Grunge: when I started "getting old"

Full disclosure up front...I have never been a fan of the Seattle music scene that blossomed in the early 90's, and to which the marketing gurus of the record companies have since applied the label "grunge". I found that music in general to be boring, directionless and sloppy, and the lyrics too whiny for my taste. The only bands from that era that I could stand to listen to at all were Stone Temple Pilots and a little bit of early Pearl Jam.

So when I saw that Netflix had the documentary "Pearl Jam 20" available for viewing, I checked it out last night. Watching it just reaffirmed why I never fully got into them or that entire scene in the first place. In fact, I think I like Pearl Jam even less now than I thought I did before I watched the film.

They were a band that became extremely successful but always appeared to be uncomfortable with their success. Whether this unease with success was geniune or something just put on for the benefit of their fans, I don't know. I do know that they shunned whatever accolades were bestowed on them and were proud to do so. I guess my gut reaction to all that is: so why are you continuing doing something that is bringing you all of this success when you're clearly uncomfortable or unhappy with that success? This makes me think they were being a little disingenuous with their shtick, or that it was just to show their fan base that they don't really care about the trappings of fame and success. To me, it comes across as a little too self-centered and petulant.

I don't like to speak ill of the deceased but Curt Kobain was probably the worst case of this. If you can't deal with success...then quit your band and go into some other profession, and please - stop whining so much! If you can't deal with being an overnight millionaire, then I suggest you give your money away to charity (somehow I guess they were never that uncomfortable with success). Pearl Jam's singer, Eddie Vedder, also strikes me as being more than a little whiny about his success. In fact, he comes across in this documentary as being whiny about almost everything, which to some, I guess, comes across as uber-cool and above it all. It made me just want to reach out and slap him.

On the other hand, I have to give them some credit when Pearl Jam went up against Ticketmaster and that company's policy of gouging ticket-buyers in the form of their "convenience fees", and even went so far as to tour in venues where Ticketmaster couldn't do their business. I think that was admirable, as it most likely cost them some income...of course, by that time Pearl Jam had already made their millions and built a huge fan base. So it was easy for them to lose a few large bookings at that point. Would they have been brave enough to buck Ticketmaster early on their career when they were struggling? I wonder about that.

As far as their music - I liked a few of their early songs but thought they were repetetive and bland as their career went on (at least, what I heard on the radio). I thought their playing was sloppy and lifeless, and that applied to just about all of the bands that were getting airplay in the early 90's. Frankly, I couldn't tell one grunge band from the other. It seemed as if they were all trying to sound like Nirvana or Pearl Jam, even down to the mumbling style of singing.

I don't know, but maybe I can point to the early 90's when all of this was happening and could say that this is when I started "getting old", since this was the first movement in popular music that I could point to and say "I don't get it". There have been plenty others since then, too (each year I try to watch the grammy awards show and more and more I find myself saying "who the hell is that"?). I say this because obviously I'm in the minority with these opinions - Pearl Jam has a huge fan base after all these years and the documentary gives camera time to many of those fans saying how much Pearl Jam has changed their lives. Still, I have to say congratulations to any band that has been popular for 20+ years. They're touching some nerve out there, even if it's not one I was born with.

Songs in the Key of Life

My friend Larry recently posted to his Facebook wall: "Dusted off the ol' Songs in the Key of Life album today...how can an album be any better?" My answer is that it can't get much better than that.

I think it was Christmas of 1976 when I was given Stevie Wonder's "Songs in the Key of Life" album as a gift. I was eight years old and was laid up in a body cast after having been hit by a car while playing ball in the street with my friends. An eight-year old boy in a body cast tends to receive a lot of gifts but this was my most memorable. Songs in the Key of Life is now considered to be the pinnacle of Stevie's recorded output, but even as an eight-year old kid hearing it for the first time, I knew this album was something special.

Even the packaging was something I'd never seen before: it was a double-album, but when you opened the gatefold you saw an extra 45 inside a pocket that was cut into the inside of the packaging. The album artwork, as I recall, was such that it appeared you were staring down into caverns and the 45 was at the center of it (man, I miss album artwork). There was a lyric booklet included which contained at least one full page (in a tiny font) of names that Stevie listed as influences and people to thank. The lyric booklet was done very artfully using a beautiful font throughout and was a pleasure to read through while listening to the music.

Oh, and the music...the album opened with a choir of voices (which upon closer listening is just Stevie singing all of the voice parts) leading into "Love's in Need of Love Today", a soulful, almost gospel-like plea for peace in the world that set the tone for the rest of the album - I remember being hooked as soon as I heard that song.

"Have a Talk With God" is somewhat preachy but set against a 12-bar blues/funk groove that still makes it cool.

"Village Ghetto Land" - another serious message song about the plight of the ghettos. No instrumentation to speak of except for Stevie's synthesized strings. To this point, the album sounds like it's going to be 4+ sides of "Serious news to pass on to everybody", until...

"Contusion" - Bam! This one hits you right between the eyes. Especially coming off the quiet strings of the previous track, Stevie lets his band throw down in an instrumental fusion masterpiece. Excellent guitar work on this track by Michael Sembello. This leads right into...

"Sir Duke" - probably the most popular track off the album. While this has been overplayed to death it still remains a hook-filled tribute to some of the early heroes of jazz. This track was my personal introduction to the greats mentioned in this song: Basie, Miller, Satchmo, Ella and Duke - and most likely led to my own exploration of jazz over the years.

...and that was all just Side 1!

The rest of the album remains just as strong - there's really not a weak track on the entire collection. Even the extra 45 (included in the package as "A Something's Extra") contains 4 very strong tracks. To say that Stevie was prolific is an understatement - everything about this album, including the lyric booklet, is epic. This album capped a very successfull period in Stevie's musical career - many agree that the 70's was his most creative decade - he just couldn't do wrong with the albums he released during this time. But with Songs in the Key of Life, he hit it out of the park and reached musical heights that few can only dream about.

I don't remember who it was that gave me that album 35 years ago, but it still sticks with me to this day and hasn't lost a bit of its vitality. If you're unfamiliar with this one, I can't recommend it enough.

So long, "Guitar Hero"

Activision announced recently that they are pulling the plug on their popular "Guitar Hero" game franchise. After several versions of the original GH game and many copycat followups, the games have oversaturated the market and run their course.

The passing of the GH franchise made me think about the impact the game has had on music and on potential musicians (i.e., the kids who grew up playing the game in any of its incarnations). I've talked with other musicians who instantly dismiss the entire franchise ("it doesn't teach real music"), to others who embraced it for what it was: a clever and fun exercise in hand-eye coordination. I think that folks who sound off against GH because it "doesn't teach real music" miss the point (it was never meant to be a music education game in the first place), but I also think there are some elements of music that you can pick up while playing the game: specifically rhythm and pitch relativity.

Learning rhythm is a skill that I've seen young musicians struggle with, no matter how well they can read music and play it on their chosen instrument. It's one thing to be able to read and differentiate between 8th and 16th note patterns, but it's something else entirely to be able to count and keep good time while playing those notes. One of the features of the GH games was that the "notes" you played always came at you in rhythmic patterns that matched the tempo of the song you were playing and which directly related to the actual rhythms that sounded from the music. Put another way, the game emphasized the rhythm of the notes rather than the actual notes themselves - in many ways I thought the game would actually be a good introduction to percussion, even though I'm not a percussionist...any drummers reading this post, feel free to sound off on that idea.

The second musical element that I believe you could learn from the GH games was the relativity of pitches. While the game never dealt with actual musical notes, it did present the concept of pitches and their relationship to one another (intervals, scales, chords) in an interesting graphical manner. Low notes were always played on the "low buttons" of the guitar controller and the high notes were always played on the "higher buttons". I suppose that the game did emulate the concept of a guitar neck in that respect. But more than that, the game actually attempted to space the "notes" you would play in a manner that almost made sense, musically; notes that came at you at specific intervals (thirds, fifths, etc) were translated to the controller's buttons in a way that conveyed the actual musical distance between those notes. As you played a guitar solo that featured an ascending scale run, the "notes" were presented in an ascending pattern that you followed on the controller. Granted, the controller only had 6 buttons so the range of notes that could be mapped to the controller was limited...but the idea was musically correct. Even chords were played by holding down more than one button at a time, conveying the concept that a chord is made up of two or more notes played simultaneously.

I think that young kids who grew up playing these games will at least be a little more prepared for the real thing when they put down the plastic controllers, pick up an actual guitar and sign up for lessons. To that end, I think the GH games were a good introduction to some of the mechanics of music. And if by playing those games, a kid's interest in learning real music has been sparked, then I think it's been a positive influence.