Why I Love Music, Parts 1-10

Okay, first off, a confession. The bare bones of this column is, if I’m being honest, lovingly ripped off from ESPN’s Bill Simmons, who has occasionally run a ‘Why I Love Sports’ column, with numbered short pieces about the tiny aspects of being a sports fan that, win or lose, make it all worthwhile. For ages I’ve wanted to talk about the little things about music other than bands and albums and songs (well, mostly) that make it all so great for me. This is completely subjective – I’m not even going to pretend that I believe these are universal experiences, but nor am I going to pretend I’m the first person ever to think of these things. It’s just a list of the first ten things I could think of – with more to follow one day, maybe – that make my iPod a happier place to hide from the real world. Just a warning – this may be my longest post ever – and it’s completely self-indulgent.Incidentally, I had planned on posting this last week, but I ended up getting far less done than I’d planned during a week with friends in France – ostensibly for the baptism of my goddaughter, and "previous guest music recommender in this space, Imaya":http://mog.com/John_Madden/blog_post/137039; but also for a well earned break from the rigors of putting pictures of cars in the right order in QuarkXpress.Either way, it did result in an Honorable Mention category, right at the end of this.1. Nobody’s PerfectYou know those split seconds in songs, where they hit ‘record’ a little early and you can hear the singer take a breath before he starts, or they stop it late so you can hear the instruments being put down again? What about when you can hear fingers scratch along the strings during a chord change, or even – and this is a rare one – an elbow hit off a microphone stand (which my grandfather, God rest him, could pick out with alarming accuracy)? I love that. I’m not a huge fan of lo-fi recordings – there’s a certain level of production quality below which I get bored and annoyed – but the tiny imperfections, deliberate or not, are a little bit of added soul that make a record feel like it was made by humans.2. There’s So Damn Much Of ItI check MOG a couple of times a day. I visit some MP3 blogs with less regularity, but still I’d say at least every week. I get ‘Rolling Stone’ and ‘Paste’ from time to time, I download the ‘Pop Candy’ and ‘CBC Radio 3 New Music’ podcasts, I drop into record stores every few days and I’m not even a little bashful about asking in Starbucks, or Borders or any other store, “Hey, any idea what song’s playing right now?” Rob, another designer in the office will often start conversations with “Have you heard...?” I’m exposed to artists I’d never heard off at least daily, and I still don’t have all the ‘essentials’ I missed buying growing up. I’ve only recently come to terms with the fact that I will, never, ever own all the music I’ve ever wanted. I know people who’d be upset by this, or intimidated by the sheer range. I’m just ecstatic that there will always be something to listen to, and more often than not it’ll be something new. 3. Ever changing and Expanding GenresOkay, so we all, at this point, accept ‘Emo’ as a valid musical genre – we’ll save the debates about it’s artistic merit or what bands are/aren’t ‘Emo’ for another time, but for now, let’s just call it a genre and that’s that. What fascinates me is that there are bands – Joy Division, The Smiths and The Cure , to name three – that fit into the broad definition (at least according to Wikipedia; but please note I'm not trying to reclassify these bands) of Emo but completely predate it. Even bands like Weezer and Jimmy Eat World who are now (apparently) ‘Emo’ were ‘Nerdcore’ when I first heard them. Now ‘Nerdcore’ is a type of Rap and Weezer and Jimmy are ‘Emo’. I can’t even get my head around Screamo. The biggest one for me is when bands go from Heavy Metal or Alternative to Classic Rock, or in the case of Led Zepellin, in the opposite direction. Driving through New Jersey in November 2005 and listening to a classic rock station I was stunned to hear Elton John’s ‘Rocket Man’ followed by ‘Jeremy’ by Pearl Jam! Seriously, I know I’m less than a month away from 30, but my teens aren’t that far away, musically, are they?4. MemoriesIn related news, how about a round of applause for the songs that are completely and inextricably linked to events in your life? Good or bad, I love that – hearing a song just takes you back to an entirely different time and place. Death Cab’s ‘Soul Meets Body’ is the Gershwin Hotel in Manhattan, the entire Snow Patrol album ‘Final Straw’ is a drive to Belfast to see a hockey game, ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ is an extremely awkward attempt to talk to a pretty girl, ‘You’re Making Me High’ is the night I met my wife, and I’m not even going to tell you about Shaggy’s ‘Boombastic’, although I guarantee my best friend JB is laughing his ass off about it right now. I’ve heard that it’s smells that do it most vividly but it’s songs for me. Fountains of Wayne’s ‘Welcome Interstate Managers’ isn’t the best album in the world but I listened to it first the day I got the keys to my own house. ‘Automatic For The People’ is in my all time top five, but part of that is because of its associations with the summer I left school, and ‘New Adventures in Hi-Fi’ is an overnight train through France for me. I can’t seperate music from my life or my life from music, and that, for me, makes both of them better.5. The internetSo apart from MOG, the altar at which we all worship, I think it’s a fair bet that we’ve all poked around for MP3s, reviews, recommendations what-have-you on the internet. As I’ve said, I spend a ridiculous amount of time (especially when I should be working) on MOG, on MP3 blogs, listening to Podcasts – I would say that in the past year, I’ve discovered 85% per cent of the ‘new’ music (new is in quotes because it’s probably only new to me – I am nothing if not under-informed) I listen to online as opposed to from other sources. Two years ago it would have been mostly radio and magazines. I’m still not nuts about downloading as a way of purchasing – unless it’s for individual songs I’d still rather buy a CD and rip it to my iPod than download it directly. 6. That line in Gym Class Heroes’ ‘Cupid’s Chokehold’“I know I’m young but if I had to choose her or the sun, I’d be one nocturnal son-of-a-gun.” Genius.7. Ronan Collins/Dad/CBC RadioIn no particular order, these are probably my biggest musical influences. Ronan Collins was (for all I know, still is) a DJ/Light Entertainment Host on RTÉ Radio 1. My mum always had him on – his show would generally start soon before or soon after I got in from school so I heard a lot of him. Whereas he’d generally play a lot of traditional Irish stuff (which I’m still not a big fan of), there’d be a wide range of country and country oriented rock – Eagles, Gram Parsons, America and what-have-you that I now love. Dad on the other hand was, and still is a huge proponent of the Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Led Zepellin, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, The Dave Clarke Five, Manfredd Mann, The Kinks, French Pop, Psychedelica, Seventies New York Punk, and especially Bruce Springsteen. If it’s because of Ronan Collins that I’m a little bit country, then it’s because of Dad that I’m a little bit rock and roll. You know what? Dad deserves his own MOG post to himself, so look for that, probably closer to Father’s Day.CBC Radio gets a mention because I’m a huge Canada-phile. Up until a year or so ago I thought Canadian there were four acts in Canada that I liked – Barenaked Ladies, Sarah McLachlan (which these days was mostly for sentimental reasons), Great Big Sea and Arcade Fire. Now I’ve turned on CBC Radio 1’s Vinyl Café and CBC Radio 3’s podcasts I realise there’s hundreds of them! Aside from Stars and Broken Social Scene, there’s Danny Michel, Henri Fabergé and The Adorables, Hayden, Tegan and Sara, New Pornographers... I could go on.8. Unexpected showsWhen I saw one of REM’s working rehearsals last summer, I only found out I was getting to go a couple of days before they happened. Same with Thurston Moore’s show and the Rolling Stones. I’ve been occasionally offered tickets the morning of the show – in one memorable case it was for an all day event – I had to decide and leave within five minutes of being offered in order to make it to see the support acts. I love the anticipation of getting tickets for something months down the line – especially when you finally get to turn the page on the calendar to where the date’s marked – but there’s something even better about thinking you’re going home to watch TV that night and then winding up at a show – still dressed as if for work and hoping you’ll make the last train.9. Cover versionsBoy, do I love cover versions - when a band you love and an unrelated song you also love come together and it works... does it get much better? I have a playlist on my iPod with my favourites – Radiohead’s version of ‘Nobody Does It Better’ is on there, as is Petra Haden’s ‘Don’t Stop Believing’, Nada Surf’s ‘Where Is My Mind?’, Lyle Lovett doing ‘Friend of The Devil’, Pearl Jam doing ‘Creep’ and dozens more, including three songs (‘Boys Don’t Cry’, ‘Hold On’ and ‘Staring At The Sun’) that are just marked ‘Unknown Artist – but are particularly – good’s not the word, interesting maybe, versions of the songs. I love them live – I remember a time when it was almost obligatory to do a cover live. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard bands (REM and Guns N’ Roses included) cover U2’s ‘One’.10. The first album after you get to like a bandI’m really looking forward to the May release of ‘Narrow Stairs’, primarily because I love Death Cab for Cutie, but also because it’s their first release since I got to know them. This is important, at least to me, because my entire perception of DCfC has been shaped by their back catalogue, from ‘You Can Play These Songs With Chords’ to ‘Plans’. Whereas they’ve plainly switched musical direction a couple of times over that period, it’s been in some ways invisible to me, because a) I bought the albums out of order and b) it’s all been in the past. The new album is the present. Liking the back catalogue, if I’m 100% honest, really says I like who this band was, the new album will determine if I like who the band is.There’s also the question of ‘New’ songs. I saw the Hold Steady support the Rolling Stones last summer – the set finished with ‘Killer Parties’, which, to me was a new song (I’d only bought ‘Almost Killed Me’ that week) – despite it appearing on their first album and, so far as I can tell, being performed live well before that. When I see them in May (and I’ve got my tickets), and get their new album, the songs will be new – but they’ll be new to everyone else too. Getting the back catalogue is the initiation – but the first new album is a welcome to the club.Honorable Mention: Guitar Hero 3So – while I was living it up in France, my friend JB broke out his birthday present – Guitar Hero 3! For the uninitiated, this is a video game where the object is to push the buttons on a guitar shaped controller (five on the fret board, and a ‘strum’ lever) in time with notes on screen, to the tune of some classic and modern rock songs. Sounds easy. It’s not – at least not for me.In the interest of transparency, I suck at Guitar Hero. I can get through about a third of the songs on ‘Easy’, and about halfway through ‘When You Were Young’ or ‘Even Flow’ on ‘Medium’. This was while my wife was rockin’ ‘Paint It Black’ with impressive finesse and JB was working his way through career mode. I still can’t get some of the songs out of my head. However bad I am at it, though, It’s addictive. Like Starbucks, season 2 of ‘24’ and crack cocaine addictive. So much so that I’m trying to figure out if I can weasel someone into getting me an Xbox 360 and the bundle pack for my birthday. Two weeks, if anyone’s feeling generous... :-DAnyway, that’s it – I’m done. If you made it to here, congratulations – now go read something a little less self-indulgent.