I miss lousy music. Yes, I know, that’s a ridiculous thing to say, it sounds like Dana Carvey’s grumpy old man character from Saturday Night Live (“Everything today is improved … and I DON’T LIKE IT!”). And anyway, lousy music seems an odd thing to miss because, of course, I can get it any time I want. I have more access to lousy music today than anyone ever has in the history of the world. If I wanted to listen to John Tesh or Kenny G, I could do so in about five clicks. Give me seven clicks, I could probably listen to them TOGETHER. I can get lousy music any time I want.
But the truth — and I know this probably doesn’t make much sense, this whole thing probably won’t make much sense — the truth is I can’t get lousy music anytime I want, not really, because lousy music is not something you purposely go out to get. Lousy music is the stuff that just pours into your life, like unexpected rain showers and insects splatting against the windshield and bills you forgot were coming. Or, anyway, lousy music used to pour into our lives. And I miss lousy music.
I thought about this the other day when I was looking for new music to download on iTunes. Every now and again, I will go to iTunes and run through their “Genius* Recommendations.”
*Apple people do tend to throw around that word “Genius” quite a bit, don’t they? Want new music? Here’s our Genius Recommendation. Need help with your Apple device? Well, make an appointment at the Genius Bar. You didn’t make an appointment? Well, we’ll see if you we can sneak you in with one of our Geniuses between scheduled appointments. What exactly would Apple do if, say, Albert Einstein or Copernicus or Mozart went to work there? Would the Apple people come up with a new word to describe them? Would all of Cupertino fly apart in the bright-white light of supergenius imploding into itself?
So I was going through the process, downloading a few songs, when it suddenly occurred to me that I have not heard Billy Joel’s “Scenes From An Italian Restaurant” in quite a while. I should say unequivocally that SFAIR is absolutely NOT the worst song ever recorded. That’s “We Built This City.” And it’s not the second worst (“Broken Wings”) and it’s not even the worst Billy Joel song ever (“We Didn’t Start the Fire”). It’s just a blandly awful song, the sort of song that has made my teeth hurt for many years now. Yes, it did sort of make me want to hit Billy Joel with a bottle of white or a bottle of red (or perhaps a bottle of rose’ instead).* But the feeling usually passed quickly.
*Of course, I am speaking as someone who despises these songs and Billy Joel’s music. If you like these songs and love Billy Joel as you are certainly entitled to do (and many of my friends do), please insert songs you hate into their places. I am not trying to make a musical point here. And I do not believe in pushing my own flawed musical tastes on anyone else.
In any case, though I have despised SFAIR since the first time I heard it, I have still heard it many, many times. Why? I don’t know why. I guess it has played on the radio and I didn’t switch the channel. I heard it walking through a mall. I caught it working out at the gym. I heard it a wedding or two, at a friend’s house, in a restaurant or five, I don’t know all the places I’ve heard it, I just know I’ve heard it many times, and I know the song thoroughly, could probably sing along with most of it, the song is embedded in my brain like some wartime journalist and it ain’t coming out. There have to be a thousand songs in my head that I like even less.
But the point that struck me is that there is almost no chance that I will ever hear SFAIR again (though writing this makes it more likely that I will hear it sometime today). There is no place in my life for lousy music. I don’t listen to radio — I listen to my own iTunes library. I wear headphones most places where there’s music playing overhead. My life is defined more or less the way I define it now. I listen to music I like. All the time.
That’s great, right? Sure it is. And yet … there’s something kind of heartbreaking by it all. Because it isn’t only music. I generally read only what I like too. I do most of my reading online or on the iPad. I used to devour newspapers in whatever city I happened to be in at the time which led to me reading stories that I had no interest in. Hey, look, Penelope Ann Miller turns 40 today! Oh oh, they’re cutting back on money spent for sewers in Tallahassee. Hey, it looks like they’re re-releasing a Brenda Lee collection. Stuff like that. Yes, sometimes, I’d read those stories and pick up an interesting tidbit. Most of the time, though, I’d feel like they were a waste of my time. But I’d read them. And now I don’t. Now, I read what comes through my RSS Feed or what people recommend to me. I read what I like. All the time.
I used to love spending hours in bookstores, walking up and down every aisle, even the computer book aisle, even the calendar aisle, even the cookbook aisle, just in case something jumped out at me. It isn’t like I made impulse buys … the whole POINT was the impulse buy. I would drift around the bookstore, making lap after lap, waiting for the impulse to strike, waiting to learn something about myself.* This wasn’t a particularly effective or terribly practical way to find a book I would actually enjoy. And, much of the time, the books I walked out with were terrible. But sometimes, every now and then, they were life-changing. I remember once, years ago in Cincinnati, walking out of a Barnes & Noble with a book called “High Fidelity.” I’d never heard of the author, a guy named Nick Hornby. Nobody had recommended it. I remember the book wasn’t even particularly noticeable — it wasn’t like they put it on the front shelf or even turned it sideways to give it room to breathe. The book was just kind of jammed in there — no idea how I found it. But I did, and that’s one of my favorite reading experiences because I knew nothing about it and I loved it and so many other impulse buys like that one had been horrible flops.
*Once, I remember, I bought a copy of Plato’s Republic out of the discount bin, not because I had any real expectation of reading it but because it was leaning up against a book about the New Kids on the Block, and, I don’t know, I just couldn’t stand to think that some of the most brilliant ideas in the history of our flawed civilization (even if I didn’t understand them at all) were jammed up against the weepy stories of Joey McIntyre’s teenage years. It cost me $3.95 to liberate Plato’s Allegory of the Cave from “I’ll Be Loving You (Forever).”
I don’t walk around bookstores much now. I generally download the books I want, and I download them based on reviews or friends recommendations. I rarely begin a book that turns out to be lousy. And if a book doesn’t capture me now in the first 50 or so pages, it tends to disappear in the “I’ll get back to that” pile (or folder). And, of course, I never do — get back, that is.
I used to watch lousy television too. I know I could watch lousy television now — more options for lousy television than ever before. Heck, I saw that even James Belushi has something new out there. But I don’t. I watched lousy television before because there was nothing else on, because there were five channels to choose from, and after that there were five channels and basic cable (which included 36 new channels, all playing Perry Mason reruns), and lousy television wasn’t just a part of life, lousy television WAS life. I’m not saying this way was better. It wasn’t. I rarely turn on the television without purpose — to watch a game or a show I Tivoed — but when I do I always can find something good, a History Channel feature on World War II, a Biography Channel feature on Al Capone, a Charlie Rose interview with someone, an HBO documentary on someone interesting, an episode of Wipeout where me and my daughters get to watch people crash into giant rubber balls and fall in mud. I don’t ever even watch games I don’t care about, there’s always another better one on. It’s a golden age. And I’ll never have to watch the painful final years of Happy Days again.
So why do I miss the painful final years of Happy Days?
Like I say, it’s hard to explain. I went on iTunes the other day, like I was saying, and I saw that Bruce Springsteen had recommended a song by The National called “Mr. November.” Well, obviously I was going to download that, and even though the song is not about Derek Jeter working through his anger issues and re-signing with the Yankees for $50-plus million, it is a great song with the great refrain:
“I wish that I believed in fate
I wish I didn’t sleep so late
I used to be carried in the arms of cheerleaders.”
Anyway, it’s a terrific song, one of my favorite singles in quite a while. So then I went to the Genius Recommendation to find songs like “Mr. November” and it led me to “Swimmers” by Broken Social Scene and “Upon This Tidal Wave of Young Blood” by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and “Pasadena” by the Broken Skirts and “Autumn Sweater” by Yo La Tengo, the name which, of course, comes from a baseball story.*
*The story, which you have no doubt heard, comes from the legendarily bad 1962 Mets. It seems that center fielder Richie Asburn, a great player who in the winter of his career found himself stranded on what is widely regarded as the worst team in National League history, kept colliding with shortstop Elio Chacon. The problem, they soon realized, is that they simply did not understand each other. Chacon was from Venezuela and spoke no English at all. So Ashburn, being an amenable teammate, decided to do something about it. He learned how to say “I got it” in Spanish. That’s “Yo La Tengo.”
And there came the game when a pop-up was dropping into that no-man’s land in short left-center and Chacon went after it and Ashburn went after it. Ashburn screamed out “Yo la tengo! Yo la tengo!” Chacon, hearing the words of his country, backed off. Ashburn contentedly settled under the ball — and an outfielder from Pittsburgh named Frank Thomas plowed right into him.
I’d say I downloaded a dozen or so songs based on Genius Recommendations, and then listened to them in the car. Some of the songs I liked. Some I wasn’t crazy about. And here’s what happened. The songs I wasn’t crazy about were eliminated from the playlist, cast out into the iTunes abyss where they are destined to never even get a second play. I know this is absurd because it always takes me two or three listens to fairly judge whether I like a song (just like it takes me 50 pages to know if I’m reading a good book). But I don’t have time or patience or room for two or three listens in my life anymore. I don’t have time or patience or room for much of anything … except what I have time, patience and room for, if that makes sense.
Of course, people talk about this all the time, about how technology has allowed us to retreat into ourselves. You can — you do — find yourself surrounded by opinions you share, shielded from things you find offensive or uninteresting, living in a world where everything you see or hear or read or touch is, like the prizes at the end of the Newlywed Game, “chosen just for you.”
This is not a bad thing. It’s progress. But in progress, sure, as we gain things maybe we lose things too. Maybe we lose a little bit of our edge because we don’t find our ideas challenged often. Maybe we lose a bit of community because few of us ever seem to be watching or listening to the same thing at the same time. Maybe we grow a little bit angrier, maybe Republican and Democrat, heartland and coasts, country and city, all of us move farther apart, because we never really have to listen to each other, we can instead listen to ourselves and our own thoughts every minute of every day, pumping again and again, an endless echo chamber, until the only possible conclusion we can reach is that we are entirely right.
Maybe we lose the surprises. Some 17 or 18 years ago, I was driving around Athens, Ga. late at night for something or other. And I had the radio on the University of Georgia radio station. They were playing various alternative songs, most of which were dreadful, or anyway I thought so. And then they played this song, and it was a beautiful song, one of those rare songs that I hear once and immediately love. I don’t remember anything about it except how it sounded — there was a woman singer, and piano and guitars going in some sort of fusion, and it was great. I remember the DJ saying the band’s name afterward, and I told myself to remember it. But I didn’t. The music went on, the next song was terrible, so was the next, at least I thought so. I only remember that the band had the name of a month in it. For a while, I thought it was “The 25th of May” but I have since heard the 25th of May and while they have their own virtues, they clearly had not performed the song I had heard.
I have never heard that song again. I know that if I ever did hear it, I would recognize it. Every now and again, I will scan the Internet for bands with names of months in them, but I have not yet found the song, and I don’t expect to ever hear it (Heck, at this point, I’m not even sure the band HAD the name of a month in it, maybe I’m remembering it wrong). And, the strange thing is that I kind of I like that. I might not even like the song if I heard it now … the point was never the song, it was the discovery, it was finding something wonderful in the midst of noise on a backroad in Georgia late one night.
It’s not like that now. Now, I go to iTunes and let the Genius tell me what I’d like. The Genius is often right.
Clearly you’re married to the wrong woman. Thanks to my girlfriend, I’ve been subjected to more crap on television this year than in the last decade. Thanfully her taste in music isn’t as bad.
You need a Pandora account: http://www.pandora.com
“Upon This Tidal Wave of Young Blood” is on of my favorite songs; even though the lead singer sounds like a out of breath high pitched Tom Waits.
I love you, in a Platonic, non-New Kids On the Block kinda way…
Yes, there is Pandora. But to create my station, they took bands I already like. So it’s just another Genius recommendation, frequently right, but all too often the same thing I already know I like. And there’s Internet Radio, but that, too, is all too often narrowcasting.
I miss college radio. I love WXPN in Philly and KALX out of Berkeley, but there’s no local college radio. I know I should stream it more, but I can’t at work and don’t want to if I’m at home.
It’s not just the music I miss. I miss the sense of discovery. Whether it was The Kinsey Sicks on radio that made me laugh or a new band, there was something new, something different, I’d not heard that I could depend on KALX to play for me.
I’m 45. When did I get old and nostalgic???
If you liked The National you should definitely check out their new album that just came out, it’s called High Violet. In my opinion it’s one of the finest records of the year.
My god, this is amazing.
Also, in 12 years your daughter will be a teenager. You will then have all the terrible tv/movies/music you could fathom. Unfortunately you probably won’t have any discoveries from this.
I had searched forever for the video of Yeah Yeah Yeahs doing Maps at some MTV function before I finally found it (Thanks, YouTube, for being invented), so that’s always my go to woman singing alternatively recommendation.
This reminds me of something I realized recently, I miss the extra excitement I used to get hearing a song I liked playing on the radio. Now, listening to self-created playlists I like every song I listen to. But when I used to drive around and listen to the radio I used to get an extra kick when a song I really liked came on. After a string of bad or mediocre songs, having a favorite appear was uplifting. And I got more enjoyment knowing that other people had to be listening to the song at the same time, and some of them were realizing how great it was. Alas . . .
Man if you want lousy music just listen to the radio. They havent’ played anything good…ever.
Take heart, you can still hear lousy music at the gas station.
I’m all about Pandora also. I disagree that they only play music you already know. I’ve discovered a couple of good bands by listening to Pandora.
Last.fm is good for that also. Last.fm uses play lists compiled by employees and Pandora uses math. Each method works.
I also like to dial up http://www.kexp.org out of Seattle. It’s the best independent station I’ve ever come across. They are all over the map and will play both music you love and hate in the same ten minute period.
The great advantage of something like Pandora is that it breaks down a song in dozens of different ways – from a musical perspective. And it finds songs that are *musically* similar, with little regard to the popularity of the artist. So it becomes a great way to discover new music – and by lesser known artists.
The problem with a system that recommends based on what other people who liked X like is that it may bring up music that is entirely dissimilar. Just as a for instance, you will often find things along the lines of a Beatles song will lead to a recommendation of a Who song. Well, the Beatles don’t really sound at all like the Who, it’s just that fans of the Beatles are often fans of the Who (more a time period thing).
Of course, I say all this in praise of Pandora, even though I am – as a resident of Canada – unable to actually access Pandora anymore…
I’ve discovered some new music through Blip (http://blip.fm). It’s a place where you get to be the DJ, and you can interact with a network of fellow DJ’s. Once in a while I’ll discover something I’ve never heard and end up enjoying it.
It’s the best of both worlds, really. You don’t have to listen to anything you don’t want to (you can always skip a song if you’re not interested), but there are plenty of opportunities to discover something new if you so desire.
Joe,
I grew up right at the end of the golden era of CDs (I’m 25) and have used the term ‘on demand generation’ to define my peers. While we can self-select and create a preferential darwinism in our musical, television and reading choices, I would argue that exposure to disagreeable tastes creates a wider landscape of topics to criticize disdainfully….
I’ve thought about this problem a lot. I think of it as the San Diego dilemma. You can have great weather all year round, but then you miss that blissful feeling in springtime when everything finally warms up after a frigid winter. Is that feeling worth suffering through the long winter? Probably not, but I’m sure I’d miss it if I lived in San Diego.
I had exactly the same radio experience, about 5:30 AM, December 26, 1996, with the late WOXY outside Cincinnati. I still (partly) hear that song in my head, but have never heard it again. I would pay a great deal of money to know the name of the song or band.
Back in the 80’s, I saw a video on MTV. In fact, I saw it several times. When that video came on, I’d stop whatever I was doing and watch. The reason, it had one of the msot beautiful women I’d ever seen. It was by an all male band, and the video was shor in the desert, with the band and the woman standing on the desert and on different rocks. To this day, I cannot remember the name of the song or the band. I’ve tried over and over to find it online, but I can’t. Joe, I feel your pain.
Wow, that was some crappy typing. My apologies to anyone out there with OCD.
This is exactly why I still listen to broadcast radio (I’m on lunch and Green Day is 6 minutes into Jesus of Suburbia, which probably won’t be done by the time I finish). I need access to all that new music so I can figure out what I like. So I can pick up Vampire Weekend even tho I mostly hate hipster music. So I can admit that Ke$ha has one heck of a talented producer.
We only get as restricted as we allow ourselves to be, right?
It sounds like you don’t have enough free time. This isn’t unusual for adults with busy jobs and young children. While technology is allowing you to remain isolated in many ways, technology is also helping you streamline your life so that you can take care of the things you need to take care of all while gaining enjoyment out of things you like.
Earlier this year, someone gave my wife a gift-card to a local movie theater for her birthday. She told me later that night, “I sure as hell am not hiring a babysitter and taking a night off to go to the movies.”
She works full time and we have two young kids. Free time is a precious commodity, and the last thing she wants to do is “waste” it watching a movie she probably won’t like that much.
I would expect that if you took a summer off work and did nothing except hang out, you’d find yourself open to exploration of unknowns. You would tolerate spending a period of time listening to music you might not like, or watching TV shows that suck. But right now, there’s no time.
My favorite musical inspirations have always come from my dad. Whether it was purposefully playing certain bands/album on a long car ride or strategically leaving one of his old CDs in my room/out in the open. I’m sure I’ll do the same one day.
You’ve never really experienced Billy Joel until you hear him channeled through Dolly Parton (?!?). A great thing, this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfK9b9QpXYg
Now we don’t even have the “I heard the song on the radio and can’t place the artist/band” problem anymore. You can either use Shazam, or you could use yes.com’s listing of whatever songs were played.
What I miss, much more than the junk, is not knowing if a book I’m waiting for has been published yet.
I remember walking into a brick and mortar and elation! there’s a new David Gerrold book to buy. Of course, that was in the dark ages when it was still reasonable to hope that there might be a new David Gerrold book.
But these days, if you care, you already know, because you’ve been watching for it on Amazon, or on the publisher’s website, or on the author’s blog…
You’ve probably already come across this band in your search, Joe, but could the band you are looking for be “October Project”?
If you loathe them, I don’t mean to impugn your musical tastes… but they were on college radio a fair bit in the mid 90s, and they tended to have guitar/piano fusion-esque elements, with female lead singers.
I did an Amazon review recentl;y on this theme.
As one who has spent many hours poring over dictionaries, encyclopedias and old magazines just browsing for fun and surprising stuff, these portraits of the known and unknown should have been right up my alley. I always enjoy finding out about some weird, peculiar, or exotic person who lived a life outside convention and normalcy and made a go of it. Or tried, but didn’t. One of the joys that contemporary readers will miss is opening a reference book looking for something and finding a previously unknown gem on the same page. The web gives you what you’re looking for, or, far too often, mountains of what you’re not looking for, but you will never open an encyclopedia seeking details on just when Stradivarius lived and stumble across Lytton Strachey.
@ Loren.
I agree. Originally from KC, I lived in SD County (Oceanside) for eight years. I loved the weather and used to call my folks up in KC during the middle of summer or winter and brag about the bland 75-80 degree weather in SD. I moved back to KC three years ago, and I could not be happier. I even love the weather.
Joe, I love SFAIR and all that Billy Joel stuff. Actually went to one of those Billy Joel/Elton John concerts in SD. But great music is a personal choice, and I lament with you the days of only four or five major channels and the UHFs. Always liked the fact that Johnny Weismueller as Tarzan, The Bowery Boys, or those old Mickey Rooney shows where his dad was a judge played on channel 41 on Sunday afternoon.
Gaines
Joe I loved this post. I wish I had more to say but I just really enjoyed reading it and am glad you wrote it.
I relate to a lot of this post, especially in terms of music. I used to not have nearly as much information about music, so I would pick up albums from the $2 that I knew nothing about because I liked some combo of the song titles or band name or cover design or (if I could open the case) liner notes. My all-time favorite band, the Rheostatics, I discovered that way, along with wonderful records by Maestro Subgum, and Sisterhood of Convoluted Thinkers, and Rise Robots Rise, and Squonk Opera. And a bunch of stuff that was okay and I listened to a couple of times and discarded.
The “couple of times” are still important, though. I listen to more great music than ever, with all the info around, and if I download it to my computer and it isn’t utterly awful, I’ll give it a chance. I miss the thrill of the accidental discovery, but I still get the thrill of the “I wrote its name down based on one obscure review and never expected it to be this amazing”, more often than before. It’s a fair deal.
Books, though? Dude, use the public library. I still go to the library with a list of books to check out, and leave with something I’ve never heard of that was alphabetically nearby and had a cool cover and some convincing quotes on the back. Usually it’s really good. At worst, it’s worth the cost.
and, I’m sorry if suggesting the possible band takes the fun our of it, Joe, but as sson as I read your description, I thought of October Project. And I agree, you might not even like the song if you heard it again. It’s not going to be the same, all these years later. But, just in case….you might find something else to love.
Sometimes I walk around and I feel like I am in a time warp.
Why are all these people typing into their phones?
Why does everyone have these wires coming out of their ears? Where are the headphones?
I hate Itunes. Hate is a strong word, but it applies here. See, I love conversation among strangers. Sometimes, rarely, a complete stranger will tell you something that hits so close to home , is so relevant , its like the voice of God.
Anyway, I like meeting new people. But its impossible to start up a conversation with someone whose got those wires coming out of their ears.
I understand that for many people the entire appeal of the Itunes is they wont be approached by folks like me. Understandable.
But thats not what I hate about it. Its the sound! How the heck are ya gonna get a full bodied flavor out of those teeny tiny little speakers?
You really gonna get the best out of the E Street Band out of those things?
So, Ive come to the conclusion that the Itunes appeal isnt so much about the music as the wearer wanting to be left the hell alone, in their own world.
But the Itunes is progress defined compared with the damn texting. Everyone texts. I hate it. I dont have the patience to hit a key three times for one letter.
This thing is a phone. A guy named Alexander Bell invented it so we could talk to each other from long distances. Texting is like morse code.
Plus, people reveal things in conversation. Fragments slip out , real thoughts and feelings escape. If one is a good listener you can get it all. The brevity of the texts protects.
And nevermind this damn computer! See, I dont like distractions in my life. Years ago I managed to quit television. I havent even owned one since 2005.
But its been replaced by this computer. I sit at it all day, getting lazier , fatter , and less motivated by the minute. And it is going to be impossible — Impossible!! — to quit the computer because the damn thing spits out money.
See, I dont have to talk to anyone anymore. I can come on this blog or another and vent.
Women? I can see five thousand of them , most out of my league , doing things that arent fit to explain on a family blog.
Every desire is synthesized by this computer.
There really is no need to go out anymore. Its sad. Soon , they’ll invent a web page that when you stare at it long enough you feel drunk , then I wont even have to leave the house!
” I should say unequivocally that SFAIR is absolutely NOT the worst song ever recorded. That’s “We Built This City.” “
AMEN
This is another reason why I only buy albums. You get the good, bad and ugly. See the great bands warts and all. In the context of an album even a bad song can be good and you have reason to listen.
“We Built This City” sounds like pure heaven when compared with “Rock-n-Roll Pneumonia and the Boogie-Woogie Flu”.
“We Built This City” is terrible. No doubt. But, Im pretty sure the members of Jefferson needed the money real bad. Real bad.
But SFAIR is a happy chippy little number. I aint got no problems with Brenda or Eddie. (It is too long — a bit self indulgent in its length — like some of my comments — and I’ll bet the producer begged Joel to cut it down — and he didnt , so its something Joel might feel strongly about. Plus, the pianos bridge is quite amazing. He tears it the heck up)
In fact, I cant think of one bad song ever. Placing judgment on a song, is like telling a 3rd grader his science fair project sucks. If the artist puts their time and effort into it, I respect it. I dont have to like it. Also, listen to any song — any song — and it will grow on you.
Long ago, I spent many hours walking the aisles of record stores looking through the cut-out bins. At $1.99, the LPs were a reasonable financial risk and it was fun to buy something unknown because the album cover was cool, or the producer was the same one who produced one of your favorite performers, or you recognized one song and were curious about the 9 or 10 others on the record (or because the performer had the same name as you. Boy was that a piece of crap.) At worst, you ended up with a lot of odd tracks to add weirdness to your mix tapes. I suppose you could find these kinds of songs online through itunes or amazon, but the technological method does not provide the same thrill of discovery.
Joe, you just listed about half the soundtrack to my junior year in college. It was five years ago, but I’m glad you got around to it and have similar tastes to myself.
Joe,
Great blog on so many levels. But the point about hearing a song that hit home while driving on a GA back road struck a real chord.
Like you, I’ve lived in KC for a long time, in fact most of my radio listening life. I concluded more than 20 years ago that KC radio was a wasteland of limited play lists, promoting nothing more than the top songs of each musical genre – especially the “classic rock” that defined my youth of 15 to almost 30 (and, yes, I do mean 101 The Fox). Played five or more times each day. (Love Kansas but “Carry On My Wayward Son” ad nauseum 20+ years after it was a hit? Same for “Stairway to Heaven.” Gag.)
My epiphany on what I was missing happened over business and personal trips in the early ’90’s to places lice Tucson, AZ, southern Indiana, northern Alabama and, to make my point, western Virginia. Over three days in western VA I heard so many great non-hit “off-cuts” from some of the best groups of my relative youth – songs from popular (& not-so-popular) albums that never got airplay. Some were vague and pleasant remembrances; others were true discoveries. The Kansas songs were like old friends. What I heard from Dylan, Hendrix, Genesis and others was like a best-case Pandora session of songs I’d rarely, if ever, heard and really loved.
Listening to this music while driving through extremely picturesque country left me asking the question to which I’ve never received a good answer: Why the hell does KC radio not play stuff like this? I can’t be alone. Surely there must be a market for this kind of music.
And not to miss your last point, many a time in the regions I mentioned did I say to myself, “who was that?” or “I’ll try to remember that artist/song.” Like you, on the latter, I never did.
As a fan of various types of music I much prefer Pandora superstations to the iTunes Genius mix. Nothing like hearing a Darkness era Springsteen song followed by Ice Cube followed by the Dead followed by Motown followed by Joe Jackson. You get the idea.
One of the best cell phone inventions ever is the Song ID program where you can hold it up to a speaker and it will identify what’s playing. I’ve become a pro at pulling out my phone to identify an unknown song playing on my car radio and have discovered many, many bands because of this.
All the other snazzy phone features they’re coming up with I have no use for – in fact, I still have an old flip phone – but I would be lost without Song ID.
Your blog is a must read – I would’ve never found it without allowing myself to go read something for no reason.
Anyway… I listen to LOTS of music I don’t like, and here’s how:
A few months ago I took an inventory of all of the music I have floating around: lps, 45s, cds, mp3s, cassettes, 78s, 8Tracks… and figured that if I listen to around a dozen songs per day it would take me close to 50 years to hear everything.
I decided to listen to an album a day with no repetitions until I either die or run out of stuff to listen to.
It’s now been going on for a couple of years. I listen to every note of every song of whatever album that I choose for that particular day, and when it’s over I say goodbye to it forever. Some albums I don’t feel too badly about never hearing again (Byrdmaniax comes to mind), but what about Pet Sounds, Revolver, Kind of Blue? Knowing that I’ll (possibly) never experience this music again is forcing me to really listen, and hearing for the last time is turning out to be just as rewarding as hearing for the first time. In the process I’ve heard an awful lot of lousy songs but I’ve also been pleasantly surprised by stuff I’d either never heard or had dismissed at some point.
There is a band called Blue Rodeo with a song called “5 Days in May” on an album called “Five Days in July.” Maybe it’s just a question of where you put the month?
I had a similar experience to @Shane. I had so many albums, bought with good intentions that I no longer remembered. Instead of just listening to my favorites, I decided that when I wanted to put on music, I would go through my LP collection in alphabetical order (I sort mine by artist; your anal retentiveness may vary). Helped me rediscover a lot of stuff I had forgotten, and saved me from having to think.
Joe – I have read your stuff admiringly for a long time but never commented before. But this one really just nailed something that I have thought about for a while, and so I wanted to write in. The whole idea that our entertainment stimulus is now self-directed, through technology and our own lifestyle choices, seems incrementally like progress in the name of efficient time management, but yet lesser overall result. Even more, it feels vaguely depressing, although I can’t easily say why. Kind of like ‘Is this all there is, just what I want to hear?’
I have my own version of your examples, like everyone, and in most of the same areas like music and TV. I can remember as a kid in the 70’s waiting for that cool new song to be played again on the radio; I needed to make myself available for it, not the other way around. I still remember sprinting towards a parked car near PS #6 because ‘With a Little Luck’ was playing on its radio, and several of us just stood outside and listened. The waiting and anticipation of the new song/show/book/movie, the sharing of that excitement with friends who liked it too, and then the satisfaction (or disappointment) of seeing it happen. Life just seemed bigger, more mysterious and exciting.
I have all this stuff now – iPods/iPad, Genius, Pandora, XM/Sirius. All of it gives me things that I find more enjoyable than much of the music that I suffered through before to get to the ones that I liked. But overall I can’t say that my music experience is necessarily better. Well, of course it is, i have learned about all these new groups that I like, but yet something feels less exciting. And for some reason, I worry for my kids that they can have any of this, whenever they want it (although they can’t yet, of course, since I won’t let them have those things yet, but the day is coming).
I think that this feeling has something to do with the choice of believing that you are part of a world bigger than yourself in which you are only a part, or setting up your world to be primarily driven by your own wants and desires. Maybe all these technology improvements are inadvertently sliding us a little towards the latter?
Or then again, maybe I am just a 21st century Luddite.
One of my favorite lyrics is:
Alot of people
they be jonesin
just to hear me rock the mic
they be starin at their radio
stayin up all night
See, there is a certain endorphin , a pure joy , that overcomes you for an instant when a song you have been dying to hear comes on the radio.
But now you dont have to wait anymore. Even immediately accesible instant gratification goes through what economists call the law of diminishing returns.
Thanks, Joe.
Long live the Parkway Diner.
Like Brenda and Eddie, we all find a way to get by (in our music choices)
@Shane & @Laszlo —
Maybe it’s an age thing or something, but I am about 18 months into my version of the same (anal retentiveness roughly = Laszlo; multiple CDs of the same artist are in chronological order). I’m not listening to them in any particular order, but I do try (usually, but not always successful) to only listen to what remains in the “I haven’t listened to that since I started” group.
As for SFAIR: I can’t say that he’s my favorite artist or vocalist or composer or singer or anything else, but I “GET” Billy Joel more than I do anyone else. No doubt this is because we are less than a year apart in age, and grew up less than 5 miles from each other (North Shore of Long Island — Lawn Guyland to the natives, of course). To sound profound, I understand his *weltanschauung*.
And specifically this song: the “Italian restaruant” in question is Christiano’s on Ira Road in Syosset (and I have heard him confirm this in interviews), which is where my family used to go for our pizza and Italian takeout when I was a teenager in the mid- to late-60s. So, every time I hear it, I think “I know that place, I know what and who he’s talking/singing about, I know what that felt like.”
And Joe, you’re right. It just isn’t the same when you can set yourself up to watch/read/listen to nothing but what you like. It really cuts down on the likelihood of a random discovery, and just makes you more of what you already are.
What I also miss out on is being able to go to someone’s house and look through their bookshelves or cd racks. I always liked finding out about people by looking through their collections.
that was always part of the excitement …like watching the Beatles on Ed Sullivan knowing there were millions of others doing so at the same time. It was a shared experience. Now everyone is just doing their own thing on Tivo or netflix
Ten songs off the top of my head that I wouldnt pay ten cents to listen to , yet when I hear them by accident that radio gets turned up as loud as it can go:
1– Second Hand News ; Fleetwood Mac
2 — Lido Shuffle ; Scaggs
3 – Shimmy Shimmy Ya ; ODB
4 — Heart of Glass ; Blondie
5 — Stayin Alive ; BeeGees
6 — Bitter Sweet Symphony — The Verve
7 – Groove is the Heart — DLite
8 — Last Splash — The Breeders
9 — Stranglehold — Ted Nugent
10 – Shooting Star — Bad Company
“I don’t have time or patience or room for much of anything … except what I have time, patience and room for, if that makes sense.”
Truer words/never spoken.
@Laszlo: “I would go through my LP collection in alphabetical order (I sort mine by artist; your anal retentiveness may vary).”
Mine is done by album name. (Though I love the fact that other people do this.) This keeps me from being able to grab The Beatles because I know where its at. Not that I don’t gravitate toward some albums more than others, but I find I forget the names of albums at ever-faster rates. For example: I’m looking for an Against Me song. I didn’t feel like trying to remember the exact album, so I perused the shelves and just grabbed something. I ended up listening to Bek’s Odelay disc. It had been far too long to put that on spin. (As the Eternal Cowboy was what I was looking for. How I ended up at “O” is why they are arranged as such.)
@ Wally: ‘Is this all there is, just what I want to hear?’
I’m always reminded of the line (not sure where I heard it), “I like every song on my iPod, except when it’s on shuffle. Then I only like every 15th song.”
Ten songs of the top of my head that I must hear by happenstance to enjoy. Ive simply played them too much to concsiously play em again:
1 — Kashmir — Led Zep
2 — Bab OReilly — The Who
3 — USSR — The Beatles
4 — Two Trains — Little Feat
5 — Its Tricky — Run DMC
6 — Lady Writer on the TV — Dire Straits
7 — Sabotage — Beastie Boys
8 — Bleep the Police — NWA
9 — Deep Elem Blues — The Grateful Dead
10 — Tightrope — Stevie Ray Vaughn
I know this isn’t the point of the exercise, but could the band be Eleventh Dream Day? They did have a female singer on some of their songs.
Last year, Pandora popped up with a song that I had vaguely sung to myself since 1984. It was an amazing moment.
Eleventh Dream Day. 1992, 93. Female vocalist. Great hooks. Yeah, it all does kinda fit.
One of my favorite bands from my college radio days of yore. It would be awesome if that’s the band Joe’s thinking of.
I somewhat relate to the post. The media world that we grew up in did require you to sift through a lot of nonsense to find the gold, but it also conveyed some sense of shared experience that has been largely wiped out by technology. The only place you get that sense of shared experience now is in sports.
I guess I can see lamenting the lost sense of discovery you used to get when you found a great band or great show amidst all the noise. In the right mood I might get nostalgic for it myself. But mostly I’m glad that I spend a lot less time listening to shitty music and watching shitty TV than I did twenty years ago.
I grew up in pre-TV days where schoolyard conversations would be about last night’s radio serial or what had made #1 on the hit parade; this was the time when Little Richard was genuinely little.
Then TV arrived and workplace conversations would be about something that had been on the night before – which pretty much everyone had seen as there was just the one channel.
I distinctly remember a documentary on smoking – in the days when seemingly everyone smoked – that scared the tripe out of the population. Everybody had seen it.
OK, small country and all that, but TV, radio and newspapers bound the nation together then, provided common talking points, in a way that no longer exists.
Progress is always two steps forward, one step back. Sometimes it’s just the one step back.
You really should just check out all of The National’s stuff. One of my favorite bands of the past decade. The albums “Boxer” and “Alligator,” in particular, though “High Violet” is great, too.
Hey, e! Start a blog. I like your typing.
you can’t know pleasure until you know pain.
I really worry about how things are turning inward. I really worry about what society will turn into if each member is referencing themselves against themself.
And I really worry that we are getting dumb because we are blocking out what we don’t want to hear or see. It’s not just entertainment, which is fairly benign, but it’s news, politics, current affairs, matters of importance.
Back in the “old” days whether we liked it or not we had to hear both sides of an argument. There were 4 TV stations. Not any more – just pick the side that you agree with and put it on repeat.
I never flip channels anymore, with one exception. When at home, I’m always watching my DVR’d recordings. I never watch any local news anymore. Even SportsCenter hardly ever gets watched these days, with all the high-lights avail on my phone or ESPN.com. When browsing through the DirectTV menu, I only watch programs that have an interesting title or description.
That being said, whenever I go to a hotel, I find myself staying up WAY too late, even if I have to get up early the next day. I find myself flipping through the channels and watching whatever TNT movie is on, or whatever is on the free HBO. Even infomercials will be watched. Just another example of what Joe and other readers are explaining.
Does anybody else find the “flipping through channels and staying up late in hotels” happens to them?
Steve-o, don’t know about anyone else but I watch stuff in hotels that I never, ever watch at home. It’s like going back in time. I’m actually on the road now and I did this just last night. All the really popular major network stuff that I never watch at home I invariably end up seeing in hotels.
One of the best radio stations in the country is right in Warrensburg, Missouri. 90.9 the Bridge. You can stream it on the computer and smart phone too. We moved away from the area 5 years ago, but I still stream the Bridge.
Joe, I love this paragraph, it speaks to the many things I’ve been feeling.
“But in progress, sure, as we gain things maybe we lose things too. Maybe we lose a little bit of our edge because we don’t find our ideas challenged often. Maybe we lose a bit of community because few of us ever seem to be watching or listening to the same thing at the same time. Maybe we grow a little bit angrier, maybe Republican and Democrat, heartland and coasts, country and city, all of us move farther apart, because we never really have to listen to each other, we can instead listen to ourselves and our own thoughts every minute of every day, pumping again and again, an endless echo chamber, until the only possible conclusion we can reach is that we are entirely right.”
I, like a couple others have mentioned, worry that the world we’re living in is becoming extremely self-serving. Don’t get me wrong, I’m just as guilty as the next guy. The thing is, it’s just so easy to fall into this routine, this “me,me,me” lifestyle. It’s convenient, maybe even prosperous, and there seems to be few if any immediate consequences. But while that attitude feels good for the moment, at the end of the day, it all just feels empty.
tarhoosier…ty very much…whether sarcastic or genuine I appreciate the comment. (Everyone can “type” few can write) But, compared to Joe, his buddy Mike Vac of the NY POST , their buddy Adrian Woj of Yahoo Sports, Dan Le batard and many others I am just a moron riding around on a tricycle wishing he had a sportscar.
Anyway, ten more songs I would never turn off the radio:
1 — Amy — Pure Prairie League
2 — Cripple Creek — The BAnd
3 — Black Coffee In Bed — Squeeze
4 — Aint Talkin Bout Love — Van Halen
5 — Maggies Farm — Mr. Dylan
6 — Kittys Back — The lads from Monmouth County
7 – Here Comes the Sun — the lads from Liverpool
8 — GImme Shelter — Rolling Stones
9 — Suffragette City — David Bowie
10 — What Goes On — Lou Reed & Velvet Underground
The sharing experience is alive and well, all you need to do is go to a concert. The $200 tickets to Elton John are OK if you want to impress somebody but go to a small venue and see someone you have never heard of. That is how I discovered Pink, and Hole, and Heart, and Victor Borge, and ZZ Top, and………
Steve-o. Yes, happens to me a lot. I don’t know why I do it but I find it’s 1am and I’m flicking channels. I don’t do it at home. So silly, I just end up tired with no return on it.
Even “Amie” isn’t really remotely complete unless it’s preceded by “Falling In And Out Of Love.” Sort of how Jackson’s Browne’s version of “Stay” is utterly forgettable, unless it’s preceded by “The Load Out.” Then, it becomes magical.
Top seven acts I never even heard on the radio:
1– Government Mule
2 — Widespread Panic
3 — EPMD — (“please listen to my demo” is a personal fav) “…got me ridin round in limos and all I ever wanted was someone to listen to my demo”
4 — Hot Tuna
5 — Sonic Youth
6 — RA — The Rugged Man — The Guy who would have been eminem if he cared to be. This is the caucasion emcee who came out with the song “All Record Labels Suck D*** haha My kinda guy. I used to think Big Pun was the most intricate emcee of all time — but RA’s middle verse on “Chains” destroys anything anyone has ever delivered.
7 — BDP — KRS is an emcee that ended careers. Ask MC Shan.
And yes, I’ll flick through the channels in a hotel room with the rapid succession of someone with OCD.
But only after the hookers leave.
Hotel rooms are the confined spaces of all kinds of “it happens here and only here” activities, except, personally, e’s hookers.
Also, while on “e,” I noticed a Cripple Creek mention. Not only have I never heard it on radio, but most of my friends ask about it when I play it. (I’m all of 29, so there is little to go on historically when it comes to first-hand experience with 99% of good music.)
That is why the iPod/personal collection is so great. I actually get to hear those songs. I still listen to terrestrial radio, but not often. Usually it occurs when driving home from a road game or tournament. I’ll even purposefully leave the iPod at home in order to force myself into some frequency scanning. I usually end up on some form of AM public radio, but I try to give modern music a chance. It just never lasts.
Still can’t understand the difference between Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel. Both don’t rock very well, both with epic, over-done lyrics..frankly, I find both unlistenable..but then I am a “soul” man!
Damn, I cant shut up today…but I have to underscore and completely agree with JJ Cole.
A small venue is the best place to see a band.
And, for those of you in the NYC area , or who travel here, there is only one venue, in my opinion, to go on any night and see amazing young talent right before its about to blow up.
The Bitter End
Then go in the back room and see all the signatures of the artists who have performed there. Grab a crayon and sign your name next to your favorite — if you can find the space.
The Bitter End — for the purposes of our conversation here — is a night out like few others.
A few years ago I saw a band there named the Stephanie Germanotto Band. The only reason I remember them is that they were so terrible but the young lady was so enthusiastic. I think she is now known as Lady Gaga though.
Funny part is, it was an old school rock and roll band. Every time I see her in the news I wonder what her old band mates are doing — washing dishes and shaking their head is my guess.
I concur with those telling you to listen to at least the last three albums by The National. High Violet is the best album I’ve heard this year.
I sometimes feel sorry for people who are too young to remember ’60s radio. I mean AM top 40 radio, when FM was still for elevator music and geezers. The beauty of it was you had everything on one station. Classic rock, Elvis, new rock (British Invasion), crooners like Nat King Cole and Perry Como, great black singers like Ray Charles and Sam Cooke and Lou Rawls, Country crossovers (Roger Miller, Glen Campbell), Motown (Marvin Gaye! Stevie Wonder!), The Righteous Brothers, The Beach Boys, and even the occasional novelty song. You even had Louis Armstrong for God’s sake!
Not every song was good, obviously (These Boots Are Made For Walkin’ could be the start of a great top 10 bad ’60s songs list), but the sheer variety of it was an experience and an education.
You can create the same kind of variety now with an ipod, but there was actually a time when it existed on radio.
Guess I’m getting to be a geezer….
“What lengths we’re going to /
Just to find exactly what we don’t want to hear /
With all our well-trained ears”
-Game Theory
That was in 1987.
The difference now is that we don’t have to go to such lengths to do that anymore.
fire dayton moore.
immediately.
You know, I just realized that if you have not yet heard the arcade fire song “We Used To Wait” it’s basically the whole point of this post in a song.
Katie Perry’s new Firework song – listen
Years ago, my friend and I picked up Tonight’s the Night by Neil Young in a discount bin. Both of us are Neil Young fanatics and we were very excited to hear it. We listened to it that night, both of us shaking our heads and agreeing that it was the worst piece of crap Neil had ever recorded. He was out of pitch (not that Neil is ever really on pitch) and they were clearly drunk when they recorded it. It’s sloppy and sad and very country.
A couple years later, another friend and I were, shall we say, in a different frame of mind when he insisted on playing Tonight’s the Night. I grudgingly agreed. It sure connected that night, and it’s since become my favourite Neil Young album, and hence one of my five favourite all time albums. It’s raw, heartfelt and as real as anything you’ll ever hear. It might be that you have to be down to get it. But I got it.
First listen sometimes isn’t good enough. Sometimes you need to give something another chance. Sometimes you need to be patient and persistent. Sometimes you have to give something time to acquire the taste.
E, as for your list of artists never heard on the radio, get thee a Sirius subscription. I’ve heard four out of seven on your list in the past two weeks.
Joe. was it the Decemberists? They might be right up your alley, have a girl singer and would definitely be on a college radio station. Just trying to help, check them out.
Once, I remember, I bought a copy of Plato’s Republic out of the discount bin, not because I had any real expectation of reading it but because it was leaning up against a book about the New Kids on the Block, and, I don’t know, I just couldn’t stand to think that some of the most brilliant ideas in the history of our flawed civilization (even if I didn’t understand them at all) were jammed up against the weepy stories of Joey McIntyre’s teenage years. It cost me $3.95 to liberate Plato’s Allegory of the Cave from “I’ll Be Loving You (Forever).”
Very good deed of you! I thank you for it. I recommend reading it though. (Everybody who is interested in politics, philosophy, sociology, history and such should)
The Modern Skirts sing Pasadena, not the Broken Skirts.
Wow, this is so cool, I never thought I’d be reading about Broken Social Scene here. If you like Swimmers, you should also check out the song Anthems For a Seventeen Year Old Girl from the previous BSS album. The singer on both tracks is Emily Haines from Metric, by the way.
Also, let me add to the chorus and say that The National’s High Violet is definitely the album of the year.
Grooveshark.com is the answer to all things music. Learn it, live it…love it.
Grooveshark.com.
(not spam, I just really love music and this site is the best thing ever to happen to online music.)
There’s this song by The Czars called Drug. Listen to it.
Joe, nice post. I’m familiar with your problem. I have about 1500 songs on ITunes (not sure if that’s a little or a lot) and I add a few each month, but I get sick of hearing them over and over.
What I miss about radio days is simply the surprise factor – hearing something for the first time that turns you on, or hearing something you haven’t in a while (bad or good, because even bad music triggers an emotion).
So I’ve turned to Internet radio lately, and the truth is that there are a ton of college radio stations that stream over the web. This may not work so well if you’re mobile, as you are much of the time, but if like me you’re stuck in front of a screen, there’s plenty of variety out there to choose from – and now almost everyone publishes playlists!
Great, great post, as always. Your paragraph (as others have stated) about how it is so easy to only listen to those that reinforce our current beliefs, how we will move further and further apart because we don’t NEED to listen to each otehr, that part scares me every day. What kind of world will my children live in, where no one has to listen to anyone else anymore?
Joe, if anyone directs you to the mystery college radio song, be sure to post it. I’m curious now, as a college DJ from the late 80’s/early 90’s. I’d suggest Lush, but I don’t think there’s piano in most of their songs. Maybe Belly or Throwing Muses? Mazzy Star?
Joe, what a coincidence! Was watching MSNBC this morning, and one of their music transitions was “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant.” I swear I haven’t heard this song in years, then read your post, and then the next day I hear this song (which, btw, I unashamedly say that along with “The Entertainer” this is my favorite Joel song). Which I am curious, why you hate BJ so much? Is it perhaps more a reaction to him personally? He does come off as a self-diluted d-bag… His music though (“Pressure” and “Movin’ Out” notwithstanding) seems relatively harmless.
YO LA F*$KING TENGO
!!!!!!!!
My guess for the mystery artist is the Darling Buds (as in “the darling buds of May”), although I’m not sure they ever used a piano.
I had a similar experience with “I Believe” by the Buzzcocks. I bought the CD which contained the song without realizing it had this song I had been looking for. Good luck finding it, Joe!
joe-
maybe the band was The Decembrists?
–Brent
I once spent a summer working next to a kid from Long Island who idolized Billy Joel (another Long Islander) and listened to nothing but Billy Joel songs on a portable cassette player he brought with him to work (it was a casual company to work for). I finally couldn’t stand it any longer and asked him if he was going to listen to Billy Joel all day long, could he at least listen through earphones? Well he complied, but was one of those people who sang along to the music, loudly and badly, because he couldn’t hear himself through the headphones. When I asked him to stop doing that, he started whistling to the music, which was in some ways the worst sound of all. I actually ripped the tape out of his player at that point and had to be restrained from strangling him. From that point on, I have never been able to hear the whistling intro to Billy Joel’s “The Stranger”, I am thrust into a homicidal rage akin to Abbot and Costello’s Susquehanna Hat routine.
So nostalgia is all about purging our memories of the lousy music? Also, “Afternoon Delight” by the Starland Vocal Band is without a doubt the worst song ever recorded. Although “We Built This City” gets honorable mention in the “bands that used to be good” category.
Wonderful post, as usual. Fits neatly with one of my theories, which is everything – Every. Thing. – in life is a tradeoff. Would I take a near-facsimile of my existence with $25 million more? Of course. Would something be lost in the process? Absolutely. Do I love having 2,000 songs with me wherever I go? Of course. Am I missing something? Absolutely. As the MGMT song goes, “I’ll miss the playgrounds and the animals and digging up worms … the boredom and the freedom and the time spent alone.”
“WE Built this City” gets extra points in Worst Song because this was a group (at least the remnants of the group) that sang the words “Start the Revolution” at Woodstock. It should be held to a higher standard than the Starland Vocal Band. That said, I personally think the circa 1975 Airplane/Starship-whatever-they-were song, “Miracles” was more annoying and execrable than anything else in their catalog. The revolution ended right there.
Funny, I agree with your Worst Song and your Worst Billy Joel Song. However, Second Worst Song is clearly “I Know You’re Out There Somewhere” by the Moody Blues.
I wonder if the band with the female voice and the month in the name was September 67? I was a big fan of their one album. Little band out of Charlottesville, VA that was widely expected to follow Dave Matthews to fame, but it never happened.
September 67 is a solid guess — they could have gotten regional airplay from WUOG, although not quite 18 years ago. Decembrists are too recent. Bloodkin and The Jody Grind were a couple of Athens bands of that vintage with female vocalists that I’ll bet Joe would have liked.
Driver, speaking of The Moody Blues, there might be no song I despise more than “Knights in White Satin.”
Gotta disagree with your take on “Broken Wings”, Joe. Despite my being a full-fledged metalhead at the ripe old age of 58, there are still songs from other genres that give me goosebumps whenever I hear them, and that’s right near the top of my list. I can’t call it a guilty pleasure, because I don’t feel guilty about liking the song.
What seems to be “genius” is that the folks at Apple have created an app that not only gets you to buy music that you don’t like but also gets you to buy more music by the artists that you discover via Genius and do like, at practically no expense to them. And you’re not the only one, by any stretch.
wber out of Rochester NY. Half the day it is programmed by high school kids. When I listen at night it is a voyage of discovery all night long.
http://www.wber.org.
The Decemberists are barely a decade old and have a male vocalist.
@ David in NYC…I also put multiple CDs by the same artist in chronological order.
But the Italian restaurant is not Christianos. He apparently dedicated the song to Christianos the first time he played it but that’s because he was playing on LI and Billy has a tendency to pander. The restaurant, where Billy claims “A bottle of white, a bottle of red, perhaps a bottle of rose instead” is a word for word quote spoken to him by a waiter, was the Fontana di Trevi which was across from Carnegie Hall.
You wanna hear lousy music? Dig up your old copy of Springsteen’s “Nebraska” or “Ghost of Tom Joad.”
I mean, even Springsteen’s most sycophantic fans PRAY during concerts that Bruce won’t decide to play anything from those albums.
Of course, the WORST album ever made (just ahead of Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s “Love Beach”) is “Sandinista” by the Clash. I mean, I’d heard many lousy albums before, even a lot of lousy two-record albums… but “Sandinista” Was the first and only THREE-record album ever made without a single good song on it.
Just by sheer dumb luck, the Clash should have accidentally come up with a catchy riff or a decent melody. It’s HARD to suck that bad for that long.
October Project was my first thought, too. The timing is right. They did get some airplay but never broke out (since they weren’t grunge, rap, or dance, they didn’t fit anyone’s playlist), then vanished having recorded only two albums.
One of which I just played for the first time in at least a decade… so thanks for the unexpected musical experience!
depressing. we keep moving farther apart, and joe is the timekeeper.
Having been a Program Director and Afternoon Air talent on Top 40 radio stations for 18 years, I consider myself an Expert on bad music. As they say in the Biz…”the masses are azzes” and unfortunately for me, that meant a lot of really bad music was/is (for some reason) extremely popular. Try strapping on headphones for 4 hours a day, 6 days a week and listening to Brittany Spears, New Kids, etc…the same song at least twice. I’m telling you, it’s painful. I used to envy the audience because I knew they at least had the option of changing the channel…
We Built This City ranks up there as a perfect example, mostly because it’s hard to put White Rabbit next to that and convince somebody that it’s mostly the same band. but there are many, many, many more.
Try on a few of these and tell me that they don’t bring on a cringe effect just thinking about listening to them….
(and btw, most were #1 songs…go figure)
Mickey – Tony Basil (My all time #1 on the annoying scale)
Toy Soldiers – Martika
MmmBop – Hanson
Barbie Girl – Aqua
A shoulder to Cry On – Tommy Page
Achy Breaky Heart – Billy Ray Cirus
There are literally Thousands….and you know what’s really weird?
Most of us know every word to the songs we hate the most. Probably due to forced listener-ship…..which doesn’t happen very much anymore….unless you force yourself….or do an airshift to put food on the table 😛
Oh We Buildt this City isn’t any worse than say ‘Glycerine’ or ‘”Far Behind’ or any of your average Grunge crap from 15 years back. Starship is a nice safe PC act to lambast, but let’s face it-it’s easier to listen to That than say, ‘Gotta Serve Somebody’ by the esteemed Mr Zimmerman. Egads when that guy goes off the tracks, he REALLY goes off the tracks.
Secondly–the library I work at? it’s packed. We lend out 20,000 or so books a year, easily. Trust me not everyone wants to download ‘Tom Sawyer’ or ‘Heinie-the life of a Manush’ by Bill James, you know? not jest yet.
Anyways. Carry on.
Oh you wanna know a painful cd to sit thru? Bruuce’s ‘Human Touch’. Now THAT’s fatal to kittens at 50 paces.
To borrow a quote from Jame Gumb, you don’t know what pain is until you’ve heard “Whip My Hair” by Willow Smith.
Can we add a little “Captain Jack” to the bottle of red, bottle of white, or maybe bottle of rose? We can all go to our special island
@astorian: “Sandinista” is bad? You’re kidding, right? “Police on my Back”, “Magnificent Seven”, “Junco Pardner”, “Rebel Waltz”, “The Street Parade”, “Somebody Got Murdered”, “Up in Heaven (Not Only Here)”. . .these are among the Clash’s best to me. I can definitely understand that it’s not for everyone, but count me as someone who loves loves loves that album. I still get goosebumps listening to the “allianza dollars” fade out/in part of “Up in Heaven”.
First, thank you for the Sirius suggestion. I did notice while in a friends car that Sirius stations are very specific when categorizing genres. But I cant send them my business. When I see Sirius Satelite , I see a stock scam, and I wont support the company.
And who in their right mind is going to compare We Built This City with Gotta Serve Somebody?
That offended me enough to Google it. Seems:
Gotta Serve Somebody has a JARS (Joy Above Replacement Song) of 56!
We Built this City? – 48756
According to the stats no comparison.
I can hear that Richie Ashburn “Yo la tengo” story again and again.
White Frank Thomas (the villain of the tale) was, of course, built like a truck (“the worst-fielding third baseman ever,” according to Bill James, though playing left field in the story) with the deserved nickname “Big Donkey.”
Poor Ashburn made the All-Star team in 1962 (maybe some Met had to) and his OB% would have led the league but he had only 473 PA’s. But he was the property of the worst team in the world. He retired.
I agree with Stephen on Sandinista. There’s some filler there and the Clash should have cut it down to two albums, but it’s almost as good as London Calling. The opening to Police on My Back makes my hair stand on end and quickens my heart to this day.
Because ‘Gotta Serve somebody’ is an auditory POS, that’s why. I’m sorry if you can’t take a sacred cow being dinged for a low point in their career-but sod it–that’s how it is pal. Board approved opinions Notwithstanding.
Joe — apparently, there IS a band called “The 25th of May” that was popular back during that time period. They seem rather small, but they have a page on Yahoo! Music.
http://new.music.yahoo.com/25th-of-may/
I hope this helps you find your song.
Kidding? No, I’m completely serious. The Clash were a bunch of rich, phony art school wankers pretending to be tough guys. They were a bad joke from Day One, which is undoubtedly why the critics loved them so much.
JOE IS THE BEST
Is it just me, or does a song you like/haven’t heard in a while/sounds kinda cool always come on the radio the second before you park? I listen to the radio a lot just driving around, and its unreal how often 5-6 radio stations will be on ads or utterly forgettable songs until about a block away, and then either an old classic or one of those songs like “See You Me and Julio Down By The School Yard” you hear once a year come on and I just wind up sitting out in my car for 3 or 4 minutes. And then the next song is “The Weight” or “Beast of Burden” and I just spend the next 3 minutes out there too. Luckily, I have an iTunes library with 5000+ songs accumulated over the course of about 50 different changes in musical tastes, so there’s always some old gem waiting on shuffle, but it’ll never replace the radio and just sitting back and letting not only the classics, but the deep cuts and the no-names and the songs you can’t stand unless their on the radio wash over you.
If you really want to hear some lousy music, then your best bet is to walk into a Walgreens drug store. That place always manages to play hilariously bad music that occasionally makes me burst out laughing in the aisles.
June of ’44 – is that your band?
Thank you for the post, and the unique perspective.
And the worst song ever is “I Want To Know What Love Is” by Foreigner. Followed by every other Foreigner song.
Those are a lot of good guesses, kids, but on Judgment Day, when the Almighty returns to deliver his verdict on what we’ve done on this planet, he will proclaim, “The worst song ever is ‘I’ve Never Been to Me,’ by Charlene. I’ve had to sit through thousands of lame hymns every Sunday for many a millennia, so I should know. And by the way, speaking as a deity, I kind of enjoyed Gotta Serve Some Somebody.”
This song was created to be the worst song ever just so there would be a frame of reference to judge all other songs by.
@astorian: Cool story, bro.
The idea that “We Built This City” (or any other 80s-era pop song is objectively worse than 95% of mainstream pop cranked out in the late 60s is an elitist myth perpetuated entirely by a) the Rolling Stone crowd and b) unfair expectations on a band that had peaked 20 years and 6 band members earlier.
Seriously: put on a Dave Clark Five album. Turn to the Sirius 60s channel and listen for an hour, and then tell me that pop music hit its nadir in 1985.
Joe – I think there’s an excellent chance the song you’re referring to is by the band Pylon, possibly “Crazy” (their biggest song). Female singer, guitar, etc, very good song. Pylon was, like R.E.M., based out of Athens, GA and the “Crazy” single was released in late ’82 if I remember correctly.
On the subject in general, I have an eMusic subscription and every month I’ll buy at least one album by a band I know nothing about and have never heard of or had recommended to me. Sometimes it doesn’t really work out (Polvo, The Ponys) but two of my favorite bands (Spoon and Mogwai) were discovered in this way.
i guess calling someone an elitist is the insult of insults in the Sarah Palin era…but if preferring the Dave Clark Five over the bloated 80s remains of Jefferson Starship is elitist, I can not only live with the burden, it makes me glad all over.
Another vote for the October Project. I loved them in the early 90s, but they sound a little dated to me know. The other thing that is related to the status quo you describe is the loss of the album. On the one hand, I no longer have to fork over money for an album when I only want a song. On the other, I no longer spend time listening to things that don’t grab me right way just to justify the album purpose. And there’s the kicker — those songs that take a while, the ones that you take to like a slow burn, are often the ones with the most staying power. An even bigger loss, in my opinion, is the framework for larger-scale works. Even if an artist wants to do a concept album, it is more than likely that a relatively small percentage of his or her audience will listen to it that way.
Joe – Listening to the radio and actually hearing new GOOD music is great. I lived in Australia for a few years and regularly listened to their equivalent of a college radio station – Triple J. It was nationwide and as you might expect featured quite a few Aussie bands. About 90% of the music was terrible, but the 10% that was good made it worthwhile. I first heard Jack Johnson, the White Stripes, John Butler Trio, Florence and the Machine and many more bands that now regularly feature in my playlists.
Good college radio stations are great for new music, even if you have to listen to so much crap.
Joe…download all of The National’s stuff as fast as you can. Boxer and Alligator rank among my favorite albums of the decade. Their eponymous debut is fantastic from start to finish, as well.
Creative drum work, haunting vocals, an eclectic mix in styles from alt country to punk to rock. They’re a joy.
And they’re from Ohio originally, too. Another thing to endear them to me, and I’m guessing to you as well.
@ Wes…reread what Joe wrote. He’s well aware that there’s a band called the 25th of May.
But the sax solo….in SOAIR….is amazing….how can you not like that? Just that part? (twice)
Thank you so much for sharing. I really appreciate your post.
Absolutely profound and stunning. Awesome read.
Adrian Belew the guitarist and singer for King Crimson, his own solo projects, David Bowie, and others had a beautiful song called May 1, 1990. http://www.metrolyrics.com/may-1-1990-lyrics-adrian-belew.html It’s about meeting his wife to be at a concert. Not an Athens thing but eclectic tastes might put this on Athens radio. Album called Here. Came out in 1994.
October Project were great. I’ve never heard any other band sound quite like them either. “An April March” is another possibility (right time period and general description).
@astoria “Nebraska” is my favorite Springsteen album actually. I think it’s brilliant.
I actually have a soft spot for “We Built This City” despite it being cheesy and all. “Achy Breaky Heart” though is just putrid. It would get my vote for worst of all time.
Ke$ha’s “music” is also just awful. I literally don’t understand how anybody can like most of her songs.
Great blog as always Joe.
Joe,
I got an image of Lt Cmdr Data (yes, ST:TNG) drinking a drink at Ten Forward.. saying, “Yes, I HATE this. Give me more.” And now I can’t remember for sure where it came from…
A bad movie, if I remember.. oh, yes – Generations.
I don’t know why, but that “yo la tengo” story made me laugh harder than I have in a long time. I was literally crying.
Thanks a million.
I mostly work (live) at my computer, and I build playlists from CDs and often listen to them. But every so often I listen to the original CD, not just my favorite songs, because it’s worth it. And I listen to radio frequently, for the same reason. Is the DJ (or, more likely these days, the station’s chain program manager) any less of a genius?
Let me put it another way: I *really* like the second movement of Beethoven’s 7th Symphony. But it’s better played in context of the full symphony. Hotel California is my favorite song from that album, but the whole album represents a musical statement that is weakened if I only listen to my favorites, and I could repeat that many times for many other albums.
So in the sense that iTunes limits the artist’s vision to the subset that happened to best suit our mood when we were buying, I don’t think it’s a genius recommendation at all.
I’m sorry, but Bruce’s “I’m going down” should be up there on any bad song list.