Alone in the City, like a Single Flame

Of all the jokes, ideas, and things that have stuck with me from the 155 podcast, formerly blink-155, the one that I might think about most is the idea of “walking around music.” The old blink episodes were an immediate listen to me and a genuine highlight of the week, as it hit this particular sweet spot for me at the intersection of cultural criticism, cancon, and the pop-punk subculture circa 1992-2015, all filtered through the lens of blink-182, a band that I’ve obsessed over probably more than any other band in history.

Weirdly, I have many more “favourite” bands than blink-182, but they occupied such a huge place in my mind right when I was starting to define my musical taste as a pre-teen that their place in my brain is outsized. I was obsessed, and MuchMusic was giving me content, quickly becoming a figure 8 of influence.

Anyway, this idea of “walking around music” comes from chapter 3 of 155, when they transitioned into having themed months of their podcast, talking about a specific band or genre before moving on to something else the next month. I think the idea first came up during the first edition of Green May (take a wild guess who it was about) while discussing the song “Burnout” from Dookie. The two hosts were at a loss to describe the ethereal, nostalgic feeling that the most impactful music from your youth gives you. In this case, it’s pertaining specifically to the feeling of being a suburban boy listening to 90s pop-punk and eventually settling on “walking around music.” What they meant by this, or what I assume they meant by this, was that listening to the first song on Dookie reminded them of the feeling of walking to places as a teen, fresh with your first experiences of independence, and those memories being scored by that music. For me, All Killer, No Filler and Punk-O-Rama 8 would qualify as walking around music, as I have such specific memories of being on my grade 8 class trip to Ottawa and listening to those CDs on my Walkman while, well, walking around the city. It’s a term for music that strikes you as being unbelievably cool and exciting as a young person, and maybe more importantly, something new to you that you’ve never experienced. 

I should mention that the two hosts of 155 have never specified this reading of the term, and this is me dramatically extrapolating what they’ve said on the show so far (“Man, this is some walking around music.” “Oh fuck yeah dude.”). I also think walking around music can be applied to any era of music in your life once you understand the original context. Does me listening to Everything Sucks by the Descendents and Borders and Boundaries by Less Than Jake during the first month of second year qualify them as walking around music? Forty Hour Train Back to Penn and We Are the Only Friends We Have in third year? In my mind, yes. This is because the vibe of walking around music stays with you. I wasn’t as impressionable as I was as a 12-year-old, but I was equally excited about music.

What spurred the idea of this post was that this past winter, I was listening to the Greet Death album New Hell while I walked to my friends' house in January.* I was going through it school-wise at the time, and the mopey shoegaze of Greet Death was hitting me like nothing else at the time. I would work during the day, feel like a moron, listen to Greet Death because I was sad, feel even sadder because New Hell was hitting such a tender spot in my heart, and then… cook dinner for like two hours. New Hell is a winter album, as the band comes from Michigan and understands how coldness works its way into your being in a way bands from the rest of the States don’t, so trudging through the show to it felt like an enthusiastic handshake. As I crossed Bennett, I was illuminated like St. Paul, and it came to me: Greet Death is walking around music.

*Yes, I thought of this idea eight months ago and am only now writing—an IMU tradition. It may have also been February!

The pieces were all there. It’s a union of an independent music experience you’re having on your headphones vs the communal experience of being at a show, combining with the world around you in a way that makes sense to you at that moment. Am I just saying that walking around music is a historicized experience of finding the perfect soundtrack for something? That seems shallow and doesn’t express the strange, esoteric understanding of what walking around music truly is. It’s like that, but better.

Remember that You'll Always Be Part of a Ska Band

A common theme in my love of New Tone ska is that the releases have slightly disappointed me. I built up Kill Lincoln's Can't Complain, Bad Operation's S/T, and JER's Bothered/Unbothered a crazy amount before they were released, hoping that New Tone's ska-punk classic would come with one of them. Those records all wound up being good (maybe great?), but ultimately my expectations were way too high, though I've also come around on Can't Complain being better than I initially thought.

Bad Time Records put out a fantastic comp last year, The Shape of Ska-Punk to Come, Vol. II* and while most of the tracklist was bands that I was familiar with from the label, the fourth track by Eichlers really surprised me because it featured ska upstroke guitar over emo-trap drums. The vocals were also effected in a Wicca Phase/Lil Peep style. Honestly, it wasn't for me at all, but I was almost glad to see that someone was trying out this combination, because I hadn't heard anyone try it before.

*We've got to stop with the Refused/Ornette Coleman references. It's even worse than "____ is fucking dead."

Similarly I've been fascinated by Eichlers' record My Checkered Future because it presents a completely new take on the genre. Until the last few years, ska had been so stuck in its ways on both ends of the sonic spectrum. Good bands were often super orthodox and focused on trying to play an authentic version of rocksteady and bad bands were goofy Reel Big Fish rip-offs. Worse than there being no bands at that time was that there were almost no bands trying anything new or interesting. Eichlers is as far away from that trend as possible since it's a mix of emo-trap, hyper pop, and ska-punk. The songs are super short, which I always love, and the record is all over the place.

After giving it a listen for the first time and moving on, I saw a video of Eichlers playing live, featuring just the singer performing with a laptop, and it confirmed that it really wasn't for me. I love the idea of this band and the approach that they're taking, but ultimately there's a generational disconnect with some of the influences that I just can't get around. I'm just never gonna like emo-rap or tik-tok and have accepted that. That being the case, I still see weirdo kids making ska and that makes me happy because I was one of them once.

The most obvious parallel that I can think of for this record is the first three Bomb the Music Industry! records, which similarly took ska to places that it hadn't explored before. BtMI! (which I've always much preferred as shorthand for the band vs "Bomb") was the first ska band I heard to use fake drums and instruments the way they did and to me, Eichlers seem like a new version of what BtMI! were doing from 2003-2006. When I was in high school, I was so excited to be around what Bomb the Music Industry! did mostly because of how different it was. The songs were great too and I still like a lot of them, but their innovative things felt important and revolutionary.

So even though I don't like My Checkered Future, no matter how many times I listen to it, I have to respect it for being what it is and trying something new. I don't know man, this seemed a lot more articulate in my mind.