The Music Post, Part 2

As Dave clarified in the comments below, his extremely lengthy post on music wasn't about which music is good or bad, only about the soundtrack to life in college back in the day. Mine was just about telling the world which music I liked and which I don't.

But that post was entirely responsive. Not this one, no siree.

I have never met anyone whose taste in music entirely coincides with my own. My best friends growing up would hear some of my stuff and ask "Why are you listening to this crap?" That's why I murdered most of them and left their bodies in cornfields, where I assume they remain to this day. Ha ha! Am I kidding?

Anyway, Dave mentioned that one of his friends played Pearl Jam's Ten into dust. I've done that with a few CDs, and I thought I'd name as many as I can right here. If any of my former roommates are reading this, which I seriously doubt, you'll probably recognize and tremble at the mere mention of some of these albums. I'll omit those that got mentioned in the last post, like Garbage and Smashing Pumkins.

The Verve, Urban Hymns - There are a few songs on this one I always skipped, like "Chasing the Butterfly" and "This Time." They don't go anywhere, and I assume you have to be high on pot to appreciate them. Other than that, I played this one into the ground. Lucky Man is my favorite, along with Bittersweet Symphony, The Drugs Don't Work, Velvet Morning, Weeping Willow, One Day and Space and Time.

Cake, Fashion Nugget and Prolonging the Magic - The first time I heard "Going the Distance" on the radio, I instantly hated the song after the first verse, and by the time the song ended I was a die-hard Cake fan. That's how fast I was sucked in. If you've never heard the song "Race Car Ya Yas" I will spoil its very sparse lyrics for you:

The land of the race car ya yas
The land where you can't change lanes
The land where large, fuzzy dice
Still hand proudly
Like testicles from rear-view mirrors (Repeat)

Non-exhaustive list of other favorites: Stickshifts and Safety Belts, She'll Come Back to Me, Never There, Walk On By, Hem of Your Garment, Cool Blue Reason. I have a funny story about the song Cool Blue Reason. If you remind me some time, I'll tell you.

Dig, Dig - They had their fifteen minutes of fame with an MTV buzz clip for "Believe," which is a good song, but I also really liked I'll Stay High, Green Room and Anymore. Their follow-up album, Defenders of the Universe was overall a worse album, but the songs Detune and Electric Chord are better than anything on the debut. There were a couple of good tunes on Lifelike, but overall a skippable album.

Afghan Whigs, Congregation, Gentlemen, and Black Love - To the best of my knowledge, I have never met another Afghan Whigs fan. They are not an accessible band, by any stretch of the imagination. So this is not a recommendation to go out and buy their stuff, because there's a really good chance you won't like it. That said, I love it. The best description I ever read of the lyrics is that they are about "relationships gone rancid." If there were a stronger word for "rancid," I'd use it. Gentlemen is a masterpiece, start to finish. Black Love is more hit and miss, but really gets under your skin. Congregation is less developed, but the title track on that one I have listened to in the upper hundreds of thousands of times. Here's a sample lyric from the song 66 which I think is just so wonderfully poetic:

You walked in
Just like smoke
With a little "Come on, come on, come on" in your walk
Come on

The mental image of a woman walking in "like smoke" is just too perfect.

Man or Astroman, Destroy all Astromen - All their stuff is good, but this is my favorite. Destination Venus and Taco Wagon are at the top. In my life I've met maybe ten people who know who these guys are.

Best. Concert. Ever. How good? The bass (etc.) player, Coco the Electric Monkey Wizard, played one song with a burning television set on his freakin head! I don't know how you could possibly get any cooler than that. Also, Coco let me wear this crazy helmet with surgical tubing glued to it for one song. What a classy guy. They have a song called __________, in which the guitarist, Starcrunch, slides his glasses over the strings for this crazy crescendo at the end. I seriously cannot tell you how awesome that show was.

Primus, everything up to and including Tales from the Punchbowl - Les Claypool is half the reason I play bass (the other half is Cliff Burton, so that's kind of a wierd combination). Another not easily accessible band (although far more so than Afghan Whigs). I thought I had outgrown them, but they came in concert earlier this year, the original line-up reunited, and it instantly knocked 14 years or so off my maturity level. Les is the freakin man.

Coldplay, A Rush of Blood to the Head - I know, I'm a sissy. My brother got me into this one when he showed me the really cool video for The Scientist. There are a couple of mediocre songs on the album, and everything else is great.

The Cure, Wish - I actually never listened to this album until I was about to graduate from college, and it was very old at the time, but I borrowed the tape from a friend of mine and proceeded to drive my roommates (and later my wife) nuts with it. Edge of the Deep Green Sea, Doing the Unstuck, Open and High are my favorites.

Catherine Wheel, Ferment, Chrome and Happy Days - The first one I heard was Chrome, again courtesy of my brother who saw the video for Crank on some late night show. On the first two albums, the band has this really awesome, dreamy sound on the vocals. They lose it a bit on the third, which turns into more standard alt-rock, but still very good. Favorites include Pain, Broken Head, Bill and Ben, Flower to Hide, Hole, and Judy Staring at the Sun.