The Path of Thorns

It’s never fair when you’re given the world, and are expected to live up to it.

A year ago now, we lost a King, a leader, a sensation and most importantly, a seemingly wonderful human being.  I can’t imagine being the center of the world’s attention, and then on top of it going through such trouble, despair and confusion.  While still being all of that, for earth to see.  We all like to jump to conclusions, judge as soon as possible, and with that judgment tear people down like moldy old wallpaper.  The second something isn’t what we imagine it to be, when it’s something we can’t understand without tearing down our own walls of perfect image, we condemn and destroy it.

I may be wrong.  This man may have been a sexual deviant, a double-crosser and a disgrace to generations worldwide.  We’ll never really, truly know if he was.  What we do truly know is that he showed the world nothing but love, dedication and endless talent that we ate up and later chewed out when it tasted a little funky.  I myself have dealt with emotional issues, heartache and awful depression.  Letting the world see not only that, but how I’d deal with that, is a trauma none of us could ever begin to imagine.  He dealt with his issues with physical changes, interactions none of us gave any time to listen to or understand (including myself, absolutely), and decisions that were questionable at best.

I was having a panic attack once.  I was in financial distress, dealing with more uncertainty than I’ve ever experienced, and dealing with losses I never thought I’d have to.  If the world saw my reactions to that, and knew nearly every last detail of it, I might have changed myself and made bizarre relations as well.  I nearly lost my world; and when you want that world back, and you don’t know how to, you don’t always know your own reason.  All you know is, you lost something and you want it back.  But you don’t want to be hurtful to anyone, and you don’t want to make a fool of yourself either.  Well, to err is human, and there’s no margin of error when the scale is that large.

This man gave us every last drop of all he had to give.  His talent, his creativity, his ecologic intelligence and passion, and even a good deal of his sanity.  Yes, as we’ve all violently pointed out, he had his mistakes and character decisions that made him far, far from perfect.  But are you?  Am I?

He pleaded with us, with so many of his songs and lyrics within them.  He tried to get us to listen.  And of course we didn’t, myself included; he practically lived in obscurity and financial demise for years before he gave his final breath.  The same market of journalists, TV hosts and press that glorified his imperfect mistakes and actions all of a sudden felt compassion and loss, and gave their best words.  In the world’s best example of not knowing what you have until it’s gone, we lost the Polaris of the entertainment world.  Had we heard him out a little better when he begged us to, maybe he wouldn’t have led such a life of inner misery and with such a lack of self-understanding.

He had everything there was to have, absolutely everything – and I can’t imagine he realized much of any of it.  He paid dearly for trying to go back in time within his own life, with his home, with choices he made, and he knew it.  Still, he died wondering if the world ever even gave a damn about him beyond what he gave and gave until he literally no longer could.

…I take that back.  I saw his final documentary that hit theaters last year, and he had all the heart and talent he ever did, and it made it that much sadder to know that never got a chance to develop again.  While he should have known better in some way, he paid the price of being cast off too soon.

Do we owe his spirit an apology?  Who knows.  Should he have shown remorse for his own trouble?  Yes, and he did plenty of times.  It’s an altogether tragic, sad and confusing loss of one of the best entertainers and activists we’ll ever witness.  And if you scoffed at that last statement, I certainly can’t blame you, but I can’t help but understand and even relate a little to someone as in need of help as they were profitable in their deserved success.

He said it best in his own words, which is cryptic and even more melancholy to listen to now:

Like A Comet
Blazing ‘Cross The Evening Sky
Gone Too Soon

Like A Rainbow
Fading In The Twinkling Of An Eye
Gone Too Soon

Shiny And Sparkly
And Splendidly Bright
Here One Day
Gone One Night

Like The Loss Of Sunlight
On A Cloudy Afternoon
Gone Too Soon

Like A Castle
Built Upon A Sandy Beach
Gone Too Soon

Like A Perfect Flower
That Is Just Beyond Your Reach
Gone Too Soon

Born To Amuse, To Inspire, To Delight
Here One Day
Gone One Night

Like A Sunset
Dying With The Rising Of The Moon
Gone Too Soon

When his sunlight began to dim, we shut our blinds well too soon.  I absolutely hope the anguish you felt in this lifetime is long gone wherever you are now.  Rest in peace and quiet, Michael Jackson.

This is a post I’ve been avoiding a bit, just because I wanted to spread myself apart from music everyone who’s ever known me knew I loved.  I don’t want to come off across bias.  But then again, I know I’m not bias, you’ll learn I’m not bias, and I shall write about the feelings and emotions of any album I damn well please.

Death Magnetic.  In the eyes of most, an album that landmarks Metallica’s return to their heavy metal roots.  In the eyes of some, their best album in 25 years.  In the eyes of others, another disappointment after decades of other disappointments.  Metallica’s been in a position no other heavy metal band has ever been in; they’ve tested the depths of their limitations time and time again, ever since their beginning.  They always refused to make a duplicate sound, and when that ventured away from thrash metal, people called the band ‘sellouts.’  Which is ridiculous, ignorant and absolute nonsense, considering everything they do is for themselves, and taking risks in their careers that may potentially alienate everyone that’s ever heard them, like in Load and ReLoad, is an idea that is the polar opposite of selling out.  Metal fans have more of a fear of change than any genre ever created, and their strict and thorough guidelines as to what constitutes metal makes them about as unforgiving as the people that beat them up early in their lives and made them this angry in the first place.

But I digress.  If there is an album to call Metallica ‘sellouts’ on, it’s Death Magnetic.  It’s the first time any of us have ever seen them go backwards in any sort of sense; so backwards, in fact, that producer Rick Rubin forced them to listen to their masterpiece of 1986, Master of Puppets, over and over again until they returned to their 23 year old frames of mind.  If that isn’t proof that Rick believed this was Metallica’s last stand in their career, nothing is.  It was a hail Mary; a last chance; otherwise many would see Metallica as a band whose glory days ended twenty years ago.  Of course, other fans like myself enjoyed any sound Metallica made and felt grateful for it.

What made this album amazing, near-perfect and true is the fact that while yes, they did go back and revisit, it was a reminder to the band as to another aspect of what they were all about; “Metal Up Your Ass.”  They ventured, from country ballads to irish folk songs to symphonies and everything in between, and returned home with their decades of knowledge and experience to make this album.  It can be considered a Greatest Hits, because it’s everything in one; I hear the punk presence that they first introduced from Kill ‘em All, I hear the thrash of Ride the Lightning and their inspiration Master of Puppets, and the commercial/mainstream monster licks similar to Metallica, or ‘The Black Album’ in there as well.  But it doesn’t end there; the “ballads” of the album, The Day That Never Comes and The Unforgiven III have a strong resemblance to melodies and harmonies of the Load era.  All that’s missing is the ugliness of St. Anger, which was little more than an ugly time in their lives that had to be created, let out, and left there.

The opening song, That Was Just Your Life, has the dark openings similar to previous other first tracks like Battery and Blackened.  It’s brutal, ugly, angry and violent, and damn near knocks you out of your chair if you’re expecting anything less.  Broken, Beat and Scarred is a clear narration of the personal and professional troubles James and the boys have gone through, and while it too sounds like an angry release similar to St. Anger, the song structure, solos and non-trash can drumming makes the fury of the song much more enjoyable.  All Nightmare Long is my personal pick for ugliest track; it literally sounds like a nightmare, and has one of the most incredible solos guitarist Kirk Hammett has written in years.  The album even has its first true instrumental since 1986′s Orion, entitled Suicide & Redemption, which consists of one of the heaviest, moodiest jams I’ve ever heard.  The closing song, My Apocalypse, might be the most brutal of them all; to me, it sounds like something Slayer or early Megadeth would write.

The album has all the fury every Metallica fan has ever needed; it has a lot of comparisons to their early work, of course, but at the same time it sounds nothing like it; it’s got the experience, the battle-worn trials and tribulations of their lives and careers, and the messages created in the aftermath.  It’s Metallica coming home after a long, hard, havoc-wrecked battle, and creating some of their best work yet.  They’re nearly 5o now, with wives and children, but no matter how much they experimented and traveled, they’re the same Metallica we know and love, and Death Magnetic has the feelings and sounds to make it an instant vintage classic.  Well done.

It took me awhile to figure out if I liked Pain.  I think the band name’s pretty cheesy and unoriginal, like Death.  They’re also industrial, and at first they didn’t stand out as much to me as i:scintilla does.  Then I really listened and really studied their newest album, Cynic Paradise.  The album is a great comedic summary of how the band seriously feels.  And that’s where I got intrigued.

The more I studied this album, the more I got attached to it, and I ended up absolutely loving it.  They tackle the lack of glamor and honesty in my favorite track, “Clouds of Ecstasy”, where they really tackle the nonsense that goes on in Hollywood’s artificial atmosphere.  “Monkey Business” tackles similar fakes and liars, calling them out while delivering unbelievable industrial anthems that just blow you away.  The band thoroughly, completely and entirely calls out people they can’t respect or dignify, and they do it bluntly, but with enough tact to really understand what they’re talking about.

“Reach Out (And Regret)” and the incredibly fierce & catchy “Follow Me” with Anette Olzon of Nightwish continue the eager, aggressive industrial/metal force with feeling most new music doesn’t have.  When I think of ‘damn the Man’ bands, historically I think of the hippie generation mostly.  Having such strong messages about corruption, scandals and falsehoods from a band in such a genre is by far the most original and most interesting aspect of Pain.  These are intelligent guys, with a lot to say, and I know this will sound comical but they have the strongest opinion out of anyone I’ve ever heard from Sweden, of all places!

Pain is a outspoken, brilliantly talented industrial metal band with some of the catchiest tunes I’ve heard in quite awhile.  They’re a band to blare loud and proud, with lyrics that stick.  I’m a fan, a big big fan, and I recommend it to anyone who likes to rock out.  With meaning.

Get the album here.

I wrote in my last post how inspired, original, captivating music is hard to find.  How most newer music doesn’t capture the essence of its ancestral rock and pop originators.  It’s hard, after so much music in this genre has been written over the past several decades, to find a crisp new sound.  Eight out of ten people I know gave up on new music fifteen or twenty years ago.

Stellar Road is not such a band.  It’s a strong and solid argument that they’re just a branch of Dave Matthews, Ben Harper or Jack Johnson.  I can’t stand the last two artists, and I only like Dave a little.  But that’s mostly because most people I grew up with listened to only those few artists for the most part, and most of those people were like James Spader in Pretty in Pink.  So, bad connotation there.

I digress.  Stellar Road’s new self-titled effort is phenomenal.  It’s acoustic rock for the most part, with additional horns and strings as needed.  The songwriting is brilliant, though; their melodies and harmonies are, well, stellar.  They have passion that a lot of newer music lacks; you can hear it loud and clear in tunes like “Try to Be” and “Amazing.”  They’re catchy, but also intelligent; I can imagine an entire amphitheater singing loudly to the chorus of “Shipwrecked” and “Believe.”

They’re bluesier than those in their genre, and you can even hear a little jazz.  Each song is put together carefully with just enough construction and layering to make it strong and brilliant, without overdoing it.  An entire room could dance and lose their minds to their perfected jams in many of their songs, but it’s the intense passion when they let it rip that really captures me.   Daly can croon as well as he can belt out, and the band meshes so well together that you’d think they’ve been doing this for thirty years.

Songs like “Before We Dance” and “Goddamakaway”, on the other hand, put me to ease as well as anything else soothing that I’ve ever heard.  You can imagine them being played on a beach after sunset, after a long and exhausting day.  They sing of love and fun, of the future and the past; never trying to be something they’re not.  I think that stands for something.

Stellar Road is for anyone who enjoys a good rock or pop song.  What’s amazing is that the world doesn’t know them, yet; for now, I’ll enjoy seeing them at Chicagoland bars until some major label realizes these songs have to be truly heard.

Before I critique another album, I’m taking this time to make a point, or statement, whatever it is.  My thoughts are so jumbled and layered that I don’t know if I’ll make more sense to myself than I might right now.  It’s an exhausted argument and a very narrow one as well, but one I feel will always be addressed.

You know who the biggest bands in the world are right now?  That’s right, the same damn ones that have been on top for three, four, five, SIX decades now.  U2.  The Rolling Stones.  AC/DC.  Metallica.  Madonna.  The Who.  Iron Maiden.  Can Phoenix sell out 100,000 seat arenas?  No, but Edward The Great can.  They’re the biggest draws live, and they’re just as big now as they ever were.  These artists and the scores more at their level have sealed their legacies and legends, and have inspired masses and generations, and always will.

Now, granted, they’ve had the time to keep it together, stay together and stay inspired enough to stay relevant.  Time to create these legacies.  But these artists defined their generation, revolutionized music, whether they wanted to or not.  There’s no way to know if something you did will be groundbreaking and a worldwide favorite, but there’s always something magical that happens when it’s made.

These artists are the master at what they do.  Whether it’s brilliant lyrics, defining entertainment, groundbreaking musical talent, they mastered it.  You see them live, they define your own lifetime, they move you, they become a part of your own dreams and loves.

Kings of Leon?  They’re as marginally forgettable as Kingdom Come.  Rihanna?  Incredibly talented, but is the millionth R&B singer to shout out songs about relationships.  Lil Wayne?  I’ll admit that hip-hop has had many brilliant talents in their innovative and culture-defining uprising, people like Russell Simmons, Grandmaster Flash and Dr. Dre, but at what point does it begin to sound like self-obsessed noise?

I don’t write this blog to attack people who live their dreams and make great careers for themselves, and I’m trying to pick my words wisely now.  But there’s a point where you just have to take a leap and say “Will this inspire?  Will this song live on?  What is the point here?”

I’ll also say that artists, many of them, don’t want to lead the pack.  They’re not looking for infamy, or an avant-garde musical lifeline, and that’s fine.  But there’s got to be someone who can take the torch from the artists that have held it for generations.  It’s going to have to happen sometime.  The Rolling Stones are nearing their mortal end.  So is Paul McCartney, Jimmy Page and Roger Daltrey.  Rock n’ roll isn’t old enough to see its direct originators play it through their 80′s, but it’s far from easily possible.

Music isn’t defining anymore.  If it is, I consider myself dated.  Music’s movement has been technological; vocoders and auto-tuners are “in.”  Bands like The Postal Service, Owl City, VNV Nation and Shiny Toy Guns are successful due to their computerized sounds that stem as far back as Nine Inch Nails and before that, 80′s synth pop.

In that, music a continuance.  Maybe that’s all it is.  I don’t know if music is going to define our lives like it did our parents and grandparents.  I think we’re forced to grow up too fast in a harsher reality, and music doesn’t always have the sway it used to.  With more ways to get music out there, with more media and with so much created in an always-corrupt recording industry, maybe there will be no one to step up to the likes of The Beatles.  Then again, we’ve never been able to see what’s to come in music, so why start now?

I’m rambling.  I knew I would.  I guess my bottom line is that I’m bummed I missed Woodstock, missed the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, missed the foundation of bands like Aerosmith, Cream,  Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin.  Those bands changed the world.  They’re honored and worshiped today and will be forever.

Is there anyone else coming?  Will my generation and those after have such incredibly earth-shattering swarms of talent that would overcome any dry spell in popular music?  I don’t know, and I don’t see it, and that worries me.

In an age of advanced electronic music, that stems from techno to house to jungle, it’s all too easy to get caught up in gadgets and vocoders, and miss out on the whole purpose of music, which is of course to reflect emotion, thought and personality.  Key word; person.

Owl City’s ‘Ocean Eyes’ is a remarkable and respectable take on emotional electronic music.  “Fireflies” is their biggest hit, discussing the rotation of our world, the colorful symphony of millions of fireflies and how he’s kept them before.  Its music video and lyrics combined paint the image of the imagination of what used to thrill us as children.  I will argue that it is damn hard to bring a refreshing take to nostalgia in a song, but they pulled it off this time.

To me, that’s just one of the many peaks of this album.  The album continues to show an exciting, visual take on the world that we take for granted, and again one that hasn’t been done over and over again.  You would think these guys lay under a skyline all night every night, and let their minds explode.  “I am floating away in a silent ballet” is one of the several brilliant lyrics on the album that just provide an excellent summation of the scenery they show such passion for.   Meteors, stars, the whole non-luminescence we all take for granted.  They connect such nature to love in one of my favorites, “Vanilla Twilight”, as well as on “If My Heart Was A House”, where he dances and embraces under a sun held from a string. Adam Young, the sole member, makes his voice almost as visual as the words sung out of it, as he allows it to travel and echo and carry with the many harmonies he creates on each song, in a perfect order.

I won’t dissect albums track-by-track, because it makes an album all to microscopic.  The best albums are defined as a whole scope, and this album fits that bill when it comes to electronic music.  Again, what makes Own City so unique and outstanding is that they take the largest departure from ‘natural’ sounds in my opinion, that being synthesizers/keyboards, and combine that with the most natural things in the world; our sky, daisies, islands, and insecurity coming down like a tidal wave that myself and many others understand all too well.

It’s music that has very much to do with personal taste more than the quality of the music, so I could see how Owl City could be hated; the bizarreness of their band name, the whole electronic sound, the lack of machismo.  Who knows.  But in my opinion, the album creates a scene that envisions a combat to my anxiety, and brings me to a place where I actually feel relaxed.

I, too, got lost in this silent ballet.

I don’t know what will end the human race first; our own greed for power, or our ability to let music be as pathetic as it is today.

Fifty years ago, music didn’t even have the ability to screw up.  Music that was considered garbage back then is held close to the hearts of most of the world; Buddy Holly and Elvis being the best examples of that.  After that, the Beatles, the Byrds, the Stones and the rest of the British invasion, that continued through Black Sabbath and the ultimate band the critics LOVED to hate, Led Zeppelin.  I can’t begin to tell you how many sources I’ve red, those of credible journalists and writers and critics, that called that music garbage, crap and a waste of studio space.  Can you believe that?  Can you believe those same artists that were considered the dregs of American music are heralded as the brilliant young musicians of a generation?

Music today, for the most part, makes you want to scream “IS THIS ALL YOU’VE GOT?!?!?!”  It’s unbelievable.  We have enough people who are celebrities that shouldn’t be – Kim Kardashian, John & Kate, Paris Hilton, to name a few – but there are as many, or more, people in music that don’t deserve what’s usually only given to the very best, the ones who fight tooth and nail to sign the dotted line.  Who?  Lady Gaga.  Jamie Foxx.  Pitbull.  Diddy.  Kanye West.  Lil Wayne.  People who are making millions because their fans don’t know any better.  People who make $80 million a year for talking into  a microphone with music a friend of mine can make in an hour on his Mac.  You’re being fooled, people.

Before there was Amy Winehouse, there was Janis Joplin.  Before there was The Jonas Brothers, there was the Osmonds or the Monkees.  Before there were Fergie and Diddy there was, oh, I don’t know, no one because no one flaunted themselves like buffoons to their level of self-important magnitude.  Kanye West calls himself the ‘King of Pop’ like an idiot – and yes, to give him credit, so did Michael Jackson – but at least Jackson backed it up with a decade’s worth of some of the best pop music in history.  Kanye walks around with sunglasses the size of his forearm, a faux-hawk and I ask myself if he even DOES music.  I can’t name a single song of his, ten years into his career.

My blog’s dealt with human emotion, understanding and trials thus far.  To reflect that, I will not entirely blame the people I’ve named, and those similar to them, for their careers.  They make piss-poor music and troll around like fools because we let them.  If we didn’t want to see these people, they wouldn’t be so well seen.  If we didn’t want them making music, the record companies would have no reason to invest in them.

The purpose of music, the sole purpose, is to better the soul, heal the soul, make us think, make us feel, make use use the words and sounds of music to help us illustrate and explain our hearts and minds.  It’s the universal language, and the only language that doesn’t need its own slang to explain itself.  And that’s where we get fooled.

Life is very serious, and very dark these days.  When you come home, you don’t see sitcoms or comedians working their tails off to make you laugh and breathe  a little bit.  You see overly dramatic mumbo jumbo like ‘Lost’, ‘Heroes’ and the trillion cop shows where you can basically see what the deepest, darkest parts of human action is.  If I want to hear about a woman’s rape, or someone overdosing on heroin, I can turn to most of the major networks.  If I want to laugh, or watch something that’s easier to swallow at the end of a long day, I have to channel surf.

Perhaps its that darkness we let ourselves take in that, combined with how hard so many of us work and how many of us are struggling, we allow garbage music to be played like it is.  So many of us are counting the hours until we get our direct deposits that we don’t listen around us anymore, and we accept how poor music is today – we have enough to worry about, why would we care if Lil Wayne’s sneering with his big platinum teeth like he’s a human trophy?  We’re all living paycheck to paycheck, counting our pennies and not our CD’s.

I’m not saying that all of today’s music is crap, either – Imogen Heap, ADELE, Bon Iver, John Mayer, Ray LaMontagne are all brilliant and well beloved to those that know them.  They’re few of many, however, who don’t rely on charts and big numbers anymore – because they can’t.  Because art is all too hard to find.

However, it’s mind-blowing that those who were successful 20, 3o, 40 years ago are still topping the charts and the venues today – Elton John, Aerosmith, Metallica, The ROLLING STONES are still light years more successful and talented than most anything that’s come since.  It’s like they’re waiting to hand the torch down, with no one there to reach it.  No one’s blowing our minds anymore.  Jim Morrison isn’t here to test our minds, Jerry Garcia isn’t here to teach us all how to relax, and Jimi Hendrix isn’t here to show us just how a show’s supposed to be done.  And if they were, they’d be here to pass the torch too.

Music is doing one thing well that it always has, though; it’s defining our generation where we like it or not.  In a world where we’re all fighting, struggling, letting ourselves be overly sensitive while tapping such small amounts of our own dignity and humanity, music is defining that.  It’s defining it by being as crappy as too many of us feel.

Once we let ourselves heal, and if we ever stand up and let ourselves take in a little more life, music should hopefully be back to the brilliance it can be.  Because right now, music isn’t the work of art it used to be considered to the masses; it’s merely flash-in-the-pan entertainment.  And that’s the darkest aspect of all.