Tuesday, April 2, 2013

tastemaking, me?

It's nice to get calls from people wanting to know what bands I was playing, especially when they're personal favorites. I end up sounding like a total geek but I'd rather be that than some elitist because it's not like what I dig is super esoteric as it is. But dude wasn't being a creep and wanted to know who those last two bands were and I of course shared the knowledge, because I still call shows to find out what I've just heard.

Rites of Spring was one of those senior year albums that we listened to at my homie's graduation party along with the Dead Milkmen before he and his girlfriend went off somewhere to make out and me and one of his other friends spent the evening next to the fire pit throwing chunks of cheese in it and talking about our futures that we knew nothing about. He thought he was going to make action movies, I thought I was going to do swank album art for bands. We have daily schlub jobs now, ten years later, but damn, this record. Not quite the white hot fast and fury of early DC hardcore, not quite as arty as Fugazi later became. I thought the emotion would seem trite or overwrought ten years later, but enough ups and downs and occasional heartbreaks makes it ring even more true at 29 than it did at 18. 

And then Subrosa's been a more recent discovery, as in the past couple years thanks to my erstwhile comrade in peonage who also digs the lady-doom. I liked it when I first heard it but repeated listens have led to it really growing on me. Whenever I fill in on metal shows, I always get callers going what IS that? Because there's the downtuned heavy and then the double violins apocalyptic like Godspeed You Black Emperor and then the vocals that are super hypnotic that kind of remind me of PJ Harvey or something but I'm not sure why. I don't really know how to to describe it, it's just great for existential nights and early mornings.


I'll have a for-real playlist up soon but there's something profoundly gratifying about knowing that you're being heard.

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