The Royal Tannin Bombs

I, the Bad Man, like it when the bass is a prominent part of the music, rather than simply a throb (U2, Simple Minds, most bands).  She Wants Revenge and Siouxsie & The Banshees are good examples, as are most gothy type bands – at least in terms of having the bass pushed forward in the mix – I am all about the rhythm section, and not very interested in guitar.  And I abhor guitar solos.  Well, I started out not being into guitar.  Somewhere along the way I (d)evolved, as now I embrace guitar.  But yes, guitar solos still suck.

Here’s my musical history.

I loved, and could really only tolerate, melodies back in the day when first exposed to modern music.  While most of my friends in high school were listening to hard rock – the likes of Van Halen, Dio, Ozzy Osbourne, Triumph, Y&T, The Scorpions, Rush (this band I loved – Peart’s drumming is second only to Copeland’s, and it’s interesting that both were trios with the bass player doing the lead vocals and – and this is the key as to why I liked them both (aside from Copeland’s superlative drumming and punk aesthete) – had heavy effects on their guitars to make them less, well, guitary), AC/DC, Led Zeppelin – I could only stand the more synth driven songs.  To me Led Zep was simply frightening – not helped by the fact that the kids who picked on me and beat me up listened incessantly to Stairway to Heaven.  So I found soothing solace in the music of the underground, the stuff none of the jocks nor stoners nor rockers listened to.  And in finding underground music I discovered a few things – that I felt a sense of belonging with a community of similarly socially deposed beings, and that there is a wealth of really satisfying melody lush music that made my soul soar.  Primarily driven by keyboards and heavily processed guitars and lyrically introspective and philosophical this music was like nothing I’d ever heard from the ghetto blasters hoisted by the rockers at school.  Bands like The Lords of the New Church, Jah Wobble, XTC, Roxy Music, Heaven 17, Big Country, Thompson Twins, The Cure, The Smiths… all I heard for the first time starting in 1982.  I was given my first radio – don’t recall the brand but it was very oldschool, complete with faux wooden veneer siding and two separate bookshelf sized loudspeakers – this was no iPod.  My father’s boss gave it to him to give to me, and as I twiddled the knob across the frequency modulations I happened upon a college radio station here in the San Francisco bay area known as KFJC, Foothill Junior College, on the peninsula.  Those who are familiar with bay area college radio are now well aware that I struck a golden vein.  Those were the days of The Stranglers, Talking Heads, Adam and the Ants, Circle Jerks, Gary Numan, Peter Gabriel, The Romantics, Steve Shelley, Soft Cell, Laurie Anderson and A Flock of Seagulls.  I found all these bands and many more that have since drifted into obscurity… and I felt incredible.

After listening for nearly a decade to the big hair bands with their accompanying heavy fashion and make up – Boy George, Haircut 100, Duran Duran, Human League, Billy Idol, Spandau Ballet – I realized something was missing.  First, there’s only so much sugar you want on your cake.  Eventually you do want some bite, some grit, some dirt in your meal.  Second, the overt theatrics and pretentiousness of a lot of these acts in the end became self defeating, as you get to a point where you want the truth – you grow tired of the heavy posturing and the artiface.  Luckily for me the music industry (for lack of a better term) paralleled my waning interest, and in the late ’80’s was born something vital to relieve the stagnation of the mainstreamization of many of these synthpop bands.  And so God decreed that a new musical style was to hit the airwaves, and it would be as refreshing as a punch to the stomach, and it shall be called – Grunge.  Loud dissonant and snotty, bands like Tad, Mudhoney and Nirvana stripped off the teen-angst masturbatory goth loser mentality and had a punk renaissance that went straight for the jugular.  The pure guitar-driven feedback distortion banging drums and throbbing bass pounded out by these disenfranchised boys was a call to arms to throw down the trappings of the rock-star bullshit, not just that of the pompous new wave but all that bad rock from the 70s and 80s – Aerosmith, Led Zep, Sammy Halen – grunge, at least for a very short time, threw it all away and the planet was a better place.  Gone was the rockstar fashion nonsense get-ups – we wore blue-collar work shirts, on stage and off.  No groupies, no difference, plugged in or not, but never un-plugged (Nirvana’s Unplugged session on MTV in New York City is ultimate proof that America can indeed – and will – ruin everything if given half a chance).  Now you had to show some teeth, some authenticity.  It was a spark that mostly wouldn’t last – a feeble supernova at the end of the synthpop rainbow.

Things get fragmented in the early 90s with – now called “alternative” – music getting really deplorable.  Limp Bizkit, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Live, 311, Sublime, all utter crap.  Played adnaseum as alternative was now fully mainstream.

So now I appreciate both these major movements – the gothier acts that have stood the pretension and not gone soft – e.g. Joy Division, early Cure, Bauhaus, Cocteau Twins – and the unbridled guitar authenticity of Nirvana, early Hole, pixies, Sonic Youth, Melvins, Dinosaur Jr..  The scene of the last 2 decades has brought us some awesome bands of very unique and new genres like nine inch nails, Marilyn Manson, Bjork, Sleater Kinney, Interpol, PJ Harvey, My Bloody Valentine, Placebo, Pavement and Mazzy Star.  Also I’ve explored the fertile grounds before my birth into music, and that is the 1977-1982 punk scene to which my beloved post-punk bands owe their existence, as without The Sex Pistols and The Clash and The Buzzcocks we’d still (slight exaggeration alert) be listening to Emerson Lake and Palmer.

Well maybe some of us still are.

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