90s Live Now #12 - BEN FOLDS FIVE

As you may have noticed, I grew up in the 90s. That's not exactly true. I grew up in the 80s and 90s. Though, I'm not really sure which decade I'm supposed to have grown up in when it comes to Buzzfeed articles and Microsoft Internet Explorer commercials. I was born in 1979, so I became self-aware in the middle of the 80s, but had reached a certain maturity level in the early 90s when I became a teenager.

But, when it comes to music, I'm all 90s. Obviously, since I write a 90s music blog that like 3 people look at. That takes a special kind of dedication.

The 80s, when it comes to music, kind of sucked. Don't get me wrong, there was great stuff in the 80s. Pixies, The Cure, REM, The Cars and other bands that were mostly on the fringe of the mainstream. And I love the hell out of Hall & Oates and Huey Lewis & The News. Unironically, even. But for the most part, I consider the early-to-mid 80s to be a bunch of synthy bullshit and the late 80s to be homogenized pop. Again, there are a lot of exceptions. But look at what the 80s did to great bands like Chicago and Jefferson Airplane. In the late 60s and early 70s, Chicago was pretty much the greatest thing alive and Jefferson Airplane was not far behind. In the 80s, "Hard to Say I'm Sorry" and "We Built This City." WE BUILT THIS FUCKING CITY. That's what the 80s were - "We Built This City" on endless repeat while yuppies snort coke in Volvos while wearing shoulder padded power suits and watching Dallas. 

But the 90s, now that was a special time. I know a lot of people will say, "Ugh the 90s was just grunge marf marf marf." But the mainstreaming of grunge lasted for like 18 months. And, it paved the way for alternative music to become popular, which it still is today: Mumford and Sons. Gotye. Fun. There's even some bands that don't suck.

For those that don't waste time dissecting this, "grunge" is synonymous with both the fashion of wearing beat-up clothes and flannel shirts, and the music. But to those people, "grunge" just means "loud guitars." Everclear and Eve 6 were grunge bands to a lot of people. This is wrong. Grunge was a very specific type of riff-based rock that was mostly popular in the Pacific Northwest. Early Soundgarden, Tad, Mudhoney, etc. It's a lot closer to Black Sabbath than it is to goddamned Everclear.

No, what these people consider to be grunge is actually "alternative rock" or "modern rock" or "alt rock" which is another umbrella term for rock that includes Soundgarden, Nirvana AND Everclear. And if you remove the rock, you just get alternative. Which allows for pretty much anything, including...

BEN FOLDS FIVE

Herein lies the greatness of 90s alternative and the 90s as a whole - you could turn on an alternative station in 1995 and hear Pearl Jam (rock), Beastie Boys (rap), Beck (whatever) and Ben Folds Five - which draws heavily from 70s-era soft rock like Elton John and Steely Dan - all on the same station, in a row. It was like your iPod on shuffle except with shitty commercials every 3 songs. Seriously, radio commercials are the lowest form of art.

But, as a child of the 90s, I hated this band. For years. Well, two years. But when you're a teenager, two years is a significant fraction of your existence.

My introduction to BFF came while watching 120 Minutes (February 4, 1996) and seeing the video for "Underground." My first thought, clear as day:

"WHAT. THE. SHIT."

In the previous hour, I had seen videos from Foo Fighters, Smashing Pumpkins, No Doubt, Spacehog and Radiohead. All guitar-based groups that used a buttload of distortion, which was the litmus test of musical awesomeness in the 90s. It took a lot to appreciate a group that wasn't stepping on a distortion pedal as the chorus starts. I came of age during the height of Nirvana; I was conditioned to hear a wall of distortion and feedback in every other song. And now, there's this twirpy guy banging on a piano in cowboy outfits singing about being cool and "Underground" in a weird falsetto like an adult Varys. This was the stuff of my 16-year-old nightmares. Well, that and Jennifer Bryant giving your friend Brent a handy when you clearly liked her.

I may have overreacted. After a couple more airings of that video it started to grow on me, but it wasn't until 3 months later when I saw the hilarious video for "Uncle Walter" that I came around and learned to appreciate this band for how great they were.

Fast forward a couple years and "Brick" just explodes. Everyone is singing it and no one can figure out that it's about abortion except me. Is that true? Of course not. Other people figured it out. But no one that I talked to at the time could. And no one had ever heard of this band before. Except me. I was so amazing and special and kind of an asshole for thinking that. Regardless of the newfound popularity, I had both of their albums on near-constant repeat. To me, this was as close as you could get to Weezer (my favorite band at the time), even if the loud guitars were replaced by a guy pounding his piano like it was a keg of Miller Lite at a freshman year frat party.

Fast forward a couple more years and we get to "Army" and The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner, the band's third album, and once again, I'm on the outside with BFF. Gone were the melodies and humor and fuzzy bass that was their first self-titled album and Whatever and Ever Amen. Messner was something else entirely, and I wasn't buying in. Until I gave it a year or so and re-listened and realized this was their best work. Hell, this was some of the best music of the whole decade.

Sadly, many others had the same initial reaction to Messner that I did. Music was changing; pop and boy bands and hip-hop and shitty Limp Bizkit buttrock were taking over and an album that could have been the Sgt. Pepper's to OK Computer's Pet Sounds had it just came out 4 years earlier was lost in the shuffle.

And then the band broke up, taking my chances to see them live with them.

I'd missed seeing a lot of bands in the 90s, but Ben Folds Five was with Buffalo Tom and that dog. at the top of the regrets list. So, when it was announced in August of 2011, a tour only seemed inevitable.

Which brings us to January 26, 2013 at the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles' Koreatown neighborhood.

In past 90s Live Now entries, I've written about fevered crowds, but I've not seen anything like tonight. This band was beloved, and every single (white) person in the greater LA area was there, singing along with every song.

Seriously, everyone was white. It was like being at the Republican National Convention.

More seriously, the crowd was manic. During "Army", Ben turned the mike to the crowd, and we sang back the horn parts, even breaking them up into their distinct parts without any direction. It was one of those special moments that happens once in a never. Like the time Raine Maida of Our Lady Peace started crying when the crowd sang "4am" louder than he was and completely unprompted.

Last fall, the band released their fourth studio album, The Sound of the Life of the Mind. And unlike Buffalo Tom's Skins, this is an album I found myself listening to over and over and over again. While not quite as exuberant as their first 2 records, nor as melancholy and experimental as their 3rd, Sound has great songs for a band that hadn't even played together in 13 years. So, when they opened with "Michael Praytor, Five Years Later", the second track off of their newest album, there was none of the backlash that you would expect from a crowd who paid a lot of money (seriously, these tickets were expensive) to see one of their favorite bands reunited but they insist on playing the new shit no one knows. Point is, the new shit is good so no one cared.

Also helping - this is a tight band. Even during songs they just sort of made up on the spot, drummer Darren Jesse and bassist Robert Sledge expertly kept up with Ben Folds and his magical piano, making it seem like these little improvs were fully formed ideas that the band had rehearsed for weeks. It was like a little window into their creative process, furthered by Ben Folds' story about how the new song "Do It Anyway" was inspired by an event that occurred the last time he had played the Wiltern (short version, Ben said he couldn't dance on top of his piano to whatever song they were playing, a fan yelled "Do It Anyway" and he wrote 75% of it right there and then).

Another very cool thing about tonight's show: Ben Folds said that the band broke up 13 years ago and his kids are now 13 years old and tonight was the first time they had met Darren or Jesse and the first time they've seen BF5 perform live. What a spectacular first time to see them - in a packed auditorium, with thousands of people singing along with their dad's songs. They must've been beaming with pride. Hell, I was for them.

So, bottom line, amazing show. Like Buffalo Tom two years ago, this is a great live band, made better by the fact that I waited a decade and a half to see them live.

Here's the setlist:

Michael Praytor, Five Years Later

Jackson Cannery

Hold That Thought

Selfless, Cold and Composed

Erase Me

Landed

Sky High

Missing the War

Battle of Who Could Care Less

Draw a Crowd

Thank You For Breaking My Heart

Brick

Theme From Dr. Pyser

Army

Do It Anyway

Alice Childress

Tonight the Bottle Let me Down (Merle Haggard cover) 

Song For The Dumped

ENCORE:

Philosophy
Chopsticks (Liz Phair cover)

Magic
Underground

How fitting that they should end with the song that had first turned me against them before I learned to love them. It was a perfect way for the cosmos to rub my early stupidity in my face.

Whatever (And Ever. Amen.).

15 Years Ago Today #5 - 1/22/98

Just five years later and it's clear that tastes had changed and how. None of these artists were on the 1993 chart and with the exception of Pearl Jam, none of these artists even existed in 1993. I realize that's not exactly accurate, as Green Day had already released 2 albums by 1993 and Everclear were doing...something and Matchbox 20 was still an Orlando band called Tabitha's Secret, singing "3am" in clubs all up and down Orange Avenue, and I say that like anyone who didn't grow up there has any clue what that means. The point is, we're like 6 months out from Barenaked Ladies' "One Week" at this point in the decade. Which is pretty much when the 90s stopped being the 90s, in my opinion.

But this is a celebration of the greatness of the decade and not its decline, and this collection of songs  defines a very specific time in my life that I loved. As I've gotten older, I've realized that finding a group of songs that can so clearly represent a period in your life is a lot harder. Partly because you end up listening to the music of your formative years more often, so the memories those songs are tied to have already been made, and partly because the radio is really, really fucking terrible right now so it's harder for songs to be tied to time, since you end up playing music you want to hear when you want to hear it as opposed to whatever is popular at the time being the soundtrack to your life.

Does that make sense? What I mean is, there's not a set of 10 current songs that will, for me, ever be tied to January of 2013. Mostly because, I'm choosing what I listen to as opposed to the radio doing it for me, which was pretty much how it was during the entire rock'n'roll era until the invention of the MP3.

Maybe I'm waxing nostalgic, but this is a blog about the 90s so I don't know what you thought you were going to get.

Anyway, here's Marcy Playground, a band that got way more attention than it ever deserved for what I always thought was a mediocre and monotonous dirge that people really only liked because of the way he said "candy here" and because the word "sex" was in the title. This was before porn saturation; we lived for any mention of sex. Oh, and the video was cool.

Side complaint: there was a 10 second commercial for a Kidz Bop American Idol-esque contest before the video, about 12 kids who are competing to be music superstars. THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS!!! I would take a thousand Marcy Playgrounds before I took one 8-year-old singing about whatever puerile garbage that spews from the food hole that is the mouth of an 8-year-old child. Go play in the yard, you gross little tax deductions!

And here's the chart:

1. Marcy Playground - "Sex and Candy"
2. Green Day - "Time of Your Life (Good Riddance)"
3. Pearl Jam - "Given to Fly"
4. Everclear - "Everything to Everyone"
5. Matchbox 20 - "3am"
6. The Verve - "Bittersweet Symphony"
7. Third Eye Blind -"How's It Going to Be"
8. Days of the New - "Touch, Peel and Stand"
9. Ben Folds Five - "Brick"
10. Our Lady Peace - "Clumsy"

Whatever.

20 Years Ago Today #5 - 1/22/93

Fresh out of 1992, and the "old guard" of alternative music was still ruling the charts. Or maybe Billboard just didn't know what to make of anything yet. Ned's Atomic Dustbin sat atop the charts and a song about a fish, or at least named after a fish, was #2. The 90s were weird, eh? That makes me miss The Kids in the Hall. Hey, another 90s thing!

I always felt like Ned's never really got their due. They had all of the elements that should have made them successful - well, more successful. They did have the #1 song, after all. But for whatever reason, they never caught on in the US.

Anyway, here's the chart:

1. Ned's Atomic Dustbin - "Not Sleeping Around"
2. Neneh Cherry - "Trout"
3. Daniel Ash - "Get Out of Control"
4. Jesus Jones - "The Devil You Know"
5. Peter Gabriel - "Steam"
6. 10,000 Maniacs - "Candy Everybody Wants"
7. Sunscreem - "Love U More"
8. R.E.M. - "Man On the Moon"
9. Duran Duran - "Ordinary World"
10. Inspiral Carpets - "Two Worlds Collide"

At 8 & 9 are two of the greatest songs of the 90s; 5 and 6 are classics; 10 is great and the rest is...well, it's there, just waiting to be forgotten about by the time Nirvana's "Lithium" is released as a single.

Whatever.

Nirvana's Legacy in Bullet Points

Despite the seeming callous and irreverent title of this entry, it's in reference not to the most impactful event of my adolescence, but rather to something that appeared on Collapse Board today.

The post details a document that seemingly originated from Nirvana's record company (presumably DGC Records, which is basically synonymous with the 1990s, having released records from Nirvana, Weezer, Beck, Hole, Sonic Youth, Veruca Salt, Teenage Fanclub, Elastica, The Posies, that dog., Counting Crows, White Zombie, Sammy, Sloan, Jawbreaker - like I said, the entire 90s) that reduces an upcoming 20th anniversary reissue of In Utero to a series of easily-marketable bullet points in order to presumably remove the burden of actual work that has been placed on their fresh-out-of-college interns.

She's still got it.

Perhaps this is a cynical way of looking at it, but then so is the memo. So there.

Since this came from the internet and it's 2013, the authenticity of the document has been brought into question, partly because only the text is posted instead of the document itself and partly becomes it seems too good to be true. Even the highest levels of Corporate America pretend to maintain a modicum of artistic integrity, especially the music industry. Something like this is like the Wizard of Oz holding an open house.

Here's the document if you don't want to leave this page. And let's face it, why would you?

(starts)

This memo is being sent out to prepare everyone for the major musical event of 2013. I am speaking, of course, about the 20th anniversary reissue of In Utero by Nirvana. Our friends at Pitchfork will produce a news item around May letting people know that the reissue is coming. Details will be scant, but it will nevertheless grease the wheels and allow a suitable amount of excitement to build up before the actual reissue. When the reviews start to appear it is vital that they all hold to a similar pattern. To understand why this is the case we must look once more to The Beatles. The sheer amount of Beatles literature (and its continued market success) should tell us all one very important fact: people not only like to read the same story over and over again, they demand it. Our job is to retell the story, to reinforce the legends, to emphasise the inflexibility of the narrative. So, given these facts I’ve prepared some bulletin points that focus on what each review should highlight:

1. Give some brief background details. This is called SETTING THE SCENE. The Nirvana/Kurt Cobain legend must reinforce again and again the idea of the reluctant star, the uncomfortable voice of a generation. I recommend the use of the term “thrust into the limelight”. It functions beautifully for our purposes. I can’t stress enough that if the tragedy of the story is to emerge it can only do so from the idea of the reluctant star. Nevermind made them famous. What would they do now? (If you must mention Incesticide, be sure to call it a “stopgap” release.)
2. In Utero must be viewed as their attempt to regain punk credibility. Nirvana are on a major label, but you should present Cobain as a punk rocker at heart. Further tragedy can be wrung from the idea of the compromise that Nirvana made when they opted to sweeten two of the Steve Albini-produced tracks and make them more airplay friendly. (Please note: the original Albini-produced album will be available with the reissue. We have several bloggers working on reviews that seek to dismiss the original release and describe the original Albini mix as a ‘revelation’. This should bring the Nevermind haters on board).
3. The reissue itself. The best way to get people to buy an album twice is to say it has been remastered. This usually amounts to making it louder, but this is where reviews can be crucial. The reviewer must create an unscratchable itch in the reader that makes them view the original release as an inferior product. Phrases like “went back to the original master tapes” and “working with the band” help, but it must be more than that. Use other phrases like “Cobain’s aching howl sounds even more revelatory” (be careful not to overuse revelation/revelatory), and indicate that the remastering job “breathes new life” into the album. Don’t insinuate that the mix has changed, more that it has been enhanced so that you hear everything with new ears.
4. The bonus tracks. The original Albini mix will be a huge draw. Ultimately this will be the thing that convinces the doubters to part with their money. When dealing with the original Albini mix, explore the idea of compromise versus Cobain’s “original vision”, and don’t miss the opportunity to bring tragedy to the surface once again.
5. Summing up. Two things are essential when summing up In Utero: It must be touted as the best Nirvana album. A phrase like “though Nevermind was their breakthrough, In Utero is undoubtedly their best” should work fine. You might want to say “may well be their best”. We’ve already sold them Nevermind by making it seem like a special moment in musical history, so let’s sell them In Utero by pointing out that it’s actually their best. This time, it’s all about the music. The second thing to emphasise is that In Utero must be seen as the last will and testament of a soul not long for this world. Stress how dark, disjointed, and angry the album is. Stress its compromised creation. Be sure to include a sentence along the lines of “just over six months after In Utero’s release Cobain would be dead by his own hand”. By all means, mention heroin and suicide attempts but make sure Cobain’s untimely death seems tragic yet inevitable.

Kurt Cobain: Reluctant star. Pressure. Compromise. Depression. Heroin. Death. It’s that simple. Don’t feel like you are selling yourself short by sticking to these guidelines. Instead know that you are performing a public service. You are providing comfort and certitude in a world of confusion. You are giving people something to believe in. You are helping to make the art of Kurt Cobain immortal. Expect more high profile media events along the lines of the Nirvana/McCartney collaboration before long and, with any luck, we can anticipate a lucrative last quarter in 2013. One last thing: is 2014 too early for a 15th anniversary of the first White Stripes album, or should we wait for the 20th anniversary? I look forward to your feedback. Let’s make the myths.

The best part about the whole thing? There's a link at the bottom of the article advertising "Rare footage of Nirvana on British TV in 1994" that is actually a clip of the forgotten band Stiltskin.

Whatever.

90s Live Now #11 - Soundgarden

#11? What happened to 5-10? They're around, just waiting to be finished and slipped into the timeline as if they've been there the whole time, just like that new girl bassist in The Smashing Pumpkins. We see you. We know you're not D'Arcy.

Now that the 90s revival is in full swing (and given the attention span of most music consumers, likely to end soon), the heavyweights are finally starting to $ee the po$$ibilitie$ that exist in reuniting, touring, recording and breaking up once more, this time for good. For now.

Perhaps the biggest band bitten by the reunion bug is Soundgarden. One of the preeminent acts of the 90s, Soundgarden would without a doubt appear as one of the answers to the Family Feud clue, "Name a Rock Band From the 1990s."

(The answers, in order, would be Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Smashing Pumpkins, Hootie & The Blowfish, Stone Temple Pilots and then Soundgarden.)

What's special about Soundgarden is that they were about the only band who had legitimacy in the Grunge Outbreak of the early 90s, but were also able to achieve mainstream success as an alternative rock band. Then, before it all had a chance to go to shit (and be Audioslave), they broke up.

But wait? Aren't grunge and alt rock the same thing? It's all coffee and flannel, right?

NO.

A friend asked me once what the difference was between grunge and alternative. So I made a mix CD outlining what was grunge (early Soundgarden, Nirvana's Bleach, Tad, Mudhoney, etc.) and what was alt rock (everything that came later, namely Smashing Pumpkins and Stone Temple Pilots). Had I made this in the 90s, it would no doubt have been on a Memorex 90 min cassette tape, one genre to a side. But this is now and even CDs are archaic, as said friend no longer has any way of playing a CD.

(Side note: Some people might argue that Smashing Pumpkins (not THE Smashing Pumpkins, which they were known by starting with Melon Collie) are in fact a grunge band, given their inclusion on the soundtrack to the 1992 Cameron Crowe film, Singles. This is true, however, Paul Westerberg is also on that soundtrack and Paul Westerberg is decidedly NOT grunge, and your argument is invalid. Though a case could be made for The Replacements inspiring the grunge culture in some weird way.)

Which brings us to now. After a decade of Audioslave - the Soundgarden/Rage Against the Machine supergroup that was neither Soundgarden, nor Rage, nor Super - and a handful of questionable Chris Cornell solo material, some great ("You Know My Name" from Casino Royale) and some just god-awful (his cover of "Billie Jean"), Soundgarden decided to reform. And after embarking on a handful of festivals and other dates, they recorded a new album, King Animal. They even had the theme song to the biggest movie of the year, The Avengers, a beast of a song that evokes the power-rock hero anthem of Chad Kroeger and Josey Scott's obtusely-titled "Hero" from 2002's Spider-Man. And then they went on tour again, which brings us to the Henry Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles, the night of November 27th, 2012.

Settle down, old-timers. It's not Lollapalooza '93 anymore.

Soundgarden was a band that I feel I never had a true appreciation for. In 1994, they were inescapable, as the 5 singles from Superunknown were ubiquitous that year, especially "Black Hole Sun." But while all of my friends bought this album, I was more discovering Beck, Smashing Pumpkins, Green Day and The Offspring. I'd always liked them, but found myself moving more in 120 Minutes territory during the mid-90s. However, when Down on the Upside was released, I had finally learned to appreciate the band for what it had become: a rock music powerhouse capable of bridging the gap between fans of guitars and fans of melody, as their songs had both in spades. I was ready to see them live.

And then they broke up.

Which brings us back to now. Despite being holders of balcony tickets for the Fonda, something that I wish upon approximately no one, this show was amazing. Save for "Black Hole Sun", there wasn't a dull moment all night as they tore through most of King Animal and almost all of their hits, save for my two favorite Soundgarden songs, "The Day I Tried to Live" and "Pretty Noose." What are you gonna do?

That might be them.

SETLIST:
Jesus Christ Pose
Flower
Outshined
Spoonman
Attrition
Gun
By Crooked Steps
Taree
Non-State Actor
Get on the Snake
Blow Up the Outside World
Eyelid’s Mouth
Ugly Truth
Fell On Black Days
Been Away Too Long
Worse Dreams
My Wave
Burden in My Hand
A Thousand Days Before
Rusty Cage
Bones of Birds
Rowing

Incessant Mace
Black Hole Sun
Slaves & Bulldozers

By far, the highlight of the night was the raucous rendition of "Rusty Cage", with a tempo around 20% faster than recorded. Given that this was always one of their most rockin' songs, this speedier version grabbed me by the nuts and said, "you're going for a ride, kid." Dear readers, I headbanged. I banged my head. At 33 years old. And had I been on the floor, I would have moshed with all the gray-templed 40 year old dudes who came out on a Tuesday night to see some good, old-fashioned grunge/alt rock. Because it's hard as hell to hear a live guitar tuned to "Dropped-D" anymore.

Whatever.