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?

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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.

The Modern Skirts play three shows in our area this week. They’ll be at Schubas in Chicago on November 18th, Mad Planet in Milwaukee on November 19th, and the Project Lodge in Madison on November 20th. Please take this chance to catch these guys live if you can. If you have not heard their fantastic 2008 release, All of Us in Our Night (that’s the awesome album art above), please add it to your collection. You won’t be disappointed.

Speaking of great albums, Jo Jo from Modern Skirts was generous enough to share some of his favorite albums with us for our continuing 5 albums feature. Some great selections below, many that I’m excited to revisit.

Belle and Sebastian – Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant
This album was the soundtrack to my years of poverty and depression. Just before Modern Skirts started, the singer and I were living in a house in a bad part of Athens, squeezed between two housing projects. We were working as cart pushers at Wal-Mart, boiling water on the stove so we could take hot baths because our gas was cut off. Dead car in the parking lot, etc. The old piano was out on the front porch, and at night I would drink wine and play as the hookers and homeless people passed by in the street. I would go downtown every night during this time and spend all my money at the bars and come home and read War and Peace cross-eyed drunk and listen to this album. I would sleep three hours and wake up and go into work, and then sneak out to my car and sleep till the managers would call me on the walkie talkie to find out why the carts weren’t getting in. Every time I hear “Fold Your Hands,” I think of boiling my bath water and wishing I could get a girlfriend. It’s hard to get a nice girl to go out into the projects with you at night.

Okkervil River – The Stage Names
“The Stage Names” was the my first road record. It came out during our first year of heavy touring. A lot of the lyrics have to do with being a small touring band on the road, which really resonated with me at that time. Being on the road had gotten really lonely and difficult fir me at that point, and it was nice to have a record to romanticize it for me again. We were in Florida when I realized how much I loved some of those songs. I remember sleeping on our friend Jeanice’s floor in Gainesville, Florida after a show and playing “Plus Ones” over and over again.

M. Ward – Post-War
Post War is my New Orleans album. We had been recording the self-produced songs from All of Us in Our Night for two weeks and all had our first Mardi Gras in the middle of all that. We had gotten really close with our friends down there, and our last night in town we went out in the French Quarter, which was pretty quiet in the wake of all the festivities. We were way back in the back of this bar called the Erin Rose, me and Jay and our friends Mary and Erin, and when we walked out, the sun was rising and casting a bright orange across the balconies on Conti Street. The sky was a deep pink and bright blue and the air was soft. It was a Monday morning and most people on the street were just getting up and getting to work. We got in Erin’s car and headed home and the first song on Post-War came on and it was just the most beautiful moment; sad, because we were going to be leaving the city I was in love with to go home, and beautiful, because we were with new friends on that beautiful morning in the city I was in love with. It occurred to me that I would remember that for the rest of my life. We went home and had a 7 am breakfast of leftover pork loin and king cake and packed our bags and left for Athens.

Tom Waits – Mule Variations
I was in a jeep with with our singer and our friend Bruce on a pitch black dirt road in our hometown of Elberton, Georgia when I heard Tom Waits for the first time. We drove deep into the woods and stopped on an old metal bridge for a while and Bruce played this album for us, and it felt like Elberton to me. Buying beer on a Sunday from an old black man at a shack out in the country with a cooler buried in the ground under an old piece of tin roof. The junkyards with the broken down school buses stuffed floor to roof with discarded clothes. Boiling peanuts in an old oil drum with the goats all around. I could hear the dirt on the floor in those recordings. There are better and stranger Tom Waits records, but this one feels the most like home to me.

Ween – Quebec
I had been listening to Ween for a little while when Quebec came out. It was the first Ween album I was able to anticipate before it was released. I was really taught to appreciate this band by some guys that lived across from my bandmates at the time; they were always taking these crazy drugs no one had ever heard of and watching midget porn and art films (kind of like what it’s probably like being in the studio with Ween, actually…) There was one night where they were putting these drops on their tongues and kind of lolling around the apartment, and they were listening to Quebec. To my ears, it was a different direction for Ween and I was sucked in immediately. I’ve had some of my own weird times with this record.

Buy: Modern Skirts – All of Us in Our Night
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MP3: Modern Skirts – “Soft Pedals”

Buy: Monsters Of Folk (Only $7.99)

I have been steadily making my way through this week’s solid list of new releases. It’s hard to dislike the highly anticipated Monsters of Folk album featuring M. Ward, Jim James & Conor Oberst. It’s got some super catchy songs that warrant repeated listens. Above, get a look into studio through this great video set to “The Right Place.”

Update: Monsters of Folk performed “Say Please” on Conan last night.

Buy: Monsters Of Folk (Only $7.99)

What great news to send everybody into the weekend! Monsters of Folk – comprised of Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst and Mike Mogis, My Morning Jacket’s Jim James and singer/songwriter M.Ward – will be releasing their first collaborative album on September 22nd.

I can remember seeing this collection (sans Mogis) on Austin City Limits years ago. During that performance they demonstrated what their collaborative songwriting would sound like. According the the press release, “The songs – some road-worn fables, some intimate and intricate with electronic elements, some woozy and sun-soaked – are everything one expects from these four musical minds collaborating together. The album exudes a warm, organic spaciousness, filled by brilliant choruses, intoxicating harmonies and effortless melodies, as each member brings his own strengths to the table to create one perfect whole.”

Monsters of Folk Track List:

1. Dear God (sincerely M.O.F.)
2. Say Please
3. Whole Lotta Losin’
4. Temazcal
5. The Right Place
6. Baby Boomer
7. Man Named Truth
8. Goodway
9. Ahead of the Curve
10. Slow Down Jo
11. Losin Yo Head
12. Magic Marker
13. Map Of The World
14. The Sandman, the Brakeman and Me
15. His Master’s Voice

M. Ward pulled out a cover of Chuck Berry’s “Roll Over Beethoven” to begin the first of four encores last week in Milwaukee. Long as I’ve been a fan, I’ve never heard him cover this tune. It was an absolute scorcher live. If presented with an opportunity to see him on this tour, please don’t pass it up. I’ve added his Milwaukee play to my running tab of favorite concerts from the year thus far.

Buy: M. Ward – Hold Time
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Myspace: M. Ward
MP3: M. Ward – “Never Had Nobody Like You”