Music is my life!!

Staring at the sun ...

 

I bought this CD finally, as I had read and heard a lot of buzz regarding the band, who for me, has the requisite cool name.  But it wasn't until I heard a sample on Amazon.com that I finally dedided to pick up their latest CD, "Restless Youths, Bloodthirsty Babes".  Funny, because I had no idea what they would sound like, and I kept "hearing" a kind of grungy rock sound ...

Of course, I had never heard anything by them, so I did not know what I was getting.  The music, the sound, moody and somber, kind of fills a spot between NIN's "Downward Spiral" and Peter Gabriel <who the lead singer sounds a lot alike>.  It harkens back to my days in Greensboro, running back from McDonald's to Odessa's apartment, the streets reminecscent of the late night scenes in a movie ... except instead of being an artificial environment, it was more profound because I was actually living and breathing in the environment, being a participant in the atmosphere.

Now, I feel that I am living a period of time like that in reverse.  Because unlike then, I was running through and out of the darkness to the light, whereas now, a gloomy as it was where I was coming from, it is as though I am running into an even deeper gloom ...

The group, two black guys and one white, makes me think of what could have been when I was a teenager, growing up listening to new wave music, and writing poems to the music of the Smiths ... maybe if I had pursuit my passion ... but like all my other passions ... because along with music, my ability with words, also relatively unexamined, goes hand in hand.  Both music and words convey the expression of human emotions and thought ... without one, does the other exist?

The power of symbols are so grossly underestimated, considering it is with abstractions we communicate ideas, thoughts, and actioins.  And that I may have the ability to shape and mold and manipulate thoughts and words to where they move the hearts and minds of others, and cause them to alter how they look at their lives ...

.. well, I just wonder what if I had applied myself just a wee bit more <the soundtrack of my life ... another cool band name ...> that just maybe I could have found my niche ...

... back to the song.  It is full of the wistfulness that comes from moments that slip through ones fingers as they journey through their lives ... And it certainly evokes the decisions that leaves one so conflicted, that their life makes as much sense as staring at the sun ...

 

Go To Hell...

If 'Sun' is the lava oozing from the cracks in the earth, then 'Go To Hell' is the depths from which it emerge.  At first, I thought that it was a contrast and that they didn't belong together ... but after listening the song, and the feelings that it brought up, I reconsidered ...

KMFDM was at the fringes of my musical awareness, a band I had heard on occasion, and knew of, but it wasn't until a snippet of their video 'A Drug Against War' on an episode of "Bevais and Butthead", I had to pick it up.  And when I became a fan, during the best era of my adult life, their music is actually something that is uplifiting to me ...

... so though it is doom and gloom of the industrial genre, I associate good times and good feelings with their music.  This song though, is the music that is the backing to my redemptive walk as I come up from the depths of Milton's "Paradise Lost".  I just feel like I am in the Pacific, escaping the Japanese as they march me to my death on Bataan ... yet there is redemption, and it pulls me through ...

Dramamine ...

... which is what you need on a long drive, though there's nothing to think about ...  I see myself driving along the two lane black ribbons in the plains of America or along the Southwest, the places where there are great empty spaces, where there no one around for miles and miles ... and you don't know where it is you are going to, but just know that you have to get away from where you are at ...

It evokes the gray days of ones life, still and colourless.with a steady rain that the wet and chill goes down to the bone.  This is a song for those roads, those days where the sound is flat and the air is thick and heavy with regret ... longing so deep and profound, that it squeezes the breath from you ... hoping that there is something better out there, but knowing that it is just as likely to be even less of what you know ...

 

Blister In The Sun ...

I was still at Renaissance, and WLBS out of Mt Clemens was the new wave station du jour ... now that I am thinking about it, it may have been after my Renaissance days ... anyway, the Violent Femmes seminal tune reflects on my days in Taegu and Jenny Nielsen <whatever happened to her??> and could be offered up as a prime example of me stumbling along in my heedless ways ...

The song is mostly one of angst and frustration < no suprise, after all it is a jack off song ...>and it fit my hormonally charged late teen years in Korea.  Admittedly, the imagery escaped me.  That is actually par for the course, that I feel and sense the song well before I understand the lyrics, which brings me to ...

Me & Giluani Down by the Schoolyard ...

I am pretty sure this was one of the first, if not the first, song that made an impression from Radio AOL. Par for the course, after hearing the song, the name of the song and the name of the band <!!! ... just three exclamation points!!  what a concept!>

This is another one of thous 'Damn, white boys with more funk than I will ever have or had!' band.  I guess they have an abstract concept to their creativeness, and I am certainly feeling them ... another thing I like about it, is that it is long, over 7 minutes, and the break just an all out rockin' blast for me

 

Too Dead For Me ...

... from the final Atari Teenage Riot release ... and based on Hanin Elias' review I read on Amazon.com <Hanin was one of the members of the band> the band itself thought little of '60 second Wipeout'.  As much as I liked the band, I must admit, it was lackluster, being a half good-half schlock release.

But the songs that hit me, hit so HARD ... and "Too Dead For Me" was one of those songs.  I had purchased their first CD, "Burn, Belin, Burn" of their rep. It was a furious social and politcal screed.  It reminded me of what early punk may have sounded to people, as this was one of electronica's early "hard" bands.

"Too Dead ..." makes me think of the dissaffected youth in Europe and the simmering anger ready to explode.  Trapped in a crowded city, the unrelenting hopelessness and apathy by the burgeois feeding the beast ... it really is the feeling of being on a 10 mile race with only 9 miles of road ...

Utopia Parkway ...

I had clipped out a column in the Free Press on the best that year in music, and this cd topped the list.  It took me a while to finally listen to it, but I had keptthe list to remind me to get it ...

... well, it wasn't until Sharon Dooley played it for me, as she had it in her collection.  On my first listen, I was blown away. It was a slice into the life I could have lived if I had dared ... man, this is such a good CD ... I thought about the time Jene Simmons and I were to run away, or when I dreamed of turning pro in Philly or in Mexico as an underage fighter ...

This was a CD that the reviewers all got it right on ... this was clearly one of the best of that year, and too bad this is such an unknown band still ...

Ed Is Dead ...

This is a North Carolina song.  I had picked up the 'Come On Pilgrim' cassette at a used tape/CD shop.  Of course, I hadn't heard the Pixies, just read about them, and it was a band that Kurt Cobain liked alot, even 'wishing he could make music like the Pixies' <his quote>.

I was living with My Delta Girl, and as is my wont <to this very day!> and I would park my butt in the living room to play video games, listening to the obscure and unknown music I tend to purchase, I popped this into my little portable stereo.  And listeninging to Frank Black warble 'her head is in a bitter way' just spoke volumes ... and the lyrics, which made no sense but at the sime time said so much, especially with the music ... many, I know why Kurt was envious!  Why can't they make music like this anymore??