Pinback - Blue Screen Life (Ace Fu, 2001)

So far, this record represents the biggest "oh yeah!" (more of the forehead smacking than Kool-aid man version) moment of this project. Neglected is a better word than forgotten for Pinback's Blue Screen Life when I consider how often I scroll past this band and this record on my iPod. Pinback was a recommendation from my music shaman, Andy, as a "must check out." It got to the point where once or twice a year, when we met up in Dallas, Andy and I would spend about five minutes catching up on life, and then spend the next twenty asking "have you heard so and so" and "oh, dude, you need to hear this band." Invariably he would list about twenty, I would remember about ten, all of which I would love. For every five albums he gets me into, I maybe have one that I introduced to him, and maybe he liked it. Over the years, I have learned a few of his secret resources just enough to feel like I can keep up.

Many things make Blue Screen Life a truly complete record that can stand alone from start to finish. But the biggest reason it's cool to me is the fact that it's two guys writing, playing and recording in "zach's living room, rob's bedroom, donny's garage and tom's garage." I broke my rules and listened to this record a few times and kept discovering things I hadn't heard before. Penelope, Seville and Prog are tracks that grabs you in the first 10 seconds, but there are plenty of others that take patience before you start to realize their beauty, like Boo, Your Sickness and Tres. I actually never knew the words Prog until digging into the liner notes, but its not one that you have to know the words to love it. No offense to the lyrics, which I already forgot, its just that the music has all the legs this songs needs to stand up big among some of my favorites.

"anything I say to you is gonna come out wrong anyway" - Concrete Sounds

Wally Pleasant - Houses of the Holy Moly (Miranda, 1994)

Proof that music can be, and should be, more fun, Wally Pleasant adds some humor to the catalog with Houses of the Holy Moly. I'll admit that I thought he was from Dallas until just now when I actually read the liner notes and realized he is from, and still performs in, East Lansing, Michigan - who knew? I only saw him live once at a Barnes and Noble in Ft. Worth and Josh and Kevin played Alternateen (linked here) regularly on the Adventure Club (including a hilarious local promo spot by Wally for the show), so I can see how I would make that assumption. Alternateen was my introduction to Wally and what made me become an instant fan after hearing the first 30 seconds of the song, maybe because, well, I was sort of who he was poking fun at. There's a part of me that believes he was too which makes me feel better. Every one of these songs on Houses of the Holy Moly is clever and classic in it's own right (Mr. Pleasant even helps you record a new answering machine message at the end). The titles alone will bring a smirk to your cheeks, among them Post Graduate Overeducated Out of Work Blues, Dysfunctionally Yours, Toxic Waste Block Party. I will leave you a bonus of multiple lines from a few of my favorite songs on this record.

"The day Kurt Cobain died, we both held each other and cried, but you made me feel a lot better, when you said thank god it wasnt Eddie Vedder" - Alternateen

"I've got nowhere else to go and nothing else to do, except stare at this bright yellow menu, I wish I hadn't ordered that god damn grand slam, Denny's at 4am" - Denny's at 4am 

"Now basically I feel so traumatized about my stupid day job that I'm gonna try and start singing like Morissey now, Stupid day job stupid day job stupid day job aahhh ahhh ahh stupid day job" - Stupid Day Job

Radiohead - The Bends (Capitol, 1995)

I don't plan to do this record justice, it is truly timeless. The Bends is one of those records that I knew I would come across in this project and not know where to start. So I will just tell you my Radiohead story. Like most of you, I heard Creep on MTV and the radio enough to sing both versions by heart. Bought Pablo Honey after a year or so at a CD warehouse (used cd chain store in Dallas) for a few bucks. Liked Pablo Honey, but didn't dust off a special corner of my tiny cd collection for it. In '95, still glued to MTV (when it was still delivering), I fell in love with Fake Plastic Trees, both the song and the video. My high school budget didnt allow for me to buy every record that I wanted and my instinct told me The Bends would be in heavy rotation so why bother with the record at this point. Impressed with my teenage insight, but sad it happened that way, to be honest. It wasn't until another trip to CD warehouse in '96 that I saw a used copy of The Bends for $9 and picked it up. Funny how my OK Computer experience wasn't much different. I guess it took me a while to take this band seriously just because everyone else was telling me to - I'm just not wired that way.

This is one of the best records of my lifetime and absolutely defined what could happen when a well of unending ambition and talent is tapped. The parts I love stem mostly from the lyrics that all tell stories and paint pictures like music should and in a falsetto that I never appreciated until I tried to sing myself. And a video for every category: Best slow-mo movie magic in Street Spirit (Fade Out), Most clever storyline/cliffhanger, also in slow-mo, in Just,  and the "let's-just-cut-to-the-live-footage" collage
(after all, Thom Yorke and co. in their live form are animated enough) in My Iron Lung.

I am really finding myself lost for words on this record and honestly, you shouldn't need my opinion on The Bends as you probably already know why you need it.

"if i could be who you wanted all the time" - Fake Plastic Trees

Hot Water Music - Forever and Counting (Doghouse, 1997)

I first heard Hot Water Music in 1997 on the Don't Forget to Breathe compilation on Crank! records. I know someday I will write about that pivotal release featuring 2 bands I already loved and 15 more I would learn to instantly. Their track on the mix, Elektra, was nothing short of what I thought hard core was. It still had melody and it still had rhythm, just doused with raspy voices singing meaningful words, complementing each other, sturdy bass lines and drums that ask you to turn it up louder and louder. This band sounded like a true family that cared for each other, stood up for one another and had each other's back - team players I guess.

I can't remember where I found Forever and Counting but I am fairly sure they were on the post-it note in my wallet to look up next time I was in a record store. From the first time I heard this record to this last time, I still get the same sense that the album is circular and never ends. Where the last track, Western Grace, just feeds right back into the first, Translocation and forever it goes. "Its like a carousel. You put the quarter in, you get on the horse, it goes up and down, and around. Circular, circle. Feel it. Go with the flow." (name that movie)

HWM has become a standard for me in my collection that I go to time and time again. Few bands continue to build yet stay the same these days and these guys from Gainesville always produced a great rock record and made me feel more like a man for liking them. Mitch, my trusty punk and hard core fanatic from college, loved HWM too and I always felt like it made up for all the fluffy bands that I played on my radio show that he thought were crappy (Belle and Sebastian, Velocity Girl, Very Secretary). I would throw in a HWM track just to keep him listening.

After a short haitus, due to a band member having to care for his family, HWM are back touring and recording. I anxiously await their next release and hope thier collection continues to be Forever and Counting...

"Now is when to question the questions." Just Don't Say You Lost It

caP'n Jazz - Analphabetapolothology (Jade Tree, 1998)

I can't claim to have been aware of caP'n Jazz before I was well into The Promise Ring and Joan of Arc, but I think I would have had to been a cool kid in Chicago to have been that lucky. In 1998, when Analphabetapolothology (which is very fun to say - you should try it) was released, it seemed to put together some of the puzzle pieces that had been floating around in my head. I will spare you the history of the band, but one important detail was that this double cd, featuring 18 tracks on disc one and 16 tracks on disc two, was released after most of the members had moved on to other projects where they had established footings in my music collection. In fact in the liner notes of Analphabeta... they justify this release's existence while admitting their reluctance to entertain the idea in the first place:

"Reissues by nature have to be a bit embarrassing. They undermine our pretenses by making what was once special and precious in its rarity, now somehow a little less in its convenient availability."

Reading that excerpt now seems like it was a much better way of describing the "ownership" I feel towards music and the silliness you feel when you put it out there. It's an enormous thing to feel confident about a song and you never seem to hear the good in your own work, you just hope someone else does.

They recognized that this early stuff was simply kids "spitting back out everything, everything, we thought and felt" as a bad thing, but to me it was what made thier music so relatable and playful. The songs were bouncy and the lyrics were fun. What more could I need. Knowing that the cover art for this release, and many other Jade Tree releases, was designed by Jason Gnewikow, from The Promise Ring, and his, presumably graphic design hobby (?) The Collection Agency made me feel like a indie rock know-it-all, although no one cared... no one I knew at least.

"We are all all we've done." Oh Messy Life

Face to Face - Ignorance is Bliss (Lady Luck/Beyond, 1999)

Ignorance is Bliss was my first F2F album. They fell into the category that I had heard a lot about them, but never actually heard any song. I knew of someone in high school that won a chance to hang out with them after a show which I thought was an odd thing for a band to raffle off. They seemed too accessible to me which was maybe the reason I didn't seek them out sooner.

My official introduction to F2F was when a college buddy, Mitch (part of his last name actually), whose opinion on good punk rock I truly valued, told me that Jimmy Eat World and Face to Face were sharing a bill in Denver. I was heavily into JEW at the time and we bought tickets online to pick up at will call. I remember feeling like there were two distinctly different groups of fans at the show. First, were those sensitive, heart-on-their-sleeve, fans of the slow build there to see JEW, and the second were the hardcore punk fans who liked the hi-tempo snare beat with most songs clocking in under 2:00 there to see F2F. During JEW's opening set, I could sense the F2F fans making fun of the slow beats, artsy lyrics and drawn out 6-7:00 numbers. The stark contrast when Trevor Keith and F2F took the stage was not surprising, except for the few songs that seemed more developed and out of the ordinary from what I thought true punk was. After enjoying the show, I went to the merch table, waited in line and found that their new record, Ignorance is Bliss, which was released partially under their own label, Lady Luck, was only $5.

On first listen I was surprised, pleasantly, by what I had heard just like at the show. The high tempo snare of what I thought was "punk standard" was never my bag. I needed more melody and could stand to let the song build slowly and carry for a while longer if it felt right. This sound seemed to take pages from Bob Mould (more Sugar than Husker Du) with some heavy chorus both in the vocals and on the amps. The way they produced this record made me think the drummer, Pete Parada, was smashing the drums as hard as he could, something I loved. Everyone Hates a Know-it-all, Prodigal (linked here), Lost and Maybe Next Time were a few of the tracks that initially stood out, but the album came together as a whole for me later.

From hearing a few earlier F2F albums, I learned that this record was a departure from the norm and might have been the reason for the self-labelled release and cheap price. Maybe the band figured fans shouldn't complain about the shift in sound as much if they hardly paid for it. F2F's next record, released on Vagrant in 2000, was called Reactionary and I always wondered if it was in reaction to longtime F2F fans possible disappointment with Ignorance. It was more of what I was expecting when I thought or a punk band and a punk album, but by now I was hooked and maybe "understood" it a bit more. What I understood more than anything, was that I didn't know, or care about the definition of punk, or emo, or indie. There are only two genre's that mattered now - music I like, and music I don't.

"You need a little time/So you can get your head around your mind/If you don't know what you're looking for" - Prodigal

Liquid Three - The Shadow Cabinet (1996)

I am fairly confident you wont be able to find The Shadow Cabinet if you tried. It took me about a year to find it in Dallas where Liquid Three hailed from, well Coppell (NW Dallas) to be more accurate. And a google, bing, or wiki search for Liquid Three leads you no where valuable. I'd like to think I love this record solely on its sound, but the fact that it's rare, local and unlabelled gives it so much more merit.

I heard Plastic Cross (linked here) on The Adventure Club with Josh and Kevin Sunday nights from 7-10pm on 94.5 the Edge (largely responsible for turning me on to the best of what was out there). I added Liquid Three to the post-it I kept in my wallet of artists to look for next time I visited one of the many record stores in Dallas that my friends and I frequented. This list became important as I had a terrible problem forgetting all the bands I wanted to investigate as soon as I walked into a record store, only to remember them as I walked out. I asked just about every store if they had Liquid Three and got funny looks each time. It wasn't until I went to Bill's Records and Tapes on Spring Valley that I found it. Part of the reason I found it was that Josh worked at Bill's and I made it a point to track him down to help me find it, although I knew it was not one of his picks to play, but rather Kevin's.

(Side Note: If you ever listened to The Adventure Club you would understand the mutual dislike Josh and Kevin had for each other's contributions to the weekly show. Josh pushed bands like Oasis, Suede, James, Gene and Elastica (yes all UK bands) where Kevin spun more of what spoke to me - Guided by Voices, Pavement, Sunny Day Real Estate - stuff that would stay with me forever).

Easy-to-sing-with vocals, blasting drums, and gritty guitars made this record burst from my speakers. The liner notes featured a rustily cropped candid photo (left) of the three, who deserved to be mentioned - Glen Reynolds on vocals+guitar, Jim Thomas on bass+vocals, Pete Young on drums. The playfulness of the two heads chopped off, 3D glasses and dogface elevated the mystique of this band for me as it represented a hidden, unheard scene in my hometown that I longed to explore deeper. Grand Spunk Medallion was the last track and served as a funky outlier to all that preceded it with a closing line of "mmm, smells like peanut butter, I can smell the sex, word up..."

I never saw Liquid Three live, but still daydream about what a show must have been like: Rick's Place in Denton, three grundgers on stage, fifteen of their friends at the show and an impossibly unavoidable smile that would creep through everyone at the scene with each halfway headbanging number. I am not good at describing music, so I will stop trying, but it was a quality rock record that was ahead of its time and went largely unnoticed. This is exactly the kind of record I wanted to revisit when I dreamed up The Textbook Committee blog as it went from the back, dusty corner of my cd rack to front and center of my memory.

"On a lonely twisted day/When your friend are all so bored/You don't have to feel this way/Look your screams are not ignored." - Plastic Cross

Frank Black - Frank Black (4AD, 1993)

I credit buying Frank Black's Frank Black in the mall to slightly digging the single, Los Angeles, I had heard on the radio (Dallas' 94.5 the Edge). I was 14 years old, still shifting from my Whitesnake, Motley Crue, RATT phase into a coming of age with New Order, Peter Gabriel, and Sugar. This is one of the first albums I remember not liking most of it until the third or fourth listen. I have always been surprised how some of the greatest records slowly grow on me and eventually break through my thick skull. This album did exactly that.

Los Angeles went from the song that made me buy the record to my least enjoyed track on the album. I still like to mumble along during the spoken word part where he mis-pronounces Los Angeles with the hard "G" in the middle. The rest of the album felt like it was in a cooler and more elevated space - I think it was because the radio might have ruined LA for me and the rest of the record felt like I secretly owned it.

I Heard Ramona Sing, Czar, Every Time I Go Around Here and Don't Ya Rile 'Em (linked) all had everything I wanted in a rich guitar rock song. I always think about the great guitar that more than filled the spaces on this record - something I would come to love about Frank Black records.

"I've been working my way back to sane/It's coming back to me again." - Don't Ya Rile 'Em

Guided By Voices - Mag Earwig! (Matador, 1997)

This is the first of many Guided By Voices records I will rant about. I expect to get carried away with this one. Most albums have stories. GbV albums have history. Mag Earwig! was the first GbV album that my friend Andy and I bought at the same time after High School. We each had just about all the other albums as our love of this band shot to the moon, but this was the first time we were "caught up," ready, and waiting to be the first in line to have the next installment from Robert Pollard and the golden boys in our hands.

Mag Earwig! marked a stark shift in GbVs lineup with Bob Pollard stepping away from the tried and true rotation of players, namely the most influential to the established sound - Mitch Mitchell and Tobin Sprout. Although Mitchell and Sprout were still minimally involved on this record, the major driving sound was replaced by members of, fellow Dayton-ers, Cobra Verde and specifically Doug Gillard who liked his guitar hooks loud and large. Apparently this was an attempt at moving from the warm 4-track feel to the well-produced crisp sounding ready-for-radio-rock-record that Pollard always wanted. 

Andy and I initially noted the difference as a bad thing, until digging further in and sifting through the obvious changes in sound, as in Bulldog Skin and I am a Tree, finding true-to-form, and actually bigger and better, Pollard gems like Not Behind the Fighter Jet, Portable Men's Society, Jane of the Waking Universe and I am Produced, whose irony wasn't lost on us. As I am listing these, I am finding hints of each track on this record that I love - like the warmth of Sad if I Lost it (linked) and the strummed down version of Now to War (a rock-a-thon of power when played live). It was building into our newest and favorite-est GbV record because it was fresh and, well, it rocked and still does.

The liner notes kept with true GbV tradition leaving little surprises at every corner. Most songs had a parenthetical note after the lyrics like "Re-zoom/Busy signals from the home front," "Scarred but tougher,"The logical nod," "Repeat forever if necessary" as if they were alternate titles or extra instructions to get the full Mag Earwig! experience. Credits included a nod to an apparently fictitious inspiration for one song (Portable Men's Society) named Buffalo Beerwax and thanking The Small Faces (Extras in the Film) which was a 1996 Scottish film about gangs (thanks wikipedia). It's like Pollard was offering us the first step in any band starter kit - the best band name you've ever heard.

Another nugget of uniqueness to Mag Earwig! is that its one of the few short-named GbV releases, up that point, that couldn't be abbreviated with the first letter of each word. ME! didn't make sense to me in the GbV mailing list postings, aka Postal Blowfish, like SIAN (Self Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia), VoT (Vampire-on-Titus), SPTFGS (Same Place the Fly Got Smashed) or B1000 (Bee Thousand)... actually now that I think about it, there were many others that were short in the discography, like Propeller, Sandbox, Alien Lanes and ME! might have been the only with punctuation... proving my theory bunk, but at least interesting to me. It was like a secret society language talking about GbV records like they were MLB future stars.

"But I'll keep a light for 'em/Hold down the fort for 'em/And wear my maroon blazer, all the time" - Sad if I Lost it.

Introducing The Textbook Committee

A few years ago, I made the shift from buying cds and records to downloading music, mainly via iTunes, directly to my iPod. While I do like the instant access to new music, I am finding that I miss the album-in-my-hands feel, not to mention an appreciation for inspiring liner notes and the look of an overflowing cd rack. I have also found some significant downfalls to how my simple brain has little self control when keeping an even rotation through my favorite albums on my iPod. I found myself scrolling through artists with little ability to actually decide on something, eventually landing on a new album I wanted to absorb again more regularly than the old standards and practices that influenced me to no end. I needed a change and wanted to truly revisit some of the albums and artists that defined me. So I decided to dig back into my cd collection, which after a few relocations and transfers from larger to smaller storage pieces was in complete disarray (ie, in almost perfect random order).

I've set a few ground rules for cycling through the rotation (I dont deny my weirdness):

1 - Grab 5 adjacent cds from my collection, starting from top to bottom, left to right.
2 - No turn backs or rejections - the 5 I grab are the ones I'll listen to.
3 - Listen to every track, in order. No track skipping, fastforwarding or muting. Rewinding allowed on special occasions. Waivers only allowed for scratched cds that skip.
4 - After listening to the 5, pick a few to write about here at TTC.

More of a creative outlet for me and a way to archive some of my favorite albums, the nostalgia they invoke and the lyrics and hooks that transport me somewhere else, I will write about it here at The Textbook Committee. I dont claim to be a music critic or a talented writer. But do claim to be a music snob, filled with admiration for some of the most talented songwriters, crafted albums and overlooked stories told through song hidden in the back of my cd rack. Comment if you like.