“Do you ever look around and think to yourself- My god, we’re friggin’ doomed?!?” This is the question that I posed to my wife, Gia, as we exited the rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike last Friday. We were on our way to Philadelphia for a wedding and when we made a quick pit stop we were surrounded by the kinds of people that Bill Burr so brilliantly depicted as animals in his 2010 special Let it Go. Call them what you will: Mouthbreathers, In-the-Way-People or just go with Burr’s summary and go with animals...but they’re everywhere and if you’re not careful they will destroy your spirit. And then, not even 10 minutes further on that unsightly highway that they call the Turnpike, I received an email from a guy named Alex who worked at Side One Dummy Records that reminded me that people are a lot like bands- there are still gems out there...you just have to sift through a lot of shit to find them.
Even though he’s been making it since the early eighties, I only just discovered Jesse Malin’s music about a month and a half ago. I had traveled into New York City to see Mark Lanegan at The Gramercy Theater and an ad for a D Generation show, the reunited glam-punk band from the nineties, continuously ran before and in between bands. The hypnotic advertising did its job because after an incredible performance by Lanegan that put me on cloud nine, I got on a train headed back to Jersey and queued up D Generation on Spotify. As buzzed minds tend to do, mine wandered to the biography portion of the user-friendly (but artist-unfriendly) app and learned that the lead singer of D Generation was Jesse Malin who was now about a decade and a half into a solo career. I had heard the name, Jesse Malin, before but I never did bother to listen because for some reason *my mind was convinced that he was the MTV VJ with the hair that was so obnoxious that it took the attention off of his piercing voice for just long enough to get the next video queued up. Now, realizing that these were two completely different humans, I was up for hearing some new music and with a plethora of albums to choose from I did what anyone fueled on Brooklyn Lager and half a pot brownie would do- I picked the one with the coolest title: New York Before the War. From that moment on I was a different person. That night, Jesse Malin took me on a journey that I doubt I will ever forget and his album was the soundtrack to my NJ Transit ride home from one of the best shows I have seen all year. It’s not often, if ever, that someone has the privilege of seeing a live show that shakes them to the bone and then discovers a completely different artist that would go on to be such a game changer for them. And yes, I have done this plenty of times before. By “this” I mean I have heard something that I deemed a game changer while my mind was altered only to hear it completely differently under less altered states only to curb my hopeful exuberance. So, of course, the first thing I did the next day was fire up New York Before the War while stone-cold sober and it gave me the same charge as the night before.
Since that wild summer night I have really connected with a few of Malin’s releases**, namely 2010’s Love it to Life, and both albums that he released in 2015: New York Before the War and Outsiders. I made the half hour journey to Vintage Vinyl, the record store that I’ve been frequenting since the eighth grade after finding out that Green Day had released two albums before Dookie (thanks for all the rides, Mom), and I picked up his two latest albums on vinyl but I could not find Love it to Life. The more I listened to Love it to Life, the full-band album that was released on Side One Dummy Records, the more I had to have it. Not since discovering Tim Barry back in 2012 or so, have an artist’s lyrics affected me so deeply. While both Barry and Malin, and Bill Burr too for that matter, come from completely different places (and certainly different than where I come from) I know that they feel so many of the same things that I feel. And isn’t that what we all seem to be looking for- someone to relate to? A friend, an ally….someone who makes us feel not so crazy after all? Maynard Keenan said it better than I ever could: I’m so eager to identify with someone above the ground, someone who seemed to feel the same.
Onward to Philadelphia. We left the rest stop and I was trying to keep a PMA (Positive Mental Attitude, a mindset that Napoleon Hill introduced way back in 1937 and the Bad Brains adopted and enlightened so many hardcore kids with, including Jesse Malin and yours truly). I try not to get too doom and gloomy around Gia. Unlike Bill Burr or Larry David who can rant about society’s flaws and sound annoyed but hilarious, I come off sounding annoying and mass killer-y. So I tend to save those types of diatribes for my friend, Rob, who shares my misanthropic feelings but who also knows that I have no intention of going postal; that I’d rather just let the frustration out and then numb myself with some music and perhaps my trusty Pax. But, in just 10 short minutes, the rest stop crowd lead me to my wit’s end. Having to dodge those who come to a dead stop out of nowhere while walking so they could check their ever so important text messages and the cuisine aficionados who are wrestling with the dilemma of Burger King or Nathan’s, it’s easy to lose hope and want to trade in my Eckhart Tolle and Herman Hesse books for a subscription to Doomsday Prepper Monthly. So I said my piece to Gia and left her wondering if she was going to have to deal with the dark side of me who listens to Neurosis and thinks Bobcat Goldthwait is the genius director of our time (if you haven’t seen World’s Greatest Dad and/or God Bless America I implore you to do so...NOW) or the happy go lucky guy who likes Green Day and popsicle stick jokes. At that point, I didn’t know either. And then my email bing-bonged. Opening my email (Gia was driving) I was delighted to see that it was from my less-popular personal email rather than my work email. I opened it up to a note from Alex from Side One Dummy Records. At that moment I remembered that I had sent an email-on-a-whim the night before. I had been scouring Discogs for the past week looking at vinyl copies of Malin’s Love it to Life for sale. It was out there in Internet record-land and for a reasonable price too but the earnest music lover in me wants to go straight to the source for records that hit this hard. Of course I know that one guy showing interest in a record released six years prior isn’t going to make a huge difference on Soundscan (which I’m sure is a dated reference), but if it’s available from the artist or the label then that’s where I prefer to go first goddammit. So the night before I had filled out one of those contact forms on Side One Dummy’s website asking if they had any copies for sale because I had just discovered it, thought it was amazing and wanted to purchase it (it is not available in their webstore, which is why I asked the question). Much to my surprise, and delight, I received a message back from Alex saying that they had a single copy in the office which was used for promotional photos at one point and because it was used he didn’t feel comfortable selling it to me, but he’d happily send it to me if I were just to provide my address. Wow. This was a huge difference from what I had just experienced on the Walt Whitman Rest Stop of the New Jersey Turnpike. Here was a guy that works for a label that’s big enough that I never expected to even hear back from, that didn’t want to sell me this record but he would send it to me for free because he wanted it to go to a good home. I then had a 3-4 email exchange with Alex that not only made my night, but reminded me that there is a lot of good out there in this backwards moving world. Sure, there’s a ton of shit too but that just makes finding the good even better.
Being a music obsessed guy, day in and day out I search for the soundtrack to my day. Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t. But the cool thing about finding inspiration in music or whatever brings you joy, whether it be sports, movies, books, bicycling, gardening, etc. is that you wake up with hope each day. One day Jesse Malin’s PMA can remind me that everything is going to be okay and the next Neurosis’ bleakness is what will give me comfort. Also, outside of the music itself it is nice to know that there are others out there like me, who are finding inspiration, hope, solace and happiness within a couple of chords and some earnest words. It’s nice to have others to remind us that we’re not alone and we’re not fucking crazy...as long as we keep working at it, anyway.
*I felt less foolish about this mistake after spreading the Word of Malin and two friends and my wife all had the same response (I’m paraphrasing): the MTV dude with the hair?!?
**Since then, Jesse’s band, D Generation has released their first album in 17 years called Nothing is Anywhere and it is truly awesome. So make that 4 Malin albums (Mal-bums?) that I have connected with.
