Nostalgia

Seattle

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One of my favourite things about writing here is finding a song/album/artist that has been a huge part of my life and digging deeper and learning more about how that music came to be.  I was never obsessed with the stories behind the music growing up – good music has just always been there, taken for granted, life’s soundtrack that rarely took centre stage – and I’m fascinated now as I discover these backstories so many years later because they provide me with context and help shape the world I was growing up in, yet so unaware of.

It’s hard to imagine that time when information was not right at our fingertips; yet, if it wasn’t in the liner notes or I missed that one radio or MuchMusic interview, the stories behind the music disappeared into the ether and by the time they became accessible the music was already so deeply rooted into the fabric of my life that I didn’t think to even seek them out.

When I heard it had been 25 years and they were going to be reissuing the Singles soundtrack with new bonus material, to say I was excited would be an understatement.

I put Singles up there as one of the best soundtracks of all time.

Not only was the music more important than the movie, the Singles soundtrack was the early nineties.  This movie was being made as the scene in Seattle was blowing up… Eddie Vedder was new to Pearl Jam when filming began, the movie’s sound was authentic and real and reflective of what was actually happening in the city almost a year before Nevermind woke the world up. Grunge was happening and this soundtrack wasn’t one that was cashing in on the movement, it was one that helped establish it.

Not that this was why I liked it so much.  I liked it so much because it was just GOOD music.

Before I downloaded the new deluxe reissue this morning on iTunes I pulled out my tape, which still plays surprisingly well given that the words are faded on either side and that this was easily one of the most played cassettes in my collection throughout the 90’s. I had to rewind as it was halfway through Dyslexic Heart… that play/rewind push down combo that made Paul Westerberg, then Chris Cornell, turn into squeaky chipmunks-on-crack versions of themselves.

As Seasons started to play I was immediately brought back to my childhood bedroom, to a time before I would play this tape in my car, a time before I would hear it at high school parties… a time when I would lie down in my room (on a waterbed, no less) with the lights out, my Walkman on, and just let the music consume the night.

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Reading Cameron Crowe’s recounting in Rolling Stone on what it was like on the set of Singles and putting this soundtrack together only adds to the notion that this album is a true, genuine, love letter to the city of Seattle and the people who were forming the scene at the time.

That Chris Cornell introduced Cameron Crowe to the music of Smashing Pumpkins is exactly the kind of detail that lifts this soundtrack up above a lot of the noise that gets passed off for art in today’s soundtracks. The labour of love that went into making this mix tape, making sure each track was just right, told a story and was put in the right order, overshadowed the movie itself, something Crowe has admitted wasn’t necessarily a bad thing in article with the AV Club (Update Feb 2025 – link no longer available).

“I have my problems with Singles. To me, Singles is the least successful of the movies I’ve been lucky enough to make. It was meant to be Manhattan, a movie I loved, set in Seattle. It stayed in the can for a year until the studio released it on the heels of the so-called “grunge explosion,” which created some problems of perception. But there were also some casting issues and some screenwriting problems I never quite solved.”

If you know Cameron Crowe and his movies, this next bit from the same interview doesn’t surprise you:

It starts with the music. Always. I hear the movie before I can ever write it. I would say that 80% of the time, that’s the successful stuff. It’s the other stuff I have to work for to get right, and sometimes it doesn’t work out, but the music is always the beginning.

Not surprising at all for the guy who wrote this scene:

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The reissue of Singles happening in the same week as Chris Cornell’s death is a 25-year-old echo we are only just now able to hear.

Andy Wood of Mother Love Bone died while Crowe was writing the script to Singles and the way the music community reacted in the city was a large inspiration for both the film and the soundtrack. A generation of musicians on the cusp of greatness, together on one album, in one city, at one place and time.

And Chris Cornell was front and centre of it all. Seasons was his first solo track ever and the reissue has a total of seven solo tracks from him.  I have had Flutter Girl on repeat for the last hour in the background while writing this post.

While very few people would dispute Kurt Cobain and Nirvana as the leaders of the Grunge revolution, they were so far above a soundtrack like this that this snapshot in time of Seattle in the 90s doesn’t even mention them.

But Cornell, his influence is everywhere here. Writing the songs, performing in his band and solo, his voice acting almost as narrator. A voice we have all been eulogizing all week long. A voice that opened up Seattle to the world.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of nostalgia and over-sentimentalize what this album and Cornell’s contributions to it means, especially given the timing and circumstances of his death. It’s easy for any look-back to take on the air of memorializing for the sake of memorializing; drawing the conclusion that the album will serve as Cornell’s swan song, his last gift to us all before passing.

The hard part is to ask if, had Cornell not died this week, would people be writing the same things about the quarter-century milestone of this soundtrack?

Impossible to answer, but for those of us who knew then as it was happening (or learned later) how important a time in music this was, I’d like to think that these are exactly the kinds of things we would have been writing anyway.

Given the timing, this is an album release that, without ever having meant to, may also be able to offer some closure for those mourning Cornell’s passing.  As Blackstar did for Bowie, the Singles reissue gives us a chance to say goodbye.

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Further Listening: Nothing Compares 2 U

This version of this incredible song gives me chills and while it might be a bit maudlin to frame it as a eulogy to Cornell himself, I think most fans of the man and his voice would forgive me.

Christmas Mourning

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I was in a musical-comedy duo in University called Yodacock.

The band name stemmed from a late-night drunken conversation around whether or not there were any female Yodas in the galaxy and, if there were, how fornication between the two Yoda genders would take place.

That’s probably enough said about the name.

We played coffee-houses, the campus pub and, mostly, for our friends.  We hit it big in our residence with a song called “Necropheliac”, sung in the style of 1950’s doo-wop about a guy who didn’t let death stand in the way from continuing his relationship with his girl, and the song was catchy as hell.  “Shelby”, a song about unrequited love for a girl who worked the same shift at McDonalds as my partner, was also full of heart and had everyone singing along.  We reached a modicum of success around campus and enjoyed making people laugh.

At the end of the school year we made a tape in our dorm room using an old four-track system borrowed from a friend and sold 300 copies.  Proceeds funded our top two priorities: more blank cassettes and beer.

After the early success of “Shelby” and “Necropheliac” we thought we could do no wrong and proceeded to write a Christmas song and took it to various floors of the residence as the term wound down and the holidays approached.  Our other songs had been happy, hopeful, bouncy, wistful even… “Christmas Mourning” took all of that and set it aflame.  Some got the darker side to our humour and loved it but for many it was just depressing as fuck.  It went on to become our least requested song, so I find it funny that it is the first Yodacock song to appear on this blog.

Written in December, 1997 and appearing for the first time on Youtube, I present, Christmas Mourning.

I haven’t thought about this song in years and it is still a secret favourite of mine on the whole tape.  As I listen to it again now I am instantly transported back to the first time we performed it and the shocked look on everyone’s faces, jaws dropped, not knowing how to react or whether or not to even laugh.

Singing to a pub full to the brim of people singing along to the chorus of “Necropheliac” doesn’t even compare in my mind to the reaction this song got out of people.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

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Further Listening – Some Happier Music

For those who maybe need a palate cleanser, here are my two absolute favourite songs to listen to at this time of year.

Dominick The Italian Christmas Donkey – there is simply no happier Italian Christmas song than this.

And for the sentimental side of the holiday season, there is no better song than this in my books, and no better version of it.

Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, as sung by Rowlf and John Denver.

Band Aid

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It’s that time of year and Do They Know It’s Christmas is one of those holiday songs that defies genre and is played on almost every radio station I listen to.  It’s a holiday staple and by far the best of the three major singles to come out of the 1984-85 Band Aid initiatives to raise awareness and funds for the starving in Ethiopia.

Not only was the song the best of the bunch, it was the first of the bunch, leading other countries to put together their own Supergroup singles and it was also a pre-cursor to other fundraising initiatives like Comic Relief and Geldof’s own Live Aid concert.

Do They Know It’s Christmas, when compared to other Band Aid songs, is simply a better written song.  It’s the one in the bunch that paints the best picture of the bleakness of the situation in Ethiopia and is the strongest call to action to give and to feed the world.

Not that that makes it a great song, musically.  In this specific genre of song it is more about the intentions, spectacle and eventual outcome than the actual song itself.  It’s an engaging genre where you try to pick out the voices in the song and entertaining to see pairings of stars you would never see otherwise.

The song made massive amounts of money for charity – Geldof had hoped to raise £70 000 and the song ended up making over  £8 Million – and was an instant number one in the UK and many other countries, except the U.S. where, despite outselling the number 1 single 4 to 1, it received very little airplay in videoland which hurt its overall status.

My dad, who was born and raised on the Isle Of Wight, loved this song and it made its way onto his mix tapes that were listened to all year.  It’s not so much a Christmas song to me as it is a memory of a pop/rock sensation that you couldn’t escape.  I would be mowing the lawn in the middle of summer while Do They Know It’s Christmas blasted out of the mega speakers in the shed that my dad had turned into a mini concert hall as a part of the ongoing war with our neighbours.  But that’s a story for another time…

Have a look and listen now to the song that started it all.

Now, on the other end of the spectrum and a song that had no place in our house or on our mix tapes, was We Are The World.  Even a jaded Geldof himself, years after, admitted that Do They Know Its Christmas was not a good song musically.

In reference to it he said “I am responsible for two of the worst songs in history. The other one is ‘We Are the World‘.”

The difference in message is subtle, but it’s there, right in the title.  While the U.K. asks if “They” know it’s Christmas, in typical American fashion the song was made to be all themselves.  We Are The World positions the issue as one that needs to include Americans for it to be in any way relatable, as if caring for others without including yourself is an impossible concept to grasp.

Musically, the song is as sappy as it gets.  While the U.K. single hits a beat and a rock rhythm in the first 50 seconds, it takes 2 minutes and 40 seconds for anything interesting to happen muscially in the American song when Michael Jackson comes in and brings the smallest bit of flavour.  Outside of Stevie Wonder at the 4:52 mark, there are very few shining moments in the song by the artists.  The song continues forever and you just. want. it. to. end.

Not that any of that stopped We Are The World from becoming a monster hit in its own right and, again, it’s not about the music but rather the intentions, entertainment value and outcomes that matter.

Have a look and, before we get to the last song on the list, when you watch this video pay particular attention to the style and clothing worn by the artists.

In my family, sandwiched right in the middle of these two Supergroup Band Aid Singles, was the Canadian venture into the territory – Tears Are Not Enough.

This song was on just as many mix tapes as Do They Know It’s Christmas and my parents were huge fans of it.  We heard it on the radio on CHUM Fm before we had seen the video and I remember sitting around the kitchen table with them as they guessed out loud who was singing which part of the song.

While we as a country had (and still do!) more than our fair share of music celebrity given our population, Bryan Adams and Neil Young were not on the same level as Michael Jackson and Bono.  I remember my parents even getting stumped and never having heard of some of the names involved in recording the track.

The song picks up at the 1:14 mark with the first introduction of the chorus and Bryan Adams is definitely the first voice to kick the song up a notch just prior to that.  The sweet and sappy sticks throughout the entire song, but somehow the choices of who sings which lines and the various musical stylings involved raise this song above We Are The World and keep things interesting from artist to artist and line to line.

If you remember the song and know it well enough, who among us doesn’t pretend we are Corey Hart for just a few seconds or, even better, at the song’s best moment, Geddy Lee.}

Hell, it’s even fun to fumble our way through the French verse.

I like how the group grows as well… as the song builds, so does the chorus group.

Comparing the message to the other two, it is typically Canadian.  Like America, we are more self-reflective than the U.K. version, but in an almost self-deprcaiting way.

“Don’t you know that Tears Are Not Enough?”

It gently scolds and plays up on our guilt – a uniquely Canadian perspective within this particular genre.

The video below is the best quality one on YouTube – at the bottom I’ve put a link to the original music video that included news footage and even a cameo from Wayne Gretsky.

Lastly, a quick comment on our style… remember what the Americans were wearing?  What the hell was up just a few miles North?  Why did Canadian celebrities in the 80’s dress like their parents did them up for school picture day?  It’s hilarious to watch and David Foster’s enthusiasm is easy to mock as well… lots to laugh at with this video but also lots to enjoy.

And that’s what I love about this genre of song – they are both bad and good at the same time.  At a time when our obsession with celebrity was at a more manageable level, these songs gave us a huge dose of what we craved: rich and famous people, working together, trying to do good and improve the living conditions for others who are less fortunate.

It’s the right time of year to revisit that notion and, through the lens of nostalgia and the cultural forgiveness that comes with it, be inspired again.

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Further Viewing – The original Tears Are Not Enough music video in full and a short doc around the making of the song that is also worth the watch.

That time I lived in Japan…

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In late September and early October I did something I didn’t think I would ever do again in my life.

I spent three weeks in Japan.

Having lived in Japan for two years, 15 years ago, and working in the travel industry, I honestly never thought I would take an extended trip there again.  Don’t get me wrong – I LOVE Japan – but just, having lived there and having so many other countries on my list, it just didn’t seem like it would ever be a top travel priority again.

Well, call it serendipity, luck or a combination of the two, I found myself with an option to do the country again that I could not turn down.

The trip was incredible – Tokyo, Takayama, Kyoto, Hiroshima, Koyasan, Nara, Kobe and my adopted hometown of Osaka.  It was a combination of everything you want from Japan.

Weird robots:

(Not my video but this was posted just two months before we were there and the show was the same.)

Temples and cultural centres:

golden-temple          img_4325

History:

hiroshima

And some of the most peaceful, tranquil places you would ever want to be:

img_3999

It was a fantastic trip filled with new places, new experiences and an overwhelming sense of nostalgia I haven’t felt in a very long time.

But this is a music blog, not a travel blog, so let’s move past the pictures and trip review and get to the heart of the matter – Japanese music from the early 2000’s.

In documenting the soundtrack to my life, my years spent in Japan deserve more than just this one post and so I will just touch on a few key songs that still make their way onto random playlists to this day.

First of all, we were lucky enough to have made quick friends upon arrival with a group of musicians who ran their own recording studio and who had their own band, Death Pizza.  Death Pizza then became World Defense Lovers and they existed on the cool outer edge of Osaka’s alternative music scene.  Heavily inspired by, and not sounding entirely unlike, The Cranberries, World Defense Lovers could rock hard and then almost make you cry at how beautifully they blended celtic sounds with modern rock.

I have the signed CD here in my house, but online there is not much to find save their official website, circa 2004.  Download and listen to February for a taste of what this band offered.

http://wdl.fc2web.com/framepage2.htm

world_defense_lovers_offical_site

In more mainstream fare, Hip-Hop was only just in its infancy in Japan and yet it was everywhere.  Blending Western sounds, classic alternative rock samples and mixing Japanese and English fluidly, Dragon Ash was at the top of this scene.

In one of their most popular tunes, Grateful Days, the band sampled and looped the guitar opening from Today by Smashing Pumpkins to awesome effect.  This was just one of many Pumpkins’ links the band had in their repertoire and to hear those licks blended with Japanese rap is not as sacrilegious as you might at first think.  Give it a listen.

By far their biggest, inescapable hit at the time was Life Goes On.  This song played on TV commercials, in shopping centres… this is the title track to my Japanese soundtrack of the time.  I called them the Japanese Sugar Ray as the parallels between Life Goes On and Fly are numerous.

It’s amazing that after all these years singing along as best as I can, today is the first time I’ve ever watched this video with the lyrics embedded.

I have been singing so many words wrong all these years.  Still though, a fantastic song that brings me right back to 2002.

Rip Slyme was another big player in the burgeoning Japanese hip-hop culture at the time and what I liked best about them was their use of horns and funk.  Less English than Dragon Ash but some awesome instrumentals.  Have a listen to Funkastic for the best example of this.

Rakuen Baby was another inescapable song of theirs.

There are so many other bands and songs to look at, but I’ll leave you with just one more.

First of all, the band’s name is just awesome in its ability to be just close enough to an English saying to evoke some meaning but still retain some Japanese oddness.

Kick The Can Crew have a song called Sayonara Sayonara that has had the most staying power on my playlists over the last 15 years.  Put simply, the switch from the minor key in the verses to the major key in the chorus makes me just about as happy as any song can make me.

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Japan gave me so much creatively while I was there… it was in Japan that I first started blogging, where I wrote my first novel and where I branched out musically and went to some of the craziest shows and concerts of my life.

And now I say it again, it’s unlikely I’ll ever spend an extended time in the country again in my life.  There’s a lot of world to see.

Or, in 15 years, the things I love most about the country might just pull me back again.

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Further Reading – An Intro to Japanese Hip Hop

These songs above were based on my time and my experience in Japan and the one thing I am loving about this blog is that as I write from my own history, memory and experience I find that I start asking the Internet questions to get a broader picture on the topics I touch on.

This article gives a ton of new perspective to me as well as a number of artists and songs I haven’t even heard of.

This isn’t just further reading for you; I’m going to just leave this link here as a reminder to myself that there is a heck of a lot more good stuff to uncover.

an_intro_to_japanese_hip_hop___the_jet_coaster

Finding Emo

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They say you can’t go home again.

I’ve never been one to listen much to them.

Living in the Annex now gives me a chance to be stumbling distance from so many of the bars and clubs that held my weekends together throughout high school and university.  One such place is Sneaky Dee’s.  And this being a music blog, we’re not talking about downstairs Sneaky Dee’s, in all its nacho glory, but upstairs Sneaky Dee’s.  You know the place.  You’ve been there.  Every city has a Sneaky Dee’s.  It’s where your friend’s band played, LOUDLY, and the beer was super cheap and afterwards, outside, your friend came up to you and asked you how you enjoyed the show and you looked at your watch and replied with the time because the combination of the ringing in your ears and the alcohol in your eyes was confusing you and then you threw up on the sidewalk and only half noticed that you threw up on top of someone else’s throw up, adding to the mosaic on the street, and the next morning the first thought you had when you opened your eyes was that you knew exactly what time you puked.

You’ve been there.  Sneaky Dee’s.

One Friday night last month I had a friend coming in from out of town and we hadn’t been to Sneaky Dee’s in years.  It was a Friday night and apparently on Friday Nights Sneaky Dee’s is home to night called Homesick which is billed as an “emo night”.  This particular Friday night was going to be a special show as there was another… um… emo crew?… called Emo Night Brooklyn who were coming all the way from… yep, Brooklyn.

Two emo crews, one stage.  We couldn’t believe our luck.

Well, more accurately, we poured countless pints of the newly tapped keg down our throats, invited another friend along with my girlfriend, and set to work figuring out exactly what was in store for us.

Now, I’m not good with labels, and emo to me conjured up kids in heavy make up who cut themselves just so they can feel something.  It’s a standard emo joke, I know, but one that seems to fit so well I can’t resist using it as a descriptor.

After some drunken googling and youtubing, we stumbled upon a bit of a setlist from previous shows and the bands on there were surprising to me.  Blink 182, Taking Back Sunday, Something Corporate, 30 Seconds To Mars, My Chemical Romance… now, to me, I would never really have registered those bands as emo.  Emo in my mind was something a bit sadder, that slow wah-nah-nah music that you kind of lurch alone to on the dance floor like those half-zombie people I accidentally ran into that one weird night at the Dance Cave in 1997 (an establishment also now within stumbling distance from the new place, I might add).

I would have called all these bands pop-punk or, if I wanted to get even less cool, mall-punk.

But apparently they were emo.  And apparently I like emo, and not-so-secretly either as these bands have popped up routinely in my playlists over the years.

So we figure there is a DJ of sorts playing this music and this Brooklyn crew sounds interesting (based solely on the fact that I spent New Years in Brooklyn this year and LOVED it) and, at the very least we know it will be loud and the beer will be cheap.

We were not prepared for the kind of show this was.  Not at all prepared.

Inside the bar for five minutes and already each of us was double fisting the $3.50 beers and worrying we had made a big mistake.  The crowd was younger than us, on average, by at least a decade and on stage there are no fewer than ten guys all standing in line behind a table that had two laptops on it.  Their girlfriends were standing on the stage too, off to the side, but very visible, and they were all just kind of… hanging out.  This is Homesick meets Emo Night Brooklyn.

The music IS loud, the beer IS cheap but there is no DJ.  There are no performers.  There are no musicians.

I kid you not, the ENTIRE show consisted of seven of these guys taking turns hitting a button on the laptop to play the next song while the other three jumped around the front of the stage in a coked-up panic BEGGING, PLEADING, FORCING the crowd to sing along.

“Wow… Blink 182!  You guys know this one.  SING IT!”

“Come on guys, who LOVES this song!  You know the chorus.  SING WITH US!”

I could go on, but you get the idea.  And I’m not even exaggerating… that was the entire show.  No talent whatsoever, just a group of guys bludgeoning the crowd with their screaming lyrics, pleading eyes, pumping fists and bouncing bodies.

This is apparently a thing.  A show that hinges solely on preying on your nostalgia and fills the room with happy, catchy pop-punk emo lyrics that everyone knows and loves.

I have mentioned this a few times (foreshadowing!) but the beer is CHEAP and here’s where the story turns unexpectedly on us.

We start to SING.  While many songs are unknown to us, there start to be some real classics.  We start to dance.  We start to bounce.

When the jacked up cokies – a term that sounds much cuter and nicer than cokehead, no? and fits better with the “we’re all friends” atmosphere of the night – do a call and response, we RESPOND.

And, we MOSHED.  For real.  I was in a mosh pit with my girlfriend.

I am 38 years old.

At one point, towards the end of the night, we actually made our way onto the stage itself and were dancing right next to friggin’ EMO NIGHT BROOKLYN themselves.

I don’t know what happened… I don’t know at which beer we decided to just give into the idiocy of the show, but dammit we had a good time.  When we were deciding to leave it was a bit of “suddenly realizing how embarrassed we should be feeling” mixed with a pinch of “Awww, do we have to go?”  I’ve never been to another show quite like it.

So there you have it – emo night.  You will need to be drinking, but if you can get yourself just past the point of caring how ridiculously untalented the organizers are, you’ll have a great time.

Sneaky Dee’s – Homesick Emo Night – Every Friday Night

emo night

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Song of the night for me – Taking Back Sunday – Make Damn Sure
I may have lost my voice a bit to this song…

The point in the night we felt the oldest when hardly anyone else danced or sang…
Wheatus – Teenage Dirtbag

And the hungover rehashing the next day…
that led us to deciding our Halloween costumes this year, not realizing that the Internet, being so damn good at everything, had already thought them up…

finding emo      tickle me emo