Liberties, Vol 6

To go along with the essay about blink-182 that I wrote this week, I've also devoted this week's edition of Liberties to what I feel are the band's best deep cuts, though Spotify doesn't have They Came to Conquer... Uranus, so I couldn't include "Wrecked Him". Also, why does that release have an ellipsis in it? It doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.

It may seem silly to include "Carousel" as a deep cut, as it's one of the band's most beloved songs, but am I to assume that you all are blasting Cheshire Cat on the regular? Also, I make the rules around here, so too bad. Blink are a band that deals in hits and most of the singles bang, to be sure, but I think what sets them apart is how great most of their output is, so here you go.

A whole lot of blink-182 content this week. If you aren't into that, all I can say is that you have absolutely come to the wrong place.

Liberties

Since its first episode, I have been a devoted listener of the Blink 155 podcast (yes, I am Original Nation, baby). I was already familiar with Sam through his time in Junior Battles, and vaguely knew Josiah through reading the excellent magazine Exclaim!, so coupling that with my lifelong obsession with blink-182, it was an easy sell.

Let's take this opportunity to segue into some related listening:



My weird, intense obsession with the podcast will be a topic for another time, but it did lead to me checking the episodes of the Myage podcast that both hosts guested on. I think that Myage is a very cool idea for a podcast: The guest goes through a sort of musical autobiography, explaining why certain interests started and how they impacted later listening while giving sonic examples along the way. It's a lot like that scene in High Fidelity. It's perfect for dumb, lame music nerds like me. An example of the format would be the guest playing a song their parents played in the house, then one from the first thing they bought, one from their teenage years, etc.

In the episode above, Sam mentions how grateful he was to grow up in a time when there was so much good music programming, like The Punk Show on MuchMusic (also a favourite of mine) or the glory days of 102.1 The Edge in Toronto. I completely agreed! Before the giant chasm of the internet truly opened up, finding stuff you could relate to through media like TV and FM radio was so exciting. It was private, but also made you feel like you were part of something bigger.

This also made me think. I'm starting to realize that though we are familiar with one iteration of this feeling, it comes in different ways to each generation. I'm sure that my parents got a similar feeling from listening to a particularly talents DJ in the 70's who played new and niche music amidst a landscape otherwise dominated by the products of major labels. Kids younger than me got the same feeling through frequently checking and reading music blogs to find obscure music, which I also participated in, but feel like I missed the glory days of.

I started to wonder if today's equivalent would be someone who puts a lot of effort into curating Spotify (or any other streaming platform) playlists. I'm sure someone out there can't wait for a new playlist from a particular user to come out to discover new things. The entire world of music is truly open to us now and collections are becoming obsolete. Streaming is a raw deal for artists, but if this is the future, let's at least make sure we keep our sense of adventure as music fans.

Through all this, I've decided to start a weekly playlist series called Liberties (I was having trouble thinking of a name, so I scanned iTunes, first checking Bomb the Music Industry!, then Big Star, then !ATTENTION!, before settling on an Attack in Black reference). I'm going to make short playlists, with the cap at 10 songs, and try to release them weekly. Maybe there will be a theme, maybe it will be new stuff I'm into, who knows? I'm just going to place the focus on doing one each week. First though, best thought.

This is the first one, based loosely on the idea for Myage. Starting with a song my mom always played, one from the first CD I bought, a song from my ska phase, from when Bomb the Music Industry! took over my life, from when I started listening to hardcore, from when I only listened to shiny pop-punk for 3 years, from when I moved into emo. I probably could have put many different songs in, but like I said, first thought, best thought.

New Punk Fashions For The Spring Formal

It's funny that I wrote that post yesterday, because today a story surfaced about Tom Delonge wanting blink-182 to sound like U2 and Coldplay. The two are not related, I swear!

Also, Travis is the worst fucking interview ever. Tom may write the shittier and more self-important songs in blink, but at least he was entertaining to watch.

Travis is clearly trying to be the one to come out of this with punk points and be the one who always wanted to record 5 more Take Off Your Pants and Jacket's, but if you take a look at the one album that he and Mark recorded without Tom, +44's When Your Heart Stops Beating you get a pretty good idea about what would have been and maybe what is forthcoming. Those two with Matt Skiba? Like, I love me some Alkaline Trio, but Matt is basically the "Tom" of that band. Sure, "Draculina" isn't nearly as bad as the Angels and Airwaves discography, but it's on that trajectory.

I mean, combine the awfulness of My Shame is True with "the past is only the future with the lights on" and you've got what's forthcoming.

I don't really know why I'm writing this, because I really don't care about the album at all. The blink reunion thing was just floating around in my head for a few days and then this story came up today. I won't sweat the definition of content.

I was thinking about trying to write a post on IMU every day for March. I was excited about this idea, but I also realized that it would not happen. I thought that if I made an official "I'm doing this" post on the blog, it would spur me to do it more, but that's really not true. If I don't commit to an imusicalgenius.blogspot.com every day, then I don't have to be pissed off at myself when it doesn't happen. Funny how avoiding goals does that for you.

In lieu of promising a post every day, I will counter with my same old promise of "writing a lot more". I've got a bunch of ideas for ska stories, personal anecdotes and band write-ups banked, so when I run into writer's block, I will turn to those. Let's call it manuscript march.

Hashtag.

I would like for imusicalgenius.blogspot.com to become popular because that would mean that a lot of people would read what I write. I've determined that there are two ways for this to happen:

1. My band gets a lot bigger. Big enough that people want to hear what a member of Beat Noir has to say. Suddenly the continued use of blogspot as a platform becomes "retro" and "ironic".

It's not. I legitimately like more than any other writing platform and it's what I'm used to.

2. I transform the blog into a music blog, where I provide a ton of music links and downloads. Considering that more or less all of my music collection is pilfered from these to begin with, this seems kind of dumb.

So, I guess we just continue on and hope for option 1 or something.

Thesis is hard. Stressed about a conference. Going to British Columbia for the first time next week. Going to see the ocean for the first time next week. Think I should be doing more. Dillinger Four is still the only band in the world that makes sense to me at the moment.

"Are you ready to be the Davey to the new Goliath?"

Throw My Hands Up at the World Sometimes

When blink-182 got back together in 2009, it seemed like the biggest deal in the world to me. A big enough deal that I watched the Grammys live that year. When they confirmed that they were going to be a band again at the awards show, I got up grabbed my hair in disbelief. I'm not entirely sure why one of the biggest bands in recent history reforming after being broken up for only 4 years seemed like such a monumental thing, but it completely did.

I think this is due to my naivety about the music business at the time. Since I was only in second year university, I didn't have a very big world view and most of what I thought about boiled down to which bar in downtown Guelph I was going to that Thursday and why I didn't have a girlfriend. Odd as it may sound, I was really sad about a break-up and blink-182 reforming counted as a MAJOR victory for me in my mind. I may have been single and sad, but a pop band had gotten back together and that somehow negated the former. I was all-in on believing that blink-182 would be back to the way they were before Self-Titled came out and their career from 2003-2009, experimental pop-punk albums, Angels and Airwaves, +44, reality shows, had all been some weird detour on what they were supposed to do: play generic, immature pop-punk songs sloppily. The idea of blink getting back together because they realized that this is how they make money and that there was a ton of money in it for them never entered my head.

This is of course because the version of blink-182 that I loved was the one I grew up with. I took the version of themselves that showed in Urethra Chronicles II or MTV Cribs to be completely factual it was such a huge interest of mine that I thought I needed. It was also a time when I was so into pop-punk that I would put bands on a pedestal. For some reason, I thought that every punk band was formed in the interest of doing things with your friends and was without reproach for that reason. I thought that deep down, blink just wanted to play pop-punk songs and be a band together. The idea of "blink-182" was this perfect thing in my mind.

The funny part is that, in hindsight, it was obviously a huge cash grab by the band. Like how could I not see that as a 19 year-old?

When I saw blink on tour that summer, they did their best to play blink's prankster reputation by telling nonstop dick and fart jokes on stage and taking lengthy breaks in between songs. But man, they were like almost 40 while doing this. When I saw it live, I convinced myself that this was the "true blink" coming back and being a band again, but obviously it was the band playing up their image for the sake of raking in ticket sales on nostalgia.

I mean, while Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker gave up on the tire fire that was +44 pretty quickly, Tom kept making Angels and Airwaves records the whole time he was back in blink. He clearly didn't give a shit about being in the band.

The story fed to fans was that Tom Delonge (of course pronounced Day-longe-ay, like on The Mark, Tom and Travis Show) had visited Travis Barker in the hospital after he survived a plane crash. The two agreed that they should be friends and that reunion grew out of this meeting. I mean, there might be some truth to that, but Tom just quit/got kicked out of the band again in 2015, so this couldn't have been a complete reconciliation.

Something that sticks out oddly in my mind is a tweet from after the reunion was announced. Mark tweeted something like "U2 is on Letterman tonight. Tom is going to love this!" A lot of people made fun of Angels and Airwaves sounding like a terrible version of U2, because that's basically what they were. BUT, this tweet had to have been their label saying "Okay Mark, you need to make the kids believe you're friends again", right? That's the way it seems to me, at least.

I guess the main thing for me here is looking back on something that was once everything for me and a huge deal and realizing it was just a hunk of BS. Maybe that's how everything in life works though.

Fuck the world and listen to Dillinger Four, one of the only real bands in the entire world.

I'm So Sorry I'm So Paranoid

When I was writing my post about The Ataris "Boys of Summer" cover (jeeze, mention it again why don't you!), I mentioned three music videos and how I would sort of like to write a post on just those three.

THIS IS THAT POST.

The three music videos are by three of the biggest pop-punk bands and made during pop-punk's biggest boom. "All the Small Things" by blink-182, "Makes No Difference" by Sum 41 and "The Middle" by Jimmy Eat World. At this time, a song succeeded more or less solely on the performance of its video, which was not the case at all 20 years prior and not really the case now, 15 years later. If you wanted to be a successful pop musician, you had to have a video that performed well on TRL or Muchondemand or whatever. Your video had to reflect the tone of the song, reflect the image of your band/artist, and also reflect popular ideas in society at the time. Now that stations playing exclusively music videos have gone by the wayside, that logic doesn't apply anymore. It's a system of music production that was short-lived in the grand scheme of things, but while it was the system it was the ONLY SYSTEM.

All three of these songs had a huge impact on me and also occupy a different place within the world of early 2000's pop-punk. It was a time in my life when I hadn't yet carved out a niche for myself musically, so these three songs really represent me starting to like my "own" music that wasn't stuff that my brother listened to or what my parents played in the car. The stuff that I listened to in 5th/6th grade then greatly informed what I got into after that, so in many ways these three songs were the catalyst in me becoming who I am right now. This is why I like punk. This why punk is "my thing".

Let's get to it.




I don't think I need to mention that blink-182 is one of my all-time favourite bands. This sounds like a pretty cliché thing to say, given how popular the whole "defend pop-punk" thing is right now, but it's absolutely true. They were one of the first bands I listened to and have stayed in pretty constant rotation since then. This was the first blink song that I heard. I know that "What's My Age Again?" was the first single, but this is the first one that I remember. Given that I was an 11 year-old boy when this single was released, the video appealed to me for obvious reasons.

Like I said in the introduction, I hadn't yet discovered the music that I liked yet. My parents dissuaded me in watched MuchMusic, which meant that I was a little sheltered musically, though I was only 11, so I wouldn't say I was sheltered. But around this age I started to notice that girls looked nice and I wanted them to think that I looked nice. I also noticed that they were into music, so maybe I should be into music too. Other big singles from this time were "What a Girl Wants" by Christina Aguilera and "Say My Name" by Destiny's Child, neither of which appealed to me at all at the time. In hindsight, "Say My Name" is a pretty big jam.

But when I saw three guys spoofing all the other videos around at the time? That I could get behind. I'm not really sure why, but back then I knew that all of the boy bands and teen starlets were lame, but I didn't know why. They didn't play guitars? There was too much sex appeal in the videos for my pre-pubescent brain to deal with? I won't know for sure, but I know for sure that that was how I felt.

Before getting into the video, I want to talk about the song. I think this jam is pretty high on my list of "Best blink-182 Jams" and boy is that ever a long list. This song is good because the instrumentation is simple and the melodies are huge. That's it!

Think about the verse and chorus vocal melodies.

See! Both of them can be called up on demand and are instantly burned into your mind because they are so catchy. That is how you write a successful pop song.

Now think about the lyrics. How fucking stupid are they? So fucking stupid! I would say that never before has a song so expertly crafted musically ('cause brother, let me tell you, writing a song this catchy ain't easy) had such dumb lyrics, but that would be a gross exaggeration and is definitely not the case. If you are a blink aficionado such as myself, then you would agree that this song has Tom DeLonge all over it. Tom (using the more formal "DeLonge" would seem way too weird) always tended to be the weaker songwriter in blink and while Mark Hoppus injected a fair amount juvenile stuff in his songs, it always seemed like it was coy as opposed to the "wow-he-might-actually-be-that-stupid-hahaha-oh-well-look-at-me-laughing-at-it-anyways" nature of Tom's songs. Think about the singles that Tom wrote/sings. This song, "First Date", "Dick Lips", "Anthem pt.II", "I Miss You", "Always". All of those songs have dumb lyrics. They're all good songs (save for "I Miss You", which is hot garbage), but they all have super dumb lyrics.

The video is clearly a Tom creation too. The earlier singles "Dammit", "Josie", and "What's My Age" are all super goofy videos, but are more self-effacing in their humour, with the protagonist Mark poking fun at himself, as opposed to the straight-up "ripping on you" nature of "All the Small Things". When you watch the video, it mostly focuses on Tom, though Mark's belly gyrations will get burned into your mind as soon as you see them, and Travis clearly does not give a fuck about doing anything at all. This video is also weird because blink is really the same thing as all of the artists they're making fun of. Sure they play guitars and "write their own songs", but they're given the same budgets and the same sheen on their production as the others. They might be marketed as edgier or different but when it comes down to it, they're really just New Coke.

But man, the whole "fuck these pop stars" attitude really spoke to me as an 11 year-old and became a rallying battle cry for Paul, Damien, Pat and I in 5th grade.

Let's now move on to the next video, "Makes No Difference" by Sum 41.




blink was pretty easy to come across because they had their feet firmly planted in the mainstream. They were all over the radio and all over MuchMusic, so they were naturally the first band I discovered. The second one was Sum 41. Man, did I ever fucking love Sum 41. Sum 41 was my whole fucking world. They were my first "favourite band".

A big part of that was because they were Canadian. Thanks to Can-Con laws, they received even more airplay in Canada than blink, which meant that I was exposed to them just that much more. When I was a child I also had a much larger sense of national pride as well, so the band's passports definitely played a huge role in my love for them. I knew that Canadians played better hockey, I knew that Canadians were smarter and I knew that we made better pop-punk bands (in hindsight, the last point is debatable).

The first CD I went out and bought with my own money was All Killer, No Filler, but I remember this video before then. My brother told me it was cool because DMX rides an ATV in it.

The thing I find interesting about this video is that it introduces a trope that is hugely popular in both pop-punk videos from this time and the teen movies they were the soundtrack for: The house party. The teen comedy movie could not exist without the house party. American Pie begins and ends with one. So does American Pie II. Superbad? Can't Hardly Wait? This isn't unique to the early aughts, Dazed and Confused is centered on teens trying to find a spot for their party after the original locale falls through. You cannot have a teen-centric comedy without a house party and if it's going on while someone's parents are out of town, all the better.

It wasn't uncommon at all for pop-punk videos to have them. Hell, the next video I'm going to talk about is at a house party too. The video for "Make No Difference" could easily stand in as the last scene of any of the movies I mentioned in the last paragraph and no one would be the wiser. This is not a mistake, by having "Makes No Difference" take place at a wild house party, the record executives at Island Records were saying "You do this on your own time. You see this in the movies. Buy this because it is the accompaniment to this." and that worked amazingly. Though we weren't drinking yet, when my friends and I had parties, we would play Sum 41 and blink-182. I was on the lower end of their target demographic, but I just assumed that being a teenager basically entailed doing the things in Sum 41 videos. And I wasn't entirely wrong.

The characters that the band are are interesting to me too because that's who the record label was selling to me. As much as I liked the band's music, I would be lying if I said that the goofy cool-guy personas the band presented wasn't the main reason I was drawn to them. In "Makes No Difference" the band are pranksters, but they're also the coolest guys at the party. This evidenced by the video cutting from them being wild and crazy pranksters climbing around the house with watermelons, but then cutting right back to them playing music and the entire crowd watching them with interest. That is who I wanted to be. I wanted to be funny and dumb enough to do something crazy, but cool enough to hopefully makeout with a girl afterwards. Hell, that's still who I want to be.

Paul, Damien and I, having decided to form a band in elementary school, used to think out loud about which member of Sum 41 each of us would correspond to in our band. Those label execs sure did their job.

Last one, "The Middle" by Jimmy Eat World:




This one is interesting because it is a great foil to "Makes No Difference". Both videos take place is the exact same place, but have a way different tone and message to them.

I mentioned in the last section that Sum 41 were my first "favourite band" (quickly replaced by NoFX), but "The Middle" was my first favourite song. The first time I heard the song was in the trailer for the, again, teen comedy The New Guy. Upon further inspection, the song doesn't appear in the film or on its official soundtrack, but I swear, cross my heart and hope to die, that it was in this trailer. When I heard the chorus of the song, it was the first time I had ever heard a song and thought "Yes. That is what I like." I knew that I liked that song and I knew I wanted to listen to more songs that sounded like it and that is exactly what I did. The song occupies a really special place in my life and still whenever I hear the intro I get wistful and get a little ping in my chest. Have I told you about how this song has the best guitar solo of all-time? I have probably told you about how this song has the best guitar solo of all-time.

Jimmy Eat World is a much different band than blink and Sum 41 though. Both of those bands were still fairly new. Dude Ranch was a big breakthrough for blink, but Enema of the State was certainly their first "big album" and Half Hour of Power, where "Makes No Difference" comes from, was Sum 41's first album (Or EP? I think if it's 10 songs or longer and more than 30 minutes it doesn't count as an EP guys). Jimmy Eat World had a significant amount of underground support and cred before hitting it huge with "The Middle". Clarity, the album that preceded Bleed American, was a landmark in 90's emo music and, while we're being subjective here, is a fucking masterpiece. Bleed American was the band's fourth album. While blink and Sum 41 were both trying to be pop-punk bands, Jimmy Eat World were instead a band who just happened to write a pop-punk song.

It's obvious when watching the video that the band isn't trying to be jokey like blink or Sum. They're still at a house party, but the band aren't the focus at all. Instead, we get a teenaged male protagonist who wanders around the party feeling out of place. The band is just in the background playing and don't interact with the partygoers at all. Since it's Jimmy Eat World, frontman Jim Adkins is covered in sweat. I read this as Jimmy Eat World trying to show that they are a "serious band". This is what we do. We play music. I'm sure that the label/director tried to get them to play in their underwear or something, but the band refused. That would be cool. Or hell, maybe the label is just trying to market them as a serious band. I will never know.

In "All the Small Things", nudity is used to comedic effect, with Tom and Mark trying to show as much skin as possible to get as many laughs as possible. Here, the nudity seems normal to me. Even though a party where everyone stripped down to their underwear would probably be fun, it would be pretty awkward. In the video for "The Middle" I find that the nudity draws me into the world of the video. It sets up the premise of the video and the short journey that our protagonist is about to go. Surprise, surprise, a Jimmy Eat World video is most tasteful than a blink-182 video.*

One can easily imagine how this video would have gone if it was made by blink. Jimmy Eat World separates themselves by including a love story in this one. In "Makes No Difference", Sum 41 are out of control pranksters who cause a ton of chaos at the party and when the protagonists of that video interacts with them, he drives a car through the front of his house. God that was a stupid sentence to type out. The protagonist of "The Middle" is instead more of a loner, which we know because he feels awkward about taking off his clothes at this party. Once, Jimmy Eat World is done playing their song, he discovers a girl going through the same predicament as him and they leave the party holding hands, feeling comfortable in themselves. It's almost like Jimmy Eat World was saying "Hey, we know we made a pop-punk song, but we're still emo. We Promise!" Also, the band is clothed, so that must mean they sympathize with him, right? I mean, "The Middle" has to have been a request for a pop-punk song by their label right? A sort of "Sure, we'll put out your emo record, but you gotta do us this solid" type of deal?

Because the more I think and write about this video, the more that I think it was supposed to be a "Makes No Difference" type of video for the label to profit off of, but Jimmy Eat World being a "serious band" threw a wrench in that plan.

Anyways, this is also one of my favourite music videos. Everything in it just seems to complement everything else so well. Granted, a bunch of that is tied up in my huge feelings of nostalgia for it, but still it just rules.

*Fun fact: Tom Delonge loves Jimmy Eat World and got them to play at his wedding.

Hearts All Gone?

A definitive ranking of blink-182's discography:

1. Dude Ranch

An obvious choice. Front-to-back it has easily the strongest songs and has a very good balance of jokiness to seriousness, which is good because that balance actually became what killed the band later. Bonus points for nostalgia tied to Damien and I listening to it after swim team practice in like grade 6.

2. Enema of the State

Enema of the State has a few of blink's best songs, including their best-ever "Going Away to College". But the second half of the album kind of runs together. Also, if I'm being real, I can't stand "Adam's Song". The production is super slick and the harmonies are pretty fuckin' real, but it does get a little over the top at times.

3. They Came to Conquer...Uranus

Look at me, being a pop-punk hipster and putting a 3-song EP third. When you compare the quality of the songs here with Cheshire Cat and Buddha, the difference in quality is astounding. While they still had good songs sprinkled through the early shit, this definitely represents the band becoming the blink-182 that everyone eventually grew to love.

4. Take Off Your Pants and Jackets

This album starts off super fucking strong, with four bangers in a row. Then you get to "Short Story of a Lonely Guy" and are reminded that this band, especially Tom, can write bad songs. The second half of this album straight up sucks, save for a few songs, but that is made up for by the tried and true blink pop-punk formula that makes "Everytime I Look for You" and "The Rock Show" great.

5. Cheshire Cat

blink was still an extremely raw band on this release and that shows as most of the songs really blow, however, "Carousel", "M+M's", "Peggy Sue", and "Wasting Time" all fucking rule and show the promise of what was to come.

6. Buddha

Same thing about Cheshire Cat, as they're mostly the same songs, but this only has "Carousel", which makes this subordinate to its successor.

7. Self-Titled

This album really sucks. They tried to make a "mature" album and it comes off as completely hacky and the lyrics fucking terrible. I hated it when it came out and a year or so ago I thought "You know what, maybe it's actually okay and I was just being young and dumb." and found that it was even worse than I remembered. "Always" is a banger though.

8. Neighborhoods

I'll be honest, I have only heard two songs off of this album and they both blew. I can only assume that the rest of the album is a less-inspired Self-Titled made when the band was ten years past being culturally relevant.

Sure got negative at the end there man!

Yesterday's Gone

Today has been a very weirdly nostalgic day for me. Like much more nostalgic than I usual. And powerful nostalgia at that. But in order to explain how this came about, I'll have to backtrack a few days:

Last Friday I recorded all the bass parts to Beat Noir's forthcoming full-length album. Hey! Wait a second! That's big news! Yep, we're in the process of recording our debut full-length! In fact, drums, bass and guitars are already done! Hot damn! I'm sure that I will update you on the process again soon and will also fill this blog with links once it is actually put out. Until then, sit tight.

So yeah, last Friday I recorded all the bass parts to the album at our friend Pat's home studio. After recording, Duff drove us back to Kitchener so we could resume our lives and I could head home for Thanksgiving. As we were getting ready to head out he said "Ah no, fuck it. We're listening to Jackson Browne" and put on For Everyman. Jackson Browne was an artist who was constantly being played in my house while I growing up, so any time I hear his music, I'm instantly hit with some crazy nostalgia. The reason for this is that Running On Empty is one of the ten or so albums that my mom has owned throughout her life and they never left her car. Anytime that I went with my mom to run errands, there was a pretty good chance that I would hear Jackson Browne*. A lot of critics see Running On Empty as "Jackson Browne lite", or the point when he started to lose his integrity/credibility, but up until about two weeks ago, it was the only one I had heard, as I had never put in the effort to go back and see why my parents fell in love with him in the first place. So the overwhelming nostalgia of hearing something from my youth combined with the "Holy fuck! This song-writing is SO GOOD!" moment of realization upon hearing For Everyman for the first time really hit me square in the feelings.

I mean, this is the real shit:



Any time that I think about Jackson Browne, I immediately think about Fleetwood Mac as well because it was another album that never left my mom's car. I always associate the two because they existed at the same time and also made at somewhat similar sounding music. When I was younger I was really resilient with my music taste and always thought my parents listened to crummy, old person music. Then you get older and realize that your parents had great taste and being around good music like Jackson Browne or Fleetwood Mac, or all the Motown and Stax that my Dad put on, during your childhood does a whole lot for your skill as a musician as an adult than they stuff some other kids parents listened to.

Anyways, back to Jackson Browne. The funniest part of driving somewhere with my mom while listening to Jackson Browne is when "The Load Out" and "Stay", the last two songs on the album, come on, because they bleed into each other and are more or less one song and that is my mom's favourite song. She doesn't even wait for the big "Oh, won't you stay..." break by Rosemary Butler, she just belts out the entire thing and lord, is she ever tone-deaf. But because of this, it's impossible to think of anyone other than Mom. This song IS my mom. Even though both my parents are a picture of health for their age, they are starting to get older and I've started to think about their mortality a lot more. What in the world am I going to do when they're gone? Will I be able to deal with it? Will I be able to function as a person without them? At the bare minimum, I know that my mom will always exist for me through this song. Any time I listen to it, it's pretty much inevitable that tears build up in my eyes throughout the entire thing. Love you Mom.



Now, after having listened to nothing by Jackson Browne and Fleetwood Mac for two or three days straight, I thought "Wow, I need to lay off the melancholic pop music for a little bit, for my own sake." Because it was actually to starting to get me pretty sad, despite the fact that I don't really have that much to be sad about. I was talking with a friend about our favourite music videos and I came to the conclusion that no matter how silly or stupid some people may view it as, "First Date" by blink-182 is hands down my favourite music video ever.



When I was in 8th grade, this was all I cared about when it came to music. Poppy (though I didn't realize that's what I liked about it at the time), silly and the main statement behind the band seemed to just be having fun with your friends, and I could really get behind that. Hell, I can really get behind that now. While I do really enjoy the direction that Beat Noir is taking and I like adding new things and seeing what we can do with our "art" (pretentious enough?), I'd be lying if I said that hanging out and joking around with Duff, Mark and Colin wasn't one of the things I enjoy most about the band.

And you know, people like to rip on blink and they like to rip on me for how much I like blink, but goddamn are they one of my favourite bands ever. I definitely wouldn't be into punk if it wasn't for them. This was also the first time I watched this video in a long time and I had an odd moment of realizing that the way I dress today is 100% and amalgamation of the three characters in this video. I didn't do that consciously, it just sort of happened. Anyways, "First Date" kicked off a giant blink binge that lasted several days and brought on a whole new type of nostalgia, much different from Jackson Browne and Fleetwood Mac.

Bet you thought you'd never see those three bands tied together, didn't you?

*For the record my mom's music collection: Running on Empty by Jackson Browne, Rumours by Fleetwood Mac, Bat Out of Hell I by Meatloaf, the soundtrack to Mamma Mia, the soundtrack to  Grease, Jive Bunny: The Album by Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers (my mom may make up the entirety of their fanbase in 2013) and Greatest Hits by the Beach Boys.