The Other Side of the Fence

 

I’ll never forget, years ago, one time, my long-time friend Wil and I were in a café one morning, during a work break.  We were hanging out.  He had ordered a deli sandwich and I was too cheap to do so, so I just sat across the table and fidgeted.  He took a massive bite from the sandwich, and was kind of struggling to take it in.  After he gained control of it, but still had a mouth full, he asked “How do normal people eat these?”  Of course, we both laughed and have added it to our ongoing we are monsters chronicles (hint: he and I are the Monsters).  At any rate, I find myself asking that type of question a lot.  For example, I’ve always wondered how ‘normal’ people consume new music.  I have a seriously unhealthy need for new music.  There are people who take it much much further, but it doesn’t change the fact that I still think about these things.  When I hear a new song, I have to own it.  I do believe in trying to pay for the joy the artist(s) is/are providing me in a small gesture of support.  In addition to owning a copy of the song, I generally have to investigate further.  Is there earlier material?  An album? A hard to find split vinyl single? 

What has it got me?  I have CDs and records in boxes all over my apartment that I have lugged around for several moves, stubbed my toes on multiple times, and at one time, a serious credit card debt!  I want to know what a healthy relationship to music is!  When I was a poor college student living in downtown Seattle in 1992, I remember spending my last $10 on a ticket to see Bob Mould’s band Sugar in place of saving it for the groceries I needed for the next week or so.  Did the same thing a few weeks later when I spotted the unexpected UK CD single for The Sundays’ “Goodbye” in a record shop window.  I was so stoked that they had new music coming out that I couldn’t stop thinking about it until the shop opened the next day.  Luckily, it hasn’t got me jail time, though at the time, a smash and grab seemed a possibility.

I was probably born with some sort of specific addictive thing.  I find myself being especially drawn into things through others’ enthusiasm.  When I was a little kid, my friend Vinton, introduced me to comic books.  He had a serious love of these things, and has continued on as an adult – getting into the industry through his art!  Once he hooked me, I found myself going to the local bookstore (the Book End) every week on comic book delivery day to get my favorite titles.  It wasn’t until Marvel started doing crossover stories like Secret Wars, where one had to buy all the comics to get the full story, that I had to bow out due to the limitations of my allowance and patience.  However, I almost immediately filled the comic collecting void with record collecting once I got my first paying job at 14.

Don’t get me wrong, my love of/obsession for music has been a huge positive for my life.  I have had amazing adventures going to see live music that I likely wouldn’t have experienced otherwise, met lots of great and interesting people, or, in other words, despite the isolating nature of listening to music, my love and need for it has pulled me out of my shell.  Heck, I even have a social media friend from Australia (hi Alex!) who I met through MySpace due to our shared love of the Go-Betweens!  There’s also Chris, a pen pal of 30 years who contacted me initially because she and her husband saw my collection in my old bedroom when they toured my childhood family home when it was put up for sale.  Music has educated me, or led me to learn about things, given me incredible highs, and is tied with almost any memory I can conjure.  Still there’s a part of me that wants to give it up.  If I hear a new song that I like, I kind of wish I could be content to enjoy it when I might happen to encounter it again, or look it up on YouTube or Spotify and make a playlist.  I have been trying to ween myself of the need to be a completist.  Just because I love a new song by so and so, does not mean I have to own every album or every single they ever released!  Perhaps it’s that I have a need/desire to not have stuff.  I like having as few possessions as possible.  Things make me feel trapped, and yet I have all of things heavy boxes of records everywhere!  What the hell?!  When I start feeling especially unhealthy, I tend to start thinning things down as an end of life necessity, once I begin to realize how meaningless my prized Independent Project Records’ Archive Series limited edition 10” records would be for whoever is lucky enough to clean up after me.

I guess it’s who I am.  Just the other day, I was driving in to downtown Portland listening to a random mixed CD made up of new songs that I’ve procured from listening to several stellar shows on streaming station DKFM (decayfm.com) such as Krissy Vanderwoude’s Drowned in a Sea of Sound, Paul Lopez’s The Shoegaze Collective, and especially Amber Crain’s When the Sun Hits.  My mind drifted through several questions, one of which is why did I select these chosen few songs of the many amazing tracks they share?  What is it that draws me in?  Songs take their time cramming their way into my thick skull these days, plus I can honestly say that the vast majority of what I hear is familiar – stuff that reminds me of music already in my possession.  So what is it?  What is the appeal?  I don’t know!  I just know that when I hear certain things, and those things evolve over time, that I get so excited and inspired.  Depending on the mood of the song, my mind electrifies and wants to be creative, wants to analyze, wants to experience genuine emotions.  Perhaps that’s the key.  Music wakes my mind up from the day to day regression it seems to be going through with the daily grind.  I remember a couple of years ago the time Amber Crain played on her show Weathering’s “Changing Colors.”  Yes, I fed off of the super power chords, but it was the vocals, the words, the phrasing and the voice all combined to make me a bit overwhelmed with emotion.  The song yanked out all kinds of stored up feelings that have built up over time – the kind that are difficult to explain or even understand.  This happened again within the last few week’s with the song “Ceiling Lines” by the Real Sea, when Krissy played it on her show.  Yes, I love the music.  The dissonant guitars of the intro lay down a familiar and comfortable pathway for my ears, but Sharon Mok’s voice is all kinds of amazing!  Just hearing that song puts a giant lump in my throat.  I suppose that’s it.  New music makes me feel alive!  I guess the need to search for it comes from the need to feel.  Seems like I’m stuck with it.  Now if only I can give up this senseless need to ramble on endlessly about nothing.

0340

Two new CDs that I have recently picked up have transported me to a different time. The first one is from the great UK label LTM’s most recent release in their continuing Auteur Labels series. The series has featured some fantastic UK labels who released some of the most influential music of post-punk in the late 70s and early 80s. This release features the fantastic US label Independent Project Records founded in Los Angeles in 1980 by Savage Republic co-founder Bruce Licher. This 23 track compilation spans the history entirely (notice the clear gap from ’96-’08) showcasing its varied assortment of artists and their amazing groundbreaking sounds. I first ran across this label in the mid-to-late 80s when I picked up Camper Van Beethoven’s landmark debut Telephone Free Landslide Victory (1985), featuring, of course, their quirky single “Take the Skinheads Bowling” (included here). The next time I ran into the label was when I found the debut LP from Nebraska’s For Against’s Echelons (1987). It wasn’t until late 1990, while away at college that I encountered a For Against release on the label which absolutely changed my life. The first in IPR’s series of 10” colored vinyl only releases featured some unreleased and experimental tracks from this amazing band. This “Archive Series” debuted with the promise of a new installment every other month which could be had via subscription. These records were interesting, thought provoking, and most importantly, entertaining, but the bonus was the fantastic artwork that made up these special records. The records were numbered and pressed in an old fashioned letterpress printer and looked otherworldly. They provoked the imagination and upon arrival would send me off to stereo to absorb every nuance of these incredible products. These records expanded my horizons and exposed me to what felt like a special secret world. I started my subscription (my number was 0340) shortly after having to return home from college due to a lot of strife with my family. My mom was going through the early stages of a battle with cancer that she would eventually lose, while I was due for some serious surgery myself. These records were an oasis for me; a chance to escape from the horrors of hospital visits full of bad news and be transported to a world full of potential and discovery. Listening to this compilation reminded me of how amazing this music really was with the added bonus of hearing some of the artists from the label’s earliest releases for the first time! It is essential.

This was when my addiction to music went from bad to worse. I began to delve further into this new secret world of music that I was quickly discovering by uncovering layer after layer of how to track these things down while stuck in a small Oregon town. I started to read small regional music fanzines voraciously, mostly for the record reviews and the tiny little ads provided by tiny little record labels. I started writing letters to the bands and labels directly and mail ordering from them for the smallest of costs. Soon enough I was receiving records in my mailbox more than a few times a week! Wil and I even started putting together a little ‘zine of our own in the early 90s named, not surprisingly, “This Wreckage.” It was fun and exciting to feel involved even in the remotest of ways.


This brings me to the other new CD that’s been gracing my player constantly: Black Tambourine. This band was only around for two years at the end of the 80s and all but one of their (few) songs were released posthumously. This CD follows 1999’s Complete Recordings and tacks on six more tracks. Two are simply demos of prior tracks, while four more are new recordings of old songs from their few live sets from back in the day. Hearing this rough and tumble music with sugary sweet melodies buried beneath walls of guitar fuzz reminded me how fun and invigorating the music was and is and how clearly it inspired and drove me through such hard times. It makes me want to dig out my old records again as well as my old holey Black Tambourine T-Shirt showing the girl with the bob-haircut pointing a gun, which once led Archie Moore in 1994 (then member of Velocity Girl, former member of BT) to stop during a set at La Luna and approach me at my familiar perch with friends near the front, stage left, and ask me where the hell I got that shirt. I was speechless and the show continued, but the answer was simple. I got it when I bought Black Tambourine’s first full 7” EP via mail order from Slumberland Records for like $4 postpaid. I’m sure it included a note of thanks from label honcho Mike Schulman (also a member of BT) on the backside of a piece of scrap paper with their small discography Xeroxed on the back. This CD release is number 111 twenty-some odd years later. I recommended these guys to everyone back then. I still do.