Caltrops - No Stairway to Heaven





	[quote name="FoK"][quote name="Senor Barborito"][quote name="Fussbett"][quote name="Ice Cream Jonsey"]I don't see how pop music, beyond boy bands and the Spears/Aguilera segment, survives this song. Worse, I don't see how it should survive, or that it <i>deserves</i> to. If 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' killed off hair metal, then surely 'Blinded' here has done the same to pop -- and worse, it did it from within.[/quote] I think middle of the road "pop rock" was already well dead (Pop Rocks, however, remain live and LETHAL if combined with Pepsi) before Third Eye Blind's new song got to the party. If anything, Linkin Korn Biscuit and neo-grunge Nickel Creed already killed it. I asked Semisonic and Matthew Sweet if pop rock music was going to make a comeback. They're getting back to me on it. Anyway, I had a similar rock music meltdown the other day when I saw the video for Counting Crows with Vanessa Carlton doing Joni Mitchell's crusty whore of a folk song "Big Yellow Taxi". As if that wasn't offensive enough, the song was apparently for the soundtrack to the vapour movie "Two Weeks Notice", so interwoven between shots of musicians trying to kill music forever was scenes of Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant being cute and charming. It was as if somewhere my arch-nemesis had gathered together all the anti-Fussbett elements in the universe in a final attempt to kill me once and for all. And it's almost worked. I had to listen to Burnt By The Sun for 3 hours straight just to snap out of the daze. This brings up another concept I always find amusing. Remember bands like the Gin Blossoms? They were all over the goddamn place at one point. Was anyone a Gin Blossoms fan? No. You could never track one down! Who's buying that boring shit? I developed a theory that some of these company/radio-pushed bands had no actual fans but instead were successful because of birthday and Christmas presents. That 300,000 unit sales figure is all from well-meaning relatives buying safe gifts for receipients who say "thanks", and listen to the album's singles twice before leaving it in the bottom of their CD collection forever. Thus, once the record company stops their money-backed push of said band, they disappear off the face of the Earth. No fan base.[/quote] Actually I bought a Gin Blossoms album at age 13, because compared to the Christian crap my parents, relatives, and friends were foisting on me at the time it was actually (comparatively) pretty damned good. Here, let's track through my album purchases history and watch my parents' influence fade. Please note that I only buy albums of bands I really really like. Back when I was at RPI, I grabbed hundreds of MP3s from bands I was mildly into. <b>Michael W. Smith, all works</b> (Christian Pop Rock for Teens extremely bad late 80s ripoffs) - given to me by family and friends, mostly. I purchased two, I think, at age 12 and 13. <b>Ace of Base, the Sign</b> - in 1993 this CD was on every station, every other track. <b>Gin Blossoms, whatever their 1994 'hit single' album was</b> - welcome relief from the prior two. <b>REM, Monster</b> - '95s very welcome relief from the previous three. Also goddamned weird. <b>Silverchair, both Frogstomp and Freak Show</b> - I fucking worshipped Silverchair as a 15-year-old. Oh the ignominy and shame, * The painful sucking stops here, the conformity begins* <b>Soundgarden, Down on the Upside</b> - not as good as Superunknown, but still alright. I think buying this instead of Bush's 16 Stone was a mistake I'd regret for years (and still regret) <b>Pearl Jam, Ten</b> - this is not a bad album, really, if you can stand Pearl Jam (I like Vedder's crooning, sorry). The only other album I sorta wished back then I'd spent the money on was Garbage's debut. <b>Nirvana, Live in New York</b> - OK, what teenager from my time period - did not - buy this album? Seriously, I knew no person in high school who didn't have a copy. I downloaded Bowie's original "The Man Who Sold The World" and Cobain beat him at his own game on that song by only a few orders of magnitude. <b>Nirvana, Nevermind</b> - This is still a great album <b>Tool, Aenima</b> - This is an amazing album, and probably the only thing you heard on the radio between '94 and '98 that is still worth listening to. I actually pop it in the tray once every couple of months and give it a cover-to-cover listen. If you can find this one anywhere, I still suggest you buy it. *The indie starts here, thank you Pitchforkmedia* <b>Death Cab for Cutie, all works</b> - these guys are hard to corner. They're not quite emo, but they lean heavily in that direction. Emo that knows how to lighten the fuck up, have a little fun and mix an ungodly number of hooks into every song ala anything by Kim Deal? Sign me up. I can't say I'd have their manbabies, but I like then & enjoy them a ton. <b>Godspeed You Black Emperor, all works</b> - I actually have the person I hate the most in #ga to thank for exposing me to GYBE, and I wouldn't have my current level of interest in indie/punk (or music at all) if not for exposure to this band. You MUST buy 'slow riot for new zero kanada' at the very least. <b>And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, Source Tags and Code</b> - this is an amazing fucking album. Tons of energy and young but with some serious sophistication for a young post-punk band. Excellent stuff. <b>Interpol, Turn on the Bright Lights</b> - if you buy one album from the past ten years, this should be that album. Absolutely the best thing I've heard without exception. <b>Mclusky, Mclusky Do Dallas</b> - I'm not big on their older, rawer work - but what Steve Albini has done with LLB's band is simply fantastic. If you want punk and lyrics with an OMM sensibility to them done by a band that to me sounds like the Pixies and to veronica sounds like Big Black, this would be a wise choice. I've listened to a lot of other indie albums via MP3 (pre-Caltrops, no more warez fun for Barbie since the server went up due to possibility of police seizure for running a server where anybody can post potentially illegal content), and veronica's given me a taste of a wide spectrum of punk bands. --SB[/quote] I fucking loved them at age 14. That was one of my "learn to play guitar!" albums (along with <i>Nevermind</i> and <i>Facelift</i>.) We can't be held responsible for what we liked when we were young and more hormonally-influenced. If it makes you feel better, there's a nice Sublime-esque tragic edge to the Gin Blossoms in that they fired the guy that wrote all the good songs (Doug Hopkins) for being a drunk. When they got popular he killed himself. Nice! Barbie: Here's a couple of recommendations... I would have assumed that you already knew these albums, but I know how it is. My wife hasn't heard them either, because I played them to death before I got married and now I don't listen to them anymore, so Veronica may have done the same. <u>Things That Are Not Just My Opinion</u> Essentials: <b>YOU MUST OWN THE PIXIES' <i>Surfer Rosa</i> and <i>Doolittle</i>.</b> Any greatest hits package is not enough... those two albums are absolutely required of anyone that likes edgy indie rock. Where's Sonic Youth? No <i>Daydream Nation</i>? At least one Tom Waits album is required as well, I think you'd like <i>Bone Machine</i>. (<i>Small Change</i> is my next favorite, but in a radically different style.) <u>Things that are my opinion</u> Anyone that thinks that Trail of Dead is good needs to go check out the great bands that they allegedly sound like. Specifically, Jawbox's <i>For Your Own Special Sweetheart</i> and more especially Burning Airlines <i>Mission: Control!</i> which is the most kickass rock album of the past ten years and is probably my favorite rock album of all time. (It jousts guitars with <i>Doolittle</i> and they come back from the Renaissance Festival with Black Francis wrapped in guitar string but J. Robbins covered in half-digested refried beans and rice - I guess it's a draw.) Also, Death Cab's evil twin is Dismemberment Plan... for some reason these bands are linked in my head. They use a similar aesthetic to reverse effect - they like to get crazy with the wacky effects, but unlike Death Cab there's no calmness, it's all hysteria. Their best song unfortunately, is only available on pirated mp3 ("Since You Died"), and I don't think anyone would care if you stole it since it's an out-of-print song by an indie band. GYBE reminds me of Glenn Branca, but it's probably better than him, so that's a possible recommendation if you run out of GYBE to listen to but it can wait. If you're only going to check out one, get <i>Mission: Control!</i>. I'm so serious. Fullofkittens P.S. I'll bet you <b>still</b> haven't checked out Velvet Teen yet, have you? They sound like a more rockified Death Cab - so much so that they got Death Cab's guitarist/producer Chris Walla to produce their album, and they've toured with them.[/quote]