It was an odd place for it to begin and an even stranger circumstance that brought it about, yet it felt absolutely paramnesic. I am speaking of course of the second wave of “new” wave or the indie explosion or whatever you want to call it and my introduction to it. It was late in the 1990’s and while there had been a few recent unique standouts (Radiohead, Soulcoughing,Cake and others), mainstream rock had become somewhat dull. Punk rock had long ago dissolved into a greatly diluted version of its once potent former self. I don’t care what you say, Blink 182 was not ever a real punk band. I’m sorry guys punk rock is actually more than tattoos, piercings and spiky hairdos. Blink had more in common sonically with Cheap Trick than they did with the Clash or the Pistols. I guess in retrospect Rancid came fairly close but after hearing some of Armstrong’s post Rancid output, I submit his then wife Brody Dale and crew were more punk. Still love me some Distillers. There is an image burned into my cerebral cortex of Brody standing on stage in front of her mic with a 24” mohawk, impossibly red lipstick and her tight as hell plaid pants stuffed down into her Doc Marten’s. The strap from her low slung axe was pulling at her wife beater, showing her bra. It maybe one of the sexiest thing I ever saw.
“What’s that honey? Oh no! Of course not as sexy as you!”
The Distillers
Grunge had come and pretty much gone. We all new it was done and over, when Creed became impossibly popular. And then there was those horrible acoustic sets on MTV. The infestation of these nasty things would eventually reach pandemic proportions, producing acoustic versions of songs that should never have been recorded in such a fashion. There were good songs made poor, bad songs made worse and some songs which should never have even seen the light of day reduced to something like audio poison. More than once, I risked life and limb while driving on DFW’s busy roadways, as I fumbled for the car stereo controls in order to silence the cacophony emitting from speakers that only minutes previous had been working fine. Even the esteemed Foo Fighters, a post grunge power house, had their best albums, in my opinion, behind them. For some reason, after all of the mania over acoustic versions of otherwise non acoustic songs had settled down, these very same Foo Fighters, uncharacteristically late to the party, released a double album with one disk containing nothing but you guessed it acoustic versions of songs that were better or would have been better had the band been plugged in. Let me put this into perspective for you. This is the band, or in the case of the Foo Fighters, Dave Grohl trying to tell you that they really are talented, “Look we don’t need all of the amps and effects pedals. We can really play and sing, really, really, cross my heart.” Not that there isn’t a place for gently strummed guitars, lightly tapped bongos and tambourines, but we came to see the Foo Fighters not John freakin’ Denver! But I digress, let me get back on task.
Look at how sincere he is. BTW he really is a genius.
So yeah, music on the radio was boring. Looking back, it reminds me of the way I felt about music in the late seventies. Imagine trying hard to become genuinely excited about the new “April Wine” release. There was one point in my life when I genuinely liked Kansas, Styx, Foreigner and their ilk. I am not exactly sure why, but I did and I also eventually became incredibly bored with it all. I think it was the summer of 1979 when the radio in west Texas (where I was at the time) was dominated by Rock and Roll Fantasy, Runnin’ with the Devil, I Want You To Want Me, Dust In The Wind, Blue Collar Man, etc. Unbeknown to my as yet uninitiated ear and my as yet unexpanded mind, there had been for a few years now, a revolution taking place in music. The first thing that alerted me to the fact that there was something going on, was when, that very same summer, I heard the Cars on the radio. “Why... they didn’t sound anything like those other guys”. They wore skinny ties and suits with tiny lapels or skin tight striped t-shirts. No frilly blouses or hair down to the ass cheeks. No masturbatory guitar solos. Yes sir there was definitely something up. This led to the discovery of a veritable bounty of bands that did not sound like anything I had ever heard before. Someone show me the precedent for Devo or Oingo Boingo. This was in-arguably a creative explosion. I had never seen or heard anything like it and it changed my perspective and musical tastes forever.
The newest incarnation of Devo.
Just as cool as the first.
Anyway, back to the more recent past. As the new century approached and then arrived without the worlds computer systems freaking out and melting down and without so much as a hint that the world might come to some horrific end, it appeared that we would be stuck with the same boring radio crap. Living in the DFW metroplex you would think things would be better but Dallas radio sucked. The once bright and shiny KDGE. home of sounds like The Smiths and PIL, had become a tarnished old spitoon. Repository for stinky wads of musical phlegm like The Goo Goo Dolls. Then one day, much like that day in 1979, I heard something on the radio that began a chain of events. It was Jimmy Eat World. It seems as lame to me now as the Cars being the intro band to the Clash. But JEW had a song on the radio that just plain rocked. I bought “Bleed American” and then began to look for older stuff. Along the way I tripped over Interpol, Stellastarr*, The Detachment Kit and the Ex Models. It was on. Another musically creative explosion was underway and for that matter still is. These days there is sub genre upon sub genre to describe what we all are listening to. Back then it was all new wave.
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