I Ain't Tellin' You a Secret, I Ain't Tellin' You No Lie -- Dinosaur Jr

I often collect music in huge groupings, often managing to catch names and groups that I've seen, read, or had recommended all at once, then find myself having difficulty keeping enough track to explicitly explore any that do not immediately have some effect on me. This is the primary reason I set up a poll on the right side of the page to help me pare down my listening and focus it a bit. It was mostly successful, though the runaway nature of my post about The Church (after both the Church's official Facebook and Steve Kilbey himself--calling it "worth reading" [!]--shared it through Facebook, it has had nearly 500 views, which is about...33x the usual views I have) caught me in an interesting problem, as former leaders, 70's pop-glam-stomp-rockers Slade were suddenly over-taken by alternative guitar-driven power trio Dinosaur Jr. Of course, the Big Star official page had also given me another couple hits, so maybe it was them? I can't be sure, of course, though I only wonder out of curiosity. I'd believe either of them.

Anyway, I'd been learning what I knew of Slade's Slayed? and Nobody's Fools when all this happened and I had to shift gears. Luckily, the alternating leads--in the poll, not guitar leads--meant I'd already been dropping in little tastes of Dinosaur Jr the whole time, but it seemed Slade were in the lead for sure and now I was just all goofed up.

However, as agreed, I'm going to write about the final winner: Dinosaur Jr. The name, like many, passed my eyes many times over the years--mentions as opening act or headliner for whom another band opened, an influence, a love, an example, but never enough to give me even a hint of what they sounded like. When I saw the cover art for the last Dinosaur Jr album, Farm from 2009, as well as lead guitarist and overall lead vocalist J. Mascis, 2011's Several Shades of Why, I got the impression of laidback, pothead, jam band type stuff. Of course, this is likely hysterical to anyone who knows the band or Mascis--at least, parts of it--or may reflect elements of the band or his solo work (or side projects) I'm unfamiliar with and be amusingly accurate, but having heard Dinosaur Jr for myself, well, I was ridiculously incorrect. Mind you, as a young child I confused U2 and REM (for which I was thoroughly admonished and mocked--though I later discovered they were commonly grouped together in some ways, at least in the 80s, even if not commonly confused, and felt a bit vindicated) and have trouble with confusing various indie bands I only know by name, often via strange trains of thought such as: Silversun Pickups -> Silver Apples -> Apples in Stereo, meaning I could conflate all three and be utterly lost.

A More Casual Update on the State of Music and Me -- Gotye, Jeff Beck, and Poll Update

 I've written a bit on my feelings regarding immediate impressions of music, but it's not a perfectly strict rule. Now, that isn't to say that all, or even part, of what I wrote before is irrelevant. What I'm going to tell you now is, for one thing, likely not news to many people, or maybe some of it will be. That doesn't matter, as there are bits and pieces, at the least, that will be new to people. And newness isn't the point--were I to begin pursuing "unheard" music for dissemination I'd turn into the reality of John Peel (who I'm beginning to think is the soul I'd most like to aspire to be), rather than the reputation of the man. If you start pouring through comments on his actual show, or look at reviews of the box set of singles that his label, Dandelion Records (named for his hamster--true story), released, you'll find that some people feel there is an "ugly truth," in that for every Pink Floyd, Marc Bolan or David Bowie, there is Bridget St. John or Medicinehead. Some stuff apparently is pretty decent, and a lot is apparently considered forgettable pap.

Now, my own approach to things means I don't particularly care about that, and I'm actually kind of interested in that Dandelion material, mediocre or unimpressive though it might be, because it actually makes Peel even more interesting to me. Honesty and integrity of taste is one of the things I find most completely respectable, and it means that Peel saw something in those artists that no one else does. Not in the sense of a magic guru ahead of his times, but in the sense of a man who had tastes that weren't defined by what was cool, is cool, or would be cool--except to himself. He liked Sheena Easton and had no shame about it, he loved the Fall like there was no tomorrow, despite the rocky reputation their cluttered discography has when some parts are magnified.

So, rather than begin to pour in things you've never heard of and I've never heard of--the desire to hear things first is one I've long, long since abandoned--I want to simply emphasize the things I hear in the natural course of things. It can be random suggestions, names that prick up my ears, names I've read or heard a thousand times, or mistakes made from confusion of names that seem similar in my head. Sometimes covers lead me somewhere with no other clear origin. Sometimes an image comes up that attracts my eye. There's no telling, really.

I Gotta New Sensation in Perfect Moments, So Impossible to Refuse -- Discussing Music Before It's Digested

For about a year of my life, I wrote movie reviews of all kinds, always after watching a movie, almost always for the first time, and usually while watching or listening to its special features if there were any. I had a passion for movies that was not quite the same as the one I've had for music, though it may simply be that it's a younger one. Or maybe it relates to the ability to chop up a lot of music into separate songs and break up an experience, or the ease of switching, or the fact that a lot of those things make them more readily accessible--certainly, there ought not to be anyone watching movies as they drive to and from, well, anywhere.

Yet, interestingly, in contrast, I write about music at about the same rate but at nowhere near the same "return" rate. Sometimes "you have to listen to it a few times" is code for "it's not that good but you get used to it," though I personally wouldn't swear to this being a majority or minority split (or even an even one). My experience tends to be that it's generally something true on some level for most anything. Once in a while new sounds reach past your ears to your brain--heart, if you must--but often they are just so foreign as to be too difficult to quite process the first time around, and the is a sense of conditioning involved.

In light of this, I very rarely write on bands new or old that are new to me until I've spent time with them for a while. Music-wise, of course. If I were out hanging about with some of these bands...I don't even know how that sentence ends. I'd be too away from computers too long and too often to be writing here? I'd be a life-mangled drug addict? I don't know. Nor does it much matter--the point is that it makes it hard to write about them when I'm still getting past that first point where, sometimes, all the songs might sound the same, or my brain might be clamouring for this or that familiar sound from a band I already know, or even simply to do something other than listen to music (though that isn't very common at all).