Getting a "Head" in Life

You didn't think I'd stray away from puns for that long, did you?

Despite recent announcements, I'm so far keeping with the 90s theme.  That being said, can anyone guess what oh what I am referencing with the title of this here post?  Anybody anybody?

...

[looks at watch]

*Siiggghhhh...*

Bingo!  It's Brian "Head" Welch!  No, I know you didn't actually answer that.  I just like putting words in your mouth.

So Mr. Welch was, once upon a time, one of Korn's guitarists.  Then he quit some years ago because drugs and depression and Korn and stuff.

You know... as much as I like them, I probably wouldn't wanna be in Korn either.

Then he came back...
as a drug-free
yay!
born-again Christian.
Uh oh.

As a Christian myself, I'm not saying that was the problem.  I think I'm a pretty spiritual guy; believe in a higher power of some sort, I think there's more to life and our world and what happens after this than a bunch of chance chemical reactions.  Shit, I'm an ordained minister!

Cuz that... totally means things these days.

But when the whole "Christian" thing is preceded by something like "Born-Again"... prepare for crazy.

Or at least stupid.

Actually, ol' Head's little case of the Jesus bug was more of the latter.  He released his first solo album, titled "Save Me from Myself".

Take it from the top.  Thought the title was pretty hokey off the bat.  Also thought the religious iconography on the cover was a little heavy, but once I looked up what Head looked like and realized it was him (in some form) on the cover...

...and that he indeed looks like a nu metal Jesus...

...I was pretty okay with it.

Then I listened to it.

I'm not gonna tear this album to pieces; listening to it, you can tell Head put a lot of himself in this record.  It's far from the worst album I've heard, not even, oh, bottom fifty.  Probably more, actually.  I've heard an asston of albums.  But in terms of letdown, it was pretty far down there.  Primarily comprised of boring power-chord progressions, none of the unique riffing that we know Head can do so well; some gothic-sounding keys that were pretty sweet at first, but got repetitive after the third song; songs all dragged, all pretty much the same (mid)tempo, same tone.  And the lyrics.  Yee.  Again, I don't wanna be mean, because Head's one of my favorite guitarists.  But if you're going to write a song about, say, your big ol' opinion on abortion... please wrap it in some subtlety, folks.

So that happened.

Then I heard his solo act was re-christened (or christened?  I don't know if calling your solo act "[Insert your name here]" really counts as a christening) as "Love and Death" and he/they/whatever came out with a new album.  Naturally, I was afraid.

Then I listened.

This album, in a sound: HHHHNNNGGGGGGUNHFFFFFFFFhnn.  No, that's not what the album sounds like.  That's more the noise that me and my loins made.  Everything that wasn't there the first time around, everything we expected from the Headster before, was delivered in full on his "re-christened" effort.  People are still calling it a "Christian" thing, saying it has "Christian" themes and bla bla bla, and know what?  I don't give a flying fuck.  The lyrics might even be about pro-choicers being allied with Satan (not my belief and not representative of the Christian faith as a whole), but I couldn't tell and the music's great, so I don't care.  Truth be told though, if I found out that was the thesis of the new record, that'd sour it a teeny bit for me.

A favorite o'mine, complete with Princesque title:

Not a perfect record, but god-diddily-damn does it have me excited for the future of Head.  'Scuse me: Love and Death.

By the way, I'm not knocking the Universal Life Church at all; I think what it is, what it stands for, and what it tries to do are wonderful things, teaching us that religion should be without rigors, free of strata and classification, and have only one rule: Don't Be A Dick.  And to you fucking hipsters becoming ordained just to make some douchey in-your-face commentary on the "commercialization of religion" or something else I really don't care about: Stop it.

Stop it nao.

Did Dreampop Survive?

This was a few months ago.  I was playing the latest SSX game with a friend of mine.  And by that I mean I was chilling on the couch nearby doing something more rewarding than playing SSX (I'm sorry, it's a good game, I'm just really not a sports-game guy) while he played SSX.  It was the newest one, with some hundred levels and crazy customization.

One of the most expansive games we have is a cot-damn snowboarding game.  No, there's no joke here.  Just me pointing that out.

Anyways, one of the many awesome things about the latest SSX (hey, it's pretty great, just ain't my thang) is the soundtrack.  For the most part, it's a lot of random electro, but it's good random electro that you probably haven't heard before.  "Young Blood" by The Naked and Famous comes on.  I don't remember the exact exchange that followed, but the gist is, I was like "I forking lurve this song" cuz holy shit do I love that song.  He was all "Ya dood ah lub this style" and called it dreampop.  Then I was like "wut da fook dis isn't dreampop dreampop was like back in the 90s and dosnt exist anymor waz stuff like Smashing Pumpkins early stuff, Blue Djinn, My Bloody Valentine" and I realized I really didn't know many dreampop bands because it never quite broke into the mainstream.  Shit, I'd barely call any Pumpkins dreampop, but it's one of the closest damn things I can think of.

That got me thinking: what the fuck else do you call bands like The Naked and Famous?  I've heard them labeled as post-punk (fuck that "revival" noise) a couple times, but...  I dunno, what's a wittier way of saying "nah"?  I've always thought of post-punk as being more guitar-driven, and when it comes to bands like The Naked and Famous, the xx, The Temper Trap, that's not really what I think of.

So I've been wondering: if even weirder, more niche things like dreampop and post-punk can burst out of their graves and shamble their way into what little alternative radio exists, what else might we see a resurgence of?

Identity Crising Hard Here, Folks. Crising = A New Word I Invented.

I gots a problem, folks.  I got a conundrum in my head.

I'm not sure if I'm a real 90's kid.

Please, please!  I assure you, this doesn't do anything to mar my credibility as a 90's-music enthusiast/blogger-dude!  So I implore you, before you go out and burn all your Thomas Gumbel paraphernalia, please... hear me out.

That's what all you birthers are on about, right?

I love 90's shit to death, as you know.  90's music?  Well... obvi.  Cartoon Cartoons?  Oh my bloody fuck yes.  90's games?  Please, please just stop.  90's movies, such as sci-fi epic The Matrix?  I SAID STOP IT, DAMMIT.

Here's that shit I don't like: all the goddamned "Herp derp if you were a nineties kid you'll totes remember this but if not you like Nicki Minaj and Lil' Wayne and hurr durr durr" posts.  That's a very long descriptor.  I know.  But goddamn it, if you have a Facebook, you know I'm right.

To all you who make those posts and just won't stop: I get it.  Nineties were awesome, nineties were different, nineties produced an arguably (VERY arguably) more well-balanced generation of kids than this generation has so far.

Also to them peoples, I posit to you: how much of the 90's do you actually remember?  I mean yeah, I remember all the toys and the existence of the shows and stuff, but I sure as fuck wasn't a conscious enough human being to put it together into one cohesive decade of experience.  Part of that's because I didn't experience the whole damn nineties.  I was born two whole years before Kurt Cobain ate gunsmoke.  Shit, I was eight when Y2K didn't happen.  I mean like, the computery business and the nuke-launching, not the turn of the century.  Cuz that like, totally happened.

Hardy har har.  I'll have you know I moved out from there several months ago.

Get it?  Cuz I was living under...  Oh forget it.

Anyways, I'll tell ya right now, the oldest person I saw post one of those things, since they were "the thing" to post, is maybe maybe maybe maybe maybe maybe maybe mAyBe maybe m.a.y.b.e maayyyybbeeeeee maybemaybemaybe MAYBE ah say MAYBE twenty-four now.  That's compared to my current twenty-one.  I was born in 1992, so yeah, the oldest person I see screaming in everyone's faces, "REMEMBER THE NINETIES, GUIZE??!!" was born in 1988.  That's... okay, I guess that's fine.  You were well on your way out of middle school when you were holed up in your basement with crates of Twinkies, canned soup and bottled water, your dad guarding the door with a double-barrel.  I'm sorry, you'll have to speak up a bit.  What's tha- What do you mean "just you"?!  I...  Okay, whatever, quirky family get-togethers notwithstanding, you see what I mean?  Everyone that actually remembers the nineties, those who lived and breathed that particular zeitgeist, who actually had ups and downs during that period beyond 'ow I scraped my knee' and 'wah I can't find my Happy Meal toy' - I had a way to end this sentence.  Something about them not doing that.  Well.

Hey, I'm sorry.  I didn't mean to hurt your feelings.  Okay, here, to make you feel better:

We sure as fuck ain't this generation.

...Criminy, I'm sorry.  I had better images in mind, but I guess Google decided to get rid of every fucking image that makes fun of kids these days.

Here's the stickiest part of the wicket, folks.  We ain't exactly 90's kids.  Sorry, that's the double-truth, Ruth.  But neither are we 2000's kids.  There's no decade between 90's and the oughties.  So uh... what the fuck are we?

Shit.  I blew my own mind there.  Gonna go think about this for a while.  Might do a follow-up post where I actually answer my own questions for once.

L011a

Lollapalooza 2011.  Saw Deftones a few hours ago.  It's already a good day.

I'm drunk; not on booze, as I came alone and didn't feel like shelling out ten dollars to a stranger (ten dollars I may never see again) for a single music-festival beer.  This is my first and so far only Lollapalooza.  I don't know how to sneak things in.

I'm drunk and here alone.  Drunk not on booze but the energy, the enchantment of shows I've seen by people I normally don't even like or that I've just come to appreciate (see above).  I'm a zombie, a damned gluttonous soul looking for more experience, more sound, more songs I don't know to scream along to, more movement and bodies to roll in.  Between sets, I meander.  During them, I'm part of everything else.  I watch, learn, and before long, I'm moving like they do.  Leaping, gyrating, heads banging, even to things that aren't remotely metal, a dance of chaos.  That's music to me.

I'm here alone and I can do this.  To me, that's special.  I'm alone, but yet... we are legion.  We're all here for one reason, the reason on the stage at the time.

It's night.  Evening.  Whatever.  Headliner, in the Big Damn Field.  Eminem.  Spirits are high.  So are the people.  Like, everyone but me.  Not upset; I don't smoke.  I look around.  It's the first time in this whole day that I've really observed rather than experienced.  For the first time that day, I feel as alone as I am.

These aren't exactly my people.  They're not even the people from before; they're not who I saw Fitz and the Tantrums, Black Lips, Death from Above 1979, and Deftones with.  These...  These are people from my high school.  Not actually - that's a small blessing.  But they're the same concept.  Bros with neon tank tops, Kanye glasses, dumb tattoos, snapbacks.  Girls with brown roots in bleached hair, cutoff shorts, pierced belly buttons, ridiculous eye makeup.  One hanging off the other, screaming their asinine jokes.  The lion's den, folks.

My judgments and reservations washed away soon enough, right when the sun went down and the music began, when Slim Shady himself took the stage.  I survived the show unmolested (in any sense of the word), loved it as much as any of the others.  One of those girls - the ones with their obvious bleach jobs, wearing next to nothing, slippery with sweat that isn't all theirs - one of them asked if she could get on my shoulders.  I obliged, of course.  There she remained for the latter half of the set; my face in a vice grip between thick pink thighs, her buttocks on my upper back (thank you scoliosis), her cooch saddling my neck, her stomach caressing the crown of my head with each heavy breath.

This isn't the story of how I fell in love at a concert with a girl whose name I never knew.  No such thing happened.  The only attraction was purely animal.  I'd have liked to screw her, but I didn't.  I didn't even get a number.  I was used, and it was awesome.  Strangely enough, she was there with a boy.  Several boys, but one boy in particular, I could swear I saw her kissing earlier, unless my ridiculous contact high was playing tricks on me and I was an idiot for being so chivalrous.  Out of all her friends, including possible-boyfriend, she went with me, some random stranger, there alone with his little red pool bag, trusted me as beast of burden, trusted that I could support her (substantial) weight for more of this set than the boys (tank tops, Kanyes, snapbacks) that she came with.

I was used, and it was awesome.

I'm not sure what this story is about.  The one pattern I can recognize is, even when I wasn't among my favorite demographic, when I was a nomad in the enemy state, I had as good a time as them.  Maybe this is a story about my ego boost.  Maybe it's one about how you can't choose your fans, or a story about music bringing people together.  Maybe it's a story about nothing, or a story about me telling this story.

Maybe it's a story about me trying to tell a story, a story where with each story I tell, I get closer to the end, closer to what the story means.

Fuck Happened to Green Day?

Sorry guys.  It had to be asked.

Exhibit A:
(not that I'm gonna keep with the theme of various "exhibits" of evidence and whatnot; I just wanted to say "Exhibit A")

See that?  That's old Green Day.  Like Green Day from when I was a tot.  I'd chill with those motherfuckers if I could.  They'd probably still be dicks, but they'd be hilarious dicks whose pastimes include drive-by moonings and raging with chicks with tattoos and daddy-issues, things I'd gladly participate in, preferably while wasted.  Shit, mah hurr used to be the same color as Billy Joe's as of like, a year ago, looked about as dope.

Okay, so far I haven't really said much about their music.  The guys above, sure, they were your standard Nineties Sapiens, kids that looked like they dressed by jumping into a dumpster full of hand-me-downs while covered in honey.  Honey that turned their hair funny colors, for some reason.  They played the latest evolution of punk.  Nothing intrinsically special, but they did it better than most.  You could tell they had potential, as a lot of their songs had real hooks and an attitude that welcomed the alienated rather than the alienation.  Don't get me wrong, Green Day was never one of my favorites, but I've got a real soft-spot for the old stuff. Shit, Brain Stew was the first song I ever learned (on a stolen guitar on Halloween, half-naked on the back porch... and I think I just got another idea for an entry).

Well anyway, then this happened.

Is that Pete Wentz's dad and his two work buddies?

I don't even...  Really, I have no idea where to begin.  I guess first I'd have to make the obligatory "lol they're wearing guyliner" comment, but...  remembering who these guys once were, it's really not that funny.

So uh... I guess they branched out?  There's that.  Given, it was to middle-schoolers and other types of people who put their fingers in their ears and hold their breath when people start talking about how the grown-up world of politics and business and global events and economics actually works.  No, I'm not bashing all people that don't have an in-depth understanding of all those things, because, well, I fall into that category.  I'm bashing those whose uninformed (and uninformative) opinions tend to show up in modern-day Green Day lyrics.  "One twenty-one guns, lay down your arms..."  Seriously?  These guys went from the kind of dicks that'll spooge in your beer to the ones that'll drunkenly corner you into a conversation about how "legalizing pot would totally save the economy, bro" while he smokes right into your face.  Weirdly, I'd way rather deal with the first type.

I know a musician's head getting bigger as their music gets worse isn't exactly a new thing, but Green Day has one of the worst cases I've seen.  Remember that little Usher fiasco?  Yes, I get it.  Dick move on Usher's part; if you're that big of an act, you don't pull that shit on the people you share a bill with.  But then what, you... you throw a fucking tantrum?  You're over forty, dude.  And I don't wanna hear shit like "you're never too old for punk" or whatever, because that was probably the least "punk" thing I've ever seen.

Once again, I've depressed myself into not wanting to finish with any real point.

You know what?  No, fuck that.  Here, Green Day.  Here's punk.

That kid's probably never heard the word "punk" in the context we're talking.  His mother was probably casting the gentleman on the left wary looks, saying "No no, keep walking, don't ask the man why he's covered in spikes."  Now the kid knows about something new.  He can put it with a friendly face, he knows it's about finding a weird kind of solidarity in a not-so-solid world.  Not in those words of course, but he knows it's about dressing how you want and cutting your hair all goofy and doing it with your friends, and not hiding it from the world, whether they want to touch your spikes or ask why you did that to your hair.  Maybe it changed that kid's life, got some kind of gears turning.  Cuz punk's not the fucking attitude, it's not breaking instruments and giving the finger (of course, those things are all in good fun if it's not to assist your bitching) and moshing while you're covered in mud and beer.  It's the ultimate safety net for the bottom of the barrel.  You lose your job and your place and your girlfriend? Throw out the fucks, shave your head, start from the ground up.  DIY, motherfucker.  It's a world of do-what-you-need-to-do-or-don't-doesn't-matter-let's-get-drunk-and-keep-the-neighbors-up.

That's something I feel like they used to get.  And they may have moved on, but they sure as hell didn't grow up.

Did Linkin Park Kill Nu-Metal?

This is an entry I've been meaning to do for a while, alternately pecking at it and letting it sit because I really, really, really want to do right by what's in my head, not just write the usual drivel like "Uhhhhhh yeahhhh maannn totally, like, stuff, opinion".

But short answer: yes.  They did.

Admittedly, yeah, a lot of nu metal's either silly (Limp Bizkit) or alienating (Korn).  However, we did get some seriously legit music out of the movement, whether it be rife with hooks and poetic lyrics (SOAD and Deftones), some stuff that, despite its harshness, has an artistic and proggy color to its sallow cheeks (Mudvayne, Soulfly).  By the end of the 90s and early 2000s, we're getting some crossover; bands like Disturbed on the radio, Deftones wins a Grammy, little victories like that.  It seems like this stuff could be a lot less niche, like if more artistic minds dabbled into the grungy, oily ore that is the sound I've come to love, then it could be a more appreciated, more established... I don't know, thing.

So we come to the genre's apex, the tipping point before it could be re-upped for the next decade, it's making or breaking point, right before half the bands watered themselves down into post-grunge and the other half flat-out disappeared or stopped caring about gaining new fans.  Hybrid Theory hits it big.

I should've made an outline for this stupid article... argh.  Anyways, soldier on!

So Hybrid Theory does a couple things.  One, it does arguably give the genre a little jolt of life.  By dominating the alternative airwaves, they allowed other such bands (like some of the ones I named above) to stay the "cool thing" for a couple years longer.  Two, it takes the Promethean fire of nu metal and gives it to the Future Scene Kids of America, a big chunk of America's youth that really doesn't get the zeitgeist that this music comes from, something I'm not sure how to feel about, being part of the sub-generation born only a couple short years before Cobain ate gunsmoke, a totally separate chunk of youth that may not be able to call themselves 90s kids, but certainly aren't 2000s kids.  Three, they broadened the definition of "nu metal" (which, in itself, was a broadening of metal), perhaps a bit too much.  What do I mean by that?  Well... I honestly have a really hard time calling them any kind of metal, let alone nu metal.  They're certainly not anymore, but even then...  I mean, you had the attitude, the imagery, harsh + clean vocals, the heavyish guitar, but...  I don't know, I can't quite put my finger on it.  Maybe it's the fact that in place of aggression, they whine and blame, maybe it's the lack of emphasis on riff that their contemporaries have.  Woah now, think about it!  Pretty much all their hooks lie in either Chester's vocals or some electronic trick.  Both are things they do well, but the guitar, more specifically the riff, has always been an integral part of the genre that people associate Linkin Park with, and honestly with them it just sounds a little... thin.  Where the hell was I?

Right, nu metal, dead.  Got it.  So how exactly did Linkin Park derail this once-proud musical mutation?  Not exactly sure...  Shit, maybe it was a death of natural causes and perhaps I'm just blaming LP cuz they're the last and most popular act of a scene they were arguably part of; maybe I'm blaming them because they had the ball and they dropped it, showing everyone that "hey, if Linkin Park can't even (or don't want to) keep this up then why should/could anyone else?"  Maybe they paved the way for half the post-nineties aggro acts to undergo the horrible transformation into post-grunge.  Well, whatever it was, that tipping point I was talking about earlier?  I can't help but feel like they pushed it back the other way.