Hole-Violet/Breeders-Cannonball/Live-Mirror Song/Nine Inch Nails-Head Like a Hole/Nirvana-Drain You/Pearl Jam-Corduroy

I just finished my sixth year of teaching, and before yesterday I had never been to a graduation ceremony. I decided to go yesterday and check it out. It was a nice ceremony, and got me to thinking back to my high school days. I'm not sure what the senior class songs are these days (or if they even have them anymore), but when I was in school it seemed that every class was "assigned" either "Don't You Forget About Me" by Simple Minds, or "These Are Days" by 10,000 Maniacs. So, ummm... that Simple Minds song might be Molly Ringwald & Andrew McCarthy's song, but it ain't mine. And, let's just say that I wasn't exactly sold on Natalie Merchant.

When I was in high school, it was all about confusion. Not necessarily confusion like not being able to decide between a Butterfinger or Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Blizzard at Dairy Queen (Butterfinger nine times out of ten), but just not really being able to process things. High school is like those magnets people put up on the fridge with all the different facial expressions. joyful! WORRIED. jubilant! EXASPARATED. whimsical! DEPRESSED. anticipating! INDECISIVE. I was plagued by the inability to distinguish between the profound and trivial events in my life. The trivial was profound. The profound was trivial, or at times not even acknowledged. Up was down. Down was up. Sideways was... sideways going in the other direction.

Of course all of this goofiness was constantly filtered through the prism of music, and in my case it was filtered largely through the prism of 90s grunge/Buzz Clips/Yo MTV Raps!/120 Minutes/Headbanger's Ball/Beavis & Butthead/etc. That may or may not be a good thing, depending on your perspective. I'm gonna leave rap out of this post and focus on rock, because a lot of the 90s rap I was into I've already posted about, and I'm gonna need to post about it again soon, because I just saw a crazy rap festival lineup that I'm insanely pumped up about. But I digress... often.

So 90s people often seem to fall either into the Nirvana camp or the Pearl Jam camp. Obviously the Nirvana camp is a much hipper camp to be in, both because Nirvana holds up better musically, and because Kurt Cobain's suicide has absolved him of any responsibility to continue making quality music. Nirvana is a better band, and I liked them back then, but in terms of hours logged listening to during high school (HLLTDHS), I guess I was more of a Pearl Jam guy. So sue me. Call me a square. I know you are!

I think I will simply say that for all the sh*t Courtney Love gets (and deserves, at this point) for being a hot mess, the argument about whether Cobain wrote Live Through This is pointless. I don't really care if Cobain wrote it, played all four instruments, and somehow morphed into a strung out-looking blonde to sing it, there's some good songs on there.

All of these songs were musical fridge stickers for me, and it's nice to go back and listen to them again. High school was strange and confusing, but in retrospect it was also a lot of fun. Below are some of my favorite 90s rock songs, with the corresponding emotional itches scratched.

Hole-Violet: random aggression with no real target or focus


Breeders-Cannonball: The sun is out and the humidity is under 99%!


Live-Mirror Song: Feeling earnest about something. Perhaps I'm not quite sure what I'm feeling earnest about, but lyrics like "holy desert shield" (?) and "said unto this man" sound really important and deep.


Nine Inch Nails-Head Like a Hole: Aggression with a target, or I just kinda wanna drive fast.


Nirvana-Drain You: Rocking out like Beavis and Butthead.


Pearl Jam-Corduroy: I can't listen to Who's Next forever!

Tortoise-Djed/Seneca (Live & Studio versions)

I mentioned attention spans in the last post. I've actually felt mine eroding to a certain extent over the past ten or so years. In fact, I'm pretty sure it wasn't that great to begin with. But having easy access to computers, ipods, iphones, instant music, instant scrabble, instant coffee, and instant karma, I'd be lying if I said it hasn't had an effect on me. In a way that's sad, I guess, but if I'm cognizant of it, and I wield this microbe-sized attention span as a weapon with which to mercilessly ration out my ever-so-important time, then eventually I will be able to look back upon having lived the most efficient life in the history of man. Or something.

Take Tortoise, for instance. They have some long songs. One of them, Djed, is approximately twenty minutes long. Too much for someone with a short attention span, you ask while checking your other three tabs to check on airline tickets, an IM conversation you're barely paying attention to, and a game of angry birds? NO! See Djed is awesome, every section is distinct and beautiful, and the last half of the song pays the listener off with some of the most incredible music there has ever been (if you MUST only listen to one half of Djed, listen to the second half, but you're really missing out on the full experience).

People sometimes ask me what the best concert I've been to is. Well I'm certain of two things. One of the two best concerts I've ever seen was Prince, and the other was Tortoise. Prince is f*cking Prince, and he absolutely tore the roof off. But Tortoise was equally amazing, because even though they're almost scientifically precise with their playing, they also kick gobs and gobs of *ss. That's why I'm posting both the live and studio versions of Seneca. The song rocks so hard, and the groove they settle into rules. Yay Tortoise. :)

tUnE-yArDs-Bizness

The enjoyment I derive from watching Olympic track & field races is inversely related to the length of the race. If I gotta watch some dudes run in a circle seventy-five times, and wait a seemingly interminable amount of time just to see the wolfpack separate in the last lap, then count me out. I'm good for somewhere between sixty and four hundred meters, and after that I'd rather take my chances on a horse biffing into the water in equestrian. Does this mean I have the attention span of a horsefly? I don't know, but I gotta make my move on Words With Friends. Be right back.

Next week is the last week of the school year, and I feel like I'm at the end of one of those really long races. The part where I've been running for so long I can't even remember when the race began, and all of a sudden I'm like "Oh, ****! There's only one lap left!" So I break into an awkward sprint for the finish line, jostling for position and half breathing, half dry-heaving. I know I'll make it-I always do-but there's always that thought in the back of my head. What if I clip the last hurdle, face-planting into the hard surface while everyone whizzes by and I pound my loser fists onto the track? What if I tear my Achilles seven strides from the finish, and I have to hop across the finish line with everyone pity-clapping and secretly thinking, "Woah. Sucks to be him!"

One of the ways to push these negative thoughts out of my mind is to occasionally blare music into my cranium. And right now I am really enjoying blaring this particular song, and watching this great video. The kids in the beginning are freaking awesome, and I feel a certain kinship with all the adults making those crazy faces in the second section. I, too, feel the compulsion to make bizarre faces on occasion. I don't, on the other hand, decorate myself with white board markers and indulge in slow motion interpretive dance. But hey. Sweet video.

Amon Tobin-Four Ton Mantis/Get Your Snack On/Like Regular Chickens/Nightlife

For some reason, before this week I had never heard the song "Chicago" by Frank Sinatra. I found it a little strange, actually. I feel like, even if you're an untouchable like Sinatra, you should only write one anthem for a gigantic US city. He's from Jersey, so he shoulda just stuck with "New York, York." Or better yet, why not write a song for Newark, New Jersey?! People are gonna love NYC whether or not he sings a song about it. The Yankees are gonna have more money than God and make the playoffs every year, whether or not his song plays after Mariano Rivera saws the last hitter's bat in two in the top of the ninth inning. If I were an internationally adored crooner, I would write songs for lesser-known and more downtrodden US cities, cause those are the cities that need them!

So here are some chorus ideas I have for songs. AHEM...

Our 2012 was 1958,
Robocop came way too late,
Somebody saaaaave Detroooooooit!

The economy sucks, that jerk Lebron left us,
Looking for a meat cleaver in Cleeeeevelaaaaaaaand.

G-ville! Great college town! Party, rock out, and dance.
But drive ten minutes, it's the banjo player from Deliverance!


Ok, maybe I have to polish some of those. Anyways, Amon Tobin is incredible. Quick side note: I've pretty much given up on constructing posts with stories related to the songs I'm posting. Hence the complete lack of transition between the story and the music! Here are four great Amon Tobin tracks (I can't choose-he rules so hard). My favorite part in any of them might be 2:45 into "Like Regular Chickens," when the two guys from David Lynch's movie Eraserhead say "I just, uh, cut them up like regular chickens." "Oh, sure, just cut them up like regular chickens," then the drums absolutely freak out, with the slower drums eventually coming back in in the background. So good.

Robyn-In My Eyes

Pop stars seem to be getting younger and younger. I think I saw a girl with braces in a music video recently, though I'm not sure if that "Friday" song even counts. Regardless, it's gotta be tough for someone like Robyn, who is over thirty (!) and actually had a hit in the twentieth century.

This song kinda kicks ass, though. Good beats, and it's strangely uplifting. Makes me want to be all I can be. In honor of Mother's Day, here's to a pop star that's actually old enough to produce offspring!