Branching, part II

Building on some of the thoughts from my previous Branching Out/Forgive Me Animal Collective post…

I’ve sometimes been (quietly, passive-aggressively) critical of people whose music tastes never seem to broaden or evolve. More specifically, I’ve been judgy of people who land on the music they like and then never try anything else¹, like picky toddlers who settle on the single thing they’ll condescend to eat. “Nothing but peanut butter—creamy only—& jelly on white bread with the crusts cut off” is not all that different from “Nothing after 1980” or “Pink Floyd studio albums but only until Roger Waters left².” You know the type; you may even be them: those whose music tastes solidify, then calcify, then petrify (most often in high school, and we’ll get to that in the next paragraph) and then just…sit there…frozen in proverbial amber, forever playing Led Zeppelin II or Tori Amos’ Little Earthquakes or The Very Best of Journey at a reasonable volume.

But did you know that there’s science attached to it all?

It comprises a whole section of Daniel J. Levitin’s book This Is Your Brain On Music. And you can find similar results in all kinds of articles that talk about how formative the music we listen to from ages 10-19 is, almost deterministically shaping the music we’ll listen to from 20-onward. Another study narrows that window down to ages 13-16 for men and 11-14 for women, going so far as to predict that the average man’s favorite song was released when the boy was age 14³. They’re not called our formative years just to be cute, I guess.

So it’s not necessarily anyone’s fault. We’re all just by-products of science. 

Unless!

Unless—like I wrote about in my last post—we make an active, conscious effort to avoid the calcification, right? Muscles atrophy unless you move them, so we move them. Likewise, our musical horizons atrophy unless we keep stretching them, unless we stave off the encroaching museum-ification of our musical world with active listening.

I love music. And I love music discovery, the allure of the new, the possibility. So I’ve put real effort into this. Sometimes successfully. Other times less so (again, as I detailed in my apology to the Animal Collective guys).

Over the years, some falling out of touch is normal. Phases of life change things. It’s expected even. What I never expected, though, was getting behind on music I knew I loved. Two cases in point:

POINT ONE OF GETTING BEHIND ON MUSIC I LOVE:
ALBUMS I WHIFFED ON EVEN HEARING ABOUT

My favorite album of 2016 was probably Texas art-rock outfit Shearwater’s Jet Plane and Oxbow. Last month, I had a hankering for their dramatic, orchestral indie rock and put it on one morning as I was getting ready for work. Imagine my surprise when I looked at Apple Music and discovered that they had released an album in 2022 that I didn’t even know existed.

Likewise, singer/songwriter Iris Dement’s 2012 Sing The Delta was a favorite the year it came out. And again, by chance, I found myself revisiting it last week and stumbled on the fact that she has a new album coming out next month.

There’s no way, 20 years ago, I wouldn’t have known release dates for follow-ups to favorites like this. Zero chance. Releases by artists I loved would never sneak up on me⁴; they were highly-anticipated dates, circled on the calendar. I'd skip second period to cruise down to Sound Off on 7th East or use my lunch break to run over to the Virgin Megastore in Times Square. It was the audio version of Appointment Viewing.

And yet, here I find myself, unaware that albums by artists whose last albums I loved (and those are just two quick examples of a far wider trend for me) have new albums. What happened? I mean, I have four kids now. A mortgage. A remodel. All of which means less disposable income. Sure, I have a full-time job that “should” mean more money than in my 20s and early 30s, but that’s both patently not the case as expenses go up too, and it’s also bandwidth-consuming, as are part-time music/writing hustles. Add in the facts that record stores have diminished generally (my two go-to’s—Slowtrain and Graywhale—are gone and, with them, their whiteboards of Upcoming Releases, a constant for me) and I don’t read music magazines (Rolling Stone, Spin, NME, No Depression, Harp, Musician, Magnet) like I used to and I guess that’s a recipe for falling out of touch.

But music still matters as much to me as it ever did. Maybe more. It’s a conundrum. In a world where every politician from a political party I may have once affiliated with can email me 75,000 times for a donation to their campaign that will stop the slow-crumble of our civilization, or where every business I’ve ever once pulled up in Google Chrome emails me twice on anything resembling a holiday (“HAPPY EARTH DAY from Exxon Mobil—get 10% off your next…”), how is it possible that Iris Dement and Shearwater records aren’t on my radar⁵?

So…BIG QUESTION FOR THE READERSHIP:

How do you keep up with releases from your favorite artists? Follow them on social media? Email lists? Is there a site that keeps you updated? What’s the secret, dear readers?

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POINT TWO OF GETTING BEHIND:
MY REPERTOIRE OF COVERS

In the late 90s and early 00s, I used to play a night or two a week at a local restaurant called Gepetto’s. It was a 3+ hour gig and, as such, I made sure I had a deep repertoire of songs to pull from. I’d play mostly covers with the occasional original song sprinkled in. I kept a big spiral binder full of lyric sheets, some of them with chords strategically placed over the lyrics, some of them with just the words (since I knew the chords well enough). Because I could often double or triple my take-home pay with tips, I tried to have a broad-ish range of songs in the book so that I could appease audience requests. That meant at least one song from most of the artists I like (or could stomach playing)….so somebody yells, “The Eagles” or “Hotel California”, I could reply, “well, I know ‘Take It Easy’…” and then they’d usually throw a couple bucks in the tip hat. I don’t wanna be a jukebox, but I’m also a born pleaser. Add in even the most minor financial incentive and it makes sense, right?

Recently, I shook of the dust and started playing another regular gig at a hotel that is, again, a 3-hour gig. I’ve pulled out the same old book from the late 90s/early 00s, supplemented with a song here and there from my Madison Arm and Rooftop Tribute repertoires. Since I started playing the gig over the past months, it’s dawned on me that there might not be a song in my book newer than, like, 2009!

TWO THOUSAND NINE!

To confirm my suspicions, I just checked the binder and, sure enough, it turns out the most recently-released songs were:

Just Breathe - Pearl Jam/Willie Nelson (2009)
Fake Empire - The National (2007)
Falling Slowly - Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova (2007)
The Quiet Life - Kasey Chambers/Shane Nicholson (2012, but that’s still more than a decade old)

So much for staying up to date.

I immediately added some “newer” songs and even that, because I did it off the top of my head without looking at the actual release dates, was slightly pathetic:

The House That Built Me - Miranda Lambert (2009, lol)
Re: Stacks - Bon Iver (2008, lol-er)
Liability - Lorde (2017, phew, but still HALF A DECADE AGO)
Motion Sickness - Phoebe Bridgers⁶ (also 2017)

One of the reasons I took the gig in the first place was because I love to learn cover songs. I love learning how they put chords together and phrasing and tuning in more closely to lyrics. So this is a good chance to re-up on new stuff, when I’ve clearly failed at staying current (even if the older stuff does play well with the older crowd that comes through the hotel and, thus, the tip jar). I just need to be a bit more deliberate about the material.

So, my second BIG QUESTION:

What are some songs, preferably in the 2017-2023 window, I should consider adding to the list? Either just songs you think fit or songs you think are modern standards?

1. I covered this more exhaustively in my last post:

Branching Animals

2. Or the even-more-insufferable “Only The Syd Barrett Era Is Worthwhile” folks. You know who you are. I admire your commitment to the bit. And you are wrong.

3. Science isn’t totally off. I love all kinds of songs released when I was 14:
- Here’s Where The Story Ends by The Sundays (someday, some shrink will help me understand why I love The Sundays but just can’t with Morrissey)
- Ball & Chain by Social Distortion
- Love Rears Its Ugly Head by Living Colour (maybe the most underrated band of the late 80s/early 90s)
- Three Days by Jane’s Addiction
- Birdhouse In Your Soul by They Might Be Giants
- No Myth by Michael Penn (Oft-painted as a one-hit wonder, Penn’s albums Resigned and Mr Hollywood Jr are masterworks, as is his latest song, “A Revival.” )
- Pictures of Matchstick Men by Camper Van Beethoven
- Twice As Hard by The Black Crowes (for the first decade-plus that I listened to this song, I thought singer Chris Robinson was singing “Twice as hard, as opposed to the first time I said goodbye” not the actual lyrics “Twice as hard as it was the first time I said goodbye” which is funny to me just how much literary credit I was giving Mr. Robinson, who later wrote the heady lyrics “The way you say hello / When you dig a hole / When you wear yellow / When you play your cello”…)
- Can I Kick It? by A Tribe Called Quest (Yes, you can.)
- Nothing Compares 2 U by Sinead O’Connor
- Put The Message In A Box by World Party (another candidate for an underrated late 80s/early 90s band; nobody wore the Beatles’ sonic clothes quite like Karl Wallinger did in this era)
- John The Fisherman by Primus
- It’s A Hard Life Wherever You Go by Nanci Griffith (one of the best concerts I’ve ever been to was Nanci Griffith & the Blue Moon Orchestra at Snowbird. She weaved story after story in her lonesome, folksy Texas drawl.)
- Joey by Concrete Blonde
- Hands All Over by Soundgarden
- Dear Mr. Fantasy by Grateful Dead (live from Without A Net)
- Where Did You Sleep Last Night by Mark Lanegan (it’s well-documented that Nirvana’s more famous, unplugged version of this song was inspired by Lanegan)
- Groove Is In the Heart by Deee-Lite (stone cold classic)
- Crown of Thorns by Mother Love Bone + Say Hello 2 Heaven by Temple of the Dog

I was about to say, “BUT….there are no songs in there in contention for favorite song ever” and then I saw….

- There She Goes by The La’s

And, man, if that’s not a perfect little pop song, I’m not sure what is.

4. An Off The Top Of My Head List of Some Albums I Recall Buying The Day They Came Out:
Pearl Jam - Ten (after the demos I listened to with my cousin, remember?)
Pearl Jam - Five Against One (the album after Ten, my cassette actually says Five Against One since it was pressed before they changed the name to Vs; and, yes, this is me bragging)
The Samples - The Last Drag and No Room
The Black Crowes - A Southern Harmony & Musical Companion
Midnight Oil - Earth & Sun & Moon
Randy Newman - The Randy Newman Songbook Vol 1 (I got him to sign my copy at Tower Records in Manhattan!)
U2 - Zooropa (the album after Achtung Baby, my experience hearing Zooropa for the first time is another essay entirely)
Ryan Adams -Gold (the album after Heartbreaker, way before #metoo)
Radiohead - Kid A
Coldplay - A Rush of Blood To The Head
Beck - Sea Change
Gillian Welch -Soul Journey
Patty Griffin -1000 Kisses and Impossible Dream (I saw Patty play a handful of these songs solo acoustic in a Barnes & Noble in midtown Manhattan. A BARNES & NOBLE!)
Neil Young - Are You Passionate? (more on this particular purchase later)
Anais Mitchell - s/t
(plus a heap of friends’ albums whose Kickstarter campaigns I contributed to)

5. I suppose it’s mildly heartening, as an artist, to know that if this happens to a music fan like myself, perhaps it happens to people who like my music too.

6. Look. I told you there would be a lot of lists. It was a promise.