Yesterday and Today
By the end of elementary school, I had already developed this reputation of being a "classic rock" kid listening to The Beatles, Tom Petty, and U2 on regular rotation. I was aware of things happening in contemporary music like I knew of Nirvana, Green Day, and Oasis but I was more preoccupied building a foundation in the music that had come before. But, as I was preparing to move on to middle school, I wanted to talk to the other kids about more than just video games and movies; I wanted to talk to them about the stuff they were listening to and, try as I might, classic rock just wasn't cool enough for them to give a try.
So I began to branch into more modern tunes.
You have to remember what was really popular right around the time that I started middle school. Rap-rock like Limp Bizkit and nu-metal like Korn and Godsmack were ruling the airwaves when the local rock radio stations took a break from playing Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and the Smashing Pumpkins like it was still 1994. If I wanted to fit in in middle school, I'd have to start wear black t-shirts, baggy jeans, silver chains, and put gel in my hair. The music I'd have to listen to would be considerably angrier and considerably louder and I would have to be a lot less goofy and start talking more shit.
So that's just what I did.
Looking back, there's still some, uh, value in those bands and I saw caught a few of them in concert over the years and, for the most part, they put on a good show! But it never quite fit; years of listening to music that emphasized melody over power and technique is probably what kept me from embracing metal more than I have over the years. Don't get me wrong, I have Iron Maiden, Metallica, and Black Sabbath records which I still listen to every now and again but I'm always more on the lookout for a good, effervescent melody.
That all changed one afternoon in my eighth grade keyboarding class.
Keyboarding classes were a fucking joke. You type up some drills that were theoretically supposed to take the entire hour and a half class time but, if you could type (and, by the end of week one, you totally could), you'd be done inside of thirty minutes. That left a room of rowdy middle schoolers with unrestricted internet access the ability to download games and music on to the school desktops which we absolutely did; I was a goddamn champion when it came to Oregon Trail by the end of the course.
One afternoon, I was fooling around on a computer as usual and the girl next to me was watching music videos. After the then-obligatory playthrough of Limp Bizkit's Nookie, I suddenly heard the dreamy arpeggio that opens Blink-182's iconic What's My Age Again? emanating from the computer next to me. Compared to the down-tuned, industrial music I had been listening to lately, Tom DeLonge's guitar work sounded like a ray of sunshine cutting through black clouds and JNCO jean shorts.
I immediately used the rest of class researching as much as I could about Blink on my computer from their sunny SoCal roots, their entire pop punk defining discography, and as much music as I could ingest in the remaining class period. This was still a pre-iPod world where everyone carried these small binders full of CDs and, right after school, I immediately made a beeline from my locker to my friend Jennifer who had EVERYTHING. I borrowed Enema of the State and The Mark, Tom, and Travis Show and, at her suggestion, borrowed Green Day's Dookie, Nimrod, and Warning.
And so, after school, I went to school, so to speak.
Listening to the CDs in my basement, I was ecstatic that popular, contemporary music driven by melody was alive and well in the 21st century. You could still sing about heartbreak and angst but not with a scream or a sneer; the music was coming from a real place and it didn't feel like that was a place of anger. The music itself was generally up-tempo, hook-heavy, and (most importantly) guitar-driven.
I had not-so-secretly been interested in learning how to play guitar for years; I've always thought it was the coolest, most versatile instrument. The thing with my family is we were always straight up middle class. As far as we kids could tell, there was going to be food on the table and a roof over our heads but we were always taught to be thankful and satisfied with what we had. As such, we would only have one of everything growing up: There was one family computer, one video game console, one family TV (My mom thought it was super decadent when I bought a TV for my room with money from my high school job). I could already play piano, so why would I want to learn how to play guitar?
Because it's fucking badass, that's why.
None of my favorite bands in middle school had keyboardists, they were all three or four piece ensembles with one to two guitarists, a bassist, and a drummer. And the thing about bands like Green Day and Blink-182 was that most of the guitar parts were really easy. It was listening to pop punk and power pop bands that eventually led my mother to relent and get me my first guitar. That's a whole other story.
So I was playing guitar and bass right around Blink-182 put out Take Off Your Pants and Jacket and Weezer put out their Green Album. The first two rock shows I went to were co-headlined by Blink-182 (Green Day being the other co-headliner at the second). You could track what album cycle Blink-182 were in the middle of based on how I was dressing at the time: The red and blue ensembles and spiked hair from the Enema of the State era; the black outfits and long, gold-highlighted bangs from Take Off Your Pants and Jacket; the 80s-inspired fashion and shaggier hair from their self-titled album.
By the time college came around, I had pretty much tapped out on exclusively listening to pop punk and power pop. Right around then, it was a blend of whatever was coming out at the time and my own classic rock roots. I would sit in my dorm room during quieter moments, listen to a song, and immediately go and listen to all that particular musician's influences. By college, I wasn't just interested in the music; I wanted to know where it all came from.
I started out as a classic rock kid that went classical wondering if I could identify with heavier bands that were ruling the airwaves. I found what I was looking for in a pop punk trio from the suburbs of San Diego. That was the catalyst for finally dragging my music tastes into the 21st century and, inside of five years, I was comfortable with blending everything all together into the grand musical free-for-all that is where my tastes ended up now. All I needed was that three-chord push.
So I began to branch into more modern tunes.
You have to remember what was really popular right around the time that I started middle school. Rap-rock like Limp Bizkit and nu-metal like Korn and Godsmack were ruling the airwaves when the local rock radio stations took a break from playing Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and the Smashing Pumpkins like it was still 1994. If I wanted to fit in in middle school, I'd have to start wear black t-shirts, baggy jeans, silver chains, and put gel in my hair. The music I'd have to listen to would be considerably angrier and considerably louder and I would have to be a lot less goofy and start talking more shit.
So that's just what I did.
Looking back, there's still some, uh, value in those bands and I saw caught a few of them in concert over the years and, for the most part, they put on a good show! But it never quite fit; years of listening to music that emphasized melody over power and technique is probably what kept me from embracing metal more than I have over the years. Don't get me wrong, I have Iron Maiden, Metallica, and Black Sabbath records which I still listen to every now and again but I'm always more on the lookout for a good, effervescent melody.
That all changed one afternoon in my eighth grade keyboarding class.
Keyboarding classes were a fucking joke. You type up some drills that were theoretically supposed to take the entire hour and a half class time but, if you could type (and, by the end of week one, you totally could), you'd be done inside of thirty minutes. That left a room of rowdy middle schoolers with unrestricted internet access the ability to download games and music on to the school desktops which we absolutely did; I was a goddamn champion when it came to Oregon Trail by the end of the course.
One afternoon, I was fooling around on a computer as usual and the girl next to me was watching music videos. After the then-obligatory playthrough of Limp Bizkit's Nookie, I suddenly heard the dreamy arpeggio that opens Blink-182's iconic What's My Age Again? emanating from the computer next to me. Compared to the down-tuned, industrial music I had been listening to lately, Tom DeLonge's guitar work sounded like a ray of sunshine cutting through black clouds and JNCO jean shorts.
I immediately used the rest of class researching as much as I could about Blink on my computer from their sunny SoCal roots, their entire pop punk defining discography, and as much music as I could ingest in the remaining class period. This was still a pre-iPod world where everyone carried these small binders full of CDs and, right after school, I immediately made a beeline from my locker to my friend Jennifer who had EVERYTHING. I borrowed Enema of the State and The Mark, Tom, and Travis Show and, at her suggestion, borrowed Green Day's Dookie, Nimrod, and Warning.
And so, after school, I went to school, so to speak.
Listening to the CDs in my basement, I was ecstatic that popular, contemporary music driven by melody was alive and well in the 21st century. You could still sing about heartbreak and angst but not with a scream or a sneer; the music was coming from a real place and it didn't feel like that was a place of anger. The music itself was generally up-tempo, hook-heavy, and (most importantly) guitar-driven.
I had not-so-secretly been interested in learning how to play guitar for years; I've always thought it was the coolest, most versatile instrument. The thing with my family is we were always straight up middle class. As far as we kids could tell, there was going to be food on the table and a roof over our heads but we were always taught to be thankful and satisfied with what we had. As such, we would only have one of everything growing up: There was one family computer, one video game console, one family TV (My mom thought it was super decadent when I bought a TV for my room with money from my high school job). I could already play piano, so why would I want to learn how to play guitar?
Because it's fucking badass, that's why.
None of my favorite bands in middle school had keyboardists, they were all three or four piece ensembles with one to two guitarists, a bassist, and a drummer. And the thing about bands like Green Day and Blink-182 was that most of the guitar parts were really easy. It was listening to pop punk and power pop bands that eventually led my mother to relent and get me my first guitar. That's a whole other story.
So I was playing guitar and bass right around Blink-182 put out Take Off Your Pants and Jacket and Weezer put out their Green Album. The first two rock shows I went to were co-headlined by Blink-182 (Green Day being the other co-headliner at the second). You could track what album cycle Blink-182 were in the middle of based on how I was dressing at the time: The red and blue ensembles and spiked hair from the Enema of the State era; the black outfits and long, gold-highlighted bangs from Take Off Your Pants and Jacket; the 80s-inspired fashion and shaggier hair from their self-titled album.
By the time college came around, I had pretty much tapped out on exclusively listening to pop punk and power pop. Right around then, it was a blend of whatever was coming out at the time and my own classic rock roots. I would sit in my dorm room during quieter moments, listen to a song, and immediately go and listen to all that particular musician's influences. By college, I wasn't just interested in the music; I wanted to know where it all came from.
I started out as a classic rock kid that went classical wondering if I could identify with heavier bands that were ruling the airwaves. I found what I was looking for in a pop punk trio from the suburbs of San Diego. That was the catalyst for finally dragging my music tastes into the 21st century and, inside of five years, I was comfortable with blending everything all together into the grand musical free-for-all that is where my tastes ended up now. All I needed was that three-chord push.
