You Didn't Find That!

I walked into CD Alley in Chapel Hill at one point in 1997 as I often did, with an excess of free time, and very little money. Money was tight, but I needed new music. I scavenged the used vinyl and discs hoping for a gem that had slipped through the cracks, but this didn't feel like the time to give Bongwater a chance. Already a bit disappointed, I walked toward the exit only half-heartedly perusing the new releases.

Terrible quality picture, but you get the idea.

On my way out, I peripherally saw the word “fucking” on a descriptor tag. I was 21 years old, so even the most pedestrian obscenity piqued my interest. When I pulled the other discs back to read it, the placard said “Harriett The Spy”, and underneath said, “Rules with an iron fucking fist, already!”.

Cursing? Ruling? A Motorhead reference? All of these were things that really blew my skirt up at that age. Then, in what may have been my most significant introduction to a post-irony universe, I looked at the cover: A crude drawing of rainbows and unicorns with the words “An Anthology of Selected Songs”. I was confused. This was not the cover art of a band who had any interest in “ruling with an iron fucking fist”! It hadn't really dawned on me that someone would purposely mislead a potential listener sheerly in the interest of fucking with people.

I turned the case over and saw more than 30 songs listed, which is traditionally the hallmark of hardcore. Or at least The Minutemen. Things were looking up.

The song titles are still some of the snottiest (read:funniest) I've ever heard of: “Sleeping Through the Money Shot”, “The Jealous Wrath of Baby Jesus”, and “I Hate America (But I Think I'll Stay)”, were among the standouts. Thirty-plus songs. The glowing, albeit brief review. The song titles. Bolstered by a $9.99 price tag, I decided that this was a smart gamble.

I'm still glad I did. To this day, I love that album. Ive tried over the years to turn friends on to it, mostly unsuccessfully. It's more digestible than, say, Heroin or Antioch Arrow, but more challenging than Fugazi or Pavement. It was a kind of perfect storm for me, which is what made it so special. I found it myself, save for an explicit blurb. Even as friends with similar interests shunned it over the years, I embraced it as something wholly and uniquely my own.

This doesn't happen anymore.

I miss that feeling, but it's probably safe to say that it's lost forever. The idea that I found something great all by myself made me hold what may even be an unjustified allegiance to a band, to an album, and even to an experience. Now, I'm older, my spirit has been crushed by the world, and I understand irony. It's probably best that that window of innocence only remains open for so long, I suppose.*

Lately, I've been doing a great deal of something that we call “rabbit-holing” in my household. It basically involves me looking up a band that I like on YouTube, then following the links wherever they lead. Like everything, there are peaks and valleys, strikes and gutters, but, you can potentially run into some really great stuff that you didn't know existed before.

The problem is, that now, the excitement of discovering something new is often eclipsed by the feeling that I just peeked into someone else's album collection and claimed it as my own: Posted it for all to see. It's just not the same. There's no adventure in not leaving the couch.

On the other side of that coin is the fact that the Internet has given me access to thousands of bands that I may not have had the resources to discover otherwise. Don't get me wrong, I am extremely grateful for that, if not amazed by it.

This was the case recently as I was looking up old Deep Purple videos**. I started out watching some pretty great live footage from around 1971, and, before long I had “rabbit-holed” through Lucifer's Friend, Pink Fairies, and ultimately, a slew of great mid-seventies hard-rock bands.

After about 30 minutes, I had stumbled on a video that was called simply “Top Ten Underground Hard Rock Albums from the Early 70's”. There it was: A pre-packaged, easy-to-swallow introduction to some great bands that I had yet to discover on my own. I've looked into most of these bands extensively since, and although I knew of several, notably Dust and Captain Beyond, I got a little hint of what it used to feel like to find something new and exciting. Meanwhile, though it may seem tailored to me and my sensibilities, someone has already discovered them, and been nice enough to share them with me.

And now, in that same spirit, I will be nice enough to share them with you directly. On my fucking blog. In this foul year of our Lord, Two Thousand Twelve.

*It is at this point, that I realize I'm starting to truly sound like a washed up hipster. That, or the bastard child of Andy Rooney.

** When I was twelve years old, I got my first record player. Subsequently, I inherited (read:stole) my dad's record collection. One of the best records in that collection was Deep Purple's In Rock, which I still have and listened to yesterday. Phew! There's that sweet sense of entitlement!