The year is 2001, I am heading off to law school, and totally, utterly alone in a new place. I am slowly rediscovering my love of 80’s bands and I come across the latest video from New Order – Crystal.
Imagine my surprise. “What happened to them? Didn’t they age? Where have they been for 8 years?” Confusion settles in and just like that I am bewildered by New Order all over again. Obviously, it wasn’t New Order playing in the video. They hardly appeared in any of their videos, but for some odd reason, this video changed my sense of direction and style for years to come. I needed skinny jeans and floppy hair. I needed less metal and screaming vocals and more mod stylings and synth-pop textures. As New Order was redefining themselves on Get Ready, I was going to redefine myself (or whatever that meant). For others, it did the same thing.
The Killers put out two videos that were homage to New Order’s – Killers, the orginal version of Mr. Brightside (above) and Somebody Told Me. I am glad I wasnt the only one who ended being moved by this record. It always made me laugh that The Killers stole so much from this quirky one off video and song.
Largely though, it turned out to be a transitional song and record in my life. I would never say Get Ready was nearly as complete or thorough as Power Corruption and Lies or Low-life , but for me, it was an incredibly important record that let me truly move on to a much more important portion of music and without it, I might have missed out on.
Sacramento was the capital of my world in my teenage and college years. Most (if not all) of the bands that got me into the music I loved, came from Sac. Obviously, the Deftones seemed to lead the way, but they were hardly the only band there that made a huge impact on my life.
Far, Simon Says, Tinfed, Quitter, Leisure, Anguish Unsaid, Silence Broken, and others, were bands I spent a considerable amount of time going to see and listening to. However, the one band that has really stuck with me through the years was Will Haven. Will Haven was different on a fundamental level. They were friends with nearly every other band in Sac (and the scene), super well respected by everyone they toured with and tuned WAY the hell down. Led by Grady on vocals and Jeff (Guitar) and Mike (Bass), Will Haven was like a mix of Bloodlet meets Crue’. When they were slow, they were heavier than everyone else and when they were fast they shredded. Grady sounded like a demon and was by far and away the guy who embodied being a lead singer. He didn’t talk much, he seemed aloof most of the time, and he never was one to mince words. But when he hit the stage, he exploded and for those 25-45 minutes, he was like the sun, just beaming with light.
They never got the recognition they deserved. A bit off in terms of timing for popularity, I think they could have been huge. But who cares, they always produced solid records (even now) that were awesome and still get a ton of listens by me. In particular, Carpe Diem was a record that just crushes on every level, in particular, the namesake of the album. Even 17 years later, the song just crushes. See if you can catch the cameos of Chino and Jaworksi.
In an earlier post, I talked about the first song off the new American Nightmare album and how I was hopeful that they could recapture their ferocity and unique ability to capture futility of youth.
“The first track off the record doesn’t sound like old AN. Wes sounds different, his voice is tired, nearly desperate to reacquaint with his former self. Struggling to find that balance between authenticity and determination to capture that essence that is unattainable. Does it work? So far, for this one song, I feel like they might have found that delicate balance of the old and new. I am pulling for you guys.”
So the question is, how is the new record. Did it work? Ill let you be the judge, but in my opinion, this record made it. In particular, the song “Flowers Under Siege” (video below) shows off what I think makes this record great. It’s short, sweet and shows their age and experience. Nothing here is terribly new, but it doesn’t matter. Wes and company pull no punches. They aren’t the old AN, but they certainly have nothing to be discouraged by. Closing in on their 40’s hasn’t changed what made them great, they just seem different, almost reborn.
Criminally underrated is a term that gets thrown around a lot. Usually, it comes out when discussing various artists. It always made me wonder what makes something underrated. When I think of the term, I have a ton of records flood into my mind and to me, they were all underrated/underappreciated in different ways. So I am going to take a moment to start a series, of artists or albums I find to be underrated. I am not sure how long this series will go, but I am sure its going to take me some time.
So with that, I’ll start with Esthero, who made one of my all-time favorite records in “Breath from Another“. At a time when everyone was trying to convince each other that they were into Portishead and Sade before it was cool, Esthero put out this record with little fanfare and hardly any push from her label. I am not entirely sure how I came across the album. I think she had a song on a mix CD of new artists that were being handed out at Tower Records for free. I remember cycling through the songs and stopping on her song “Heaven Sent”. It was a trip, this eerie haunting songstress vocals, with dub-beats. I wasn’t terribly into this type of music at the point in my life, but it came crashing down on me like a burst of light. Here I am, nearly 20 years later still listening to this record and it hasn’t lost any of vibrancy or authenticity that made it stand out, all those years ago.
Every year it seems some band from adolescence gets the bright idea that they should reform, go on tour, and release a new album. And as much as I want each of these rekindled projects to work, it inevitably goes as expected. The spark that made each of these bands great (which is almost always their youth) has long since passed and they are left trying rehash something that is already passed. It isn’t easy recapturing that incorrigibility and ferocity, that seems to come from bands early in their career, frankly its usually why they break up and why people look back with such admiration (ie see – the Refused, At the Drive-in, Glassjaw, and countless others).
So here we are with potentially my favorite lyricists of all time in Wes Eisold, and one of the preeminent hardcore bands from the early 00’s in American Nightmare, coming out with a new S/T record. This isn’t the first time they have had a reunion, but they hadn’t recorded new music since 2003’s – We’re Down Til We’re Underground.
The first track off the record doesn’t sound like old AN. Wes sounds different, his voice is tired, nearly desperate to reacquaint himself with his former self. Struggling to find that balance between authenticity and determination to capture that essence that is unattainable. Does it work? So far, for this one song, I feel like they might have found that delicate balance of the old and new. I am pulling for you guys.
Somewhere along the line, I developed a profound interest in emotional (emo) music. The term emo though comes across almost pejorative and it’s difficult to say it without wrinkling your nose. I remember as the word came into vogue in the earlier 2000’s and bands like Taking Back Sunday and Dashboard Confessional held the moniker of “mainstream emo”. It felt wrong at the time and it still does now.
Not that emo bands, can’t be popular, but at its core, I just assumed that to write and truly enjoy the genre you had to be pretty misanthropic and torn by a continual assault of fervent internal conflict. But here it was, kids clinging their hearts through their t-shirts and wearing Jansport backpacks while rocking back and forth, screaming their lungs out to the some of the most trite lyrics anyone could ever pen all on MTV. But, who am I to judge, I like plenty of terrible bands. Part of me was humbled that anything so insightful as emo, could be commoditized by the major label record companies, while the other half was excited to see folks who clearly deserved a break, get just that, a break.
My friend Matt in Simon Says was the one who first turned me onto to the genre when he played for me Sunny Day Real Estate’s LP2 and told me that it was Emotional music, which seems simple enough. The music was chaotic, big and fast – the vocals had the typical nasally sneer to them, that so many of those singers have. But it felt different than most things I had heard and I couldn’t quite place what compelled me to keep listening at the time.
So that leaves me with my video choice of the day. The Promise Ring was the proverbial emo band and “Nothing Feels Good” was a record that I would find myself listening to throughout various points of my life and yet the feeling it emanated was almost always the same.
With each passing birthday, I become a bit more nostalgic for the “old” days. Not to say that I dwell on them entirely, but like anyone, I have youthful moments that I look back with profound reverence. In particular, I feel lucky to have witnessed the rise (and fall – maybe?) of hardcore and emo in the collective conscious of popular culture. I still remember seeing Snapcase have its first video on MTV and hearing the music press fawn over At the Drive-in when Relationship in Command came out. Granted this wasn’t the glory of the 50’s rock n roll or 60’s psychedelia where people knew they were witnessing history, but from my perspective, this felt just as compelling.
Now some 20+ years into my journey, I can look back and remember with fond nostalgia just how great some of the bands were and continue to find new treasures.
So with that, I am going to kick this blog off, focusing in on all of the random (cliche and derivative) things I liked. I am dedicating this to all of the rock’n’roll kids who grew up listening to metal and dreamed of being in a hardcore band and somehow ended up being a corporate lawyer.