intervention.”

On “Spawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains),” Arcade Fire throws a bit of a curveball as the instrumentation is a lot more bouncy and almost disco-esque. I can’t imagine too many Arcade Fire songs that would actually make me want to dance, but “Sprawl II” gets me there.

The Suburbs as a whole has more or less a sound that I have come to expect from Arcade Fire. It is big and it is exhilarating. The guitars and drums and pianos and synthesizers and strings and probably other obscure instruments that I’m missing all combine to make a delightful musical stew. Not all the songs hit as hard as singles from previous albums, but as a whole they make the album the best thing they’ve done yet.

But it’s definitely the lyrics and themes within that stimulate me both intellectually and emotionally. It’s those albums that hit you were it matters most that stick with you the longest.

The final track finds Butler admitting that he’d waste the time he’d wasted as a youth all over again if he had the chance, which I can’t disagree with. But I find it interesting and fitting that the song just kind of peters out at the end, a lingering question that has yet to be answered.

Rating: 5 White picket fences

#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.

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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.

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My listening notes, for anyone interested...