A Day in the Life

What’s the inverse of futurology? History, you might say, and then you’d accompany your deft response with a fetching backhand to my infamously rotund skull. And you might be right, but I ask this in a very particular sense: what do you call the study of causes and chains of determination that have led things to be as they are? Whatever it is, that is what’s been occupying my idle thinking time of late. I will not go so far as to say there have been ruminations, but let it be known that there have certainly been, shall we say, ponderings.

And not toward any spectacular ends, either. Though I’ve neglected it recently, music remains one of my greatest passions, though I won’t bore you with that old yarn. No one likes hearing about how this or that friend of theirs just, like, loves music man, you already know the score. Applying this kind of critical historical thinking to my own auditory life, however, has been a delight, and I’d like to start with a story.

When I was eleven or twelve, my aunt Heather asked my dad what I’d like for my birthday. At the time, all my friends classmates were talking about the Green Day album, Dookie. Today this CD might be considered a seminal pop punk album by an influential band – all we cared about was the swearing and dick jokes. I asked for this, and my auntie later sent some cash in a birthday card, informing my dad that she hadn’t bought said CD because of the horrific parental advisory sticker slathered on its jewel case. Looking back, it was sound parenting, but back then I was just pissed that kids would continue to make snide jokes about how I wasn’t in on their fun.

I’d like to say that I took the cash to the nearest HMV and bought an album that changed my life, but at the time I probably put it into some colourful Star Wars graphic novel technical manual thing and forgot about music. Several years later I stole Californication from my twin sister and was thence struck by lightning.

So this is my list, the (mostly embarrassing) records that changed my life (or at least shaped my love of music forever):

Red Hot Chili Peppers – Californication

Everyone has their first CD, the one that they memorized before wearing it out or splitting it in half on an errant road trip. They can still sing all the words to every song, even with years between listenings. This is mine, my baptismal into rock and roll and all its subspecies in under sixty minutes. I would argue fiercely for it being one of the top five best albums of the nineties, and tracks like Easily and This Velvet Glove remain some of my favourite rock songs of all time, bar none.

Our Lady Peace – Spiritual Machines

Oh yeah, if you knew me in my early years of high school, OLP was on my mind. A lot. The influence this ridiculous band has had on my life is almost silly, if only in an indirect manner. I listened to Spiritual Machines for the first time in a room at Queen’s University with my still best friend Gavin, in a dormitory I would five years later return to, to take up my undergrad. The songs unhinged my imagination like only a snotty teenager can experience, they sent me to the internet to cavort around a message board that would, in all honesty, almost completely shape my social life even as it is today. I met roommates through this music. I met my girlfriend through a friend of a friend whom I met on that board, it’s insane, and wonderfully so. I shudder to think of what I’d be like if Gav had popped in Korn or some shit instead of SM. Yikes.

The Beatles – One

This didn’t occur to me at first, but everyone remembers their first proper exposure to the Beatles. The thing I remember striking me most was how happy the music was, One being a greatest hits collection that heavily favoured early period pop-happy Beatles singles so much that it’s far too cloying for my tastes anymore. But it served as an introduction to music beyond my time, opened my eyes to the decades of music past that I’d previously rejected out of hand as grown ups’ music. And Eleanor Rigby still totally kicks ass.

A Silver Mount Zion – He Has Left Us Alone but Shafts of Light Sometimes Grace the Corner of Our Rooms

If any of you think I have an elitist attitude about music now, you should’ve seen me in grade twelve. A Silver Mount Zion is a post-rock classical ensemble from Montreal, a side-project of the core members of mega-indie outfit Godspeed You Black Emperor (the grammar nerd inside of me refuses to bisect the band’s name with its infamous exclamation mark). They sounded like crap, and they meant to, because they were sticking it to the man. They recorded inside of barns or churches or some far out shit like that, they covered their records in anti-capitalist propaganda (the band is made up of Christian Anarchists, or at least I heard that somewhere), and all their songs had titles like Long March Rocket or Doomed Airliner and the whole record was dedicated to the frontman’s dead dog. And it was beautiful, unnerving, and utterly mesmerizing. It led me to classical music and non-rock music in general, an incredible influence.

Taking Back Sunday – Tell All Your Friends

Fuck the haters. Emo was one of the most divisive movements in music our generation has had to suffer through, and I’m right there at the barricades waging war against the worthless non-artistry that makes up so much of it. But. Taking Back Sunday produced Tell All Your Friends just as the genre was taking off (and I’ll crush the skulls of anyone who tries to lecture me on emo going way back, with my Mineral records no less), and this was good shit. I never dabbled in punk music at all prior to the band’s sketched out and phenomenally catchy debut, and this reached into the viscera of my histrionic teenage angst unlike any rock album before it. I can’t understate the impact that had on me, nor what a relief it was at that age. Bathos, yes, but so what?

Tom Waits – Rain Dogs

Liking Mister Waits is like liking strong bourbon. Difficult to stomach, initially appalling, gradually enchanting, and it’ll make you cool as hell in the right social circles. I was fascinated by the bluesy Waits, with his trademark growl and exotic mash of styles, for quite a while, but it proved incredibly difficult to get into. The soaring New Orleans funeral march of Anywhere I Lay My Head broke me into the songwriter’s world, and an obsession was born not only with his music, but with the richness of blues and folk and all those strange things that grow out of broken hearts.

TV On the Radio – Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes

I have a troubled relationship with TVotR. On the one hand, I love all of their albums dearly. On the other hand, I can barely summon to mind more than a handful of their tunes, and I must lament that I’ve never given them enough of my time. The band is legendary for Staring at the Sun, as they should be. These men can produce, at will, the most perfect indie rock songs one could ever hear, but spend the rest of their time producing brilliant summations of their love for doo wop, soul, and electronica. It’s a challenge to pay attention to the latter when the former is so good.  DY,BTB was a gateway into the indie rock cosmos for me, something that pointed me toward the body of music that now makes up the greater part of my favourite material. That’s a heavy debt to owe to so fragile an album.

Outkast – Aquemini

I originally wrote down Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, purveyor of everyone-loves-it super hit Hey Ya, and was ready to be deemed uncool forever. Even though I listened to S/TLB first and was charmed, I can honestly say I don’t remember a single song off of either that wasn’t a single. Aquemini, on the other hand, is a creature that plunged me into Hip Hop proper, something that made me understand the worth and beauty of the genre and washed away the baseless hatred I once harbored (“I like everything except for hip hop and country, mannnn”). Also, it made me feel really, really bad ass, and remains one of the most cinematic, awe-inspiring records I’ve yet experienced.

I can hear the cries of “TL;DR” already.

Have you noticed me dropping italics and dashes in favour of the homely parantheses lately? It feels wrong, but at the same time so right.