So next month I'm planning on a 2012 retrospective where I talk about my favourite music of the past year. However, I'm pre-emptively going to give some fodder to those who would bitch at me for loving album by a band no one has heard of (and trust me that will happen). I'm basically pretending that I had hipster-cred in the first place and then destroying it anyway. What could I possibly say to prevent me ever getting this blog published on Pitchfork or Wire? Well it is this... the most important band in my life is Linkin Park.
Go on, read that again. I mean it. Its going to be pretty hard for me to pretentiously criticize the new Godspeed You! Black Emperor album now!
But before the mockery begins in earnest let me try and explain. Notice I used the word important and not best or talented. In all honesty I can't stand Linkin Park and haven't listened to any of their albums since the first one. So we're not talking about all Linkin Park here, in fact we're mainly talking about just one song. Crawling.
I first heard this epoch-defining tune on Top Of The Pops (a quick search tells me this must have been March 2001). At the time I was actively searching for a musical identity. All my friends were getting them so why couldn't I. I wanted to join their conversations rather than continuing my existence as ostensibly classroom furniture. Despite the fact that I had been playing the violin for about 4 years by then I still didn't really get what music was, save for a relatively small number of CDs I would request on long car journeys. These included such delights as The Backstreet Boys, Savage Garden and the soundtrack to the loathsome Super Mario Bros. movie.
My general indifference to music at this point was great and it may have stayed that way had I not tuned into Top Of The Pops to see what all the fuss was about (because I honestly thought that that was the place to go to discover trendy music!). What greeted me however was not the jaunty melody or boastful rap that I was expecting, but a yell, a roar the likes of which I'd never heard. Exploding from a benign verse was a crash of guitars and an angst-ridden cry of Crrrawwwwling in my skiiiiiiiiiin... I felt a tingle in my spine, a spark, the shocking thrill of the new. You can chalk it up to bog-standard teen-angst and pubescent catharsis all you want but it was the first time I'd heard something that to me felt different. I'd also found an identity that, like it or not, probably defined me right up until I left for university - rocker, metalhead, geek with the long hair. I'm not sure how aware I was of rock music before that time. All I really remember is being terrified of posters of Iron Maiden's Eddie when following my Dad into record shops. So maybe this was why I hadn't gotten into music before, I just hadn't discovered what I would respond most to.
The ball was now rolling. Its speed increased faster than I could have imagined or expected. While my intentions were to just know something about music to share with friends instead my tastes began to pass theirs. I remember returning to school one summer, surprised to learn that no one else had gone on to discover Rage Against The Machine like I had. They were still listening to Limp Bizkit and Feeder! Eventually, I found other friends into heavy rock music, but of course I couldn't stop. Next, I was amazed that none of them had made the seemingly obvious progression from American hard rock to Scandinavian death metal. Amongst all this, Linkin Park, like any good Messiah, would come to be forsaken. It didn't take me long to move away, idealogically, from their drop-D riffs and nu-metal rapping, but the killing blow was an interview with guitarist Brad Delson in which he claimed to hate guitar solos. Seeing as I was knee deep in learning to play Metallica's One at the time I obviously considered this a huge betrayal. Ironically, Delson would go on to introduce guitar solos in future Linkin Park albums whereas my opinion these days is that they contribute to some of the blandest heavy metal music around. Go figure!
Nevertheless, that electrifying thrill I felt when Chester Bennington first wailed at me through my TV screen would later appear again as my exploration of music continued. I felt it the first time I heard a bit of vocal screaming from the Lostprophets; the intricate, yet bludgeoningly heavy guitar riffs of In Flames and Meshuggah; the primal violence of The Right Of Spring; the colours of Messiaen; the digital chill of Autechre; the visceral noise of Wolf Eyes and even this year *SPOILER ALERT* in the kaleidoscopic future pop of Animal Collective.
To me this progression of leaps in taste seems obvious - nu-metal to rock to melodic death metal to classical to avant-garde to IDM to noise to... well, everything. I can trace it all back to Linkin Park, and it still genuinely baffles me that other people haven't made similar journeys, just as much as it amazes me that Slipknot are still making albums and teenagers are still buying them. Well that's growing up for you! Today I'm always searching for new music, trying to regain that spark like a heroin addict (...I imagine). That's why I can go from listening to extreme noise to avant-garde classical music; minimal techno to Japanese folk song.
It's also hard to imagine that I would even be where I am today without Linkin Park. Sure I never did find myself a niche in the music industry as a performer/composer/writer/programmer, but my taste in music determined what I studied at school and the friends, or lack thereof, I kept. It led me to idly pursue dream careers like writing film music, and it took me to London where I still live today. As an aside, before I discovered music my other great passion was video games. I wonder where that interest might have taken me... although ironically my current skill set means I'm more qualified to work for a games company than sound designing the new Star Wars trilogy. Oh well, maybe it seems like I'm exaggerating the effect of one song on the last 11 years of my life, nay who I am as a person. Of course friends, family and teachers played a huge part, but every great journey starts with a single riff!
Listening to this life-defining song once again I notice how quite atypical it is of most nu-metal with little rapping or DJ scratching and with only a few sparse electronic loops to underline the vocals in the verse. The choruses are in stark contrast, though, with full rock crunch. There is a barely song with a more binary form, there's not even a bridge. Maybe this black and white structure is what really got me moving. A verse - this is what it was like before - simple, safe, nice, but now a chorus - this is what it will be like from now on - noise, violence, uncertainty. Those words still ring true. That scream is still crawling in my skin. These wounds they will not heal. Anyone who I've bored in person or through this blog will tell you that! Yes, those wounds of musical obsessiveness refuse to scar. Fear is how I fall... uh, yeah... I guess? Confusing what is real. OK, that's enough now.
As a fun bonus I've made a little playlist filled with some nostalgic treats from my awkward teen days. Feel free to wallow in the detritus of my past with this playlist which I post here with absolutely no shame!* You can't change your history so might as well embrace it. Thanks for reading!
*Some of it is still good today but in general these are quite embarrassing picks. Have you actually listened to Papa Roach recently. Ugh!
No comments:
Post a Comment