Recently my buddy Josh was in town.  We were making one of our world famous road trips to see some live music.  This road trip involved 7 people heading down to Nashville, Tennessee, not Indiana.  I only head to Nashville, Indiana when I am antiquing.   Anyway, we were heading down there to see The Black Crowes and take in the local music scene.  I will tell you about that trip another time.  As always when Josh is home and all of “the guys” get together we talk about the girls we did not get in high school, predict how long it will be before Josh is throwing up from excessive drinking and music.

On this particular night the topic turned to musical guilty pleasures.  My definition of a musical guilty pleasure is a song or a band that you really like but would prefer not to let anybody else know you like.  The kind of music you will turn up extra loud and sing to in your car but the kind of music you turn down when you pull up to a stop light because you do not want the car next to you to know you like that “crap”.  The kind of music that would ruin your “street cred”.  I am not sure if you know this about me but I have considerable street cred when it comes to music and I cannot risk my image being tarnished by someone hearing me singing along to “Step By Step” from The New Kids On The Block.  With all of that being said I think musical guilty pleasures are great and everyone should have some.  If you claim to to have no guilty pleasures then all of your music is probably guilty and not a pleasure.

As I said earlier I typically do not let me people know about my guilty pleasures and if someone spots them on my iPod I claim ignorance and act like I have no idea how those songs could have ever ended up on my iPod.  The truth is I know exactly how those songs ended up on my iPod and I never want them to leave my iPod.  I need those songs.  There are days when those steaming piles of shit mean as much to me as Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles or Otis Redding mean to me.  Some days I do not have it in me to dedicate 22 minutes and 15 seconds to listen to the Allman Brothers sing “Whipping Post” from Live at Fillmore East.  I tell you what I do have time for and that is the sweet sounds of Kelly Clarkson singing “Since U Been Gone” or “Behind These Hazel Eyes”.  I cannot get enough of those songs or Kelly Clarkson.  There are times when I like to listen to the seminal album Sweetheart of the Rodeo by the Byrds and there are other times when there is nothing better than The Little River Band.  That is right I love the Little River Band and own their Greatest Hits.  I am sure you are wondering how could they have an entire album of so called “hits”.  They do and it is great.  I dare you tell me you do not like “Take it Easy on Me”, “Help is on the Way” or my personal favorite “Cool Change”.  My guilty pleasures do not stop there.  REO Speedwagon, Justin Timberlake, Candlebox, Extreme, Journey and many many more bands that I will keep to myself at this point.  And while I am laying all of my cards on the table I love the TV show Glee and watch it every single week.

I think I have revealed enough of my darkest most embarrassing secrets for one week.  I am sure next week I will be back to telling you how great my taste in music is and how bad your taste in music sucks until then I am going to listen to some Rick Springfield no wait I mean I am going to listen to The White Album.

Later,

Nick

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Elvis

The first movement I think of is the arrival of Elvis Presley.  In 2009 it is easy to think of the fat bloated Elvis wearing rhinestone jumpsuits or some of his horrible movies.  I like to think of the young Elvis that changed music forever.  The Elvis that could not be filmed from the waist down on TV because his moves were to sexual for America.  The Elvis that mixed country music, gospel and blues into something so exciting and dangerous it still inspires young musicians today.  The Elvis that made teenagers realize how silly it was to watch Pat Boone rip off artist like Little Richard.  That is the Elvis I think of and I wish I could have witnessed it happen.

The British Invasion

In the mid to late 1950′s when America was producing artists like Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Little Richard, Bill Haley and the Comets, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly and Bo Diddley there message was being heard across the Atlantic and would inspire an invasion nobody could have ever predicted.  Bands surfaced in the early to mid 1960′s that would forever change the world of music.  The Beatles started it all.  Is there one adult over the age of 55 that does not know where they were the Beatles were on The Ed Sullivan Show.  The Beatles were just the beginning.  The sixties saw bands like The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Animals, The Kinks, The Dave Clark Five, The Spencer Davis Group, The Yardbirds, The Hollies, The Troggs, Cream and many more.  These bands took what American musicians were doing in the 1950′s to a level that may never be matched again.  I cannot imagine hearing Satisfaction, My Generation, Wild Thing or Love Me Do as they were being released for the 1st time.  If there is one period in music that I regret not being around for this is it.

Motown/Stax-Volt/Atlantic Records

This movement really is incredible.  During a time where most artists making this music could not even eat in the same restaurant,use the same bathroom or go to the same school as a white person they made music that would cross all racial borders and made the whitest of white kids get up and dance.  The soul movement of the late fifties and sixties came from Memphis, Detroit, Philadelphia and even the deep south in places like Muscle-Shoals.  The list of artists is jaw dropping to say the least.  Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, The Temptations, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Aretha Franklin, Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, Jackie Wilson, The Four Tops, Martha and the Vandellas, The Supremes, Marvin, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Jr. Walker and the All Stars, Booker T and the MG’s and many many more.  If you need proof about the amount of hits you can buy 202 Motown Songs: The Complete #1s.  That is right 202 #1 songs, and that is just from Motown.

Dylan

Bob Dylan is the man.  There is no 2 ways about it.  He is a bad Mother Fucker.   Dylan started out as guy who wanted to be the next Woody Guthrie.  He was a guy that played acoustic folk music.  He was the savior of the 1960′s folk movement.  He started out on the east coast coffee house circuit.  He graduated to playing folk festivals with the likes of Pete Seeger and Joan Baez.  He was loved in that scene, he was hailed for being an acoustic alternative to the loud rock music of the time and then on July 25th 1965 he changed the world.  At the Newport folk Festival he went ELECTRIC.  The hard core folk audience hated it but once Dylan went electric he changed all the rules and went from being a folk legend to an American treasure.  He released Highway 61 Revisited later that year which included the classic Like a Rolling Stone and he never looked back.  Dylan going electric was truly a moment in time that will never be matched.

Grunge

I would like to start out by saying God bless Nirvana.   They are not my favorite band from that era but they were the 1st and I give them credit for putting all of the shitty hair bands of the 1980′s out of business.  If you think back to the music of 1991 there are not a lot of good memories, until Nirvana released Nevermind.  Once Smells Like Teen Spirit hit the airwaves everything changed.  All of the sudden bands like Poison, Motley Crue, Warrant, White Lion and Winger seemed cartoonish.  Smells like Teen spirit took over MTV and rock radio.  The album Nevermind climbed the charts eventually knocking, of all people, Michael Jackson out of the #1 slot.  All of the sudden the center of the musical universe was Seattle and they were not only delivering us Nirvana but also Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Mother Love Bone who would eventually become Pearl Jam and Screaming Trees.  The music not only changed the way people thought about music but it changed the way kids dressed.  Kids identified with this music it seemed to be talking directly to them. It seemed more important than singing about Cherry Pie, Girls Girls Girls or Talk Dirty To Me.  It truly was a pivotal moment in music.  Looking back at that time I am dissapointed that I did not immerse myself in that music.  I love that music and own all of the albums but I gravitated toward it much later in life.  I was 20 years old in 1991 and let that movement slip through my fingers, truly dissapointing.

Those are just a few of the moments in music that I think changed things forever.  I am now closer to 40 than 30 and wonder if I am too old to even see the next movement when it comes.  Maybe it has come and gone and I missed it.  I know that I love music and I want something to happen that changes all of the rules, something that none of us are expecting, something that we will be talking about in 20 years.  I fear with the state of music these days it may be impossible but I will keep hoping and listening.

Later,

Nick

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