Music is My Radar

Billy Corgan can eat a dick.

Now that the only other remaining original member has quit the quasi-reunited Smashing Pumpkins, Master Corgan confirms what we knew all along: he = Smashing Pumpkins.  There is no difference, no separation, no boundaries between the two.  It’s kind of like Sauron and the One Ring - you destroy one, you destroy the other.

You might be wondering what brings on this sudden anti-Corgan sentiment.  Well, it’s been brewing for some time.  Despite the fact that I was/am something of a SP fan (sorry, boxmonster), there were certain aspects of the band that I never really liked.  Mostly, the “rat in a cage” lyrics and nasal vocals of the group’s singer and songwriter, ol’ Billy.  I was able to overlook them due largely to the wonderfully over-the-top guitars and thunderous drums of the newly-departed Jimmy Chamberlin.  That guy has my vote as one of the top rock drummers performing today.  Serious badass.

Anyway, after various member’s departures, break-ups, reunions under another name, and general dicking around, I lost interest in SP years ago.  Sure, I still crank “Geek USA” or “Jellybelly” on the iPod every now and then (I am right now, actually), but that’s really about it.  And until just recently, I was content to just ignore whatever else the group and its former members did.

Until this.

And this.

And this.

And this.

So yep.  Eat a dick, Billy Corgan.  You certainly seem to be working up an appetite of late.

My beloved Memphis was quite a pleasant place to be this Friday morning and early afternoon. The sun was shining, there was a nice breeze, even the temperature was playing along: a wonderfully out-of-season 60 degrees. I was driving to Home Depot to buy materials for my soon-to-be-started garden and listening to the Shins (Chutes Too Narrow, FYI), and you know, the moment did not entirely suck. In fact, it did not suck at all.

Then I started thinking about that moment in Garden State when Natalie Portman hands her over-sized headphones to Zach Braff and tells him to listen to the Shins, because “they will change your life.”  And I got to thinking that Zach Braff is a real big douchebag, because he wrote that film. OK sure, he was funny in Scrubs, but that’s all I can do for him.  Because every time I listen to the Shins, whom I like, I think of that movie, which I did not like.

Douche.

Hi everyone.  Sorry for the lack of activity lately.  Teaching two summer classes has been kicking my ass - I didn’t get a PhD to work 8-to-5 hours, buddy - and I haven’t had much time to devote to Music is My Radar.  But since summer school is almost done, I can crank out a few posts without fear of falling behind at work.

And, since summer has just recently arrived, with the attendant heat, humidity, and mosquitoes, I thought I’d update my series of posts of music that is tied to a particular season.  After all, what screams music more than trips to the beach, cookouts, and bikinis?

There’s only one problem: I hate summer.  Always have.  Maybe it’s my general preference for cool-and-dark rather than hot-and-bright.  Maybe it’s my aversion to sweating while remaining utterly fucking motionless.  Maybe I just like my flesh free of blood-sucking-insect-induced welts.  I don’t know.  As soon as the awakening warmth of spring gives way to the stultifying heat of summer, I want to hibernate until October.

The only bit of tunage I remotely associate with summer is the album Houses of the Holy by Led Zeppelin.  I’d say the linkage began in high school, when I first became obsessed with Led Zeppelin - still am, BTW - and discovered Houses, their fifth studio album.  I don’t think the connection is accidental; many of the songs sound downright, well, summer-y.  The opening song “The Song Remains the Same” practically breaks out of its own skin it is so eager to start, just like summer vacation after months of increasingly dull classes.  Yet another opening track that to me is anthemic.  Next, “The Rain Song.”  If I didn’t spend a good amount of time making out to this song in high school, then my life has been misspent. (Full disclosure: I didn’t, and it has been.)  I can still remember two of my female friends from high school - and yes, I tried desperately to date both of them - driving around in one car or another, singing the “oh, oh-oh-oh-oh” (man, that just doesn’t look right typed out) refrain from “D’yer Mak’er” at the top of their lungs.  Ah, teenage silliness.

I won’t go through the rest of the album track by track, but between “Over the Hills and Far Away,” “Dancing Days,” and “The Ocean,” it’s difficult to imagine a more perfect soundtrack to a most miserable season.

As always, comments and nominations are welcome.

My wife and I had a party this past weekend - perhaps our most successful yet - to celebrate the arrival of spring and some friends visiting from Atlanta, and to mourn the back-yard deck that never was. (Long story.) Anyway, many of our blogolicious friends were in attendance: godbless, upupdowndown, fearlessvk, hifidelity, and fieldguide. (BTW, referring to my friends by their blog handles rather than their names makes me more than a little uneasy. But then, so does beginning a sentence with “BTW.”) At one point late in the evening, as beer made room for scotch, fearlessvk and some others and I were sitting around the living room, chatting on about something or other, as a succession of people passed through my wife’s and my home office, intending to examine my CD collection. (I would say our CD collection, but most of what we have filed away is mine. I mean, technically, yes, it is ours, in the legal/marital-property sense, but that’s like saying that my wife’s yoga clothes are ours. Accurate, but misleading.)

Point of order: I do not feel like I have a particularly large CD collection. By my most recent and highly inaccurate estimate, I have about 750 CDs, including albums, EPs, singles, and box-sets. Yes, I realize that is probably hundreds more than the average bear, especially now that music is rapidly becoming a predominantly downloaded commodity, but compared to other people I know, 750 is paltry.

Granted, if you consider my entire music library - those 750-odd CDs, plus almost 23,000 mp3s and a few hundred vinyl records - I do have an ass-ton of music, but my CD library is only a part of that, albeit the fastest growing. As I’ve written before, I tend to buy CDs with near-reckless abandon, almost on a spur-of-the-moment basis. Today for example, I was listening to Icebreaker International, a pretty solid IDM group with at least one quite excellent CD. As I was listening I remembered how much I like the one CD of theirs I have, their first. So I decided to hop on amazon to see what other releases were available. The end result? I bought their second album. I chose a used copy (how thrifty I am with my profligate spending), so with tax and shipping included, it was about $16.

(I do feel like I got a good deal at least; the only other copy for sale was priced at $45. Such is the market and its price system.)

Hmmm … perhaps discussing my CD-buying habits is not the best way to convince people that my CD collection is actually quite modest. Point taken. But again, compared to past friends, one of whom, having discovered a new band, would go ahead and buy the entire CD catalogue of that band, not just the most recent or highest rated album, I’m doing OK.

Let’s see, what was I talking about … ah yes, the surveying of my CD collection by my friends. After disappearing into the office for a moment to have her own look at my library, fearlessvk emerged and proclaimed ‘Here is why I love ________ (me)’ and plopped a CD on the coffee table. It was Attack of the Killer B’s by Anthrax. Other than being flattered at my friend’s praise, I was mildly surprised, as I hadn’t seen the CD, let alone listened to it, in quite some time. Admittedly, it’s my only Anthrax CD; I never was a fan of speed metal.

So why do I own it? One song, really: “Pipeline.” I was in college at the time, listening to the campus radio station on my crappy yet loud stereo, when I heard this amazing cover of an old surf-rock song I used to listen to when I was a kid. I was most familiar with the Ventures‘ version of the song (and with an album cover like this, is it any wonder I developed an early appreciation of surf-rock?) but new that numerous other bands had covered it as well. The version I heard that day on the radio was louder, faster, crunchier, and all around more exciting than the relatively mild original. I was fairly well impressed, so I called the DJ and asked the provenance of the song. It was a cover version by Anthrax, and so I dashed out and bought the CD.

Soon I began to appreciate the other tracks on the CD: an excellent cover of “Parasite” by KISS; the manifesto cum two-step/thrash anthem “Startin’ Up a Posse;” and the first rap/metal song ever, “Bring the Noize.” But I never ventured into the Anthrax catalogue outside of this CD. In a way, it makes me feel like the “Easter Christians” I would silently mock when I was a regular church-goer: the people who attended services on holidays but never any other time.

This is an issue I’ve visited in a past post, that except for the poppy, catchy songs within a particular genre I would otherwise ignore, I tend to stick with very Beatlesque music. Don’t get me wrong: I do love me some metal, and spent quite a few years in my younger days listening to all manner of heavier music. But what I keep returning to are the songs that have that undeniable hook, chorus, or whatever. Metal for metal’s sake doesn’t cut it.

I can say that for a time, Anthrax was on regular rotation at Chez Moi, and for that I will always hold a special place in my heart for the group, if for no other reason their willingness to push the boundaries of what was then considered metal and their unwillingness to take themselves too seriously. Perhaps I’ll return to my limited Anthrax collection soon and have a nostalgic listen to Attack, but in the meantime, I have many other groups with whom I want to spend some time, including M83, Tapes ‘n Tapes, and the Shout Out Louds, all of whom have released new albums recently, and none of whom I’ve heard. And of course, as summer approaches, I’ll need to dust off my summer-themed music selections and trot them ’round my iPod for a time.

Anyway, thanks to fearlessvk for reminding me of a CD I used to love and now ignore, and for appreciating my paltry but growing CD collection.

Hello again. If you’ve been around me long enough, you know that my astrological sign has made its way into my self-identity. I’m a Virgo - have been all my life - and for as long as I can remember, I’ve exhibited many of the characteristics of a Virgo. For example, I remember one episode that occurred when my family moved from my birthplace (Huntsville, AL) to the western suburbs of Knoxville, TN. My mom and brother and I had just arrived at our new home - Dad arrived a day or two beforehand - and we set about unpacking and setting up our new life. Of course, I wanted to help (as much as a four-year-old can), so I was charged with the singularly important task of unpacking my toys. I guess I didn’t have any idea that we would need to put furniture in my room (the Bekin’s truck hadn’t arrived yet), so I set about meticulously arranging my toys in rows along the walls. A place for everything and everything in its place, I probably thought. I also remember insisting that my friends return each crayon to the exact spot in my box of 64 from which it came. I mean, if Binney and Smith put Periwinkle next to Cornflower when they packed my crayons, by God, it was meant to be there!!

Even as a child my propensity for organization was evident, and it has certainly continued to this day. Not surprisingly, this tendency for categorization and classification has been extended to my music library. (If you need evidence of this, have a look at some of the Smart Playlists I’ve created in iTunes. As you can see, I’ve created playlists for the year the song/album was released, its genre, and artist. I also have playlists for songs I’ve listened to once, twice, three times, more than three times, never, for songs with the beats-per-minute recorded and sorted by increasing tempo (my exercise/DJ playlist), and so on. Believe it or not, I get plenty of fiber.) I haven’t created any formal system for organizing my music by season - no, I’m not joking - but for years I’ve associated certain albums and songs with specific seasons, and their attendant changes in temperature, rainfall, humidity, length of day, and so on.

The seasonal association is made most often based on the time of year during which I first heard the recording in question, regardless of whether the music itself matches well to the season. I have no reason to argue, for example, that Bandwagonesque by Teenage Fanclub is a particularly wintry record; if nothing else, the group is known for its sunny, Beatles and Byrds-influenced pop songcraft, not chilly, isolated instrumentation or bleak vocals. But for whatever reason, I always break out Bandwagonesque around late November, once the trees are bare of leaves, the wind is chilled, and the hours of daylight are mere minutes. OK, the record does have a song called “December,” but that’s irrelevant. It just sounds like winter to me, and so it is a winter record.

But I don’t want to get ahead of myself and start listing my winter music before I have a chance to cover my spring music. After all, we are just weeks into the first season of the year, the zodiac wheel has not yet rolled into Taurus, and the pollen hasn’t started bugging me too much yet. So far, so good.

I won’t try to list or discuss all of my springtime favorites here, as I plan for this post to be part of a series (and I need to do yard work). But to get things going, here’s a handful of albums that mean spring to me.

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