Signing Myles Garrett is a no-brainer and a sign the Browns finally have some common sense
July 15, 2020Finding Hope in the Time of COVID
July 15, 2020mgbode – Courtesy of @andrew – today’s roundtable is talking about the musicians who meant the most to you growing up. !channel
andrew – Ok, so, I definitely had a musical Rushmore growing up. It was Chris Cornell (my all-time personal musical hero), Tim Armstrong, Stone Gossard, and Jerry Cantrell.
andrew – Chris Cornell I feel is self-explanatory. My favorite vocalist ever by a mile, a great person who I looked up to and respected. I wrote about what his death meant to me, so I’ll leave that there. Tim Armstrong opened my eyes to the world of punk music. His music has always spoken directly to me, whether it was Rancid, Transplants, Tim Timebomb, any of his solo stuff. Stone Gossard because of the weirdness of the style of blues-infused rock music that he writes. It’s always there weird riffs that seem like they shouldn’t necessarily go together and I love that tension. Pearl Jam is my all-time favorite band, and most of my favorite songs tended to be ones Stone wrote. And then Jerry Cantrell. There’s just something about the way he plays guitar and writes harmonies. I have loved pretty much everything he’s ever put out. I’m not sure there’s any artists who a higher “hit rate” with me in terms of albums that I absolutely love from start to end.
mgbode – Cantrell wrote my favorite Alice in Chains song, “Heaven Beside You,” though he apparently wasn’t present much when the most important one to me as a kid was written, “Sludge Factory.” And look, I get it that the latter song there was written about being forced to come out with an album when they weren’t ready, but my dad worked in wastewater and having one of my favorite bands write even a metaphor based on that occupation was great.
wfnycraig – My life has been defined by varying musical obsessions. My earliest obsession was definitely Guns N’ Roses. That was a band that I wanted to read about, listen to, and would go out of my way to watch live performances, etc. I knew all the band members names and felt I could talk about each of their abilities, especially Matt Sorum, the band’s Illusions-era drummer. After that it was Pearl Jam… so much Pearl Jam. Then Tool. Then Acid Bath. Then Mineral. Then Death Cab for Cutie. Then Mansions? I don’t know. Things get murky after a certain point. However Guns N’ Roses to Pearl Jam to Tool, and fast forwarding to Death Cab is probably how you start carving out my musical Mount Rushmore. :slightly_smiling_face:
andrew – Oh, guess what, Craig? Guns N Roses were my first band that I was really “into” as well. Go figure!
wfnycraig – They were dangerous, mysterious, and scary for my parents!
andrew – For me, Metallica came shortly after. I remember a kid on my bus giving me tapes of Garage Days and Kill Em All to take home and dub. And I listened to them non stop until my mom took them away. Then I heard Pearl Jam and everything changed for me.
wfnycraig – I’m one of THOSE Metallica fans. I really only like the Black Album and One.
mgbode – While y’all were listening to the heavy stuff, I was diving in on John Lee Hooker and Taj Mahal. Mr. Lucky was a Hooker album where he brought in Robert Cray though and he became one of my favorites for a long time. Simple lyrics but he told stories with his guitar and tone better than any outside Hendrix that I had heard.
andrew – I’m the rare Metallica fan whose favorite album is Master of Puppets, but also who loves The Black Album. And I loved Load, too. Sue me.
I completely missed all that old blues stuff. Still to this day it’s largely a musical blindspot for me that I probably should fix at some point. I knew of Hendrix mostly because of the Wayne’s World soundtrack. Then as I got into Pearl Jam and would read or watch any interview with the band that I could find, Mike McCready would talk about him all the time. So I checked out his albums and really liked them. But I’ve not listened to as much classic blues as I should.
wfnycraig – That’s the funny thing about music. Because artists stand on each other’s shoulders and because there are only so many chords and chord progressions, I have difficulty going back when I’ve already listened to derivative work that’s further down the line. Obviously classic blues is an important building block, but I’ve already heard the next result of that progress. It’s hard for me to look back unless I was there for it in the first place.
andrew – I feel that. When I was in high school I got into the likes of the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and The Who. And I feel like that was my baseline for “old music”. It’s been hard to get into other older stuff now. I’ve gotten into some Bob Dylan and Neil Young stuff, but I do sort of feel like it’s hard to go back now.
mgbode – True classic blues is not for everyone. It’s sort of like dolmathes (stuffed grape leaves) in that it is amazing to those who enjoy it, but there is a barrier to entry because there is a lot of subtle portions to the music and transitions that take awhile to pick up. I mean, there’s also fun stuff like Blues Traveler and B.B. King… but guys like Muddy Waters have a master of simplicity that has been mostly lost in what is seen as the “result of that progress” as Craig calls it.
And, I get it… I loved the Smashing Pumpkins complex guitar riffs a ton. It’s great. Why music is a fun topic because there are so many differences that everyone can find something for them.
wfnycraig – What’s important for me is that I no longer denigrate anything in music. I say that things are not for me, but not that they suck. You know, except pop country. That genre is to music what reality television is to Mad Men or Breaking Bad.
andrew – If I had a current Mount Rushmore of musical heroes, it would be pretty different. Chris Cornell would still be on it, I think. It would be hard for me to not have Patrick Stickles from Titus Andronicus on it. And Dylan Baldi from Cloud Nothings. I could probably almost put Jayson Gerycz, Clound Nothings’ drummer, on it as well. I might want Danny Brown on it, too, as my favorite rapper and probably the artist who has done the most to get me into more hip hop.
wfnycraig – For me the Mount Rushmore has to be “founding fathers” types. I love Cloud Nothings too, and they’re really important to me, but I wasn’t 14 when I listened to them so they don’t qualify.
Death Cab is basically the band I dated my wife and got married to, so they sneak in.
andrew – Yeah, that’s true. I guess I’m not saying those guys supercede the originals for me, just that in totality they might mean a little more to me now in my present day listening habits.
mgbode – The new guys get statues in your musical museum wherein the older guys get the Rushmore monument?
andrew – Yeah, that’s a great way of putting it
Oh, I can’t believe I haven’t mentioned Josh Homme yet. While I didn’t know about him growing up, even though he spent time in the Screaming Trees and was friends with tons of the Seattle musicians I loved, I discovered Queens of the Stone Age in college and they are now on the short list of my all-time favorite bands. I can’t express articulately enough just how much I love the way Homme approaches guitar player and song writing.
I love this video of him just talking shop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJDUHq2mJx0
Kerry McCoy is another new influence for me. His guitar playing with Deafheaven is surreal, the way he tells a story with the way his songs build and move. His parts rarely repeat in songs much, instead wandering from one part to the next. And the way he can build tension and release, it’s incredible on every level.
davesterling – Growing up I was very heavily influenced by They Might Be Giants. They got me into electronic music, and into some music that had a bit of a weird tilt to it.
scott – “Piano Man” is the first my song I ever remember hearing. My dad was (is?) a big Billy Joel fan, so that was passed down to me early. Similar with Springsteen and “Born in the U.S.A.” These two have the most impact in that light. Getting into Dave Matthews in the mid-to-late 90s turned me onto other bluegrass-fueled jam rock in the 2000s like Phish, The Dead, moe., Ben Harper, eH, and the like. As it pertains to my current listening, what OutKast has done for the Atlanta music scene is paralleled only by the lineage in NY and LA. If we are Rushmore’ing, Andre 3000 is on mine next to BIG (sorry, Nas), JAY, and Dre (he gets the last spot because of how important NWA was in the big picture).
mgbode – Ben Harper is great. My entry point to him was when he opened for the Black Crowes, who themselves were a nice blend between the different types of music I enjoyed.