THERE'S A PLACE I GO BUT YOU'RE NOT THERE...

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.

Peace.

...AND WE ARE NOT ALONE.

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.

HUM-COMING HOME


HUM-GREEN TO ME