Monthly Archives: May 2007

Nine Inch Nails, “Dead Souls”

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The Crow Soundtrack
someone take these dreams away
that point me to another day
a duel of personalities
that stretch all true reality

 

 

 

 

In the early to mid 1990s, there was a period where the soundtrack album was an excellent way to discover new music. Film directors like Quentin Tarantino, Kevin Smith, and Cameron Crowe were using so much popular music to score their films that there was hardly any traditional score at all. And because of that, the albums that came out to accompany the films were often little slices of musical heaven. The soundtracks to Tarantino’s films in particular, with dialogue from the movies spliced between songs, are albums I remember quite fondly.
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Blind Melon, “Change”

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blindmelonblindmelon.jpg And oh as I fade away,
they’ll all look at me and say,
Hey look at him, and where he is these days…

When life is hard, you have to change.

 

 

Like most people, my first introduction to Blind Melon came from a girl in a bee costume on MTV’s Alternative Nation. And really, looking back on it, the song has all the trappings of a one-hit wonder, doesn’t it? Catchy video? Check. Cutesy melody? Check. Able to simultaneously blend in on college radio and at your nephew’s seventh birthday party? Check. In fact, for most people, this is where Blind Melon remains – a one-hit wonder band from the early nineties. Which is a shame, really, as I think Shannon Hoon was one of the more interesting musicians to come out of the post-grunge explosion of quirky bands. (Far better than those Spin Doctor fellas, at any rate!) Still, this album is one of the fine examples of that bizarre phenomenon of discovering things in your own backyard (so to speak). I received the disc by accident from one of those “cds through the mail” things that were fashionable in the late-eighties/early-nineties, and it remained on my shelf for quite some time. (Beck’s first album did this, as well. Stupidly, I gave that one away without opening it.) It wasn’t until I went away to camp in 1993 that I really got to know and love this disc. And it wasn’t until then that “Change” set up camp in my heart. { In light of the rest of the entry, I realize that this has become an awful pun. I’m going to leave it, though. For those of you who aren’t “irony challenged,” I apologize.}

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The Mountain Goats, “Love Love Love”

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and way out in seattle, young kurt cobain
snuck out to the greenhouse, put a bullet in his brain.
snakes in the grass beneath our feet, rain in the clouds above,
some moments last forever, but some flare up with love love love.

This past April, I had planned to write an entry on R.E.M.’s “Let Me In.” Obviously, I didn’t. Not for any good reason, it’s just that the words never seemed to come out right. It was like trying to explain what it felt like to stand inside a hurricane, watching the sky turn dead-television grey. I can do that in a sentence (and you have proof, presuming your short-term memory works all right), but it doesn’t ever seem to match the original, emotional connotation. So, no entry came. I can tell you, right now, that this entry is going to do a whole lot more than what it says on the tin. In fact, it’s probably going to be two entries. But seeing as it’s the Mountain Goats track that brought everything to a head, I’ll let it rule the subject line. Goats are probably use to lofty places, anyway – especially mountain goats – and I’d hate to tinker with nature.

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Smashing Pumpkins, “Mayonaise”

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smashingpumpkins-siamesedream.jpgFool enough to almost be it
Cool enough to not quite see it

Doomed…

 

 

 

Something Chris wrote about wondering whether contemporary couples still had “their song” started me thinking about just how important songs have been in my life, and in the construction of my own personal identity. And of the complete impossibility of choosing a “favorite song.” A sort of one-size-fits-all for the rest of my life… I have songs for seasons, friends, enemies, places, moods, times, and so on. I can tell you precisely how any one of the thousands of songs I own fits into my life, and precisely how it doesn’t. And so, as you might expect, on most days I am completely unable to describe which is my “favorite.”

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