Post by Finn Melanson
Son Volt – Down to the Wire
Genre: the partially scratched CD that lost it’s case 12 years ago lodged between the center console and the passenger side front seat of your family car.
Feeling: the credit you give yourself for noticing humbly inserted, socially conscious sentiments, on par with not losing your train of thought when a colleague uses words like “orthogonal” in cooler-talk conversation
Alt-country and Grunge duked it out in the early to mid-1990s to carry the banner of intellectualized young adult malaise. Grunge walking away with a first-round TKO means we have a historical duty to revisit the library of bands like Cross Canadian Ragweed, Uncle Tupelo, Whiskeytown. I mean, those that don’t study Alice in Chains are doomed to repeat it. That and it appears “alt hyphen” endeavors are experiencing a renaissance these days…
Sample:
As they raised their glasses to conquest and nation
Still, pawns playing out the legacy
Of long-dead industry titans and haters of men
Crash Test Dummies – God Shuffled His Feet
Genre: No idea. These people were true iconoclasts and all the social influence in the world couldn’t replicate and mainstream Brad Robert’s bass-baritone range.
Feeling: The cognitive dissonance arising from the realization that your parents were cool if they listened to this stuff 25 years ago
Were you subjected to the Crash Test Dummies on replay at any point between 1992 and 1994? If so, you should know you are not alone, there is a hotline for that, and survivors are starting to tell their stories. We can heal now. I know, because my subconscious said I should publish this song.
Sample:
The people sipped their wine
And what with God there, they asked him questions
Like, do you have to eat..or get your hair cut in Heaven?
The Moody Blues – Om
Genre: countercultural cavemen
Feeling: saluting the first movers in the rejection of middle-class conformity
Closing out this week’s set with a radical departure from the preceding offerings. Not a whole lot going on here lyrically, it might be too abstract for some, but the sitar has a foreboding quality that grants the listener as much interpretational license as they please. So sit back and enjoy the only thing that wasn’t regulated in the mid 20th century – blissed out, psychedelic rockers.
Sample:
The Earth turns slowly round
Far away the distant sound
Is with us everyday