I had my birthday a few weeks back, which means now I can hang
out with former A&E editor Jess Rodgers at Maloney’s
(where everybody knows her name). The biggest change over the last
year or so, though, has been in something unexpected ““ my
musical taste.
The more music you listen to, the more you get a feeling for
what attracts you to certain songs or genres, and for me
there’s something about carefully produced albums by wistful,
quiet artists such as The Softies or “Michigan”-era
Sufjan Stevens.
I’m a sucker for a great guitar part, and it’s no
surprise to me that my favorite artists of the last couple years
have been acoustic guitar-playing rock musicians such as Ryan Adams
and Wilco.
I’ve always been a melody junkie, from my initial exposure
to The Beatles and Frank Sinatra on car trips with the family to my
own fumbling exploration of local pop radio. The first CD I ever
bought was Fastball’s “All the Pain Money Can
Buy,” which still holds up today as a great pop-rock record,
even outside of the ubiquitous “The Way.”
Perhaps inevitably, I started getting into edgier material when
I started high school. Ben Folds Five and Fiona Apple were early
favorites, and by the time I discovered the lo-fi late-night
ruminations of Elliott Smith ““ who remains my all-time
favorite artist ““ I’d kicked my fascination with
pop-punk and dove headlong into indie rock.
The stuff I was listening to then wasn’t that different
from the stuff I started out with. The Olivia Tremor Control was
just The Beatles on better drugs, and the very non-indie Dave
Matthews Band satisfied the love of acoustic guitars and folk
songwriting that my dad led me into with Crosby, Stills & Nash
and Simon and Garfunkel.
Finally, of course, there was Radiohead, the band that
transcended every genre and stylistic expectation. My first
experience with “The Bends” was quite possibly the most
mind-blowing hour I’ve ever spent listening to music.
I think a lot of people have had similar experiences with the
band. Either way, listening to them started knocking down a lot of
doors in my brain.
I came to college ready for anything, hoping to have my nubile
young ears turned on to new music.
I ended up just listening to a lot of Ryan Adams freshman year,
but all the same, that openness paid off when a friend started
getting into hip-hop and decided to make his way through the
genre’s greatest works, one album at a time.
All of a sudden, I was replacing Wilco with Wu-Tang Clan,
Galaxie 500 with Gang Starr, Neil Young with Nas. For a guy who was
spending every waking moment listening to guitars and woe-is-me
lyrics, drum machines and rap rhymes were a revelation.
This was music, believe it or not, that I could relate to. Cash
rules everything around me. I, like Dr. Dre, still rock my khakis
with a cuff and a crease.
And I wasn’t the only one. At summer camp last year, my
campers and I bonded over Wu-Tang Clan. We brought the ruckus on a
daily basis.
Aside from the obvious draws of excessive profanity,
misogynistic portrayals of women and the thug-life aesthetic, what
turned me on to hip-hop is the fact that I’m finally getting
old enough to think I understand it.
The quality of what I listen to now has a lot to do with it,
though ““ in middle school, my only real exposure to the genre
was Puff Daddy. Er, P. Diddy. Diddy? Whatever.
Regardless, at the ripe old age of 21, I would honestly rather
listen to the new Ghostface Killah album than Sufjan Stevens’
latest disc. Perhaps they’re an unlikely pair, but Ghostface
and Sufjan have plenty of similarities: Both load their extra-long
albums with unnecessary filler, flaunt their musical virtuosity,
and write songs about murdering people.
So what’ll it be next year? Maybe when I turn 22
I’ll finally get into death metal or hardcore punk (doubtful)
or get back to my roots and start listening to my mom’s Billy
Joel LPs. All I know is I won’t be doing anything without the
Wu-Tang Killa Bees.
Greenwald still listens to The Softies every night before he
falls asleep. E-mail him at
dgreenwald@media.ucla.edu.