Pantheon Songs

[Editor's note: the eponymous debut album by The Stone Roses had four releases throughout its first two years of life---the original 1989 UK release, the original 1989 US release, the 1989 US re-release, and the 1991 UK re-release. The original UK release, which is the release that this post will refer to unless otherwise noted, had only eleven songs, never included the tracks "Fools Gold" or "Elephant Stone," and ended with the track "I Am the Resurrection."]

On an album with a cover that refers, however subtly, to the May 1968 riots in Paris and includes songs that range from the desperate need to impress (“I Wanna Be Adored”) to a sub-minute track that yearns for a day in which the Queen is gone, complete with a brief effect that can be interpreted as a gunshot (“Elizabeth My Dear”), The Stone Roses unabashedly soaked themselves in a specific political perspective on their debut album. How they chose to end this album is with “I Am the Resurrection,” which is not only one of the best songs of the ’80s but is also one of the very best and most definitive fuck you songs ever written; a fuck you song so towering that its intended political bent sounds more like a breakup song on first listen.

When I say that this song is “one of the best songs of the ’80s” I mean that it is easily in the top 5, probably in the top 3 along with “Blue Monday” by New Order and “London Calling” by The Clash.^[1] I will go one step further and say that “I Am the Resurrection” is one of the greatest six-plus minute songs of all time as well—sitting comfortably in the front row of the team photo along with Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone,” Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven,” the Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” and Pink Floyd’s “Interstellar Overdrive,” just to name a few.

As for “I Am the Resurrection” being one of the more definitive fuck you songs ever made, allow me to clarify something by noting that when it comes to caustic and blunt writing, be it lyrics or poetry or literature, it can be pretty easy—especially when some aging sets in—for the bluntness and the caustic tone to lose some power. This is natural and unavoidable to a degree as artists and writers are perpetually chipping away at norms and taboos. Shakespeare was an incendiary figure to some once upon a time, but it’s hard to call him that with a straight face in present tense terms when one can go to a local bookstore and purchase a Palahniuk or Burroughs novel. All of this is to say that I fully realize that my calling “I Am the Resurrection” one of the best fuck you songs ever made is entirely subjective—to say nothing of how differently we all interpret the tones of a writer or a singer. But to me, hearing Ian Brown sing lyrics like “Stone me, why can’t you see/You’re a no-one nowhere washed up baby who’d look better dead” is one of the most biting and scathing things I’ve heard this side of Bob Dylan’s “Idiot Wind,” and that the fact these words are wrapped in a song whose musical construct is founded on drug-fueled white boy groove/jam elements and a quasi Indian sound—and that they are somehow able to fucking pull it off—makes it all the more outstanding. Brown’s true message can easily be lost amongst the sea of polished music that emanates all around it. (Kind of like how a career politician’s true message is oftentimes blurred, laundered, re-framed by the polished dissonance that emanates all around them, to bring the political angle back full circle.)

On the surface “I Am the Resurrection” can be seen as a song broken down into two parts: a first part that has a standard pop-rock structure complete with lyrics that gives way to the instrumental jam band-esque second part. But the song really has three parts, with the instrumental jam being broken down into two parts. To me the song breaks down into this three-act format…

Act I – The Angry Intro — (0:00 – 3:39) Starts out with about twenty seconds worth of a drum beat that always reminds me of Bill Berry before shifting into its established melody. If the end of this act were recorded differently “I Am the Resurrection” could have been a sub four minute rock track. As mentioned previously, this is the only part of the song that contains lyrics—cold, biting lyrics that can be hurled at your ex, or at the sea of the dead-eyed lower and middle classes who can’t see that you absolutely loathe them. Either one.

Act II – I Don’t Give A Fuck About You (3:40 – 6:16) With the vocals gone, this song becomes more interpretively expressive in its rebirth as a jam-like instrumental. (You may hear this part and the next part and think that it’s all one big jam that doesn’t really tell a story. And that’s completely fine. I fully realize that I have an inner music dork that most people probably don’t: one that is governed by the part of my brain that was greatly affected by watching Fantasia and subsequently tries to create an imagery that lines up with a lot of music that I listen to. I digress.) The music here lightens up considerably as John Squire shuffles right along the fretboard with a playfulness that is the envy of many a stoned, hemp-wearing, self-taught guitar novice that has occupied countless dorm rooms throughout America. There’s even a prolonged pause that teases you into thinking the song is over. After that pause the drums begin to gallop and become a bit thunderous, which gives way to some more serious riffs by Squire, which blend into the third act of the song. The first act is so blatant (because of the vocals) in its message that the singer doesn’t give a shit about you. This part of the song is basically saying Oh, you’re still here? Okay, well if you won’t fuck off then stand there and watch how much I’m not giving a shit about you. The contrast of this part compared to the first part of the song almost feels like this act is the musical equivalent of dancing on someone’s grave.

Act III – The Fuck You Phoenix (6:17 – 8:13) This nearly two minute block not only possesses the best and most masterful segment of music but it also, to me, possesses the greatest amount of imagery. The thumping one-two-three-four-ONE-one-two-three-four drum beats that precede the whirlwind of assaulting drums and cymbals and Squire’s near sitar-like riffs: it all feels so primal and, for a rock song, tribal. You factor in the indecipherable tornadic vocal effects that swirl throughout it and you have a block of music that paints the image of a phoenix (or the monster from the “Night on Bald Mountain” Fantasia piece), rising up and destroying everything in its path. The final fuck you. Goodnight forever. I couldn’t stand another second in your company.

I don’t expect anyone else to experience or digest this song as I have broken it down above. You may listen to this song and think: “Meh.” Or maybe you’ve already heard it before and think that what I’ve written is an overwrought love letter. Additionally, I have no idea if my breakdown meshes with the band’s concept and inspiration for the song. For all I know the jam portion of the song is just a jam—something that exists simply because it does (“Toccata and Fugue in D Minor”) rather than something that tells a definite story (“The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”).^[2] But its true meaning is of no concern to me. I have lived inside this song. I know exactly when all of the transitions take place, and all of the different the inflections of Ian Brown’s vocals. I have listened to this song too many times to count while driving at night, when the night can act as a projector screen by which a song’s imagery becomes more palpable. This song is no longer The Stone Roses’ song, it’s mine; the final psychic transaction that takes place long after the receipt was printed out. Every one of us has a song or small group of songs that represents our soundtrack, and we bend it and contort it to make it our own. “I Am the Resurrection” is that song for me. Its scathing lyrics and (personally interpretive) dark-ish overtones aside, this song, musically speaking, is beautiful and amazing; a no-frills killer track with no flaws whatsoever.

The majority of this post has been subjective, so let’s get objective: The Stone Roses is one of the greatest albums of the ’80s, one of the greatest debut albums of the modern rock era, and one of the greatest British rock albums in general of the last twenty five years. You cannot have a serious discussion about the music of the ’80s without including this album, and you cannot affix this album onto a Best Of list without talking about this song.

The Stone Roses would never be able to recapture or duplicate the power of their debut album and would eventually break up in the ’90s. Their inability to create a second masterpiece or sustain a longer career shouldn’t be seen as a mark against them though. Their debut album is a towering masterpiece complete with a song that effortlessly merges anger and politics with a freewheeling jam, a jam that produces a flawless communion between electric guitars and drums that I have yet to hear anyone else remotely encroach. Simply put, “I Am the Resurrection” is a once-in-a-lifetime song.

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[1] “London Calling” qualifies as one of the best songs of the ’80s if you go by its US release, which was January 1, 1980 (the UK release was December 14, 1979).

[2] More Fantasia references, per my inner music dork.

Minutemen was a San Pedro CA-based punk band from 1980 to 1985. They were one of the first bands signed to the SST Records label (I believe they were the second band ever signed, after Black Flag). Their brand of punk music was predicated on brevity—between their four LPs and eight EPs you can count on one hand how many songs exceeded the three minute mark. They were a three-man band that was one of the most integral bands of the ’80′s, both in terms of the ’80′s in general and in terms of their influence and reach to bands that formed afterward.

They permanently disbanded in 1985 after the sudden death of lead singer/guitarist/songwriter D. Boon in a freak bus accident during R.E.M.’s Lifes Rich Pageant tour (they were an opening act). To most casual music fans, the name Minutemen has little if any meaning; they had no #1 singles and it is fair to assume that the casual music fan doesn’t know any Minutemen songs or albums by name. But even if you think you’ve never heard a Minutemen song, you have: if you’ve seen the beginning of a Jackass episode (or one of the movies), the theme song for the show and movies is “Corona,” a song off of the band’s 45-track magnum opus Double Nickels on the Dime. (Note: the original vinyl incarnation of Double Nickels had 45 tracks; the version that is sold now has 43 tracks.)

If “Corona” is the only song you have heard from the band it is adequately emblematic of Minutemen’s sound, especially their more straight-up flavor of punk rock. It is a song that has a wild catchiness befitting of blaring it through your car’s speakers, or blaring it at a party after everyone is nicely toasted (yet still has enough energy to jump around at a moment’s notice and laugh and bang into one another). “Corona” is the perfect song for Jackass to use; it’s an unabashed guy song, right down to its final inside joke-sounding lyric “I only had a Corona/Five cents deposit.”

I use the word “adequately” in the previous paragraph because Minutemen were tinkerers and experimenters on a level rarely seen before they formed and since they departed. Bands and artists who rattle off a laundry list of disparate influences come and go but Minutemen backed it up to balls-out effect. To be sure, their canvas with which to experiment might have been helped by the fact that their songs were so short—which could definitely equate to an easier ability to produce a bountiful garden of odd delights. But the fact is they did back it up. Math rock? Check (“If Reagan Played Disco”). Jazz progressions? Why not (“Split Red”). Captain Beefheart? Of course (“The Toe Jam”). Avant garde? Yes (“You Need the Glory”). Throw shit in a musical blender and see what happens? Why wouldn’t you do that? (“Take 5, D.”) An instrumental acoustic song? Check (“Cohesion”). Traditionally structured punk songs with politically charged lyrics? Yes, a thousand times yes (“Working Men Are Pissed”). And this doesn’t fully convey how they incorporated their tastes and influences into their music. Minutemen were in a league of their own in terms of diversity of music catalog. To listen to all of their songs chronologically from start to finish is to live inside an auditory emulation of ADHD—and I mean that in the best possible way.

So, which song from this wide and diverse catalog is the best at summing up the significance of Minutemen? In all honesty you could probably throw a dart at the track listing of Double Nickels on the Dime and whatever you hit would work. That album is staggering in its genius, the musical equivalent of sifting through Picasso’s sketch book; even the raw and bizarre tracks are filled with a creativity that leave an impression on you. But the song that I think best encapsulates the energy, the unique flavor of punk, and the fuck off intensity (all wrapped up into the sub-minute length that Minutemen was known for) is “Please Don’t Be Gentle with Me.”

In forty seven seconds “Please Don’t Be Gentle with Me” has more raw power than any song The Red Hot Chili Peppers has ever produced (Mike Watt blows the more recognizable Flea away) and more energy than most punk songs in general that have ever been produced. This song is an appropriate totem of D. Boon’s booming, working class vocals and outstanding guitar work, the aforementioned Mike Watt’s superior bass-playing ability, and George Hurley’s foundational beating of a drum kit. This song is so perfect, so raucous, so indie polished that it seems unfair that it only lasts for a little longer than forty seconds.

But then again—aside from incendiary, inciting lyrics and frightening appearances—what is more punk than the notion of defying the audience’s expectations? You want songs that are three minutes long? Fuck that, we’ll give you a minute. If you’re lucky. Or, conversely, you could look at “Please Don’t Be Gentle with Me”—and most of Minutemen’s catalog—as rock foreplay. Either way, this is one of the best songs from one of the greatest bands of the ’80′s.

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The generally accepted narrative of American rock music of the late ’80′s and early ’90′s is that Appetite For Destruction by Guns N’ Roses and Nevermind by Nirvana are the two albums that not only define the block of years 1987 through 1991, but also changed the landscape of radio and MTV during that time and for a few years afterward. Both albums made explosive, out-of-nowhere entrances into pop culture. Both albums, even if it was in temporary bursts, completely changed how music was digested on a mainstream level. What I mean by that last sentence is that there are plenty of instances in rock history where great albums—albums that would later be considered classics by those who listened to them after their initial release—elude broad appeal and national recognition. Astral Weeks probably never made it in to the Billboard 200, and if it did it was not there long and probably only hovered around the #180 mark briefly. The Velvet Underground & Nico was a buried treasure for decades until enough artists and critics convinced people to take up their gear and make an excavation visit to the V section at the local record shop. Appetite and Nevermind suffered no such fate.

None of this is to say that it is the fault of a clueless or dumb audience (or whatever other descriptors people like to throw around when the audience is declared to be held in contempt)^[1] as to why certain albums escape mainstream popularity. There are plenty of factors in play as to why Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks or X’s Los Angeles or Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation never became household name albums, the largest of which is usually bad luck/timing or other larger forces at play (i.e.–the contradictory nature of the radio industry in that payola is illegal but they still get paid and pushed into playing certain artists and songs).^[2] Another reason that some albums never achieve household name status is that, for a myriad of reasons, they don’t age well. An example of this is The Real Thing by Faith No More, an album that happens to sit at the midpoint between the releases of Appetite For Destruction and Nevermind.

When I was in seventh grade (1989-1990) it was defined mostly by the following: The Simpsons, Saturday Night Live, In Living Color, and the album The Real Thing. The television shows are self-explanatory—The Simpsons fell into the wheelhouse of every other boy at my junior high if only for Bart, who was like a younger, animated, jaundiced version of Ferris Bueller; and Saturday Night Live and In Living Color were the only options (other than David Letterman) in which to find the kind of (to me and my friends) groundbreaking and oddball humor, the kind of humor that allowed us to do the very guy thing of quoting comedic lines and skits. It also didn’t hurt that SNL had Dana Carvey, Mike Myers, Dennis Miller (and the indescribably awesome “Immigrant Song” intro for “Weekend Update”) and Phil Hartman, while In Living Color had Damon Wayans, Jim Carrey, and glimpses of rap in a prime time setting.

The Real Thing came out in June of 1989. I don’t exactly recall when it was that I saw the video for “Epic” for the first time but it was pretty much a life-changing event (in as much as a music video can be a life-changing event to a seventh grader). “Epic” rocked and it rapped, and it did both in such a way that it made the Aerosmith/Run-D.M.C collaboration on “Walk This Way” feel like it was recorded twenty years earlier. It seems a bit strange now but for a stretch of time one of the identifiers of rap artists was to at times sing the lyrics with kabuki-like intensity and jaggedly throwing your arms forwards and backwards, alternating between a pose that looked like it was mimicking being in a straight jacket. (Thankfully, rap hip hop embraced fluidity of motion.) To a seventh grade white kid growing up in the southwest suburbs of Chicago, Faith No More’s frontman Mike Patton’s kabuki style delivery of lyrics mixed in with his In Living Color-esque attire and hopping, jagged movements (complete with facial expressions that sometimes suggested electrocution) was indescribably fresh and awesome.

As I mentioned earlier, “Epic” made “Walk This Way” seem foolish and contrived. “Walk This Way” is a totem for the Ronald Reagan/Jerry Bruckheimer ’80′s: it was large and manufactured as hell right from the get-go; there is nothing organic about it as it is presented to you from the start as two distinct halves coming together (with the video showing a literal wall being broken down to further reinforce its meaning on you—the fourth wall came equipped with a hammer to hit you on the head with).^[3] “Epic” is a rock song that happened to have rap vocal elements brought to you by the aforementioned hyperactive Patton. It is easy to see now why “Epic” has not aged well as nobody really raps like that anymore; the kabuki style exhortations of short lyrics are still in the downturn of the rap/hip hop cycle. But musically I think it still holds up fine as its fusion of ’80′s west coast punk funk, hard rock, and “Layla”-esque ending makes it a classic in the vein of Songs That Time Forgot.

Faith No More would resurface a couple years later with Angel Dust, an album that many fans agree is better than The Real Thing, and Mike Patton would enjoy further cult status as the frontman for the band Mr. Bungle. But for me The Real Thing and specifically “Epic” is what defines Faith No More on a large scale, and I fully realize that my seventh grade nostalgic bias is in play to some extent here. When push comes to shove I have to go with the song that either made a large impact on the music landscape or in my life personally and I feel that “Epic” did both in spades. Its impact on music in 1989 may not have resulted in spawning new bands with a similar sound but if you were in your formative years when it was released it was a song that clearly stood apart from anything else that was being played consistently on the radio or on MTV. And then you bought the album and heard “From Out of Nowhere” and “Falling To Pieces” and “Woodpecker From Mars” and their cover of “War Pigs” and it all made for a Holy shit! moment. Additionally, I believe a case can be made that the popularity, however brief, of Faith No More was a necessary step in the broad acceptance of alternative music such as Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Alice in Chains a few years later; Faith No More’s image made for a good bridge to the “grunge” look that bands would sport a couple years down the road.

As for personal impact, this song is just plain fucking great. What else needs to be said?

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[1] Whenever I hear people say that audiences are stupid and that that’s why the current state of [insert art form here] is suffering I think of this quote by David Foster Wallace about poetry (but it can be applied to television, music, or cinema). The last four sentences are the most pertinent [emphasis mine]:

“Literary fiction and poetry are real marginalized right now. There’s a fallacy that some of my friends sometimes fall into, the ol’ ‘The audience is stupid. The audience only wants to go this deep. Poor us, we’re marginalized because of TV, the great hypnotic blah, blah.’ You can sit around and have these pity parties for yourself. Of course this is bullshit. If an art form is marginalized it’s because it’s not speaking to people. One possible reason is that the people it’s speaking to have become too stupid to appreciate it. That seems a little easy to me.”

[2] Pick up a copy of Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business for further reading on this topic. One of the things that the book goes into detail about is how Pink Floyd’s The Wall, an extremely popular album, was not played in some markets because of the advent of “indie” promoters.

[3] Furthermore, if you want to hear a rock-rap song with two groups that kills “Walk This Way” in almost every respect, have a listen to the Anthrax/Public Enemy collaboration “Bring the Noise.”

Two days after my eleventh birthday Ministry released The Land of Rape and Honey, an album that forever changed the direction of the band’s music. Before The Land of Rape and Honey, Ministry’s music had more parts pop or dance than industrial or dark. They scored an unexpected hit in 1984 with “(Every Day Is) Halloween,” a song that combined a danceable melody with lyrical goth elements. To this day it is still a great anthem for anyone who feels like an outsider, or who loves any of the psychology associated with Halloween and/or the goth lifestyle. The early Ministry catalog sets up a very good foundation; Rape and Honey blows it up, creates a new foundation, and constructs an almost entirely new mythology built off the blueprints that Throbbing Gristle and Killing Joke first drew up—a blueprint that involved pushing music to its loudest and most angriest levels without fully encroaching on metal or (death metal) territory.^[1]

(A few words about the album’s title for those of you who have never heard of it and who are reading this and see “rape” and “honey” and begin to think that this album is hopelessly depraved, or possibly even Satanic. While this album is dark—how could it not be with tracks named “Stigmata,” “Destruction,” and “The Missing”?—the title’s inspiration comes from something much more banal and decidedly un-evil: the slogan of Tisdale, Saskatchewan, whose main sources of revenue come from rapeseed and honey. Yes, when you drive into Tisdale you will be welcomed to the land of rape and honey.)

I will readily admit that most of the industrial music genre is over my head. I was really into Nine Inch Nails in high school; I saw them in concert a couple times which meant that I got to see Killing Joke and a couple of other bands live that opened for them that I can’t remember off the top of my head (Front 242 maybe?). What I soon realized when I tried to delve into the industrial pool was that I really just liked NIN and that was about it. This is not to say that I think industrial music is bad across the board or anything like that; it’s just not my thing on the whole, the same with modern punk and metal. The genre has a story to tell but the soundtrack can just be too much at times. Everything has a balance and while I admire some people’s goals of destroying that balance it is still a razor’s edge when it comes to the actual music (for me anyway).

So I buy The Land of Rape and Honey during the spring of 2003 on a whim after it was referenced in something I was reading and it instantly became one of those albums that when you buy it its existence becomes the very totem of seemingly everything in your life at that moment. In the spring of 2003 there were two things going on in my life that couldn’t have been more diametrically opposed in terms of perceived significance (both in present-day terms and in hindsight) but they were significant nonetheless. They were: 1) I was working for the worst boss I ever had^[2] and 2) the television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer was nearing its series finale. The former is probably pretty self-explanatory in that I loathed my boss to such a degree that on some days my subconscious flooded my daydreams with images ranging from beating him with a lead pipe to just setting him on fire at his desk while he scolded our team for not reacting quick enough to a network outage at 11p the night before at a satellite four-person office (even though our contract with the building’s network support was written as such that they would not support us beyond the hours of 8a-5p) and my oh my what a welcome breath of fresh air it was to hear Al Jourgensen’s buzz saw-like vocals on the beginning of this album and be able to channel my aggression in a more socially acceptable manner, as opposed to committing manslaughter (or a murder) in a Brick Tamlin-like way.^[3] The latter has to do with the introduction of Caleb during the final season of Buffy.

Caleb was a very creepy and extremely misogynistic fallen priest who appeared in the final five episodes of the show. He had a creepy southern accent and he acted as a vessel by which the First Evil could enter, thus making him extremely powerful. (And his eyes would turn completely black when the First entered him. Creepy.) He constantly referred to girls and women as whores and sluts and “dirty girls” and he relished the opportunities to beat them up, or kill them. Again, creepy.

(A few words about the final season of Buffy and about Caleb specifically for those of you who have never seen the show and think that the previous paragraph seems hopelessly depraved, or possibly even Satanic. Don’t worry, no spoilers are coming. Under creator/executive producer Joss Whedon’s direction, the show, throughout its seven year run, consistently zigged when everyone expected it to zag. He introduced characters that the audience initially loathed then wrote them off or killed them right when everyone began to love them, and his mission statement could probably be summed up as Don’t give the audience what it thinks it wants; in his universe, Sam and Diane never get together. The philosophy inherent to the show was executed in near perfect literary terms, which only reinforced the audience’s love of the show—myself included. So when it came time to plot out the final season’s arc, Whedon and the writers came up with this: Buffy is predicated on strong feminist ideals, what better final villain should Buffy have to go up against then a thoroughly evil and gruesome misogynist? I bring this up because I don’t want people who’ve never seen the show to divine from the previous paragraph that Caleb, and by extension the final season, was created to be solely evil and causelessly violent. Also, if you have never seen the show, do so immediately. Caveat emptor: the first season seems really dated now.)

The Land of Rape and Honey, like the Caleb character, is dark but its darkness has a commentary to it—or at the very least an extension of complex philosophical ideas. It is in our human nature to want to explore darkness up to a certain point; to gaze into the abyss as Nietzsche once wrote. Whether it was Milton’s idea to make Satan an antihero or Conrad’s explorations into our hearts of darkness, music at some point took a cue from literature on a larger scale and went in search for the underground caverns of our nature and souls. Blues and country singers began incorporating murder and violence in their music; songs about con men ruining lives became a theme.

I am not here to say that Ministry found the core of darkness on Rape and Honey but they got pretty damn close, and they did so while also creating music that still sounds remarkably fresh today considering that the album will turn 25 in a couple of years. What I will say, though, is that the album’s masterpiece, the title track, “The Land of Rape and Honey,” is the best song I have ever heard that resides closest to that darkness. It is a song that dovetailed perfectly with the introduction of Caleb.

“The Land of Rape and Honey” combines traditional industrial drum beats with blurring tape loops and audio samples of a Hitler-led Nazi rally. I fully realize that seeing the words “audio samples of a Hitler-led Nazi rally” can be off-putting to the point of outright dismissal, or of no return. Using archived audio from a Nazi rally for a song seems like a fundamentally crass thing to some; I completely understand that. Just like I understand that seeing “misogynistic fallen priest hurts and kills girls” can sound profane to some. But half of accepting and digesting and appreciating great art is in the audience’s willingness to explore the direct and peripheral meanings associated with the art. If you are unwilling to look past certain taboos or creative differences, the art becomes something of no value. Conversely, if you sit on the opposite end of the spectrum—if you feel that darkness is unappreciated or dismissed by the masses—then this type of art can be exactly what you are looking for, a counterbalance to collective mainstream sensibilities. This song could easily fit into both categories: Offensive and Welcoming.

By releasing an album entitled The Land of Rape and Honey and producing a track of the same name, Ministry knew who its target market was and probably had little concern for the offended (just as I am sure that Milton didn’t let the criticism he surely envisioned he would receive get in the way of writing Paradise Lost). “The Land of Rape and Honey” is not for everyone. But its darkness should not be misconstrued as a call to violence or the shredding of any moral or social fabric. This song is important because it, and by extension the album from which it came, redefined the industrial genre as well as representing the first steps of Ministry’s reach into influencing metal (and metal-like) bands of the ’90′s and ’00′s.

I suspect that a lot of people point to Nine Inch Nail’s debut album Pretty Hate Machine as the progenitor of modern industrial music, and in many respects they are not incorrect as that album was able to break through the fringe with “Head Like A Hole.” But to me The Land of Rape and Honey should be seen as the origin as it was not only released a full year before Pretty Hate Machine but the title track thoroughly eviscerates anything on NIN’s debut album.

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[1] Nine Inch Nails enjoyed the most mainstream success employing this technique, with Marilyn Manson probably coming in second.

[2] He is still the worst boss I have ever had. (He left the company in 2005 but I’d still like to take this opportunity to say: Fuck you, Bob.)

[3] “Things got out of hand quickly; Mike killed Bob with a trident” became a good running joke the following year when Anchorman came out.

“There’s a club, if you’d like to go
You could meet someone who really loves you
So you go and you stand on your own
And you leave on your own
And you go home
And you cry
And you want to die
When you say it’s gonna happen now
When exactly do you mean?
See I’ve already waited too long
And all my hope is gone”

____________________

Best known for making music that made your recent breakup seem bearable within the confines of your balled-up Kleenex-littered dorm room, The Smiths (along with The Cure—and to a lesser extent, Joy Division) were probably the best friends one could find during the ’80′s if you were sad, down, lovelorn, or shy (or all of the above).^[1] The Smiths consisted of lead singer Morrissey (birth name: Steven Morrissey), guitarist Johnny Marr, bassist Andy Rourke and drummer Mike Joyce.^[2] But like The Doors—and a handful of other bands before them—the casual music fan probably only knows the frontman of The Smiths, the tortured-sounding, asexual and celibate lead singer Morrissey.

The Smiths formed in 1982 and disbanded in 1987, along the way releasing four studio albums: their eponymous debut in 1984, Meat Is Murder (1985), The Queen Is Dead (1986), and Strangeways, Here We Come (1987). These albums are a veritable murderer’s row for fans of the band because, in a way, albeit in an apples-to-oranges way, The Smiths were like the ’80′s version of The Velvet Underground in that maybe not everyone (particularly Americans) listened to a Smiths album all the way through but those that did probably wanted to form a band right then and there, or at the very least they had their musical tastes and outlooks forever changed. (Also, Morrissey and Lou Reed have a very specific type of devout cult following—as well as a very specific type of intense naysayer.)

To those who aren’t big fans of The Smiths—or to those who never really listened to much of their catalog—it is almost impossible to understate the significance of one (Steven) Morrissey. To his many fans, as well as to many music critics, Morrissey is one of the most important and influential musicians of the last thirty years. He is an amalgamation of elements of other iconic musicians, ranging from the aforementioned Lou Reed in terms of cult status appreciation to Elton John and Randy Newman in terms of personal songwriting ability. He is probably the single artist that James Murphy from LCD Soundsystem aspires to be like. In an alternate universe wherein The Smiths never released an album it would not be crazy to imagine that not only would modern Brit-pop be completely altered, but that bands like Radiohead and Oasis and R.E.M. would’ve probably produced albums of a much different tone. (I.e.–if there were no Smiths albums, would Automatic For the People even be made?)

Even as I sit here writing this post I will readily admit that I have never listened to an entire Smiths album, mostly because I fear that I will become subdued by a melancholy that was not present before I listened to the album.^[3] But at the same time, having not heard all of their music does not change the fact that this group is highly influential and one of the most important bands of the ’80′s.

And this is where “How Soon Is Now?” comes in. It is a powerhouse song. It’s on the short list of songs to be considered for the title Best Song Of The ’80′s, along with “Blue Monday” by New Order, “Thriller” by Michael Jackson, “Welcome to the Jungle” by Guns N’ Roses, “With Or Without You” by U2, amongst others. Of course, the irony here is that “How Soon Is Now?” doesn’t entirely represent the sound of The Smiths, and that this song’s life began as a B-side and not as an A-side.

“How Soon Is Now?” starts (famously, I think) with a low level reverberating type sound that feels like the visual distortion that humidity and asphalt create transformed into auditory form, which is then interwoven with an industrial-ish drum beat, a weeping guitar that perfectly updates what George Harrison was going for (even if the update was unintentional), and the declaration that Morrissey, delivered in such a manner that you can practically visualize him contorting semi-dramatically around the microphone as he sang it, is the son and heir to a shyness—and of nothing in particular—that’s criminally vulgar. Later on Morrissey proclaims, without too much winking, that he is human and deserves to be loved just like everybody else does.

The part of me that simply and fundamentally appreciates great music hears this song and thinks of things like how the song has a perfectly crafted sound that exudes sadness but is also kind of uplifting,^[4] and how it’s over six and a half minutes long and never boring, and how it has a terrific and addictive melody. The critical part me of hears this song and sees the title of “How Soon Is Now?” and thinks that it is a song that, even though it is written and performed by a group of Englishmen, perfectly assimilates itself to the experience of living in America during the ’80′s. And even though I was only 3 years old in 1980 there are certain things about the ’80′s that can be understood by all about the decade that embraced excess, namely that the ’80′s were the first decade in which the kids of the Baby Boomers were entering high school and college en masse. The significance of this can be explained in two ways. First, the Baby Boomer parents brought with them a growing divorce rate into the ’80′s. Second, more and more Boomer households—the ones that weren’t divorced—had two full-time working parents; parents that weren’t able to spend as much time with their kids as they wanted to. Combine these two factors and you had an unprecedented level of collective guilt from parents towards their children, which resulted in unprecedented amounts of collective spending on children. (I am generalizing here but you get the picture.)

On the whole, people like to generalize the ’80′s as the Me Decade but in doing so the generalization seems to only apply to the Wall Street types and celebrities and those forgotten names of people who appeared on Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous. But the Me Decade applied to us kids too, probably more so than anyone on Wall Street. We wanted a Nintendo, we got a Nintendo (and numerous games to boot). We wanted $100 shoes, we got them. Without having to really fight our parents for them, on the whole. And so many of us went through junior high and high school getting all of these things while forgetting the cliché about objects failing to instill happiness in us.

I am admittedly taking the scenic route to get to this point, which is: is it any surprise that The Smiths had a devout following? To be sure, from the band’s perspective, the music they made was the music that they were bound to make but the audience that found them probably wouldn’t have embraced them if they had arrived in the ’60′s or the ’70′s. The ’80′s saw the proliferation of what David Foster Wallace once called “a new type of American sadness.” (The Brits had their own shit to deal with too with Thatcherism and other subtleties that I’m not cognizant of, being that I was born a Midwestern kid and not an East Midlands kid.)

Looking back, it made sense that the ’80′s saw such an increase in fragile egos, selfishness, and the desire to find happiness in things rather than people. It made sense why superficiality reached new collective highs. The ’80′s were a strange and polarizing decade; The Smiths provided a fresh perspective for many people and embraced emotions that most people were happy to be in denial about. In many ways, they were the antidote for the Reagan ’80′s and its manufactured mythology and overall Me-ness.

“How Soon Is Now?” is an important song because it is at its core a song about what it is like to be fucking human, and it being released during a decade in which embracing the fake and the manufactured mythologies was commonplace only reasserts its importance in the canon of modern rock.

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[1] Which is why I love the picture at the top of this post so much: The Smiths are practically synonymous with the word sad and yet… here’s a picture of all of them smiling and laughing. I love it. But I digress.

[2] So I’m not sure who the fifth gentlemen in this picture is as I’m admittedly not knowledgeable enough about ’80′s British pop bands to know everyone by face. I know that Morrissey is the one laying back on the grass wearing sunglasses, if that helps.

[3] I do, however, own a 23-track best of CD that I quite enjoy. But again, after I listen to it I feel a little bit sadder afterwards. Not that this is a bad thing (I do enjoy me some Joy Division, purveyors of very sad and depressive music), it’s just that I have to be in a particular mindset to consume The Smiths en masse. Also, I’m saving the Smiths albums for a rainy day as they are on my Time Capsule List. (A Time Capsule List is a term I use for any art that you missed out on—either because it was released before you born, or during your pre-teenage years—that you will revisit at a later date. Some of the things on my Time Capsule List besides all of The Smiths albums: Hill Street Blues, Bob Dylan’s music after 1975, The Conversation, and The Third Man.)

[4] Kind of like how I feel about “Isolation” by Joy Division.

On May 18, 1980 Ian Curtis, the lead singer of Joy Division, committed suicide. Exactly two months later Closer, the band’s final studio album, was released. Within a few months after the release of Closer the remaining members of the band—Peter Hook, Stephen Morris, and Bernard Sumner—formed New Order and shortly thereafter they brought in Gillian Gilbert to round out the original lineup. And by the spring of 1983 (almost three years to the day after Curtis’s suicide) New Order released the single “Blue Monday.” “Blue Monday,” simply put, is arguably one of the greatest and most important songs of the ’80′s. Its greatness lies in its musical polish (oh, how the beautiful electronic melody coexists with the spidery guitar!), and its importance is marked by its success as an electronic crossover hit in both the US and the UK. More importantly, though, “Blue Monday” is to me one of the best songs of the ’80′s because it artfully avoids all of the pratfalls and clichés associated with ’80′s music (even though its sound is unmistakably tied to the ’80′s).

Allow me to elaborate.

If I were to say to you Think of the ’80′s and tell me the first five pop culture-related things that come to mind you would most likely say a couple/few of the things from this generalized pool of clichés from that decade:

cocaine, Reagan, neon colors, Gary Coleman, high hair, hair metal, Wall Street, Madonna, Don Johnson, Thriller, archaic Personal Computers, Atari, E.T., the word “rad,” L.A. Gear, Michael Jackson’s glove, MTV, Nintendo, the 1984 Apple commercial, Studio 54-type dance clubs, headbands, Miami, “Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters!” Trapper Keepers, Spicoli, John Hughes, iced jeans, Judd Nelson, teenage girls whose singing careers were helped by performing at suburban malls, Swatch, Eddie Murphy, Perfect Strangers, “I’ll be back,” Duran Duran, Tony Montana, torn jeans, the phrase “gag me with a spoon”

And there are probably a hundred more that I am leaving out but you get the picture. The main point, though, is to illustrate that we are all guilty of compartmentalizing decades and eras into a handful of landmarks from the world of marketing, music, television, fashion, and cinema. Think of 1969 and most of us will inevitably think of dancing hippies on a piece of farmland while a Joe Cocker or Canned Heat song plays in the background of the montage that we are imagining. None of this is to say that it is wrong to do this or that it’s too simplistic to fall into those traps, as these things help break things down and remember things from a complex and diverse era, much like metaphors help explain complex and diverse theories, facts, and practices.

And so it is probably not far-fetched to think that many people, when they are asked to think of ’80′s music as a whole, will think of a certain kind of music—a certain kind of synthpop sound with a Flock of Seagulls or Duran Duran or Madonna face to it. But when I think of the ’80′s in terms of the entire decade of music I think of “Blue Monday.” I think of “Blue Monday” because it simply exists as an entity outside of itself; it has no real linear cliché attached to it. When I hear this song I have no association of what the members of New Order looked like or dressed like, whereas with Madonna or Michael Jackson I have very definite images that crop us subconsciously when I hear music from their ’80′s catalog.

Think about it: unless you grew up in England and are around 40-45 years, or you are a huge New Order fan, would you even be able to tell Stephen Morris apart from Martin Gore, one of the founding members of Depeche Mode? The primary reason why I chose to use the picture of the band that I did above is because of its inherent anonymity. As a 33 year old American male I grew up knowing who New Order was and hearing their music here and there on the radio, but I had no idea what they actually looked like—and I suspect that this is something that many many people my age have in common when it comes to this band. And, yet, “Blue Monday” is one of the best masterpieces from the ’80′s in spite of its anonymity. It is nearly seven and a half minutes of polished electronic bliss with singsong vocals and a wonderful pacing and perfectly placed gunfire and a nearly three minute outro. It encompasses so much about the ’80′s without all of those pesky direct clichés associated with it. If anything, the main image that this song likely conjures is probably a generic scene at a club.

To be sure, there is nothing wrong with music that directly attaches itself to the sign of the times—even if the music itself is kind of ultimately secondary (again, think: “Thriller” or “Material Girl” or anything from Purple Rain). But there is something to be said of art that is simply timeless, even if it is sometimes forgotten.

One of the main goals of this site is to provide a new perspective of looking at the history of modern music, one song at a time. When this site reaches its ultimate endpoint I hope that all of the songs that are profiled, when taken together as a whole, provide a detailed and (hopefully) uniquely panoramic view of modern music. And when it comes to ’80′s pop, to me, any discussion regarding it simply has to include “Blue Monday.” It is one of the best electronic songs ever made; it is one of the best dance songs ever made; it is one of the best pop songs ever made. It cuts through all of the minutiae and all of the revisionist pop culture forces of the ’80′s. It transcends torn jeans and Trapper Keepers and silver right-handed gloves.

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“Straight Outta Compton,” the first track on the debut album of the same name by N.W.A, begins with police sirens and the repetitive spoken words niggaz wit attitude set to metallic beats, followed by this spoken word intro:

“When something happens in South Central Los Angeles, nothing happens. It’s just another nigga dead… dead… dead… dead… dead…”

And with that, the song begins in earnest with Ice Cube’s verse and intro and the rest is history. Straight Outta Compton not only ushered in the gangsta rap genre but it almost instantly redefined the entire genre of rap.

In the late ’80′s America wasn’t lacking for writers, authors, musicians, and journalists espousing the opinion that Reaganomics had done more harm than good, either generally on the whole or specifically about inner cities. Between the cutting back of social programs and the spread of AIDS and crack, inner city turmoil become a part of the narrative involving the Reagan years. And because this reality sat at such a glaring contrast to the other reality of the excesses of Wall Street (and of New York City in general), it makes it much easier to drill Reagan on this, and it makes sense why Wall Street and The Bonfire of the Vanities (the book, not the movie) became such instant classics for many people. But what we never really heard during this time was a stop-us-in-our-tracks kind of bluntness about the inner city, or if we did it was in the form of a New York Times article or a television news piece. At the end of the day, though, you were rarely affected much more beyond That’s too bad (unless crack babies were central to the story).

Enter “Straight Outta Compton,” a song that is unabashedly straightforward about its new school street philosophy: if you cross us, you’ll be shot (and we’ll like fucking enjoy doing it too). Before this song and the album from which it came, we saw some disturbing images and heard quote unquote real music and read shocking things about inner city life but it all paled in comparison to the first three lyrics of this song/album.

“Straight outta Compton
Crazy motherfucker named Ice Cube
From the gang called Niggaz Wit Attitudes”

Those lyrics are only a combined 15 words and yet when they came through your speakers the first time you heard them and they kicked you in the face. This dude just announced himself as a crazy motherfucker? He already dropped the N-word on us? This song (and the group) were assaulting in such a new way. Yes, we heard Grandmaster Flash before rapping about cocaine and heard other rappers going on about ghetto life, and some of us had seen the blaxploitation films and gritty NYC-based films of the ’70′s but Straight Outta Compton was something totally different. In terms of its social recalibrating powers, it was like the musical equivalent of The Jungle; something that, out of nowhere, destroyed our conceptions of how things worked. South Central was like a war zone, and a place where the cops would fuck you up too. Part of us knew this but part of us didn’t really know it either. (Just like we thought we knew how the sausage was made at the turn of the 20th century.)

Of course, the flip side of this is that N.W.A helped to usher in the Gangsta Rap Era and all of the macho bullshit ethos of the East-West cultural divide with it. It helped to usher in a prison culture to the mainstream. It freaked out loads of white people, but it also scored many white fans and followers. And while it wasn’t completely shocking that many white suburban kids began to admire Ice Cube, Eazy-E, and Dr. Dre (white people have loved black music that is disassociated from their, white people’s, everyday lives since at least the early delta blues days), but what is surprising was how large the contrast was between the context of N.W.A’s music and the white consumers that were buying it. Most of the white consumers who bought Straight Outta Compton had never fired a gun, or been abused by the police, or had to move product just to get by.

And this is why “Straight Outta Compton” was such a game- and genre-changing song: like the old blues songs before it, this song was simultaneously a sermon for many black men and a collective alter ego for many white men. And because of its defiant middle finger towards authority, it also borrows from a fundamental Rock aesthetic that spoke to people who weren’t terribly interested in the context of the album.^[1]

Deeply polarizing and born out of a desire to depict violence in a new light, “Straight Outta Compton” was a force of nature that was akin to an auditory version of a Sam Peckinpah movie. Which is to say that many people weren’t ready for it when it was released, but as more and more time goes by all you can really do is marvel at its originality and its ahead-of-its-time quality.

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[1] I.e.–from an artistic standpoint, you have to tip your hat to a band that produces a song called “Fuck Tha Police.” In 1988. At the height of all of the D.A.R.E. bullshit. That was a pretty ballsy move.

At the end of the day, I was born to be a worshiper of Rock. Growing up, my brothers, who were much older than me, were constantly listening to the local classic rock stations. I grew up listening to Who’s Next and Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin and (begrudgingly, because of my aforementioned older brothers) Rush, Bob Seger, and Santana.

I was around for the early years of MTV as well, which mostly included videos of white rock bands. I remember thinking that The Police and Duran Duran were the coolest bands ever because of the videos for “Every Breath You Take” and “Hungry Like the Wolf,” respectively. And then when I was ten years old I had found (like much of the country) the dual revelations that were R.E.M.’s Document and Guns N’ Roses’ Appetite For Destruction.^[1] Rock made an overwhelming impression on me. I jumped into that pool head first.

So when rap music started becoming more and more mainstream in the late ’80′s, and when Yo! MTV Raps became a cult-ish show that me and my friends would watch, I found myself liking rap but something prevented me from fully immersing myself in it. It was entertaining, to be sure, but it didn’t always speak to me because, well, at the end of the day, I didn’t live in Brooklyn or aspire to be a DJ or want to completely change the way I looked and spoke. I’ve also never truly been fond of poetry and heavy bass, and an appreciation of both seemed like pre-requisites to fully enjoy rap/hip hop.

Another reason—probably the main reason—why I have never been able to immerse myself in rap is that once I heard Public Enemy I pretty much realized that right then and there, to me, they represented the absolute zenith of that genre. With all due respect to Eminem and Jay-Z and Kanye, you have absolutely nothing on Chuck D in my book. And it begins and ends with his voice.

Carlton Douglas Ridenhour has the greatest voice in the history of rap. This is not up for debate. I know that this is an inherently subjective view to take, so allow me to back it up with a thoroughly subjective anecdote. Why is Chuck D’s voice the greatest voice in rap? Because a twelve year white kid growing up in suburban Chicago felt stupid for not knowing who Louis Farrakhan was when the named was dropped in a song.

Because it is both thunderously commanding and it possesses a kind of salt of the earth quality. Because there is no animation attached to it, or odd accents that surface when any slang is dropped. Chuck D always came across to me as a guy who would have been an amazing teacher or professor to have, but he chose music rather than a classroom as his avenue to educate.

Public Enemy’s image was something that probably frightened many suburban households. You had Professor Griff and his S1W’s,^[2] dressed like military-style Black Panthers; Terminator X, the large imposing black DJ whose head was usually covered up with a baseball hat and oversized black sunglasses; Flavor Flav, a Gremlins-looking character who sported many gold teeth and an oversized clock—a bizarre mutation of Bootsy Collins and a street thug. And, finally, there was Chuck, who tied everything together. Chuck D might have looked imposing but his look balanced everything out, which was indescribably important. Not wearing the military gear like the S1W’s and not playing the pure entertainer part like Flavor Flav, Chuck D was allowed to just straight up inform you and speak at you and to you. The dude had presence.

And the song that best represents the apex of Public Enemy’s musical genius—and Chuck D’s lyrical genius, and his vocal power—is “Fight the Power,” which is one of the greatest and most important rap songs ever made. “Fight the Power” starts off with a recorded speech by civil rights activist Thomas “TNT” Todd, with its sarcastic final line of, “Matter of fact, it’s safe to say that some of them would rather switchhhhhhh than fight!” If Public Enemy’s image alone was enough to scare white suburban housewives than a song called “Fight the Power” probably caused some sweat to appear on their temples. But the message of this song was not advertising causeless reactionary impulses towards all pillars of society. Instead, its message to fight against abuse of power, to educate yourself in the face of all the bullshit that drapes your television set every night (or is transmitted through your radio), to fight the powers who don’t see you as a positive endpoint in their game. “Fight the Power” packed the weight and intensity of a hundred anvils, yet its band members—its messengers—had no grand aspirations to become larger than themselves. Instead of writing an important book or novel on this subject matter they wrote a masterpiece song. Is it any wonder why Spike Lee tagged them for the soundtrack for Do The Right Thing and used this song in the beginning of the movie?

It is fitting that Public Enemy and Spike Lee’s masterpiece were intertwined because both were mostly misunderstood by White America initially but are now probably unanimously viewed as being capital-I Important and ahead of its time. And while it is true that much of the context of Public Enemy’s music was lost on me when I was a kid I was still completely entranced by their sound and the voice of their messenger. So much so that no other rap/hip hop artists have really connected with me like that since.

Again, apologies to all of the other iconic rappers who have come out since 1989. But until any of you make something that rivals “Fight the Power” you’ll all be playing second fiddle to Chuck.

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[1] Oh, and I can’t forget about Kick by INXS too.

[2] S1W was short for “Security of the 1st World.”

Any debate of where the Beastie Boys are placed w/r/t to significance or influence within the history or rap/hip hop music (as well as within the scope of modern 20th century music in general) pretty much begins and ends with their sophomore album Paul’s Boutique, an album that almost single-handedly redefined the boundaries of how sampling could be used.

If you are a fan of this album you no doubt subscribe to the belief that it is their magnum opus—a 15-track masterpiece consisting of 105 wildly disparate samples (ranging from “Military Cut (Scratch Mix)” by DJ Grand Wizard Theodore to “Mississippi Queen” by Mountain), and lyrics that zoom all over the pop culture reference map (from Robotron to Hawthorne Wingo). In some ways Paul’s Boutique represents the end of the first era of rap, an era defined in part by placing style above substance;^[1] fun above reality; New York City above every other city. And because this era was more inclusive and inviting, it is relatively easy to allow some sentimentalism in and rank it higher than the second era of rap, an era defined in part by placing substance above style; prison culture above fun; unalloyed macho provincialism above every other city and region. Paul’s Boutique is a legitimately great album, but it is helped by when it was released. It is the Pet Sounds of rap.

If you are not a fan of this album you would probably be inclined to think that it is too hokey or too dated. Or maybe you think that Ill Communication or Check Your Head or License To Ill is vastly superior. And if you have never heard any of Paul’s Boutique before (save for maybe “Hey Ladies”) you would probably be inclined to think that “Sabotage” or “(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party!)” or “Brass Monkey” is the song that best defines the Beasties. And while you could certainly make a case for any of those songs (and probably even “Root Down”), the song that I think does the best job of capturing the real essence of the Beastie Boys, of capturing their creativity, their collaborative genius with matching up the perfect samples for their songs, and their humor is “The Sounds of Science.”

The title of the song was inspired by “The Sounds of Silence” by Simon and Garfunkel but the sampled music in it is almost all Beatles. And by the time the penultimate song from Abbey Road (“The End”) begins and the song starts in earnest about two minutes through, you realize what set the Beastie Boys apart from just about every other rap artist.^[2] “The dirty little secret at that time within the black hip-hop community,” Public Enemy frontman Chuck D once said, “was that Paul’s Boutique had the best beats.” The first half of “The Sounds of Silence” starts out slow and uses, amongst other things, cuts from “When I’m Sixty-Four” and both versions of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” and the lyrics are kind of deliberately drowsy but still humorous (“‘Cuz I’ve been dropping the new science and I’ve been kicking the new ka-nowledge”). The last half has more energy, a great bass drum explosion, and a few terrifically well placed stop-on-a-dime cuts thrown in for good measure.

“The Sounds of Science” did not have a memorable music video to accompany it. It did not chart very high. It may not even be a consensus pick for favorite song by fans of the Beasties. But what it does do—and realize that it does this really well—is it perfectly exemplifies the genius of the band itself, and of the fertile decade in rap that was the ’80′s.

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[1] Please do not misinterpret my use of the phrase “style over substance” as it is not meant to be a backhanded insult towards the rap music of the ’80′s. Nor do I mean that the rap music of the ’80′s was thoroughly devoid of substance either. What I mean is: the rap of the ’80′s is similar to some of the best pop music of the ’60′s. It had an earnestness and an image that could be very fun to listen to and somewhat easy to identify with. One does not have to deeply appreciate “She Loves You” by The Beatles like you might have to with something like “Cry Baby Cry”; you can just enjoy the former. The same logic applies to something like “It Takes Two” by Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock when comparing it to say “Hit ‘Em Up” by Tupac. You can enjoy the former without subtext (or context), just like most of the popular rap in the ’80′s.

[2] You know, other than that they were white.

At some point in our lives—usually when we are between the ages of 16 and 24—we have friends or acquaintances or co-workers whose entertainment views suddenly skew towards the obscure. Or, if they do not skew fully towards the obscure, they become arrested by the idea of finding different meanings in music or movies that lie a notch or two below the mainstream. Whether the object of these views or arguments is about Jim Jarmusch, Lucinda Williams, Chinatown, Elvis Costello, Afrika Bambaataa, Drugstore Cowboy, Charles Bukowski, or how big budget Hollywood movies are somehow killing our wills to live, the reality is that these people usually acquire these views out of a perceived necessity to discover “real” art—things not yet stained by the masses. It happens to guys more often than it does to girls. (And I confess that once upon a time I thought that Drugstore Cowboy was one of the greatest movies ever made. Now? It’s a completely average movie; it is certainly no Ratatouille.)

I bring this up because this post is about Sonic Youth, a band that over the years has been mostly defined by its resistance towards mainstream success, and whose fans can sometimes be described as those that would like to convince you that Jim Jarmusch is the greatest director ever, and that Lucinda Williams singing about a gravel road is transcendent. In short, Sonic Youth can look like a very cliquish and exclusive band. And so if you have never heard of Sonic Youth before^[1] I am here to tell you that they are worthy of entrance into the rock Pantheon, and that if you prefer Top 40 over Patti Smith and Die Hard over Syriana you may even like this song.

“Teen Age Riot” starts off very drowsy for the first minute or so. The guitar sounds lackadaisical and Kim Gordon keeps singing lines like “You’re it” and “Spirit desire” randomly and for no apparent reason. From here the songs takes the shape of a normal rock song, complete with quicker riffs, a full-bodied sound, a fantastic break at around the 5:00 mark that features some perfectly attuned drumming, as well as some great lyrics from Thurston Moore (“Everybody’s talking ’bout the stormy weather/And what’s a man do to but work out whether it’s true?”).

To be sure, some of this song’s lyrics are indicative of the cliquish and the exclusive crowds (“It’s time to go round/A one man showdown/Teach us how to fail/We’re off the streets now/And back on the road/On the riot trail”) but it is the music that is the overwhelming star here. “Teen Age Riot” is a true-to-form (and somewhat structured) rock classic from a band that has a tendency to dabble too much within the domain of the unstructured. It is also a classic example of an indie rock song of the Reagan ’80′s: it’s angry, it’s sardonic at times, it wants the listener to re-examine their surroundings, but it ultimately offers nothing new.

Again, it isn’t so much the lyrics that make this song a classic—it’s the music after the 1:15 mark. It’s textured wonderfully, it’s loud, it feels new even though it is almost 25 years old. And it was cool enough for the cool kids to listen to while also being accessible enough for those of us who think Lucinda Williams, Steven Soderbergh, Elvis Costello, and Jim Jarmusch are grossly overrated.

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[1] Or if you have heard of Sonic Youth before and you have simply not liked what you have heard from them.