The break at 2:55 is really something. It feels thrown away at the tail end of such a seemingly bitter song. The reach isn't epic melodrama but the melody and harmony are painfully beautiful. Makes me sigh heavy just before it disappears.
I read in the paper that my brothers are being thrown from rooftops blindfolded with their hands tied behind their backs for violating sharia law. I heard the crowds stone these fallen men if they move after they hit the ground. I heard it’s in the name of God. I heard my pastor speak for God too, quoting scripture from his book. Words like abomination popped off my skin like hot grease as he went on to describe a lake of fire that God wanted me in. I heard on the news that the aftermath of a hate crime left piles of bodies on a dance floor this month. I heard the gunman feigned dead among all the people he killed. I heard the news say he was one of us. I was six years old when I heard my dad call our transgender waitress a faggot as he dragged me out a neighborhood diner saying we wouldn’t be served because she was dirty. That was the last afternoon I saw my father and the first time I heard that word, I think, although it wouldn’t shock me if it wasn’t. Many hate us and wish we didn’t exist. Many are annoyed by our wanting to be married like everyone else or use the correct restroom like everyone else. Many don’t see anything wrong with passing down the same old values that send thousands of kids into suicidal depression each year. So we say pride and we express love for who and what we are. Because who else will in earnest? I daydream on the idea that maybe all this barbarism and all these transgressions against ourselves is an equal and opposite reaction to something better happening in this world, some great swelling wave of openness and wakefulness out here. Reality by comparison looks grey, as in neither black nor white but also bleak. We are all God’s children, I heard. I left my siblings out of it and spoke with my maker directly and I think he sounds a lot like myself. If I being myself were more awesome at being detached from my own story in a way I being myself never could be. I wanna know what others hear, I’m scared to know but I wanna know what everyone hears when they talk to God. Do the insane hear the voice distorted? Do the indoctrinated hear another voice entirely?
Dr. Dog’s Eric Slick pens a defense of the oft-maligned mainstream band.
On the heels of the Current's Most Essential #893albums, this seems especially relevant and I'm sharing this article because I feel like it's a kind of cowardice to snipe at what art might have shaped someone else's personal experience.
(Disclaimer: This rant assumes a person's definition of "essential" is roughly: something which shaped the person they are today.)
As I was saying...
#1. Nobody's too cool for their teenage self and #2. Your big list is lame enough already without including whatever offending Objects of Snark drew your derision.
I don't begrudge anyone their personal life's experience (their Current faves are another story), but snide comments about whatever first piqued someone's now undying love for EDM, neo-soul, or whatever incarnation of mouth-breathing Appalachian regurgitation you're on about these days is 13 year-old smoking pathetic.
Because everybody starts somewhere, be it Lisa Loeb, DMB, Blink 182, Mariah Carey, TLC, Goo Goo Dolls, David Gray, or the fucking Eagles--you can't spin Foo Fighters' every new release and pretend you're somehow not catering to recovering (or current) Creed fans. Ditto the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Pearl Jam, et al...
OR: When the Velvet Underground doesn't break your top 20 (h/t Star Tribune) and your supposed bonafides are "hey, Nirvana's #1" you've kind of forfeited your edge, assembled a more traditional Rolling Stone-type round up than anything deserving the oft-repeated, snarky descriptor or name-calling: "hipster," and maybe it takes just as much cool, honesty, self-awareness, or whatever to list Pink Floyd as it does Counting Crows.
Or TLC as Tune-yards. David Gray as Elliott Smith.
Inspirational Quote (from linked article:
"Are the Counting Crows influential and relevant? I can’t help but think that acclaimed artists such as Real Estate, DIIV and Mac DeMarco might owe some credit to the Crows — even if it may be unconscious
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2087
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