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