The First Word that They Learned was Please

Now with an update on this week's Giant Brain Album Exchange Album of the Week, Mean Gene Okerlund!

This choice by Duff was unique because Sinéad O'Connor's I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got is actually a record that I've tried to get into in the past, but ultimately gave up on. Even though I have a history with the record, it had been almost a decade since I had given it a listen, so our exchange was a good excuse for me to revisit it.

Deep down, I want to like Sinéad O'Connor because I think she's extremely cool. Like most, my knowledge of her came from the two most obvious places: Her cover of "Nothing Compares 2 U" on I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got and her ripping a picture of Pope John Paul II (JP2, for all of my Catholics in the know) on Saturday Night Live. I always thought the former was so badass and it's something that I've grown to respect even more with time. The Catholic Church's history of child abuse is firmly planted in mainstream discussions of the religion now, but not so much in 1992 (or 3, I didn't fact check #jschool).



I feel like so much of my relationship to older pop music was shaped by watching MuchMoreMusic while I was in elementary and high school. In addition to videoflows of music from the 80s and 90s, they would show tonnes of VH1 music documentaries, which would contextualize the bands I saw. Watching those shows was absolutely how I learned about Sinéad O'Connor and is also why I tend to only think of her in terms of her biggest crossover hit and her most infamous moment in the public eye. Not enough time in a superficial music documentary to really dig in, you know?

I deeply loved "Nothing Compares 2U" after going through my first breakup in university. In fact, me listening to the song on repeat in my tiny basement room in my shitty student house is probably the most melodramatic cliche thing I've ever done. Even so, every time I hear the song it takes me back to that time and I remember deeply the song resonated with me. For the entire duration of it, I felt present and it felt like I was being heard. That seems silly to say, considering I was 19 and didn't know anything about life or love yet, but I'm a silly person.

Of course, since I was 19 years old and still invested in skate punk, this version also got a lot of play:


At this point in my life, I'm willing to hear out claims on Me First and the Gimme Gimmes being much better than NoFX.

After revisiting the album, my opinion was more or less the same as the first time. I think that I appreciated it more this time, but it ends up being a little too all over the map for me. I wish the percussion on "I Am Stretched on Your Grave" was on every song. It feels like it's getting close to an interesting mix of Britpop, 80s dance, and folk singing sometimes, but then just when I get comfortable it veers into something else. Really, I want to like the album more than I actually do. I wish it was a cohesive thing that ties together all my expectations, but that's just not the case.

Maybe she has other ones that will do that? Probably not. Is it bad to limit my appreciation of Sinéad to her canonical moments? As much as I do want to steer out of the dumb a limited Western canon of rock and pop music, in this instance I tried and came back with the same answer. This reminds me of this scene from Lady Bird, which has stuck with me since I saw the movie and I think of all the time.

I Want to Taste the Salt of Your Skin

I'm wearing a vintage Kenny Rogers t-shirt today that my brother got me for Christmas in 2018 and it got me thinking about wearing the shirts of bands that you don't listen to, which has persisted as a hot-button issue in rock subcultures since merch really started to take off.

Not actually my shirt, but that is the one I currently have on.

Seeing somebody who more than likely doesn't listen to a band wearing a band's shirt and trying to needle them about their choice of shirt is something that the most basic rock bro loves to do. Case in point:



I guess that because you have devoted so much of your life to learning minutiae about a specific type of music, it feels good to identify and out somebody who is, in your estimation, a poseur. That will certainly make you feel big, but it also reflects more deeply ingrained gender dynamics in music, as especially rock music. How many of the people that he does it to in the above video are women? Does he gravitate to women rather than men because he assumes that most men will know? How many of those women were just panicking because they were put on the spot?

Being asked about the t-shirt that you're wearing is something that Rebecca has always worried about and that I had a hard time relating to. Becks hated talking about music and movies and their feelings about those things because there was such a history of men not believing their feelings were genuine. I couldn't believe that "Oh you like this band, name 5 songs" was a real thing, but obviously it happens all the time.

Who fucking cares what someone is wearing? Most male rock music fans are the type of losers who put any woman that listens to the same music as them on a unattainable pedestal anyways, so why are you purposefully trying to drive them away from that?

How that relates to my current shirt though is that the current fad of wearing vintage shirts is basically entirely built on wearing the shirts of bands you don't like.

Sidenote: Today, we were listening to Third Eye Blind's Self-Titled while driving. I wondered what type of merch 3EB has right now (it's all bad) and that led to me looking for their shirts on Etsy, where their 90s merch was going for hundreds of dollars.

A prime example of this is me right now. I don't really care about Kenny Rogers at all. "The Gambler" is a great classic rock staple and the MadTV skit was pretty funny, but other than that I have no tie to his music whatever. I like wearing the shirt because of commodity fetishism and because I love the aesthetic of old rock shirts. I can put on this t-shirt and because it's Kenny Rogers and it has the sewn-on stripes on the sleeves, it makes me look like Kelso.

Though at one time a celebrity wearing the logos of bands they clearly didn't listen to was grounds to roast them online, somewhere in the last 15 years the rock side of that argument lost so soundly that no one even noticed at all. Anyone bringing up that sort of argumentation now sounds like Abe Simpson in a bad way,* and we can see that reflected in current style.

*I find that "Ok boomer" got so tired after like a day. I get extreme chills of embarrassment every time someone uses it now.

Now, when someone wears a vintage t-shirt, like let's say an Instagram influencer wearing a Judas Priest shirt or something, it's about them acknowledging the spot that Judas Priest once occupied in music and pop culture discourse, rather than voicing your opinion of their music. What you're really saying by wearing your vintage shirt is "I know that heavy metal used to be dangerous and edgy and I like the aesthetic of the band". It's a post-modern way of interacting with popular culture, because we are now bringing the discourse and culture surrounding an idea or a band into our fashion choices, adding an extra, critical step in the choice beyond "I like the band, so I'm wearing the t-shirt", which I also still do.

I guess it's similar to other fashion trends coming back around again, like acid-washed jeans and hippie skirts, where a young person wearing them is doing so because the idea that it used to be cool is now cool enough to display that you know that.

More like Closed-Eye

One of the most fruitful friendships that I've formed in my life has been with Duff, who I'm certain I've mentioned on here before. Duff and I met through going to punk shows in Ontario with mutual friends. We weren't nearly as close as we eventually became then, mostly because I was deep into my party phase and Duff was nailed to the X.

Note: Duff is my only friend who remained edge. Kudos to him.

We became much closer after I joined Beat Noir and we realized that we had much more in common than we initially thought. We both loved reading, both loved keeping up with #peakTV, had similar politics, and actually both loved a lot of the same music (neither of us would have guessed the last bit). We talk pretty much every day and have had a running conversation for I don't know how many years.

A quick aside: Duff used to work in Guelph and would give me a lift home from campus on Fridays. We would have really funny conversations on the ride home and I joked about starting a podcast that was just a recording of us talking shit during this drive. We obviously never did, but this is the only good podcast idea I have ever had and it is the only one I will ever consider actually doing.

At the start of quarantine, Duff came up with the idea that we would give the other an album they hadn't heard to listen to during that week and we then established these rules.

The listener must:

1) listen to the album from start to finish in one sitting
2) consult all notes given by the recommender while listening
3) read the relevant Wikipedia pages for the album

After that we reconvene and talk about what we thought. It's been a nice thing to do each week and has made me revisit my own collection of music more critically, rather than just living on my Spotify homepage and the playlist of things that came out this year. Both of us have had hits (Duff showing me a late-60s Kinks record and me showing him Thin Lizzy's Fighting) and both of us have tortured the other person a little bit too (Duff listening to the Raspberries and me listening to Faust).

Today I was worn out from a bike ride downtown to get a COVID test. Turns out that going right from learning to riding into the city is stressful. When I got home, I was in a bad mood, but something that helped mitigate that was checking out Duff's recommendation for the week, the Cocteau Twins' Heaven or Las Vegas.

Duff described them as UK post-punk's most ethereal band and that tracks. I had actually checked out an earlier release of theirs a couple of weeks ago, but for whatever reason that album didn't stick with me at all. This one was instead a dreamy, immersive way to escape the frustrated feelings that I was stewing in. For a moment, I thought it might be too adult contemporary for me, but that was only a passing feeling. This is what bad adult contemporary thinks it sounds like. Layers upon layers of vocals and effects that can take you away to another place for a little bit.

Before you thinking that I'm getting all highbrow pop critic on you though, I then turned to a Japanese ska-punk release I recently discovered and learned a bass tapping pattern.

And Consequently He Also Saved the Piña Colada Industry

I've never been a "bike guy" let alone a bike punk. This subculture has really flourished over the last decade or so and was something that I totally wiffed on because I didn't even learn how to ride a bike until last month. Once I learned, a friend graciously gave a bike to me, I rode it a bunch, went and got it all set up at a shop and now I guess I am a bike punk. I even have the rolled-up khaki shorts to go with it!

I must admit that a small part of me feels guilty that the bike will now take the place of my skateboard as my primary way of getting around. The divide between skaters and bikers isn't as strong as the former and rollerbladers, but I feel like it's still there to some degree. Is it possible to exist in both camps? I feel like yes, but this will be a new thing for me to navigate in the future.

While riding my bike to the bike this morning, the experience made me think of an anecdote that Dan Campbell told about the experience of writing The Upsides in which a formative moment for him happened while he was riding his bike through the city. Those sorts of bits of information always stick to me like Krazy Glue.

It made me reflect on that album and how singular my relationship is to it. I had such an obsessive draw to it after it came out and built it all into my personality so heavily. I had an "I'm not sad anymore" sign in my bedroom, had "I'm not sad anymore" written on my backpack, and had (still have) the "I'm not sad anymore" hoodie.

Note: I wonder constantly if this is the most valuable piece of merch I own. I was shocked when I looked at my discogs and discovered that my 1st pressing of The Upsides was my most valuable record by a landslide.

After that I never really got into the band's later stuff as much, though Surburbia did get some plays, and I quickly moved on from my interest in that sort of pop-punk. When I look back at the record now, I find the music, lyrics, and general message insanely corny, but I also have a deeply embedded nostalgic relationship with it that I can still fuck with it on some level. I think about how much I would make fun of a nasally pop-punk that centered a message of positivity above all else if they came out now. I think about how some of the jokey pop-culture reference aged like milk. I think about how truly embarrassed I am of some of the other stuff I liked at that time (I will never live down Four Year Strong).

It all makes for a strange relationship to the band in which I recognize that they are critically not very good and unbelievably corny in terms of punk and that I have to own that, but also that I have a real, emotional connection to the music and it did do very real, tangible things for me. Just look at this blog in 2010 for fuck sakes.

Maybe going through your posi phase is a necessary thing to do as a young person. I like to think that it taught me important lessons about keeping a level head and always looking for more perspective on things. I think it was also a way for me to ignore the world for a little bit in self-interest and only think about my own minuscule problems, which sucks.

All that said, this song is my favourite on the album and still bangs, so we can end on that.

 

I'll Sleep Away the Summer to Be with You

Something comforting about living in Montreal is that the summers have the same sort of riverbed humid heat that I would experience in Toronto. I look forward to that heat all year and its sort of comforting that the same heat comes to visit me here.

My love of humid heat is contentious with most people I meet. Everyone hates summer because during winter you can always add more layers if you need to warm up, but in summer you just have to be hot. Everyone hates summer because they sweat and it makes them uncomfortable.

It's not like these are actual arguments or this is something that really bothers me, it's just that it comes up constantly. Everyone is surprised that I can like summer. It's strange. I thought everyone liked summer? Maybe that's because everyone in my family loves summer, so that's what I heard while growing up and this is one of those situations where I didn't my family wasn't like the ones around me. Putting that aside, why is it so strange that someone out in the world could feasibly prefer summer to winter?

I don't really know where I'm going with this, but was just thinking about how nice and hot out it is today and that's what followed.

People are just always shocked when I say that I don't care about being hot. I don't know what to say man, I just don't mind it.

I've been having a hard time writing lately and I think that a lot of it is due to me not being able to articulate just how dumb I think the world is. During the height of the uprisings all over North America (they are still going on), I tried to not say much because I didn't want to take up space. I'm now shocked to see people moving on so quickly. It really sucks. That all of this is against the backdrop of COVID now starting to take even more of a hold in the States is so fucked. Everything is fucked man.

Wouldn't You Like to Get Away?

A couple of recent enthusiasms:

First, the TV show Search Party returned this week as a title on the HBO Max service.  I adored the first two seasons of this show (as well as Charles Rogers' excellent movie Fort Tilden) and am glad to see it return after it bounced around in network limbo for a bit. It lands somewhere between noir and comedy but is told from a millennial point of view in a good way, balancing the “that’s fucked up, I wonder what will happen next” breadcrumb trail with over the top silliness. It’s hard for a show to do that while maintaining the integrity of both, but doing exactly that is Search Party’s calling card. Rebecca and I blew through the first two seasons of the show shortly after discovering it and the waiting for the next installment was tortuous at first. Then it inexplicably got dropped by TBS and I stopped thinking about when it would come back.

The good news is that it did and the third season they already in the can could then be quickly released. This season is a huge pivot tone-wise, moving from the more noir tendencies of the first two seasons to a courtroom drama this year. A lot of interesting new influences were brought in this time as well and it seems like the show is growing in a cool and interesting way. Kind of an 80s John Waters vibe to a lot of it, especially in looking at society’s obsession with celebrity and media with a healthy scoop of camp.

Really can’t recommend this show enough. After making a movie that completely sums up the millennial zeitgeist in Fort Tilden and following that with a show as sharp and well-paced as Search Party, it feels like Charles Rogers will be someone everyone will love in ten years. Also, he has one of my favourite accounts on Instagram and is so consistently hilarious.

Second, this week I finished an 8-year-long watch of Cheers.

Whenever I have a piece of media that I care deeply about, I always feel the need to write some long saccharine essay about it on IMU. I know that it’s fine and normal to do that, but part of me also feels kind of embarrassed after the fact about having these odes to TV shows and albums on here. For that reason, I’m currently resisting the urge about writing a long-winded thing about how Cheers weirdly hit me at the exact right time in my life and I formed a weird emotional bond with it right away.

I guess, just know that I did.

Yeah, I was sad and watched a lot of Cheers in the summer of 2012. It was a nice escape. Since then, I’ve on and off worked my way through the entire series, because watching all 275 episodes felt like something I had to do. It's from such a different time in sitcoms and the episodes go down like water. There’s something so satisfying about the by-the-numbers storylines, that seemingly every sitcom has a version of, and the premise-set up-punchline nature of every joke. Rebecca began to joke that Cheers was my go-to “happy show” that I would put on whenever I had a shitty day or needed something to pick me up. Sam and Diane forever.

In all eight years of going through it, I never skipped the theme once. The build up to the chorus gets me every time.

Maybe Today Will Be Curious

This evening I was supposed to meet up with a friend to have a hang at a park downtown. Because of a miscommunication, he didn't end up making it to the hang. It was a pretty big hike downtown for me and since COVID is still roaring, though everyone in Montreal seems content to ignore that, I did the journey across town on my skateboard. The skies opened up about five minutes after I left the house and by the time I got to Parc LaFontaine I was already soaked. The rain somehow continued to increase and eventually I got to the point where I didn't care about being wet anymore. Fortunately, out of all the things I had brought with me, the only things that stayed dry were the two joints that I had with me in my cigarette case. Smoked both, put on another album, and decided to take a moment.

Being in a hot rainstorm was comforting. The storm cleared out most of the people from the park, but a surprising amount of people hang around. There were pockets of people in cutoffs and tank tops just standing in the rain drinking beers, not caring because it was still hot out. Those types of things make me enjoy the city I live in. "Nothing will stop me from having a beer in the park. Not anything."

The skate home was much easier, since I was moving downhill away from the mountain. While I was smoking at the park, I had put on Daniel Romano's latest release Dandelion, as the psych-folk seemed like the best fit for the situation. Wearing completely soaked-through clothes with the rain clearing was euphoric.



A quick rating of Daniel Romano's insane quarantine output:

1. Dandelion
2. Visions of the Higher Dream
3. Content to Point the Way
4. Super Pollen
5. Daniel Romano's Outfit Do (What Could Have Been) Infidels By Bob Dylan & the Plugz
6. Spider Bite
7. Forever Love's Fool

Once Dan (yes, Duff and I have now ascended to the level of Romano Head where we've turned him into a mononym), ended I put on In the City by the Jam and that was an equally enjoyable thing. As much as I could, I danced on a skateboard.

Other recent enthusiasms:

Rebecca bought this book at the Drawn and Quarterly story in Montreal and immediately recommended it to me. A white guy having an interest in Jamaican culture is the most basic shit in history, but I must admit that I fall pray to it as well. My longstanding love of ska, rocksteady, and reggae was an avenue for me to learn about the vital contributions of Jamaicans to Toronto's history and culture and this book continues that. The story is about a teen aged girl balancing her overbearing relationship with her mother with her friendships and the weight of her family's needs. Great stuff.

Becks and I have used quarantine to dive into Veep and it is so insanely good. With the world falling apart at the seams around us, it's been oddly comforting to watch a show that focuses on just that. Turns out that laughing at how shitty the human race is is a good way to deal with how shitty the human race is. 

My friends and I used to wonder how long it would take for Me Too to get to wrestling and it got there last week. I would say "Good riddance dicknose", but the sad reality is that most of these pricks will end up working again and the worst shit (LOOKING AT YOU JERRY LAWLER AND SHAWN MICHAELS AND VINCE MCMAHON) won't even come to light. It honestly makes it pretty hard for me to continue to watch wrestling. I stopped watching and supporting WWE years ago, but more and more it looks like the industry as a whole is just fucked and should go away. Even the voices who I really valued for bringing more progressive and inclusive views into wrestling, like Brandon Stroud and Joey Ryan, turned out to be predatory pieces of horseshit themselves. If even the good eggs turn out to be insidious creeps, then who even is worth supporting?

Speaking with white friends, it seems like most people have gotten burnt out reading the news and trying to find ways to help against systemic racism and police brutality. It's tough reading bad news, but the reality is that everyone needs to take a breath, dig in harder, and get back to it. Never stop reevaluating yourself, what you've said and what you've done. If you are white, you are part of the problem. You have to be strongly committed to anti-racism and it has to be a thing you think about constantly, especially in regards to what you do. There's never a hurdle where a white person is finally "good". Keep it up your whole life.

I Think I Hate You

It's hard for me to think of anything worthwhile to say at this moment. The world seems okay when you can be distracted for a day, but it's never long before something like a black man getting suffocated to death by a racist cop or a black woman being pushed off her apartment balcony by a group of cops who conveniently have their body cams off reminds you that our world is so profoundly flawed and basically not worth of existing.

Yesterday I figured that I would put up a Spotify playlist that I had made. Kind of seems trite now, but I don't know what else to do and I guess there's no reason I can't. It's mostly spacey ska/reggae punk songs that aren't actually ska songs. I made it originally because it's a little niche subgenre that I like to put on when it's really hot out and I'm smoking a joint. Some of the songs are anti-cop, so maybe that's how I can tie. Put it on and let's hope that one day a bunch of pigs will get their heads cut off in a public square because that's what they fucking deserve.

ACAB

No One Keeps Track Anymore

A little blog before I move onto writing something a little longer.

Yesterday while vacuuming my apartment I listened to Braid's post-reunion album No Coast.



I find that I come back to No Coast regularly and listening to it this time had me thinking that Braid made one of the best reunion albums. It's hard for me to not think that bands are just doing it for the money when they get back together. That's fine, use your reputation to get money while you can, but I never feel invested in what comes of it because the shows and songs never have the same ethereal "this is happening now" feeling. 

For whatever reason, No Coast more genuine. The songs still feel like Braid, even if they aren't as immediate as Frame and Canvas. It seems like a linear transition from their earlier material and the youthful outlook on heading out into the world is replaced by a wiser retrospective look on life. It also feels like Chris Broach carries a bigger load on this record, and his songs really carry it.

Of all the emo bands from the 90s who have gotten back together, like American Football and the Get Up Kids, I think Braid did the best job of continuing being the band they used to be, in a way that is still genuine, but also not overly nostalgic.

Two things:

1. We must put respect on the lead guitar on "East End Hollows". If that had come out in the 90s, it would be revered as all-time lick.

2. Any time I discuss Braid, I legally obligated to mention Bob Nanna singing the back-ups to "At Your Funeral" from when I saw Saves the Day and Braid play together in 2013.

We All Need a Fix at a Time like This

This morning I watched Emerica footwear's newest video Green.



Just wonderful stuff. Immediately after finishing it, I decided to go out for my first skate since the winter ended, so mission accomplished boys.

The video managed to hit at some specific part of my brain, this weird space that connects skateboarding to my sentimental side. Maybe it was the use of "Some Misunderstanding" by Gene Clark at the end. It was probably also due in part to the video starting with fast punk music. Either way, it captivated me and gave me that "I need to go skate right now" feeling.

Context is also important here. Last year, Emerica's most visible and longtime rider Andrew Reynolds, one of my very favourites and one of skateboarding's all-time greats, left the company for the greener pastures of Vans. It's probably difficult for non-skaters to get how big of a deal that was, but rest assured that everyone couldn't believe it had happened. Reynolds was synonymous with Emerica and I wondered how the company would fare with its biggest name and cashcow now riding for another company.

Green is Emerica's first video since the Reynolds departure and I think that this in an undercurrent that runs throughout it. In a bold move, the video only features two parts: the supremely underrated Dakota Servold and Jon Dickson. Other riders from Baker and Deathwish, both of which are closely associated with Emerica, make cameos, but all the action focuses on these two. Both deliver amazing parts that touch on all my favourite parts of skating, valuing spots, style, and gnarliness over technicality. Though it's never expressly stated, having just two riders put out long, great parts to make up the whole video feels like Emerica expressly stating "We'll be fine."

This cycle is kind of how the world works. A new shoe company is built around a young star and achieves its peak with Stay Gold. As he starts to age and settles into the part of his career where he is, with all possible respect in the world, a nostalgia act, the company withers like a tree and the leaves fall off. After this, the tree turns green and starts again.