Jeremy D. Larsen, writing for Pitchfork, uses the riotous 1913 Paris debut performance of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring to illustrate the difficulty our brains have in enjoying new music. The performance, to perhaps understate the effect, took its audience outside of their sonic comfort zones.

Many members of the audience could not fathom this new music; their brains—figuratively, but to a certain extent, literally—broke. A brawl ensued, vegetables were thrown, and 40 people were ejected from the theater. It was a fiasco consonant with Stravinsky’s full-bore attack on the received history of classical music, and thus, every delicate sense in the room.

He goes on to explain why new music, truly different music, is so hard for us to enjoy.

People love the stuff they already know. It’s a dictum too obvious to dissect, a positive-feedback loop as stale as the air in our self-isolation chambers: We love the things we know because we know them and therefore we love them. But there is a physiological explanation for our nostalgia and our desire to seek comfort in the familiar. It can help us understand why listening to new music is so hard, and why it can make us feel uneasy, angry, or even riotous.

​I’ve often read that our musical tastes solidify somewhere in the late high school/college years. I like to think I’m an exception to that, because I still spend a fair amount of time seeking out new music. I read music blogs and diligently check out their recommendations. I listen to the Apple New Music playlist that is algorithmically curated for me every Friday, comparing my list with my wife’s. I make a new playlist every month, comprised of mostly fresh tracks (with some evergreens thrown in for good measure).

How exceptional am I really, though? Is the new music I like that much different than what I would have liked in the past? Is it really challenging me?

For example, one of my new favorite songs is “I Feel Alive” by the band TOPS. The band describes itself as “a raw punk take on AM studio pop,” though it feels like more of the latter. So of course I like it! The band itself is fairly new, but I got introduced to music by AM studio pop in the seventies and I spent my high school years listening to punk.

It is true that I do listen to things that I wouldn’t have in high school. Don’t tell anyone, but I didn’t really like My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless when it came out. I can’t imagine having enjoyed the Velvet Underground at the same time I was exploring industrial bands. However, the noisy rock and quiet modes of the VU did influence a lot of the bands I listened to in high school and college, so again, eventually liking them is hardly a stretch. I never would have been into sophistipop in the nineties, but having grown up in the eighties, I was able to appreciate it more when teenage angst died down.

I plan to keep exploring new music, but I don’t expect my tastes to change in a revolutionary way. Whenever I so much as look at the band/artist names that are trending on Apple Music, I’m just not sure what to make of them.

I’m happy that my tastes didn’t get stuck in a lock groove in 1994, but I’m also cognizant that there is a familiarity and sometimes nostalgia with even the new music that I appreciate.

It’s worth noting that I also don’t like a lot of the stuff I did in my teens. Those industrial bands didn’t stick with me, and neither did hip hop or ska or half a dozen other genres I threw myself into for a while.

Us old dudes are suckers for reissues of our favorite records. I’ve owned Green Mind by Dinosaur Jr. on cassette, compact disc and vinyl. Still, when I saw another colored vinyl version newly available for sale, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t tempted to make a purchase. It’s especially hard to resist that kind of acquisition when you believe that, after the apocalypse, the only currency worth anything will be vinyl records.

The limited edition vinyl game is not for the faint of heart nor the easily discouraged. A rare bundle of reissues came up recently for another one of my favorite indie-rock bands, and before I even knew about the bundle, it was sold out.

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The Polvo reissues are going fast. Pre-order yours now to be sure you get the first pressing. You can find them in the Merge Store [link in profile]. #Polvo #Vinyl #MergeRecords

A post shared by Merge Records (@mergerecords) on Jan 17, 2020 at 12:31pm PST

The most frustrating thing about this sort of “you snooze, you lose” situation is that being off Instagram for a few days was what ultimately prevented me from getting the bundle of LP’s. The three LP bundle is sold out, and the only way to get the third record is to buy it off of Discogs for a cool $100. It wouldn’t irritate me as much as it does if it wasn’t a case of a legendary independent record label like Merge Records using a corporate silo owned by Facebook exclusively to advertise their new hotness. There is a news section on the label’s website, but it doesn’t appear to have an RSS feed.

The founders of Merge records are famous for their progressive political activism. However, not even they consider the role that Facebook has played in undermining our democracy. That is a role to which even executives at the company now admit. It doesn’t seem like Facebook is a platform a fiercely independent label would want to help amplify. Nor should the label force their fans into those platforms to keep up with new releases.

I saw my first show at a club in 1993, at the venerable Local 506, on Franklin St. in Chapel Hill. The venue is still there, nestled snugly between two Indian restaurants. Now I typically go to see a band there every couple of years or so. At that initial show, I saw Polvo, with the classic lineup of Ash Bowie, Dave Brylawski, Steve Popson and Eddie Watkins. My first rock show was supposed to be seeing Mudhoney the previous year, at the 9:30 Club in DC, where my cousin worked. However, my dad strongly objected to me going to what he just thought of as a bar to see a grunge band. He was intransigent on the subject, and it was out of my hands. I had to wait a bit longer to experience eardrum pounding indie rock in the dark confines of a club.

Polvo was brilliant and raw that night, and left me with a taste for move live music. Polvo remained on of my favorite bands through the 90’s (I also love their more recent records), though drummer Eddie Watkins left the group after the 1996 Exploded Drawing double-LP. That record is considered by many to be the best math rock album ever made. Exploded Drawing effectively showcased the many different sides of Polvo, from the Eastern influences, to the unusual time signatures and unpredictable song structures in an almost grinding journey through the essence of the band. It was certainly a fitting last act with the group for an unusually gifted drummer.

Fast forward 23 years, to 2016, and I found myself employed in the same office with Watkins. I never even knew I was working with one of my favorite drummers. I’m not sure why I didn’t make the connection, since I should have recognized him and he was in a fairly senior role, so I heard his name around. To be fair, we did work on separate products and in different parts of the organization. I didn’t realize it was the same Eddie Watkins, that is, until I came into work one Monday morning and read an email about his death. I was frozen by the news. The cause of death was not specified, which usually means one of only a few options. What I found out independently confirmed my suspicions that Eddie had taken his own life. His family had wanted to keep it quiet initially, but by the following year had started Eddiefest, an event held at the Cat’s Cradle club, featuring a host of local bands. The third such event was just held.

In honor of late drummer, friend, son, brother and father Eddie Watkins, his family created EddieFest, the first in 2017.

A benefit to bring awareness about suicide and suicide prevention.

I’m glad to see the family taking the opportunity to memorialize Eddie in a way that contributes to the cause of preventing such tragedies.

Movember

The Movember Foundation started in 2003 with a mission to improve men’s health and focused on male-specific cancers. The method the charity used was to enlist men to grow mustaches (which had fallen out of favor) in the month of November. The gimmick gave men participating the chance to explain the cause to those asking about the new whiskers. What began as a simple but clever idea has expanded over time. In recent years, they have increased their mission to feature a significant focus on men’s mental health and suicide prevention.

A recent post from the foundation cites research that shows ongoing perceived stigma around talking about mental health at work. 75% of suicides in the US are committed by men. One has to wonder, if it were easier to talk about these issues at work, would we be losing less men in this way? In the wake of Eddie’s suicide, a number of leaders wondered if they had missed signs. What could we have done differently?

I don’t have easy answers to the questions about why choose to end their own lives at such a high rate, but I have been participating in Movember for the last few years to try and raise money and awareness about the problem. I’m hoping that bringing this topic out in the open is a good first step.

(Polvo, without Eddie on drums, by Edward on Flickr)

Folks, I would really like to checkout The Mandolorian. However, that would require two things:

1. That I setup a Disney+ subscription. This shouldn’t be too hard.
2. That I stop watching the new Tennis video on repeat. That one is going to be tougher.

The husband and wife duo that comprise Tennis wrote this song while living on a boat, anchored in a fisherman’s cove, armed only with an acoustic guitar and a drum sequencer. The recorded version, however, is fully fleshed out and bubbling with synthesizers. The video is simply hypnotic. This is a trance from which I never want to come out.

🎵 Sebadoh - Sunshine: I’m still deciding how I feel about the majority of the new Sebadoh album, Celebrate The Void. Sebadoh and I have a long history and it has been about 27 years since I heard that the bassist who got kicked out of Dinosaur Jr. had his own band. At the time I nearly flipped my lid. In the fall of 1994, I went to see Sebadoh and Dinosaur Jr. within a week of each other and teased Lou Barlow a bit about it while getting to hang out with him as well as Mike Flood at the merch table (I didn’t ride with the flood that night).

Although, it’s hard to call such a unique and prolific band “consistent,” I would maintain that the majority of their records have a sizable number of songs that have stuck closely with me throughout the years. Even the previous record, Defend Yourself, which appeared after a fairly lengthy hiatus, has a couple of tracks that rank among their better material.

It’s hard to predict how the latest record will age, though. I’ve liked it better than I thought I would and the track “Sunshine” is one reason for that. Barlow’s clever lyrics about needing the brighter side of life so he can shut it out speaks to a part of the human condition that’s hard to name or even describe well. The slow and angular guitar part lazily wraps itself around some soothing negative space. The classically and unmistakably Sebadoh baseline anchors the song and gives it a bit of a jaunty feeling. The whole song comes together as a remarkable entry in the band’s catalog and makes you glad they are still doing their thing.

Most of the Record Store Day exclusives recently have not been my cup of tea. However, this year, one release in particular caught my eye after the tragic death of Richard Swift.

Death Cab For Cutie’s Ben Gibbard will pay tribute to friend and collaborator Richard Swift with a new 7-inch split single featuring two unreleased tracks recorded by the pair. The A-side is an unreleased demo of “Me and Magdalena” which Gibbard wrote for The Monkees’ 2016 album Good Times!. The B-side is an alternate unreleased version of Teenage Fanclub’s “The Concept” from Gibbard’s cover of the band’s Bandwagonesque album, which he released in 2017. Limited to 1,600 copies, with proceeds benefiting MusiCares.

I can vouch for the quality of the album version of Gibbard’s cover of “The Concept” from his full-length take on Teenage Fanclub’s Bandwagonesque. It will be interesting to listen to the alternate version. Many times, with Swift’s production, you can hear his style in the recording. I think I get just as much of Swift as I do Jurado on Damien Jurado’s “A.M. AM.”.