You can find episodes on frondsradio.com and be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you have any suggestions or thoughts, my twitter handle is @stoopkidliveson and I’d love to hear from you. You can find Ryan’s band, Premium Heart, on facebook, twitter, or instagram for upcoming releases and shows.

The original column was published on October 15th, 2019 and can be found below.

Do you hear me out there? I can hear you.

I got you, I can hear you alright.

This is so strange, I want to wish for something new.

This is the scariest thing I've ever done in my life.

Who do we think we are?

It's always been really hard for me to feel like I truly belong. I always get close, but I always feel like I'm just outside the core people who deserve their place in the inner circle. Lately, I've really been trying to take that big jump into the deep end and stop feeling like an awkward observer but own my role as a central figure in my own passions. And one of the things that really helped me re-focus my efforts is one of my favorite albums from the mid 2000s, Angels And Airwaves' 2006 debut, We Don't Need To Whisper.

Leave your pain on the bedroom floor again, bring a smile to survive

And do you think that you have that in you?

If you're here and you're all alone tonight, then I'll give you a free ride.

Take a chance 'cause I know you want to.

blink-182 was the first band I ever really loved. The first CD I ever bought, the reason I bought a bass, the first songs I ever taught myself, the reason I started my first band. There are plenty of pictures, videos, and recordings of me at 14 playing blink songs with my friends. Plenty of people fell in love with blink in the 90s and 00s, so this isn't all that rare of a sentiment. But even among blink fans, there's a lot of camps you can fall into. Those who consider them a punk band, those who call them pop, and the in-betweens. Scott or Travis? Is the Skiba stuff really blink? +44 or Angels? It goes on and on. But none are more pressing than the debate I hear more than any other. Mark or Tom?

For those who don't know, Mark Hoppus is the bass player and one of the singers, and Tom Delonge is the guitarist and other singer. Tom's the one with the voice. Where are you and I'm so sorry and all that. I will always love them both, but despite citing Mark as the reason I play bass (and for what it's worth, I do crib a lot of his fifth-based melodies and chord structures), I've pretty much always been firmly in camp Tom... and boy, oh boy, have I gotten a lot of shit for it. How much that contributed to my feelings that I was always just a little bit of an outsider, I don't know, but it certainly didn't help.

In 2005, when blink broke up, everyone blamed Tom. And then when Angels And Airwaves debuted, it was pretty divisive. It sounds nothing like blink, even with Tom's voice fronting the record. It's got these long, atmosphere-building songs, U2-inspired guitar sounds, lofty lyrics on war and grandiose takes on love. Tom took a whole lot of chances when he reinvented himself this way, and not everyone liked it. But man, I ate that shit up. At 15, We Don't Need To Whisper was a permanent fixture in my stereo and quite a few of the songs made it into my band's setlist. That June, I saw them with Taking Back Sunday and hearing Tom play the verses of "Down" by himself was the first time I ever cried at a concert. It was truly a defining moment for my teenage years.

But even then, I still had this... tinge of outsider. After the Angels set, people in our section, as well as the whole coliseum, stormed the floor to hop the wall and get on the floor. And I couldn't. I just kept thinking, "wow, those people are so cool, I could never do anything like that. Those are real punks. If I did that, they would just think I'm some poser." And th

You can find episodes on frondsradio.com and be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you have any suggestions or thoughts, my twitter handle is @stoopkidliveson and I’d love to hear from you. You can find Ryan’s band, Premium Heart, on facebook, twitter, or instagram for upcoming releases and shows.

The original column was published on September 15th, 2019 and can be found below.

Content Warning: this column deals with trauma, September 11th, 2001, and similar topics. All the heavy stuff is prologue to the column, so feel free to skip to the actual album review, starting with the fourth paragraph.

God is on top of it all

That's all

We are we are we are

What's the difference between a timeless legacy and a dated representation of the times? How do we decide what's worth focusing on when we look back? It sure seems like a random and arbitrarily decided distinction. Sure, some are clearer than others. It's easy to give credit for era-defining albums or days that live in infamy. Less noteworthy things, like one-hit wonders, are usually revisited as a nostalgia trip, not because they're still relevant, whatever that means. Relevancy is such a nebulous concept and one that varies so much from person to person. Because of that, this column is going to be a little more divided than usual, focusing first on what's on my mind leading up to putting this month's album on repeat before diving into the album itself.

Just a few days ago, we passed the 18th anniversary of the September 11th attacks in New York City. I'm not going to get into my personal connections and memories with the event here, as I think they're much too complicated to have as a backdrop to a music column. But this year felt... different for me than it usually does. Yeah, every year I see a lot of "Never Forget" posts alongside edgy jokes belittling it, the usual internet discourse ranging from deeply personal to the shallowest callousness and every level of no/half/full-hearted messaging in between. I was surprised, though, to see a lot of people talking about how it's been so long, why do we still make such a big deal out of it, that it's no longer relevant enough to justify all this attention. And this year, I saw an elevated level of animosity, which is, frankly, what I've come to expect in 2019. Some using it as an example of true American sacrifice, the day we were shown just how at risk the life we had taken for granted was. Others using it as the starting point of the modern American imperial era kicked into effect by the Authorization For Use Of Military Force Against Terrorists bill and the Bush Doctrine. Projecting it as the event that jingoists and fascists use to justify their politics. And while I don't disagree with any of that, per se, I think there's something deeply personal missing from that dichotomy, a focus on what parts of the event are still relevant and necessary to include in our thoughts on that horrible day.

I'm sure it's because I'm a New Yorker, but I don't think enough people give space for the trauma that it caused in so many of us. Yes, it is more important than ever to discuss the politics of the weeks, months, and years after that, especially now that people born after that day are now old enough to go fight in the wars that spun out of it. I was extremely lucky not to lose anyone that day, but knew plenty of people that did. When we look at such a catastrophic event as that day, we too often forget that the people affected are still affected and walk around with that weight every single day. First responders dealing with the mental (and physical) damage from being a part of it. People who were harassed, abused, and worse just because they looked like the people who did this. Children who were forced to confront so many things about the world, prematurely, that Tuesday morning. So many people lost something that

You can find episodes on frondsradio.com and be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you have any suggestions or thoughts, my twitter handle is @stoopkidliveson and I’d love to hear from you. You can find Ryan’s band, Premium Heart, on facebook, twitter, or instagram for upcoming releases and shows.

The original column was published on August 15th, 2019 and can be found below.

Just a content note, I’ll be talking about genocide, fascism, and political generalizations based on demographic trends, so you don’t have to yell at me if you’re “one of the good ones.”

Mother, did it need to be so high?

I spend a lot of time doing deep dives on music and I try to break open as much of what the songwriters are trying to say as I can, whether it be about themselves or the world around them. But it’s becoming more and more obvious that a lot of people don’t do that, even when they’ve been listening to these songs for decades and especially when they’re really popular. The more these songs are played out and diluted, the less real meaning they seem to have, like an album everyone seems to know, Pink Floyd's 1979 album, The Wall.

I’ve been thinking about this in the context of older generations lately, after starting to really delve into the solo career of Roger Waters, the bass player and main songwriter for Pink Floyd, primarily Is This The Life We Really Want?, his newest record. I was searching through some reviews for it and came across this one:

If you know anything about Roger Waters, you already know more than “Steve S,” but if you don’t, he’s pretty consistently written political lyrics. Even before the Pink Floyd album I picked for this month’s column, you can clearly see his politics shine through in most of his post-Dark Side Of The Moon work, both solo and with Floyd. Here’s “Sheep” from their 1977 record, Animals.

What do you get for pretending the danger’s not real

Meek and obedient, you follow the leader down well-trodden corridors

Into the valley of steel

What a surprise, a look of terminal shock in your eyes

Now things are really what they seem

No, this is no bad dream

The entire album is politically driven, from attacking capitalism, media censorship and “traditional values,” to blindly obeying a leader until you realize how far you’ve fallen. The issue we’re seeing today, though, is that so many people, especially when they’re privileged enough to be less affected by day-to-day policy fights, don’t realize they’ve fallen from their ideals at all. They think they’re on the right side of history, but if you were to supplant their opinions now relative to the oppressive power structures back just a few decades, they would almost certainly be the people calling Martin Luther King Jr. a dangerous radical and contributing to the almost two thirds disapproval rating that he had in 1966. They’d much rather just “keep politics out of it” and “talk about something else” instead of standing up for what’s right. King talked extensively about the dangers of these (white) moderates who sit on the sidelines in his “Letter From A Birmingham Jail.”

First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride towards freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council-er or the Klu Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action;” who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a “mor

You can find episodes on frondsradio.com and be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you have any suggestions or thoughts, my twitter handle is @stoopkidliveson and I’d love to hear from you. You can find Ryan’s band, Premium Heart, on facebook, twitter, or instagram for upcoming releases and shows.

The original column was published on July 16th, 2019 and can be found below.

This album was selected by Will.

Spirit of my silence, I can hear you. But I’m afraid to be near you.

And I don’t know where to begin

And I don’t know where to begin

Folk music can be a real bummer. Indie folk? Forget about it. Sufjan Stevens? Well, I might as well grab some ice cream because I’ve been listening to his 2015 album, Carrie & Lowell, and it’s a doozy. I’ve only heard Sufjan’s earlier indie-folk stylings in passing, and years ago at that, so I had no idea what to expect when this album was picked for my first requested record. I’d heard he got really experimental with electronica music? Well, definitely not here because this is a real mellow acoustic album and, even with that, it has a lot of weight to it.

I should have known better, to see what I could see.

My black shroud, holding down my feelings

A pillar for my enemies

I should have wrote a letter, and grieve what I happen to grieve

My black shroud, I never trust my feelings

I waited for the remedy

When I was three, maybe four, she left us at the video store

Be my rest, be my fantasy

The album deals with some more complex looks at death than I was prepared for. Sufjan’s mother had just passed away and this record deals a lot with the difficulties he’s feeling, as she was not exactly the most… present kind of parent. But still, when someone’s gone, it has a sense of finality, regardless of whether we’re able to make our peace with them before they go. 

When I was three, and free to explore

I saw her face on the back of the door

Be my vest, be my fantasy

I should have known better, nothing can be changed

The past is still the past, the bridge to nowhere

I should’ve wrote a letter, explaining what I feel, that empty feeling

This album really made me think about my relationships with people and what it would be like if the current status quo was permanently set as the finale. The album is full of the kinds of solemn regrets that accompany them, but that in and of itself is not all that rare in folk music. The tone is really what sets Carrie & Lowell apart. Sufjan has this atmospheric and airy quality that draws you in and just kinda floats around your head for a while. Even when I wasn’t initially picking up the themes, the intent was clear. I generally gravitate towards much more full and upbeat folk, like The Decemberists, but I still found myself getting lost in the world he was painting, even when the song itself was deeply somber.

For my prayer has always been love, what did I do to deserve this?

With blood on my sleeve, Delilah, avenge my grief

How? God of Elijah

As fire to the sun, tell me what I have done.

How? Heart of a dragon?

One of the things that really stood out to me on this record was how specifically anecdotal Sufjan’s lyrics could be. A lot of folk comes across as “everyman” stories and universal truths, but here, Sufjan doesn’t steer away from specific locales and stories that help build his story as more personal, less universal and help build an irresistible ethos around his narrative.

Emerald Park, wonders never cease

The man who taught me to swim, he couldn’t quite say my first name

Like a father, he led community water on my head

And he called me “Subaru,” and now I want to be near you

Since I was old enough to speak, I’ve said it with alarm

Some part of me was lost in your sleeve where you hid your cigarettes

No, I’ll never forget. I just want to be near you.

Carrie & Lowell isn’t my usual style

You can find episodes on frondsradio.com and be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you have any suggestions or thoughts, my twitter handle is @stoopkidliveson and I’d love to hear from you. You can find Ryan’s band, Premium Heart, on facebook, twitter, or instagram for upcoming releases and shows.

The original column was published on April 15th, 2019 and can be found below.

Love say "Take my hand, it'll be alright.

C'mon, save your soul tonight."

I had a really hard time picking what album to cover this month and kept putting it off. But then I fell down an unexpected rabbit hole and ended up deep in early 90s Prince, which is a pretty great place to find yourself. It all started because our stupid president released his first campaign ad for 2020 and used some music from his favorite (probably) Christoper Nolan movie, Batman: The Dark Knight Rises and had it almost immediately taken down by Warner Bros. for unauthorized use. He has a long history of using music for campaign things without permission, but that's neither here nor there. So I ended up dipping back into the only Batman soundtrack that actually matters, Prince's soundtrack for Batman (1989), and decided to just continue on through from there.

Since I last wrote about Prince, I've gone through his entire catalog, and can sincerely say there's not a single album with his name (or symbol) on it that I don't love. But a run of albums that really stand out to me are the early-mid 90s, specifically 1991's Diamonds And Pearls. It kicks off with this huge vocal-driven gospel track, "Thunder," that immediately lets you know that you're in Prince's church now. Even though this record isn't one of his universally beloved or top 5 albums, it's a really fascinating era for Prince. It's his first with a full band lineup since The Revolution disbanded five years earlier. This time, The New Power Generation brings a real 90s party vibe with them. Every song on the record shines with the quirky production, hip hop beats, and rap verses that immediately take you back to the early 90s. And the album itself perfectly captures that tone. Diamonds And Pearls is a whole lot of fun, but hidden under the party are some deeper undertones. Even with that, though, the vast majority of the album is just about sex and dancing. And there's a whole lot of real 90s slang. You know I eat that kinda thing up. Who couldn't love deep metaphors like "Mack Daddy In The House" and "clocking a freak in the low pro?" Plus, the cover (up top) has one of those sick holograms!

But even moreso than the new music styles Prince was embracing, this era is interesting because Prince was kicking his feud with his label, Warner Bros, into high gear to get out of his contract. (For more on that: I highly recommend his 1996 triple album Emancipation, his first release after he finally succeeded.) This album explicitly lays out the struggle Prince is having after the dopey dance track, "Jughead," in a perfect example of the dichotomy of this record.

"What you need is a manager" "For what? Money minders are like parasites. They pose as wheelers and dealers for your rights. And most companies say that you need em! Not me! But I've kicked back, observed, and watched 'em bleed 'em. Artists young and old. Where'd this unwritten law come from anyway? That years after the contract, you should still be getting paid? Boy, I go broke and hit the skids before I take care of a rich sucker's kids. Hell, A contract ain't got no pension plan. Years after this, my kids are still gonna make the grand."

Moments like this really stuck out to me when I realized I only initially grabbed Diamonds And Pearls because of some jackass trying to steal someone else's music to fearmonger in a propaganda video. There's a lot more here than just catchy songs like th

You can find episodes on frondsradio.com and be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you have any suggestions or thoughts, my twitter handle is @stoopkidliveson and I’d love to hear from you. You can find Ryan’s band, Premium Heart, on facebook, twitter, or instagram for upcoming releases and shows.

The original column was published on March 15th, 2019 and can be found below.

I'm not anything at all

I've been leaning into some major escapism this month. Sometimes we all just need a break, you know? Mostly this means I'm reading a lot of sci-fi novels, but I almost always keep music on while I read, to really tune out the distractions and get lost in a world that's got a better sense of morality than the one currently on the other side of my headphones. This time, it's been a lot of St. Vincent, the musical identity of Annie Clark.

St. Vincent's an artist I've only very recently gotten into, specifically with her 2017 record, Masseduction, after I was given it for a network Secret Santa from Falling In Love Montage's Helen. After going backwards through her whole catalog, Masseduction is still my favorite, but recently I've been gravitating towards her debut, 2007's Marry Me. It doesn't have the bombastic and explosive melodies of her latter work, or the complexity of some of her collaborations, like Love This Giant (with David Byrne) does, but Marry Me has really resonated with me beyond an album hiding in the background of my solitary reading sessions. Now, I don't mean the album is best listened to passively, as it's very strong on it's own and certainly deserves your full attention. What I mean is that, unlike the rest of Annie's catalog, Marry Me has a simplicity to the structure of the record that lets you forget just how brilliant it is.

The album has a lot of themes of the naive idealism of love from someone new to it, something I'm always a big sucker for. The overwhelming feelings you're controlled by. The agency you give up to the other person, as you lie awake wishing more than anything that they feel the same way. Thinking, no, knowing, that this is the most important thing in the world, until you come up for air and realize it... wasn't. Until it is again.

But you, you're a rock with a heart like a socket I can plug into at will

And will you guess, when I come around next, I hope your open sign is blinking still

So marry me, John, I'll be so good to you

You won't realize I'm gone, you won't realize I'm gone

As for me, I would have to agree, I'm as fickle as a paper doll being kicked by the wind

When I touch down again, I'll be in someone else's arms

Oh, John, C'mon

But albums about young love are not exactly the hardest thing to find. This album stands out above and beyond for a few reasons. Most importantly, the melodies and instrumentation are very good. It's the kind of album where I struggle to pick what should've been the single.  There's a lot of really great production, a lot in really unexpected places. There are 17 different musicians present on the record and it shows. Lots of strings, brass, and more help to layer the album, but the real shining star is Annie's voice. I really love her guitar playing, too, but her voice ranges from choir backups (alongside the additional singers present) to some raw and straight-from-the-heart solo vocals over a simple piano. The record jumps from full string arrangements to the barest melody and back again without ever feeling jarring or out of place. The highs and lows of love are clear, not only in the lyrics, but in every aspect of the record. Her voice, alongside her writing, is so versatile that listening to her debut, you can clearly see why her records went on to be so unique. The dichotomy is here, bouncing between the simplest and most complex aspects of young l

You can find episodes on frondsradio.com and be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you have any suggestions or thoughts, my twitter handle is @stoopkidliveson and I’d love to hear from you. You can find Ryan’s band, Premium Heart, on facebook, twitter, or instagram for upcoming releases and shows.

The original column was published on February 20th, 2019 and can be found below.

New York, release me from my strata

I'm back and so is Say Anything. This time, it's all about 2019's Oliver Appropriate, the final record in the era of Say Anything's catalog kicked off by ...Is A Real Boy. I really could write a whole column on every one of their records, but for now, I'll be fast forwarding to Oliver, which serves as a spiritual sequel to the themes I talked about last time. Just a quick content warning up at the top, this album deals with a lot of sex, sexual identity discussion, and violence against partners.

Quick recap: ...Is A Real Boy was all about that entitled and obnoxious mentality that almost always accompanies a suburban punk dude, explored through singer and songwriter Max Bemis' first person narration. Rage at everyone who won't give you exactly what you want. Screaming over everyone else because you don't think anyone's listening. Stroking your ego just to cover up how little you actually like yourself. Lashing out. Constantly. Really all the time. At everybody. Like this guy:

Definitely not me. I don't know why that's there. Weird.

Oliver skips ahead 15 years later to see what that teenage jackass is up to now. It's a thematic record, so I really recommend listening to it as a whole, even if the plot isn't the clearest narrative on the first listen. The story opens with the titular Oliver, narrated by Max, an older version of our Boy protagonist. His band's broken up, which he assumes is a devastating loss to the public, and he's living his life through an alcohol and pill induced haze. He's conformed to the standard hetero liberal "ally" lifestyle, despite holding deep resentments for everyone around him.

They fade into the liberal bourgeoisie,

Their hatred now inflamed to stoke your daughter's screams

And ramble about Trump over Stellas

And headline Coachella

He takes that resentment as some sign of his superiority. He's miserable because he's better than everyone and always has been. He only pretends to be one of them to fill some hole in his self worth. His flaws are what define him, but no one's allowed to see them; Oliver himself barely acknowledges them.

And everything they told me was wrong is still in my heart to turn me on

My ego is built on all my pain. I'm your migraine.

Deep down his struggle with his sexual identity gets covered up in a way that may seem familiar to a lot of people who came of age in the "newly woke" era. Oliver "pretends" to be queer as a joke to hide his insecurities. He kisses men as a goof to show off how "comfortable" he is with his heterosexuality, but never pursues these relationships past the mockery phase. He's satirically macho to the point that he falls into the same tropes that outward misogynists do. And that struggle with his identity manifests itself, not only in his sexual identity, but in a deep hatred of women, no matter what he pretends to feel.

I somehow became a feminist, when ten years ago I was feeding drinks 

To women I'd laugh at when they'd think amongst my friends

It's such a lie

After we really get to know Oliver, his whole world changes. His facade slips and he actually lets himself go home with a guy, maybe as a joke, maybe not, but he crosses a line he never did before and starts to really fall for someone after the high of getting his band back together lets him actually show some honesty, played by the drummer and co-writer of the re

You can find episodes on frondsradio.com and be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you have any suggestions or thoughts, my twitter handle is @stoopkidliveson and I’d love to hear from you. You can find Ryan’s band, Premium Heart, on facebook, twitter, or instagram for upcoming releases and shows.

The original column was published on February 10th, 2019 and can be found below.

And the record begins with a song of rebellion

Here we go. I've been putting off writing this one for a while. I'm going to try to keep the gushing to a minimum here, but Say Anything's ...Is A Real Boy has been called my favorite record more often than not over the last 6 or so years. I could go on about how "Alive With The Glory Of Love" is a perfect song, or how one of the best songs to cover with my high school band was "The Futile," with it's intro of SHIT, NOTHING MAKES SENSE. Or even how neither my wife nor I hesitated to say "I Want To Know Your Plans" had to be the first dance at our wedding. So instead of just talking about how flawless it is, I'd rather talk about why I've been listening to it a lot lately. I don't plan on getting into the songs that mean the most to me, but what the record is trying to say as a whole. As an aside, you gotta admit it doesn't get more precious than this, captured by Flying Machine Network host, Elle Riccardi.

So if this record is such an important part of my narrative, why am I writing about it now? This month, I'll be doing a two part column about Say Anything's first major release, the aforementioned ...Is A Real Boy, and their most recent and allegedly final record, Oliver Appropriate. I'll save most of the Oliver talk for next time, but the premise is that it's a concept album that extrapolates the character set up in ...Is A Real Boy and follows up on where that character would be 15 years on. So let's take a look at that guy's beginnings.

The general idea behind the record is that our narrator, an angst-ridden, entitled, suburban asshole has been cursed that everything he feels and thinks just pours out of his mouth in a dramatic, musical way. Definitely not how I see myself in any way, I swear. But this character isn't supposed to be our hero. I've been thinking a lot about the problematic lead style of storytelling and what it lets us explore. I'm a big fan of following the, I don't want to say villains, but the characters we aren't supposed to agree with, to help illustrate the flaws we all have. Seinfeld, It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, and Rick & Morty are prime examples of cautionary tales of letting your pettiness and ego get in the way of being a real human being. We also have characters like Han Solo, who we see develop from problematic asshole to hero in their own right. That growth is what makes them fan favorites. But I've also been thinking a whole lot about the role that these characters play when the wrong lessons are learned by the audience. Rick & Morty's fanbase is one of the most toxic places around and they worship at the feet of a character that's supposed to be the villain of the series; taking his narcissism as an ideal to strive for instead of seeing the damage he brings to the rest of the cast. People look up to Joker and Harley Quinn, a couple that was literally created to bring domestic abuse and mental illness to the forefront of the already traumatic and messy world of Batman. But does that mean we should abandon work with problematic characters, regardless of authorial intent? Personally, I think it's more important than ever to showcase the problems these characters work through and help show their motivations and the impact they have. Fiction is a safer place to explore the problems of society, than let people just like our characters exact more harm on the people

You can find episodes on frondsradio.com and be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you have any suggestions or thoughts, my twitter handle is @stoopkidliveson and I’d love to hear from you. You can find Ryan’s band, Premium Heart, on facebook, twitter, or instagram for upcoming releases and shows.

The original column was published on January 15th, 2019 and can be found below.

Shhh. Peaceful. Silent.

Happy new year, everybody! It's January, and while I'm generally not one to make resolutions, there is still something about changing out my calendar that gets me thinking about where I should go next. 2018 was a big year for me and I feel like I've grown a lot. But that always pushes me to think "Ok, so I did all that, now what?" And I found myself gravitating towards music that asks the same questions.

There's something about Miles Davis. Every single time I hear his trumpet come in over any of his incredible rhythm sections, I can't help but think "why the hell don't I listen to more Miles Davis?" But for Davis' In A Silent Way, it doesn't even take that long. It takes this record 7 seconds to kick in and it does not let up until it's over. It opens with Joe Zawinul's low organ hum until Tony Williams' hi-hats, John McLaughlin's guitar, Dave Holland's bass, and Chick Corea's and Herbie Hancock's electric pianos kick in and just like that jazz fusion was brought in to the limelight, all in 7 seconds. Rounding out the band is Wayne Shorter's beautiful soprano saxophone. And then, there's Miles. His trumpet is unparalleled here. Sure, most people prefer his deeper exploration into the murky waters between rock and jazz in the following year's Bitches' Brew, but for me, In A Silent Way is where it's at.

By the late 60s, Miles Davis was already an incredible musician and a huge force in the jazz world. In 1968 he had just gotten married to Betty Mabry, who introduced him to a whole lot of funk, soul, and rock throughout the New York scene, and as I talked about in my previous few columns on Prince and Bowie, newlyweds discovering music together is something I can really get into right now. But even though they were divorced the following year, her impact on his music was hardly a temporary thing. With 1969's In A Silent Way, Davis had fully integrated the guitars, electric pianos, and organs of rock music into his jazz ensemble. There had been a handful of artists pioneering this mix of jazz and rock (eventually called fusion), but few had the jazz world's respect that Davis had. As he continued to explore with dissonant and challenging mixes of genres throughout the 70s, he became so controversial and reviled in the jazz world, he went in to retirement for a bit, but very little of that strife is heard here.

The record is two acts, one on each side. Side A is an 18 minute suite of "Shhh" and "Peaceful." As I said up top, this piece is one of my favorites. The bass, drums, and pianos hold a perfect rhythm while the leads go explore. Davis lets the guitars and keys explore for about two minutes before he comes in. This is the kind of improvisational jam you would later hear on albums like The Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers or The Grateful Dead's Europe '72 tour, but here, it's more... adventurous. Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking those fantastic records. But when rock bands jam, you feel the music building heavier and heavier and the focus is often on the dynamics, to give the musicians and the audience the release of an explosive crescendo. The exploratory jams are some of my favorite things in rock, for sure, but it's a different vibe. You can feel the band's energy as they push the jam bigger and bigger. But on this record, Davis grows the music sideways instead of up. The bass and drums never get more intense, they just evolve. The keyboards never start hammering away, they only add different kinds of texture. Just about all of my improv ex

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The original column was published on December 29th, 2018 and can be found below.

In the event

that this fantastic voyage

Should turn to erosion 

and we never get old

Remember it's true, dignity is valuable

But our lives are valuable too

Here we go! We're at the end of Bowie's Berlin trilogy. We started with Low, continued with "Heroes," and now we're finishing up with Lodger. I'll be back to monthly after this, so I'm excited to see where I end up in January.

Full disclosure, right up front. I don't have nearly as much of an attachment to Lodger as I do Low and "Heroes." Don't get me wrong, it's a good album. For sure. It just doesn't have as grandiose of a thesis as the last two. It kind of wanders and is a bit all over the place. But that's why it works for me. When you're going through a transitional period, you can't always end up in a clear, concise, and obvious place of growth. You usually just end up "here." And you usually can't tell where here is until you're already... somewhere else. But it's important to remember how you got "here." Even when that trip was a rough one, it's still, as Bowie calls it, a "Fantastic Voyage."

But any sudden movement I've got to write it down

They wipe out an entire race and I've got to write it down

But I'm still getting educated but I've got to write it down

And it won't be forgotten

'Cause I'll never say anything nice again, how can I?

We're learning to live with somebody's depression

And I don't want to live with somebody's depression

We'll get by, I suppose

There's a lot of interesting directions Bowie and Eno choose to take on their final (for now) collaboration. Songs like "African Night Flight" and "Yassassin" pick up where the final song on "Heroes," "The Secret Life Of Arabia" left off, with Bowie and Eno experimenting with world music. These serve as the most diverse songs on the record, which doesn't feature any of the ambitious atmospheric instrumental pieces the last two albums featured. I don't have a whole lot to say about them, but these serve to define the eclectic and meandering style of the record. Coupled with the German influenced "Red Sails," this record really feels like Bowie wandering around the world trying to find the next musical outlet to call "here." In case the diverse styles aren't enough to convince us of this, here's Bowie on "Move On."

Sometimes I feel the need to move on

So I pack a bag and move on

Well I might take a train or sail at dawn

Might take a girl when I move on

Somewhere, someone's calling me

And when the chips are down

I stumble like a blind man

Can't forget you

The second side of the album is more focused and thematically driven. After establishing that Bowie can do whatever he wants on Side A, Side B is all about expectations and what those restrictions can do to people. Now that Bowie has broken out of the standards he's set on his own records, it's time to explore just what that kind of pressure can do when you *can't* break free of it, in four different acts.

First, in "Look Back In Anger," we see the set up. No matter where the pressure is coming from, we can so often only get mad and just wait for it to reach a tipping point.

Then "Boys Keep Swinging." What about privilege? Can these societal pressures benefit some of us? Is it fair? What's the downside to that?

Heaven loves ya, The clouds part for ya, Nothing stands in your way

When you're a boy

Clothes always fit ya, Life is a pop of the cherry

When you're a boy

Uncage the colors, Unfurl the flag