Category Archives: Music

Jay-Z: The Blueprint

This post is in the theme “Constructing an identity through media”. Read the first.

September 26, Chicago: When you talk about the best rappers of all time, my mind (and my heart) always goes to Biggie. For a long time, I wrote Jay-Z off because I didn’t really care about the radio hits. Don’t get me wrong, I knew all the words to “Big Pimpin'” and could never pass up a chance to dance to “Crazy in Love”, but it wasn’t canonical. It was getting into this album that changed my opinion on Jay-Z forever.

My favorite song continues to be “Heart of the City”. I love that beat and the hook is so infectious. This song, like so many on this album is filled with memorable zingers like “Sensitive thugs y’all all need hugs”. So great.

There is of course “Takeover”, which despite disciples of Nas who might claim it was bested in the rejoinder, is still my favorite battle rap song of all time. That beat snipped out of the Doors, that whole verse for Nas with its absolutely specific detail about the business of the game (“I know who I paid, dog / Searchlight Publishing”), and that super hot final line in “half a bar”. And then “Girls, Girls, Girls” which despite its casual racism and expected overt sexism, remains a fun-as-hell song. (The jam, of course, is the second version over that Pretenders sample; Young Kanye you really were a genius.) And “Renegade”, which as Nas notes, is really Eminem’s song. And how. So. Many. Hot. Tracks. On. This. Album.

Really dedicate yourself to some Jay-Z and listen to this album.

Black Star: Mos Def & Tali Kweli are Black Star

This post is in the theme “Constructing an identity through media”. Read the first.

September 23, New York: As the first track began (“The mighty Mos Def is a real life documentarian. / Talib Kweli, real life documentary”) I immediately wrote in my notes: “This might be the best album of all time?” It just might be. Talib Kweli and Mos Def are truly incredible behind their respective microphones. The guests across the album are all fantastic; I could listen to Jane Doe rap for hours. The beats are stellar, the message is important but the album is still fun. It’s a masterwork.

But let’s say you disagree. Let’s say there’s some other album out there that has your heart by the tail. Well let me at least make a case for “Respiration” to live in the all-time-greats canon of hip hop. Holy crap this song is incredible. The Spanish-language hook? The Style Wars sample at the intro? That line “blasting holes in the night til she bled sunshine”. Wow. Not too mention— this song has Common!

I spent my entire early twenties praying to the lords of rhyme that we might have a hip hop supergroup of Kweli, Mos, and Common. Pretty please? I remember hearing a rumor about a Rawkus Records supergroup: Mos Def, Common, Talib Kweli, Pharaohe Monch, Hi-Tek, maybe more. I believed that rumor a little bit too hard. In the end it was probably just the wishful thinking of other Rawkus fans.

But looking back now at the full discography of Rawkus, it’s incredible. So many of my favorite hip hop albums. Mos Def and Kweli, of course. But Beatminerz, Big L, Soundbombing, High & Mighty. All such fantastic stuff. Thank you, Rawkus Records. But most of all, thank you for Mos Def and Talib Kweli are Black Star.

You should own this album. It’s important both to you and to humanity that you are listening to “Respiration” on a regular basis.

Mos Def: Black on Both Sides

This post is in the theme “Constructing an identity through media”. Read the first.

September 22, New York: I’ve been too busy to stick to my strict consumption schedule. Work got hectic, the weekend was well-booked, and so I dragged my feet on posting about this album and I missed my goal of seven for last week. Also, honestly, it was because I wasn’t done listening to Black on Both Sides yet. It is just too good.

When I first discovered Mos Def it was when I was realizing there was more to hip hop than the radio and here was this voice that was honest, sincere, compassionate, and holy crap could he rhyme. A track like “Mathematics”? Stop it. Just stop. “Ms. Fat Booty”? “Got”? Gawd. Mos Def (now Yasiin Bey) is a god among men. There’s not a single track on here that doesn’t impress.

Mos Def – Ms Fat Booty (1999) from Golden Era Videos on Vimeo.

And this is one of the first self-aware hip-hop albums I’d heard. An album with a point (or a few). I’d missed Public Enemy, safely ensconced in the dirty south. But here was an absolutely invaluable lesson in race and identity. Here was a complex and challenging use of the word-that-began-with-n-that-I-should-never-use, not just as a generous sprinkling to emphasize the choruses. Here was a whole song about the political power of clean water. Here was a song arguing for a black history of rock and roll that ended with a bad-ass punk rock bit.

Listening to this album today is such a treat. I probably listened for four days straight, every time I put my headphones to my ears. Music is lucky to have the occasional album like Black on Both Sides, and America is lucky to have a voice like Mos Def.

If you’ve never heard Black on Both Sides, you must amend that and do so now with your One-Click-Purchase.

Ghostface Killah: Supreme Clientele

This post is in the theme “Constructing an identity through media”. Read the first.

September 17, New York: Honestly, I don’t know why it’s this album. There are so many Wu-Tang solo albums and so many of them that are so great. There’s Method Man, there’s the GZA’s Liquid Swords, there is (and there will always be) the ODB, whose “Baby, I Got Your Money” will never, ever fail to move me in a dancefloor direction. But Supreme Clientele, for some reason, is totally my jam.

Maybe it’s the whole Ghostface canon, though this is by far my favorite. I am completely a sucker for Ghost’s nonsense rhymes (“Yo, this rap is like ziti / facing me real tv / crash at high speed / strawberry kiwi”) and his great story-telling raps (or the ones that are just stream of consciousness reminiscences). The beats on the album are slick, even when they’re sometimes a little obtuse and weird. Ghost pulls that shit off.

Ghostface Killah – Apollo Kids (feat. Raekwon) from Tarik Azzougarh on Vimeo.

I also love about Ghostface that he has so many identities. Where other rappers (so many) have adopted Tony Montana as their second/third nickname, Ghostface chose Tony Stark. Which actually gives him two additional identities: Tony Stark AND Iron Man. Then he waves clips from the old Iron Man cartoon throughout the album.

Rappers are totally superheroes. They have alter egos and costumes and super powers and fantastic wealth and crazy origin stories. Ghostface pulls it off the best. That’s why it’s this album.

Go listen to Supreme Clientele and try to come back and tell me Method Man and Redman are better.

Beastie Boys

This post is in the theme “Constructing an identity through media”. Read the first.

September 14, New York: “Sabotage” was my original entry point into the Beastie Boys library. There was that incredible music video and it was all over my MTV and it was loud, fast, and awesome.

I never bought Ill Communication as a teenager. It wasn’t until I had been in college for a bit that I really discovered the Beastie Boys, amidst what was for me a hip hop renaissance. A glorious period of a year or two in which I kept discovering incredible music that was so different than what I’d grown up with. There is a veritable gulf between the 69 Boyz and Black Star and I spent this time of my life happily rowing across it.

For the Beastie Boys, that re-discovery most likely began with Paul’s Boutique and that’s where I started this time. Listening to Paul’s Boutique now, as at any time, the first thing that washes over you are the samples. So many samples! The ones you know and the ones you don’t; they are so deeply layered into this album. And the music is so funky: “Egg Man” is incredible (“when I say dozen, you know what I’m talking about boyeeee”); “Sounds of Science” with its wildly long build-up and utterly satisfying breakdown; and of course all that “Boullaibaisse” including rapping over the Isley’s Brothers most delicious riff.


If I had to pick a favorite Beastie Boys song, it would probably be “Sounds of Science”.

From Paul’s Boutique on to Check Your Head, which experiments more widely with instrumentation. Then I went into Hello Nasty, with even stranger, further experiments in instrumentation. And yet so many classic lines: “Dogs love me cause I’m CRAZY sniffable.” “I’m the king of Boggle / There is none higher / I gets eleven points / off the word quagmire.”

Back to Ill Communication. If I had to name a favorite Beastie Boys album it might be this one. It’s so widely varied, yet feels to me like the most sonically consistent. Its experiments capture the same energy as songs like “Sure Shot” and “Root Down”. The punk rock of “Heart Attack Man” sort of makes sense with “Sabotage”. And of course: “Get It Together” with Q-Tip (“Phone is ringin’/ Oh my god.”)

What’s I found fascinating about the Beastie Boys is that no matter how widely they experimented on each album, the core was always the same: three dudes rapping in that late-eighties group rhyme pattern. They finish each other’s verses, they all chime in to punctuate a syllable. While hip hop changed around them, they stuck to that, and frankly, kept it pretty fun.

I’ve been listening to the Beastie Boys for the whole week, waking up with their songs stuck in my head and every day digging deeper into the library. But it was crushing to remember as I was working my through these albums that this is a finite canon. Absolutely heartbreaking. #RIPMCA

If for some reason you’re just getting started, probably your best bet is to buy the Beastie Boys Anthology.

Jeff Buckley: Live from Bataclan & Live at Sin-é

This post is in the theme “Constructing an identity through media”. Read the first.

September 10, San Francisco: There is only one Jeff Buckley CD for me. I burned it myself, combining two EPs: Live from Bataclan and Live at Sin-é. Multiple times have I thrown myself into Grace or Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk, but once I’d tasted the sweet fruit of Jeff Buckley live, I could never brook Buckley in the studio.

This disc, which I have thanks to my friend Dominic’s two EPs, has seven songs. It begins and ends with the “Je N’en Connais Pas La Fin”, such a lovely little song (about such a lovely little fair). It includes, of course, “Hallelujah”, which Buckley singing live is one of the most haunting musical experiences imaginable. It also has “Mojo Pin” and “Eternal Life”, both wonderful. But man, Jeff Buckley doing live covers is something spectacular. Van Morrison’s “The Way Young Lovers Do” is completely transformed by Buckley’s adept hands and voice.

This disc found me in the midst of a long way down. I listened to it repeatedly with my headphones on and my self-pity wrapped around me like a shroud. It’s a great album for that, if that’s what you want from it. Just Buckley’s beautiful voice, his guitar, and maybe a little other instrumentation thrown in from time to time. But listening today I felt like that experience has clouded my appreciation for how beautiful these songs are.

Buy these two EPs and then slap them together in a single playlist and BOOM there’s all the Jeff Buckley you’ll ever need.

Neil Young: Harvest

This post is in the theme “Constructing an identity through media”. Read the first.

September 7, New York: Harvest is such a beautiful album. “Old Man”, “Heart of Gold”, “The Needle and the Damage Done” are such incredible songs. They weren’t what initially attracted me to this album. My first obsession with this album came through the discovery of “A Man Needs a Maid”.

“My life is changing / in so many ways. / I don’t know who / to trust anymore. / There’s a shadow running / through my days / like a beggar going / from door to door.”

Symphonic and self-absorbed, “A Man Needs a Maid” soars with sadness. It glorifies the self-pity of a man alone. I think Young intended a slight bit of irony in that; indeed I heard it ironically as a thirty-three year old. But at eighteen I was in a real low spot and Neil Young was putting my misery on a pedestal and I loved it.

“I was thinking that / maybe I’d get a maid. / Find a place nearby / for her to stay. / Just someone / to keep my house clean / fix my meals and go away.”

There is a way to hear this whole album through this lens, particularly the first couple of tracks. Tracks 1 – 4 are basically all melancholy post-break-up songs if you want them to be. And I did. I dove headfirst deep into sadness at nineteen, and I cultivated it. I hesitate to call it depression because it seems today so much like an affectation, though an affectation that was sometimes nasty and difficult to break. I flaunted the albums and books that reflected my downcast emotions back to me. Through which I would continually resonate and intensify the feeling. This beautiful album was an unfortunate victim.

“A while ago somewhere / I don’t know when / I was watching / a movie with a friend. / I fell in love with the actress. / She was playing a part / that I could understand.”

Harvest is still beautiful and I still love to listen to it. It’s the only Neil Young album I know by heart. And though the next couple of Thirty-Three Project entries will trace other sadnesses, I’m glad to still have this one, whole and healthy in adulthood.

Don’t get a maid. Get this album.

Radiohead: OK Computer

This post is in the theme “Constructing an identity through media”. Read the first.

September 4, New York: I don’t need to remind you that OK Computer is an amazing album. You know. You listened to it on repeat in your bedroom on your headphones just like I did. You might have even had the “Fitter. Happier. More productive.” poster on your wall in college. I did not, but I always enjoyed seeing it around.

For me, this album is an end of an era. Perhaps multiple eras. It was the last of the really great alt-rock albums. We kicked it off with Nirvana and wrapped it up with Radiohead. And who could try to top this? It was on every single critic’s top ten list at the end of the century. Even Radiohead themselves introduced a wholly different sound with the release of Kid A.

It was also the end of a personal era: This was the last rock album for a long time that I loved that was also popular with the kids. That’s perhaps because this was the end of my being one of the kids. My strongest memories of listening to this album are in my freshman year of college, and it was in college that my taste in music began to expand, began to reach backwards in time past the radio hits (or the anti-radio hits) of the present. I’d already begun to broaden past the radio in the present, with artists like Ani DiFranco, but it was in college that I began to discover all the wonderful things I’d missed from way back when.

OK Computer is still great to listen to. It certainly doesn’t feel defined (or confined) by its era. There is a fully enjoyable cognitive dissonance between the alienated, insecure, often nasally-intoned lyrics and then the sudden all-out, head-banging, body-thrashing rock. The singer is still the same guy who brought us “Creep”, yet this album will induce uncontrollable reactions to bang one’s head or slap one’s hand down on the table in time with the beat. God, it’s great.

If for whatever reason you lost this album, let’s say you lent it to a girlfriend/boyfriend and she/he dumped you and you never did that return-to-me-the-things-that-are-mine thing, buy it again.

Jesus Christ Superstar

This post is in the theme “Constructing an identity through media”. Read the first.

September 1, New York: Coming out of middle school I was a wrestler. I know, strange. I’d been casting about for hobbies and sure enough, going into freshman year of high school I was on the Wrestling team. Squad? I was terrible. I had no upper body strength, was dreadfully bored by exercise, and was heavy enough to be in a weight class with 5’9″ dudes that were 100% muscle. I won zero matches.

Come sophomore year I found my salvation: theater. Oh yes, it was obvious. Loud, obnoxious, perpetually on stage: I was a theater kid in the biggest possible way before I even learned what the word “thespian” meant. My high school had a small and underfunded theater program and I quickly trod the boards to lead roles. I loved theater. It gave me community. It gave me identity. It gave me a way to release the wild, pent-up emotion of teenaged angst. When my Dad passed away, half of my therapy was going too deeply into every single character I played and yelling, stomping, screaming my way through every performance. Theater turned out to also be a wonderful way to meet the ladies.

Jesus Christ Superstar was my favorite musical. I listened to my two-disc edition of the London Cast Recording until the laser in compact disc player nearly wore a hole through the plastic. I would have loved to have performed it, but I was forever stunted in my ambition because my voice, while great for a scream, was terrible for a song. Had my high school had the resources to produce a musical (we didn’t) I never could have been cast in any lead roles. (In Superstar I maybe could have eked out a Caiaphas.) As it was, we stuck to Neil Simon and I was a big fish in a little pond and things worked out great.

But, oh I loved to sing along to Jesus Christ Superstar, lack of talent be damned. This is another one of those albums from which I know every lyric. In fact, I know this album so completely, that the time I finally did well on the SAT, I spent the entire test singing this musical to myself front to back accompanied only by two bottles of Jolt Cola and a #2 pencil.


From the movie, not really my jam. But I do love this song.

I loved, loved being on stage but theater never felt like a calling. I wanted to create worlds, to write the stories. I acted here and there in college, but eventually moved completely on. And around the same time, grew a distaste for the artifice of musicals. But man, with the headphones on? Turns out I do still love to sing along to this album.

Sure, it’s a musical, but just imagine you bought this album so you could get out of reading the New Testament. It’s like a funky Cliffs Notes.

Ani DiFranco: Living in Clip

This post is in the theme “Constructing an identity through media”. Read the first.

September 1, New York: My wife had a tough week. So I cleaned the house while she napped and I listened to this double album of live Ani DiFranco with my headphones on. I confess, I missed this music. There was a moment in my life where I so strongly identified with being a fan of Ani’s, couldn’t tell it to enough people, and then the epochs of personality shifted and I left her behind when I left for college.

In high school, though, I listened to Living in Clip on repeat for nearly a year. I loved Ani for her virtuoso guitar-playing, for her lyricism, for her politics. I loved this music honestly and without artifice. “Out of Range” is particularly close to my heart; I once totaled a car because I was pressing forward on the CD player to get through the tracks to “Out of Range”, the final track. (Yes, I should have hit back twice.) I knew enough to wait for it this time and to enjoy the songs that came before. And then I played it three times through.

With this listen, too, I knew enough to hear all the love songs with a different ear. I suddenly realized why we all had such tortured and tumultuous relationships in our youth. This was our model! I lived my teens and twenties like an Ani DiFranco love song, without ever realizing how subconsciously I’d been prepared for it. I was either the protagonist or the villain, alternating back and forth between the roles (or always a villain, I am sure). Every relationship was a study in protracted yet beautiful collapse. Like “Gravel” or like “Untouchable Face” or like “Firedoor” or like sitting in a dark room with this album on repeat for hours.

Just as I left Ani behind on my way to college, I eventually worked my way out of those patterns in the years that followed and I now enjoy and indeed relish the stability of adulthood. And connecting back to my teenage self over the gulf of years spent, I must say I’m happy with the way things have turned out. And I think my Ani DiFranco period teenaged self would have been proud to see me, married happy and stable, listening to songs about gender roles while I quietly cleaned the house for my napping wife.

Revisit your Righteous Babe and pick up this masterful double disc live album.

Wu-Tang Clan: Enter the 36 Chambers

This post is in the theme “Constructing an identity through media”. Read the first.

August 30, New York: This post is about a different friend named Chris. This Chris was the sports anchor of our high school television show. I was the news anchor (“news” = announcements). Chris and I were good buds and he was often forceful of opinion. In this particular case I don’t recall the beginning point of contention, but Chris one day took me to school about hip hop. He had merciful pity for his poor white friend and graced him with some wisdom. He handed me a cassette tape of the Wu-Tang Clan and said “Go home, listen to this twice through, and then bring it back to me.” I did that (and I copied it) and oh man, did Chris save my life.

Enter the 36 Chambers was the first time I really experienced incredible hip-hop for what it was. Sat down and listened to it. Most of my youth had been dirty south dancefloor rhymes and radio hits. Sure, I’d heard Dre and Snoop and Tupac, but I’d heard all of them through the filter of a white, suburban, MTV-viewing audience. And that ended up not being my thing. Around the time people-who-were-not-in-gangs were really into acting like they were in gangs, I got into techno and Fiona Apple and punk. Hip-hop to me was just what was on the radio (this is probably the root of the disagreement Chris and I had.)

This album, though, this album revealed a whole different world to me. This gaggle of guys was awesome and awesomely talented. Fantastic beats. Incredible rhymes. And so many artful movie samples— by which Wu-Tang creates a whole WORLD within their mythos. I once took a class on hip-hop from Dr. Todd Boyd who dedicated an entire day to discussing the majesty of the Wu-Tang Clan, drawing an incredible parallel between them with their Shaolin vocabulary and Parliament-Funkadelic with their space alien world. Best day of class ever.

And you know what? I didn’t hate the skits on this album. They were little snatches of life. “Where my killer tape at?” This album is the best. Thanks, Chris.

You should own a piece of the Wu-Tang, like the secret Shaolin you are.

Fiona Apple: Tidal

August 28, New York: I have a confession to make: I went to the Lilith Fair. Twice. One of those times was with a girlfriend. But the first time was with my best friend Chris and we went as two straight dudes with the best of intentions— we just loved the music! (We loved it so much we drove all the way from St. Petersburg, Florida to Atlanta.)

Why go so far? Well, a lot of it had to do with Fiona Apple. We loved her. Loved her music and both had monster crushes on her. It came from an honest place! We listened to Tidal and were blown away. Before the hyper-sexual “Criminal” video, before her VMA acceptance speech sass, Chris and I were obsessed with how damn talented this woman was. She could play a mean piano, had a completely unique sultry voice, and WHOA could she write a song. We were superfans.


Forget “Criminal”, here’s “Shadowboxer” instead.

Tidal was at the beginning of a lengthy period in which Chris and I were obsessed with female singer/songwriters. Which, perhaps unsurprising for teenagers, the radio was conveniently obsessed with as well. This is the period of Jewel, Sarah MacLachlan, Shawn Colvin, Sheryl Crow, Lisa Loeb (those glasses!). We unabashedly loved them all. And we unabashedly wore our Lilith Fair t-shirts. To our high school. For real.

Tidal is still a pretty great album. It stands outside of its place in time, to my ears at least. I love a Fiona Apple turn of phrase in the lyrics and I love the way the piano drifts along. Happy to have given myself an excuse to re-listen to this one.

Relive the Lilith Fair yourself and buy this gorgeous little album.

Smashing Pumpkins: Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness

This post is in the theme “Constructing an identity through media”. Read the first.

August 26, New York: I put my headphones on and went for a walk with this album. It starts so soft with the orchestral arrangement and then the string-dominated “Tonight, Tonight”. I all but forgot I was listening to a rock album until “Jellbelly” kicked off. When this album wants to rock, it rocks. “Bullet with Butterfly Wings” caught me by surprise when all of a sudden, in my headphones, Billy Corgan stated declaratively: “The world is a vampire.” Rock ensued.

This album is pretty fucking great. I wasn’t sure how time would treat it, but it’s a good one. Wide variation and great songs. There does not seem to be much distance between hits and filler, it’s just one solid album. I remember when this album was released, the pride I felt as a fan of a band that took a big risk. That booked an orchestra to weave into their crazy-long double album. And it worked. So many hit singles from such a great total album. For a song like “Tonight, Tonight” to be in regular rotation on MTV, that’s something.

I saw Smashing Pumpkins on the tour for this record. They were fantastic. They played a giant stadium venue and they must have played for nearly two hours. The set dragged at the end, they lost themselves in a fifteen minute rock jam and people began to file out. I was there with a girlfriend and the poor friend of mine who had driven us (who found himself the very definition of a third wheel) and while the friend was desperate to leave, my girlfriend and I were determined to see the end. Wrapping up their jam and my friend checked his watch, Billy Corgan looked up to the half-empty stadium and gave us a little speech about being the real fans, and fuck ‘the MTV fans’, and then he played “Bullet with Butterfly Wings”. It’s great to see a band you love in triumph.

Buy yourself a little Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.

MTV Party To Go, Vol. 5

This post is in the theme “Constructing an identity through media”. Read the first.

August 24, New York: This is a post about high school dances. And middle school dances, too. I grew up in St. Petersburg, Florida; we knew it as the Dirty South. Our anthem was “Tootsie Roll” by the 69 Boyz.


Do you remember what it was like in nineteen ninety quad?

“Tootise Roll” played at every school dance and it defined our dance culture. I don’t know what it was like in your mid-1990s high school, but we grinded. We freaked. Male and female pelvises came together and remained inseparable for the length of every song. When I later went to college, I was astonished to discover that this style of dancing was not universal. (Perhaps it was my dance partners who were astonished.) But in Florida, in the 1990s, it wasn’t “grinding” it was just “dancing”.

MTV Party to Go Volume 5 has many of the other regular tunes at those dances. Smooth slow jams like “Anniversary” and “Weak” and dance floor fillers like “Whoomp There It Is” and “Boom! Shake the Room”. “Slam”, which for no good reason other than the repetition of the title, used to inspire a mosh pit of slam dancing at every dance. And of course, that cultural high point “Come Baby Come”.

Fun fact: The first show I ever attended was K7. It was in a teenage dance club called “Sponges”, opened by local Top 40 shock jock Bubba the Love Sponge. It was open for kids from 12 to 19, and you know there were some 19 year old Floridian creep dudes making moves on 14 year old girls. “Come Baby Come” is a ridiculous song. Comically sexual. It makes you wonder if these guys had ever had sex before releasing this track. Well, at least you can understand the words; twenty years later and I still can’t decipher the lyrics to “Informer”.

Buy this album and relive a little bit of nineteen ninety quad.

Operation Ivy and Rancid: Let’s Go

This post is in the theme “Constructing an identity through media”. Read the first.

August 24, New York: My punk phase was brief, if it was a phase at all. I found my way to punk via ska, to ska via Less than Jake, whose song “Johnny Quest Thinks We’re Sellouts” was one of my absolute favorites. I saw Less than Jake a few times at St. Petersburg’s State Theater, a last bastion of the era in which the Tampa Bay area had a large and thriving punk scene. I was not a part of that scene; I was too late for that.

I guess I would be a third wave punk kid? Fourth wave? I listened to Operation Ivy and Rancid, riding around with my best friend feeling cool with the radio cranked up. The ska was great, sometimes cheerful, always danceable. I loved to skank; I’ve many times demonstrated that I could skank to any music. But Operation Ivy and Rancid always felt far cooler. More true.

These two albums were my favorites of that time. Fast, fun, rebellious. I still knew every word listening today, still enjoyed them just as much. With the perspective of over a decade gone past I heard the anti-authority message much more crisply. As a teenager, everything is anti-authority, so those messages kind of wash over you. “Fuck the cops” is what you feel you’re supposed to say. As an adult, I recognize that these were, at the time, other adults making this music. People for whom cops were a real threat and the warnings about them had to be spread far and wide.

Turn your speakers up and skank along to Operation Ivy and Rancid.

Nirvana: Nevermind & Unplugged

This post is in the theme “Constructing an identity through media”. Read the first.

August 20, New York: I’d originally planned to listen to Nevermind exactly once through, then write up a post and move on to the next album. Nirvana, it turns out, it pretty fantastic. I’ve spent the last two days listening to Nevermind a bunch and falling back in love with the Unplugged album. This music is really something great.

I was of the Nirvana generation— that cohort of teens and preteens for whom this album was the Beginning of Music. As it was a musical turning point, it was the turning point of my adolescence. Post-Nirvana I wore my Dad’s old flannels and one time tried to sing in a rock band (I was terrible, by the way). All the guys at my school grew their hair long and shaved underneath it. I asked my barber to do the same and he tried to talk me out of it; I didn’t really understand the difference between curly and straight hair. I had that mushroom haircut for at least a year.

I’m so happy that this was the music that defined my cohort. We could have done a lot worse. This music feels original, and to listen today, it feels timeless. It’s of its time, but stands outside it, too. It’s haunting to watch the videos of Cobain now, particularly this one from the Unplugged show, making wry jokes about David Geffen buying him a $500,000 present. It’s a shame to have lost him.

Nirvana is always for sale. David Geffen still needs the money.

Jimi Hendrix

August 17, New York: This post will launch a new theme: Constructing an identity through media. (Note: The last theme is not complete, but I’ve got two big honkers to finish and that will take some time.) Where A Long Waltz Through Nerddom was about quiet, private identity, this one is about consciously building a public face and doing it through the music, books, and movies I consumed. I was typical for my age in this way. In my teens, you were judged by guests in your bedroom on the CD rack you displayed. In my twenties, that same collection became the cornerstone for digital identity: your favorite books, movies, albums were crucial fields of Friendster, Myspace, Facebook.

As best as I can remember, the albums of Jimi Hendrix were the first instance of this in my life. For a lengthy period in middle school I became a MASSIVE Jimi Hendrix fan. It was my differentiator. I had Jimi t-shirts, I bought as many Jimi albums as I could, I listened to Jimi constantly. I knew the music was great and it was indisputably not nerdy. My Dad was thrilled; better to hear “All Along the Watchtower” blaring from my room than more of that ‘rap crap’. It was also, importantly to me, not what everyone else was into at the time. I had my own thing.

If I’d ever had a talent (or more than passing interest) for guitar, this would have been a life-defining period. And my Hendrix phase would have lasted a lot longer. As it was, it was just a phase. I never got past the strum. I’ve not really listened to a ton of Hendrix since middle school; I’d really burned through that library.

For this project, I focused on six albums: the three canonical Jimi Hendrix Experience LPs, the live Woodstock album, the Band of Gypsies album, and a compilation Blues album that I loved. This music really is incredible. It makes me inordinately proud of middle school Andrew to have been a big Hendrix fan. The songs are loud and dense and varied and so full of sound. There were just three guys in the Jimi Hendrix Experience! Making so much noise! And it is fun that I still know many of these songs note by note, like “The Wind Cries Mary”. Or “Voodoo Child”. My lord, that song. It was fun too, in this listen, to track his career through these albums and his soaring arc toward deep blues. Electric Ladyland is my favorite of the Experience albums, and it’s really thanks to “Voodoo Child”. That song should be in everyone’s canon. It’s like Jimi Hendrix was the Christ-figure messiah of the blues, he took it from Old Testament to New. Introduced a new epoch.

Much of this theme will not be as satisfying as listening to six Jimi Hendrix albums. The next few posts are going to move solidly away from distinctive identity and start to flow right on into the sometimes-lamentable mainstream of my youth. But this should be a fun one nonetheless.

Of all of these Jimi Hendrix albums, I would most recommend you pick up the Blues album. It’s really something special.

Weezer: Weezer and Pinkerton

This post is in the theme “A Long Waltz Through Nerddom”. Read the first.

August 16, New York: I first heard (watched) Weezer when the “Buddy Holly” and “Undone” videos were all over TV. I hated it. These preppy guys with their poppy songs. I couldn’t imagine a music that was further from what I wanted to be (long-haired and thrashing). I rediscovered Weezer in college and fell in love. This was music for nerds! This was nerd music coming out of the closet!

“In the Garage” is the song that nails it: “I’ve got a dungeons master’s guide / I’ve got a 12 sided die / I’ve got Kitty Pryde / and Nightcrawler too / waiting there for me.” And that over distorted guitar. It’s a sound that’s cool and lyrics that are decidedly not. This is one of those moments in which being a nerd or being a geek was suddenly accessible to the mainstream. A premonition of Comic Con being the central event of the film industry. Of The Lord of the Rings movies making hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office.

My guitar-strumming college friends loved to play Weezer and every time the guitar came out we would all be belting along to “El Scorcho”. “Well goddamn you half Japanese girls / you do it to me ev-e-ry time.” I have a particularly fond memory of being on a train in Austria heartily singing “El Scorcho” in compeition with the Christian folk songs of a church group.

When I listen to this album now, I still just want to sing along to every single song, head banging all the way, face screwing up in ‘rock music face’. I can recall every word, every note.

Rediscover your inner nerd released with the blue album and Pinkerton.

Portishead: Roseland NYC Live

This post is in the theme “A Long Waltz Through Nerddom”. Read the first.

August 13, New York: I get chills every time I hear the beginning of this album. Not chills from the horror-movie-soundtrack-sound, no. It’s that the symphonic treatment of this album is just incredible. It’s smooth, it’s spooky, but above all it’s EPIC. Unlike most live albums with a symphonic backing, this one sounds like it was meant to be this way. As if Portishead should always have been a 31 piece ensemble.

Portishead is the one artist discovered in the techno phase that followed my friend Chris and me into adulthood. It perhaps bridged the gap into our next obsession with female singers. I think this is music without genre, wholly unique and timeless.

One time Chris told me he sang karaoke with Beth Gibbon. I’ve never decided if I believed him or not. There was another time he told me that a meteor was going to strike the earth by the end of the week and I believed him for half the day. Hard to say if the karaoke story is the same category or not. But I was super jealous.

Holy crap, watch the whole thing on YouTube:

I don’t know what a “trip hop” is, but I know this album is great. Buy it on the ol’ Internet.

Orbital: Orbital 2

This post is in the theme “A Long Waltz Through Nerddom”. Read the first.

August 12, New York: Techno represented a brief but important period for me musically. As a teenager, after watching Hackers, my best friend Chris and I went through a major techno phase. When it came to the Thirty-Three Project, I wanted to pick one album that was emblematic of that time. There was a lot to choose from: Prodigy, Lords of Acid, Underworld, Orbital. The thing is, Orbital is kind of the best. It’s always kind of the best. There’s something about “Halcyon + On + On” that gets me every single time.

Funny enough, my experience of 1990s techno never involved drugs or dancing in a rave or glow sticks of any kind. It was all computer games and carpeted, air-conditioned bedrooms and driving around in cars feeling cool as shit. Maybe that’s why Orbital is best representative of that period for me— it was headphone music, not dance music.

I actually think the Thirty-Three Project was the first time I ever stitched together the worlds of 1990s rave culture that influenced my life, keeping in mind that I never went to a rave in the 1990s. (Okay, a handful when I was in college, but it was a frat boy scene by that time.) There was a whole subculture which I experienced in multiple facets, but of which I was never a full participant. I’m sure part of that was geographic isolation— not a lot of super-rad warehouse raves in the suburbs of Tampa Bay. But also, I came at this stuff as a real nerdy teenager. I didn’t like parties, I didn’t like drugs. I wanted to be a rollerblading computer hacker!

I don’t listen to a lot of techno these days (and certainly don’t listen to what the kids these days call EDM). But you know when it’s still really useful? When you have to put on a pair of headphones and hammer on a keyboard for a while. Not writing a fiction story, but solving problems with your fingertips! The only time I pull these albums out is when I open up CodeAcademy and try to teach myself some programming.

Check out some Orbital on the Rdio.