Wednesday, 2 Dec 2009
By Jon Stone | @jwstone
In 1991, Boyz II Men and DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince put out the unforgettable singles Motownphilly and Summertime. If you were 11 or 12 like I was when those tunes came out, those were THE songs, right? You know you loved them (unless, as I sometimes suspect, all readers of this blog were somehow born with unrelenting, musical erudition). That summer, though, with high school on the horizon, I abandoned them—openly disdained them even. I hid my cassette singles and in their place new, shiny CDs appeared with pale, British faces on them: from Boyz II Men to Boyz Don’t Cry faster than you can say goodbye to yesterday. (Sorry, kids. I’m kind of old.)
This ebb and flow of our musical interests is common, I think, and though it may not happen as frequently (or dramatically) as it did when we were kids, I think it’s fun to think about how what we listen to changes over the years. My musical tastes certainly have changed and expanded over the last decade. I suspect yours have too. And thank goodness, really.
Skipping ahead another ten years from where I started, the beginning of this decade was rough. 2000-2004 were like musical badlands for us post-alternative, 20-something, suburbanites: our favorite bands kept abandoning us by breaking up (or starting to suck and then breaking up), making bad records, or worse, making the same record over and over again. It took me a while and several John Mayer and Coldplay records before I recovered. (Seriously though, anyone who wants to chat up “Parachutes” or rap about Mayer’s guitar playing hit me up, I didn’t hide those tapes very well.)
I think the watershed moments of our musical pasts are important to reflect on. What we listen to seems to be indicative of other shifts in our often tenuous world-views and brought about by other life changes, subtle or serious. No wonder songs and bands become both touchstones and course markers along the way.
A standout moment for me in the last ten years was when M. Ward and Jim James took the stage with Bright Eyes—Conor Oberst and Mike Mogis—during a 2005, pre-Monsters of Folk Austin City Limits performance. I was in the midst of a shift that year and was looking to shows like ACL and podcasts like NPR’s All Songs Considered for nudges in new sonic directions. Bright Eyes is a force to be reckoned with, to be sure. Oberst was (then even more) strange and catlike and I remember being intrigued (if in a pseudo-literary sense) by his poem-song “Waste of Paint.” He also did a lovely waltz with Mogis on mandolin called “We Are Nowhere and It’s Now” from the critically acclaimed album I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning. But it was when M. Ward and Jim James came out and played songs from their respective main projects that ears perked. Ward played “O’Brien” — a great song from his now classic, break-through record End of Amnesia (2001). Next, Jim James played the My Morning Jacket tune “Golden” (from It Still Moves, 2003) with Mogis on pedal steel. Something clicked. That Gibson, those chords, that melody, and the lyrics:
Watchin’ a stretch of road, miles of light explode.
Driftin’ off a thing I’d never done before…
Watchin’ a crowd roll in. Out go the lights, it begins.
A feelin’ in my bones I never felt before…
I watched and listened again and again. In the process, I discovered—from the first half of that episode—a little band called Wilco (tragically late, I know). And while I can’t trace back all of my current musical interests to that moment, it was very significant.
Tell us a little about your musical histories: What were the moments, songs, albums, artists, blogs, podcasts, tv shows etc. that brought on some kind paradigm shift in your musical world over the last five or ten years? How dramatic were your shifts? And, if you please, what brought on those shifts?
++++
Download: three songs from Bright Eyes (and friends), Austin City Limits 2005.
MP3: Bright Eyes – “We are Nowhere and it’s Now” (Austin City Limits, 2005)
MP3: M. Ward – “O’Brien” (Austin City Limits, 2005)
MP3: Jim James – “Golden” (Austin City Limits, 2005)
(As an aside, you gotta love Tweedy’s swagger in that first half. So cool. So intense. So much so that it almost seems uncharacteristic, until halfway through the set when he says, “Everybody look under your chairs. We’ve got a prize for you.” An audience member screams “I won!!” way off mic and Jeff adds, “Anybody find my keys?”
And well dressed! Dude’s wearing a suit coat(!) and we’re talking straight-edge razor shave up in there. Unprecedented.)
Special thanks to Leslie Nichols, Associate Producer on Austin City Limits, for official photos from the show by Scott Newton.
December 2nd, 2009 at 8:21 am
Awesome post! Could be your best yet.
Wilco’s Being There was a huge life changer for me. I’d heard about the album through a friend and bought it while on vacation in California. I played it constantly after returning home. That album opened me up to a whole new world of music – Son Volt, Uncle Tupelo, Damien Rice, and countless bands and music that I never knew existed. Being There spoke to me like no album had in a long time, especially songs like Misunderstood and I Got You (At The End Of The Century). It was just as I was transitioning from my 20s to my 30s and having a lot of self doubt about my life and my place in life. These new songs (and the ones that followed as I sought out more music like this) helped me to refocus and rediscover myself. Wilco has been VERY special to me ever since.
Ryo Vie
December 2nd, 2009 at 12:28 pm
In the early years of this decade, I had a bad taste in my mouth from bands like Limp Biscuit and the takeover of teen pop like Nsync and Backstreet Boys. Everywhere I turned, I was inundated by pre-packaged, souless music, mass produced for consumption. Radiohead’s “Kid A” and Wilco’s “Yankee, Hotel, Foxtrot” were two albums that completely changed my musical world and renewed my belief that there was hope for music. In the middle and latter part of the decade it was the Bright Eyes Acl performance, along with the release of “I’m wide awake, Its morning” and “Digital ash in a digital urn”. Seeing them gain unexpected mainstream popularity, to me, signaled that people who loved music were taking over. The watershed moment for me was seeing Arcade Fire play Austin City Limits Music Fest in 2005. I got chills watching all these people on stage jumping from instrument to instrument playing with such joy and passion, as if every song was humanities last chance for salvation. If, indeed, each song was our only hope, Arcade Fire succeeded in saving our collective souls from the fires of hell for a long time to come. When they were done, I wandered around in the Texas heat and tried to process what I just saw. Upon returning to WI, I purchased Funeral and my musical world was forever, irreversibly changed.
December 2nd, 2009 at 1:02 pm
As a kid in high school I was just a main-stream rocker dude. Aerosmith, AC/DC, Smashing Pumpkins, etc. But living in the south I was being exposed to alt-country, roots music, and lots of bluegrass. The turning point came during my freshman year in college. While touring the radio station, they showed us an unlit back room where they said they kept “all the old stuff no one listens to.” Upon closer inspection I discovered a treasure-trove. Literally thousands of original vinyl albums by Bill Monroe, the Stanley Brothers, Seldom Scene, Tony Rice and every album Flatt & Scruggs ever released. I was stunned that no one appreciated the rarity of such a vast bluegrass collection. Plus it wasn’t being utilized. Suffice it to say over the next four years on my weekly bluegrass show I tried to work my way through the entire collection. It wasn’t possible, but it changed my musical world forever.
December 2nd, 2009 at 4:07 pm
This is such a great topic. I love to trace by my musical discovery.
My first love was Bruce Springsteen
I got into Pearl Jam in a big way in the early 90′s as a teenager. Listening to their bootlegs I got into bands like Bad Religion, The Who, Ben Harper.
Discovering Wilco was definitely a marker in the sand for me. They lead me all over – back through Uncle Tupelo stuff – lots of older alt-country.
Take a look at any blog linked to on the left sidebar and they each have probably influenced me at some point. I love Aquarium Drunkard and Chromewaves blogs – I trust everything the lay praise on. I don’t think they’ve ever let me down.
The All Songs Considered podcast is pretty golden, really like those guys.
As this post correctly spotlight’s though, Austin City Limits TV show has been turning me on to great artists for decades. I learned about Explosions in the Sky, saw/heard Calexico “live” for the first time, Wilco’s first appearance I’ve watched a dozen times. The great thing about ACL is that 35 years later, they still deliver – I tune in religiously and absolutely love it.
December 2nd, 2009 at 10:34 pm
This is the decade that I discovered Elliott Smith. I had always loved music but until I started listening to him, I really couldn’t relate to it. I’d be stuck listening to Pink Floyd’s “Green Is The Colour,” or Bruce Springsteen’s “Nebraska,” or a ton of Neil Young. Not that there’s anything wrong with those choices, but my post-Elliott days have allowed me to branch out into so much else. Music that makes life worth living; stuff that I may never have come across. The aforementioned Wilco not only provided me with countless hours of perfect music, but enabled me to delve deeper into Dylan, just like Elliott drove me towards late Beatles and obscure classics that I may not have ever listened to like The Zombies, The Kinks, and Hank Sr.
Blogs like Pitchfork Media and Daytrotter have navigated me towards other bands that I have fallen in love with, or have had amazing times while listening to.
The decade has brought us most of Radiohead’s best work, Sufjan Stevens, Iron & Wine, Blitzen Trapper, Girls, Bright Eyes, etc. etc. In my opinion, these are bands that we will be listening to for a long, long time. They will always be relevant.
I saw Elvis Costello open for Bob Dylan at a huge outdoor venue– coincidentally enough, the one that Animal Collective named their most recent LP after (Merriweather Post Pavillion)– and he managed to captivate an entire outdoor audience that came only to see Dylan with nothing but a microphone and acoustic guitar.
Another great concert that comes to mind was The Raconteurs shortly after their first album came out, when they toured with Dr. Dog. All around, it was a great show, and to watch Jack White captivate an audience was amazing. Every guy wanted to be him, and every girl wanted to be with him.
I too had the pleasure of seeing Daniel Johnston play to a crowd of about 200 in Baltimore on a Sunday night. He literately brought all 200 of us to tears.
I was also fortunate enough to experience Radiohead play Idioteque. Whenever I hear that song my body goes into uncontrollable fits and convulsions not unlike the way Thom Yorke dances.
It’s also important to note that all of our first experiences with iPods occurred in this decade. Remember what it was like to carry around a portable cd player alongside a giant book of cds?
I read David Foster Wallace for the first time this decade.
December 2nd, 2009 at 10:42 pm
Really lovely responses here, folks. Thanks for sharing. The note here that resonates for me is uwmryan’s “led me all over” comment. For me Wilco did the same exact thing (and it could be a handful of great bands)–in fact, if you haven’t read Greg Kot’s _Wilco: Learning How to Die_ you should. I don’t know how accurate the history is (though it felt very balanced, fair and well-researched to me), but the amazing and HUGE list of influences that Kot is able to aggregate in connection to the band (everything from their influences and collaborators, to where he sees Wilco as fitting in with the music scene[s] throughout their [and Uncle Tupelo's] career) is astounding.
Music should make you feel something and great music should make you smarter.
December 3rd, 2009 at 10:17 am
I think the biggest transformation in my musical tastes, starting to dive deeper into new music, was when I first heard The Strokes: This is It, and The White Stripes Elephant. To me, that lo-fi sound was so different than what I had come accustom to expect from modern music, that it allowed me to dive deeper into new music, versus the only the older artists I had come to be a fan of, eg, Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, and The Grateful Dead.
From those two albums, my consumption of music became more a deliberate and proactive seeking out, rather than relying on traditional methods of new music delivery, FM Radio, MTV, Rolling Stone.
Late Night with Conan O’Brien was a great medium where I could hear bands that I never otherwise would. His musical acts always seemed to be someone I had never hear of at the time. That further allowed me to develop a belief that despite how much I was not a fan of what was on modern rock or pop radio stations, there truly was very good new music out there. The idea now seems extremely obvious, but before Blogs, Pandora, Myspace, and the overall relative ease in which music is delivered, it was somewhat of a revelation for me.
To be specific, hearing My Morning Jacket play “One Big Holiday” on Conan, was it. I was blown away by what I was hearing (I could tell Conan was impressed as well.) That prompted me to do something I rarely did, go buy a CD of a band I knew nothing about – and discover the band that is still my favorite today. To me that was truly a “Golden” moment of my decade.
December 3rd, 2009 at 3:14 pm
This is a great piece (and it sounds like we are the same age). Golden is one of my all-time favorite tracks. In reading a lot of the decade retrospectives in the last several weeks, I have kept thinking about how much I used to love MMJ, Wilco, and M.Ward (less so Bright Eyes) but each of these bands/guys have become really disappointing in the last few years.
Each still holds a spot in the list of top bands of the decade (which I may or may not ever write) but their evolution has been an interesting sidebar to my getting older.
Sigh.
December 5th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
I purchased Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot for the sole reason that I liked the cover (the Marina Towers here in Chicago). I was hooked 1 minute into the album and have never looked back.