Part 2 of my conversation with guest Phil Stacey
about the music of 2000. Listen to the episode below or download directly (right click and "save as").
Show notes:
Jay's non-top 5 picks: Hot Snakes, Rollins Band, Fu Manchu, Pearl Jam
Phil's and Jay's #5: Diverse offering from the Tragically Hip
Phil's and Jay's #4: More accessible effort about living in NYC by PJ Harvey
Phil's #3: Bluesy debut album from North Mississippi All-Stars
Jay's #3: Electrifying major-label debut from At the Drive-In
Featured in Dan Ozzi's book Sellout about indie acts who sign with majors
Phil's #2: Phish blends some different styles into their jam band formula
Jay's #2: Queens of the Stone Age's second album takes a big leap onto the rock scene
Phil's #1: U2 bounces back with a back-to-basics release
Phil: Feeling down about what was once his favorite band
How bands age
The last really good U2 album
Jay's #1: Radiohead totally reinvents their sound, embracing electronics
Phil's not feeling it
Favorite songs: "Optimistic" (Jay), "Stuck In a Moment You Can't Get Out Of" (Phil)
Completely Conspicuous is available through Apple Podcasts. Subscribe and write a review!
The opening and closing theme of Completely
Conspicuous is "Theme to Big F'in Pants" by Jay Breitling. Voiceover
work is courtesy of James Gralian.
Part 2 of my conversation with guest Phil Stacey about our favorite music of 1987. Listen to the episode below or download directly (right click and "save as").
Show notes:
- Recorded in the backyard of CompCon HQ
-
Jay's non-top 5 albums: Terence Trent D'Arby, Pixies, The Cure, Prince
(The Black Album), Sonic Youth, Def Leppard, Guns N' Roses
- It's easier to listen to bro-country or classic rock than look for new music these days
- Phil's #5: GNR's debut took a few years to really take off
- Jay's #5: The Cult goes for a hard rock sound
- Jay's #4 and Phil's #1: U2 with a massive mainstream breakthrough
- Phil's #3: The Cure with a killer double album
- Jay's #3: R.E.M.'s last album on IRS, embracing a big rock sound
- Phil's #2: The Grateful Dead go mainstream
- Jay's #2: The Replacements' last great album
- Jay's #1 and Phil's #4: Prince tries out many styles, makes social commentary
- Favorite songs: "One Tree Hill" (Phil), "Sign O' the Times" (Jay)
Completely Conspicuous is available through Apple Podcasts. Subscribe and write a review!
The
opening and closing theme of Completely Conspicuous is "Theme to Big
F'in Pants" by Jay Breitling. Voiceover work is courtesy of James
Gralian.
Part 2 of my conversation with guest Phil Stacey
as we discuss the music of 1983. Listen to the episode below or
download directly (right click and "save as").
Show notes:
- Recorded via Zoom
- Phil's #5: U2's second release of '83
- Captured the band's fiery live show
- Jay's #5: Iron Maiden continues its U.S. breakthrough
- Part of the mainstream acceptance of metal
- Phil's #4: The solo debut of Stevie Ray Vaughan
- SRV got a lot of comparisons to Hendrix
- Jay's #4 and Phil's #3: Talking Heads' highest-charting album
- Several songs were overshadowed by Stop Making Sense versions
-Jay's #2: Replacements start hitting their stride
- The start of a great run of albums
- Jay's #3 and Phil's #1: U2 busts out in the U.S.
- Phil: Still disappointed to miss them on this tour
- Phil's #2 and Jay's #1: R.E.M.'s studio debut was massively influential
- Jay: Saw them on Letterman making their network TV debut
- Favorite songs: "Surrender" (Phil), "Talk About the Passion" (Jay)
Completely Conspicuous is available through Apple Podcasts. Subscribe and write a review!
The opening and closing theme of Completely
Conspicuous is "Theme to Big F'in Pants" by Jay Breitling. Voiceover
work is courtesy of James Gralian.
There was a lot going on in 1987. We had a big stock market crash, major sex scandals involving presidential candidates and televangelists, and a pit bull named Spuds McKenzie became a major beer spokesman.
In February, I sheepishly walked into the UNH student newspaper because my journalism professor recommended that we get some practical experience working there. That's where I really found that I wanted to be a reporter. I finished my sophomore year on a strong note, making the Dean's List and feeling a lot better about life in general.
I had a real busy summer. I got a job setting up wooden swing sets, which had me driving a van all over Massachusetts and New Hampshire. The job was pretty exhausting, between all the driving and the manual labor (not to mention the multiple flat tires I had to change). I was working 50 an hours a week there and then two night crews at Market Basket on the weekend. Didn't leave much time for the vacation part of summer vacation, but at least I was socking away some money for the fall. But after a month of that, I decided to quit the swing place and just work at the supermarket part-time.
Originally, my plan for junior year was going to involve me getting a single room in my dorm; I was even toying with the idea of becoming a resident assistant to get the free room and board. But that all went out the window when three of my buddies ended up needing a fourth roommate for the apartment they were renting just off campus. It was still within walking distance of everything and was pretty cheap as far as accommodations go. I also became one of the two news editors of the school paper, so I spent much of my non-classroom time during the day working there. It was a twice-weekly paper, so I took the Thursday production night, which meant I usually was there until the wee hours. I wrote the occasional story and did a humor column, but most of my hours there involved assigning and editing articles. It was a lot of fun, and somehow I managed to squeeze in a lot of extracurricular enjoyment on the weekends.
I listened to a lot of radio (mainly WBCN), which fortunately was full of all sorts of
alt-rock goodness: XTC, R.E.M., INXS, The Cult, Husker Du, The Replacements, World Party,
the Pixies, Midnight Oil, The Cure. There were also big albums from Aerosmith, Motley Crue,
Whitesnake, Def Leppard and some new band called Guns 'N Roses, but I was definitely getting into the so-called college rock. And the biggest thing for me that year was U2's The Joshua Tree. I wasn't alone; the album was a massive hit, with two #1 singles in "With Or Without You" and "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" and a hugely successful tour. In the summer, I was on my way to get comics in Salem, NH, when it was announced that wristbands were being given out for the fall tour in about half an hour; I hauled ass over to the Methuen Mall and got in line at Midland Records, which had a Ticketron outlet. I got wristband #32 and was able to get tickets to one of the September shows at the Boston Garden. This was the old Garden, so the sound wasn't particularly great, but our seats were right behind the mixing board and the show was terrific.
With all the big songs on The Joshua Tree, the one that always stood out for me was "One Tree Hill," an emotional requiem for a friend of the band who died tragically in a motorcycle accident. It's a real gut-wrencher that the band has only played occasionally over the years.
I was already a big U2 fan, but in '87, they became my favorite band on the strength of The Joshua Tree. I don't feel as strongly about them now as I did then, but there's no denying the greatness of those early albums, especially this one. And this song still gets to me, all these years later.
Honorable mentions: U2 - "Bullet the Blue Sky"; U2 - "In God's Country"; XTC - "Dear God"; The Replacements - "Alex Chilton"; Husker Du - "Could You Be the One"; The Cult - "Love Removal Machine"; The Cult - "Lil' Devil"; The Psychedelic Furs - "Heartbreak Beat"; INXS - "Need You Tonight"; INXS - "Devil Inside"; World Party - "Ship of Fools"; R.E.M. - "It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)"; Prince and Sheena Easton - "U Got the Look"; Prince - "Sign 'O the Times"; The Cure - "Just Like Heaven"; The Cure - "Why Can't I Be You?"; The Cure - "Hot! Hot! Hot!"; Crowded House - "Something So Strong"; Def Leppard - "Rocket"; Joe Satriani - "Surfing With the Alien"; Guns 'N Roses - "Welcome to the Jungle"; Rush - "Time Stand Still"; Motley Crue - "Girls, Girls, Girls"; Whitesnake - "Still of the Night"; Genesis - "Tonight, Tonight, Tonight"; Midnight Oil - "Beds Are Burning"; David Bowie - "Never Let Me Down"; Jon Astley - "Jane's Getting Serious"; Mojo Nixon - "Elvis is Everywhere"; Love and Rockets - "No New Tale to Tell"; Squeeze - "Hourglass"; Robert Cray - "Right Next Door"; Echo and the Bunnymen - "Lips Like Sugar"
After a year of stability, we were back to our nomadic ways in 1983. From the moment we arrived in Richland, Washington, in November 1981, we were hearing rumors about the possible closure of the nuclear plant where my dad just got a job. Sure enough, by '83, things were heating up and my father got transferred by his company to the plant in Seabrook, N.H. Once again, he moved out several months ahead of us, which meant we had to move out of the house we were renting.
My mom, brother and I moved into a smaller apartment right across the street from my high school, which I suppose was convenient. The uncertainty about when we were moving was a bit distracting, especially given the possibility that the three of us were going to move back to Toronto instead. My mother was a nurse who was unable to work in Washington state until she took the certification exam there; she had just passed it when she found out we were moving again. So she entertained the idea of moving us back up to Canadia. There were discussions with a high school in Scarborough, a Toronto 'burb (now actually part of the city) where I was born and where we lived for several years, but ultimately, Mom decided we should give New Hampshire a go. I was not thrilled by this decision. I knew nothing about New Hampshire and had no desire to learn more.
By this point, I was really enjoying living in Richland. I had some close friends and finally felt like I fit in a bit. And then, on the day after my sophomore year ended, we got on a plane for Boston. I remember I had just picked up the new Iron Maiden album Piece of Mind and I carried the vinyl with me on the plane (everything else had already been packed up and shipped to NH). My dad picked us up at Logan Airport and took us to our new home, which was a little cottage on the outskirts of a tiny town called Kingston, NH. The mud driveway was uneven and there were no neighbors or streetlights, so it was pretty dark by the time we got there. My heart sank. The house was on three acres of land and we spent much of the summer clearing brush (leading to a nasty case of poison ivy for me) and getting used to living in the middle of nowhere.
The one redeeming part of the summer was when my brother and I flew to Toronto for two weeks, staying with family and friends and getting to see the place we called home for most of our lives. I went back to Pickering and met up with some of my old buddies, bought a bunch of records I couldn't get in the States and just soaked up as much Canadiana as I could before it was time to go back. Probably the biggest shock was that Pickering, which had around 35,000 people when we left less than two years earlier, had nearly tripled in size since we left. Apparently, Toronto was booming and a lot of people moved out to the suburbs.
There was actually one other positive from moving to New England: The radio stations. Whereas we just had the one crappy station in Richland (mainly because it was also situated far away from major populated areas, a full three hours from Seattle), in southern NH, we could get the Boston stations as well as others in New Hampshire and Maine. At the time, WBCN was the big FM rock station and it hadn't begun to suck yet, so it was playing a wide variety of music: In one stretch, you could hear the Police (who were EVERYWHERE in '83), Black Sabbath, Culture Club, Talking Heads, Iron Maiden and the Clash. I loved it. I still was into the metal, but it was great to be able to hear new music by interesting acts. MTV still had not come to my town's cable system (and wouldn't until late '85), so I was watching Friday Night Videos and a lot of Late Night With David Letterman, but I felt like my musical education was advancing much quicker.
And one band that got a ton of airplay on WBCN was U2, which had released its breakthrough album War in February. I had heard "New Year's Day" (and was familiar with the band from hearing "I Will Follow" when I lived in Toronto) already, but by mid-June, the rest of the album was getting a lot of play. The song that really grabbed my attention was "Two Hearts Beat As One," but especially the version that BCN was playing a lot, which was a remix released in France (see below). It just sounded cooler. I was still a sucker for the heavy stuff (Maiden, Priest, Dio, Sabbath), but I liked the fact that my horizons were expanding. There was also a station in nearby Lynn, Mass., that had started up called WFNX that was playing what was then known as "college rock," with bands like R.E.M., X, the Replacements, Husker Du. They billed themselves as "Rock the Boat Radio" and I only occasionally listened; I wasn't ready for them yet, I guess, but I got there eventually.
In the fall, I started my junior year at tiny Sanborn Regional High School. I walked on to the soccer team, which helped me make some friends a little early, but I was still kinda dreading the whole "new kid in school" thing yet again. But it ended up going about as well as I could have hoped. More on that later.
Honorable mentions: U2 - "New Year's Day"; The Police - "Every Breath You Take"; R.E.M. - "Radio Free Europe"; The Fixx - "One Thing Leads to Another"; David Bowie - "Let's Dance"; Prince - "Little Red Corvette"; Prince - "1999"; The Pretenders - "Back On the Chain Gang"; Robert Plant - "Big Log"; Def Leppard - "Photograph"; Def Leppard - "Rock of Ages"; Iron Maiden - "Flight of Icarus"; Iron Maiden - "The Trooper"; Black Sabbath - "Trashed"; Dio - "Rainbow in the Dark"; Big Country - "In a Big Country"; Genesis - "Mama"; The Rolling Stones - "Undercover of the Night"; The Clash - "Should I Stay or Should I Go"; Marvin Gaye - "Sexual Healing"; Thomas Dolby - "She Blinded Me With Science"; Eddy Grant - "Electric Avenue"; Kim Mitchell - "Kids In Action"; Golden Earring - "The Twilight Zone"; Duran Duran - "Hungry Like the Wolf"; Talking Heads - "Burning Down the House"; Billy Idol - "Rebel Yell"; Ozzy Osbourne - "Bark at the Moon"; Pink Floyd - "Not Now John"; Stevie Ray Vaughan - "Pride and Joy"
Editor's note: Through the Past Dorkily is a recurring feature that looks back at the embarrassingly dorky diary I kept as a 16-year-old in 1984.
Sunday, January 15, 1984
This was the day boredom is made of. Got up at around 10, had breakfast and did homework. After lunch, we decided to go to the Methuen Mall. I bought 3 magazines and a Judas Priest pin. I lost my Rush pin last week. Came home, did more homework, went to bed.
What a day!
- The Barbarian
Postscript: A few words about the Methuen Mall, which no longer exists. Back in the early '80s, we used to go there fairly often because it was the closest real mall (i.e., non-strip mall) to our podunk town. My favorite spot there was Midland Records, a great little record shop. While my mother would go to Sears or wherever, I would hunker down at Midland and browse through the vinyl from A to Z. They had a great import section. I was mostly interested in hard rock and metal, so I would pick up things like Gary Moore's Rockin' Every Night, a live album only released in Japan (this was during his post-Thin Lizzy, pre-blues, hard rockin' phase).The store also was a Ticketron outlet; I once got tickets for U2 on the Joshua Tree tour in 1987 by getting to Midland after hearing tickets were going on sale that day and getting a wristband. For hot shows like that, it was tough to get tickets. You could never get through on the phone (I failed miserably a few years later trying to get tickets for the Achtung Baby tour), so if you could get a decent spot in line at a ticket outlet, you had a chance. Even then, my seats were behind the mixing board at the Boston Garden, which weren't awful, but were still pretty far from the stage. Anyway, the Methuen Mall also holds less fun memories; my dad ended up working at the Sears there after he lost his job at the nuke plant. Those were not good times.
One of my favorite local areas, Davis Square in Somerville, was crawling with people, police and press all day today as some unknown band called U2 was preparing to do an invite-only show/Q&A at the Somerville Theater. Of course, even with all the hype U2 has cranked up for their new album (playing Letterman all last week, showing up on Good Morning America, doing these Q&A shows), the album still "only" sold 484,000 copies last week, about half the total of their last album's debut. I'll be in Davis Square on Saturday for a much more important event: My every-so-often chowfest at Redbones with the old Webnoize crew. Before we hit Redbones, I'll be meeting up with OJ to record some jibba-jabbin' for the podcast.
Beforehand, I plan to get my long run in. Yeah, I'm back to running again. At least, I got 5 miles in today on the treadmill and felt no pain in my shin. I hadn't run since last Tuesday when I did an abbreviated 3; since then, I've been massaging and icing the area and most importantly, resting. So far, so good. I'm going to shoot to do 13 on Saturday, so wish me luck.
After months of slacking off, I finally updated my Flickr page with photos through the end of 2008, so check 'em out if you choose.
And now for something completely different...
Apparently, it's crazy lone gunman week. Two mass murder sprees took place yesterday, one in Alabama and one in a German school. Let's hope there aren't any copycats.
The NHL general managers met this week and came up with some proposed rules designed to cut down on fighting but not ban it outright. The real target appears to be fights that are pre-planned and start right after the whistle, presumably to fire up a team. As opposed to ones that start in the heat of the game. I have no problem saying I enjoy a good scrap, but the fake ones are just stupid. Get rid of them. That said, I dug this tussle last night between ex-Leaf Wade Belak and Caps goon supreme Donald Brashear, in which Belak drops the feared Brashear with a well-placed wallop.
