That’s right: Shove your Beatles, your Beach Boys, your Monkees, all straight up your ass (and then remove them from your ass and wipe them off, because I like all of those bands), because The Left Banke have written the most wonderful, splendiferous, gorgeous, achingly beautiful pop song of the entire Age of Aquarius, and that song is “Walk Away Renee”. Cherubs weep when they hear this song; spittoons transform into floating cotton candy machines; chocolate becomes more delicious, and soda temporarily loses its fattening properties. Statistics have suggested that 0 in 4 people who listen to this song become serial killers. If loving this song is wrong, then your criteria for what constitutes “wrong” is incorrect. Never have vocal harmonies been so deliriously delightful, harpsichords so regal, performances so spot-on within a pop song. Neither have sentiments been so sweet, yet so warmly grounded within the lyrics. This is a golden, cascading wonder of a pop song, and it instantly rendered almost every conception of “chamber pop” or “classical pop” to come entirely irrelevant twenty-five years before any such genres even began to exist. “Walk Away Renee” is the absolute apex of all things splendid and joyful within sixties pop music – please cherish it in heaven and on earth. Oh, and listen to the rest of The Left Banke’s first two albums, because there isn’t a single bad or even just okay song between them. That is all.
Well, I haven’t done much deeply personal public internet writing in a very long time. Hell, come to think of it, I don’t even really know how to operate a keyboard anymore! Like, for instance, I have no idea what this button does.
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Whoa! Incredible! This is nothing how I remember typing being!
So yes, higher education has a way of taking it out of you, and forcing you to put all of “it” into all your stupid higher education work that, for the most part, frankly, you won’t remember, let alone care about, in another couple of years. However, school is almost over, and I’m becoming increasingly leery of devoting all of “it” to writing about fire-and-brimstone sermons or whatever the hell it is I’m supposed to be learning about right now. No, there are far more important things to contemplate, to ruminate upon, than such frivolous subjects as early American literature or the manner in which eastern religions interact within assorted cultural contexts. Instead, I’d like to take a few moments to talk about enjoying stupid bands.
Being twenty something years old and a product of postmodern western society (or something like that), I am conditioned to value a sense of individuality while being forced to confront the reality that in a lot of ways, I’m really not all that different than a lot of people. Oh sure, the fourteen year old me would have adamantly disagreed, citing his love for obscure, underground musical outfits such as The Ramones and The Sex Pistols as essential proof of nonconformity, but let’s face it: I’m not terribly far off from your average Linkin Park lovin’, Korn rockin’, Nickelback blastin’ pop rock fan when it comes to my attitude regarding my own music. I think the bands I love rule, and anybody who disagrees is missing some sort of essential perspective which allows them to appreciate my music as much as I do. Of course, the only difference between me and the average Creed fan is that I actually have good taste, but I digress.
Oh yeah. Take that, average Creed fan!
Really, though, it’s true. Nobody thinks their taste in music sucks, and those that do don’t have enough of a spine to embrace what makes them happy, regardless of what that happens to be. ‘Boring’ is a word for such folk. When I first really got into music, which was when I got into punk in the summer of 2000, I was suddenly finding music to be the most crucial, defining aspect of my character, and the quality of my music taste was an indication of fortitude of my being. I was done with trying to be popular, done with caring how I looked (so long as mom only bought me black jeans, and my pins and patches were put on correctly), didn’t care about boys or girls, didn’t care about anything but my friends, my family, my grades, and my music. Mostly, though, my music. My music was a representation of my character, and it was easy to reflect a pure character when my tastes were confined to such a small scheme: it was either punk, or it was shite. Now granted, I embraced a rather, er, “liberal” sense of what constituted “punk” when I was just barely fourteen (The Strokes, Weezer, and No Doubt were all considered punk…at least until No Doubt put out that shitty “Rock Steady” album and immediately lost all semblance of confidence on my behalf), but still, I had a necessarily narrow idea of what was good and what was not (being young and inexperienced with different kinds of sounds tends to lend one to such a disposition), and as I was tapping into the braver, more interesting category of “good” music, as opposed to the “bad” music most of my peers were listening to, it was easier to feel good about myself, and to feel pure about my character.
When I got into 80’s hardcore punk about a year later (and I refer here to hardcore punk from the 80’s, not this boring revival music that is making the rounds amongst people my age and younger today), my tastes became even more narrow, and my idea of what constituted good became even more strident. Now, there were less rules for what counted as valid music (the songs hardly even had to be catchy any more, so long as they were fast and boasted a recording date prior to 1987), and any music that did not fit such limited criteria was looked upon as being even more worthless than before. For one year, hardcore became the one and only type of music I cared about, the purest form of expression as far as I was concerned, and I truly and honestly could not understand how anyone could like anything other than hardcore. Yet, so many people didn’t like hardcore. Some people even started liking hardcore, and went onto either liking, or – even worse – being in shitty bands. As ridiculous as it was to mull over, I wondered what would happen if I would some day maybe start liking crappy music, and then what would that say about me? Would I be a poser at that point? But, no! Now that I already knew who The Meatmen and The Cro-Mags were, so how could I ever go back – or even temporarily divert my attention from this all-important, all-defining genre?
But then it happened.
I was sitting at home, watching VH1 Classic’s “The Alternative” video block, before they changed the name to “120 Minutes”, and before VH1 moved the block to 4:00 to 6:00 in the morning, ensuring that almost nobody would ever see it. I mostly watched it out of boredom, and out of hope that they’d either show some Ramones or that cheesy, camcorder-looking video for Black Flag’s “TV Party” single.Now I was watching some British fruitcake scrunched up in a cave, decked out in teased-up black hair, sloppily applied lipstick, and whining some lyrics about how “no matter how far away – I will always love you”. The song prominently featured a keyboard, which automatically meant it sucked. Yet…I couldn’t turn away. Usually, if a video really stunk, and it usually did, I’d click back to some other channel and wait for the song to pass. Yet, in my fifteen year-old mind, I’m thinking “Man, this is so gay. I’m totally going to just watch this video for another minute to see what this mincing British tool bag does next.” A minute passes, and the tool bag is doing the same thing he’s been doing during the whole video: he’s scrunched up, in a cave, whining about always loving you. I keep listening to those fruity, eighties-sounding keyboards. “Man, this is really, really dumb. I’m going to watch another minute of this just to see how bad it is.” Another minute passes, and I’m still watching it, listening to it. “Well, I’ve already watched most of this stupid video, so I might as well finish watching it.”
And I do, and I have the song stuck in my head, and somehow I kind of like the British fruitcake, and whoops! Unable to admit it to myself, but known in my brain and my bones, I now like a song by The Cure. And that song couldn’t have been further from what I thought of as “good” at the time. As such, racked with the prospect of my tastes immanently going to shit, I refused to accept that I did actually like this song, though the collapse of my iron curtain of hardcore punk was now inevitable. I soon heard The Smiths, New Order, Peter Godwin, and more Cure, and liked what I was hearing (and in the process sealing my fate as a future depressed, sexually frustrated teenage art student). As if this wasn’t enough, I also began researching that most maligned of all youth-pop genres of the day, emo, and was liking what I was hearing there too. At last, the day came when I was standing in the Tower Records at Laguna Hills, scrutinizing over whether or not to buy a Crass album or a Sunny Day Real Estate’s classic Diary album. I ended up going with Crass, hating it, and resolving not to make the same mistake when I went to the music shop next week.
My days as a hardcore punk rock puritan were officially over, but even though I had now embraced music that the me from even a year ago would’ve deemed pure suckage, the current me sure didn’t think of these new sounds as such. Rather, I was simply branching out, finding tunes that I could better relate to, that better fit my somber moods – what with not being able to kiss any girls and not knowing if I possibly liked boys and not knowing if I was going to move and whatnot. So, even though my tastes had changed, I didn’t see it as a degeneration – I was simply moving in a different direction.
Now, this was all fine and well, partially due to the fact that even though I was embracing softer, less aggressive music, I still wasn’t necessarily giving myself to what many would consider to be especially lame bands. Yeah, maybe a thrasher cretin might look at The Cure as wimp stuff, but at least it wasn’t Taking Back Sunday. And then when I finally bought a Taking Back Sunday album, at least it wasn’t Saves The Day. Granted, I don’t think there’s a whole lot of people at this point (myself included) who would argue that Saves The Day have less credibility than Taking Back Sunday, nor did they ever, but preconceptions allow for such convenient gloss-overs. Anyway, so I went through a phase of listening to a whole lot of rather whiny, depressive emo and indie rock, randomly got into extreme metal for a month, moved, and promptly moved into a classic rock phase for a while, bought a Saves The Day album, and didn’t like it. Which was good, because Saves The Day sucked.
But then it happened. Wait, I’ve already used this lead-in before. FUCK! I’m never going to make any money off of my writing at this rate!
But it really did happen. Bebe’s Records, a rather crappy music shop, was going out of business, and Saves The Day’s Through Being Cool album was there new for like, six bucks. I had an illustrious job working in the kitchen of a bowling alley at this point, so the money was rolling on in, and I figured that even if I didn’t like that one Stay What You Are album all that much, this album was supposedly the band’s real classic, it was here, cheap. So I bought it, and lo and behold, I liked it. Yet, unlike The Cure, who I was simply closed off to liking before, this was a band that I already had heard and knew I didn’t like, yet now my ears were telling me differently. Thus, it prompted the first asking of the question: Am I really hearing something I hadn’t heard before, or are my tastes just getting worse?
Of course, “good” and “bad” is all relative, and I’m of the firm philosophy now as I was then that if a song brings you joy, it can be a good song for you no matter what it is, but I couldn’t help but wonder: was I becoming more open-minded towards different kinds of music, or were my tastes just becoming more and more lax? The less than profound answer is that both changes were occurring, and continue to occur now. Before I was so small-minded when it came to my music that it was easy to maintain a sense of continuity amongst my collection; when not having a 1-2-1-2 beat excluded your band from possibly be being good, it wasn’t especially hard to think about where my tastes were going. But now that I liked a whole bunch of different kinds of music, some mopey, some atonal and aggressive, and lots somewhere in between, there was a lot more room for tolerating stuff which wasn’t necessarily totally my bag, so long as there was at least one song on the album that did it for me.
As it went, between the time I bought that Saves The Day record and now, I’ve bought a whole hell of a lot of music, and I’ve sold a good chunk of it back after realizing that it really did suck. Yet I’ve replaced that hole in my collection with music that I currently love, albeit stuff that the me from Hanukahs Past would’ve absolutely gagged at the thought of owning. And you know what? Some of the stuff I love now is, from as objective a level as one can hope to achieve, which is to say not much of one at all, pretty goddamned stupid music. But I absolutely adore it, and I couldn’t care less how ostensibly silly it is, because that just adds to the charm as far as I’m concerned. I’d like to share some of this music below, along with why I previously thought it sucked, and why it currently rules now. Let’s just hope the fifteen year old me doesn’t stumble upon a time machine in some alternate dimension or something. Or that I don’t have to scramble to sell all this stuff off because I think it’s boring and terrible in another four or five years.
1. Sleep – “Dragonaught”
Why I used to think it sucked: It was slow, it was metal, and it had clean vocals. I love metal, and have loved metal for years now, but in my metal vocabulary, “slow” and “clean vocals” did not, under any circumstances, go together; unless we were talking about Black Sabbath, who these guys ripped off anyway. Plus, this is severely druggie music, and as a member of Straight Edge Positive Youth Crew Core of America Until Death, stonerisms, musical or otherwise, did not bode well with me. Why it currently rules: Those riffs man, are like, so crunchy! Sure, slow, but like, so, so, crunchy. Plus, their music has a benevolent pothead vibe, which beats the hell out of the frightening, depressing heroin/methamphetamine approach of Eyehategod or something along those lines. Also, while I still don’t drink or do drugs, I now find the concept of caring about straight edge to be tedious and boring, and thus would now much rather listen to a bunch of stoners kick out of some heavy jams over some hogheaded mongoloid with a crew cut telling me to keep it positive by acting the way he does. Plus, yeah, it’s Sabbath worship, but it’s good Sabbath worship!
2. Candlemass – “Demon’s Gate”
Why I used to think it sucked: When I finally opened my heart to slower forms of metal, I was still very selective. Bands either had to be excessively druggie (Sleep), excessively evil (Abruptum), or both (Electric Wizard). Candlemass isn’t really either of these things so much as it is lumbering, hamfisted, and cheesy. I mean, yeah, they’re singing about witches and crystal balls and demons and stuff, but there’s no menace. Just a lot of guitars and goofy, quasi-operatic, Fat-Swede vocals. Why it currently rules: I don’t really disagree with my previous assessment of this band’s music; it’s just that now their faults have become their assets! And those riffs, man, are heavy as hell. More Sabbath worship done right. I mean, yeah, it’s still cheesy, but so was Black Sabbath, and they rule too. Also, bonus points for having the artistic integrity to name their first album "Epicus Dommicus Metallicus", thereby blessing it with one of the most audaciously stupid titles in all of metaldom.
3. The Donnas – “Rock ‘N’ Roll Machine”
Why I used to think it sucked: The first Donnas song I ever heard was that lousy single/jingle “Take It Off”, which sounded to me like the movie version of the Josie And The Pussycats band with a bunch of blood-drawn children on backing vocals. I still think most of this band’s material stinks, although there’s certainly worse pop rock you can be into. Why it currently rules: When it comes down to it, this song (as is the rest of the album it comes off of, American Teenage Rock’N’Roll Machine) is basically twee teenage girl vocals set over recycled Kiss and Ramones riffs. And, goddamnit, I love Kiss and The Ramones! And girls! So, who am I to complain? What, do you hate women or something?
4. Anti-Nowhere League – “So What”
Why I used to think it sucked: As a member of hardcore positive youth, this band represented the textbook definition of dumb punk poserdom. Plus, they don’t play very fast. Bands that don’t play fast are stupid. Why it currently rules: Like Candlemass, it isn’t so much that my opinion of this band has changed, so much as I have embraced it for the reasons that I used to dislike it. And frankly, I don’t care if you’re deaf or an eight month old baby unable to distinguish or remember music – this is a catchy damn song! So is the rest of the album it’s always reissued on, We Are The League! Of course, they haven’t released an especially useful note of music since, but eh, oh well. One awesome album is better than none, I suppose.
5. Devourment – “Babykiller”
Why I used to think it sucked: It wasn’t so much Devourment that I specifically hated, so much as it was the entire disgusting subgenre of death metal which I’ve come to know as wigger slam. And as a genre, I still think most of this kind of metal is just boring, wank-off competing to see who can outdo who in terms of grossness. It’s basically just the opposite of techie metal one-upping. A race to the bottom, if you will. I won’t, but you may. Why it currently rules: Despite all the lousy music they have spawned, Devourment are, for better or worse, originators, and those slamz simply cannot be denied! Truth be told, Devourment is gross, brutal, and hilarious live – although I’d shy away from saying that to the face of any member. Long live the wigger slamz!
So, do you have any bands that you once thought sucked, that now totally rule? Which band got you on the path to liking stupid and/or shitty music? And what musical group are you most proud of being embarrassed to admit you like?
