Waiting Room

When I was in 12th grade, I discovered Minor Threat. There's pretty much a shelf-life on hardcore bands that ends at about the same time that the pre-frontal cortex is fully formed (21-25) or when one starts paying his / her own bills and doesn't live at home with his parents. This rule can be completely neglected if one is 53 years old today (happy birthday, Jello!) and is pretty much angry at everything... spurning making good money on it to keep their punk rock cool by not allowing his bandmates to sell "Holiday in Cambodia" to Levi's.
That said, if a sound financial plan and vacations are in the cards, uh... the above rule is enforced thoroughly.
I grew up with a mix of heavy metal in junior high school and pop / new wave prior to that. I don't want to turn this into songs that changed me because a few of them (David Bowie's "Changes" and The Smiths "There Is a Light That Will Never Go Out") deserve entries all their own, but there were songs that changed me, and somewhere in 10th grade, there was a kid named Nate who turned me on to punk rock. My friend and next door neighbor Tom knew him, and he was willing to record his vinyl and tapes if we got him tapes, so I did, and I got a bunch of Dead Kennedys, Circle Jerks, and other bands I can't quite remember (forgettable crap like the Surf Punks) as well as a list of "cool" bands before he moved to a different state.
Over time, I would buy to experience (it's not like going on Youtube or Myspace to hear something now), and there was some good stuff, and there was some not so good stuff. For example, my cousin Michelle had a tape by the Exploited (Punk's Not Dead), and she lent it to me. It was OK. Frankly, it was better if you
hadn't heard much punk music. And I'm not talking about good punk stuff like The Ramones. I'm talking about loud and annoying British mohawk sporting 1970s leftover bands still trying to perform in the 1980s while doing too much bad needle drugs and taking too much dole money. Well, unfortunately, I got stuck buying that tape because somehow Tom lost the case, and I ended up having to buy a new tape of it (not exactly easy to do at Mall stores), which left me stuck with the original tape and short of $10 (and you wonder why Napster was so revolutionary for those of us who felt that the music industry owed us thousands of dollars for all of the crap that we bought just to try it since it wasn't on commercial radio at the time - thank God for used CD shops at the time that were at least willing to trade our crap for better crap).
And there were some good bands then. Minor Threat was one of them. A lot of the DC bands on Dischord were really good, and they seemed to stand the test of time better than some of the other stuff (especially the New York stuff that seemed to want to be metal or skinheads). Alternative Tentacles offered some great non-Dead Kennedys choices as well (Alice Donut and Nomeansno), but it's hard to listen to them the same way as I did when I wasn't a quarter of a century old (though I will say, I can still listen to them more than a lot of other stuff that was SOOO... cool back then).
There was some good stuff on SST as well; however, it's not like anyone over the age of 25 can listen to Black Flag or Bad Brains for longer than a couple of songs either (if that long). Nevertheless, at 16, I was captivated by the guy at the mall who looked so cool with his Black Flag jacket. He wore Misfits shirts, so I discovered them, too, and let me tell you (in another column at length), they're still awesome (at almost age 40).
Some bands moved on and became mature than straight up noise and angst-filled short "fuck the world" songs. Husker Du, Sonic Youth, and Dinosaur Jr were some of the best, and I can elaborate on them in other columns, too (and I will).
But Minor Threat and their 1-2 minute songs were anthematic... at least at the time.
And they did it with a lot of stuff that related to why high school life sucked so much (instead of real world politics that I thought I understood better than I did).
Now... not so much. The same is true with other good Dischord hardcore stuff like Dag Nasty. Even some of the Ian Mackaye side projects (Egg Hunt and Pailhead) have lasted, but other stuff (Embrace) is simply nostlagic pre-emo / straight edge history of a time long since forgotten in the course of daily life (though thinking about them here makes them come alive again).
But Fugazi... and that first 7 Songs vinyl release... and we all had the 2nd one for Margin Walker, too. They were liberating forces of life in 1989. Blueprint was equally fantastic in 1990, and by the time Steady Diet of Nothing came out prior to that tour in 1992 where my friends and I met them and took a million pictures (none of which came out - damn you digital age for not being here soon enough and damn you Tony for not loading or removing the film correctly!), they were the greatest. However, by 1993, In on the Killtaker was good, but it wasn't the same as the live versions of the songs or the older discs. The later albums like Red Medicine and The Argument didn't match the intensity of a full on band's assault and timing with lyrical and musical masterpieces like the ones that comprised those first 13 songs. Those 13... they were and still are the greatest example of what the days of hardcore music could mean. Twenty two years later, they're still awesome as I listen to the digital versions from my computer's speakers.
And "Waiting Room" can be mixed with Destiny's Child and Rihanna and still be great, but when it's by itself, it's still one of the best of all time, which is a lot more than I can say for anything that the Butthole Surfers ever did, but you didn't need me to tell you that.
Or did you?

Paris and Rome

The Cranes always had that little girl lost in the woods voice from their British waif / Goth wannabe singer Alison Shaw, and it really worked from the get go (her brother was in the band, too, but who cares - he was a dude, and nobody pays to see the guys in a female fronted band). Had she walked into the orange walled Listening Booth that I worked in post high school, she would have surely been a "dead girl," and despite the descriptions listed above, at 19/20, she was the hopeful dream woman. At 39/40, she would just try my patience way too much. But at the time, she was my Kim Gordon, my Bjork, my Kat from Babes in Toyland, or any other indie princess that could be thrust out there.
As for the Cranes, sure, the early stuff (Self non Self) was very poorly produced, and while some bands can sound over-produced, let's be honest: If you're going to record an album, it has to sound like it wasn't done in a wind tunnel or a closet (no matter how much John Peel thought you were the bomb). Sound needs room to breathe and come alive. However, for their first REAL single, a term I use as in the line of demarcation for where I picked up with the Cranes, I have to say that "Tomorrow's Tears" off of Wings of Joy was fantastic. The review in the NME / Melody Maker said kill for a copy, so I went out and got the disc, and yeah... I was hooked, so hooked that I made a pair of friends go to see them in London. It was a great show, but unfortunately, that was the same night that Nirvana played in London, and I was never forgiven. I'm sure that I deserved not to be forgiven, but I had seen Nirvana (and it was good), and my friends didn't (nyah nyah nyah!!!). For the life of me, even looking back on hearing that one song I really liked, it wasn't live music or at least music to spend time with in a live paying venue. It was mopey bedroom music or alterna boy love music or whatever it was, but it wasn't a live show to be reckoned with (the same can be said of Dead Can Dance when I saw them a few years later).
The disc itself didn't have much shelf life. I still have songs from it, but it's not something that I listen to all the time. Recently, I've been listening to their next proper disc Forever, which is really good, and it's a nice touch when I'm working on stuff for school on my computer and trying to drift into solace. I can't say that I'll be loading it into my mp3 player for the car since that DEFINITELY won't happen, but yeah... it's been getting some rotation, which has been making me want to go back and get the entire disc of Loved.
In looking at the aforementioned Forever, there was "Everywhere," "Cloudless," "Jewel," and "Adrift," and  they were big and beautiful and dark and eerie and driven and sweeping with that aforementioned sense of little girl lost in the world at its ultimate perfection and the simple piano of "Tomorrow's Tears" sounded so simple and unrealized into what the band could be if they ever got out of Southampton (if it's the last thing they ever do), and thisdisc, Forever, was the moment of all things great and possible, and there was nowhere else for them to go.
But then there was "Paris and Rome."
And the sound was so hauntingly wonderful and sweeping into indie rock's "The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow" as she sang into a kicked in purpose with its totality."Shining Road" was good too, but it wasn't as good, and frankly, it's been so long since I listened to the rest of the disc and thought anything more of it other than the fact that the cover is actually a Degas painting (at 23, who knew?).
Does it matter what she was singing? Like Liz Fraser of the Cocteau Twins, there was a sense that she could be making up sounds and still making beautiful music. Sure, there were the points where it was clear and real what was being said by Liz (I suddenly have a hankering for This Mortal Coil's version of Tim Buckley's "Song to the Siren" at this very instance: Did I dream you dreamed about me...), but did it really matter? Who cares what a "sugar hiccup" is? It was just a moment in time to drift back and remember and feel so 1980s / 1990s - even if one looks at her now in that video for "Song to the Siren" and thinks... that's a bad haircut - even for that time.
Does it matter that "Paris and Rome" is lyrically far less than the great American male poet Ezra Pound's "River Merchant's Wife," which is one of the most incredible poems ever?
For in Pound, there is a sense of that realization of love and forever that comes with the lines:
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.
But for the Cranes, there is simply a sense of hopeful yearning... a remembering of all things that were good. Both lovers are separated from their loved ones. Both have a desire for the destination and a hope that they will get to it.
And there is hope... if nothing else there is a sense of purpose and promise.
So we go back to Annie, and we sense the feelings of Alison Shaw as we hear:
Just thinkin' about
Tomorrow
Clears away the cobwebs,
And the sorrow
'Til there's none!
When I'm stuck a day
That's gray,
And lonely,
I just stick out my chin
And Grin,
And Say,
Oh
The sun'll come out
Tomorrow
So ya gotta hang on
'Til tomorrow
Is it really so different for mid 1990s quasi goth / alternative bliss / dream pop other than the lyrics, which know that there is nobody coming back? Couldn't Pound have planted a sense of doom for his narrator with a twist that her lover was never going to come back to her (killed in battle, abducted by aliens, tempted by a woman on the other side of the river)? Sure, Annie was going to end up with a home and Daddy Warbucks (this is Broadway), but might that have not happened at all? Isn't there a plot twist that could make it NOT SO?
And what will happen to me, to you, to any of us when this day ends?
Do we keep our hopes up high? Do we subscribe to the painful reality of all things that could happen and confront the brutal truths of the Stockdale Paradox and just say to ourselves that nothing good is ever guaranteed to happen, so why not assume the worst and it can only get better while we remain optimistic to our own powers of immediate control. But does that mean that we should accept our lonely, miserible existential void and live as if nothing is to happen, for who knows? That may be the truth... or maybe not.
So how do we find a new meaning beyond the lyrics and hope for a better tomorrow in spite of all things? If we can't count on the lyrics of our songs to do it for us, can we just ascribe them hope and drift into the things that we want to hear?
In Paris and in Rome
And in places far from home
From the mountains to the sea
To wherever the road may lead
I wonder where you'll go
Will the sun shine as you go?
There's all the World, you know
Just beyond the things we know
Don't be lonely now
If you can try to be brave
Maybe the sun will come back
To wash your tears away