A Band That I Used to Know

                In preparation for a new addition to my family in the form of a baby girl I have been going through many of my belongings to determine what I can dispose of that will not actually impact me in the losing of said belongings.  I have been combing through drawers, cabinets, boxes, bookshelves, and even my CD collection.  While flipping through my collection of compact discs a few days ago I came across some rather interesting discoveries or re-discoveries, as it were.  This was where I can to several conclusions: a) younger me was WAY more musically eclectic that I am now, b) younger me was way more musically stupid than I am now, and c) younger me wasted way too much money on music.

                Up until the about four years ago my CD collection was immaculate.  That is not meaning that it was a perfect collection of music, just that my numerous books of CDs were not only in alphabetical order but also in alphabetical order by genre, year of release, or in case of multiple releases in the same year by album title.  Yes some of my CDS were scratched to hell and back, but they still managed to play in any CD playing device that I put them in.   

                As I poured through the books of CDs I began to remember listening to almost every album that I own and enjoying over ninety-five percent of the music.  I took a few of the albums out and threw them into the CD player to jam out while finishing the cleaning up of the office.  Almost instantly upon the first track beginning I thought to myself, “What the fuck was I thinking when I bought this?  More importantly, why the hell did I even like this?”  Seriously, almost every one of those CDs was crap.  It was crap when I bought it.  It was crap when I was jamming to it.  It was just crap.

                Instrumentally, the music is stock.  There is nothing challenging in how the guitars, drums, basses, and other instruments are presented to the listener.  Lyrically, the writing is on par with the poetry of between an eighth grader to sophomore in high school.  And much of this is from grown people who have been in the music business for several years and have several albums under their belts.  Oh sure, much of it has “shredding” guitar solos that rocked my face off back in the day.  Today, though, I realize that all the soloist is doing is playing scales really fast.  The singer is going on and on about the travesty of war like they are the first one to put into song the notion of war being a bad thing.  The song is completely void of any real depth or meaning.

                Then there are the albums where the singers are pouring their hearts out over the loss of love, the anguish of loss, and how much not having that one person in their life anymore sucks; all while playing slow, simple bar cords on an acoustic guitar.  Hell, these are Taylor Swift’s albums before there was a Taylor Swift.  For the most part all of this together does not annoy me, I still like Jewel’s first album.  However, when you take into consideration that at one point I had heard all of her albums and they were all the freaking same.  Sappy music, weepy lyrics, and melodrama.  Some of the songs have good vibe to them, but in the end, it is still the ingredients listed in the previous sentence.

  

              These days I seem to have gone away from wanting to listen to what is popular and current or classic and “Retro.”  I have a tendency more than ever to listen to the music whose lyrics actually inspire with more than just a catch phrase.  Music that discusses things which are important to us as a people, a nation, and a world community.  Music where it is obvious that the instrument players know how to play their instruments and did not just learn by reading tabs off some webpage and suddenly thought they knew what the hell they were doing.  I have also begun to listen to more of the classical music that I have.  I am not talking about Skynyrd and Sabbath.  I am talking about Mozart and Bach.  It calms me, relaxes me, and allows me to have something to listen to whilst thinking through things.  Hell, couple classical music, stroking my beard, and actual thinking and I will have world peace through domination down in a week.