Musical Polygamy

The first time I fell in love with music was Led Zeppelin, and no matter how trite that seems, it illustrates a greater point about music and how every individual relates to it. Music is the soundtrack of our lives, and while there are a very few folks out there in modern America who have silence and ambient noise as the backbeat to their personal memoirs (think The Birds—Hitchcock famously used no music in that film—the score reads like a blank computer screen), most of us have at least a few tracks that mark specific periods in our lives.

But to be in love with music—that is something completely different.

I didn't fall in love with music until the 1990 release of Zeppelins four-disc boxed set. I had crushed on music before, including (regrettably) Poison, Motley Crue, Whitesnake, Cameo and (not so regrettably) Bon Jovi, Guns and Roses and Def Leppard. I had really crushed on the Ramones, which later turned into love through nostalgia and appreciation.

Zeppelin, however, was new territory.

When I received the boxed set for Christmas from my grandparents (a little strange, I thought, but not completely out of the ordinary in my family), I had yet to ever get drunk (that would be days later), smoke pot (college), live on my own (college again), worship Aleister Crowley (maybe once, while drunk or stoned, in college) or fight trolls in Middle-earth (still waiting). It would seem that to enjoy Zeppelin, one would have to experience some or all of those things.

Rather than fall for the Zoso anthems, though, I discovered my first serious relationship with music in the less-played tracks. "The Rain Song," "The Bron-Y-Aur Stomp," "Gallows Pole" and others were infinitely more complex songs than the three-chord majesty of "Beat On the Brat," and technical excellence wasn't even the reason I loved those songs.

Something happened on an emotional level when I listened to some of those Zeppelin songs that transcended the general excitement/heartbreak/desire-to-shake-booty elicited by other songs. Even long after the songs had lost the cutting edge a song has when you first get acquainted with it, I could go back and listen again and again.

Then I became a college DJ and everything changed. I discovered Cracker, Phish, Fishbone, Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, Moloko, Ani DeFranco, Detroit Soul, Dinosaur Jr., The Jayhawks, The V-Roys and a host of other bands that either lived under the radar or never appeared on many screens for all of posterity. Thanks to a career in journalism, I met Hootie (and the Blowfish), the Floyds, Confederate Railroad, Jennifer Nettles (before Sugarland), Maroon 5, some of the remnants of Lynard Skynard and probably three dozen more bands that should have made it big.

It took a really long time to develop an eclectic, all-inclusive taste for music, but in the last several years I've embraced everything from hip-hop (almost strictly outside mainstream "niggas and hos" fare, I assure you) to country (again, mostly not the overproduced stuff of commercial radio). I jump from band to band and song to song like a musical gigolo. I'm not conflicted by this.

I'm also not afraid to like something popular. Popularity is the death knell for many forms of music, at least as far as hipster culture is concerned. Still, I'm sticking to my guns vis-à-vis Jack Johnson and Corinne Bailey Ray although I think The Fray may be a little overrated. I guess time will tell. I still go back and listen to "No Quarter" (it's playing as I write this). If "How To Save A Life" stands up as long, then we will all have to recalibrate our opinion of that song.

I don't claim that anything, from my musical epiphany to my background working as a part-time entertainment writer, makes my taste in music good or right. I do think my love of music lends some gravity to my opinions. Periodically, I will be dropping some suggestions for new tunes out under the guise of the Institute of Higher Thinking's radio station, WIHT.

I hope everyone that reads this blog (all six of you) will keep coming back when the Georgia Southern football entries are more scarce and try out some of the music, as well as sharing your own suggestions. In the meantime, here are five new (or newer) albums I think everyone should listen to:

The Decemberists – "The Crane Wife"
King Straggler – "King Straggler"
Manchester Orchestra – "Like a Virgin Losing a Child"
Ray LaMontagne – "Til the Sun Goes Black"
The Avett Brothers – "Four Thieves Gone"

For more (and better elocuted) selections, see the link to Paste Magazine to the right.

Back to Georgia Southern football on Thursday (or Friday). More music and pop culture to follow as well.