This Saturday, April 19, 2008, is the inaugural Record Store Day, a pseudo-holiday spearheaded by an alliance of several indie retailer organizations, encouraging all involved to celebrate the culture and aesthetics of such stores and ideally bolster sales. On some level, the day’s very existence appears to be an admission across the board that independent record stores are not doing so well. I was living in New York City for a few months in Summer 2005, and I tried in vain to find the stores that were listed in the then-still-current Yellow Pages – they had all shut down, seemingly at the same time (perhaps more than in any other city, New York’s audiophile has been entranced by the allure of portable, digital media). The indie/used record store is certainly a dying breed, but I have noticed a resurgence of late (I wonder if any stores have reopened in NYC?...). Maybe it only seems that way to me, because Nashville has a healthy independent music scene and is generally behind the nationwide curve technology-wise and it has several of the finest used music stores I’ve ever seen, but there is definitely a different energy in the air than just a few years ago. I can’t speak to such stores’ continued success in other cities, but I’m willing to bet that Electric Fetus in Minneapolis and Amoeba Music in Los Angeles are still going strong.
That these stores are still (or once again) successful is not necessarily surprising; downloadable music is still young, and tangibles like disc insert art, the smell of the packaging, extensive liner notes, etc., are just not there on iTunes. For me, there is still a draw for CDs; whether it is a nostalgia trip back to 1996 or the necessity to listen to an entire album all the way through without shuffle, there are things CDs offer me that I do not get from my iPod, while are still in effect roughly compatible with the iPod, with a little work. Personally, I download a lot of music (some legal, some “extralegal”), but I am probably in the minority in that I still buy a number of CDs. This is the same minority that supported these indie record stores in the 1990s, a time when every city of more than 20,000 had at least one charming mom-and-pop corner music shop. But in recent years, as the market for physical copies of music became more obscure and specialized and most used CD stores have closed their doors, the clientèle has shifted to a wholly different format, one that does not particularly appeal to me, but also one that I admittedly do not completely understand. That format is vinyl.
Audio junkies will use any chance to discuss the merits and storied history of vinyl. They say that it never really went away, that hip bands have always continued to release music on vinyl despite the rise of other formats, and that it “sounds better.” The music market post-1985 is so complex (dare I say postmodern?) that making such broad statements across the entire marketplace are at most false, and at least precarious and cautionable. That vinyl “sounds better” is an argument I will revisit later in this essay. But most likely, all of these notions are tantamount to more than a little bit of revisionist history. The lure of vinyl must be more firmly rooted in the nostalgic, yearning for a bygone era of music that on some level seemed more “pure.” More “enlightened” bands than ever are releasing their new music on vinyl, playing into the great vinyl fantasy.
When I visit one of these stores in Nashville today, some of the patrons in the vinyl section are middle-aged or older (certainly old enough to truly appreciate vinyl’s golden age). The ones that perplex me are the younger twenty-somethings. On a different but related note, my older sister works in marketing and media in NYC. Several of her colleagues are a few years younger, in their early 20s. My sister understandably objected when one 22-year-old girl cavalierly expressed her nostalgia for the 1980s, even though she was hardly old enough to talk at the turn of that decade. Although that girl is most likely not in the hipster set, and she more than probably does not own any vinyl, she illustrates an important point: The 1980s and before were the last time that an era truly had an identity across the cultural spectrum. Think about that lame “1980s Party” your friends put on in college. We can all vividly picture the fashion, the TV shows, the movies, the fads and trends, and especially the music, regardless of whether we were really culturally conscious in the 80s themselves. The 1980s are recent enough where we can almost remember, but they come from a completely different cultural approach and landscape. The 1990s, in contrast, were subtler, more esoteric, more scattered, and more moody. But more importantly, the 90s were the first time when American pop culture as a generalized whole doubled back on itself, mining trends and sounds from decades past, almost in equal measure and without regard for any sort of progression. This halt to goal-oriented innovation marked the end of an American Popular Modernism and the beginning of a Postmodernist sensibility. [For example, grunge was a punk/metal/classic rock hybrid, neo-swing was obviously past-oriented, third-wave ska was already ska’s third wave, and the bubblegum pop revival of the late 1990s was simply a slicker facsimile of similar sounds from 10 years prior. There were, for the most part, no new sounds created in the 1990s. Note: I mean this to be in no way a knock on the 90s, either. It is rather mentioned here to point out how the pattern of artistic progression and creativity fundamentally changed.] Clinging to the 1980s, then, is more than natural: it can seem completely of-the-moment and appropriate to do so (per the rules of Postmodern nostalgia and ironic indie-scene embracing of tongue-in-cheek camp), yet most of us can claim to have been a part of it in some way, whether valid or not!
So at least on some level, vinyl fandom is rooted in Postmodern cultural nostalgia. But of course there’s also personal nostalgia, which is in my opinion much more legitimate and valid. But if vinyl is the main ingredient in most forms of musical nostalgia, why doesn’t it speak to me in any way? I think it has very much to do with my upbringing. My parents were avid music fans, to be sure, and there was more than a small collection of vinyl records next to our living room stereo. Music was always playing in our house and on car trips. But we were a cassette tape family by the time I was old enough to know what was going on. All the best records had been transferred to cassette, mostly for play on road trips (where, to this day, I believe the most basic musical consciousness is conceived). But mostly, unlike many of my fellow musicians and aficionados, I never had a eureka moment in which I discovered by dad’s cache of Pink Floyd, Rolling Stones, Beatles, Mott the Hoople, and ELO LPs. That moment never happened because that cache did not exist. The family LP collection was great in doses (my mom’s Paul Simon records and my sister’s Thriller were highlights), but as a family, our cassette tape stash, both original tapes and dubbed records or radio mixes, was more consistent. In fact, I remember our LPs being somewhat off-limits anyway, and requests to fire up the turntable being greeted with groany resistance. But even with a pretty solid set of tapes owned by my parents and older sister, from a relatively early age, I was to hear on the radio what I liked by myself, forging my own musical identity, although still heavily influenced by the sounds and general appreciation my parents taught me. By the time I was old enough to decide that I would spend money on my own copies of music, we had CD players. Cassette tapes had wussy sound, wore out easily, and had no easy way to select tracks. Their handiness on car rides notwithstanding (today my only cassette pangs are for mixtapes, but even those are trumped by mix CDs and MP3 playlists), I felt little resistance leaving that world behind and starting my own musical journey on CD. Vinyl had barely been on my radar.
Years before I could drive a car, I began taking trips to Bismarck’s Music Syndicate Discs & Tapes store by myself. It was owned and operated by a friend of my dad’s, and we had gone there in various family member combinations to visit Mike and peruse tapes since I can remember. When CDs took their hold on my obsessive collector’s sensibility (coins, rocks, toy dinosaurs, baseball cards, pogs, etc., being CDs’ predecessors in that dubious honor), and I began venturing out of the neighborhood on my bike, there was little stopping me. With the average 13-year-old’s overall lack of expenses, and money from mowing the lawn, allowance from parents, and gifts from relatives, I was on fire, solidly planting the cornerstone of my CD collection today, which I can proudly claim as the largest and most-diverse CD collection of anyone I have personally met in my 23 ½ years. For those 5 or so years, before I moved away to college (and perhaps not coincidentally, Music Syndicate shut its doors), the majority of store space was new and used CDs. A cassette tape display on the wall was little more than a cute homage, and the used vinyl section seemed like it had been not touched once since 1989. I understand that Bismarck may not have the hippest audiophile scene, but in my teenage years, vinyl seemed almost sad, a dinosaur that had already been dead and buried.
Of course, I probably overstate things. Someone must have been buying and selling those records. But the fact that vinyl has not died yet, by 2008, seems ludicrous to me. Okay, the physical nature of vinyl’s operation means that the analog sound has more frequencies or something. CD chops out some of those frequencies, MP3 chops out even more. However, I cannot hear any difference between a CD and a high-bitrate MP3. Anyone who says they can is probably a liar. But then, does vinyl sound “warmer” than CD? – I don’t know; that’s kind of up to you and how you have your stereo equalized, and what kind of speakers you own, right? Does vinyl sound “better”? – yeah, if by “better” you mean “scratchier and crackly.” CDs, MP3s, and even cassette tapes far outshine vinyl records convenience-wise. Even if you prefer the sound of vinyl (which I emphatically do not), records are for the most part not portable. You cannot listen in the car or at work. You cannot make a mix-vinyl record for your friends or create a playlist. You cannot listen to records on shuffle (unless you have one of those weirdo jukeboxes). We have been given a gift with modern technology. Music can be a part of our lives almost constantly, everywhere we go, with digital media. To relegate musical enjoyment to those times when we can sit in our living room and listen to a vinyl side seems outdated to me, and very frankly reductive. It used to be that our lives could be split into two parts: listening to music, and the rest. Now, music is intertwined with the events of our lives in an ever-increasing way, and there is no such dualism. Vinyl as a medium is so foreign to me, and again, I don’t really get it, but I honestly do not see the appeal.
Another argument that I haven’t explored is of those who do not download music because the artists get no royalties, but then are completely content to buy a used record. I promise that Boy George sees no royalties from that used Culture Club record that someone bought last week. It was bought once, yes, but there is no new money being exchanged, compensating the artist, writers, and publisher for the new enjoyment by new fans. The same goes for used CDs, of course, but the bitter snobbery of such hypocritical value judgments is usually reserved by the indie rock elite vinyl fan.
Then there is the thrill for collectors to find something out-of-print or rare, only ever released on vinyl. This one I understand, but I have personally always found much more thrill in seeking out rare CDs. CDs had a golden age of only about 10 years, but I am sure more music, both obscure and popular, was released on CD in those 10 years than was ever released on vinyl through vinyl's lengthy history.
Vinyl has a special place in people’s hearts, and I would never want to take that away from anyone. I make so secret that vinyl has simply never been an important aspect of my music life, but I see it in most cases as a weak tie to the past, grounded only in nostalgia (either personal or Postmodern-cultural) for an era since usurped in technology. Technological strides since the advent of the CD have resulted in convenient portable media and musical immediacy never before seen. A fondness for vinyl, often accompanied by an impractical repudiation of all other formats, rejects what contemporary technology can offer to us, and the enhanced musical appreciation it facilitates.
I will celebrate Record Store Day on Saturday by visiting my three favorite Nashville haunts. I will have a great time. But I will stay in the CD section.
April 16, 2008
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
An Apology on Liberal Leanings Among Artists and Intellectuals
Last night on Comedy Central’s Colbert Report, host Stephen Colbert asked his guest, legendary songwriter Carole King, “Why are musicians so liberal?” She paused for a second, and shook her head, responding earnestly, “I don’t know.” Colbert made a joke, and the question was brushed off as the conversation moved on to a discussion of King’s efforts to help an environmental advocacy group in Colorado.
Colbert is of course playing a conservative-pundit character, and I get the sneaking suspicion that both he (the real-life Stephen Colbert) and King know damn well why musicians are liberal, but still in all, I was perplexed that she did not take advantage of the golden opportunity to explain in it intellectual terms. I have never before seen such a fundamental question leveled at someone capable of answering it in such a wide-reaching (and ultimately, forgiving) forum as The Colbert Report.
With far longer wind than I would no doubt be allotted on Colbert's program, I will attempt to posit my theoretical response to said question. Of course I admit that I am biased as a liberal myself, but I don’t necessarily see this as an attack on conservatism or the Republican Party, it’s just the way I see it as unfolding.
The Republican Party, or the new conservative movement, or what-have-you, seems like the party of absolute truths (i.e. there is one American family, there is one true religion, there is one American dream, and everyone has, for the most part, the same opportunities). There are certainly times when this sort of absolutism is valid and appropriate, but I think more often than not, the story of America cannot be broken down into such black and white terms.
Liberals, on the other hand, deal with the subjective – for instance, “Yes, I have been privileged, and I am lucky to have been. But what if things had been slightly different?” Or alternately, “People in the inner city have not been dealt the same number of cards. Maybe we can break the chain of poverty and violence if we give them a preferential option for jobs and welfare, to make the future brighter for them, and especially their children and grandchildren.” Some might call this sort of shades-of-gray policy wishy-washy or weak spirited, and there are doubtless instances of broken systems or liberal ideology shifting too far into areas of unrealistic humanism and hopeless idealism, but the project is noble: to level the playing field by attempting to put oneself in another’s shoes. (To go further, focus on the environment is arguably a call to put ourselves in the shoes of our descendants, preserving resources and natural beauty for them; abortion-rights advocacy is not support of killing fetuses – to liberals, it is an acknowledgment of compassion to young women put in difficult circumstances with few options.)
Back to the original issue. Musicians, and artists of all kinds, really, and a lot of intellectuals and humanities-type people, make a living dealing in the subjective. And thank goodness; their output would be incredibly boring otherwise. Being able to see from other points of view, whether or not that is the right thing to do or even valid or practical in a certain instance, is what liberals do, and it also happens to be what humanities people and artists do – they go hand-in-hand. Also, artistic types are constantly searching for new ideas, or ways to appropriate old ideas in interesting ways, and this insatiable appetite fuels progressivism, not only in the arts but also in the socio-political realm.
I see the appeal of hard-line stances – “If you commit a crime, you are a criminal; there is no reason that residents of the inner city cannot take responsibility for themselves; Muslim fundamentalists attack U.S. civilians in the name of Allah, so Islam is evil.” So simple, there’s a neat order to them, almost poetic. The realities, however, are infinitely more nuanced.
What led the criminal to commit that crime? Is it fair to punish someone for committing a crime for, say, preserving himself or his family? Is it fair to punish him the same amount as someone who committed the same crime just to be a dick?
How on earth are inner city residents supposed to take responsibility when there are fewer positive role models in their communities, or responsibility has not been consistently stressed as a virtue?
Is it fair to define one fifth of the world in terms of a minority of radical jerks? Is it fair to assume that Middle-Eastern culture operates on Western, post-Enlightenment ideals of personal freedom and separation of religion & secular life/culture, or that it should?
There are no easy answers to these questions, but the very act of giving them a second look is more than many people do. I'm getting worked up now, and I could go on with dozens more examples of how our domestic and global realities are complex and subjective, but such digressions would effectively lose touch with the purpose of this column. That is, artists, musicians, writers, etc., are simply more likely than their non-artistic counterparts to be hard-wired into seeing from another’s point of view, then making them more likely to jive with the social and political sector that is consistent with such mindsets. Not necessarily out of enlightenment, mind you, but because that's what artists do.
(An aside: The irony is that, in today’s fiercely bipartisan political climate, the same movement supposedly based more on intellectualism, empathy, and multiple points-of-view is forced by its very leaders and proponents to shut itself off from the biggest set of other points of view, that of their Republican opponents, therefore squelching any room for compromise or discourse on either side. It is for this reason that I cannot necessarily call Democrats open-minded, however much I would like that to be the case.)
I do not know why Carole King was stumped by this question – it seems so obvious. Maybe she knew that Colbert's character would interrupt her and not let her speak. Maybe she assumed everyone knows the answer, or maybe she got flustered on TV. Regardless, I am sad that she missed the opportunity to once and for all defend the arts and entertainment industries’ liberal leanings against accusations of anti-American hippy non-politics. Although that may be the case for, say, someone like Richard Gere, the reality in total is far more nuanced. There are no absolutes.
March 19, 2008
Colbert is of course playing a conservative-pundit character, and I get the sneaking suspicion that both he (the real-life Stephen Colbert) and King know damn well why musicians are liberal, but still in all, I was perplexed that she did not take advantage of the golden opportunity to explain in it intellectual terms. I have never before seen such a fundamental question leveled at someone capable of answering it in such a wide-reaching (and ultimately, forgiving) forum as The Colbert Report.
With far longer wind than I would no doubt be allotted on Colbert's program, I will attempt to posit my theoretical response to said question. Of course I admit that I am biased as a liberal myself, but I don’t necessarily see this as an attack on conservatism or the Republican Party, it’s just the way I see it as unfolding.
The Republican Party, or the new conservative movement, or what-have-you, seems like the party of absolute truths (i.e. there is one American family, there is one true religion, there is one American dream, and everyone has, for the most part, the same opportunities). There are certainly times when this sort of absolutism is valid and appropriate, but I think more often than not, the story of America cannot be broken down into such black and white terms.
Liberals, on the other hand, deal with the subjective – for instance, “Yes, I have been privileged, and I am lucky to have been. But what if things had been slightly different?” Or alternately, “People in the inner city have not been dealt the same number of cards. Maybe we can break the chain of poverty and violence if we give them a preferential option for jobs and welfare, to make the future brighter for them, and especially their children and grandchildren.” Some might call this sort of shades-of-gray policy wishy-washy or weak spirited, and there are doubtless instances of broken systems or liberal ideology shifting too far into areas of unrealistic humanism and hopeless idealism, but the project is noble: to level the playing field by attempting to put oneself in another’s shoes. (To go further, focus on the environment is arguably a call to put ourselves in the shoes of our descendants, preserving resources and natural beauty for them; abortion-rights advocacy is not support of killing fetuses – to liberals, it is an acknowledgment of compassion to young women put in difficult circumstances with few options.)
Back to the original issue. Musicians, and artists of all kinds, really, and a lot of intellectuals and humanities-type people, make a living dealing in the subjective. And thank goodness; their output would be incredibly boring otherwise. Being able to see from other points of view, whether or not that is the right thing to do or even valid or practical in a certain instance, is what liberals do, and it also happens to be what humanities people and artists do – they go hand-in-hand. Also, artistic types are constantly searching for new ideas, or ways to appropriate old ideas in interesting ways, and this insatiable appetite fuels progressivism, not only in the arts but also in the socio-political realm.
I see the appeal of hard-line stances – “If you commit a crime, you are a criminal; there is no reason that residents of the inner city cannot take responsibility for themselves; Muslim fundamentalists attack U.S. civilians in the name of Allah, so Islam is evil.” So simple, there’s a neat order to them, almost poetic. The realities, however, are infinitely more nuanced.
What led the criminal to commit that crime? Is it fair to punish someone for committing a crime for, say, preserving himself or his family? Is it fair to punish him the same amount as someone who committed the same crime just to be a dick?
How on earth are inner city residents supposed to take responsibility when there are fewer positive role models in their communities, or responsibility has not been consistently stressed as a virtue?
Is it fair to define one fifth of the world in terms of a minority of radical jerks? Is it fair to assume that Middle-Eastern culture operates on Western, post-Enlightenment ideals of personal freedom and separation of religion & secular life/culture, or that it should?
There are no easy answers to these questions, but the very act of giving them a second look is more than many people do. I'm getting worked up now, and I could go on with dozens more examples of how our domestic and global realities are complex and subjective, but such digressions would effectively lose touch with the purpose of this column. That is, artists, musicians, writers, etc., are simply more likely than their non-artistic counterparts to be hard-wired into seeing from another’s point of view, then making them more likely to jive with the social and political sector that is consistent with such mindsets. Not necessarily out of enlightenment, mind you, but because that's what artists do.
(An aside: The irony is that, in today’s fiercely bipartisan political climate, the same movement supposedly based more on intellectualism, empathy, and multiple points-of-view is forced by its very leaders and proponents to shut itself off from the biggest set of other points of view, that of their Republican opponents, therefore squelching any room for compromise or discourse on either side. It is for this reason that I cannot necessarily call Democrats open-minded, however much I would like that to be the case.)
I do not know why Carole King was stumped by this question – it seems so obvious. Maybe she knew that Colbert's character would interrupt her and not let her speak. Maybe she assumed everyone knows the answer, or maybe she got flustered on TV. Regardless, I am sad that she missed the opportunity to once and for all defend the arts and entertainment industries’ liberal leanings against accusations of anti-American hippy non-politics. Although that may be the case for, say, someone like Richard Gere, the reality in total is far more nuanced. There are no absolutes.
March 19, 2008
Thursday, December 20, 2007
The Decline of Dave Matthews Band: a Quiet Tragedy
Dave Matthews Band seemed to be an unparalleled creative musical force from the mid 90’s through the millennium. However, in recent years, their musical energies appear to have congealed into a gelatinous mass of complacency. Their current success and fandom, mine included, may arise more from wishful thinking that the band may return to its glory days than from a genuine sharing in the enjoyment of their contemporary performance cycle. It is remarkable that a band that has not produced a memorable set of songs in seven years can still find themselves a top concert draw and find it acceptable to release a handful of that year’s sometimes-sloppy live shows as albums. As we approach the ten-year anniversary of BTCS’s release (coming up in a matter of months), I think it is time we assess DMB’s slow decline from a do-no-wrong juggernaut to a tired machine that is happy to provide the status quo while their fans humor them, pretending to be excited to the extent they used to be. I am just as guilty as anyone in this, which is why I decided to write this essay. I also feel I should draw a distinction: I am not complaining because I feel “entitled” to better product from the band (that sensibility is unfair to the band and just plain wrong); I am rather stating that it is a shame that a band with so much promise seems to have systematically thrown themselves into a pattern of perpetually falling short over the past several years.
Dave Matthews Band instantly became my favorite band the moment I heard “What Would You Say” on the radio March 12, 1995. I can remember that night like it was yesterday. I am now a professional musician and writer living in Nashville, and I can trace most of what I do musically, and much of what I do literally, back to that singular moment – I took up percussion because of Carter, guitar and songwriting because of Dave, and harmonica because of John Popper. I became interested in poetry and analysis of the written word from Dave’s layered early lyrics. Immediately I picked up UTTAD and mail-ordered Recently and R2T as soon as I could – I even ordered a DMB “Thermal” Fire-Dancer shirt and wore it nearly every day. After 12 years and dozens of wash cycles, it strangely still smells like patchouli from the old Bama Rags warehouse. [Note: I give my DMB fan credentials not for “I’ve been a fan longer than you”- type snobbery, but rather to show that I have been in this for the long haul, and DMB was of utmost importance to me in my formative years. Needless to say, I do not critique artists that were so vital to me – both developmentally and nostalgically – lightly.]
Some would argue that I’ve never been as big of a fan as some – I’ve only ever been to three (yes, only three) live DMB shows (growing up in North Dakota, it wasn’t exactly an easy task to make it out to concerts), and I’ve never been a member of the Warehouse (to this day, my lack of genuine Warehouse bonus discs as the only major holes in my DMB collection really sticks in my craw). But true fandom is not expressed in those statistics – it is what beats in your heart, and I cannot express how important DMB was to me for several years in my youth. I remember seeing the video for “Too Much” on MTV’s Buzz Bin feature on April 20, 1996, and then seeing them later that night on SNL doing “Too Much” and “So Much to Say.” I was beside myself. At 10 A.M. the next morning, I called Sam Goody to see if they had Crash. It wouldn’t be in until April 30. Those would be the longest 10 days of my life. But then the day finally came – buying that CD, listening to “#41” on repeat for over an hour, poring over every detail of the book insert and committing it to memory – it was like a dream. It couldn’t get any better.
From approximately 1995-1998, it looked like I was the only one in Bismarck who had ever heard of Dave Matthews Band, despite media buzz and even (*GASP!*) radio play. I desperately wanted to share this great music with everyone – this could be my contribution to Bismarck youth culture! Sadly, my lack of popularity and tact probably hurt the cause, and the fact that several peers whom I despised came around to liking DMB anyway, in spite of my gentle pushing, was a bitter pill for me to swallow, circa 1999-2000. But there were a small number of people with whom I could bond over DMB – several of my friends were drummers who were similarly drawn to Carter’s drum style. Some of these guys are still my best friends today.
Live at Red Rocks was a revelation. I had seen them do live songs on TV broadcasts, but hearing an entire show was a wholly different experience. I could see myself there – going back in time to 1995 and traveling to Colorado to see the show, singing the words to the Crash songs that Dave himself didn’t even know yet, screaming the loudest during Carter’s “#36” solo, and predicting the setlist to everyone around me. This was more than merely my favorite band – this was a band for history.
BTCS was more of a slow-burner for me. I liked it immediately, but too many things were different for me to love it in the way I loved Crash and UTTAD right away. Alanis Morissette? Gospel singers? Mini-song segues? Banjo? A string quartet? Dave's Vincent Price voice? It was a lot for a young fan to take in. Eventually, I came around to see how the songwriting, production, arrangements, drum sounds, song order, placement of segues, etc., were all perfectly planned out and executed. And of course, now I recognize it as their creative apex, one that may have effectively destroyed the band we know and love.
Luther College and Listener Supported were welcome additions to our collections, giving fans, pre-file sharing, a more complete picture of the band than we had previously if we weren’t good tape traders (and I wasn’t much of a trader at all). This band was nothing if not perfect – every release was different and welcome, every note pristine, every setlist seemingly handed down from the Heavens themselves.
Fast forward a few years. I remember the fever-pitch excitement in the online communities (I especially remember the old dmbml board – man, was that a fun and mean set of DMB fans) when the Lillywhite Sessions surfaced. They were scandalous (we knew we shouldn’t be listening to these unauthorized recordings) yet relief-inducing (we were so glad to hear them), and they turned every DMB fan into a music critic, comparing and contrasting the sessions with Everyday. Conclusions were nearly unanimous.
I had been torn on Everyday when it came out in February 2001. It wasn’t a bad album per se, but looking back, it certainly does mark the end of the innocence for DMB fans. The first show I had seen was the Mile High Stadium show in 2000 – “Grey Street,” “Grace Is Gone,” “Bartender” – in my mind, this set of songs had the opportunity to trump BTCS. But we all know sort-of what happened – the band was getting tense, Lillywhite was working them too hard, and the songs gave them a bad taste in their mouths. Everyday was then the manifestation of what can happen when a band has more pressure than they can handle. The Lillywhite Sessions, if finished properly, could have been a stunning achievement that maybe would have set the band on a course to be a genuinely legendary record-making and songwriting alliance for the ages. Everyday, in stark contrast, was a scared band retreating into what they know could easily make a record – shorter songs, pop production, happier themes, slick rhythms. It was marketed as the record of a band finding new inspiration and focus, but really it was a different band, tired and frightened – probably still tense that the LWS didn’t work out (for whatever reason) but unsure of the streamlined new direction.
I had a teacher who always spoke the loudest if he was unsure of what he was saying; RCA and DMB pushed Everyday harder than they’ve pushed any other DMB album. Longtime fans responded with everything from shrugs and head-scratches to outright renouncing of the band. I think that period was the great equalizer; those fans that stuck around, hoping that Everyday was not a signal of the band completely losing their energy, are the ones that are still around today, still going to the forums daily and buying every volume in the Live Trax series – I am among that group, although I am not particularly proud of it. In due time, I would be able to recognize Everyday as a perfectly solid album – “Everyday” and “What You Are” have become semi-legitimate DMB classics, “Dreams of Our Fathers” a far-more effective attempt at rap- and R&B-influenced songwriting than anything on Stand Up, “So Right” a could-have-been classic (if presented differently), and “Sleep to Dream Her” a beautiful song that combines advanced chromatic musical theory in the chord structure (whether Dave knows it or not) with a love lyric equally comforting and devastating, despite the fact that it’s never received a proper live treatment. But time has shown Everyday to be a fair entry in the DMB discography only in distant retrospect. At the time, the decision to put the kibosh on LWS and give the green light to Everyday was, in a word, perplexing.
I hesitate to call the 2001 tour bad, since I did not see a show that year. The recordings I heard were of a band stripped of its confidence, trying to fit their grassroots sensibilities into big-stadium pomp and swagger. Napster and the LWS came and went. Busted Stuff was DMB trying to save face – fans wanted Ballard out and the LWS songs back in. Rather than trying to push forward creatively, the band sheepishly retreated and did a mostly-poor job of giving some then-two-year-old songs the studio treatment. Boyd is audibly out-of-tune on “Raven” (I defy you to try to find an out-of-tune moment in a completed Lillywhite album or Ballard’s Everyday), Dave unapologetically messes up lyrics in “Bartender” (to the point where the second chorus doesn’t even make logical sense), and the “adventurous new things” they were trying in the studio amounted to be nothing – Stefan playing dobro (kind of) and keyboard (not really)? It seemed very coldly calculated, yet very lazy at the same time. “Grey Street” certainly benefited from a revisit, but “Grace Is Gone” was stripped of its dramatic balladry, and “Big Eyed Fish” came off as an awkward “Bartender” intro. There was no magic, no fire – the band had flat-out wasted a golden opportunity.
Fast forward more. The inundation of live album releases began in earnest. Dave did a mostly-OK solo album that simply made me wonder why he didn’t record the songs with DMB. Boyd did a merely-OK solo album that can best be described as amateurish. The Musictoday promotional machine went into overdrive – exclusive bonus discs packaged with new releases and a confusing hierarchy system dictating which fans are important enough to get certain bonus tracks. Perhaps the MOST exciting inclusion on these cool-fans-only discs was on the first Warehouse 8 – a 40-second tease of “Blue Water.” People were stoked. An official “Blue Water” release! But was this really something to get excited about? The song, although a minimalist DMB classic, is two chords! The band could easily play it in full without breaking a sweat, to the delight of thousands of fans. But rather than even attempting such celebrations of their talent, history, fan appreciation, and creative capability, 40 seconds is all the band gave us to be excited about.
Times got harder for the DMB completist. The 6-disc Gorge boxed set was an embarrassment – Dave’s voice was gone, the mix was awful, and the flimsy packaging was most likely dented when it arrived. Plus, the DVD didn’t come with the complete set, so fans like me had to buy both the retail version and the site exclusive to get it all. Was the DVD worth it? I can’t even remember.
The band now seems obsessed with making their own shows available. Somewhere between the every-released-show-is-an-important-document philosophy of the Dick’s Picks and Live Phish series and the only-buy-this-if-you-were-at-the-show policy of Pearl Jam’s live album series lies DMB Live Trax. Rather than using this web-exclusive series as a vehicle for truly rare stuff – uncirculating early shows, studio outtakes, Dave & Tim releases, etc., the releases seem to alternate between great but all-too-obvious choices (Volume 1) and weak, inessential, overblown boxed sets a la The Gorge (Volumes 6 and 9). Don’t even get me started on The Complete Weekend on the Rocks. I’m sure I’m missing something, but I shelled out 70 bucks for “Time of the Season,” “Butterfly,” and several dozen songs performed better on other albums.
There exists the notion that DMB needs to release as many live shows as they can. Is the live concert experience amazing? Yes. But musically, are they that different? No. DMB does not have that many songs in their repertoire. I mean, more than Matchbox Twenty, definitely, but far fewer than their number of live releases would suggest. DMB’s idea of changing a song’s arrangement usually involves giving the solo to someone else (“Jimi Thing,” “#41”) or extending a riff for ten-plus minutes (“American Baby Intro,” “The Dreaming Tree”) with the only “build” to speak of involving Carter playing more notes, louder and faster, and the band following suit. This rarely actually works. They simply do not have the ability that the Allmans or the Grateful Dead had to build a minimal musical idea into a spontaneous composition by sheer group will. It could happen in the band’s early days, when Dave wrote unconventional guitar parts that borrowed from everything from prog rock to world music, but the hypnotizing beauty of “Proudest Monkey” was the simplest and most-guilty-of-noodling they got ten years ago. Simply put, “American Baby Intro” is not a song.
Then comes the issue of Dave’s songwriting. Has he written a truly great song since 2001? “Stay or Leave” comes closest, and that gets relegated to Dave’s side project shows. There have been sparks of greatness here and there – the 2004 songs were decent but not brilliant, but they were mostly scrapped for the un-thought-out shitfest that was Stand Up. For the record, I do not blame Batson for how awful that album was. He is a great producer with a keen compositional sense, good ear, and talented ability to use sonic space in interesting ways. His only mistake was in not challenging the band (and how could he? Although he says he was intimately familiar with BTCS in interviews, it is simply not plausible that he knows the band’s catalogue like the rest of us). Dave’s lyrics on Stand Up were either laughably sloppy or beleagueredly forced. Musically, the songs rarely ventured out of two-riff territory. The band claimed they had found a new creative focus or something – a marketing attempt that sounded eerily familiar to the Everyday PR maelstrom. It seems like part of the band’s policy is now to make fans like their music by suggesting that it’s good music, rather than by actually creating good, exciting material.
The 2006 songs had flashes of brilliance too – the jam at the end of “Break Free” is nothing short of exhilarating, and “The Idea of You” could become a borderline classic. But the band has not showed a lot of confidence in these songs – they will most likely abandon them on their next studio album in favor of “Cornbread” and “#27,” both boring, interchangeable blues rockers. “Eh Hee” is at least interesting and different, but it’s not a classic song. Dave throws in “Fuck” in a way that does not enhance the song one bit – that is classic amateur songwriting.
If we contrast the band’s output now with the “classic era,” 1995-2000, we find newish things that are listenable at best and embarrassing at worst. As a professional musician and songwriter, I find myself having to qualify and apologize when I tell my peers that I like DMB. I used to be proud of the adventurous, genre-bending iconoclasts; I now am slightly ashamed of the band that throws smoke in mirrors to hide the fact that they were just not up to the challenge post-BTCS.
I sit here today listening to Live at Piedmont Park, its bonus disc, and Live Trax Vol. 10, all of which I received in the mail a week ago. With a few reasonable exceptions, my collection is complete. Have the last 13 or so live releases been essential? Intermittently, but mostly no. As a whole, I’m glad I have them. Why? I don’t know. I don’t really sit down and listen to them. The possibility that there is some piece of each live release that I need eats at me when I get those e-mail announcements, until I finally get out my credit card and pre-order. Inevitably, I will find two or three performances on each live album that I really enjoy, but that does not change the fact that this is a very different band from ten years ago. There is a great possibility that the next studio record will be great, but I do not find that to be very believable. Will I buy it? Of course. I’ll pre-order it right away so I can get the bonus disc with yet another live “Jimi Thing” on it. Oh, and the “making-of” DVD, where they insist to us how essential and exciting the new songs are. I’ll need to have that.
It breaks my heart to say it, but DMB has been dying a slow death for nearly ten years. I call this a quiet tragedy – because there’s been no sudden event to trigger the end of their great period, no one ever had the opportunity to sing a swan song or recite an elegy. It is tragic nonetheless, and I hope that the sheer brilliance of their first three albums will be enough to preserve them for the ages. They probably have a few more years in them, and then a proper goodbye. Nothing would make me happier than a great studio record and a solid set of songs. Here’s to hope. I don’t want to have to lie in my grave, dreaming of things that might have been.
December 20, 2007
Dave Matthews Band instantly became my favorite band the moment I heard “What Would You Say” on the radio March 12, 1995. I can remember that night like it was yesterday. I am now a professional musician and writer living in Nashville, and I can trace most of what I do musically, and much of what I do literally, back to that singular moment – I took up percussion because of Carter, guitar and songwriting because of Dave, and harmonica because of John Popper. I became interested in poetry and analysis of the written word from Dave’s layered early lyrics. Immediately I picked up UTTAD and mail-ordered Recently and R2T as soon as I could – I even ordered a DMB “Thermal” Fire-Dancer shirt and wore it nearly every day. After 12 years and dozens of wash cycles, it strangely still smells like patchouli from the old Bama Rags warehouse. [Note: I give my DMB fan credentials not for “I’ve been a fan longer than you”- type snobbery, but rather to show that I have been in this for the long haul, and DMB was of utmost importance to me in my formative years. Needless to say, I do not critique artists that were so vital to me – both developmentally and nostalgically – lightly.]
Some would argue that I’ve never been as big of a fan as some – I’ve only ever been to three (yes, only three) live DMB shows (growing up in North Dakota, it wasn’t exactly an easy task to make it out to concerts), and I’ve never been a member of the Warehouse (to this day, my lack of genuine Warehouse bonus discs as the only major holes in my DMB collection really sticks in my craw). But true fandom is not expressed in those statistics – it is what beats in your heart, and I cannot express how important DMB was to me for several years in my youth. I remember seeing the video for “Too Much” on MTV’s Buzz Bin feature on April 20, 1996, and then seeing them later that night on SNL doing “Too Much” and “So Much to Say.” I was beside myself. At 10 A.M. the next morning, I called Sam Goody to see if they had Crash. It wouldn’t be in until April 30. Those would be the longest 10 days of my life. But then the day finally came – buying that CD, listening to “#41” on repeat for over an hour, poring over every detail of the book insert and committing it to memory – it was like a dream. It couldn’t get any better.
From approximately 1995-1998, it looked like I was the only one in Bismarck who had ever heard of Dave Matthews Band, despite media buzz and even (*GASP!*) radio play. I desperately wanted to share this great music with everyone – this could be my contribution to Bismarck youth culture! Sadly, my lack of popularity and tact probably hurt the cause, and the fact that several peers whom I despised came around to liking DMB anyway, in spite of my gentle pushing, was a bitter pill for me to swallow, circa 1999-2000. But there were a small number of people with whom I could bond over DMB – several of my friends were drummers who were similarly drawn to Carter’s drum style. Some of these guys are still my best friends today.
Live at Red Rocks was a revelation. I had seen them do live songs on TV broadcasts, but hearing an entire show was a wholly different experience. I could see myself there – going back in time to 1995 and traveling to Colorado to see the show, singing the words to the Crash songs that Dave himself didn’t even know yet, screaming the loudest during Carter’s “#36” solo, and predicting the setlist to everyone around me. This was more than merely my favorite band – this was a band for history.
BTCS was more of a slow-burner for me. I liked it immediately, but too many things were different for me to love it in the way I loved Crash and UTTAD right away. Alanis Morissette? Gospel singers? Mini-song segues? Banjo? A string quartet? Dave's Vincent Price voice? It was a lot for a young fan to take in. Eventually, I came around to see how the songwriting, production, arrangements, drum sounds, song order, placement of segues, etc., were all perfectly planned out and executed. And of course, now I recognize it as their creative apex, one that may have effectively destroyed the band we know and love.
Luther College and Listener Supported were welcome additions to our collections, giving fans, pre-file sharing, a more complete picture of the band than we had previously if we weren’t good tape traders (and I wasn’t much of a trader at all). This band was nothing if not perfect – every release was different and welcome, every note pristine, every setlist seemingly handed down from the Heavens themselves.
Fast forward a few years. I remember the fever-pitch excitement in the online communities (I especially remember the old dmbml board – man, was that a fun and mean set of DMB fans) when the Lillywhite Sessions surfaced. They were scandalous (we knew we shouldn’t be listening to these unauthorized recordings) yet relief-inducing (we were so glad to hear them), and they turned every DMB fan into a music critic, comparing and contrasting the sessions with Everyday. Conclusions were nearly unanimous.
I had been torn on Everyday when it came out in February 2001. It wasn’t a bad album per se, but looking back, it certainly does mark the end of the innocence for DMB fans. The first show I had seen was the Mile High Stadium show in 2000 – “Grey Street,” “Grace Is Gone,” “Bartender” – in my mind, this set of songs had the opportunity to trump BTCS. But we all know sort-of what happened – the band was getting tense, Lillywhite was working them too hard, and the songs gave them a bad taste in their mouths. Everyday was then the manifestation of what can happen when a band has more pressure than they can handle. The Lillywhite Sessions, if finished properly, could have been a stunning achievement that maybe would have set the band on a course to be a genuinely legendary record-making and songwriting alliance for the ages. Everyday, in stark contrast, was a scared band retreating into what they know could easily make a record – shorter songs, pop production, happier themes, slick rhythms. It was marketed as the record of a band finding new inspiration and focus, but really it was a different band, tired and frightened – probably still tense that the LWS didn’t work out (for whatever reason) but unsure of the streamlined new direction.
I had a teacher who always spoke the loudest if he was unsure of what he was saying; RCA and DMB pushed Everyday harder than they’ve pushed any other DMB album. Longtime fans responded with everything from shrugs and head-scratches to outright renouncing of the band. I think that period was the great equalizer; those fans that stuck around, hoping that Everyday was not a signal of the band completely losing their energy, are the ones that are still around today, still going to the forums daily and buying every volume in the Live Trax series – I am among that group, although I am not particularly proud of it. In due time, I would be able to recognize Everyday as a perfectly solid album – “Everyday” and “What You Are” have become semi-legitimate DMB classics, “Dreams of Our Fathers” a far-more effective attempt at rap- and R&B-influenced songwriting than anything on Stand Up, “So Right” a could-have-been classic (if presented differently), and “Sleep to Dream Her” a beautiful song that combines advanced chromatic musical theory in the chord structure (whether Dave knows it or not) with a love lyric equally comforting and devastating, despite the fact that it’s never received a proper live treatment. But time has shown Everyday to be a fair entry in the DMB discography only in distant retrospect. At the time, the decision to put the kibosh on LWS and give the green light to Everyday was, in a word, perplexing.
I hesitate to call the 2001 tour bad, since I did not see a show that year. The recordings I heard were of a band stripped of its confidence, trying to fit their grassroots sensibilities into big-stadium pomp and swagger. Napster and the LWS came and went. Busted Stuff was DMB trying to save face – fans wanted Ballard out and the LWS songs back in. Rather than trying to push forward creatively, the band sheepishly retreated and did a mostly-poor job of giving some then-two-year-old songs the studio treatment. Boyd is audibly out-of-tune on “Raven” (I defy you to try to find an out-of-tune moment in a completed Lillywhite album or Ballard’s Everyday), Dave unapologetically messes up lyrics in “Bartender” (to the point where the second chorus doesn’t even make logical sense), and the “adventurous new things” they were trying in the studio amounted to be nothing – Stefan playing dobro (kind of) and keyboard (not really)? It seemed very coldly calculated, yet very lazy at the same time. “Grey Street” certainly benefited from a revisit, but “Grace Is Gone” was stripped of its dramatic balladry, and “Big Eyed Fish” came off as an awkward “Bartender” intro. There was no magic, no fire – the band had flat-out wasted a golden opportunity.
Fast forward more. The inundation of live album releases began in earnest. Dave did a mostly-OK solo album that simply made me wonder why he didn’t record the songs with DMB. Boyd did a merely-OK solo album that can best be described as amateurish. The Musictoday promotional machine went into overdrive – exclusive bonus discs packaged with new releases and a confusing hierarchy system dictating which fans are important enough to get certain bonus tracks. Perhaps the MOST exciting inclusion on these cool-fans-only discs was on the first Warehouse 8 – a 40-second tease of “Blue Water.” People were stoked. An official “Blue Water” release! But was this really something to get excited about? The song, although a minimalist DMB classic, is two chords! The band could easily play it in full without breaking a sweat, to the delight of thousands of fans. But rather than even attempting such celebrations of their talent, history, fan appreciation, and creative capability, 40 seconds is all the band gave us to be excited about.
Times got harder for the DMB completist. The 6-disc Gorge boxed set was an embarrassment – Dave’s voice was gone, the mix was awful, and the flimsy packaging was most likely dented when it arrived. Plus, the DVD didn’t come with the complete set, so fans like me had to buy both the retail version and the site exclusive to get it all. Was the DVD worth it? I can’t even remember.
The band now seems obsessed with making their own shows available. Somewhere between the every-released-show-is-an-important-document philosophy of the Dick’s Picks and Live Phish series and the only-buy-this-if-you-were-at-the-show policy of Pearl Jam’s live album series lies DMB Live Trax. Rather than using this web-exclusive series as a vehicle for truly rare stuff – uncirculating early shows, studio outtakes, Dave & Tim releases, etc., the releases seem to alternate between great but all-too-obvious choices (Volume 1) and weak, inessential, overblown boxed sets a la The Gorge (Volumes 6 and 9). Don’t even get me started on The Complete Weekend on the Rocks. I’m sure I’m missing something, but I shelled out 70 bucks for “Time of the Season,” “Butterfly,” and several dozen songs performed better on other albums.
There exists the notion that DMB needs to release as many live shows as they can. Is the live concert experience amazing? Yes. But musically, are they that different? No. DMB does not have that many songs in their repertoire. I mean, more than Matchbox Twenty, definitely, but far fewer than their number of live releases would suggest. DMB’s idea of changing a song’s arrangement usually involves giving the solo to someone else (“Jimi Thing,” “#41”) or extending a riff for ten-plus minutes (“American Baby Intro,” “The Dreaming Tree”) with the only “build” to speak of involving Carter playing more notes, louder and faster, and the band following suit. This rarely actually works. They simply do not have the ability that the Allmans or the Grateful Dead had to build a minimal musical idea into a spontaneous composition by sheer group will. It could happen in the band’s early days, when Dave wrote unconventional guitar parts that borrowed from everything from prog rock to world music, but the hypnotizing beauty of “Proudest Monkey” was the simplest and most-guilty-of-noodling they got ten years ago. Simply put, “American Baby Intro” is not a song.
Then comes the issue of Dave’s songwriting. Has he written a truly great song since 2001? “Stay or Leave” comes closest, and that gets relegated to Dave’s side project shows. There have been sparks of greatness here and there – the 2004 songs were decent but not brilliant, but they were mostly scrapped for the un-thought-out shitfest that was Stand Up. For the record, I do not blame Batson for how awful that album was. He is a great producer with a keen compositional sense, good ear, and talented ability to use sonic space in interesting ways. His only mistake was in not challenging the band (and how could he? Although he says he was intimately familiar with BTCS in interviews, it is simply not plausible that he knows the band’s catalogue like the rest of us). Dave’s lyrics on Stand Up were either laughably sloppy or beleagueredly forced. Musically, the songs rarely ventured out of two-riff territory. The band claimed they had found a new creative focus or something – a marketing attempt that sounded eerily familiar to the Everyday PR maelstrom. It seems like part of the band’s policy is now to make fans like their music by suggesting that it’s good music, rather than by actually creating good, exciting material.
The 2006 songs had flashes of brilliance too – the jam at the end of “Break Free” is nothing short of exhilarating, and “The Idea of You” could become a borderline classic. But the band has not showed a lot of confidence in these songs – they will most likely abandon them on their next studio album in favor of “Cornbread” and “#27,” both boring, interchangeable blues rockers. “Eh Hee” is at least interesting and different, but it’s not a classic song. Dave throws in “Fuck” in a way that does not enhance the song one bit – that is classic amateur songwriting.
If we contrast the band’s output now with the “classic era,” 1995-2000, we find newish things that are listenable at best and embarrassing at worst. As a professional musician and songwriter, I find myself having to qualify and apologize when I tell my peers that I like DMB. I used to be proud of the adventurous, genre-bending iconoclasts; I now am slightly ashamed of the band that throws smoke in mirrors to hide the fact that they were just not up to the challenge post-BTCS.
I sit here today listening to Live at Piedmont Park, its bonus disc, and Live Trax Vol. 10, all of which I received in the mail a week ago. With a few reasonable exceptions, my collection is complete. Have the last 13 or so live releases been essential? Intermittently, but mostly no. As a whole, I’m glad I have them. Why? I don’t know. I don’t really sit down and listen to them. The possibility that there is some piece of each live release that I need eats at me when I get those e-mail announcements, until I finally get out my credit card and pre-order. Inevitably, I will find two or three performances on each live album that I really enjoy, but that does not change the fact that this is a very different band from ten years ago. There is a great possibility that the next studio record will be great, but I do not find that to be very believable. Will I buy it? Of course. I’ll pre-order it right away so I can get the bonus disc with yet another live “Jimi Thing” on it. Oh, and the “making-of” DVD, where they insist to us how essential and exciting the new songs are. I’ll need to have that.
It breaks my heart to say it, but DMB has been dying a slow death for nearly ten years. I call this a quiet tragedy – because there’s been no sudden event to trigger the end of their great period, no one ever had the opportunity to sing a swan song or recite an elegy. It is tragic nonetheless, and I hope that the sheer brilliance of their first three albums will be enough to preserve them for the ages. They probably have a few more years in them, and then a proper goodbye. Nothing would make me happier than a great studio record and a solid set of songs. Here’s to hope. I don’t want to have to lie in my grave, dreaming of things that might have been.
December 20, 2007
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