30 Years, 30 Days: Day 14, 1993

Playing a bit of catch up tonight, so you all get two entries on the early 90s. This coming weekend is also full of shows and travelling, so I'll be just as behind in no time, don't you worry.

1993 marks the first entry where I will actually write at length about Nirvana. And the reason I waited is because In Utero is the first Nirvana album that I actually experienced right when it happened. The previous year was spent hearing all the hype and buzz and devouring all three records already out. In Utero is the Nirvana record that feels more like mine than the others because I was in middle school, barely a teenager, and this music is pretty much laboratory designed for that exact demographic.

If Nevermind is the commercial, shiny success in their catalog, In Utero is the record that sounds the most like a heavy, pop-oriented loud band. Gritty and rough around the edges, it was a surprise even to me that they could sound this dirty, having only really been aware of them for about a year. At 12 or 13, you really just react to loud music rather than pick it apart to see how it ticks. I know I did. I loved things loud, the louder the better. But also having come from a world of song structure and melody and hooks, Nirvana worked for me because they had all these things. This record contains some of the more out of control, punk-oriented moments ("Scentless Apprentice", "Very Ape", "Tourettes"), but also some of the humbler, toned down moments that offer a glimpse into how good a songwriter Cobain was at the time, and a indication as to his sadly unreached potential. "Pennyroyal Tea" and "All Apologies" are great songs because their roughly-sung melodies and slightly muted sound show that the intenstiy is still there without the screaming, grinding guitars and Grohl going all nuts on the kit.

This will forever be my favorite Nirvana record, as I'm sure it's a lot of other people's as well. It's the one I feel could have been released years later, in a different musical climate, and still done just as well. All the elements are truly starting to come together, and it's bittersweet because even when I listen to it now, I get a little sad that it's the best it will ever be.

As for Smashing Pumpkins' Siamese Dream, there's not much more I can say about the band that I didn't already go into in my bit about Gish on Day 12. This was the last studio album I ever really liked by them, and I know that they broadened their sound and got even huger as time went on, but that doesn't matter to me. I responded well to Siamese Dream, and to really no other Pumpkins since then.

To me, it's that continuation of the "loud-quiet" formula that still gets me. The opening of "Cherub Rock" still gets me every time: it starts pretty mid volume, almost a little jangly and you think, "Oh, good, some mid-tempo guitar rock." Then the rest of the layers of guitar cut in and the drums get all punchy and it erupts into a sonic wall of rock music. Songs like "Rocket", "Geek USA" and "Silverfuck" are great examples of what happens when a band takes the My Bloody Valentine approach to guitar layers and makes it a little more accessible. And songs like "Luna" and "Soma" are delicately hushed songs that show the other side of the Pumpkins, and it's a great side, a side of restraint and control to make something equally as powerful. And while I don't respond to this in quite the same way as I did at 13, I still get a lot of joy out of this record. That fuzzy guitar sound that they defined just never sounds the same played by anyone else.

And keeping in my theme of women in rock that I've touched on in previous entries, we have Liz Phair's first album, Exile In Guyville. I will admit, my biggest attraction to Liz Phair was that she cussed like a sailor and made no apologies about it. It was enticing to hear a young woman adopt what is stereotypically considered a man's role of rock musician, and take part in the great tradition of poetic profanity. She had a filthy mouth, and I loved it. Not even necessarily in a sexual sense, but in a powerful sense, in that she immediately grasped my attention with her music and her wry and matter-of-fact lyrics. She spoke frankly about her own sexuality and lovers, and not in an exploitative way, but in the same way that it gets portrayed by any male singer.

Phair was the beginning of my understanding of feminism in an equality sense. I didn't realize it at the time, and wouldn't really realize how my listening to many powerful women songwriters would shape my general attitude towards women (being raised by a fiercely independent and capable mother had a lot to do with that, too). But the seeds were planted, and I never viewed women in rock as a novelty or a ploy, even though they've been used for that purpose time and time again. It taught me to seek out the truly unique voices, and to take what I could from their stories and songs. I'm not saying I'm better than anyone because I embrace feminism and its ideals, but that powerful music by powerful women has definitely shaped my view not only of music, but of all of culture and society.

We'll close tonight with The Juliet Letters, an absolutely stellar record from Elvis Costello, backed up by the Brodsky Quartet, an honest-to-God string quartet. I didn't discover this record until early college, after I had digested a huge amount of Costello's catalog. It was so fresh and new to hear him writing songs not backed up by a rock band but by "classical" instrumentation. The songs rose and fell with a different kind of energy and flow then anything else I had heard him do. And rather than writing lyrics and melody in a classical style, you could hear how any one of the songs on the record could be performed in a rock setting. I really got to focus on his lyrics and attention to melody and arrangement in ways that often got overshadowed on his rock records by the band and the pop nature of it all.

And it's fantastic. It's very dramatic sounding, and Costello works with the new ensemble in a way that doesn't just seem like his way of trying to sell some records to a different genre audience, but because he truly loves the quartet and wants to work with them. I almost never think of this record when I compile a favorites list of Costello, but I always think of it when I think of an artist truly stepping into new territory and not trying to simply increase his profile. Instead, Costello strives to make a record separate from his Attractions persona, and he succeeds beautifully.

Whew. Two entries back to back in tiring, but I hope we're on our way to getting back on schedule.

-Dan

30 Years, 30 Days: Day 13, 1992

I've realized upon looking at a couple of past entries that I've come off as pretty negative about the major music industry in general. I don't know if I need to backpedal and explain the more specific conundrum I have about music as a business, or to just let it roll. To put it simply, I despise the practices while loving the end result. Some of my favorite records are carefully fine-tuned to sound the way they do, with a lot of non-musician input to make the record a "hit". Would they sound as good if the band was just left to its own devices with an engineer in a studio? Probably not. It's something to think about: every bit of commercial music you've ever listened to has been carefully crafted to sound the way it does, sometime sby the artists and sometimes by execs who want whatever sound will make money immediately. And the 90s are an excellent place to explore that, as bands that never would have been signed in the past suddenly have access to a lot of label money, but the label wants results and return, hence why it's called the "music business" and not the "music partnership of good vibes and grooves, man".

But I digress. 1992 was the year that a lot of alternative music was really breaking into the public consciousness. Basically, if I heard it in 1992, it was already known and praised and on its way to being a hit (if it wasn't one already). I don't know anyone my age who can claim with a straight face that they were listening to Nirvana's Bleach the year it came out in 1989. It just seems highly unlikely.

However, 1992 marks a year where I can unequivocally state that some of the records I did hear right when they came out. Like this first one:

Barenaked Ladies' Gordon was something I definitely remember listening to in 1992. One of my camp counselors made a tape for me (Remember taping things for people?) and I loved it to pieces. They were both incredibly funny and incredibly good at the same time, and my predilection towards things like Weird Al definitely put me in the right place. Gordon was a culmination of a very talented live band finally getting to put down a real record. It helped that they were Canadian, and the Canadian government does subsidize a lot of popular music with grants (for no real gain other than to showcase great Canadian music). They still do it to this day.

Gordon was just a pop-rock masterpiece to me. All its songs were listened to intently and pored over, it was one of the first times I ever really did that with a record. While BNL definitely portrays a relaxed, humorous attitude, their songs are very deep and very poignant at times. "The Flag" and "What A Good Boy" are the types of songs that should have been written by a band much older than them, but there you go. Even in their lighter songs, like "Enid" (a song about having a relationship with an older girl while still a teenager), there's a remarkable amount of intelligence as it reaches the last lines about how you could grow up and be all these grown-up things for the older girl (get a job, pay the phone bill, cut the lawn, cut your hair, cut out your cholesterol), but Steven Page simply ends the verse with "I could do it all for you /But I don't want to". Aside from it being a great sort of "fuck-you" line which appealed to the pre-teen me, it's also a great line because it's about that selfish time of life where you could be all these great, grown-up, mature things, but you'd rather not. You'd rather just young and keep trying to dodge all the expectations.

A quick little mention needs to be made about the album Little Earthquakes by Tori Amos, her first full-length. To be honest, I haven't listened to it in almost ten years, and if I did, it probably wouldn't mean the same thing. But Tori Amos, like Kate Bush, was one of the first powerful female songwriters in my life. I still remember where I was the first time I heard "Silent All These Years": in the furnished basement of a family friend with my brothers, watching MTV (which was a rare luxury for us, as we did not grow up with cable). I don't know what it was about that song that struck me, it couldn't have been the lyrical content and themes. It would be years before I started to decipher those. It was her voice, soaring like Kate Bush's, and the piano arrangement and all these elements together to make me stop and think, "Wow. This is a great song. It needs nothing else than to simply be a great song. I don't have to know where it came from, and it doesn't have to scream for my attention through loud guitars and a rebellious attitude. This song is just simply gorgeous and I am for a moment moved by it." I probably didn't think it in those terms, but I think that was probably the core of it. I went out and got it as soon as I could, and it remained one of my well-kept secret records to the outside world. It was hard enough being a skinny kid who wasn't very good at sports and other guy things, being a Tori Amos fan would probably have just made things worse. In high school, however, I met girls who loved Tori, and quite a few guys who had also hidden their love of her music. It was a great common ground between us, and began to etch on my brain that it was okay to like what you like, as long as it speaks to you.

Another quick mention needs to be made to Phish's A Picture Of Nectar, which was the real jump start to my love affair with the band. My best friend James lent me his copy sometime in early high school to try and convert me (at the time, I associated Phish with the athletic guys who used to wail on me, mostly because of my big mouth and inability to run fast enough). It worked. This album has everything: bluegrass, jazz, 70s style heavy rock, Latin, everything. Not only did I probably not give it back, I subsequently lost it, forcing me to buy another copy before 18. I still don't recall if I bought him a new one. James, if I didn't, I am truly sorry to deprive you of one of our favorite records, and I'll gladly burn you my copy. Which is hardly a substitute, I

know.

The thing that struck me so heavily about this record was that i felt like I was seeing through the outer layer of Phish, from the party, Dead-like touring atmosphere with its drug culture, and into the actual musicianship of the band, which has sustained my love for them ever since. Let the jocks get drunk and stoned to this, I'm sure I thought. I'm going to enjoy it because it is truly great, and requires no additional anything to receive full enjoyment. It's been my philosophy on music and drugs ever since.

I've ended up flipping a coin to decided the last record for 1992. And heads says it's Broken, Nine Inch Nails' EP with big flaming "N" on the cover. This record literally blew my freakin' ears off, it was so loud and primal and powerful and full of heavy guitars and masculinity. It's only five tracks (not counting the two hidden ones), and it is like being in a fistfight, except you don't get hurt and you actually feel a hell of a lot better at the end.

I could write paragraphs on the song "Wish", not for its lyrics, which are kind of awful despite being some of Reznor's better (the man can sing, the man can write arrangements and manipulate synths and drums like no one else, but the man write lyrics like teenage girl poetry), but for the sheer brutality of its sound. I could write a good paragraph on each of the subsequent songs as well. But I won't. Unlike Pretty Hate Machine, I don't cringe with embarrassment when I hear Broken now, at nearly 30. It is such a kick to listen to, and to be pummeled in the ears with sound of it all. It still sounds freakin' great, despite having been made on technology from almost twenty years ago. My suggestion for any fan of heavy music who has never heard Broken is to do so immediately. Labeled as "industrial" music, it transcends any label you can throw at it and just simply rocks loud and hard. And it's short, which is good, because it's hard to sustain that level of "being-pumped" for much longer.

I've been noticing my blog traffic has increased immensely since starting this series, and that makes me happy, because while I am definitely writing this for me, I am also writing it for others who lived through the music I lived through. Feel free to share your own stories and anecdotes about music that still means a great deal to you. Art can be a bonding point between people, and I'd love to hear from others about growing up in the 90s and music and life and all things in general.

Incidentally, a few records got left out here, most importantly REM's Automatic For The People, The Gin Blossom's New Miserable Experience, They Might Be Giants' Apollo 18 (their first record with a full band), and a special shout-out to Dr. Dre's The Chronic, which every white kid growing up in the 'burbs in the early 90s heard unless they had their ears stuffed full of some kind of dense material. And even still, the bass probably rattle through and you felt it. This was the record that showed the rest of the country that rap music was for everyone young, regardless of race, and it's a grand and wonderful place we live in after it.

-Dan

30 Years, 30 Days: Day 12, 1991

1991 can be categorized not necessarily as the best year of alternative music, but definitely the year where the commercial potential was truly grasped and subsequently cashed in on. All this meant nothing to me, of course, because at the age of 11 I was truly beginning to hear music as my own thing. It was becoming less of a background track to life and moving quickly into the foreground. A Walkman and headphones were almost always in my possession, I was constantly listening to music. Really, anything I could get my hands on would do, but the great breakthrough albums of 1991 were seeping in there as well.

Nevermind, Out Of Time, Bloodsugarsexmagik, Badmotorfinger and Achtung Baby were in heavy rotation over the next few years, and these are very important albums, not only in a public way but also to me in a personal way. But there are a few other gems of the year that I listened to voraciously, and they have definitely inspired me as a listener to diversify what I listened to. There would always be something to be found, often in unexpected places.

Take, for instance, the massively successful debut album from the Spin Doctors, Pocketful Of Kryptonite. First and foremost, being a comic book nerd, I was immediately drawn to the title. It was the first time I ever saw something from my peer-ridiculed world coincide with rock music: the oblique pop-culture reference. In truth, they were probably the first "jam-band" I ever listened to, a good few years before I would ever hear Phish. They were bluesy, funky and very up-tempo. Their songs were not dirges of depression and darkness, but straight-ahead rock, inspired by their forefathers (people like the Stones and Curtis Mayfield) and not at all apologetic about being a little out-of-date. I think that may be one of my favorite things about the 90s: in a rush to find the "next big thing", bands that were simply putting their spin on the classic-rock era were picked up as well and gave the otherwise bleak world of grunge and punk a little 60s and 70s shot in the arm.

In 1992, when this album was really making its impression on everybody, I can remember listening to the cassette constantly. "Little Miss Can't Be Wrong" and "Jimmy Olsen's Blues" were a fantastic revelation to me of how music can be incredibly fun and good-spirited, and that wallowing in your own angst and maladjustment was all fine and good, but a person needed to be happy some of the time. 1992 was definitely the summer of "Two Princes", and I will always associate the song with a summer by a lake in Western New York at camp and the first time I ever kissed a girl for real. Everyone's got their summer where they started finding themselves a bit (only to reinvent it time and time again over the next several years), and mine was the summer of the Spin Doctors.

The Smashing Pumpkins will forever be remembered by me as one of my largest disappointments in music ever (1995's Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness). They will also be remembered as one of my absolute favorite bands from 1993 until then. And I first heard Gish about the same time I heard Siamese Dream in 1993. I will definitely go into more on the latter when the time comes, but Gish deserves its own reflection as well.

Like My Bloody Valentine, Smashing Pumpkins were a wall of fuzzy guitar noise sculpted into coherence with pop hooks. More so with the Pumpkins, actually. What I love about Gish is that it sets the scene for the following album in terms of the "quiet-loud-quiet-louder" formula that would define their early work. And it's track listing is amazing: "I Am One" and "Siva", the first two tracks, were huge for me, mixing wildly chaotic guitar feedback with heavy blues riffs and some of the most bombastic drumming I've ever heard (Jimmy Chamberlin still remains one of my all-time favorite drummers). And the band just looked so darn cool: long hair, pale-skinned female bassist, Asian guitarist. They would be the very essence of cool for me for the next few years.

But one of the other big albums for me from 1991 was not released by a young, up-and-coming band, eagerly scooped up by a major label trying to find the next Nirvana. It was by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, already well established in my father's generation. The album Into The Great Wide Open is by no means their best album (although it was their first for Warner Brothers after their split with MCA), but it is my favorite mostly because of my dad. He played that record all the time, in the house, in the car, everywhere. He even used to do (I gotta be honest) a very poor impersonation of Petty, particularly on the title track. However, as a testament of genetics or upbringing or both, I also do that same sub-par impression myself. I have gotten a lot of things from my father (height, build, most of my face, my work ethic), but it's truly apparent to me that I am my father's son whenever I impersonate Tom Petty (or Neil Young, for that matter).

And to its credit, the record has some awesome songs on it. "Learning To Fly", "Into The Great Wide Open", "Too Good To Be True" and "Makin' Some Noise" are all great rockers. And the title track has one of my favorite "gotta-make-this-rhyme" verses:

"His leather jacket had chains that went jingle

They both met movie stars, partied and mingled

Their A and R man said 'I don't hear a single.'

The sky was the limit."

It's also one of my favorite Petty songs because it is a song about being a nobody, then being a somebody, and staying pretty optimistic about all of it. 1991 would bring us a lot of hope and hype of great young bands who careened onto the music scene with reckless abandon. And many of these bands would quickly become jaded and bitter and it would show in their attitude and their subsequent material. My favorite thing about Tom Petty (and I have a lot of them) is that he gained success while still keeping his wits and sticking to his guns about how he wanted to do things. He is honest, principled, hard-working, funny and has miles of integrity. Kind of like my dad, actually.

-Dan

30 Years, 30 Days: Day 11, 1990

Whoooo!!! We made it to a new decade, and more importantly, the decade of my musical taste really being formed. While I don't like to ally myself with any particular decade/genre, I cannot deny that the 90s were the decade where I heard a lot of music at the time it was actually coming out, so there were no preconceived notions or history or nostalgia to get in the way. And I really hold to the idea that that is the best way to hear things for the first time.

Upon making my preliminary list of records that have had a hand in defining my musical world-view, I realized that 1990 had way more records than any other year yet, and paring them down was going to be difficult. So there are quite a few omissions, and I'll just put them up here so you can have an idea of what I had to cut: Robyn Hitchcock's Eye, They Might Be Giants' Flood, Concrete Blonde's Bloodletting, Fugazi's Repeater, Jane's Addiction's Ritual De Lo Habitual, The Pixies' Bossanova, Galaxie 500's This Is Our Music and countless others. So what did I leave in?

Why, Primus' classic debut album, Frizzle Fry, for starters! There is a certain subset of dudes from the 90s who responded very well to the music of Primus, and I am definitely one of them. Someone played this record at summer camp when I was in 8th grade, and it changed the way I looked at music, especially bass playing in music, forever. I hadn't even picked up a bass yet, and wouldn't for at least a few years, and even when I did I never cited Les Claypool as an influence on my playing, but rather as a huge influence on my listening in general.

Basically, the bass guitar up this point had always been a background instrument to me. None of the bands I was really into yet were bass-heavy bands. With the exception of John Entwhistle and John Paul Jones, I couldn't even name you another bass player until Les. All of a sudden, there was this very high-to-mid ranged instrument that was insanely percussive and insanely melodic, and I had never heard anything like it before.

On Frizzle Fry, not only was the bass new and different, but Les' lyrics and delivery (sort of a Texan hipster-shitkicker type vibe, even though Les hails from California) were new. He sang about the weirdest things: fishing, puppies, wind-up toys, pudding, cereal, groundhogs, etc. Up to this point, songs were either about how great girls were, or how not great not being with girls was. The irreverent wit and monster chops of Primus was right up my early-teen alley, despite having no chops of my own or even the knowledge about how to gain said chops. The guitar playing was also out-of-this-world to me: Larry Lalonde always sounded like they never gave him the right backing track to play over in terms of his solos, he was just out there and it all worked and blended together in this harmonious, cartoon-like mess. As a lot of people get older, the grow out of their Primus phase, but luckily for me, I never did.

And speaking of insane chops: Phish. And speaking of people who want to hate on Phish: shut up. Phish's Lawn Boy is probably my most listened-to Phish album, I have distinct memories of some holiday trip to Lake George where the tape just repeated itself over and over in my headphones the whole time. There is so much to hear on this record, I used to focus on a different instrument with every listen, and then just repeat the process again.

I owe a huge debt to this band because it took me out of the idea that good music had to be written down ahead of time. This is where you start to lose people; the idea of "jamming" is usually pretty foreign to most people who don't play in a band, and often the core concepts of jamming are lost on those who do. It's not simply one guy soloing really well over the rest of the band laying down changes, it can be a constantly changing and shifting musical piece where everybody feeds off what everyone else is doing. I don't mean to sound so "hippie" about it, but that's what jamming is to me.

Songs like "Bathtub Gin" and "Reba" play like finely composed acid jazz, and lay the groundwork for when the band takes of on them live. Songs like "Oh Kee Pa Ceremony" and "My Sweet One" are short little moments of energy, also finely composed (Page's piano solo on the studio cut of "My Sweet One" is killer). And then there's a song like "Bouncing Round The Room", which is a perfect example of all that musical knowledge and skill being harnessed into a really great four-minute single, where everything fits perfectly, and nothing is too "out-there". The whole record is the sound of a band who is really discovering what they can do, and realizing that the possibilities stretch out a lot farther than they might have anticipated. It delves more into the improvisation that would make them legends, and paves the way for more records of equal parts spontaneity and painstaking composition.

To round out 1990, I bring up my first "Best of" record (or two records, actually). Both Devo's Greatest Hits and Greatest Misses continue to rock my world. I heard their cover of the Stones' "Satisfaction" on the radio, and it just floored me. They took a classic rock anthem and just didn't give a damn that they stood it on it's head. I had to hear more, but the band had a large number of albums by the early 90s, and I had not a large amount of spending money in the early 90s. Hence, the two compilations were purchased together, and I've never owned another Devo record since.

Devo was my introduction to a more synth based rock. The sugar that helped the medicine go down was their anti-establishment image and their unique melodies (both Gerald Casale and Mark Mothersbaugh had a very quirky singing style which I loved). They were from the middle of nowhere Ohio, and rather than wait for a scene to come to them, they built their own around songs about cavemen, homicidal radio DJs and de-evolution (the idea that we are actually regressing rather than progressing). It was, at its core, the most anti-jock thing I'd ever heard. Having spent much of my middle school years getting the crap kicked out of me by members of the athletic establishment (I was a late bloomer with a big mouth and a sense of fearlessness until the hitting commenced), I felt I was wired to like this.

I definitely like Greatest Hits as an album more than Greatest Misses, although the latter contains some favorites ("Clockout", "Mongoloid", "Timing X/Space Junk"). Songs like "Satisfaction", "Big Mess", "Through Being Cool" and "Jocko Homo": these were anthems about being a nerd and that being okay (not dissimilar to They Might Be Giants' effect on me). And it definitely warmed me up toward synth music and electronic instruments, which I dismissed through a lot of my early-teen years for not being "real". It's what a diet of Zeppelin, Sabbath and The Who will do to you. I'm so grateful for that eye-opener, as it's led me toward some great music I might not have given a chance otherwise.

I do realize I'm still behind a bit after the weekend's travels, and we'll get up to speed real soon before the following weekend's travels (Hartford and Boston this time). Writing about 90s seemed really easy to me at first, but it is proving to be more difficult because so much happened to me and to music. And there are tons of great things being left out. For example, "Groove Is In The Heart" by Dee-Lite came out in 1990, and that one tops my list of favorite party songs. So my thanks for everyone bearing with me, and thanks for reading and sharing your comments with me.

-Dan

30 Years, 30 Days: Day 10, 1989

I'll have to figure out a better way to keep writing this thing throughout the month while I go play shows on the weekends. I was on the road in New Jersey all weekend, and was just pressed to find the means and time to write. I'll come up with something.

1989 is truly the year that music starts to make the swing over towards what we would call "alternative rock" in the 90s. Debut releases from Nirvana, The Offspring and growing acclaim for bands like Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, The Pixies and the like are starting to turn heads on the major-label scene, and guys in suits start running around figuring out how to make money off it (God forbid we give it to the bands).

But my favorite records released in 1989 are, for the most part, not quite in the "alternative" spectrum yet.

I start with Lou Reed's New York, which is one of the finest solo albums he's ever released (also in the running are Transformer and Berlin, but they were released in the 70s). It's interesting that it came out in 1989 as the tide was starting to turn in music, because it is one of his most straightforward rock records ever. It's also his most cohesive concept records as well (both Berlin and The Raven fall a little short), because his theme is something so large and full of material: New York City. At the time I heard this record, I had never been to NYC (I think I was 13 or so) and everything I new about the city came from people like Lou Reed and Suzanne Vega and the early records of Bob Dylan. Reed not only pegs some topical issues, like the rise of Rudy Giuliani, but gets at the very core of living in New York as it is trying to reinvent itself and shed the dirty, dangerous and crime-ridden images of the 70s. He hearkens back to the New York of the 60s and 70s, but does not dwell in it as the best times ever. He acknowledges its faults in songs like "Dirty Blvd" and "Busload Of Faith", and I've always liked that about this record: it's reflective without being nostalgic. I've always found nostalgia to pretty much be the death of any forward progress, and Reed would definitely progress and make many more records (though none of them quite as good as this one).

To continue in a non-grunge vein, I also have a huge spot in my heart for Chris Isaak's Heart Shaped World album. I came to Chris Isaak in a big way while in college, looking for good country music and things styled after it. Isaak has a voice as big as Roy Orbison, and his guitar

playing is a cross between slick LA studio work and the twangy honky-tonks that inspired it. People always remember "Wicked Game" from this record, as well as the resulting music video. And that's a good place to start, because it's a killer song. But the rest of the album is equally excellent, with songs like "Don't Make Me Dream About You", "Forever Young" and "Wrong To Love You" being some of my particular favorites.

Isaak's record marks to me a sort of changing of the guard in terms of popular music. 1989, and to a point 1990, are the last years where pop music that was inspired by what many consider the core of rock music (country, blues, rockabilly, etc.). From 1991 on, the main inspirations seem to come from hard 70s rock, punk from the UK and America from the late 70s to the 80s, and the heavy electronic club music from the UK in the 80s. There are a lot of statements you can make about this: music isn't as good now because we've "lost out roots", or conversely, music got much better once the blatant ties to the classic era were shed and mainstream music got more experimental and aggressive. I don't really come down on one side or the other, and I think that to do so is extremely limiting. I love classic era rock n' roll, but I came of age during the "alternative" revolution of popular music, so that music will forever be in my psyche as music made for me in particular.

As the "thing that is not the like the others", The Pixies' Doolittle is on the top of the pile as a favorite record made in my lifetime. I must have been in 8th grade the first time I heard The Pixies (I came to them via The Breeders, who were fronted by Pixies' bassist Kim Deal, and whom I would nurture a major crush on for most of my teenage years). From the first track, "Debaser", this was a record that was both intelligent and experimental, while also being loud as

all hell and frantic. Frank Black's screaming vocals mixed with Deal's high monotone are a wonderful match, and Joey Santiago's approach to lead guitar work is a major building block in my playing. This was a record that was different because, among many other things, there were no real guitar solos. Santiago would just kind of riff through heavy distortion and effects, making no attempts at a traditional rock solo. As a fledgling guitar player, this was good: I could learn this, I could do this, I didn't have to study scales for hours and hours. You could let the sonic landscape dictate your sound, and not have to be entirely reliant on your technical skill. I hold this idea to heart to this day.

Doolittle just screamed for your attention. The songs were short and catchy, but not really ties in anything you'd ever heard before. There are elements of Mexican imagery, references to surrealist art, all over a screaming grind of guitars and a steady as a rock rhythm section (someone had to hold the bottom end down). "Here Comes Your Man", "Wave Of Mutilation", "Monkey Gone To Heaven": these are the more accessible tracks. For the lunatic ramblings and out-of-left-field guitar work, you have "No. 13 Baby", "Tame", "Crackity Jones" and "I Bleed". A lot of my peers remember the beginnings of the "alternative" rock movement in terms of Pearl Jam, Nirvana and Alice In Chains. I think it started more accurately with The Pixies.

The entries are gonna get more and more rambling as we move into the 90s, it was my Woodstock, my Altamont, my Isle of Wight, all those classic music moments that the older generations talk about, except for me. I invite all who read to wax reflective about the 90s, and think about the records you heard as a teen and how they shaped you as a listener as well as a person in general. But no nostalgia, please. Things were great in the 90s for music, and things are still pretty great now, with countless bands of extreme talent having arisen in the beginning of the 21st century. Where do you think they heard the music that inspired them?

-Dan

30 Years, 30 Days: Day 9, 1988

We're almost there. Almost to the years where I actually started experiencing records the year they came out. Which really lends them no more or less validity than the other records I've already written about, but definitely gives me a lot more personal history to draw from. Still, 1988 had a slew of great releases, too numerous to get to all of them. But here are a few.

Isn't Anything by My Bloody Valentine. I have one word to say about MBV and that word is SKRREEEEEEOOOOOOWWWWW, WHICH IS OF COURSE THE SOUND OF KEVIN SHIELDS' GUITAR. Sorry, but you pretty much always need to shout to make yourself heard over the sound of Shields' guitar. My Bloody Valentine are one of those bands that has influenced me so heavily that it's hard for me to imagine a time where the music wasn't already part of my brain. Isn't Anything doesn't break up for me in terms of songs or sides of an album, it's really just one huge noise symphony. And on Isn't Anything, it's the kind of noise that's lulling more than it is shocking or abrasive, which is something I highly enjoy. Any jackass with some overdrive and a Marshall 4x12 can make noise. It takes a certain kind of musician to "tame" the noise, and by tame, I mean adapt to its chaotic nature. So much of this record is guitar sounds that seem like at any moment they could just turn absolutely awful. But Shields' harnesses the power of his sound and lets it run around loose for a second before reining it back in and starting again. This coupled with Blinda Butcher's just-rolled-out-0f-bed vocal style, it's a juxtaposition made in heaven. I used to fall asleep to this record in high school (if you put it on just quiet enough, it's like one of those white noise machines, but melodic), and I often put it on when in transit for a long time to just zone out and forget where I am for a while.

I did get to the following record only maybe four years after it came out. Nothing's Shocking by Jane's Addiction was the first record I ever bought that felt like I had just bought porn. Highly sexual in nature, and with a rather shocking cover to boot, this was one I felt I had to hide from my parents and brothers because maybe this time I had pushed the envelope too far. There are songs about serial killers and sex, showering and sex, summer and sex, pigs and sex, etc. The refrain from one of the standout tracks (about Ted Bundy, "Ted... Just Admit It") is "Sex is violent!" repeated over and over amidst the squeal of Navarro's guitar, wailed in that almost-cracked high register that was Perry Farrell.

The album was also full of phenomenal playing, which even I appreciated at age 12. The bass line to "Pigs In Zen" is still one of the first things I play when I pick up an electric bass, and "Jane Says" is the most singable portrait of a heroin addict you'll ever hear. There was just so much power and rhythm in the album, it was funky without really having a discernible pocket. It was punk without being repetitive and mindless. It was sexual while being deranged and quite violent at times. If Violent Femmes was my album of sexual frustration, Nothing's Shocking was my album that showed me what could very possibly occur afterwards. But rather than being erotic or even stimulating to me, it was a gloriously raw and aggressive sound that just rocked out hard, and at 12, that was probably for the better. Who knows what I would have thought if I had understood most of that record?

A quick shout-out is due for a few things. First, to REM's Green, which was one of the first albums I ever bought on CD. It contains an excellent mix of mandolin and acoustic led songs along with the up-tempo rockers that would come to encapsulate the band. Second, to Living Colour's Vivid, one of the first times my little suburban dwelling, WASP-ish ears ever encountered an African American singing anything that wasn't hip-hop, soul, jazz or blues. Vivid continues to blow my mind by combining really heavy monster metal riffage with super tight funk grooves. Seriously, find me one decent person who doesn't dig "Cult Of Personality", and i will run them over with a car. It also contains the finest Talking Heads cover I've ever heard ("Memories Can Wait").

And third, and lastly, the soundtrack to the film Cocktail. Yes, the Tom Cruise bar tending movie. To this day, I have never seen much more than ten minutes of that movie at a time, but I loved the living hell out of the soundtrack. Having already digested a pretty stead Beach Boys diet, I was so incredibly excited when my older cousin Suzy bought it for me when I was about 8 or 9. It had a Beach Boys song I had never heard! It also contained heavily produced bluesy bands like Georgia Satellites, Ry Cooder and the Fabulous Thunderbirds. It all sounded so catchy and grown up, who was I to resist it? I played that tape until it broke. I never bought another, because you're only nine years old for so long, and I probably moved on. Still, there is a spot in my heart with the Cocktail logo tattooed on it in giant neon letters, just like the album cover.

-Dan

30 Years, 30 Days: Day 8, 1987

I'm going to be real: 1987 was a rough year to find material from. Aside from the huge hullabaloo of both Madonna and Michael Jackson launching two of the biggest tours the world had ever seen, not a lot really came out that had a huge effect on me. So I have drummed up a couple of choices that, while being huge in my personal shaping, are pretty darn obvious. And here they are.

The Joshua Tree by U2. I feel my friend and fellow picker-of-musical-bones John would probably stop speaking to me if I didn't include this, and it works out, because I would probably stop speaking to me if I didn't include this, too.

I had The Joshua Tree on cassette at about age 11. I proceeded to wear it out and buy another one, which I also wore out. I would then buy it on CD at least three times in my lifetime, losing each copy to lending out or to the void where most things you lost as a teenager end up. If something were to happen to my current copy today, I would most definitely buy another copy tomorrow, despite having not listened to it for some time. Now that's importance.

As for the meat of the record, the why and the wherefore, I have to simply default to what most people have already said about the record. It soared. And so did I. It was also a much easier record to wrap my head around. The songs were much simpler, inspired by roots music rather than trying to recreate their own 70s punk and rock influences. The politics were less heavy. Or maybe they just seemed less heavy because the songs were about a lot of things that rang true to being an America: songs about the landscape, its leaders, hope and dreaming of better things. I will not for a minute claim that I had my finger on the American dream in 1991 when I first heard the record, but all the mythos and history of growing up native born in America definitely put you in the right mindset to relate with the record.

It's also the record where The Edge's guitar playing become less of a trick, dictated by limited musicality, and becomes his Thing with a capital "T". As I've stated before, I still base most of my playing on The Edge in some way. His guitar playing always seemed so powerful and beyond me at a young age. As I grew older, and particularly as I picked apart the elements of The Joshua Tree as a musician, I realized how darn simple it all was. But none of that diminished its power or hold on me, leading me toward the path that simple, done well and done interestingly, was all you really needed.

In a blatant case of repeating an artist two days in a row, I offer up Document by REM, released just one year after Life's Rich Pageant, which I spoke of yesterday. I don't know what it is about this era of REM that affects me more than others. Both these albums are my go-to albums when

I'm in an REM kind of mood. It was a time where their sound was expanding immensely, going beyond the muted jangle-pop of Murmur and Reckoning and starting to sound like, well, an honest to God rock band. All the elements that had been building up in their arsenal (Stipe's lyrics and trademark wail, Mills' excellently executed harmonies, Buck's romp-stomping Rickenbacker riffs, Berry's simple yet powerful beats) seem to really come alive on Document. It's fitting that it's their last release on an independent label: REM had outgrown college radio.

This is not a bad thing, to outgrow a humbler kind of fame. It's what bands get into the business to do. To not get there wold reveal more about their shortcomings then any "stick-to-your-guns", "indier than thou" attitude that permeates punk and the indie rock of the 90s would prove that they were still "down to earth". I love that REM sounds bigger and more confident on this record, and that the hit "The One I Love" was such a success. They were due. And if they weren't due at this point, they probably would have gone the way of a lot of other great bands of the 80s college rock renaissance and simply faded into the woodwork, popping up on iconoclasts' "Overlooked Gems of the 80s" lists and whatnot. They simply did not deserve that. Many other bands have broken huge who don't really deserve it, so rather than bemoan our favorite underground acts for grabbing at the brass ring, we should be thankful that amidst the sea of mediocrity that is the popular music canon, a few managed to sneak in who had something to say and a truly unique way to say it.

So maybe 1987, despite not being chock full of material for me, stands tall because it brings up some important ideas of what makes popular music popular, and how the machine of the music industry churns on, pushing bits and things up to the surface for us to "ooh" and "aah" at. And how every so often, it's deserved. U2 definitely took a departure from their fiery Irish politics and began to take on fiery world politics with The Joshua Tree, and many would turn up their noses and cry sell-out. I don't necessarily judge the sentiment, there are plenty of underground faves for me that I've lost interest in once they started having a massive, faceless audience (Modest Mouse and The Shins, to name a couple). But rather than bitch and whine about my favorite bands being unsung and under-appreciated in their lifetime (I could list about fifty off the top of my head right now), I take comfort that some of them managed to crack through to the next level and delight people all over. Because if music and bands can be a bonding point between people, it helps to have more people to bond with.

-Dan

30 Years, 30 Days: Day 7, 1986

You know what I remember about 1986, more than anything? More than the demise of Black Flag and The Dead Kennedy's? More than the death of Cliff Burton? More than the first inductions to the Rock N' Roll Hall of Fame? I cared about none of these things in 1986, but do you know what I did care about with every ounce of my six year old self? I'll tell you what: The Monkees.

I know, I know. How can a person who has name checked XTC, Kate Bush, Violent Femmes and many other hip canonical 80s recording so far want to spend any line space at all writing about The Monkees? I'll make what would most likely be classified as an embarrassing confession: I was a Monkees fan for years before I really came to listen to The Beatles. 1986 marked the 20th anniversary of the band, and it was all over the radio (at least where I grew up). My babysitter, Heather, was about 14 and obsessed with The Monkees, so therefore I became obsessed with The Monkees. Here's the thing: you can't control the first bits of pop music you come into contact with. In a perfect world, we'd all discover Sgt Pepper at age 5 and everything would fall into place from there. My earliest pop music memories consist of sitting in the kitchen with Heather making tapes of Monkees' songs from the radio for me. "Last Train To Clarksville", "Pleasant Valley Sunday", "Daydream Believer": these were my first steps into "rock" music. Every time I hear a Monkees' song, it's takes me back to being six and dancing around the living room like an idiot. I love it.

But in terms of the "serious" albums of 1986, I have to start with REM's Life's Rich Pageant. This is the first REM record to enter the series, and will not be the last. REM was a band I discovered in middle school, right at the height of their major label successes. I loved Michael Stipe's slightly nasal voice and the glitter and jangle of Peter Buck's guitar and the positive nature of their music. As I grew older and began to decipher Stipe's lyrics, I would learn that thematically this wasn't necessarily the case. They were one of the first bands I ever listened to that mixed overtly up-tempo music with very dark themes, sugarcoating them so you would swallow them immediately and let them bloom in your brain as you listened to it more and more.

"Fall On Me" remains in my top five REM songs, and high on the list of all-time favorites. the interplay between Mills and Stipe during the chorus is sublime, and it's one of the many songs that really shows off Stipe's range, from mid-range to high and piercing. "Cuayahoga" would become one of my favorite words long before I knew it was a river in Ohio, and Mills once again compliments Stipe in the chorus perfectly. There are so many things that make REM great, I won't blow them all in their first appearance.

And as long as we're glorifying 80s college rock, we cannot continue any further until we acknowledge the debut album from one of the most creative, pop-oriented bands I've ever heard. They Might Be Giants (or also known as "The Pink Album") is the most anti-rock album to be considered a rock album. It's full of consumer-grade synthesizers, drum machines and an accordion, for God's sake! But it has served as a soundtrack to millions of self-proclaimed freaks, geeks and nerds, and it definitely was for me. While a lot of rock music was busy making you feel not as cool as the guys singing it, one look at John Linnel and John Flansburgh and know that a) they are just as geeky as you and b) you might actually be able to kick their ass.

And lyrically, it's a high-minded nerd fest. Full of wordplay, double meanings, discrete references and the like, it is truly an album for people who spent more time reading books and listening to records than going outside, maybe building up a semblance of athleticism. This is not to discredit the fan base or the Johns, but to simply state that if rock music is truly for everyone, then someone had to make music like this in order to fulfill the promise. And as far as highlights go, this album is full of them: "Don't Let's Start", "Put Your Hand Inside The Puppet Head", "Nothing's Going To Change My Clothes", "Rhythm Section Want Ad", it goes on and on. This was the first record I ever heard that seemed to make it okay to be a nerd, or to have a mind of my own and use it, and to be amused at humor that wasn't at someone's expense or a standard "joke-punchline" format. I would devour everything TMBG put out for years, as they would continue to get better and better as players as well as songwriters. Their "descent" into kids' albums may have seemed like a middle-aged sell-out to many, but I've always seen it as the Johns just trying to inject a little intelligence and dignity into a genre that is pretty much designed to sell toys, when it should be educating while entertaining. Kudos to them.

A couple honorable mentions for today come straight from the "My Parents Played This" file, which while not as thick as other files, contains some really important music. Both Paul Simon's Graceland and Huey Lewis and the News' Fore! were played heavily in the house from 1986 and on, and both shaped me immensely. Graceland showed me a mixture of pop rock melody and world music didn't have to a niche record, it could just be great and catchy and take you out of the usual formulas of rock music. And Fore! showed me that you can be one of the most popular band's of your time, and make music that is both incredibly accessible and incredibly good at the same time. Of course, I did not come to these realizations at six, I just played these albums over and over again until I absorbed everything a six year old can absorb from music not written for them. So I must doff my cap to my folks again for bringing some excellent music to me at a young age. The record player wasn't always spinning in my house, but when it was, it was worth hearing over and over again.

-Dan

30 Years, 30 Days: Day 6, 1985

So here's the thing. I was in my bed, getting ready to fall asleep when I realized the thing I forgot to do tonight. This whole blog series is as much an exercise in discipline for me as it is a brief amusement for those who read it. And here we are. Consider this a kind of shotgun version of the day's musings.

Album number one: Hounds Of Love by Kate Bush. I was first alerted to Kate Bush's existence through my father's constant spinning of Peter Gabriel's So, which features her as a vocalist (Gabriel has an amazing knack to pick female vocalists). I was always drawn to the particular sound of her voice; it was full and rich while not being operatic or overly dramatic. I came across Hounds Of Love years later, and it's one of my favorite "solo-female-singer-with-full-production" albums ever.

While there are a ton of elements on the record that clearly make it dated to 1985 (the synth sounds, the fake strings, the drum machines, etc.), Kate Bush's songs and delivery just transcend all of it. "Cloudbursting", "Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)", "The Big Sky" and "The Hounds Of Love" make up most of the first side, and I've got to be honest, I had a hard time making it past the first side for a long time. To tell you the truth, I can't recall most of the latter tracks, which is not to say they are not also amazing. She just has an absolutely outstanding songwriting skill, coupled with equally great arrangements that make each song ethereal while also very grounded and resonant with me personally. I truly understand why males (like the lead singer for Placebo) choose to cover her material; it's just straight up good, no questions. Kate Bush was one of the early female singers that broke down my walls of a male-oriented music world.

Lastly for the evening is Husker Du's New Day Rising. I am fully aware that they were well into their career at this point, but this was the first album I ever heard of them, sometime around 24 or so. It was a real bonding point between me and my much older bassist at the time that we

both had a huge love for Husker Du (sorry, I can't make the keyboard make those little dots above the "u" in "Du"). It was fast, it was brutal, it was loud, and most of all it had melody. They always got lumped in with a lot of early 80s underground acts: Black Flag, The Minutemen, The Replacements (who had moments of melody early on, but I wouldn't seek them out until after I heard Paul Westerberg's solo work). I had huge respect for a band that could play like an 80s punk/hardcore band, yet still retain a sense of melody and coherence in their songs. Being a big Buffalo Tom fan, I could see where the Husker Du influence had taken the band, and it made me appreciate them even more.

If I had to pick one song, it would be "I Apologize", a real barn burner of a power pop track. That's the thing; I don't lump Husker Du in with the early 80s hardcore scene (despite this record being engineered by Spot, Black Flag's engineer, and being released on SST records), but with the growing series of power pop bands into the 90s (Bob Mould's solo work helped color that was well). It was rough around the edges, and was incredibly noisy, but underneath all the grit and chaos were finely crafted pop songs. And that's what I'm always looking for: a well written, melodic song that cuts to the core. "I Apologize" is possibly the most friendly song on the whole record, and it's chorus hook is fantastic. It almost seems like the came across the "pop" part of it by complete accident, but knowing how Mould would write after the demise of the band, you know that's not true. It sounds just as good played on a solo acoustic guitar as it does on the record, and that's the key to a really good song: arrangement and instrumentation don't really matter if the soul of the song is catchy and resonant. I have an appreciation for all of Husker Du's records, but this is the one I would keep over all the others if forced to make the choice.

I gotta say, I almost went to sleep thinking "I'll just write two entries tomorrow." But that would be against the whole spirit of this undertaking, and would simply open the door to more lapses and laziness. So here's hoping that it is enjoyed, and maybe makes you take a closer look at records you might not have thought much about.

-Dan

30 Years, 30 Days: Day 5, 1984

A happy Labor Day Eve to everyone. I hope tomorrow finds you shirking whatever labor is thrust upon you on a daily basis, and instead hoisting your favorite adult beverage of choice in front of meat being cooked over fire. But I will be hard at work, continuing to document years in music that I was still to young to appreciate firsthand. Just wait until we get to the 90s.

As a bit of historical context, 1984 was the year that a few bored wives of politicians decided they didn't want their daughters listening to Purple Rain, so they formed the PMRC (Parents Music Resource Center). I never really questioned why a lot of the records I bought in the 90s had those "Parental Advisory" labels on them, by that time it seemed like a real badge of honor on a recording. If it had the sticker, I was so intrigued about what could be on it that was so "offensive" that you had to be "warned" before buying it. So really, what did these people accomplish?

None of the records I can think of from 1984 that have affected me bear these labels, which goes to show you don't have to be right-out edgy and crass to be relevant.

I Often Dream Of Trains by Robyn Hitchcock is one of my favorite records by one of my

absolute favorite people. I discovered Hitchcock amidst the stacks of my college radio library, and I never looked back. He was so amazingly quirky, and yet so very earnest and capable of writing beautiful songs. He has an amazing sense of humor combined with a dry British wit, I couldn't help but be drawn to him in the same way I was drawn to Monty Python and the Beatles' films of the mid 60s.

Bookended by two very haunting piano pieces, Trains is full of off-kilter imagery, pointed sarcasm and brilliant songwriting. The second track on the album, "Sometimes I Wish i Was A Pretty Girl", is a stomper of a track, designed to be slightly repulsive while being a real sing-along number (I get it in my head regularly). "Uncorrected Personality Traits" is a hillarious acapella number about the dangers of indulging children, as they will grow into maladjusted adults:

"If you give into them every time they cry,

They will become little tyrants, but they won't know why.

Then when they are thwarted by people in later life,

They will become psychotic

And they won't make an ideal husband of wife."

Brilliant, just brilliant. The title track is a lovely song about the never ending shuffle of the train systems in London, making it a very surreal love song/lullaby if you're in the right mood. I didn't come across the record until after 1997, when it was reissued (it's since been reissued in 2007 as well), and the reissue contained two of my favorite Hitchcock songs that never saw the light of day on an album: "My Favourite Buildings", about London losing it's identity amidst Thatcher and "I Used To Say I Love You", one of the best "love songs" Hitchcock's ever written ("I used to say I love you/ I meant it as a threat/ Or maybe as a promise/ To see what I could get").

The joy of a live album is that it can act as the best introduction to a band you could possibly get. It's usually packed with the "hits", and it's delivered in what is hopefully the truest and most dynamic manner a band can present itself: live on stage. Stop Making Sense by Talking Heads was my first introduction to the band, and it's where I always send new converts. All the early 80s classics are there: "Burning Down The House", "Psycho Killer", "Once In A Lifetime", "Girlfriend Is Better", the list goes on and on. I don't know if at 16 I would have embraced the angular, jerky rhythms of their early work. Instead I needed to hear it a bit poppier and a hell of a lot larger than those early records (I shortly came to love all their material, don't you fret).

I mean, you could just feel the giant, sold out crowds on that record, and feel the intensity and excitement of the tour, which was as much a giant, walking, talking modern art installation as well as a rock show. "Psycho Killer" was my favorite song up until about 17, and one of the first songs I ever performed live by myself in front of an audience (my best friend James and I hijacked the musical act at our senior year send-off and performed our own version to our classmates). The whole record has all the elements of a great live record: new, dynamic arrangements of old hits with a couple of newer tunes sprinkled in, while capturing the intensity of what it was like to be there. And Bernie Worrell's keys are a huge addition, as well as Adrian Belew on guitar to help make the zealous production of their last record come to life on stage. When I was in college, the record was re-released with a handful of extra songs that were in the film, but I always felt the newer version was too long and cluttered. Stop Making Sense was always fine the way it was, as a phenomenal introduction to one of my favorite bands.

We're going to stop at two tonight. Many other great things came out in 1984 (Reckoning, Ocean Rain, The Smiths, The Unforgettable Fire, This Is Spinal Tap), and they all live in my collection on my shelves (that I can peer at just over the top of the laptop). But in the case of REM, Echo and the Bunnymen and The Smiths, they all come into play in the long run, so be patient.

A couple of people have noted to me that I seem to be very Brit-heavy in a lot of my selections. I don't really have an answer (or an apology) for that. English music has been huge in America for decades, and who am I to resist it's well-mannered charms? My only real reason I can come up with is that as a teenager, you're yearning to escape your current situation and if you can do that with music from across an ocean and not have to leave your room, so much the better. British teens have been doing it with our records as well. And the most influential music you will ever hear in you life comes through your ears before you're 21, so embrace the fact that you pretty much developed your taste in music long before you developed your taste for beer.

-Dan

30 Years, 30 Days: Day 4, 1983

I'm going to be up front here. I just spent most of the day in the studio with my band making an awesome recording, so my head is a little more focused on music I'm making right now as opposed to older music. However, without these older records, who knows if I would have ever picked up a guitar or had the guts to actually write my own songs. So perhaps there is something valid in this exercise: you can't know where you are if you don't know where you came from.

Before I start my daily monologue, today on 1983, I'd like to point out that on September 30th (my birthday) of 1983, none other than T-Pain, the auto-tune junkie himself was born. I think he's in jail right now, which just goes to show you where all that pitch correction will get you.

I haven't talked about the following artist yet, and he's a big one for me. Frank Zappa completely changed how I thought about music, composition and pop writing. He completely removed himself from the sentimentality of songwriting and based his writing on what sounded pleasing to the ear. And while his coldness and disconnect would make him an icy, no-nonsense persona in music, I do enjoy the intellectual approach to music at times.

But when talking about The Man From Utopia, you can easily put all the comp major geekery aside and realize it's an absolute freak show, full of gross-out humor and the often spot-on political observations. My freshman year roommate Greg was a huge Zappa fan and played me this record one evening. Needless to say, I was hooked, and was moved to hook everyone I knew who had even an inkling of taste onto this record. On top of the amazingly technical playing of Zappa and his uber-rehearsed band, it was a laugh riot. An excerpt from "The Dangerous Kitchen":

"Sometimes, the milk can hurt you

If you put it on your cereal before you smell the plastic con-tain-er

And the stuff in the strainer

Has a mind of it's oh-own!!"

All this is being sung while he is matching his vocal part (which he is completely making up on the fly, mind you) on the guitar, in a kind of Slam Stewart type of way (Stewart was a hot jazz era bassist who used to match whistling with his bowed bass solos). I won't even repeat most of the lyrics from my all time favorite, "The Jazz Discharge Party Hats", it's not really for mixed company (or most company, really).

Aside from being incredibly funny, and incredibly technical, The Man From Utopia was an eye-opener in the way that Zappa would turn rock songs into little short plays. There were multiple vocalists to represent various "characters", the music would move with the action and it seemed like a performance piece as much as a rock number. I've always enjoyed that, the sense of theatricality and absurdity in Zappa's work. You can approach him from many angles, but I feel the easiest is to approach him for his "funny cuz' it's weird" and "funny cuz' it's true" moments.

Switching gears, I bring to the table Swordfishtrombones, my favorite Tom Waits album of them all. There are basically two kinds of Tom Waits songs: ballads and rants. Guess which kind I like the best? (If you guessed rants, you win.)

There are a good share of the more ballad type songs on Swordfishtrombones: "Johnsburg Illinois" is a heartfelt ballad to his girl's hometown and "In The Neighborhood" is a brass band led slice of life from a rundown urban block. But the best tracks on this record are the straight-up, howl-at-the-moon ravers. The opening track "Underground" gives you that full, gruff bellow that Waits is so known for, and "16 Shells From A Thirty-Ought Six" is a road song for the truly disturbed. With this being the first record Waits produced himself, it's the first real inkling that listeners would get into his true intentions as a songwriter and performer. Marimbas, odd percussion and shrill pipe organs replace his piano and strings of previous records.

In it's insanity, there's a sort of coherence to this record. All of Waits' characters in the songs could be him, or they could be people he knows, or they could be just based on stories he heard other gin-soaked folks tell at the bar near closing time. But it all fits in his world of hustlers, suckers, tramps, low lives and travelers. I love this world, precisely because I know nothing of it or anything like it. The greatest thing about Waits is that he could be pulling your leg the whole time, but the tales he tells are just so vivid that you could care less if you found out the truth, and would probably choose not to believe it anyway.

Last, and the exact opposite of least, is U2's War, one of the first rock records I ever owned. Everyone has their own memories of this record, or of their first U2 record, and for about three years, I considered this to be the best record ever made, period. I still get shivers when I heard The Edge's guitar tones, the soaring high notes of the riff on "Sunday Bloody Sunday", or the chugging rhythm of a delayed Stratocaster on "New Year's Day". As a guitar player rating his betters, The Edge ranks right up there for me.

This was also one of the first records about political violence and oppression I'd ever really heard (or been able to grasp at all), and it caused me to learn more about the IRA bombings and all the crap that had been going on in Ireland for the previous decades. Bono's lyrics, protesting against war, violence, nuclear arms and oppression; these were things that began to shape my young mind as a political thinker. There were places in the world where people died in the street every day, due to age-old conflicts between governments and its people. It was quite an opposition to my middle-class upbringing in America, and when you're 12 and live in comfort, you tend to latch onto stories and themes of tragedy. Or at least I did. War was my James Joyce, my first glimpses into Ireland as a country of amazing music and people, as well as a country still freshly scarred by war and violence.

When you grow up on a steady diet of music, it's no surprise that the music informs you as a person, even more so than the direct factors around you (geography, parents, social status, etc). My parents did an excellent job of raising me, and rather than instill into me their particular values and mores as the be-all-end-all, they instead gave me the tools and well-rounded mind to go out into the world and find myself my own way. They didn't play me War or Berlin or Bob Dylan; they let me find them on my own, and inform myself however I saw fit. I think that's a greater gift, and while I've often envied the children of hippie parents who grew up surrounded by rock culture and music from the cradle, I also think a lot of those kids ended up going to college for business management, currently vote Republican and think Glen Beck "may be onto something". So, a big thanks to my folks, Robin and Jim, for letting me find myself amidst the stacks of CDs, vinyl and cassettes, and for having every faith that I would find the right things.

-Dan

Me at about 2 months with my dad, Jim

30 Years, 30 Days: Day 3, 1982

1982 was the year of Thriller. Everyone loves Thriller. I love Thriller. It's one of the few albums I can put on in the van with the band and everyone is happy. Thriller plays like a "Best Of", except it was a studio album. Which is awesome. That is the last that will be said about Thriller. I'll talk about a different "Jackson" in a minute.

This was also the year that a ton of great bands formed, including Concrete Blonde, Faith No More, The Smiths, They Might Be Giants, The Pogues, Public Enemy and the Melvins. All of these bands played a role in my musical upbringing.

But in terms of releases of 1982, it was a pretty darn good year. Again, I did not experience any of this at the time. I was too busy riding a tricycle down the front stairs, freaking the hell out of parents and resulting in one of my very rare trips to the ER, the night we moved from Philadelphia to Western New York. Perhaps if I had been quietly listening to records, all that could have been avoided. Moving on...

Night and Day by Joe Jackson holds a very high place in my personal canon, and I've only come around to it in the last five years. I heard a triple shot of it on WXPN in Philly, during one of their yearly countdowns (I believe it was "Real Men", "Cancer" and one other that I don't recall). I was immediately struck by the fact that if there had been no Night and Day, there would have been no Ben Folds. Folds definitely drank from Jackson's well of intricate piano work and pointed, darkly humorous lyrics. I was familliar with Jackson on Look Sharp!, which is an excellent late 70s Brit pub rock album. I thought that was all he was about, but it's sometimes so great to be dead wrong.

The two songs I love the most are "Breaking Us In Two" and "Real Men". I love the latter because it tackles the sexuality of the 80s in such a straightforward way, asking the question of what makes a man a "man" ("What's a man now?/ What's a man mean?/ Is he tough and is he rugged?/Is he cultural and clean?"). As someone who grew up never quite measuring up to whatever was considered "masculine" (didn't play sports, was into theater and music, went through a goth black eyeliner phase, didn't call other dudes 'faggot', etc.), this song resonates with me very strongly, and I feel I could do a whole essay on gender with the help of this song and a couple of other Jackson tunes.

"Breaking Us In Two" is a great sequel to "Happy Loving Couples" from Look Sharp!, and definitely echoes a lot of my cynicism against most romantic relationships (yet not my own marriage, which is the biggest exception that proves the rule in my life). There comes a point where you have to realize what is keeping you with someone, be it in marriage or just a very long relationship. And if it ends up like the two people in "Breaking Us In Two", then there are bound to be problems.

If Night and Day is a mature serving of pop arrangement and a well written lyric sheet, than nothing could be further away than Violent Femmes, one of the brattiest records I've ever heard (and I am familliar with works of Ryan Adams, ha ha...). It's what a debut from three young guys is bound to be: urgent, hormone-fueled and a huge rush. I first heard this record in 9th grade,

which I'm pretty sure is the absolute best time to discover Violent Femmes. Released in 1982, then released a year later with the addition of "Gimme The Car", this record just exudes teen angst and sexual frustration. This is the record for every gawky, nerdy, out-of-place, not-quite-developed-yet teen boy. (Not to exclude girls at all, but as I was not a teen girl, I don't really have a lot of context here. This may also be a record for them, too, but I don't want to presume.)

The first side alone is more than enough: "Blister In The Sun", "Kiss Off", "Please Do Not Go", "Add It Up", "Confessions". Good freakin' GOD, that's a lot of maladjusted teen catharsis right there! I was wholly convinced all these songs were about me. I barely understood the ins and outs of teen mating practices, and clearly neither did Gordon Gano at times. His high, cracking snarl of a voice is the voice in your head, and others have tried to copy his approach to the adolescent male (and in the case of things like the book series "Youth In Revolt", failed miserably), but no one has ever nailed it quite like him. It's not sappy or sullen, it's not wordy or dramtic, and it is definitely not intelligent at all. It's just blunt and messy and totally fucked up. It is everything that being a teenager is about.

And did I mention that most of this record is acoustic? Their drummer doesn't even use a full kit most of the record, the bassist has an acoustic bass for cryin' out loud! How non-macho can you get! I am literally saying hello to 9th grade Dan every time I hear this record, and while I'm still young enough to cringe at my 14 year old self, it's an appreciative cringe, because I know things are going to end up being alright, and that 14 is actually the year where things started their slow upswing. Many of the friends I still keep in touch with today I met when I was 14, and there's power in knowing that you still want to interact with people from those days. It makes you feel like you got it right in some ways, even back then.

Okay, that was fun. Until I started this project, I hadn't really delved back into what Violent Femmes meant to me. Being married to a beautiful, intelligent woman now, I want to go back in time and tell myself that it's going to be cool, that good things will happen to me in the lady department eventually. But to also keep cranking that record, because right now everything is going to pretty much suck and this is going to help get you through it.

I'd also like to throw out an honorable mention to Robyn Hitchcock's "The Cars She Used To Drive", which was on his 1982 album Groovy Decay. The record as a whole is pretty weak, but it's got that song on it and I love it. He operates under the metaphor that the "cars she used to drive" are his lover's exes. "I get run over by the cars she used to drive./They recognize me on the street./I glue my arms and legs back on so I survive./She giggles underneath the sheet." Branded early on as "quirky", Hitchcock makes quirky so amusing and well written, with great hooks and melodies. Rather than becoming annoying, he remains so gosh darn endearing. His later records will play a much bigger part in my life as we go on with this series.

Goodnight, and tomorrow will be very fun, as 1983 has some real gems. Til then...

-Dan

Me, circa 1995. Note the attempt at

"humor" to mask all self-consciousness

and inadequacy. It still serves me well today.