I'm Good, Gone, Down on the Hip -- Jawbox

I've always had an affection for music videos, which has led to the purchase of numerous otherwise-ignored-by-the-public DVDs, and some other oddities. Before I'd really settled into the mode of pursuing b-sides, my purchase of Deftones' B-Sides and Rarities, which naturally compiled its titled objects, was driven by the unmentioned inclusion: all of their music videos on a DVD accompanying those songs. Because I like the band quite a lot (Deftones was one of my few major label modern releases on vinyl for a long time, and still has only a few relatives of that variety, and I was known for my endless listening to White Pony in high school), I did decide to go ahead and listen to the "accompanying" CD (as I saw it, at least).

In the process, I was faced with a good number of remixes, live and acoustic versions, but also a solid number of covers. Deftones were part of what was considered the "nu metal" wave of heavier popular music, but rapidly found the label inappropriate or uncomfortable--and their choices of covers only re-emphasized this. Their performance of the Cure's "If Only Tonight We Could Sleep" from the MTV Icon show for the Cure appears on the disc, surrounded by covers of The Smiths, Cocteau Twins, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Sade. However, the cover I'm bringing all of this up to mention is the one chosen to lead the disc: "Savory."

Of course, that cover is technically just Deftones vocalist Chino Moreno and the band Far, but that's not relevant for where I'm going, which is toward the band from which the song was sourced--Jawbox. When I picked this disc up (near its release seven years ago), even the Cure was only vaguely familiar, Skynyrd through the obvious singles (though not the one covered there--"Simple Man"), and the rest were alien to my ears, though the names rang bells in a way that suggested I ought to know them in the sense of knowing things about music, but I had no clue why, and would easily confuse them with other familiar band names that I had no music to associate with. Jawbox easily fit here, except that I didn't even associate the band's name with a reputation.

"Savory" was probably the standout cover on the album, even if it came from the earlier phase in the Deftones' career, which has remained my least favourite. The song itself, though, is so very unusual that it is at first jarring but rapidly becomes alluring and curious. It starts with a distorted, circling, ringing riff, with a more staccato, muted, and heavier one driving underneath it until an unusual drum beat comes in and the first riff turns to a higher note and circles closer. Chino and Jonah Matranga (I assume) then begin to sing and carry the melody, with harmonized emphases over the near-atonal, repetitive riffing until it spreads apart to single-picked notes that mimic the previous riffs like an echo, but carrying more melody by moving between strings.

Indeed, the instrumentation is all preserved from the original track:

Times I Want Is Times Like This - We're Where the Action Is

While my immediate desire was to begin addressing the Beggars Banquet series of Omnibus releases, I'm going to set that aside for another day, as it was requested, quite reasonably, that I discuss the stores in the area I live in and that seems important in this day and age, as I'm not sure who does or does not know about them. As I'm writing this, making it a revolving series seems like a good idea, as I'm likely to wax poetic about a lot of them, or at least a few of them, to make sure I give a good approximation of the kind of variety each carries and what to expect from them.

If you live in the Triangle--the part of North Carolina so named for its set of three cities in relative proximity to each other: Chapel Hill, Durham and Raleigh--there are a number of music stores actually still present and doing interesting business and providing different advantages for those seeking music. We've lost some good ones, some not so good ones, and some middling ones, even in the time I've been around. Some persist, some persist for strange reasons, and some go for even more mystifying ones.

I frequent two stores for new music on a semi-regular basis, occasionally browsing one or two others, and dipping into a chunk of used stores even more erratically. It's a weird sort of community in general, but the persistence of independent music stores is a good thing. Most cover vinyl and CDs, and all of the sealed, new music purveyors also sell used material.

I'm not going to delve too much into vinyl, though I'll address the locations I've had luck with it, because I'm not enough of a connoisseur of the stuff to address who has the best, most pristine stock, or who is best for collectors. Me, I couldn't care less if what I just ran across that I want is a first pressing. It's a nice bonus if it is, and I can delight in stumbling across it, but I won't turn down second presses or even reissues.

The best place to start is probably the store that caused me to move to the area. About ten years ago, I visited Chapel Hill for the first time in my life, shortly after I'd started expanding my taste into modern independent music. I was in the midst of obsessions with At the Drive-In and Aphex Twin, and the former I could actually still find in places like Best Buy and Circuit City, but you'd be lucky to get past The Richard D. James Album or Come to Daddy (the US issue that combines the original, separate British singles into a single release) in the catalogue of an artist who has been releasing music since the early 1990's under various aliases. So when I went into this newfangled idea of an "independent music store," my new fascination with vinyl and my interest in these harder-to-find artists drove me to look in those places first.