8Sided Blog

a zine about sound, culture, and the punk rock dream

A Punk-Rock Gut Punch

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Another dispatch from out in the sticks. Howdy. Proverbial country road pictured above.

There’s a fantastic photo in NPR’s In Memoriam 2018: The Musicians We Lost. An emotive Glenn Branca is pictured in the center, and this is one of the best concert photos I’ve seen in a while. There’s so much energy there, like a jolt of Jolt. I assume Glenn is pictured in the midst of conducting his guitar-based ‘orchestra.’ 

The In Memoriam piece is striking, as these tend to be. There are a lot of special music folks we’ll be missing in 2019. For me, in addition to Branca, losing Mark E. Smith and Pete Shelley in one year is a punk rock gut-punch.

I don’t need another ‘favorite albums of 2018’ list — going through the ones I have bookmarked already could last well into next summer. I should be listening to 2019 music! But Austin Kleon, via his amazing blog (another inspiration for what I’m trying to do here), turned me onto a tantalizingly diverse ‘best of 2018’ list from music writer Ted Gioia.

Kleon titles his post ‘The Agony of List-Making’ and expresses a frustration with making public recommendations under the scrutiny of the internet mob. Gioia eases his own misgivings by presenting his list alphabetically, not allowing any title to receive a crown above any other. Kleon highlights this quote from Gioia’s list post:

Like any music lover, I enjoy sharing my favorite music with others. But in the last few years, a different motivation has spurred me. I believe that the system of music discovery is broken in the current day. There is more music recorded than ever before, but it is almost impossible for listeners to find the best new recordings …

I believe we are entering another era of music discovery, as listeners experience playlist fatigue and blogs continue to lose sway. These personalized lists, from close friends and selected ones from respected total strangers — chefs, movie directors, music writers, etc. — will hold the real power. Recommendations like these have always been the truest source of discovery. But we — as music fans rather than casual listeners — lost our way for a bit as streaming took hold, fascinated by algorithmic playlists and unlimited access.

Optimistically, these personal interactions of recommendation foster more intimate relationships with our music. On the other hand, this could all be my imagination as friends have been recommending music online since those early-90s message boards. But I do feel like there’s a dissatisfaction with playlist culture and how it’s pushed on us by certain platforms. This is a reason I switched from Spotify to Apple Music, something I’ll write about in the future. And this dissatisfaction will grow as playlists and platform features bow further to corporate influence. I used to wonder why Bandcamp didn’t have a playlisting feature — now I get it.

In other news, Big Shot Magazine kindly asked for a 2018 recap and I delivered a few reflections. I mainly talk about the launch of 8D Industries but I also touch on curbing the news diet, a recurring topic around these parts. The Ryan Holiday quote in the piece should be mentally taped above every screen at home, whether it’s a TV or a laptop:

Perhaps it’s time we realize that consuming more news about the world around us is not the way to improve it (or ourselves), personally or politically.

Holiday has written a few articles on why we should abstain from breaking news. They’re all worth a read. 

I’d also like to point out that I meant to refer to the long album version of “Bunny’s Dream” as a favorite song of the year. The video edit embedded in the article doesn’t quite have the majesty or the sprawl and, like many unsuccessful edits, feels rushed in comparison to the original. 

A question I posed to my social media friends: will people be playing Paul Hardcastle like they were playing Prince on NYE 1998? Of course, this is meant as a joke but I know I gave some DJs an idea for a midnight song on Monday. Please report back if you took the bait.

Singles Going Steady

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I’m self-taught on guitar, and I learned by playing along to some of my favorite records. I started on one string, which strengthened my ear and warmed up my fingers. Over time I’d add another string, then another, and eventually I could pick out and play chords.

The records that I selected had to fit specific criteria. First of all, they couldn’t be too complicated: mostly open chords, not too riff-based. And I needed to love the songs — I’d be enthusiastic about learning if the songs were favorites. Also, it was a bonus if a whole album fit these specifications — then I could just put the album on and play along, like a concert. Circa 1985, when I was starting to learn guitar, two records perfectly fit the bill: The Feelies’ The Good Earth and Buzzcocks’ Singles Going Steady.

The Buzzcocks got back together around 1990 and did a tour of the USA, which brought them to Jannus Landing in St. Petersburg. I made the drive over from Orlando to see them. The Buzzcocks were as good as I hoped they would be. Once the show ended and the club emptied, I stayed behind in a happy daze from finally seeing one of my favorite bands. That’s when I looked over to the bar and saw Steve Diggle, the lead guitarist, sitting down for a drink.

I walked over and introduced myself, and after his casual acknowledgment I decided to tell him, “I learned to play guitar to your songs.” Diggle’s reaction was like no one had ever told him this before. “Really? To my playing?” He then quickly ordered a pint for me and exclaimed, “You should meet the rest of the guys!”

So he took me backstage and introduced me to an incredibly friendly Pete Shelley. I stuck around, drinking their beer and chatting for about an hour. Somehow, they had no qualms about this excited fanboy hanging out in their dressing room while they were decompressing from the show. Everyone was so nice, and even Pete seemed interested in my compliments and questions. One of my best ‘meeting my heroes’ memories.

Pete Shelley died yesterday of an apparent heart attack. At 63 he was way too young. The Buzzcocks were still a going concern, with the reunion never quite ending. I see they were supposed to do a show in a couple of weeks.

Before you get to an age when your friends start dying, you experience your heroes dying. In a way, the loss probably feels about the same. You’re losing the ones you love.

Here’s the Buzzcocks song that’s rolling around my head today (not one that I would have expected):

And this one, too, which was used as the end-credit song for the great documentary They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead (no correlation — Pete Shelley was very much loved while he was alive): 

Update: A friend with a much better memory than mine and who was also at the show reminded me that it actually moved to the smaller Club Detroit because, if you can believe it, Buzzcocks didn’t sell enough tickets to adequately fill Jannus Landing. We also figured out the year was 1990. BTW – this friend saw Buzzocks in Manchester in 1979, opening band: Joy Division.