It’s been well over five years since Elliott Smith stabbed himself in the chest and died, what must’ve been, a rather painful death. A couple of years prior to his suicide, around the time XO was being made, he jumped of a cliff and was saved/impaled by a tree. Nothing in his music depicts the harshness of these acts and I still wonder at what point sadness can turn into so much self-hate. I guess when bitterness is stripped clean from all its sweetness and you can no longer see what you want to see there’s really no other way but down. One day you just wake up with a stone cold heart and you’d expect the knife to fucking break but it doesn’t… and you take another stab because there’s no other way but down and you realize you we’re a human being all along and not some shitty excuse. There were days when I thought hope was a bitch and there were days when I was really fucking pissed at people like Elliott Smith for having the balls I’d never have. I could’ve sworn I felt death’s warm embrace on several occasions but every time I turned around it was that goddamn sun bearing down on me again. When I’m listening to XO I’m pretty sure Smith must’ve seen that same sun just as much I did, and I’m sure he could’ve gone more gently than he did but I guess there comes a time in everyone’s life when there isn’t any room left for romanticism. No last Herzog film and no last writing on a bedroom wall. It was my first suicide and it definitely shook up my idea of the artist and his tormented life. No goodbyes whatsoever. One day you’re listening to Elliott Smith and the next day you’re listening to the Late Elliott Smith. All of sudden your records get an extra pinch of bleakness and you just sit there with a kitchen knife, too much romanticism and no fucking guts. This kid in my class always told me how much I looked like Elliott Smith and I’m still not sure if he was pointing out a physical resemblance or if he was just referring to my state of mind. Either way, I guess I was that ugly. And even though my days of wine and roses are long gone I can still get bummed when I come across a used XO copy at whatever local flea market it is I’m roaming and I feel like punching the guy who thinks he can sell so much beauty for a just a buck. In the end I always buy the damn thing because Waltz#1 is my jam and it always makes me cry a little on the inside. With each passing year the price I have to pay for everything that is priceless in my life becomes a tad bit smaller.
According to my calculations this will be my 6th blog entry and according to my gumption the other 5 ones pale in comparison to the classic that I will now touch upon. I kid you not, DUDE RANCH pisses all over every record you’ve ever heard (from age of quarrel to blonde on blonde) and it pisses all over credibility. Who the fuck needs credibility when you can listen to the greatest thing since pet sounds? Too many goddamn people, that’s who. It bums me out to no extent when dudes think too highly of themselves to enjoy a BLINK record, let alone acknowledge its genius. Just picture BUZZCOCKS playing some NOFX covers or something. Now try figuring out how this could be a bad thing. You fail. BLINK wins.
This band was able to combine all of the genre’s best assets and they really fucking nailed it with DUDE RANCH. Under the supervision of Mark ‘the legend’ Trombino and with the urgency of a bunch of youngsters dying to get out of the garage and possibly even sunny suburban San Diego staleness, BLINK rages through a flawless collection of coming-of-age-anthems that is yet to be rivalled. DUDE RANCH depicts the fun of giving some kid a wedgie but then just gets really sad when you realize that same kid is probably jerking off to some picture of some girl in some yearbook with parents that don’t care about anything as long as he doesn’t leave a mess and gets good grades. Realisation can be such a party-pooper sometimes.
I know it’s easy to just write this off as completely irrelevant frat boy shenanigans but in reality it’s one of the most accurate descriptions of life ever recorded. We’ve all yanked out other dudes’ pubes and we’ve all tried skateboarding. We’ve had our forgettable love interests and we’ve learned from our mistakes. This ongoing process of maturation might not allow us to set our farts on fire anymore and each problem we now meet surpasses any of the high school crap that made us long for adulthood. But just know that if someone would’ve actually taped your most embarrassing moments and compiled them into a 3-minute video, any song off of DUDE RANCH would be the perfect soundtrack. And you’d laugh really… Hopefully…
A much wiser man than myself once said: “BLINK haterz: quit the pose.” But unfortunately, truth will always be overlooked and there will always be people who refuse to enjoy a record that has a bull’s scrotum for a cover. Their loss I guess.
Assuming the unlucky few who read my fanzine are the same few who read this blog I don’t really think I need to explain my love for a little three-piece called JAWBREAKER but I’m still gonna do it anyway. It is a love that goes deeper than oceans and expands beyond skies. Pretty much the most love one man can have for one band. In between jumping from one fad to another, various elitist indie sites and their smarter-than-thou-editors tell me I will grow out of this phase but I’m just a working class guy not eager to listen to difficult music just for the sake of coming of as difficult. I enjoy discussing krautrock influences on BOWIE’s post-ziggy stardust material just as much as the next guy, but when it comes down to the core of music I’d rather have my tunes drenched in tangible heartache and genuine solitude and my stories dealing with little men fighting themselves whilst being crushed by the weight of the universe. And it just so happens Blake Schwarzenbach was handpicked by some supreme being to deliver these tunes and stories to those who cared.
Picking his words carefully and writing melodies one the most lonesome of his Frisco nights Blake saw JAWBREAKER gradually growing out to the cult favourite they still are to this day. And his army of scrawny kids wearing chinos and reading beat poetry in the back of the classroom was constantly expanding until it was big enough for Geffen, still in their post-NIRVANA depression, to think that this could work on a major label level. All parties involved knew it wouldn’t and I guess that makes Dear you all the more a classic record. Weird how they come of so tight and still sound like they’re on the verge of imploding. Anyway, an expected break-up resulted in Blake clearing his throat and quickly bouncing back on his feet by relocating to Brooklyn where he surrounded himself with Jeremy Chaterlain and Chris Daly, ex-HANDSOME and ex-TEXAS IS THE REASON respectively. One can do worse I’m sure… Being the ‘supergroup’ that they were, JTB quickly managed to ink a deal with major indie Jade Tree and squeezed out an anticipated album only a year or so after the band’s inception.
Now this is usually the paragraph where I blabber about my personal involvement with the band’s music but before I can go on with that part I just have to bring up JB one more time. I can’t help it, I’m the boy who cried JAWBREAKER. I was just so awestruck with this band hitting home that I decided not to acknowledge anything else these dudes did afterwards. That way I could keep them alive in my head for as long as possible. I know that sounds crazy and all but the fucked up part is that when I finally gave in and checked out JTB it actually did change the whole JAWBREAKER experience for me. But that pretty much is the only real downside to orange rhyming dictionary. It’s vintage Blake Schwarzenbach and very hard not to like.
‘Cause in all honesty, this could’ve been the perfect batch of songs to follow up dear you and the only real significant difference lies in the execution of the material. The whole vibe around orange rhyming dictionary is a bit looser with an almost jam-like approach at times. I guess it’s the start of a natural departure from the urgent and angsty sound JAWBREAKER had at their most desperate. These men are experienced musicians coming into their own, wilfully shaking the urge to help out every lost teen soul out there. Same goes for the lyrics, it’s real obvious that Blake worked hard on them in an attempt to steer away from his past endeavours and the way he plays with the English language is just plain amazing. As usual he pours heart, soul and craftmanship into almost every sentence turning them all into little works of art but never neglecting the bigger picture of the story he tries to tell. Only this time the picking of words is just that tad bit smarter and not solely relying on the spur of the moment. The fact that there isn’t a word in the English dictionary that rhymes with orange should already give you an idea.
In my blurriest of days I sometimes see ORD as the record bivouac should’ve been. Where the latter was too serious and forced in it’s attempt to create a moodier and more epic sound, ORD comes of a lot more natural and just sounds like there was a lot more fun involved in the making of it. But I’d still pick bivouac though, I’m such a fanboy.
It’s getting late and it’s getting dark. People are retreating and gathering around their television sets. It may be artificial but at least it’s a glow you can always rely on. Their window to the world while I’m peering through a real one. Left eye to the sky and the other looking inwards, scoping for memories that will tell me change doesn’t have to be inevitable. But my head is empty and the stars are flickering and I have to get out for a sec. I put away the phone book on my lap and open the front door, I lay one hand on the street in an almost petting-like manner. The pavement and the earth below are cooling off. Inner peace strikes me before I realize I look like a fruit kneeling down like this. No cars pass by here this late so I guess I can act as nutty as I want. And if someone does see me acting all weird I just trust on God to tell them how I really feel, maybe they can feel it too for a minute. Or just long enough to get them through another day in this town… In reality though, they will just shake their heads in disbelief and pray for me next Sunday in hopes of relieving me from all the weirdness. I guess it comes down to which side God chooses to be on, and I never win this kind of situation…
I head back inside and pick up the phone book. I have a name and a town and now I have to find the address. Black ink of a thousand names starts to wear off on my browsing finger and I’m wondering who these people are. My nerves are twitching and I feel pathetic. Is this even legal? I manage to find what I’m looking for albeit with a few more options than I expected. But I live life on the edge and I’m taking another stab in the dark. The note I’ve been having in my back pocket for what seems to be a thousand years already is burning right through my pants. Maybe God’s with me after all and He’s giving me a sign. I scribble down a random address on the back of my hand and head out. My heart is doing backflips and my stomach is slow dancing with my intestines. My ribs ache and I’m pretty close to losing it. The madness of my quest is starting to sink in…
But the night is welcoming and the stars tell their stories to calm me down. I’m not realizing it right now but the scenery is being etched in my mind as I roll into it. Reason is starting to sip through the cracks of my maddened mind. And for now I’m just a kid on a bike with his mind set on something he’ll never have. That is a nice thought to hold onto as I take a left into your street and start counting numbers… Everything else I was having on my mind before tonight is now completely gone and I’m so tranquil that it feels as if my spirit is actually leaving my body. There’s this bench right in front of your house, the kind that’s randomly scattered all over the country, and I sit down for a minute. I play with these little rocks I picked up from your driveway but I’m not here to wake you up tonight. Hell, I don’t even know which window is yours, or if you even live here for that matter. By morning I’ll be gone and no one will ever know I was here, including me… hopefully. But that’s just wishful thinking. I close my eyes to reminisce about days when everything wasn’t completely hopeless but I can only picture you sleeping. I get up and sigh. But there's no way back and I can't slow down.
Or how some teen punk with his heart on his sleeve ripped off LIFETIME and totally got away with it.
I’m feeling kinda bummed today for no particular reason. Sure, the weekend’s over and work is waiting but it goes a little deeper than that. I was out for a little stroll around sixish tonight and there was just something that got to me. The sun was out but it was cloudy as well, neither cold nor warm. Indecisiveness in the air and it just felt like nothing at all. Summer’s around the corner but it’s only gradually taking little peeks, not ready to make a full appearance yet. And then I just got carried away thinking about summers long gone. In those days I felt like absolute shit and I guess that’s a good thing when you’re younger ‘cause I really really miss those days. I’m missing days of feeling like shit, go figure. In all my nostalgia I still realize it’s impossible to revive the past but there’s nothing wrong with getting yourself tangled up in its glow, right?
Luckily enough, I’ve collected so much music over the years that I pretty much have a tune for each particular mood I’m dealing with. What I do is I pick a record that stimulates said mood and strikes all the right chords. This may seem like a pretty depressive thing to do but it actually has an uplifting effect on me as it is very comforting in the process. I never understood why people take pictures and keep dozens of albums but I guess I’m using music for the same purpose. Just snapshots you look at every once in a while, providing a smile or a tear before you continue going through the motions of every day life. Right now SOMETHING TO WRITE HOME ABOUT by THE GET UP KIDS perfectly sums up the feeling I was having earlier today and I’m loving every minute of it before I have to go on with every day life again.
I still vividly remember the first time I heard this band. I came across the action & action vid and it just kind of stuck with me. Nerdy looking characters playing an undeniably catchy tune with nerdy girls playing out a disposable background story. Still one of my favourite vids to this day. After some online research on the band I kazaa’d SOMETHING TO WRITE HOME ABOUT and burned myself a copy. Even though I felt really guilty about listening to a CD-R it still took me about six years to finally score an official copy. Until that time it definitely made the top 3 of most listened to CD-R’s in my collection.
Despite their instant catchiness these are the kind of songs that evoke the feeling of being down but not the whole suicidal type of being down if you know what I mean. They’re just sad in the uplifting way I explained. And I’m just glad they’ve aged well unlike most of the other bands I was listening to in those days. I would actually go as far as saying that this is the last emo classic to ever see the light of day. Most people that know what’s up will beg to differ but I’m ranking these guys alongside the revolution summer bands (EMBRACE, RITES OF SPRING,…) or the Midwest pioneers (SPLIT LIP, FALLING FORWARD,…). Sure, the link with hardcore is practically non-existent and they sound a lot sappier than the bands I mentioned but still… The line between sounding cheesy or sincere is very thin when playing this style of music and THE GET UP KIDS just pull it off. They still sound as fresh and inspiring as the first day I got into them. Or is that just the nostalgia talking…
I’ve only just realized now that I spent my late teens looking up to early twenty-somethings that wrote songs about broken relationships. I guess I must’ve been impressed by the fact that they even had relationships to write about considering these kids were rocking thick-rimmed glasses, faded shirts and moogs. This type of stuff influenced me to the extent that my teen romances were doomed from the start due to my overly dramatic outlook on love. I was desperately trying to be the desperate emo kid and I always had this notebook with horrible poetry on me. It meant the world to me back then and sometimes I wish it still did.
Coming up with a second entry for this blog has been harder than I thought it would be since the first one was kind of posted on a whim. I had been toying with the blog-idea for a couple of months prior and I always landed on two options concerning the subject matter. One was focussing on all the cheap, neglected and forgotten gems I’ve discovered in bargain and used bins over the last couple of years. I love browsing through cheap old records until my fingers turn greyish from all the dust they’ve been collecting over the years, usually relying on nothing but mentions from thanklists and cool-looking covers. You can score some pretty sweet stuff that way and I thought it was a good idea to bring up some of those semi-obscure bands (with the emphasis on semi since there will always be a smartypants who has heard of this or that band). It always bums me out to see a good record slip through the cracks of time and I figured there were at least some that deserved to be pulled back through those cracks… Another option was some sort of trip down memory lane that would pretty much consist of me looking back at all the musical stuff I’ve waded through over the last 8 years and picking out the records that had the most impact on me. A pretty selfish endeavour as it would only seem interesting to me in a therapeutic kind of way. With my first post I kinda landed in the middle of those two options and I guess, when all is typed and done, the end result will do so as well. I’ve always had a hard time making choices so yeah… I’m just gonna go with whatever feels right and hope some will enjoy my rants in the process.
Today’s post will be about one of the bigger alternative bands of the last two decades, namely DINOSAUR JR. I’m pretty sure there are a ton of bloggers out there that have covered this band before and probably way better too as I don’t know much about this band except for the fact that I love their music. And I can also imagine some kids were thinking I was jumping the wagon (get it? get it?) whenever I was posting some DINO JR in a playlist or something. But truth is, due to some weird twist of fate I went from indie music to hardcore instead of the other way around. The way sellouts end up going in an attempt to look cool or something. It wasn’t until a year ago that I found out that this band was highly appreciated by the hardcore in crowd. Somewhat ironic as these were the people I was trying to emulate by digging all the early HC bands from the eighties.
Somewhere in 2002 I figured it was the right time to skip cash money affiliated hip hop, post-Max SEPULTURA records and post-SEP Max Cavalera records. A tough decision to make at the time but in hindsight an important one as it kept me from having dreadlocks, sporting a full camo outfit + dollar sign necklace and being siked for that CAVALERA CONSPIRACY thingy and the LIL WAYNE record that seems to be in the pipeline forever. Thank you God. Now, since I was ditching all my shitty records I obviously needed some new ones to replace them. Turns out I didn’t know any cool record stores at the time so I roamed the local library for hours straight as they seemed to have a fine collection of quality post-punk, alternative rock and hardcore (RYKER’S and that one SOIA live record that came out on lost and found). I browsed the web for recommendations concerning all things indie and I ended up frequenting the pitchfork media forums, thus learing about INTERPOL and THE RAPTURE before you did. I consistently made an online fool out of myself in those days not realizing messageboards were the ideal spots for bitter fucks to showcase their witty sarcasm. But it all proved to be worth it when I learned about the classic stuff like PAVEMENT, SLINT, PIXIES and, at one point or another, DINOSAUR JR. Eager to check out all of this I headed over once again to the library and ended up having to chose between a bunch of DINO JR records. The GREEN MIND cover (courtesy of Joseph Szabo, as I later found out) intrigued me the most so I picked that one. Back home I instantly dug the shit out of this. And I really mean instantly. Ten seconds into the wagon and I was forever in debt. J Mascis must’ve had this huge bag of hooks right next to him when he wrote this and left it empty by the time he had the 10 songs finished. His singing is off key, the soloing is spot on. You can play air guitar to this, or you can reminisce. Rock out, but not too hard. The songs have this fuzzy type of sound that has the warmth of a blanket on a cold December night or an August sun at 22:03 pm, when the smell of summer is so present in the air it almost becomes tangible. Love it. Borrowing this from the library became such a habbit that I just never bothered to buy an actual copy until years later. I don’t listen to it all that much these days but it’s just one of those records I’m happy to come across when I’m looking through my collection. “Hey, I have this. Sweet…” and I move on.
I guess picking GREEN MIND as my favourite DINOSAUR JR record is an odd choice but keep in mind that I got into this band when I was still unaware of all the street cred you could get for picking the SST records over the SIRE ones, or the Lou Barlow-years over the J Mascis solo efforts. Although this one came out several months before NEVERMIND I guess they sorta got caught in that whole buzz that was surrounding NIRVANA at the time. Coincidely maybe, but it seemed like when Geffen won the whole bidding war over Seattle’s darlings other majors were settling for the next best thing and handed out record deals to whatever Cobain cited as an influence to his band. The result was a bunch of poorly promoted records that ended up being neglected by the indie kids but were still a bit too shaky for the mainstream. GREEN MIND was one of those and slipped under everyone’s radar, but Mascis works in mysterious ways and reached out to kids through libraries worldwide giving his post-LIVING ALL OVER ME work the appreciation it deserves. That dude is still one of my favourite slackers.
I always promised myself I would start this blog with a post about HUM if I ever actually started it. The reason for that is that I always promised myself to do a blog whenever I was listening to HUM. That train of thought never made any sense to me either so I just never bothered to pick this up. That is until I was reading Kei Yasui’s blog a couple days back. Infamous for his input in HAVE HEART and now infamous for bringing up QUICKSAND, FAILURE and HUM in one blog entry. Some mindboggling shit right there. That almost made me go just as crazy as the time I found out my main bro Chasarion was secretly into this band as well. For more on that check his first podcast. Don’t ask me why but I always get stoked when I find out other core kids are into HUM.
For some reason I can’t really remember when I first heard of them but they must’ve crossed my path at one time or another ‘cause I sorta knew what I was in for when I picked up DOWNWARD IS HEAVENWARD just about a year ago. De Kaft, Ghent, a used copy for 4.75€. That place always has the weirdest prices and everything in their bargain bin is 2.75€. Unless they have a huge stash of 5 cent and 20 cent pieces somewhere I can imagine these guys run out of spare change every once in a while. One time they did have this 1€ sale and I picked up the BOTH WORLDS full length. That was sweet but a completely different story so back to HUM.
This band instantly hit home for me and they sounded really familiar but I couldn’t really put my finger on it until I dug up that HOPESFALL record from a couple of years back, the one that sounded all spacey and shit. Good record but a blatant ripoff nonetheless. I actually wish they still did this half-decent HUM tribute instead of putting out shitty albums with their own shitty songs. But that’s all water under the bridge now and it’s not really considered cool to be into any HOPESFALL so yeah… nevermind.
DOWNWARD IS HEAVENWARD is the last record that really ‘clicked’ with me. I can still tell if I’m listening to good or bad music but at a certain age it’s just getting harder to connect to music on a personal level. As a teenager in shitty times you just cling on to whatever you’re hearing all the while giving it a nostalgic level that doesn’t really hit you until you’re grown up. That kind of crap is part of the music-as-a-trigger-theory I firmly believe in. Even though I never heard this record prior to last year it still had the same effect on me like all of those teenhood classics I was clinging on to. I mostly listen to this when I’m biking back home from work after a late shift so the setting might help as well. Picture a rural scenery with a bunch of stars and me wondering what the fuck is out there. This record happens to be the perfect soundtrack for wondering what the fuck is out there. Somewhere halfway my ride I can see the streetlights of the suburbs of my shitty town from a distance and it all makes sense somehow. Listening to this also brought back this vision of an ideal world I had when I was like 10 years old. Just me lying in the greenest grass imaginable, looking up to the bluest of blue skies. There’d be the occasional fluffy white cloud and I knew that if I ever got up there’d be a place called home waiting. I just never felt like getting up though…. And that’s the kind of comforting stuff that comes back to me when I’m listening to DW=HW. Soothing shit. Who the fuck needs therapy?
As far as an actual review goes I can give you some random keywords like: layered, textured, walls, of, sound. Basically just post grunge going space rock on us. It comes of as natural as if they started jamming and someone accidentally pressed rec. but on the other hand you just know that every effect pedal was used with a purpose and every sonic detail was carefully analyzed and discussed. This record didn’t pop out of thin air but it’s greatness lies in the fact that you believe it did. Na’mean?
Random fun fact courtesy of wikipedia: after DW=HW was released HUM was hand-picked to do a cover of invisible sun, and that just so happens to be my favourite POLICE song. But apparently Sting himself decided to go all reggae with his own song right before HUM was scheduled to record. If it wasn’t for most of SYNCHRONICITY and GHOST IN THE MACHINE I’d definitely hate that guy. I still, however, back the ‘someone please give Sting his balls back’ review I once read for one of his Disney (barf) soundtracks.
Peace!
These are the vids to the only singles this album spawned.
