An Introduction

Hi there.

Like it says in the description, I'm new at this whole thing as far as publishing what I think about music on the internet. It takes a lot for me to think that my opinions matter enough that I need to publish them, or push them on people I don't know, or whatever. Ideally in that sense, I guess, it's my hope that this blog goes only as far as friends or acquaintances...it's way easier to argue or take criticism from those people than it is from total strangers.

Or this thing could blow up eventually. That'd be nice too.

So where am I going with this thing? To be honest, I have no idea. I'm modest enough to admit that I already get most of my news about music from other blogs - Idolator, Nah Right, Status Ain't Hood (begrudgingly) and a few others. Hopefully I can still set myself apart from the pack a little bit. At the very least, I'll just talk about things I like, things I hate, and review the dozens of music DVDs I get thanks to my Netflix subscription. And I promise to never, ever, call anything I write a "rant." I fucking hate that, to me it screams "Mountain Dew-swilling theater kids making broad generalizations about the government."

I figured a nice way to start would be with a post that shows what's up with my tastes, and decided that a nice little recap of who I would consider my "favorite" artists would be a good call. Anyone who's had a conversation about "favorite" bands or artists with people, or even just tried to figure it out for their own sake, knows that the concept of a "favorite" is one that is pretty much completely inconsistent. When I was 13, I was almost positive that not only was 311 the greatest band in the history of recorded music, but that they were always going to hold that spot at the top of my personal lists. How things change.

So, to make it easy, I'm going to just post a handful of acts that I'm really incredibly into at the moment, and try to sway it at least marginally towards stuff I've been into for longer than a year or so.

Mobb Deep
Starting with hip-hop, this group in particular is the easiest for me because I've talked at length about them - specifically Hell On Earth - literally dozens of times. And to be totally blunt, aside from a few choice tracks off the Free Agents mixtape, and a couple listens through the relative abortion that is Amerikaz Most Wanted, Hell On Earth is the only Mobb record I've ever picked up (which I know is a crime, poser status for not hearing The Infamous, whatever).

Basically, in my opinion, Hell On Earth is the consummate hip-hop record. The production is lean, cold, and stark, using pretty much exclusively the jazz-flavored instrumentation and samples that drove NY artists in the 90s. This alone gives the record an intense vibe from start to finish. It doesn't hurt that the rhymes are absolutely sick, either. Forgive me for getting all Pitchfork here, but Hell On Earth has always seemed to have this weird sense of reality to it - it's not a guns, bling, bitches album alone. Lines like "crime pays but for how long/til you reach your downfall," and "my first priority's to reach 21 breathin" really kind of lend the album this tinge of vulnerability. Yeah, these guys are living the stereotypical "rap life," but it seems like it isn't because they want to - it's because they have to. It's also worth mentioning that "Shook Ones pt. 1" is easily my favorite hip-hop song ever by a mile.

I've done much better jobs explaining this before, but you can blame getting up for a snack and losing my train of thought for that.

Mobb Deep - Hell On Earth


Sepultura
I toyed with not posting about this band in this entry, and instead making a separate one about them at a later date, but they really belong on this list. This band changed the face of metal and hardcore - whether or not they did it for the better is largely up to personal taste, but to listen to either Chaos A.D. or Roots and not hear the seeds of modern metalcore is absolutely impossible.

It's always been incredible to me that an already mind-blowing thrash metal band from South America could so seamlessly evolve into this beast that straddled the line between NYC metal/hardcore heavyweights like Machine Head and what would eventually become nu-metal (Soulfly, anyone?).

I'm not sure what else to say about this band. Obviously, the thrash records are stellar but that genre already has such a dearth of excellent bands that to me the harder, more hardcore-inspired albums are the two that really stand out. A lot of the bands that call themselves "metalcore" today could do themselves a massive favor by putting on tracks like "Propaganda" or "Territory."

Sepultura - Refuse/Resist


Joy Division
Especially with the 80s revival that has been going on for the past few years, it might seem like this is some obvious hipster-type choice, but until I had actually visited Manchester I was never really into JD, New Order, The Smiths, or anything else from that era. It might speak to my own bad habits of self-loathing, flirting with suicide and a general love for the morose that drew me in so close to this band and The Smiths initially, but I still remember listening to "Atmosphere" (still my favorite JD track) as I gazed out the window of a train heading from Manchester to Bolton. Though the money has clearly been pumped into the city to turn it into a cosmopolitan metropolis rather than the factory town that it was previously, almost every city in England still has that lingering sense of bleakness, of a layer of dirt and dust that will just never come off (and I mean that in the most endearing way possible).

Just as much as Oi! or punk was the sound of the decade previous, the 80s brought about newer, more damaging realizations and lifestyle changes. Punk had changed nothing, and growing suburbanization led to a whole new kind of disenchantment in England.

Nothing I'm saying here hasn't been said before, but I can say this - Joy Division has changed my entire outlook on music, and I can count on one hand the amount of musical epiphany moments I've had that were as beautiful as listening to this band cruising through the industrial northwest.

Joy Division - Atmosphere


Naked Raygun
My musical tastes are more than a little varied, and that led to a lot of headaches trying to decide what bands to include in this initial entry (I'm already sort of regretting installing Sepultura instead of one of a few others, but the fact that I've been listening to them for almost 10 years got them a spot). This band was one I was sure I was going to include, however, and I knew from the get-go I'd save them, the best, for last.

I was 14 years old and had just started to get into punk the traditional modern way, through occasionally buying a Punk Planet and picking up every $5 label sampler that I could scrounge up. It wasn't for a few months after my initial exposure to the genre that my aunt gave me one of the most valuable music-related gifts I've ever received: a cassette tape with Never Mind the Bollocks on one side and Naked Raygun's Throb Throb on the other. Obviously, having heard of the Sex Pistols before, I wore out the A-side pretty fast, but it was when I flipped the tape and heard the raw, tinny guitar riff of "Rat Patrol" (my copy is missing "Libido," which is probably for the best) that I was truly blown away. This, to me, is what punk was supposed to be: fast, political (but actually saying something), still true to some sort of rock roots, and fucking snotty.

The guys have dropped some absolute stinkers ("Hips Swingin" springs to mind) but, largely, they manage to play some of the most genuine punk rock I've ever heard. Shout-along choruses ("Metastasis"), straight-ahead rock, ("I Don't Know"), drinking anthems ("Wonder Beer"), and the surprisingly genuine heartbreakers ("Entrapment," "Treason")...this band truly covered all the bases, all the while setting up what would eventually become the Chicago punk rock sound.

There isn't a single band ever to come out of Chicago that has ever inspired so much local pride in me as Naked Raygun, and seeing them at Riot Fest last November was absolute gold.

Naked Raygun - Vanilla Blue




...that's it for my hello, from now on I'm going to try to keep thing more relevant to what's going on currently with the occasional nostalgia trip, show review, and DVD commentary.

Come back tomorrow for a look at what's up with Chicago hip-hop from an outsider's perspective, and every day after that for whatever I feel like. Tell your friends.