I suppose the theme of "tour" is starting to fade here, but I felt inspired to get back into the blogging game after a nostalgic trip through my old CD catalog.
Thus, without further ado, I present to you:
A REVIEW OF ALBUMS FROM MY TEENAGE YEARS
I'll spare you the discussion of interesting artists that I may have listened to plenty of times (Grant Lee Buffalo, King's X, Jeffrey Gaines, etc.) but no one other than devoted readers of mid-1990s back issues of Rolling Stone would remember. Instead, I'm going to focus on those gems that so many of us bought and celebrated through a mopey cultural exchange of emotion-laden rock. I mean no disrespect, however, to these alterno-rock titans. The mid-90s were a terrific time to be an angsty, withdrawn teenager. We didn't have to suffer through the whiney, diluted, lip-pierced crap offered by the likes of Blink-182, Good Charlotte, Sum 41, and all the other over-tattooed folks who passed for angst-mongers in the mid-2000s. No, those of us who passed through puberty a decade earlier were treated to pure grunge, distortion-fueled rock likely inspired by bouts of Seasonal Affective Disorder brought
on by Seattle's gloomy climate.
Who are these bards of not so long ago?
SILVERCHAIR (Frogstomp, 1995)
My friend Chris' constant playing of Silverchair on his acoustic guitar may have inspired me to write this entire article. Back in the day, though, I was inspired by the fact that Silverchair--three Aussies sporting the requisite long hair, was nearly exactly my age when 1995's Frogstomp hit the charts.
At 15, the trio of Daniel Johns, Chris Jannou, and Ben Gillies certainly seemed to harbor their fair share of angst. Lord knows what about childhood in sunny Newcastle, Australia prompted this, but according to Johns' wailing on "Cicada," GROWING UP IS LIKE A CIVIL WAR!!!
Frogstomp's lyrics ranged from disturbing ("I fantasize about my death/I kill myself from holding my breath") to almost touching sympathy ("Don't go hiding/hiding in the shade") to completely nonsensical ("There is no bathroom and there is no sink/the water out of the tap is very hard to drink"). Most of their songs read like overwrought teenage poetry--and considering how old they were when they wrote it, that makes complete sense. Naturally, any teenager who wrote something resembling a Silverchair song for an English class assignment would probably find himself the target of an FBI investigation as a possible future school shooter ("Hate is what I feel for you/and I want you to know that I want you dead.")
Accompanying their unsophisticated use of imagery was the equally unsophisticated use of about three heavily distorted chords powering their songs. Yet despite the fact that they rivaled Presidents of the United States of America in guitar-based simplicity, their music was straight to the point, not overly produced, and consistent. You could rage straight through all 45 minutes of the album, then go back to studying biology.
Grades:
A for enthusiasm
D for lyric-writing and sophistication
D for timelessness
In sum, Frogstomp makes a great vehicle for channeling teenage nostalgia but does not pass the laugh test when considered at age 30.
PS As it turns out, Silverchair has cut their hair but still insists on touring. Can anyone explain this 2008 picture, including the use of backup singers and the garter on Johns' leg?
SOUNDGARDEN (Louder than Love, 1989; Superunknown, 1994; Down on the Upside, 1996)
Chris Cornell's signature wail helped make Soundgarden nearly a household name at the outset of the grunge movement. While Badmotorfinger put Soundgarden on the map, it was 1994's Superunknown that got me--and legions of other acne-ravaged youth--to pony up for a still surprisingly diverse album.
Some time after embracing Superunknown, I purchased Soundgarden's second album, Louder than Love, on a bit of a lark. This unintentionally provided me with a trip through the evolution of the band's sound. Louder than Love was a terrific example of music morphing from hair metal to grunge. Cornell et al. took the big, unrelenting sound of the late 80s and previewed some of the themes of the early 90s, packaging them all together in some 53 minutes of screaming--both the vocal and the guitar kind. But if you could decipher the high-pitched warbling coming out of Chris Cornell's mouth, you might catch some deep themes on "Hands all over," the inspiration for legions of dirty mom jokes on "Full on Kevin's Mom," and one of the most get-to-the-point songs EVER with "Big Dumb Sex."
Five years later, Cornell's testicles descended and Soundgarden matured in a way that Silverchair never will. Anyone possessing of a radio in the mid-90s will remember the chart-toppers "Fell on Black Days," "Black Hole Sun," and "Spoonman." (Funny tangent: my misinterpretation of Spoonman's lyrics--all my friends are in the air, I thought--was memorialized on a shirt from camp in 1994.) Superunknown was filled with gloomy, dark imagery, choosing even to rain on our happiest holiday ("I heard it in the wind and I saw it in the sky/I thought it was the end, I thought it was the fourth of July"). But the sound is incredibly diverse across the album, and Cornell's impressive vocal range goes to good use, even to the point of him harmonizing with himself.
My album collection moves onwards to 1996's Down on the Upside. At age 16, I still had my fair share of angst but was dangerously close to getting tired of my own gloominess, to say nothing of the bands providing my life's soundtrack. In that context, Soundgarden seemed intent on making me despise and resent this god-awful world we inhabited. "I've given everything I could/to blow it to hell and gone/burrow down in and blow up the outside world," Cornell purred on one of the album's more romantic tracks. This was the someone-killed-my-dog-the-only-real-friend-I-had-in-the-world album that we had so long hoped for. Music to inspire disturbed teens by!
Grades:
A for a band's ability to grow up
B+ for overall wailing quality
D- for lyrical subtlety, especially in the final album
A+ for making Celia wince (during the song "Big Dumb Sex")
