This is how I think of Alternative music: mainstream you >transplanted. You feel the same but something edgy and slightly frightening is going on. You can see a world others can’t.
You are in a different club.
Maybe you start to dress with more swag and maybe you let your mouth form words that seem alien and leave a weird aftertaste.
But I am getting ahead of myself because it might not take.
There is more to being cool than finding a different band or two, but coming to the Cave for a visit is always a good place to start!
Bronze:
Squeeze.Pulling Muscles from a shell.
I just love this happy song. In fact, I love the whole record.
I am way behind picking my 10 favorite records of all time. {Spoiler Alert} ArgyBargy is one of them.
You could classify this as pop, but wait minute—–pop stations did not and will not play this.
Pop radio did love it when Paul Carrack joined:
This is another great song- just in the other universe.
The Silver:
The Pixies.Where is my mind
They invented grunge as far as I am concerned. I will throw grunge in with alternative because it came from there and returned there after a little brush with mainstream.
The Gold:
New Order. Blue Monday
This one holds up well.
If I did this next week –this list would be different….Hell, if I did this again IN 15 MINUTES –this list would be different.
In fact I am changing the bronze right now.
In the words of Paul Westerberg when I saw him play this as a warm up band for a Tom Petty tour-
Indie Music – The miscellaneous cool file of Rock since…since… The Smiths?
And the only reason this genre goes back this far is they were added in after the fact.
There was no indie music in the early 80’s-all the cool music was thrown into that big “alternative music” pile and sorted out from there.
Listening to this song now-I can see why the indie crowd wants to claim it as their own.
“Hang the D.J- because he does not play anything good.” Is the basic premise of this uplifting little tune.
To get to indie music you have to go under the surface. Like those old movies when you swim underwater to emerge in a secret cave below the depths; another world that only the cool kids know about.
I think of indie music as the new growth of rock music after the big forest fires of excess wiped out all the old guard. The geezers still pretend to hang around with nostalgia tours featuring 2 original members if you are lucky, but it is a joke. Is just a quick stumble from this to the final walk of fame: selling reverse mortgages and walk-in bath tubs to the last few who still remember.
So as I try to finish out my medals category because the stray dogs of this Olympic site are looking at me with an angry growl-I just run out of bones.
Here we go.
The Bronze:
Arctic Monkeys.Do I wanna Know?
The riff is what makes this work. Psychedelic Led Zeppelin with this great high harmony “Do I wanna know” in the chorus… this puppy works-this puppy will crawl up to you, sneak on the end of the bed and get comfortable in your rock n roll head.
Infectious and Indie.
The Silver:
Silversun Pickups.The Pit
Good Indie music always has this quiet scream to it. It does not yell at you but instead it keeps nudging and nudging until you find yourself getting swept away with it. Silversun getting the Silver [see what I did there?…Do you hipsters?…course you did-you guys are too smart for me]
The Gold:
Bon Iver.Skinny Love
Bon Iver is French for “Good winter”- This song is so cool that it is below zero cold just like it is going to be again tonight here at the cave. I don’t know what the French word is for endless brutal winter but I am hearing a ton of non-french words around here to describe it.
I know I have featured this song before….but damn-it is good.
And one more for the road:
The Black Keys may be indie but I can’t call them that anymore because they are too big.1
You can only be indie for a small amount of time- A time when passion for the craft of music does not always equate to success. A time when you do what you love and let the chips fall as they may-a time when struggle is life and life is struggle but so what-Let’s rock anyway.
I do not like this band -if they never visit Cleveland to claim their place in Rock n’ Roll history; that is fine with me!
I was O.K. with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame not allowing them in….
BUT…
I know the names:
Gene Simmons, Ace Frehley, Paul Stanley and Peter Criss
We all know those names and those are the names that the Hall of Fame accepted for induction.
There are a legion of fans still enlisted in the Kiss Army. They made enough records that you could cover an entire ocean and not let the fishes get any light…They are a raging success and deserve to be in no matter what us “serious” rock music fans think.
I mean, was the Ramones hit with Rock and Roll High School really any deeper than Rock and Roll all Nite?… Oh yeah-they were cool but Kiss was all flash.
They were really good flash-with smoke and make up and all the other stuff that made the kids go crazy.
Even the grown up kids. Even now.
But Kiss can’t get it together for the original four to play a couple songs for fans that have made them gods- Fans that have paid the mortgages on mansions and the insurance on fancy sports cars for years and years.
It is one night and a couple tunes- that will allow you guys to take this little carnival of fantasy on the road and laugh all the way to the bank for the rest of your days. It will allow 4 or 5 generations of your heirs to live like kings if they have any sense at all and not waste this wealth that your followers have bestowed on you.
But no—-Wha, wha wha…Gene Simmons wants everybody that ever pretended to be Ace Frehley and Peter Criss to play and be inducted because they are just as much of the Kiss experience.
And it seems that 3 or 4 fake Aces are too many Aces in the deck for the original Ace.
Whatever.
Could you please just give the fans what they want one more time?
You neuvo geeks don’t understand because you were not born before the revolution. ..
Before the revolution-there was only darkness for the fleet of brain.
Al Gore had not yet invented the internet.
We played chess by mail (yes, stamp and envelope mailbox-mail!…-pawn to king 4, bitch!)
We were hunted down in school and beaten up for good sport-they would later call this bullying-and even later would declare it a bad thing. Think Hunger Games High school.
Comics were not cool…and we read them because we were not cool but they made us feel better. There was no banding together at a Comic Con…with dressing up in costumes and fellowship! Fellowship? Friends? …No –none of that.
When our glasses broke, we could not afford to fix them right away, so we rigged them the best we could. And we did that because without them-we could not see!
Star Wars was yet to become an official religion- it was just a movie they forgot to make toys for. (yes, there would be an over reaction of epic proportion and geeks everywhere or maybe nerds would buy tons and tons )
In this dark age-there was no difference between a geek and a nerd-each were considered the lowest form of life.
Star Trek was a campy 60’s show.
AND—-Batman was still a joke with the cheesy “Bam” graphics or as Robin would have said “Holy History Batman!” He was yet to make that Walter White transformation and go all badass over Gotham.
Those were the dark days of Geekdom and there was no music.
Then this band Devo came out.
They were smart, smart-ass and funny. We had a band….Yeah! We don’t have to pretend to like Foghat anymore people-we can dance…it just might be O.K to be us!!!
We are legion and we are the bomb!
Then Bill Gates and Steve Jobs arrived and the rest is history.
But first was Devo-first was sound. This revolution would not be televised.
No messing around-nothing fancy- Straight ahead Rock n roll songs that still have plenty of rubber left on the tires.
I am not picking the usual worn out suspects for the cave medals.
Anybody and their un-house trained dog can pick ‘Back in Black” or “Satisfation” as the top rock songs of all time.
I went with songs I love that still have plenty of juice.
Like a big pack of energizer batteries with an expiration date of “never”.
Here we go
The Bronze:
Lynyrd Skynyrd.Call me the Breeze
J J Cale wrote it and they put it on one of the best sophomore albums of all time and just kicked the dry excrement right out of it. What a song and what an original line up of whoop-ass.
The Silver:
Pretenders.Mystery Achievement
Another great effort by another short lived line up. This first Pretenders record always gets forgotten when we talk of the greats. You can call it punky new wave if you like. I call it straight ahead Rock music with feeling and with conviction.
Progressive rock– the arty, pompous and always a tad snobby weird cousin of rock music. Those who like him will affectionately refer to him as a bit eccentric and an acquired taste. Those who don’t like him will call him an overblown pompous ass wallowing in mindless self reflection that is all too full of codswallop*.
*pick your favorite word here to describe senseless drivel – I always liked this one
But I digress and getting back to the music-
Both are correct descriptions.
Bands like Rush, early Genesis, and Yes- I do not like and will use the bad definition to explain why.
Bands like Pink Floyd, Supertramp and solo Peter Gabriel I like and will refer to the good definition.
Many fans will be the opposite or simply hate all of these groups for being way too much over the artsy ledge.
I am cool with that
But the winter games are still going on at the Cave and we need some medal winners
The Bronze:
Arcade Fire.Afterlife
Before I get all my 8 or 9 readers to band together and tell me this not prog….Here is the test.
Is it artsy? Check
Is it self-important drivel and over the top in a way that angers some music fans? Check
Would you have thrown this band in with all the other progressive bands if it came out thirty years ago?
Again-Check.
And I love this song and it is my website-Just a regular guy in a regular virtual cave-so there and let’s go to silver.
The Silver:
Frank Zappa.Watermelon in Easter Hay.
Frank was a talented and thoughtful musician known for a too grotesque sense of humor. He would be a mega star today. It was nothing more outrageous than Eminem.
And the dude could play guitar.
If you got a chance to see him live then you got a chance to see something like the massive migrations of buffalo across the Great Plains before they were all gone. You got to witness something special that was normal for the time but fading fast. You got to be part of history.
I now feel like I am history! (that is good, right?)
The Gold:
Pink Floyd.Shine On You Crazy Diamond
I could write a book on what this song means to me. (maybe someday)
My favorite Pink Floyd song from my favorite Floyd record-Wish You Were Here.
This is the ultimate bromance ditty-One guy writing a song about a friend that has lost his mind but will never be considered lost. It is song of hope and a song about love and respect. Friendship is a deep and mysterious thing that this song is not afraid to expose to the light. Madness is another dark depth that few pieces of music will dare to set sail for. Just for those two reasons this song is beautiful and this version is unforgettable.
Next I will go for the “Classics” and Cheers from the Cave!
A truly great pop song will weave itself into the fabric of society.
Sir Elton John.Rocket Man
Elton John and Bernie Taupin wrote some great pop songs-this is my favorite. Their collaboration represents a high-water mark for Top 40 radio and raised all boats to a new level of quality.
This man was not knighted because of Knomio and Juliet or that Circle of Life thing in Lion King.
Not only do we have a fantastic song by Captain Fantastic-We also have this sequel to Bowie’s Space Oddity and a Ray Bradbury Sci-Fi vibe going on. It was like realizing that the space age is not something that should freak us out anymore-this is where we live now.
He brought the whole thing down to earth so that we could all go on the trip and get back home safely.
The best art always takes you on a journey and lets you return to solid ground.
It makes me think of this video which is worth a look because it brings this thing full circle.
Like the song says-Being a rock star or an astronaut is a job- getting up and putting on the flashy suit to punch the clock and do the best you can for the day. You do not always have to like it and you don’t always have to be completely swept up in the emotion of the experience us mere mortals take as living like a god. In fact, if you approach it the right way- you just might stay on top and have people care for a “long , long time”.
The Silver:
Lady GaGa.Bad Romance
“I’m a free bitch, baby”
This line makes me laugh when I hear it yelled in the background-it also evokes strength and power when it returns later in the song as a cold statement of fact.
I love Lady Gaga- She always knocks over the big milk cans of society and does not care who gets splashed. She is bigger than life; riding a wave of controversy with flair and artistry. She just goes for it every single time.
She has been accused of being everything bad in this world-she has even been labeled as being a man?
This man thing kind of confuses me- It is a weird kind of redneck feminist fear about her being too powerful to be a woman. That same fear would turn into a life-threatening blood rush of excitement if she posed in one of her costumes with a bow and stood over the carcass of a fresh killed 8 point buck.
We live in strange times and she is our hero.
I am not a little monster but we created this phenomenon known as Lady Gaga.
And she says more about us than we do about her.
The Gold:
Micheal Jackson.Billie Jean
“Billie Jean is not my lover, she’s just the girl who claims that I am the one”
A good ol’paternity lawsuit will give you a little street cred, especially when you are trying to break through and become the “King of Pop”.
Or a song about it is close enough to send Michael Jackson into the stratosphere of musical stardom; he would not find his way back to earth.
Bob Dylan once said that everyone had a copy of the “Thriller” album. The record was a big deal-it broke the color barrier on MTV….who would have guessed that MTV would break the stupid barrier a few years after this and never look back?
This was 1982 when MTV and vinyl records still ruled the earth…I know…it does seem possible, almost as relevant as dinosaurs to a generation today-but it did happen.
Just like with Lady Gaga- Michael Jackson gives us all these weird dichotomies- Woman or man “He is trying to look like Elizabeth Taylor” Black or White “He is getting skin lightning treatments”- Kid or Adult…I don’t know where to start with this one.
And that is just a hint of the circus that followed “His One-Glovedness” around.
This song is as good as pop music gets and we have a moon walk on top of the podium.
Next –we take on Progressive—and as always-Cheers from the cave!
Metal is not my thing, I like some of it but I am not in the club. I am not submerged in this murky subculture – I needed some help from metal heads I know in real life and in the blogging world.
To me- metal is a light and humorous distraction from my other music. I think of it as Van Halen and The Scorpions. (Cartoony with a flair for the over dramatic)
No!! To metal people this is not right.
Just like real drinkers like their liquor aged and neat. Real metal heads like their music black and evil with no touch of water …if you please and thank you.
There is the famous story of Robert Johnson selling his soul to the devil in order to play guitar like no one before him (the genesis of rock n roll). It may be myth but it fuels this whole thing. https://caveoffame.com/2013/02/20/the-devils-music/
On the other side we have stories of Black Sabbath painting rooms black and doing witchcraft…all while figuring out the small tonal shift on guitar that would forge a new evil sound.
They did not make just make a deal with the devil-they are invited over to the Lucifer Mansion for the Thursday night poker games!
Again-is this myth or reality-is this just for show or are we true believers-it really does not matter- it just matters that this “vibe of hell” is what the passionate of this genre like to blindly follow.
It is the zip in this trip.
So I give you my medal winners of this very scary genre of which I have a new found fear.
The Bronze- Opeth.Blackwater Park
Death Metal is to Sweden like those little funky knives with everything are to Switzerland. It is a factory for this music. And before a “speed metal” or “black metal” freak flames some angry comment about Opeth being really a “progressive metal band with a death metal start that kind of draw influences from everywhere.” Let me say that they are a “progressive metal band with a death metal start that kind of draw influences from everywhere.” And let me also say that the only thing scarier than metal music is any comment thread on a metal website-join in at your own risk!
The Silver-Metallica.Master of Puppets
The vocals are clean and the guitar is fast. You could call this a nice drinkable American blend. Thanks to http://1001albumsin10years.wordpress.com/ for this suggestion!
The Gold-Black Sabbath.Paranoid
There is no argument from metal lovers of all kinds that these guys are the original. I know the song Black Sabbath is considered the first example of the genre but I did want something a little lighter for the gold medal….you know something that is a hit and that the kids can dance to!
Yearn: to have a strong desire for somebody or something, especially when the desire is tinged with sadness.
That is really what all these unrequited love songs are about.
Maybe it is all this rain gently washing away the January snow that has me in this yearning funk.
I don’t know… but the best way to deal with it-is to find some great songs and let them rain in on my soul.
There is something always pure about something that is unattainable-if you can’t get it then it follows that you can never diminish it. It stands there in all its glory and remains just out of reach.
Mix it with talent and music and magic happens.
These songs are all great and I am just scratching the surface.
Cave of Fame 