Funny Blog

Stuff White People Like

Alt. Country in 60 seconds

My hairdresser (don't laugh) asked me what "Alt. Country" is. I muddled through my own definition, but here's a funny video that explains it.

Counting Crows "August and Everything After"

OK, back to the topic of albums that first made me fall in love with albums. Now, mind you, these are not records I would necessarily consider my favorite. These are just albums that I got in highschool that got me totally hooked on being a record collector.

Keith and I often would buy tapes together. If a tape cost $9.99, we'd each pay $5.00. I don't know what made us buy this record. There used to be a great radio station in the Bay Area called KOME. In th early 90s, KOME played new Alternative stuff and they weren't bent on commercial stuff only. They played more stuff and took more chances than LIVE105, but they folded after a couple summers.

I remember the day we bought it, we laid on Keith's double bed and listened to the tape repeat and repeat. This was alternative music that wasn't angry, but full of emotion. It was not there for shock or gimmick, but for art's sake. The lyrics were abstract, but not so abstract that they were silly or meaningless. In these ways, it was so different than the other alternative music out there. I mean, the guitar solos are country telecaster twang solos! It had organ, slide/steel instruments, dobro.

I think the most important thing this record did was get grungy little alterna-boys off of the Nirvana/Metallica teat and expanded people's perception of what "alternative" music was.

JUNO

So it turns out this movie is not about one of the best analog synthesizers ever made- the Roland Juno 106. In fact, it's not about synthesizers at all. It's just about a girl who was named after a synthesizer.

U2 "The Joshua Tree"

I want to stay on this topic of albums I first fell in love with. I blogged below about hearing a podcast on "the death of the ALBUM" and in response to that grim news, I am posting a series of blogs about albums that made me love albums (the Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits post below was the first of these blogs).

In highschool, I was riding in a car with a much older guy and he was just tickled about a new tape he had. It was called "Rattle and Hum" by a group called U2. He was driving on a windy country road and his enthusiasm for rewinding the tape to play specific excerpts for me surpassed his interest in safe driving. "Wait, did you hear that line?!" he would ask, "Lemme rewind it. Did you hear what he said? You gotta pay attention to this part!" I remember that in the spoken word part of "Bullet the Blue Sky" he was so excited as he recited along with Bono, that he even had motions that he did and gestured as if dealing invisible playing cards as he let go of the steering wheel completely and mimicked, "Shhhlappin' um down. One hundred! Two hundred!"

I figured that anything that made someone so passionate was probably a decent piece of art. And I asked for it when my parents asked me what I wanted for my birthday. They replied that they weren't going to buy me "heavy metal" and referenced a time when I requested "anything by Morrissey" and they got to the record store to find that one of his albums was called "Kill Uncle". What could be worse? Morrissey was probably out to convince me to kill one of their brothers. I purchased a Rattle and Hum cassette on my own dime. It and a subsequently rented VHS documentary by the same name won my parents over with its B.B. King cameos, gospel choirs, and songs about MLK Jr.

I needed more and bought the Joshua Tree at a shopping mall music store. I distinctly remember taking off the cellophane and taking in the album art and knowing that this was something magical. Talking about The Joshua Tree and using words like expansive, cinematic, or soundscape is just preaching to the choir. I hope we all know the Joshua Tree to be these things, but hear them in a way that is much more individual and personal.

A deluxe edition was just released like at Christmas time. It was remastered by The Edge himself and a second disc, incredible packaging, and a cool little booklet were thrown in. You know I bought it. A review I read, which claimed that the bonus disc was an album in and of itself and on par with the Joshua Tree, prompted me. That reviewer was wrong. The bonus disc is full of disappointing B-sides and outtakes, which didn't make it on the album for a reason. The better tracks are ones that incorporate a spooky sort of "world" feel, like "Race Against Time" and "Wave of Sorrow". Its downside is the overuse of spoken word, especially on the final track which is just my least favorite poet ever, Allen Ginsberg, reading a poem.

Bob Dylan "Greatest Hits"

I was working as an apartment complex manager/groundskeeper and finishing up highschool when I broke up with my girlfriend of almost two years (or she broke up with me, depending on who you talk to). I dealt with it by immersing myself in the "Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits" cassette tape I had. I wore it out in a maroon walkman I listened to at work while I tended the garden, which contained shaped shrubs, rare tropical plants and trees, multi-level lawns, a pool, and several different courtyards.

I think I understood the cliche' of the first three tracks (Rainy Day Women, Blowin' in the Wind, and The Times They are A-Changin') and took them with a grain of salt, but when "It Ain't Me, Babe" and "Like a Rolling Stone" came on at the end of Side 1, I was sure that Bob had felt what I felt and maybe was even singing about my story! If my 1971 VW Squareback had a tape player, I would have driven past her house blaring the lines:

You got a lotta nerve
To say you are my friend
When I was down
You just stood there grinning

from "Positively 4th Street". But I don't think I ever spoke to her again. I think it was the first time I really fell in love with an album. Not a bad trade at all.

Death of the CD? Death of the album?

On a music podcast I frequently listen to, this morning, they had an entertainment industry analyst on as a guest and this guy said bluntly that the CD was a dead medium and that people who refused to agree with him were crazy. He aslo suggested that the album as an art form was also dead, due to the fact that technology allows people to just download a song or two at a time.

This made me very sad. I love CDs and I love whole albums. The war in Iraq, a failing economy, and now this.

This was on repeat in my ipod for the last 30 minutes.

Morrissey- "The More You Ignore Me"