"Revolve" by The Melvins

By Neal Dusedau

The Melvins might be a band some people love, but I’m not one of them. “Revolve” was vaguely a hit in 1994 and I really liked it. But I actually bought the album before “Revolve” hit the radio. Was I in touch with the underground? Did I have feelers out to find out what the next hot thing was? No. The Melvins had been a moderately successful band for ten years when this album came out. But what made this album call to me was the power of Kurt Cobain.

I bought Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana by Michael Azerrad a few months after Cobain’s death. I wanted to buy it sooner, but word on the street was a new chapter on Cobain’s death was being added. I read it cover to cover in one sitting. Not only was it filled with great quotes from Kurt, but it was also an easy way to find out about bands I might like. After all, If Kurt liked them, they had to be good, right?

I don’t think I’ve owned an album that I listened to less in my life. Every time I popped it in I would skip straight to “Revolve” and when the song ended, my time with the album ended. I never gave the rest of the album a chance and I don’t regret it for a second. Listening to it now I still really like it. The sound of 90’s angst always warms my soul. Has any word fallen off the planet more in the last ten years than “angst”? I blame 9/11 and George W. Bush. How can you have teen angst when you think "evil-doers" are out to get you?

Meanwhile, this album began a sad trend that would continue all the way through college. Buying an album without listening to it, but trusting that it would make me cooler if I owned it. In middle school, how a band sounded was secondary. I just needed it to sit on my shelf, ready for a friend to casually ask, “Oh and what’s this band?” so I could school them with said band’s relevance and influence, proving my coolness or what a douchebag I was (depending on your point of view).

It’s not all bad. There were other bands that Cobain led me to that I ended up liking. I think this same book mentioned Sonic Youth. So when I placed my order for eight CDs for the price of one through BMG music service (tell me you took advantage of this deal in the 90s. not to be confused with Columbia music house’s rip you off deal), I went for Sonic Youth’s Day Dream Nation. It was actually completely awesome! But for every hit there’re tons of misses.

The last time I bought something solely on reputation and hipness was in Early college. At that time “Post Rock” was the cool thing to be into. I tried. I really did. But it was boring as all hell. Sort of like jazz if solo’s were forbidden. No, that’s not right. Like instrumental lite-FM. A few bands of the genre are great. The Sea and Cake, some of Tortoise’s stuff, Trans Am… But the band that started it all, Slint, put me straight to sleep. And their album is continually named the best blah blah of the all time by all sorts of semi-respectable indie websites. I think after I blew 50 dollars on Post Rock albums I learned to at least give something half a listen without buying it. And that’s how this all ties together: just like those crappy Post Rock records, I didn’t listen to a second of The Melvins before I bought the album. I wonder if younger folk reading this can even understand the concept of paying money for music, much less buying music without getting to hear thirty seconds of the song first to see if you actually like it.

"Down" by 311

by Neal Dusedau

I have a confession to make. In 1995 I told my friends that my greatest wish was for grunge to finally die and let my incredibly novel idea for the next wave of music take over. You guessed it, I prayed for a day when rap and rock would mix together to create the ultimate form of music. To this day, I still blame myself for what my simple request did to the world.

But at the time it made sense-- I was in need of more bands like Rage Against the Machine. If I could do it over, I'd never pray for what happened to the late 90s music scene, but I swear, at the time I couldn't predict what was going to happen. And it all started with 311.

311 was the answer to my prayers. When "Down" first hit the radio in July of '96, I bought the album and then I bought their t-shirt to celebrate my wish come true. Could this just be the beginning of a trend? Were there more bands mixing power cords and rap? I needed to find them. Ah! Sublime! they scratched on their records. Not quiet rapping, but still pretty good, the forces of rap and rock were mixing.

I spent the summer after freshman year working at our town's local day camp. I walked the mile to camp every morning with my yellow Sony discman in my hand playing the 311 album. And while "All Mixed Up" and "Stay Home" were good, they didn't rock (and rap) me like "Down" did. I had never heard such cranked up crunching guitars. I think they gave me the energy to deal with obnoxious eleven-year-old campers refusing to participate in the sport, game, or craft of the day.

"Down" was the kind of song that ballplayers play when they're at bat. It rocks really hard without being divisive. It's poppy while being aggressive and the rap lyrics are offensive to exactly no one. So how do I feel about it now? I want to say it sucks, but that wouldn't be honest since I just listened to it 4 times in a row without smashing my face apart. I guess it's kind of a good song-- but the kind that's only good if you haven't listened to it since 1996.

During the summer of '96 I tired of 311 faster than my campers tired of track & field day (Run! Run! Run all of your energy out before lunch-- nope, they were way too smart to fall for that). Soon after 311 left my life, I realized my prayer had been answered and I was satisfied. The combination didn't exactly work, but it was a worthy experiment. Thanks for the help, God!

The story should end there. Everything was back to normal. Nope, I'm a Jew dealing with an old testament God. How dare I not relish the rap and the rock mixed together? Throw it away after a few months? Not on God's watch. The following summer Three Dollar Bill, Yall$ was released and my perfect dream became the state of music's worst nightmare. Limp Bizkit took over and led the way to a bunch of bands that I don't remember except to say they were much worse than 311 and made you change the radio station twenty seconds into any of their songs.

Makes me think that if I had prayed for world peace, all war would have ended, but then the overpopulation that would ensue would starve us all. Too extreme?

Here in my Pontiac, I can pump my stereo too loud

Here In Your Bedroom - Goldfin...

By Neal Dusedau

"Here in Your Bedroom" was featured on a mixtape I made when I first got my drivers license the summer before my junior year. Thanks to Nick Hornby and a slew of internet imitators, I've now read all too much on the art of the mixtape. Unfortunately, back in high school I wasn't cool enough to have read High Fidelity and I didn't have those valuable innate mixtape instincts. Thus, "Here in Your Bedroom" was sandwiched between the New Jersey high school special, "Carry on My Wayward Son" and the worst song of all time, "More than Words" by Extreme (as in Extremely terrible).

During my drive to school I was happy to listen to these cheeseball staples in the privacy of my car (windows rolled firmly UP), but the last block before the parking lot was time to show how tough you were-- to show how much you kicked ass (a high school feeling to be sure), and "More Than Words" wasn't going to get it done. Time to rewind the tape and let Goldfinger do the talking: I would whip around that last curve and barrel into the parking lot fifteen miles above the speed limit, windows DOWN, blasting the so-cal pop ska/punk of Goldfinger. It made me feel so cool, which is hilarious. What did I think I was proving? And if anyone did hear the song, they weren't going to think, "wow, that guy is punk as fuck." No, they'd think, "wow, didn't that song stop being popular two year ago?" I wasn't playing the Dead Boys, The Clash or even the Sex Pistols. I was playing the 90s equivalent of surf rock.

In retrospect, my choice of tough-guy song makes absolutely no sense-- like everything else from high school. Two years earlier, in 9th grade, I made an overly conscious decision to reject grunge and become a punk rocker. I bought Black Flag and Fugazi records and got pulled into the older alterna-kids scene (Thanks Winnie!). Yet, here I was two years older and I was trying to be intimidating with a really catchy top-40 ska hit. Now I'm not saying Black Flag is particularly better than Goldfinger (Yes, yes I am), but at least if you blast "My War" out of your car window you're making a statement.
Why did I pick such a soft song to rest my testosterone against? I owned the real "angry teenager" records, but I guess I'm just a sappy emo kid at heart... Or maybe a "monsters of guitar rock" kid? I mean, "More than words," really? How did that song end up on the mix? Did I hate myself back then?

Listening to "Here in Your Bedroom" now is pretty confusing. I assumed I would just hate the song, but just like a ditty from their Cali brothers, Sublime, I can still bop my head to it. "Here in your bedroom I feel safe from the outside, I can tell that you're changing, but still I feel so high." It's this (low) level of introspection that makes the song perfect for sixteen-year-olds. At that age you either had a girl's bedroom that you could spend hours doing absolutely nothing in or you were desperate to be invited into one. And, like everything in high school, it might have felt like forever for a moment, but a day later she had moved on and you were stuck feeling like an asshole. Not terribly deep, but something I could relate to at the time. And if you didn't get the theme in the verse, the chorus really breaks it down for you, "When I wake up tomorrow will you still feel the same? When I wake up tomorrow will you have changed... Cuz I still feel the same! Cuz I still feel the same! I, I still feel the same!"

Um, I wonder if he still feels the same? I also wonder if the owner of said bedroom broke up with him because he was so nervous about her feelings changing?