I’m writing this hunched over on the couch. Not due to my typically poor posture, but instead from the fierce blades of a palm tree out back. Admittedly, I’m in a very privileged scenario to make this possible, but I learned that the back of a pool cleaning pole is a great way to draw and release palm fronds forcefully into one’s own back. Oof.
Hüsker Dü “Something I Learned Today”
This is the opening track from the classic album Zen Arcade. The raw emotion, heavily distorted guitars, and driving rhythms are what I appreciate most. The record is a double album concept record about the arc of a troubled teen leaving home. As mentioned on the blog a few times, I learned about the band from my college indie rock class “textbook” Our Band Could be Your Life.*
Check out the Zen Arcade record, starting below, and experience the 1984 punk/rock/post-whatever yourself. Honestly, I can’t find the source now, but if I remember correctly, the ~2min track “Dreams Reoccurring” was recorded by reversing the track “Reoccurring Dreams”, replaying the reversed song, then finally reversing the replay. You end up with a track that sounds like an odd kind of “off” sample of the longer song. The song names are a little hint to the process.
*Sidestory: The professor was: the front man in a local band called The Sames, clearly into a bunch of the OBCBYL artists back in his day, and genuinely conflicted about burning CDs of old out of print records for the class to take home. He also was kind enough to write me a letter of recommendation for the study “abroad” program in Los Angeles. My punk rock friend C. Smith, also in the class, graciously agreed to go to The Sames show in Chapel Hill, so I could ask for the recommendation letter. I got the letter, got accepted, but then the councilor scheduled me for classes in an unrelated subject, and I stayed back in Durham instead.
Hieroglyphics “You Never Knew”
This one starts back in my college days as well. Some NJ kids were heavy into Deltron 3030 era Del the Funky Homosapien. I hadn’t heard rhymes and flows like that before and was pretty entranced by the album. There was even a track composed by and featuring Sean Lennon, called “Memory Loss”.
Flash forward 15ish years, I hear about Hiero Day in Oakland, an annual show is a celebration of Hieroglyphics, hip hop and culture. Hieroglyphics were one of those groups I’d always heard of, but not listened to, like People Under the Stairs. Come to find out, Del is one, among many, of the talented MCs in the Hieroglyphics collective. To be honest, he was the rapper on the 2001 Gorillaz album too.
The Appleseed Cast “Blind Man’s Arrow”
Rounding today out with a Midwest emo hero, The Appleseed Cast. It’s a track off of Low Level Owl: Volume 1. The record uses an interesting dynamic in the audio mix, with the intense vocals layered below the heavy guitar and drum sounds.
I saw them open for TGUK right around the time this album came out. Before the show I’d judged them as “too emo”, based on almost nothing, but they ended up putting on a solid show before The Get Up Kids’ set.
