The Rentals are Fredo Corleone?

I've been thinking a lot about The Killers lately, but only because I've been listening to Pinkerton a ton. You wouldn't think the Killers and Weezer have anything in common, and sonically, I guess they don't, but after the release of both of their first albums (which incidentally came almost exactly a decade apart: Weezer ("The Blue Album") in May of 1994, Hot Fuss in June of 2004... not sure if that's poignant or not, but whatevs), both bands found themselves in near identical situations, and both bands chose dramatically different paths for their second records. The early careers of both Weezer and The Killers may have only coincidental similarities, but when looked at in tandem, the first 2 years of their recording careers serve as the perfect examples for both the good and the evil that goes along with super-stardom.

Both bands released their debuts to little immediate fanfare. Both band's first singles petered out before cracking Billboard's Top 50 ("Somebody Told Me" reached #51, and "Undone (The Sweater Song)" reached #57), both albums took off commercially with the release of the second singles ("Buddy Holly" and "Mr. Brightside"), and both albums eventually went Triple Platinum in the US.

But as I look back now, what really seems to be the tie that binds these guys is that, when listening to these records when they first came out, I got the distinct impression from both bands that the guys who made these albums probably got beat up by the cool kids in High School: Weezer for being dorks who spent their weekends playing D&D while cranking Fair Warning or Dressed to Kill, The Killers for being effeminate boys who cared more about fashion than football. Either way, both bands wrote and recorded fantastic debuts that would clearly become hits in the sequestered world of Indie-Rock, but be unlikely (but not undeserving) conquerors of the mainstream Rock universe. Both bands seemed to operate too far outside of the boundaries of normal (nerd-central and hipster-metro-sexual) for mainstream audiences to be comfortable enough to make them successful. Clearly, I couldn't have been more wrong. Both bands achieved that second scenario...crossover success.

There isn't a negative connotation in the general sense of the term "crossover success". It really just means that an artist who should have a niche audience makes a record that satisfies the needs of those outside of that niche. I'm sure there are apartment-dwellers in Brooklyn cranking Taylor Swift, just as there are 13 year old, upper-crust, private school suburbanites in my neck of the woods blasting Jay-Z. And the Jigga fans that bought the "In My Lifetime" single out of Damon Dash's trunk in 1993 aren't pissed at Jay because a bunch of entitled snots bought The Blueprint 3. My guess is that most of them see his ability to sell records to kids who have no clue about where he's coming from or what he has to say to be a testament to his talent. His shit's just that good. But "crossover" doesn't mean the same thing in the street-cred-obsessed-but-not-from-the-streets world of Indie-Rock.

Generally speaking, in Indie-Rock, "crossover" is really just another term for "sell-out". When a band on the rock fringe finds itself in the warm and unlikely embrace of the common folk, Indie-Rock fans usually jumped ship about 3 months earlier. But after their debuts, both The Killers and Weezer found themselves in the dubious position of achieving mainstream success while retaining their niche appeal. Even with the chart-topping albums and FM pop radio-friendly singles, Indie fans didn't abandon them. I don't think commercial ascendancy was necessarily embraced by the cool kids, but they didn't lose interest either. And as the clamor for a second record exponentially grew, both bands found themselves in the same position, only a decade's worth of time apart. (Weezer released their second album in September of 1996, The Killers in October of 2006, exactly 28 months after each their debuts.)

Very few bands have have the luxury of finding themselves in such a precarious circumstance. But when a band is confronted with this unlikely situation, it's time to make hard and important decisions; what direction does record #2 take?

You could go the Red Hot Chili Peppers' route and stay the course. (Granted, the Chili Peppers didn't find themselves in such a place until after their 4th record, but still...) It's certainly the safest road to travel. You could record a couple of great records still. (After RHCP broke through with Mother's Milk, they recorded the absolutely brilliant Blood, Sugar, Sex, Majik, the solid One Hot Minute, and the remarkable Californication.) You'll probably lose 10 to 25% of your overall fan-base to boredom, and you run the inevitable risk of eventually becoming invalid (i.e., Stadium Arcadium) but you'll retain the bulk of your fans, probably gain some new ones, and ultimately enjoy a relatively solid commercial harvest.

Road #2 is the Coldplay route. Taking this path is playing it more than safe; it's playing it commercial. You can adapt your music to market trends, make songs that are well-written but so absolutely white-bread, dry-toast, horribly uncreative and obviously formulaic that they clearly cater to the lowest artistic common denominator and result in records that sell like hotcakes but sound and ultimately are soulless and nearly indistinguishable from anything else you (or anyone else on top 40 radio, for that matter) have recorded and are an absolute tedious listen to anyone who isn't a sheep or over 40 with a desperate desire to be hip without hurting their ears. Oh, Coldplay sells a shitton of records, but at what cost? You'll make more effing money than you can ever hope to spend, and you'll get to marry Gwyneth Paltrow, but you'll no longer be any good...and you'll name your daughter Apple (not so hot either).

Then there's road #3. The third path, the one least traveled. This is the route with the greatest level of risk/reward...the Nirvana route. You could look at your breakthrough record and acknowledge that it was a success, drawing in and hooking the hardest core of fans as well as the most casual of listeners and make the decision to up the ante, expand the boundaries of modern commercial musical mores, break new ground, not simply try to push the envelope but attempt to fucking set it on fire and burn it to cinders. You can try to alter the face of modern music. The impact might not be directly noticeable, but it will ultimately manipulate the shape and parameters of contemporary tuneage. Even if your contribution doesn't engender an automatic change in popular music, it can at least pave the way for future endeavors, whether from you or artists influenced by you. Even if your attempt at progressive adaptation falls on deaf ears initially, it may and probably will result in some up-and-coming youngster fucking up people's world and making modern music a more compelling force because of being influenced by that record you made.

So if the parallels I see between the first two years of both Weezer's and The Killers' careers  aren't completely imagined, this is where their paths diverge. Weezer chooses one road, The Killers choose another. This is where these two bands truly become different.  Weezer goes one way. and essentially,  The Killers became the Indie-Rock Saruman the White.

The Killers had the world by the balls, and that grip was well deserved. In 2004, Hot Fuss was about as good as Indie-Rock gets. Even people who didn't like that album bought that album because it was totally irresistible. It was the perfect mix of Indie street cred and sugary-sweet, radio-friendly pop. Every song on that record could have been a hit. They were that good. The Killers were poised to unite, or at least bridge the gap a little between the arthouse* sect and the mainstream herd. They could have taken the unlikely situation that Hot Fuss generated and pleased the hipster contingent while potentially expanding the world of the imaginatively inept by pushing the boundaries of their creative indulgences, even if only slightly, and helped to usher in a new era of commercially viable music that was just as artistic as it was marketable. They had the opportunity and the means. In 2004, if Indie-Rock bands were Istari, The Killers were certainly the leader. But like that Son of a Bitch Saruman, they got scared and greedy.

Let's face it, Saruman was no idiot. You don't get to be the leader of all Wizards on Middle-Earth if you're a dummy. He saw the writing on the wall. He saw that the potential for success was at best slim. Shit, everybody saw that the potential for destroying Sauron hung around the neck of a naive little guy with big hairy feet. Can Hobbits even run with those feet? And Hobbits were always full of greasy meat and beer, that's hardly the diet for an active hero. How is some full-bellied, kind of drunk dude who's never left home going to elude the Nazgûl flying around on the mounted backs of the Fell Beasts, let alone The Dark Lord Sauron, if he can't even run because he's got a bunch of junk sloshing around in his breadbasket and his feet are too big to be graceful?

Things looked bleak in Middle-Earth when the fate of the world rested on dear Frodo's shoulders. It didn't take a genius to see the potential benefits in becoming a turncoat, but Gandalf didn't bail, neither did Aragorn or, Éowyn, or Pippin, and sweet Sam, well, frankly, Samwise Gamgee risked just as much as Frodo did with a lot less glory. They didn't bail because they had principles. They all thought it was better to die fighting for good than throwing on the manacles of evil, no matter how comfortable and stylish they might be.

But not Saruman. No, Saruman got scared. Saruman saw the potential for failure in supporting Frodo and the rest of his Fellowship of misfits, and the possibility for great wealth and comfort in backing that very darkest of horses, The Dark Lord of Mordor, Sauron. So he took the easy way out. He took the road that seemed most lucrative and least risky. He took the path of Coldplay.

Okay, so Saruman had Wormtongue doing his bidding as a result, and he did get that kind of kick-ass army of blood-thirsty Orcs at his disposal, but what was he left with? Wormtongue killed him. He took the wrong path to avoid death and gain wealth only to be cast out of society and die at the hands Gríma Wormtongue, a filthy sycophant, a grimy, slimy liar; a lowlife if there ever was one.

Reenter The Killers, welcoming us to Sam's Town. They had the chance to change everything, but just like Saruman, they chose the easy way out. They feared obscurity, they craved a wider commercial appeal. What they ended up with was a record that has easily one of the most exciting lead singles of the last decade, and 11 other tracks that make dust-covered dog shit look like a motherfucking thrill-ride.

When I first heard "When You Were Young", I expected Sam's Town to be one of the greatest records in the history of the world. (Had they not so blatantly ripped-off Springsteen, "When You Were Young", probably would have been one of the best songs The Killers ever recorded; with the obvious theft, it was without a doubt the best song The killers ever recorded.) Instead I got one of the best songs I had heard in a long time, and a bunch of other boring songs designed to adequately coexist with their previous material and generate record sales. They aren't necessarily awful, they just aren't good. They're boring, insincere, middle of the road, insubstantial tracks. In the end, 11 of the 12 songs on Sam's Town seem utterly lifeless. They're not Rock songs, they're jingles for toilet paper or cotton-balls or any other innocuous substance you can think of. Those songs aren't alive, they just exist. And for me, they would have been better off recording nothing at all.

What should have been a game changer turned into nothing more than a slightly better rendition of everything else. It wasn't unlistenable, there was just no reason to listen to it. It was sterile and manufactured. It was a record designed to sell rather than a record that sold a ton because of a brilliant design. The Killers had an opportunity to reinvent the wheel, but instead they chose to manufacture a new brand-name tire. They put out the same product virtually everyone else was, they just slapped a different name on it. The Killers didn't simply drop the ball, they cremated the fucker.

Weezer on the other hand did the exact opposite. (Okay, I guess I have to acknowledge that Weezer actually did the exact same thing The Killers did, they just did it one album later. I guess if I'm sticking with the literary analogies, this would make Weezer the Micheal Corleone of Indie-Rock. [Does that make The Retals Fredo?] Micheal tried to do the right thing, tried to avenge his father and legitimize the Corleone fortune even though, at least at first, he felt like he had no place wallowing in the mire of "The Family Business". Ultimately though, the desperation he felt as a result of the deaths of first his brother and then his father thrust him into a life that was too cavernous and alluring for him to reject. He started out sweet and ended up evil, but at least for my purposes, the most important thing to remember is that between his two poles, he was a hero.)

"The Blue Album" was recorded, "The Blue Album" was released, "The Blue Album" was huge. The success of Weezer gave Rivers Cuomo opportunity. As Weezer's primary songwriter, Rivers Cuomo certainly could've opted  for road #1 or #2. Both would have most certainly made him a buck and an even bigger household name. That's obvious, because their second self-titled album (their third record, "The Green Album"), sold over a million copies in the US and peeked at #4 on the Billboards even though it's only 28 minutes of I guess respectable but remarkably derivative songs ("Photograph" is a pretty solid song, and "Smile" is ultra rocking, but other than that, it was really more of the same from record #1 without any of the excitement of novelty.) But with Pinkerton, Rivers Cuomo decided to walk the path least traveled, that 3rd road, the "Nirvana Road".

Pinkerton's almost 15 years old. That amazes me, because as I played it tonight, it sounded fresh, exciting, relevant. Pinkerton sounds just as new and valid today as it did 14½ years ago. When Rivers Cuomo wrote the songs that collectively became Pinkerton, there were no aspirations of grandeur, no attempts at super-stardom in mind, he was just a man hemorrhaging, a man in need of catharsis, a man who deserved exorcism. The fact that everyone and their mothers knew he was the guy who sang with The Fonz didn't mend a lifetime of rejection, disappointment, and marginalization. That's why he wrote Pinkerton.

For Pinkerton, Rivers Cuomo skinned himself. He stripped away all airs and exposed himself; all of the dirty, painful, uncomfortable bits were laid out for mass consumption. For as much hook as "The Blue Album" had, as much as it rocked and crunched, it was never as honest, as sincere, as emotionally bare, or as brave as Pinkerton. RC hung it all out on the line with Pinkerton; he acknowledged the existence of the restless skeletons and then he threw open the closet door, exposing himself to the entire world.
And that's just conceptually, lyrically.

Musically, this record is about as adventurous and uninhibited as the band has ever been. The music courses with pain, disillusion, and cynicism. Rivers Cuomo's voice has never sounded anywhere near as passionate and brazen. The gritty distortion swallows almost every expertly written and delivered guitar riff. The performance given by Pat Wilson isn't simply adequate but downright savvy, and Matt Sharp's bass is not simply brilliant but quite possibly the backbone of the entire operation. It's how Pavement would have sounded if they wanted to be successful.

No meticulous overdubs, virtually no attention to aural detail; the band entered the studio with the songs, their instruments, and a handful of mics, recording the songs live from a single room to tape with virtually no production whatsoever. It was a minimalist approach to a massive undertaking with masterful results. It was important for the moment as well as the song to be captured. It was more important to chronicle the spirit of the endeavor than to manufacture a product for the consumer. The result is an unbridled and sincere record devoid of manicuring. There's no pretension or preconceived notion, only an organic essence to a crop of remarkably honest and unabashed songs. It's amazing. It's inspiring. If it's not genius, it's just a shade short of it. And 15 years later, it's just as essential to me as it was when I first heard it.   

Okay, so after Pinkerton, Weezer went all Micheal C. on us. After Pinkerton, Rivers Cuomo turned to the dark side (could Weezer also be Darth Vader? Would that make their tour bu the Death Star?) because he couldn't handle the commercial dejection of his soul-offering. So what? None of that matters. What does matter is that for one single, brief, but nonetheless shining moment, Rivers Cuomo was a hero. For that one moment, RC had enough heart to record Pinkerton. It's not a typical Weezer record, it's the quintessential one. Maybe Rivers Cuomo gave up greatness for solace. We still have Pinkerton, an single offering more chock full of valor than most artists can hope to achieve with their entire career. Do doubt, now Weezer is who Weezer "is now", but they once were so much more, and Pinkerton proves that.  And hey, they may no longer be "my" Weezer, but at least their not The Killers.

(*The word arthouse™ means pretentious and was coined by Matt McKenna)

"The Long and the Short of It: A Focused and Truncated sort of Autobiography" or, "Motivations of an Old Toaster: A Manifesto"

An Introduction:

You don't know this, but I've written 17 blogs over that last 6 months. You don't know this because I haven't posted a single one of them. Okay, so none of them are "finished", per se, but they exist. They're all nearly done. They're on the precipice of substantial. They're there, all fuzzy and flickering in and out out reality, trying their hardest to break through the plain of idea and theory into the realm of actuality, but these writings have a single, significant stumbling block...the writer.

I keep writing; I always write. But regardless of how much I've liked the finished product, it was wrong. I was always wrong. I would tell myself it wasn't good enough, wasn't funny enough, wasn't clear enough, but really, the only problem was it wasn't "right" enough.

It's not that what I was writing was factually incorrect or misrepresentations of my opinions, it was the subject matter that was wrong. They were all fine subjects and I hope to finish and publish them very soon, but I've been dwelling on something for quite sometime, something that I have needed to get out, but have kept side-stepping. The irony of course is that by standing in the way of what I should be writing, the things I wrote stood in my way.

But no more...I'm done. After great contemplation and a much needed pow-wow with my super-good-buddy Liz, I've decided fear will not be my master. I'm too tired and too frustrated to be scared of appearing unbalanced. I have something to say, a blog to write, a blog that is probably the most egotistic and self-centered one I will ever write, but so be it. The more I've thought about it, the more I'm convinced I have to write it if for no reason other than emotional exorcism, catharsis, or self-preservation. As one final note, it is not my intention for what is written here to sound either self-deprecating or condescending, but there's a good chance it will be both. Oh well, here goes nothing...

The Long and the Short of It or Motivations of an Old Toaster

I'm not like you, or at least I'm not like literally every other music fan I've ever met. Everyone I know, everyone I've ever talked to about music (and if I've talked to you, there's a 99% chance music has come up. I probably forced the topic.) seems to have a singular similarity, they're looking for a visceral response to the music they listen to. Whether the provocation is emotional or physical, in order to fall in love with a song, album, artist, they need to be moved. This is something I do not need.

Don't get me wrong, an emotional response is great. Hell, an emotional response is invigorating, liberating, amazing, but for me an emotional response is simply a welcome byproduct. For me, music is an intellectual pursuit. A song can't even begin induce an emotional reaction if it doesn't make me think first. (Okay, so that's a blanket statement that doesn't cover all the bands I love. It doesn't account for Sigur Rós [I don't understand a thing those guys are saying], the Misfits, The Ramones, any of my beloved 80's Metal [exception within the exception: Metallica, Anthrax, Megadeth, White Lion], Wham!, or Kelly Clarkson, but "exception to the rule", writer's prerogative, and all that shit...they don't count in this instance.)

My friend John has always said I'm a horrible party DJ because I don't abide by Party Music rules, and I could never figure out what he meant. But since I've been trying to figure out what makes me different from all of my friends, I've realized that that statement is completely wrong for me, but he is, in fact, entirely right. The fact is, I have a solitary emotional response to the music I listen to, happiness. The Cure's Pornography makes me feel exactly the same as The Cure's The Head on the Door. I just feel good. But that's because Robert Smith and the rest of his rotating gang of bros that have encompassed The Cure over the last 3 decades never fail to make me think. Lyrically, Robert Smith has always written remarkably poetic, insightful, thoughtful words. And from a historical perspective, you can track the trajectory of The Cure's stylistic metamorphosis through their biographical timeline. Even though the series of singles released between November of 1982 and October of 1983 share no sonic resemblance to the songs recorded for and released on Pornography in May of '82, without the latter, the former would not have existed. That is a tale for a different day, so I won't go into it, but believe me, it's true.

And this (both the discovering and eventual knowing and dwelling) excites me. Getting to hear this stuff, know how it all intersects and interconnects is for me just pure, unbelievable, unmatchable, pulsating energy. Deducing this, dissecting it is intrinsically scholastic, but it's also unyielding in its brilliance. For me, thinking about this is fun, and that's makes the music fun. So even though the songs on Pornography are quite possibly the antithesis of fun, the fact that it gives me something to think about is fun, thus it makes me happy, thus Pornography makes me happy (I'm talking about the album, but I certainly see the humor here), thus I am happy when I listen to Pornography. So for me listening to Pornography at a party makes total sense. And this logic applies to everything I have ever loved.

Being given the opportunity to deconstruct what a band or artist is doing is what I love about music. Without that, I am only capable of at best liking it. In order for me to love something, it has to be intellectually compelling in one form or another. That's what does it for me, and once I have that, I'm happy...and there's that emotional byproduct. And if this was the only issue, it wouldn't be an issue at all. So what if I want something different out of the music I listen to than you do. You want something different from me, so it should at least be a wash. But of course, it's me, so there's always another issue.

If pending fatherhood has forced me to do one thing, it's been to attempt as best I can to seriously examine who I am as a person. I don't want my bullshit to become my kid's bullshit. I don't want my baggage to become my child's inheritance. In doing this very bare-bones self-diagnosis, I've discovered that my problem is I'm an old toaster.

Everyone's had one at one time or another. You know the one I'm talking about; the toaster that, in order to properly brown bread into that state of golden and crispy edible accoutrement that is a staple on breakfast tables around the world you have to "toast" the bread on one side, flip it over and "toast" it on the other. If you're particularly unlucky, you might have to jiggle the lever in just the right way to make the thing turn on at all.

Well, that's what I am. I am the human equivalent of that. I function, just not in the intended way. I can hold down a job, conduct conversations without educing fear in my conversant, perform the basic vitals necessary to survive, but outside of that, I kind of begin to fail as a human. I'm sort of like a believable imitation of a person. I am dysfunctionally functional. I hesitate to call myself crazy, but I have to admit, a more apt term continuously seems to escape me. Maybe quirky or not-quite-right are more satisfactory terms, but I don't know, crazy seems to just ring a little more true to me. Oh, I'm not stabby or rubber-room crazy, I'm just incapable of functioning in a full and normal capacity in the realm we call the real world.

Maybe I'm being a little unfair to myself. Maybe I'm not crazy, but I'm definitely not normal, I'm definitely flawed. Whether I'm crazy or just a little broken, the result ultimately ends up being the same, I'm a little fucked up and communication seems to be the root of the majority of those flaws. It probably sounds funny that the loudest guy in any room who has apparently no filter for what is and is not appropriate social conversation should say he has a hard time communicating. I think I come off as an open book type of person, but I'm not. I'm actually pretty fucking guarded. I think I also often come off as a pretty easy going guy, but again, I'm not, or at least not entirely. Don't get me wrong, I like having fun, I enjoy jokes and laughing. I'm not saying I'm dark and brooding, but I am somewhat intense. The way I think, the way I feel, internally, I'm kind of severe. Because of the severity of my personality, I have very little tolerance for small talk, but because of the insularity of my nature, I have a hard time talking to people about the things I want to talk about, the things that actually matter.

So where does that leave me? Well, kind of fucked is where. Essentially, unless I feel like I can trust you 100%, I have a hard time showing you the dark, cold, abyssal waters that exist beneath my surface. There are probably only 5 people on Earth who know the whole me. It's not that what everyone sees isn't me, it's just not the whole me. And if you're close to me but don't think you're one of those 5 people, don't feel bad. If you're my friend, that means I admire, respect, and love you. It's not anything you did; it's me, it's my hang-up. I'm not sure why I'm like this. I wasn't raised that way. I'm not some über-masculine, Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry type. I'm no Cromagnon man (although if Brendan Fraser's portrayal of Link in 1992's Pauly Shore vehicle "Encino Man" was anywhere near historically accurate, I might not be giving the proper credit to the intuition and range of emotional depth of the Neanderthal). Still, there's a real fear attached to the idea of truly exposing myself. Maybe it's fear of vulnerability, maybe it's a fear that, if I allow you to see the whole messed-up picture, you'll decide I'm not worth the energy. Maybe it's something entirely different that I hasn't occurred to me yet. I don't know. Nonetheless, here I am and here it is.

"So what does any of this have to do with music?", you ask. Well, music has served as my great neutralizer. If you like music, and I like music, this the one way in which I know you and I are the same. Thus, I have used music as a way to safely reveal myself to you. I relate to the world around me through the music I listen to and love. If I recommend something to you, that probably means I'm trying to, in my own backwards, cryptic way, open up to you. I'm trying to show you something about me that I think you may not know. I'm attempting, in what I realize is the most unobvious way, to be a better friend, or open up to you in a way I probably haven't yet. The music I listen to is rarely music I simply like, it's part of me. It's someone's unintentional yet probably apt interpretation of an aspect of my personality. So by recommending you listen to this, I guess I'm sort of indirectly hoping that we'll get a chance to later talk about it, and as a result, you'll gain a greater understanding of who I really am.

Oh, I realize this is asinine. Not only would I have to actually tell you that this is what I was doing for you to get it, but you'd also have to listen to music the same way I do to glean what I was trying to convey, which we've already established is probably not the case. I guess in the end, what's important here is that I've finally realized this. My expectations are unfair and unrealistic. And although I'm 100% sure that I won't stop attempting to cram the music I love down your throat in order to put myself on display, I'm going to make a concentrated effort to be a little more obvious, a little more open. I guess this is one part explanation, one part personal exposé, one part self-gratification, and one part apology. I'm sorry I've been a kind of crappy friend to most people, but it's not because I don't love you, it's because I don't know how to say it, and for that, I'm sorry. I'm going to try to be better. And if you appreciate it, do me a favor, and when my baby is old enough to understand, let he or she know that the mere idea of their existence made their dad try to be a better person.

Protractors+Crystals=The Shit, Whod've Guessed?

I think most people have flashes of genius; most people have great ideas. Almost all of us have those moments where we think "wouldn't it be cool if..." or "wouldn't it be funny if..." or "wouldn't it be crazy or weird or amazing if...", and we're probably right, it probably would be cool or funny or crazy, wierd, or amazing but it seems too hard or too ridiculous or too far-fetched to even try, so we don't, but Wayne Coyne does, Wayne Coyne always does. If Wayne Coyne dreams it, he does it. This alone would make it hard to have anything but respect for The Flaming Lips, but the fact that no matter how maniacally insane Wayne Coyne's ideas are, they always seem to work makes The Flaming Lips one of the greatest bands in the history of Rock n' Roll.

Last night, I listened to In a Priest Driven Ambulance for the first time in probably at least a year, and I couldn't help wondering how, if this record was released in 1990, every record since then hasn't been amazing? I mean, it's all right there; The Lips showed everyone how to make a brilliant record. Okay, so maybe it's a stretch to believe ...Ambulance should have inspired all music. Maybe expecting SWV to release It's About Ambulances, Snoop Dogg to drop Prieststyle, or Jordy's hit single to have been "Dur dur d'être prêtre" is a bit much to ask. But there has been a lot of Rock music released over the last 2 decades, still I have yet to hear a band who has been obviously influenced by The Flaming Lips. How can this be?

It can't. It's simply not possible. I'm sure there are bands out there who have been influenced by The Flaming Lips. I'm sure I've listened to bands who have been influenced by The Flaming Lips. I'm sure I like or maybe even love bands who have been influenced by The Flaming Lips, but it's never sounded obvious that a band has been influenced by The Flaming Lips because, unlike pretty much any other band in history, it's impossible to believably replicate the sound of The Flaming Lips.

I listen to a lot of music. I love a lot of music. I can't imagine a life without The Cure. I adore Ryan Adams. I love Wilco, Joy Division, Bright Eyes, and even when Morrissey has released something bad (Smiths or solo), it's still better than 99% of everything else out there. But regardless of how unique you are, you can almost always find another band who has clearly ripped you off. Oh, I'm not saying it's as good as the original or that it's even good at all, but the attempt is unmistakable.

But The Flaming Lips, well The Lips are just too crazy. The Lips are fucking nuts. I think you have to comprehend to effectively imitate, and the only thing any of us will ever understand about The Lips is they are completely incomprehensible. You never know what Wayne Coyne's going to do. You only know that it will probably blow your mind.

Like a lot of people, the first thing I heard from The Flaming Lips was "She Don't Use Jelly". I bought Transmissions from the Satellite Heart with expectations of mild rocking with boat loads of comedy. Instead, I got a remarkably chaotic and equally brilliant record with at best an occasionally humorous moment (the lyrics for "She Don't Use Jelly" were and remain ridiculously funny, and it's hard not to crack at least a tiny smirk at the gelatinous quiver of Wayne Coyne's post-Ruthless Records voice). Transmissions... made me smile, but it was certainly nothing to laugh at. From the second I heard "Turn it On", I knew that these guys were no joke. They might have a sense of humor, but there was nothing funny about them. They were pure Rock n' fuckin' Roll, period.

But frankly, that's just who The Flaming Lips are. They are pure American Rock n' Roll to the N^th degree. Whether it's the "Replacements on acid and amphetamines" sound of the Ruthless Records albums (Hear It Is, Oh My Gawd!!!...The Flaming Lips, Telepathic Surgery, and In A Priest Driven Ambulence), the futuristic, communal lasciviousness of Hit to Death in the Future Head
(This album's always sounded dirty to me. It's probably only because of the use of the word "Porn" in "Talkin''Bout the Smiling Deathporn Immortality Blues (Everyone Wants to Live Forever)"), the intense Space-Rock of the aforementioned Transmissions..., the crunchy, chaotic sincerity of Clouds Taste Metallic, the conceptually adventurous spirit of Zaireeka (in a practical sense, Zaireeka is a bit much to handle, but you can't fault Coyne and the rest of The Lips for trying), the shimmering, silken beauty of The Soft Bulletin, the sentimental whimsy of Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, the sweeping disjointed grandeur of At War with the Mystics, the ultra-stylized and epically ominous Christmas on Mars, the mechanized brilliance of Embryonic, or the remarkably original yet shockingly true take on Pink Floyd's classic masterpiece Dark Side of the Moon, The Lips are calculatedly chaotic and destructively dissonant while always maintaining a symphonic ornateness; a delicate, focused, intricate, structural integrity.

The Flaming Lips are simply amazing. They have consistently managed to release the most insane music of the last three decades (that's right, they've been around for nearly 30 years...doesn't that make you feel super old?). They're music is always unique, fun, slightly unsettling (in the best possible way) and incredibly chaotic, but the brilliance of The Lips is that within that chaos are amazing songs. If you strip away all of the din and bedlam, you're fundamentally left with timeless songs played in the most irreverent way. Ultimately, this is why The Flaming Lips sound is unable to be replicated. They are simultaneously universal and antithetical. They are both experimentally sterile and classically touching. They are everything to anyone. They're science and mysticism, they are quite possibly the best American Rock n' Roll band recording today.

If you're not a Flaming Lips fan, do yourself a favor and become one, because there's no way around it, these dudes are the shit.

Napster, and the Softest Bullet Ever Shot

Napster fucked us, plain and simple. It was like we all became crackheads. It was cheap and as long as you knew where to go, it was easy get and you could take as much as you could carry. It felt good at first, but before we knew it, we couldn't stop using it. Eventually, it left us hollow, a shell of our former selves. When we looked in the mirror, we didn't recognize who we saw. We became mp3-addicts, freebasing electronic rocks through our Ethernet cables, forgetting how to live and how to listen to music.

Trust me, I know because I was a huge user. Oh, it started out innocent enough...born out of curiosity and a desperate desire for out-of-print Cure b-sides; I turned to Napster as a way to satisfy my completest urges, but before I knew it, I had stopped buying music all together and started downloading songs and albums I didn't even really want simply because I could.

A large part of it was novelty. Before Napster, the only thing I used the Internet for was printing out a Misfits lyrics book, looking up inaccurate information for high school research papers and seeking out naked pictures of Jenny McCarthy, but then Napster came along and suddenly the Internet seemed to have a higher purpose. I could get music for free. It was a revelation. It was exhilarating. It was like handing a rockhead a packed pipe and a bottomless supply...only bad shit could come of it. A wise man named Justin Hawkins once said "It seemed like such a good idea at the time", and how right you were Mr. Hawkins. It seemed like a fucking great idea at the time. But we tend to only see our mistakes clearly when we look at them in a rear-view mirror, and Napster was a mistake. P-2-P networks changed everything, stole it all; robbed us of our fanship, our humanity, our souls, and the kicker is, we unlocked the God-damned door for them.

Napster got us hooked, and once that happened, the way the world collectively looked at music changed. There was no more investment. Obviously, if you were using Napster you weren't investing financially, but more importantly, Napster allowed music fans to check out emotionally. That's not to say that economics wasn't in itself a significant factor. It changed record sales which changed the industry which ultimately changed the way we saw musicians. All of the sudden, artists who wanted to sell records became evil and greedy. We suddenly thought artists who were upset about their music being ripped off were sycophants to the almighty dollar, like they didn't care about their art or their fans, like all they wanted was a big pile of cash to put on top of their already big pile of cash.

The fact that Metallica had spent 14 months on the road playing shows for fans ceased to matter. Metallica, as the obvious example, wasn't touring relentlessly for themselves. Can you imagine how hard it must be to tour for over a year? I'm away from my house for 5 hours and I start to get the shakes. They, like pretty much every other band in history, were doing it for the fans, they were doing it so as many people who wanted to see them had the opportunity to do so. And because they played so many fucking shows, ticket prices stayed down. This isn't meant to be a defense of Metallica, or a validation of Lars Ulrich. I like Metallica, and I think Lars Ulrich is a dick, but not because he wanted people to buy his records. That just makes him a working musician.

I remember all the Lars bashing; I was in on it anytime the topic crossed my path, but not because I agreed with the arguments, because I was scared not to be. I was scared that understanding the point of Ulrich threatened my coolness factor, so I agreed and mimicked people's rage, but I understood where he was coming from. First off, L.U. claims that his only anger at Napster was the fact that it gave bootleggers opportunity to release unfinished material. Maybe that's true, maybe that isn't...I don't know. But I do know I don't like anyone reading what I'm writing before I'm finished, not even my wife. So if rough cuts of a song find their way onto the Internet, I can understand why he'd be pissed. It'd be like eating a chef's food before their done cooking it. Even if it tastes good, it's not going to be as good an experience had you let them finish.

But even if it had more to do with the cold, hard dollar more than our buddy Lars let on, people seem to have forgotten that although music is art, it's also a musician's job. I don't know about you, but if I showed up to work tomorrow and they told me my services would be on a strictly volunteer basis hence forth, they would blink their eyes and see nothing but my dust trail. I'm not going to work for free, and I suspect neither would you, so why would we expect musicians to do it?

I've heard the counter arguments. "I go to the shows", and "I spend money at the merch tables". I know the arguments because I've used them myself. But truthfully, I will never have enough money to buy tickets to even just one show by every band or artist that I've downloaded music from, I certainly won't have enough expendable cash to throw at merchandise. It's an excuse, a rationalization. It's illegitimate and it's delusional. It's something to say in order to make ourselves feel better about doing something we know is wrong but wish wasn't.

It fucked the record industry too. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not a huge supporter of the record industry or big business in general, but I also don't have time to care about trying to stick it to "The Man". I'm tired a lot, and I am a big fan of instant gratification, so with the exception of my wife, I don't really want to stick it to anyone. Hey, I'm all for the theoretical overthrow of "The Man", and it someone wants to stick it to the man in my honor, go for it, but in this case, we didn't stick anything to anyone making above a 5 figure salary by using P-2-P programs, we stuck it to ourselves. The result of the use of of Napster and other P-2-P networks resulted in a change in the way the record industry operated.

At one time, record companies conducted business much in the same way that publishing houses do. Publishing houses sign mass-market paperback-ready authors because they sell a shit-ton of books. They then can funnel the profits they make from that less-than-creative but more-than-lucrative author into other less-than-lucrative but more-than-creative writers. The rewarding ends justify the filthy means. Danielle Steel gives us John Irving. Granted, Irving carries weight on his own now, but he didn't when he started, and all good things have to start somewhere, and 9 times out of 10, good things are misunderstood and under appreciated in the beginning.

In 1994, Columbia Records was the home to both Aerosmith and Jeff Buckley. By 1994, Aerosmith sucked but sold a lot of albums and Jeff Buckley did neither of those things. I can't say that Aerosmith's record sales had a direct impact on Columbia singing Jeff Buckley, but I can't imagine it hurt. In a perfect world, Jeff Buckley would have sold 6 million copies of Grace worldwide, but we live in a very imperfect world, and in reality, Jeff Buckley was never going to sell millions upon millions of records. It sucks, but it's the truth. With a crappy cash-cow like Aerosmith on it's roster, Columbia could sign Jeff Buckley without fear. If it's a commercial success, awesome, but if it's not, if signing Jeff Buckley turned into a financial black-hole, Columbia could find solace in the fact that they unleashed a brilliant artist on the world, even if the world was too myopic to care and still have Aerosmith to churn out another shitty record that would sell 3 million copies to fill the economic void.

But the Napster shows up. Faster than anyone could ever imagine, Napster begins draining record sales, not only from the paltry numbers of the artistically brilliant but commercially unmarketable, but also from the horribly marketable but artistically barren. What's a company supposed to do? A business that deals in art is still a business, and they need to at least break even if not turn a profit. So the record industry shifts from the old mold. They no longer use commercially feasible entertainers to foot the bill for honest artists, they take a dollars-and-cents, practical approach to business. They start to sign, promote, push only commercially proven, probable money-making artists. Suddenly, we're overrun with bullshit. Suddenly, unless you're 'NSYNC, you're album doesn't get made on a major label because if it can't make a ton of money, then it's costing the label too much money to make. The result is record companies discharging a tumult of entertainers with no artistic merit but an excess of commercial viability on us, saturating the airwaves with junk-food sounds instead of solid, enriching, nutritious sustenance.

And can you blame them? They're just trying to stay afloat. They're just trying to make records that make money so they can continue to make records, period. I wish I could find the fault with and point the finger at the record execs for ruining recorded music, but they've never been in charge of making a good band popular, they've only been in charge of giving a good band a chance to be popular, and Napster destroyed the record labels' financial ability to take chances on a good but unproven band. After Napster, good bands still made records, and a ton of people listened to them, but without the numbers reflected in dollar-signs, major labels had to resort to releasing nothing but Enrique Iglesias records, because Enrique still sold, and even he and the others of his ilk weren't selling as much as they would have in a Napsterless world. Still, the pop stars were making some bank, so the record companies released and promoted the shit out of that stuff, forcing everything else in to a dark corner.

Meanwhile, the pool of creative and worthwhile artists being released and promoted on major labels was slowly drying up, evaporating from an ocean to a lake. Good musicians were still getting signed, but they had a lot less time to prove themselves as a viable economic force. Where artists once had three, four, five records to make a name for themselves, they now had an album or two before the major labels chalked them up to a bust and cut them loose. I wish we could blame the record companies, but they were like any other evolutionary organism, adapt or die. The adaptation wasn't beneficial to the music buying public, but the companies managed to survive. It sucks, but you kind of have to give them a pass. Napster on the hand doesn't get that pass. Napster was the music world's CFC's, destroying the ozone and perpetuating the global warming that evaporated that ocean.

But then there's this other effect, less tangible but far more dangerous. See, when you buy music, you feel a greater need to give an album a fighting chance. When you pay hard-earned greenbacks for a record, you listen to it a lot. Maybe you don't like it the first time you hear it, but you still listen to it five, eight, ten times. Maybe you will eventually throw your hands up in disgust and admit to yourself and the world that you wasted your money on a bad album, but maybe after that tenth time listening to it, you'll hear something you didn't hear those first nine times, some subtle nuance, some small detail that managed to escape you the initial handful of times you tried to justify your purchase. And sometimes, some of those albums you don't like at first turn into some of the best records you ever heard.

Some of my favorite albums ever are ones that I didn't like at first: Radiohead's O.K. Computer, Jeff Buckley's Grace, Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, The Hold Steady's Boys and Girls in America were all records that, after one listen, made me wonder what in the fuck my friends or the critics I respected were listening to. But because I refused to give up on them, eventually they didn't simply grow on me after but fucking floored me.

I think about that a lot, about where I'd be if I'd given up after a listen or two; would I be a different person? Probably not, but I still would have missed out on some of the most enriching material I've had the pleasure to fall in love with. I paid money for them, so I wanted to give them as many opportunities as it took for me to be absolutely conclusive. I wanted to repeatedly pour over the evidence before I handed in my verdict. I invested financially so I wanted to invest emotionally. And I think that's how it was for all of the music buying public, that's how it was when you had to buy music, but Napster changed that. "No cash" equated to "no real involvement".

Napster made music disposable, like food at an all-you-can-eat-buffet; don't like something you grabbed? Set the plate aside, toss it out. Go back and get something else. It's no thing to you, you're not paying any more for it than you already have. And if the next thing you take isn't so great either, throw that out too and find something new. If something wasn't instantly pleasing, you could get rid of it with a few simple mouse clicks, sending it away into the garbage disposal without ever having to think twice about it. For some people, it was liberating, but for me, it just made me feel sad, wasteful, traitorous, and helpless to stop myself.

Napster provided us the opportunity to lose a part of ourselves, and we lunged at it, we drank it up with fervor and begged for more. True, we only have ourselves to blame for what it did to us as fans; you can't blame a drug dealer because you're an addict. The dealer may be a piece of shit, but unless we're willing to buy what he's selling, he doesn't exist. But what Napster helped us become as music consumers doesn't come close to comparing what it did to what we're consuming.

Napster showed the world that coupling music and technology was a lucrative prospect. MP3 players may have existed years before Napster, but I certainly didn't know anyone who had one. Before Napster, the MP3 player required a lot of personal dedication. You had to create your own MP3's from CD's you bought, or spend massive amounts of time searching for websites that hosted downloadable files. They were bulky and expensive but had small amounts of memory, and required a lot of work. They were annoying and wouldn't have lasted, but then Napster came along and made everything easy, thus destroying the viability of the physical medium of music. But it doesn't end at MP3 players.

Napster accelerated music-based technology. Suddenly, software companies began pumping out products that made home recording easier and the results sound more professional. Simultaneously, websites like Myspace and Youtube begun popping up that gave these new home-recorders an outlet to display their material. The virtual world became saturated with two-bit hacks who found themselves with means and opportunity. Sadly enough, the music world responded, and everything became a hastened reaction to the guerrilla bullshit that we found ourselves swimming in.

It ushered us into the age contrived novelty; writing a solid song and executing it with precise and exceptional aptitude took a backseat to gimmick. Separating yourself from the heard became the most important and essential thing. Even though that ocean I mentioned earlier was definitely shrinking, the water had to go somewhere, and suddenly we found the plains flooded with uninspired musicians, or at least incapable ones. Now anyone who had ever had the slightest aspiration to be a rock star found the opportunity to do so, as long as they sounded original. Being different became more important than being good. We have stopped caring about artists who wrote good songs and focused on people who write different sounding songs. Good or bad, it doesn't matter as long as it doesn't sound like something that came before it. But a piece of shit that smells like perfume is still just a good smelling piece of shit. Just because something is different doesn't make it good, it simply make it different.

What all of this ultimately amounts to is that Napster showed the world that there was money to be made by pairing music with burgeoning, non-musical technology, and once that happened, the music world began to spin way too fast for music fans. We couldn't keep up, so we, like the major labels, had to adapt. And like the major labels, those adaptations may have allowed us to survive but made us fundamentally less than what we used to be.

Artist loyalty went out the window. We used to buy records by artists we liked simply because we liked the artist. Good or bad, we bought the album and listened to it. Some albums were better than the last one, some were good but not as good as the last one, and some weren't good at all, but we bought them all and listened to the shit out of them. For better or worse, you stuck out with your artists because they were your artists.

That may seem horribly moronic if not maybe at least a little admirable, but if you love music, the outcome is really just purely beneficial. Ryan Adams is one of my artists. I'm going to buy anything that R.A. puts out simply because he put it out. Some of it's been good, some of it's been not so good, some of it's been mind-blowingly, fucking-A brilliant, and for me, the average and sub-par have proved to be as equally valuable as the amazing, life-altering shit. Oh, I'm not saying the aesthetics are equatable; Cold Roses and Heartbreaker will always sound better than Demolition or Cardinology, but in the end, their substantive worth is the same because the great and not so great both give me a clearer, deeper insight into the music. I've always believed that to truly appreciate the present, we have to internalize the past. Pouring over what's already happened gives us the ability to comprehend and appreciate what's currently happening and helps us prepare for the future. I can feel the newer Ryan Adams records more because, good or bad, I've thoroughly studied the albums that have already been released.

By giving the missteps just as much attention as I've given the triumphs, I've gained a greater understanding of Ryan Adams as an artist. This understanding creates a more immediate and intimate relationship with the good records, but it also provides me with the ability to comprehend the moves that seem incomprehensible. I can listen to a record he makes that isn't nearly as good as some of the things he's done in the past, and even if the end result isn't what I want it to be, I can find reason in his process; I can find method in his madness. This helps me to see the less obvious records in a different light than I otherwise would be able to, to see the more veiled efforts for what they really are and not just what they simply seem to be.

What this boils down to is I get him as an artist. As a human being, who in the hell knows. He's easily one of the most baffling fucks I've ever known of, but as a creator, I understand him, I get it. The good, the bad, and the ugly as it applies to his music all makes sense to me. I may not agree with all of his decisions, but I understand why he makes them. As a result, his music means a lot more to me than it ever would otherwise.

Maybe this seems like self-coercion or maybe concession. Maybe it seems like because I've allowed myself to fall in love with an artist I'm willing to accept whatever swill they throw at me as something worthwhile, excellent, significant or possibly even essential. I don't know, maybe that's exactly what it is, but I don't think so. I don't think I'm deaf to what I listen to, even if it may seem like I'm blinded by the person who creates what I hear. What I think it means is that I'm searching for clarity, looking for more depth not only in the music I listen to, but the way I listen to music. This used to be the way. This used to be the way we all did it, everyone. This was the approach everyone took when listening to music. But once Napster happened, that ideology went out the window for a lot of people, too many people, frankly. We once were all loyal fans to somebody, but P-2-P networks stole that principle from us. We were no longer devout fans to anyone, we were simply slaves to the technology.

Suddenly, the excitement about new albums released by the bands you loved was gone. Enthusiasm was replaced by skepticism. If a band released a record you loved, and you heard a new one was coming out, you greeted it with crossed arms rather than open ones. What a band or artist did in the past became meaningless. We stopped expecting new albums by great bands to be as great as the previous effort; precedent ceased to be a factor. We are no longer happy about a band who has made us happy in the past. If someone's impressed us, we're no longer expectant, we're incredulous. We might listen to it...hell, we probably will, but rather than being thrilled about something new by someone we love surfacing, we approach it with cynicism. We expect the artist to fail; we expect the artist to fall short of the expectations their previous effort established. We want the artist to prove it, prove they're worth our time.

In the past, music fans were like sports fans, but Napster came along and gave us everything we wanted pretty much all at once, and that kind of unlimited access coupled with heightened disposability made us jaded. We no longer listen to transitional albums and try to find the transition. We don't attempt to decipher the code, we don't try to see where the music might be headed, simply because it hasn't already gotten there. We want instant gratification.

Now, when a band doesn't constantly perform, we write the band off instantly. The idea of a "rebuilding year" in music no longer exists. Sports fans, like music fans once were, are willing to accept a lackluster season or two if it means that their team will eventually be better. They don't stop watching the games or throw the jerseys away if their team is in a transitional period. They watch the games while wearing the logos with staunch pride and loyalty. Failure doesn't stop being disappointing, but they persevere and wait for a brighter day.

But once Napster happened, loyalty and patience became insignificant. When financial investment was a factor, we had to be selective, we had to make decisions, form bonds, and let those bonds play themselves out. Before Napster, we had to try, had to care; we kept the concert t-shirts on and listened to the new records even if they weren't as good as they had been in the past because we were waiting for our bands to shine again, and although this was often grueling and painful, and sometimes, there never was that return to form we were so desperately waiting for. But but then there were other times, other times when, after hanging in there through an album or two of shit, our artists recaptured what they had once been and shined brighter than ever before. Your loyalty was rewarded, and it was amazing. That was what made being a music fan truly worth while.

But in order to have loyalty, you had to have emotional investment, and more often than not, to be emotionally invested you had to be financially invested, and financial investment is made only when something is deemed valuable, and nothing disposable is ever truly valuable. So when Napster made music a disposable commodity, it also made the users incapable of ever really loving anything they heard. Oh, it was easy to like a lot of it, maybe even all of it, but love never reentered the equation. Everything suddenly had a sell-by date. New albums no longer had the potential to achieve timelessness because now they had a shelf-life. All the bonds we once developed with the music and artists we loved became tentative and insubstantial. There was no more devotion, no more loyalty, no more historical connection with artists. There was no more marriage to the music, no more relationship with the songs. Instead, we metamorphosed into a culture that saw their music as nothing more than just a seemingly random string of events tied loosely together by time and place, a culture that valued style over substance and quantity over quality. We settled for what was "pretty good for now" over what would be "great for ever".

And in the end, that's what truly sucks about Napster and P-2-P's. They turned us in to automatons. We stopped being fans. We stopped caring about our library because we could amass as big a library as we wanted without repercussion. Because we stopped having to make a decision about what music was important to us, all music became equally and simultaneously less important. We stopped caring because we could. The music we listened to became less a statement of who we were and more a statement of who we wanted or thought we should be, and that mentality makes us stupid and indistinguishable.

In the P-2-P world, loving Ludacris is no different than loving Against Me! because we no longer have to pick between the two. You no longer have to decide what to spend your money on. Through the P-2-P mentality, one thing is the same as the other. Weighing options isn't a concern in the P-2-P world because everything is at your disposal. The music you listen to is no longer a statement of who you are because choice is no longer a factor. Everything can be yours, so in the end, nothing is yours...it's anyone's who wants it. You are now no different than someone who is actually completely different from you. Napster and P-2-P's drained our individuality.

What all of this adds up to is Napster made music less important and to save some cash, music fans fell in line. We accepted Peer-2-Peer networks' degradation of an art-form we loved in order to keep some green in our pockets and our greed (or frugality depending on how you look at it) not only prevented us from being outraged but made us cheer and celebrate Shawn Fanning. Certainly, it would be impossible not to applaud Fanning and Napster as a technological crowning achievement, but as for a musical one, it was nothing more than a slowly penetrating bullet to the head.

If You're Not Already Listening to "Orion", You Should Be (If You Can Find It)

In the past, I've been accused of being a Ryan Adams slut. Okay, so maybe no one's ever used those exact words, but I've always been pretty good at reading between the lines even when I pretend not to be, and ultimately, that's what the criticism boils down to. Adams has never released a (legitimate) album I haven't liked (the DJ Reggie and Werewolph e-albums were good for a laugh but nothing more, and The Finger is virtually unlistenable).

I adored Heartbreaker, couldn't get enough of Gold, found Demolition to be a suitable snack to satiate my R.A. cravings, loved Rock N' Roll (yes, I said "loved", and I meant it), considered the Love is Hell ep's to be a strong and valiant effort (although I don't think nearly as highly of them as most Ryan Adams fans do), was floored by the brilliance of the 2005 trilogy, Cold Roses, Jacksonville City Nights, and 29 (contrary to every other account I've heard about the latter, that one might be favorite of the three). Easy Tiger and the Follow the Lights ep would have benefited from a slightly dirtier sounding production, but despite that fact, they both were remarkably well-written outputs. Even the somewhat lackluster Cardinology, with its flirtations into the realm of "adult contemporary", still had some relatively lofty high-points (even if the lows were possibly the lowest of his career). Over the last several years, I've done my best to shed the "Adams' whore" tag as best I could, but with the release of Orion, sew a scarlet R and A to my v-neck T, because I gave myself to this record within seconds of hearing "Signal Fade".

The instant I heard this record existed, I bought it; partly because I knew of its limited availability and feared it might be good, mainly because I assumed it would be so horrible that I had to hear it...but it wasn't horrible. No, this record is good, damn good in fact. This record renews any lost faith I had in Ryan Adams as a viable and important, maybe essential, artist in our time.

With Orion, Adams manages to incorporate every crucial Metal movement: the breakneck pace of the speed/thrash sect, the aggressive simplicity of hardcore, the intensity and weight of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal scene, and (on occasion) the infectious hooks of the 80's/early 90's mainstream Pop-Metal acts. Of course, individually, none of these pieces should appeal to the typical R.A. fan, but when Adams fits them all together, the result is nothing short of a pure and brilliant Ryan Adams record.

The album opens with "Signal Fade", a number with churning speed that Slayer would approve of, and a guitar chug that would sound at home on a bill with Sick of It All, and the relentless speed and thud doesn't stop with track #1. For the next 25 minutes and 28 seconds, Adams rips through 12 more tracks ("Signal Fade" clocks in at 2:49 as the second longest song on the record, making the total running time of Orion 28 minutes and 17 seconds). Adams guitar work on Orion leans more towards his punk rock roots with its simplicity, but for what it lacks in complexity and classic Metal showmanship, it makes up for in ardor and ferocious velocity that could give Adrian Smith a run for his money. Still, as "Heavy Metal" as the licks may be, they somehow manage to maintain an undercurrent of the passion and rootsy-substance we've all come to know as Ryan Adams, making this sound less like a "Heavy Metal" album, and more like "Ryan Adams playing at Heavy Metal", which is good, because, well, that's exactly what it is.

And the vocals are impeccably and unmistakably Ryan Adams. It sounds simultaneously familiar and foreign. The tone and control are instantly recognizable to anyone who has bought and loved a Ryan Adams record in the past, but the fervor and force with which he sings sounds more potent and fresh than he has in years, maybe ever. Vocally, the apogee comes on the bridge on "Fire and Ice" (the standout track on the album and easily the most traditionally Adams-esque song on record). R.A. belts and wails stark and desperate words about imminent doom, "How much longer will they let us survive? All the weapons pointed as us as we die. Either way only the Sun will survive. Either way only the Sun will survive". Adams sounds more vibrant and uninhibited than he has since the Whiskeytown days.

But what's most refreshing about Orion is that, in true Ryan Adams fashion, he clearly doesn't give a fuck what we think about it. Okay, it's no secret that Adams has badgered critics who have unfavorably reviewed his records, but Adams has never recorded an album for critics. He doesn't write albums for critics to like, he writes albums he wants to and then expects critics to like them. Unrealistic...definitely, positively delusional...probably, but nonetheless, he's not kowtowing to the people who declare his merit to the world, he's expecting the those people to kowtow to him, and Orion is no exception.

Most people would probably find this behavior pretentious, bratty, erratic, annoying, but not me; I find it invigorating. Music is art, musicians are artists. Good art is an extension of the artist and it should be completely selfish. Certainly, once fans get a hold of it, it becomes a selfless gift; it begins to apply to lives other than the artist's. But if the primary objective of any art is to please anyone other than the artist, than it's not art, it's entertainment. Ryan Adams is not and has never tried to be an entertainer, he is an artist. Orion exemplifies that fact. When you listen to this album, you know there were no preconceived notions or delusions of grandeur about what he was doing; he was just making an album he wanted to make. And in an increasingly electro-reliant world where record sales mean far less than public opinion, that's about as refreshing as it gets.

That's not to say it doesn't have its weaknesses. Lyrically, if you're looking for the slightly nutty, homespun wisdom of past Adams efforts, you best look elsewhere. The lyrics on Orion are, for lack of a better word, ridiculous. With lyrics like "Evil overtakes him, The dragon speaks in tongues, The master has arisen, To swallow up the systems"...on "Ghorgon, Master of War", or "We wait in the caves, Machines do not detect the heat from our bodies, We are disguised by rocks, One leaves and investigates"...on the album's closer, "End of Days", it sounds less like a Ryan Adams album and more like the most depressing conclusion to The Terminator franchise. It's clear you're not going to find any poignant life-lessons here, but with Orion, the ends certainly justify the means.

Orion may not be exactly what we pictured for the return of Ryan Adams. It may be an insane and ludicrous concept, but the songs on Orion are lean, unencumbered, and unpretentious. They aren't molded or derivative, they are simply the product of a man trying to write and record an album that he wanted to make. Orion may be the craziest legitimate release of Adams career, but it also might be the most pure and steadfast record he's ever had the balls to dream up.

Prayers are Sometimes Answered

Tonight I'm listening to The Cure's 8th Studio album Disintegration. When I put Side A of the first record on, the sky was blue achromatizing to gunmetal gray. It seemed no more an omen than it was attractive; innocuous on both counts. As "Fascination Street" ended, concluding Side B on record 1, I rose from my seat on the couch to change the record and I noticed out of my living room window that the sky had changed. It had darkened and become premonitory. A storm was on its way.

As the needle dropped on Side C, I stepped out onto the porch for a clove cigarette and a Miller High-Life and I searched the air for the smell that accompanies the moments before a hard rain; soil and electricity, but the scent wasn't there. The storm must still be a ways away, I thought, but as the beginning of "Prayers for Rain" poured from the speakers, the deep gray of the sky gave way to a deeper black, and as Simon Gallup's bass began to boom and writhe on the 8th track on what I can only refer to as one of the most beautiful and brilliant albums I have ever heard, the onyx sky burst open and released a torrential downpour. This was a full-on, no-joke, motherfucker of a rain, one that came on so hard within little more than 30 seconds, and began to flood the earth.

I watch the sky swell and explode in a tumult of water in real time as I listen to "Prayers for Rain". How apropos.

As track 1 on Side C ends and the 2nd track, "Same Deep Water as You", envelops me, so begins the thunder that fills the air outside my door. With the windows open, the natural roar and the authentic reproduction on "Same Deep Water as You" sound like syncopated eruptions; they almost explode in unison. Suddenly I can't help feeling that listening to an album that came out in 1989 somehow conjured the weather that would happen over 2 decades later.

This is ridiculous, of course. As magical a moment as this is, I know in my mind it's nothing more than a perfectly timed and poetic act of nature, but in my heart...well, in my heart I can't help but believe there's some sort of of ethereal, cosmic hand at work here, some divine being with kick-ass taste in music orchestrating this. It's hard to believe there's not some omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent puppet master pulling strings out there in the ether because this moment is too perfect to be accidental.

Since I began listening to The Cure nearly 2 decades ago, I have experienced a series of seemingly random yet oddly similar Cure-related events that, when closely examined, seem fantastic but and coincidental. But when looked at with a wide lens, seem too recurring to be simply random or mere happenstance; a random pattern can only truly be random until it becomes a pattern, then it becomes fact. Time and time again, my real life and the chimerical dream that The Cure have created with their songs have bumped up against each other, overlapped, became one and the same, even if only for a few ticks of the seconds hand...and now this, one of the most empyrean experiences I've had in a very long time. I am in utter awe.

I can't be 100% positive, but I'm pretty sure God wants me to love The Cure.

Don't Eat Yourself, It's Not Good for You

When did autosarcophagy become an acceptable practice? Now let's make no mistake, I'm not saying that self-cannibalism isn't a little more selfless than your everyday, garden variety cannibalism, but there's something about consuming your own flesh that still seems more demented, at least more masochistic. But regardless of how degenerative this mentality seems to me, this has clearly been deemed okay by a certain subculture of society (one that I am regrettably a part of) because Indie Rock is eating itself alive and we are not only standing by, watching it happen, but are actually applauding every time another chunk of meat disappears down its proverbial gullet.

As I see it, there are three interrelated causes for this: 1.) The fans, 2.) Technology, and 3.) Pitchfork. (But not necessarily in that order.)

First off, there has been a change in attitude of the fan. Indie Rock was always a call to arms for the disenfranchised. If Heavy Metal of the 80's and 90's was the music for the disregarded, burn-out youth, Indie Rock was the music for the bookishly intellectual and misunderstood sect (I'm thinking Ducky from Pretty in Pink, but then again, most people probably were.) If you were a little too artistic in the 70's to play High school football and couldn't get into the sounds of Average White Band, you had Bowie or The Stooges or The Velvet Underground to make you feel like you had allies in the world. If you weren't comfortable in an Izod polo and couldn't afford (or didn't want) tickets to the big Duran Duran show in the 80's, then The Replacements or Robyn Hitchcock or Nick Lowe might have had something to offer you. If you were outside of the norm but couldn't fit in with the W.A.S.P./Krokus/Dokken bunch, you still had R.E.M. or The Cure or The Smiths to listen to and find a home. Just like the Heavy Metal of 30 years ago, this music welcomed anyone; Underground rock has always given the outcast a place to belong as long as it felt good to be a part of it.

Fast-forward 30 years, and things have most certainly changed. Indie Rock has become an exclusive club for over-intellectualizing prats. Indie Rock fans tend to be fashionable hipsters who like to laugh at those who aren't like them. Where the Indie fan was once part of a faction of society that had banned together to create something beautiful and extraordinary because they had been spurned by "normal" culture and had no where else to turn, they have now morphed into the very kind of culture that the music was initially created as a reaction to. Simply put, Indie kids think they are smarter, cooler, better.

And if you've ever read the album reviews and opinion pieces on Pitchfork, you already know that the content on the site plays directly into this elitist mentality. Did Pitchfork create this superior attitude or is Pitchfork simply reacting to the already-in-place superiority complexes of it's readership? I don't know the answer to that, but it's clear the more you talk to Indie kids and read the Pitchfork editorials and reviews they regurgitate like scripture, the two are definitely working together to make Indie Rock an increasingly exclusive and uninviting club that most of us are not cool enough to join.

Now let's combine this first idea with the hyper-fast, technologically advanced, digital age of music. Music has become such a "point-and-click" medium with iPods, iTunes, home computers and P2P networks that it has changed the way we listen to music. We have access to a greater number of albums, songs, artists, but still have the same 24 hours in a day to digest it. We obviously can't listen to it all. At one time, we had to make hard choices. If you buy a record, you're going to give that record more than a simple cursory listen. But now, with everything quickly at the touch of a button, we can try to hear as much as possible, even though we may not really be listening to anything.

That of course, doesn't change the fact that there's so much out there. How do we hone? How do we focus? How does the hipster-about-town figure out what they should be hearing? Easy, let the "über-hip" Pitchfork guide your way. The "ultra-sheik" Indie elitist looks to Pitchfork to see what's hot, and has their self-serving insincerity validated by the identical tone of the pieces they read. Again, whether the "better than you" modern Indie Rock persona originates from Pitchfork or Pitchfork is simply a reflection of the contemporary mindset, I can't say for sure, but one way or the other, this co-dependent relationship that has developed between the reader and the read is cultivating the destruction of the very music both groups claim to celebrate.

Still, there's a bigger problem...a much, much bigger problem. I've noticed for years that a strange difference in the way people are listening to Indie Rock has slowly been occurring. I could see things changing, but up until recently, I couldn't quite put my finger on what that change was (and when I say a recently, I mean recently, as in a little less than two weeks ago). But then Heaven is Whenever came out.

Every week when the new releases come out, I try to read as many record reviews from as many different media outlets as I can. I find real value in the work of the Rock Critic. In fact, if I had my choice of "dream jobs" and that choice couldn't include being independently wealthy/unemployed, Rock Critic would be the job I would choose. The Rock Critic provides a biased yet essential service to the music consumer, and I appreciate what they do for me. I don't have a ton of money to drop on records. Because of this, I do my best to read and take into account what they have to say in order to focus my purchasing decisions. The critic helps me a lot. But occasionally, there's an album that comes out where the "to buy/not to buy" question is already answered, regardless of what the Rock Critic has to say about it. Good or bad news, thumbs up or thumbs way down, I'm going to buy "this" record. In these cases, I tend to avoid the reviews until I've formed my own opinion, then after I've decided how I feel about said record, I backtrack to see what the Critics have to say.

Last week, this very scenario presented itself. The new Hold Steady album, Heaven is Whenever, came out, and this was something I was going to own regardless of what any other person in the world had to say about it. Come hell or high water, Heaven is Whenever would be mine, even if every critic on Earth panned it. So I waited until I thoroughly digested the record before I looked to see what the professional appreciators had to say. After a little more than a week, I had made up my own mind about the album (fucking brilliant), so I began to scour the globe (maybe a slight over-exaggeration) to see what others had to say about The Hold Steady's fifth joint. I hit all of the obvious outlets: Rolling Stone, Spin, allmusic, Paste, but I went much further than that. I read everything from legitimate but tiny e-music site reviews to what the average blogger thought (I even read Entertainment Weekly's review...still kind of shocked that there not only was one, but that I took the time to care what EW thought). I wanted to read it all. And everything I read was, if not glowing, at least reasonably positive. They all had written the things that mimicked my feelings about the record...but then I got to Pitchfork's review.

When I read Stephen M. Deusner's review of Heaven is Whenever, I was angry. I wasn't angry that he gave the record an unfavorable rating. He did in fact give it what would amount to a D if it was a test, but he and everyone else is entitled to their opinion, even if that opinion happens to be wrong. But reading Deusner's review, it quickly became aware to me that his problems with the record had very little to do with the record.

"Coming from a band so rooted in notions of community and classic rock, "The Sweet Part of the City" seems to acknowledge that the Hold Steady realize their function as a liaison between the underground and the mainstream. They're trying hard to achieve widespread appeal while remaining embedded in the scenes they've been chronicling for half a decade. Heaven Is Whenever loiters in the same dives, clubs, and party houses as their previous albums and chronicles the sagas of similar hoodrats, townies, gamblers, waitresses, and girlfriends. Meanwhile, the band has graduated to larger venues, festival appearances, and an avid fanbase that shouts along with every word. The distance between subject and band has never been greater than it is on this album, and these new songs just don't hit as hard."

Maybe I'm overreaching and overreacting. Maybe I'm being petty because a guy I don't know, whom I'll never meet or even speak to wrote a less than positive review about an album I love by a band who is easily the best Rock n' Roll group recording today. But I'm not. Mr. Deusner doesn't have to like the new Hold Steady album, but if he is writing a review of this album, he should write a review of the album.

Now I don't want this to disseminate into a Hold Steady blog because 1.) I wrote a Hold Steady blog not more than 3 weeks ago, and 2.) I have every intention of writing another Hold Steady blog about the new album and the band in general because the new album's kick-ass and I left a whole bunch out of that initial blog that I wanted to say (a topic I intend on writing about in and of itself, so I will abruptly cease this line of discussion). But with the Pitchfork review, it seems obvious to me that the writer's problem isn't necessarily with the music, but the fact that The Hold Steady have achieved a certain level of fame.

Essentially (and I now paraphrase and interpret), Deusner feels that Craig Finn has no right to sing about dark alleys, drug deals, and raved-up, boozed-out nights because The Hold Steady have become too "mainstream" to have a valid perspective on these subjects. But as angering as it is that this sentiment seems to drive the entire feel of the review, that's not even the most maddening part. What's so revolting to me is that Deusner calls the Hold Steady "widespread" and "mainstream".

I'm not upset by any means that The Hold Steady are "big". The Hold Steady are an amazing band that deserve to sell millions of records and get super fucking rich playing the music they do because they're better than the bands who already do that. The Hold Steady are better than U2 or Green Day (not to take away anything from U2 or Green Day, I like them both). They are infinitely better than Coldplay or Train (2 bands I absolutely don't like). The only problem is The Hold Steady are not "big". They are not selling anywhere near the number of records the afore mentioned bands are selling. If you ask the average person on the street in nearly any city or town in the U.S. if they like or even know who The Hold Steady is, I can almost guarantee they will say "no". Okay, in college towns and NYC or other big cities, that ratio might be skewed, but then again, are college towns or the East Village average?

The assertion that The Hold Steady are a "mainstream" band made me realize that somehow Indie Rock now exists in a vacuum. Okay, so the last 2 Hold Steady records have manage to garner a pretty decent position on the Billboard charts (Stay Positive topped out at #30, and Heaven is Whenever has thus far reached #26, but still, if you aren't breaking the top 20, I'm not sure you can be categorized as big. Furthermore, the first 3 albums haven't managed to climb into the top 100. In fact, the first 2 haven't even charted.) Shit, Godsmack's latest album came out on the same day as Heaven is Whenever, and it debuted at #1 on Billboard's top 200. If a great band like The Hold Steady can't outsell fucking shit-ass Godsmack, can they be that huge?

To answer my own question...no, they can't be. They may be a big Indie band, they may even be the "biggest" Indie band, but that still means they are no more that a large fish in a comparatively small pond. What this says to me is that from the perspective of Pitchfork, which ultimately has become the perspective of Indie fans, Indie Rock operates outside of the actual mainstream. If you're a "big" Indie band, that means you're a "huge" Indie band even if you've only sold 400,000 records worldwide simply because other Indie bands haven't sold as many records as you have. And this is dangerous ground to tread, because in the Indie paradigm, "mainstream" has become the dirtiest word, and as a result, we are inorganically backing Indie Rock into a cacophonic corner.

Because we've forced Indie Rock into this separatist bubble that operates outside of the rest of modern pop music, our reality has become skewed and our perspective has become disoriented. And The Hold Steady aren't the only applicable example of this. Take Neutral Milk Hotel. The amount of times I've had conversations with people who make the assertion that "everyone" has heard In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is overwhelming. Virtually no one in the grand scheme of things has heard In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. It's sold over 200,000 copies, and I'm sure twice as many people have downloaded it from P2P networks. Still, 600,000 people is not a whole lot. The world population is currently estimated at 6,822,200,000 people. 600,000 is less than 1% of the population. That's hardly "everyone". And if we compare my NMH estimates to the sales of a truly mainstream record, like say Guns N' Roses Appetite for Destruction, Guns N' Roses debut album has sold 46 times more records than NMH's sophomore release has had in total listeners. I apologize for the math lesson, but the numbers make it clear. Nearly every Indie kid knows Aeroplane..., but no one else does.

And this brings me back to my first issue. A stigma has been attached to the word "mainstream" because if the indie kids desperately want to be smarter and cooler, and certainly different than the mainstream, than they can't possibly allow themselves to relate to something that is considered mainstream. And because they are also influenced so severely by the Pitchfork pedagogy, when Pitchfork says "mainstream", Indie fans flee. And because Indie Rock is now in a Pitchfork-induced Indie bubble, the number of acceptable Indie Rock bands is shrinking and becoming more and more unlistenable.

Imagine for a second drawing a line in the dirt. On one side of the line is "Indie", and on the other is "Mainstream". As a "respectable" Indie fan, you are to believe you need to stay a minimum of 5 feet from that line at all times. Once again using The Hold Steady as an example, when Boys and Girls in America came out, The Hold Steady were 10 feet from that mainstream line. Then comes Stay Positive. It was a little more mature and a little more accessible. So now, even though The Hold Steady's sound hasn't changed much, because more people have bought the record (probably pretty much all Indie Rock fans, I might add), the line has to move. The Hold Steady doesn't move; they're in the same place. The music, attitude, soul, focus hasn't changed. The only change has been the perception of what mainstream is, based on the fact that more people like this band.

So the line moves to the left 3 or 4 feet, leaving The Hold Steady only 1 or 2 feet from the safe 5 foot distance. Now comes Heaven is Whenever, apparently not simply more accessible, but in the eyes of Deusner and the folks at Pitchfork, actually mainstream. The old mainstream has stayed in the same place. Nickleback hasn't moved, nor has 30 Seconds to Mars or Coldplay or Daughtry or HIM or any other crappy bands that a lot of people listen to. But still, somehow, The Hold Steady is now on the other side of that line, grouped with these other (f)artists (I fucking kill me). The line has moved 10 feet in 4 years, but the music has retained the same heart it had in 2006. But the Hipsters still need to stay 5 feet from that line. They've moved 10 feet from where they used to be. Every time that line moves, they have to take another step to maintain a 5 foot distance. With each move, the line is forcing good bands onto the other side, making them "unlistenable". And with each movement of the line, the bands who are now deemed hip enough to rock out to become more subversive, abrasive, gimmicky, and ultimately less musical.

It's a slippery slope. before you know it, Pitchfork going to be calling The Animal Collective Neil fucking Diamond. With each band that falls prey to the "mainstream" tag, the bands and Indie kids in response have to up the ante and move further away from what this new perception of mainstream is. Now LCD Soundsystem and Broken Social Scene are considered the wunderkinds of Indie Rock, and then the line will sweep them up because too many Indie kids will buy their records and the next band will be swept up, and the next band and the next band, and the next. Before you know it, it'll only be cool to listen to bands whose albums of nothing more than a series of blips and clicks and buzzes. Because of Indie Rock's desperation to be so anti-mainstream and Pitchfork's desperation to seem ahead of the popularity curve, and the fact that so many people are unwilling to see Indie Rock in the context of music at large, the "good" stuff is becoming nothing more than an abradant in cool clothes.

And what does this mean for those bands who are actually good? Well, they won't be mainstream enough to garner a significant mainstream following, but because the hip Indie Clergy have deemed them sinful, quoting their website like the Bible to save the elite souls of the eagerly converted, they'll lose a large percentage of the hipster Indie kids. They'll be a band condemned to hell. They'll be a band without a country, and that's not only a shame but a downright Shakespearean-sized tragedy.

The Indie world is shrinking into a black hole of chaos. Slowly but surely, the less capable you are of playing an instrument, the greater possibility Indie fans will love you. The more noise and less song you write is all the more chance you'll sell records to the Indie crowd. No melody, you gain allies, more melody, your simply maligned. Indie Rock, with the help of Pitchfork and the misguided, misdirected ethics of the fanbase, is slowly killing itself, lopping off the good bands like pieces of flesh and devouring them, tossing the ripped tissue down its throat and smiling as it bleeds out. Eventually, if attitudes across the board don't change, there's going to be nothing left but a large intestine full of bullshit, and this makes me sick to my stomach. But I guess I should look on the bright side; if I record the sounds of my purge and combine it with a sweet back beat, Pitchfork will probably make me an Indie God, that is until the sound of electro-vomit becomes mainstream.