I’ve decided that I’m going to start being more active on this site. So welcome to what I am now calling “Museday” I will release a new blog post every single Tuesday going forward. Sometimes it will be me blathering on about some musical topic that tickles my fancy that week, sometimes it will be to release new songs, sometimes it will be just life stuff, but it will happen every Tuesday, or “Museday”. I hope you enjoy it!
Now, on to today’s thoughts. I’m in a band with a guy who’s 11 years younger than me. In our teens, we were both very fond of the punk rock of our day. But the 11-year gap between what we love makes things kind of amusing sometimes when we talk about it. Now, he’s always had way more punk rock cred than me, in terms of his dedication to creating original music in the genre, and his look and stuff like that. I’ve never been into the fashion of punk rock. I think it’s kind of silly, actually, but I think that about most fashion, so it’s not really relevant. The music has always been the only thing I cared about.
When I started liking punk rock, it was the beginnings of what people would call “punk-pop” or “pop punk”. It was the Lookout! Records bands – Green Day, Operation Ivy, The Mr. T Experience, The Queers. And it was Rancid, The Descendents, All, NOFX, Offspring. It was all very California-style, steeped in the Bay Area/Gilman Street scene and the Southern California surf-punk thing. I loved when people mixed genres in to punk, like ska, especially, and I especially loved the bands with exceptional melodic sense, like Green Day. My punk rock was the softer, more pop version.
In discussing the genre with my bandmate and buddy, I found out something interesting. “Pop-punk” means something COMPLETELY different to his generation. It’s the bands that followed the Blink-182 model – the first generation AFTER all the bands that I loved. The production was slicker, the guitars were thicker, the drum sounds big. By the time all that stuff was getting popular, I had grown tired of the genre. I mean, I liked Blink-182 a little – definitely a fan of their more pop material (their “heavier” stuff sounded super derivative to me), but I was snobby about it. So I never got into the bands that he loved all that much. We do have some overlap, in that he was younger when the genre grabbed him, so we both dig the skate punk stuff and stuff like NOFX, because they kind of just kept making records, but I find it kind of amusing that we’re so far apart on some stuff. I think he sees a lot of the stuff I was into as almost unlistenable because he really digs that Pop Punk production quality that became very specific and a genre unto itself in the early 2000s.
By then, I had shifted my focus to more purely classic alternative/indie pop and power pop stuff like Fountains of Wayne, Jellyfish, Superdrag, Sloan, Marvelous 3, The Grays, Jason Falkner, and other super-melodic, dense music that had a melodic and harmonic sense derived heavily from the best rock and pop music of the 60s and 70s (and sometimes 80s). Often these artists added a lot of punk rock attitude and energy to what they did, and I think that gave me the “edge” I needed to keep devouring it. It’s probably still my biggest go-to when I want to listen to music. But I also was way into the “alterna-pop” stuff of the day, so I was into Barenaked Ladies, Fastball, Semisonic, and bands like that – they also derived their melodic and harmonic sense from classic rock and pop, but were less punky and more mainstream.
All the while I never stopped listening to the metal bands I loved (Anthrax, Pantera, Metallica), the hard rock bands I loved (King’s X, Extreme, Living Colour, Van Halen), the funk bands I loved (The Meters), and the progressive rock bands I loved (Rush, Queen, Yes, Zappa, Primus, Dream Theater). All of this plus a steady diet of the classics (Beatles, Beach Boys, Motown, Atlantic Soul, Zombies, Grand Funk, Led Zeppelin, 70s Chicago), 80s pop stuff, Next School hip hop (De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, etc.), a few classic hip hop acts (Run-DMC, Beastie Boys, LL Cool J) and a smattering of jazz and classical and soundtrack music.
So, circling back to the topic, I was never a punk rocker, even if there was punk rock that I liked. And sometimes I find it hard to talk to my buddy about the music partially because what he seems to really love is something very specific that I don’t understand – the Pop Punk, Hardcore, and Emo stuff of the early 2000s. I wasn’t the right age to “get it” and by that point I’d already had a kid (and then another in 2003) so it just wasn’t for me. In fact, at the time, I HATED it. Not because of the music, necessarily, but because of the culture surrounding it. I didn’t get it. I thought it was whiny, crappy, overproduced, edgeless music. Punk Rock Air Supply. I still find it hard to keep a straight face when someone says anything positive about any band of that time except perhaps Jimmy Eat World, because I really liked them (and still do). I also liked New Found Glory even though the singer’s super whiny. So I’ve been a kind of a dick about it forever for no good reason. And to get along, I definitely don’t talk shit about it to my friend who I love and don’t want to hurt by being an asshole.
But I have a confession to make (and not a Dashboard one…yay dad joke):
I REALLY DON’T KNOW SHIT ABOUT THAT GENRE.
My attitude about it is one based on ignorance and merely being annoyed by the people clad in what appeared to be Hot Topic uniforms who liked it back in 2002. How crappy and small is that? How “dickhead older brother” is that?
Now, I will say that I’m trying to turn over a new leaf here, and just say what I always say about music, “If it’s good to you, it’s good. To you.” Music is personal, it’s subjective, and anyone can pick apart absolutely anything for whatever reason they choose. So my hatred of the genre, however silly, considering how much of that type of music I enjoy that doesn’t really carry the label (I’m looking at you, Weezer), is actually just as valid as hating the stuff I love that most people agree is great (like The Beatles).
I want to have passionate opinions about new music again, but so much I hear that’s new just falls flat for me. Some people love the exploration – the next new creative thing from someone – but I’ve never been one of those people. New is just more recent. It doesn’t mean anything else to me. I find something special I like, devour pretty much everything they’ve ever done, and then listen to it over and over again ad nauseum until I go back to listening to something I loved 30 years ago.
A perfect sort of recent example of this is the English band Muse. They are a perfect combination of so many of my favorite bands all at once, so once I got hooked on them (their 2006 record “Black Holes and Revelations”), I bought EVERYTHING and listened to it constantly.
An even more recent example, which might be surprising to some people, is Billie Eilish. I heard The Interrupters’ cover of “Bad Guy” (I LOVE THAT BAND…) and then circled back to Billie’s original version, which I actually didn’t like at first. But it grew on me fast, and I had to consume as much of her stuff as I could find. When I found out her brother Finneas was heavily involved in all her music and produced it, I made sure I consumed whatever I could find from him (his EP is fantastic – go listen to it now).
But back to the point. I’m kind of a hard “get” at this point as a fan. I’ve blogged before about hating music, and honestly, that was probably never really true, even though it felt true at the time. I just find it hard to be inspired by new music. I pick it apart and ruin it for myself before it even has a chance to move me. It has to be something that surprises me or feels fresh. There’s very little of that in the mainstream. There’s very little of that in hip hop for me anymore. I’m such a fuddy-duddy when it comes to the style of flow I like in hip hop (basically, pre-1995) – and I just don’t like the over-processed vocals on most of those tracks, and trap beats are the high-waisted jeans of music – they work about 5% of the time. Even when I hear about a promising new hard rock band, I almost always end up going “meh” after a while. Not much feels fresh anymore, and very little surprises me.
But I admire my friend. I love that he can get joy from the stuff that I find endlessly boring. I love that he gets excited about the new stuff. I don’t know that I have the bandwidth to give a shit, to be honest. Sometimes I wish my ears were more open and I was less of a party pooper about music, but being true to me means I’d almost always rather listen to Toto’s “Rosanna” another thirty times to get the nuance of David Hungate’s bass phrasing or to nail that Luke guitar solo than listen to some mumble rapper, some wank-vocal-with-small-minded-lyrics pop chick or a guy with face tattoos who seems to sorta like rock music but is famous as a rapper.
(Although I did like that guy’s Nirvana tribute a few weeks back.)
I doubt I’ll ever be able to just listen to whatever’s current and enjoy it again unless the way they make music these days changes, but “new” is whatever you really haven’t experienced, so since my buddy’s favorite music is that Emo stuff I never bothered to really explore, maybe I should check out Saves The Day, The Used, Taking Back Sunday, Bright Eyes, Alkaline Trio, Simple Plan, AFI, Boys Like Girls, and Relient K. And maybe some more*. Maybe I’ll get into screamier bands like Thursday, Silverstein, Underoath, Senses Fail, Hawthorne Heights, or Story Of The Year? Maybe one of them will hook me and I’ll be sucked in. Maybe not. Who knows? It’s probably worth giving it a shot. And if nothing works, at least my negative opinion of the genre will have a more solid, empirical base.
(* – But not Dashboard Confessional. I’ve heard enough of that already to know that the only Carrabba I’ll ever like serves me delicious fettuccine alfredo.)
Peace be the journey, and C U Next Museday!
(wait, that kind of ruins it the joke…crap)
TMS