by Cheryl Lightfoot
We geeks are known for our love of comic books, science fiction TV and movies, and anime. But music? You don't see a lot of concerts happening on the floor at Comic Con. But geeks like me take our music as seriously as our other entertainment loves, if not more so.
For me, music is like air. I need it every day to keep me going. Sometimes music is more important, for although air is a biological necessity, it does not have the healing powers of music. Whether it's a bad day or a broken heart, music can uplift and cheer, each lyric or note pushing sadness a little further away. When I listen to a sad song when I'm sad, I feel the singer understands my pain.
And on the flip side, when people celebrate, music is a big part of it. Parties, wedding receptions, dances all require a musical score. There are few things more fun than rolling down the windows of your car, pushing the stereo volume up way to high, and belting out a terrific song as you roll down the highway. Music = joy.
Music can manipulate your emotions (next time you see a sad scene in a movie or tv show, pay attention: the background music may be saying more about how you are supposed to feel than the dialogue is.) It's an instant memory trigger, and a single bar of music can throw you back to a school vacation with your parents, your high school prom, your first dance with your new husband. I still remember lyrics to songs I haven't heard in several decades.
I don't remember when I started loving music or why, but I think my mom had a lot to do with it. She didn't have a huge album collection (though my dad did, and his Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel albums -among many others- were some of my favorites). Mom simply loved music. She was the type to sing along to the car radio constantly, and to have a boombox on the patio as she sunbathed by the pool. Mostly she like the top 40 radio hits, the poppy tunes that now populate those CDs that gather the best of the 70s and 80s. I think it's thanks to her that I like to always have music around me. I'll never forget her belting out this song to the car's FM radio.
Don't Go Breaking My Heart, Elton John and Kiki Dee
My musical tastes are a little different than my mom's were; I love a good pop song, but I don't usually follow the Top 40. It just doesn't appeal to me, for whatever reason. When MTV launched, I was 15, and had a lot of free time on my hands that I used to open my mind to music I had never heard before. And while you have to work pretty hard to catch a music video on that channel now, then it was all music. And so much of it was brand spanking new to me. Perhaps, in the town where I grew up, they played the Sex Pistols on some radio station. But I never heard them there and I probably never would have heard them until college if it weren't for MTV.
I discovered two things: I liked finding new music, and for the most part, I was a fan of new wave music and what they called "college rock." Today, all that is lumped together as 'alternative', whatever that means, and those tunes are genuine oldies. But then, it was all so new and exciting. Finding a new song or band to love is like falling in love for the first time: you can't get the song out of your mind, you want to find out more about it, you want to spend all your time with it, and it causes a physical reaction: your heart beats faster, your skin tingles, it makes you want to get up and dance with joy. It's a total rush that I have never gotten tired of.
The first band I really fell in love with was Squeeze, a band from London that had a bit of success with two videos that you would have seen a squillion times if you watched MTV during that time: Tempted and Black Coffee in Bed. I really liked their music and the lead singer was totally dreamy, so I bought their greatest hits album and in no time, they were my favorite band. Here's a wonderful tune of theirs called Up the Junction, which is desperately sad if you pay attention to the lyrics.
Squeeze, Up the Junction
In college, I had a roommate as dedicated to music as I was, and although she didn't really introduce me to Genesis, as they were all over the radio at the time, she played their early, uber-cool albums that had Peter Gabriel as the lead singer. I had never heard those songs before, but really liked them. This song is really theatrical and weird, but only a fraction as weird as the album as a whole. I love it.
Genesis, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway
I met my husband while I was on a college internship and while we were dating, he introduced me to some great music too. One artist was Billy Bragg, the Englishman who talked with the taxman about poetry. Although Scott's tastes were more classic rock than new wave, he still introduced me to this iconic artist.
Billy Bragg, A New England, Live
I knew I could marry Scott because once he heard my favorite music, he liked it too, or at least he tolerated what he did not love. After college, we moved to northwest Ohio and I finally found those radio stations I was looking for. One was called 89X, which broadcast out of the Windsor, Ontario area. Due to regulations regarding Canadian content, they played a set percentage of music from Canadian bands. For the first time, I was hearing alternative music from bands from the Great White North. I could make this post a hundred yards long if I included all my favorite Canuck bands of the 90s, so here are just two of my very favorite songs.
Grace Too, The Tragically Hip
I can't quite explain what is was about this exotic 'foreign' music that I loved so much, except perhaps that it was new and kind of unknown to most of my friends which made me feel that much cooler for liking it. Smug audiophiles everywhere probably know the sensation of discovering and loving a new band before anyone else does, or god forbid, that band SELLS OUT and actually starts making money performing their music. It feels good, is what I'm saying. Or, it could just be that the music was good and just happened to appeal to me. The Tragically Hip put on a damn good live show, too, which helped immensely. My passion for all things Canadian got even worse when I discovered there was a Canadian version of MTV, which I could tune in at the TV station where I worked. Amazingly, the feed was not scrambled! Those were heady days where I fell in love with dozens of bands from up north.
Not that I gave up on good American music. Of course, grunge happened and I loved it, flannel, dirty hair and all. It sounds cliche, but I when I heard Nirvana for the first time, it was an absolute "aha!" moment for me. But there was so much more to love. I got a subscription to CMJ magazine, a college music journal that sent out a free CD with every magazine. Most bands were totally unknown to me, and it's safe to admit that some of the songs were, sadly, not very good. But there were some great discoveries on those discs: Elliot Smith, Mark Eitzel, Sigur Ros, Orgy and so much more. This weirdly titled song is so distinctive and memorable.
Official Ironman Rally Song, Guided By Voices
Movies and TV are great ways to find new music, too. I normally prefer fiction to non-fiction when it comes to entertainment, but somehow I heard about a rock documentary that sounded really interesting. I like a band called the Dandy Warhols, who were featured in a movie called Dig! The movie compares and contrasts the possibly less-talented but more successful Dandies with a rival band called The Brian Jonestown Massacre (really), who are led by a near musical genius called Anton Newcombe. Unfortunately, Anton was unstable (if the movie is to be believed) and seemed determined to sabotage any chance of his band's success, which was really unfortunate. These guys are damn, damn good.
When Jokers Attack, Brian Jonestown Massacre
I've heard conflicting reports on just how accurate the movie is, but it is very entertaining and I definitely took away a love of BJM. They have a huge catalog of music (Anton is both talented and prolific) and the band experiments with a lot of different music styles.
The arrival of the internet meant a lot of things for music lovers: finding an obscure album on e-Bay, connecting with a group of like-minded music lovers and finding a community that didn't exist in your offline life, and finally knowing all the lyrics to It's the End of the World as We Know It by REM. While you could also steal music using illegal peer-to-peer sites, that wasn't cool and not too useful for discovering a new favorite band. (As an aside, the Brian Jonestown Massacre offered up their whole catalog for a free download during this time period.) Fast forward some years to the mid-2000s and the birth of iTunes. Not only would they give you free songs every week (usually pretty good, sometimes great,) but I discovered the single greatest thing about the service: the Song of the Day podcast.
I found several different radio stations or online communities that offer a daily podcast which consists of a single song, no commercials or DJ blather, that you could download and have and even put on your iPod. Completely free and legal! Were they all great? Of course not. But they were new songs, some from bands I knew and some from artists I'd never heard of but grew to love. The thrill of discovery and the satisfaction of ownership were tied up in one 4 minute podcast. I have probably heard thousands of new songs this way, and heard many tunes that would (much, much later) hit it big on alternative radio. But I heard them first. (Said the smug audiophile!)
The Thermals, Now We Can See
Rogue Wave, Lake Michigan
Want to get in on this free awesomeness? Do an iTunes search for KEXP, KCRW and The Current from Minnesota Public Radio. You can subscribe to the podcasts and depending on how cooperative your computer is, those songs will automatically download to your device as soon as you power it up. You can also stream their radio stations and hear more great tunes. MPR's The Current is a particular favorite of mine; their music is so eclectic (Miles Davis, Loretta Lynn and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes in the same set!) and they have no commercials. It's a public radio station, and last year I caved in during a pledge drive and became a sustaining member.
I actually had heard the Rogue Wave song around somewhere, and when it appeared as my daily download, I was so happy, because I liked it but didn't know where to find it. And there it was! I found Rogue Wave when a song of theirs appeared in the TV show Heroes. I hadn't heard of the band yet, but a Google search for the lyrics helped me figure out the name of the song. (It was Eyes, btw.) That's another cool way to find a song - the song you hear on the radio but don't catch the name of. I was driving back to Ohio from my parent's house and I passed through Angola, Ind. where there is a college radio station that plays cool music but never tells you what it is. I heard a great song but had no clue how to find it again. I memorized a bit of the lyrics, got home and hopped on the internet and voila! I found it.
Bell X-1, Rocky Took a Lover
I love Bell X-1 now, and I'm so glad I drove past that station on that day, and that I was able to figure out who they were. But if you don't want to just trust blind luck in trying to find your new favorite song, here are some ways to seek out new music.
The internet has a lot of great music features now, like streaming radio. I know a lot of people are in to Pandora and Spotify, but I like SoundCloud. I subscribe to a few bands and labels I really like, and I just make a list of those songs I want to hear. There's no logarithm-based software trying to convince me that because I like one 90s band (Better Than Ezra,) I must also really want to hear Counting Blue Cars. Because I don't. SoundCloud just plays what you ask it to play. You can favorite all the songs you love but can't afford to buy just now, try out a new album before you commit to buying it, or explore the music offerings of labels, bands, or individuals who seem to like the same stuff you do. I follow SubPop records on SoundCloud, and they have hundreds of good songs to enjoy. I recommend you try it and see if you can find something you like. (This would be a good site for lovers of different music genres; unfortunately I am no expert on where to find the next great country or rap artist you are looking for.)
The internet has a lot of great music features now, like streaming radio. I know a lot of people are in to Pandora and Spotify, but I like SoundCloud. I subscribe to a few bands and labels I really like, and I just make a list of those songs I want to hear. There's no logarithm-based software trying to convince me that because I like one 90s band (Better Than Ezra,) I must also really want to hear Counting Blue Cars. Because I don't. SoundCloud just plays what you ask it to play. You can favorite all the songs you love but can't afford to buy just now, try out a new album before you commit to buying it, or explore the music offerings of labels, bands, or individuals who seem to like the same stuff you do. I follow SubPop records on SoundCloud, and they have hundreds of good songs to enjoy. I recommend you try it and see if you can find something you like. (This would be a good site for lovers of different music genres; unfortunately I am no expert on where to find the next great country or rap artist you are looking for.)
Low, Silver Rider
So that's me, seeking out and geeking out to new music. What music do you like, my fellow geeks? Where do you go when you want a new music fix? Or do you prefer the oldies? I'd love to know, so post something in the comments! Until then, I'll be the chick in the corner with earbuds plugged in, finding solace in sound.
