The ongoing rants of one man out to introduce the world to the tunes that inhabit the space inside of that region known as his mind a collection of the songs that have shaped his day, his Song of the Day.
I saw these guy's play an almost completely packed venue in the release for their EP “The Darnedest Things,” and it blew my fucking mind to see these guy's truly get a reception that showed that they are something worth giving a fuck about and that view of them on that stage looking out in a stuffed room playing these songs that spoke to an entire room of people in such a way that I'm not sure they knew would happen made me feel like a dad looking at their child accomplish something they never thought they could do even if I kind of really didn't actively do much of anything for these guy's really it was one of the last times I can immediately think of that has truly stuck with me in terms of show's I've attended.
This song is a blast of early 90's alternative rock aesthetics with some echoing guitar work, a fantastic pacing, and George doing a vocal performance that sends a shiver down my spine because there's just this weird sense I get that this guy finally found his voice and the line, “To Be a fucking weirdo ALL THE TIME!” is just absolutely perfect just a casually expressed cooler than cool delivery that's just so effortlessly done that I'm at a loss for words really.
These guy's go their shit together way better than I do that's for fucking sure and you better see them whenever the fuck you can because I got a good feeling about them especially if they can keep on making stuff this fantastic.
I saw these handsome son's of bitches
just before I started seeing my current girlfriend.
There's no purpose for that statement I
just think it's kind of funny also I remember them playing this song
at that show and months later it did this weird thing for me where it
dropped, I listened to it, thought it was fantastic, forgot about it,
heard it again, and now I can't help but not jam to this summery
little tune.
These guy's are another pop punk kind
of emo group that make the catchiest most easily sing along session
ready tunes you'd ever heard in your entire fucking life and the fact
that they got a pretty devoted local following should come as no
surprise because they know what the fuck they're doing they're just
in need of everyone else coming to realize these bright airy tunes
are what they need in their lives.
This song is subtle it gently lulls you
in before busting out a very energetic and dreamy chorus that makes
you think of riding the bike along a coast line during the summer as
you see a very attractive girl in a sundress walking by and as she
gives you the sweetest smile you've ever seen in your entire fucking
life you're then transported to this cloud like state of euphoria
that you didn't know could exist nor do you ever want it to go away.
If you haven't felt that feeling then
listen to this song, get that feeling, see these guy's live, get your
fucking mind blown, awkwardly hit on a girl, and live your best
fucking life supporting people making great stuff ya fucking asshole.
Yeah that's pretty accurate because I just did not fucking try this year I gave myself a send off of epic proportions and then just been blaring the same things all year so with that in mind there had to be some fantastic things that came out right?
Well yeah and here's the tracks that I personally felt something listening to and remember actively listening to quite a bit in what is some form of an order that while not defined (Minus number 1) should serve as a means of giving this pre-christmas week something else to look forward to so let's fucking do this:
5. Nervous – The Fiction Department
You know when a band does one show a
year and that show happen to be for you?
Well when a band does one show a year and that show happen to be for you, you best god damn believe you
listen to the music they put out especially when it happens to
trickle out at a rate similar to your last few years of being a music
blog and that's what these guy's did when they dropped this demo on
the same day that my end of the day show was suppose to happen and
here we are a little less than a year later and yeah it's a pretty
deep hitting tune for me.
These guy's are modern American Emo
through and through a bunch of young guy's that write some fairly
simple heart on your sleeve tunes that won't be winning any awards
any day soon but they speak to a primal sense of dread that even my
old ass can't help but feel attached to especially when the line,
“Convince myself THIS IS RIGHT WHERE I BELONG!” that shit rings
true people especially when you decide to throw all your past efforts
into a wood chipper and burn it all up, and there's all the weird
personal attachments for me because these guy's really have a lot
that they can do they just seem to be at an awkward place a lot like
myself and it's weird to sit back and listen to this tune and not
feel like it hits closer to home than I think these guy's intended on
it doing.
Yeah this song is a fantastic bit of
emotionally tinged I need purpose in my life pop punk and you don't
need to be a shitty teenager to feel the appeal that's for fucking
sure so go listen to this fucking song and pester the shit out of
this band and convince them to start playing shows again.
Life has a weird way of making you have to reassess it all whenever you decide to quit things and that's where I am with this whole writing thing. I basically had a host of anxiety and depression lead me to have to end a thing I was doing because the lack of proper fulfillment was a real son of a bitch and a half that's for sure and after being such a narcissist that had to end his personal project in a the most self fulfilling way that was throwing a show completely on my own dime with enough people awkwardly patting me on the back for what I kind of wasn't sure was really all that special I was kind of left in an awkward state of being relieved that I wasn't trying to write something substantial anymore but at the same time crushed in the knowledge that I had completely lost a personal connection to listening to music or going to shows so much so to a point that I may have grown to personally detest going out and listening to live music in general.
I have nothing to really add to the discourse and nobody around me has any essence of an idea of what I am trying to express in this passion of listening so many individuals are just overly dismissive or numbed to a point of just making a meme out of it all that I don't honestly see a fucking point to even trying to do this thing anymore that's kind of why I just ended up taking my ball and fucking going home there was no reason for me to even put an effort in anymore.
The thing about life is that it goes on and even if I'm not covering things there's places and people who are doing things there's local podcast doing their thing to expose local acts who are putting out great stuff and there's plenty of online critics gaining headway in some capacity and I get this feeling the sonic landscape has changed....the only thing that doesn't change is every dickhead that want's to tell me that it's alright to like what you like because we all have different taste to which I say with the most gleeful expressiveness I can conjure up to shut the fuck up, let people who know some iota of what they're talking about do the discussions, or at the very fucking least provide an interesting point that's not you just being an internet troll otherwise I kind of don't really care to deal with those things in my life I'm getting on in years and I already deal with my fair share of dumb non-intellectually stimulating discussions on the daily.
Unlike politics entertainment has a certain aspect to it where you can disagree and argue but you're not actively putting the lives of millions at risk for thinking some band/film/video game/ect. Are good, great, shit, or trash you're just simply expressing some level of passionate discourse that helps provide some sense of purpose in giving a flying fuck all about these things and a the end of the day we all need some sense of worth and validation otherwise we're just shell's walking on by listening to fluff.
I don't have anything to achieve anymore so fuck it let's just say something ya bunch of fucking assholes strap on in and give me something to talk about otherwise it's not like I ain't use to nobody paying attention to me anyways.
Mark your calendars Monday December 16th 2019 I got some stuff to cover more specifically the best of this quiet year.
Well it happened folks the showcase to end all showcases Song of the day is officially done and last night after much delay due to mother nature not being able to accept the fact of the matter I had the farewell show happen over at Minibar KC.
It was a hell of a showcasing of 3 exceptionally good acts starting with the Fiction Department finally coming out of hiding to rip through a well balanced host of what I feel could be the signs of the next great American emo band from the rip roaring "20 Minutes," to the debut of their exceptional "Nervous," these guy's really put forth a fantastic effort.
Following them in an incredibly timely and efficient matter was The UK's who fucking tore the god damn house down with a well crafted set of mostly newer jams that have really come into their own and become a whole other beast of their own from the fantastic cuts off their newest release American Way of Death to some newer cuts my favorite being Motor City Blackout which is this fucking fantastic rocker of a track that I'm sure will be a fucking banger when they release it sometime in the next century and a half be sure to be on the lookout for that when you can because it's fucking tight.
After that whirlwind of awesome you're wondering what could possibly come next well then we have the Saints of St. Joseph, the men, the myth's, THE LEGENDS OF MODERN DAY Scruffy and "THE MOTHER FUCKING!" Janitors who to put it bluntly brought this to the best kind of finish playing through a host of some of Modeling is Hard's best cuts as well as a new tune that fucking killed it these guy's proved just why they had to headline this bitch for sure.
This night was a weird experience for me because that's it I'm fucking done with this little website of mine and the whole concept of writing a song of the day and looking at this footage it's strange because ever since announcing this I've been asked by a host of people what is next and that I can't really answer for ya I got 9 years of post to use for a resume if I wanted to and maybe if I'd of played my cards a lot better I could be doing some part time work or something but in the process of setting up this show and figuring out how to end this blog I just kind of needed to step away from that and reconsider things and what I can do with my creative energy.
If there's one thing I really can say it's that this night humbled the ever loving fuck outta me because as I'm writing this I'm still having a difficult time coming to grips with the fact that this actually happened like I can watch the videos that I recorded and hear my awful singing along to all of these tracks but it's hard to really grasp the fact that it all happened just because I didn't want this bastard to just die the way as all pet projects with nothing more than a written farewell.
At this point I've said most that I needed to say in regards to the state of Sam's Song of the Day and I just wanted to do one last post to commemorate the end show thanks to everyone who read the years of post and to anyone wanting to know what's next give me a while and I'll be up to something all of the love I have gotten is more than I could honestly ever expect to be deserving of and from the folks at x105.1 shouting out the show twice, to the various bands expressing their appreciation for the nice words, to the bands who played all of the show's I've put together, and of course to all of the people who've ever read song of the day and thought, "You know that is a pretty good fucking song," I thank you all for making this worth it.
You know world I'm an incredibly bitter person that seemingly hates anything and everything that makes people happy if you were to ask the various people I work with because if I'm to be honest with you I don't much care for things that are fake and disingenuous to me which is why I most often express that these things people like are trash like country music or the topic of this article Love Songs.
You know as well as I know Sam's Song of the Day is coming to an end and with that path of self wanking that is my series of ending articles I'm taking the time to go back over all the topics, songs, and what-not to kind of put 9 years of bullshit into perspective and really come to end this thing on an honest note and in the years I've been doing this there's an article I wrote back in 2015 about my top 5 love songs of all time (Original Post) and while at work talking mad shit to my coworkers about how people don't just want songs that make them happy or that make them feel good I thought about this article and figured since the end is after Valentines that it'd be about the best time to go back and look at that list and kind of react to it in a way.
Looking at it in retrospect after the relationship I was in at the time came to an amicable if not bitter end for me at least and as of the time of this writing I've been getting over yet another failed relationship you can only imagine that I'm most certainly not feeling the love these day's and that's just it I can't help but wonder to myself why does that particular article stick with me so much then so I did what anybody would do I read the mother fucker and in the process of going over the list and for the most part still believing it I was taken back by the post I'd linked to from 2011 where I coincidentally wrote about a person that very much affected my thoughts on romance in such a way that it's crazy to think I was able to realize then that I had desperately needed to move on and the fact that I'd had a guest spot from the guy who fucked that up from me is just a hair funny in a god damn it kill me now kind of way.
SO what is it that I got 8 fucking years ago that sticks with me so much today I'm a grown up now that persons moved on, the guy who contributed unfriended me YEARS ago, and I've all but abandoned the whole not revealing more information about myself that what be necessary because I guess it's just some overall lack of fucks that come with the territory of needing to paint the necessary picture when trying to give you the reader an idea into the mindset it takes for me to come up with these types of pieces.
What the fuck does any of this have to do with love songs? Well here's the deal I still after all these years still have people tell me that I seem to lack the ability to be happy or understand what a god damn love song is and that's fucking wrong because I've written about it multiple times and the string of telling people that the root of all quality music isn't what makes us happy and feel good but rather to understand a complex series of emotions far beyond happiness is truly what qualifies a good song in comparison to a terrible tune in the opinion of a guy that's spent 9 fucking years trying to describe to people these things is rather annoying and in the process of proving this point I'm going to look at the most basic of songs and explain to you what really is a good love song.
First off I literally wrote about it already looking back that top 5 list is still pretty accurate for the most part and reading over all the post on it I kind of concluded that it's more than happiness that need be encapsulated in the best of these tunes but rather the full spectrum of emotions you don't want emotionless overwrought tripe like Justin Timberlakes Mirrors that's a shit song that tries too damn hard to not look like a shameless cash grab of a track from a former boy band extra that lucked out and figured out how to do a discount MJ but with all the sanitized whiteness on 11.
Love isn't sitting on the side of a mountain exclaiming to the world that the super model you banged last night is the pride and joy of your life ala insert 80's hair metal band's mandatory second single ballad no those coke fueled romps of trying to let a stripper give you a special slip of the tongue in the area's you're too ashamed to tell your band mates you enjoy having done to you isn't the foundation of a good love song it's yet more fake ass garbage that leads me to write such mean stuff as such, it's not a matter of trying to be something more than you really are but rather you need to present a certain level of honesty that for me at the very least has only really been done on a handful of occasions.
Yeah I'll say there's a few more tunes since I originally visited this topic that can bring a certain warm feeling like Kimbra's, “Two Way Street,” (Song here) but in all honesty as much a lovely and warm fuzzy filled jam as it is that's a song that for me at least could be amplified by the fact that for lack of a more tactful way to put it is done by my forever number 1 celebrity crush and as great and genuine a musician she is and as ethereal her performance is on that track it's still kind of the required ballad in a way and while it's a damn great one it doesn't quite reach that level of being what I think of when I think of a love song.
Being that I live in Kansas City Missouri I'm also inclined to mention a little ol' group known as the Greeting Committee and their breakthrough track, “Hands Down,” (Song Here) which I truly believe could very well have been the next great modern love song it's a simple tune by a group of kids still trying to figure out this whole being a rock star thing and it's under produced aesthetic and genuinely amateur lyrics give you this idea that they didn't know just what they were doing instead they just felt like doing whatever they felt like and for the most part this song has resulted in some truly outstanding times especially when you yell 1,2,3 for Brandon, but even with that in mind this song has an unfortunate stigma to it because aside from this paragraph and when I saw these guy's perform for a sold out crowd I don't willingly listen to this song because for lack of a more tactful way to say it 96.5 the Buzz overplayed this song to a point of no return and turned what once was a lovely track into an eye roll and a station change.
That song is still a good song and it has a host of great memories I wouldn't give up for all the riches in the world and I truly love the fact that the Greeting Committee are a thing they deserve it for being good people who made a band and did something but that song is the past and they've moved on from it and are in a better place and I don't mind that because well that's every failed relationship in a nutshell you loved it once but you don't anymore and you have to separate yourself from that because clinging onto those memories does more damages than you need to do to yourself and the only way to still feel the good is to just move on, and as far as I'm concerned when a song makes you feel like you're getting over a break up that doesn't really qualify it to be a great love song now does it?
So OK you're aware that there's good love songs and there's bad ones and you got an idea of some songs that I think get close but why they fail what is the best love song, what do I Sam consider the best love song of all time? And most importantly WHAT IN THE FUCK MAKES IT SO GOD DAMN GOOD? Well if you didn't read any of the links I left in this article nor have you been a follower of Sam's Song of the Day for these 9 years let's finally get to the fucking point just like I said all those years back this song right here is the best love song of all time give it a listen then continue reading because in order for it all to make sense you have to hear this song, form and opinion, and then proceed to have me explain to you my opinion I hope that was clear and you just haven't skipped over all the wall's of text leading up to this part of the article.
Love is a complicated emotion that brings upon it a certain level of anxiety that constantly leaves you on the edge wondering if it's all worth it at the end of the day, when you are starting a relationship or establishing something with someone you'll constantly be in this mental bind of trying to figure it all out you'll obsess and constantly worry if your next move could end it all you'll get to a point where you obsess over them and have a difficult time imagining what life without them.
It's an anxious ugly feeling of wonder where you and another person can't possibly believe that someone so seemingly beautiful and perfect could enter your life you'll put them through a series of test and you'll act in such a way that makes you wonder what in the actual fuck is wrong with you a certain cheeky sense of wonder and playfulness that's constantly testing the waters of the person in question to ultimately answer this nagging question so perfectly stated at the very end ever so abruptly, “the question is do you?”
Genius borders on 2 and a half minutes it's a statement I made up a long ass fucking time ago and it's been my biggest takeaway from all of the songs I've ever enjoyed in life while a complex musical arrangement that takes the time to really make a listener think and truly find more and more to any given piece of art sometimes in life you gotta just fucking cut to the god damn point this is that it's not a happy song it's anxiety personified Brian Molko and company are leading up every scenario with this nagging question of whether or not they want to say I do he hit the nail on the head bringing forth the fact that things are a total fucking mystery and you're never quite the same person when you're in or done with a relationship it changes your life forever I've been in love I've asked that question do I wanna be with this person for the rest of my life to which all of them decided to answer that for me and for those not in the know they all said no and yes that shit fucking hurt.
I'm not the happiest person in the world that's very true but just because I am that way doesn't mean that I don't feel happy ever and the thing is what I want in a love song isn't just an artificial level of happiness that gives a fake feeling of joy but rather a tune that is kind of weird, ugly, a bit on the simple side but with an understated level of complexity that isn't immediately apparent on first listen I want a non traditional take on things that gives just the right amount of information to get you wanting to hear more just to see what you missed the first time and this song does that in a way most other songs of its nature doesn't.
I don't want happy and upbeat that isn't a good song what I and many other people want is to have all of our emotions satisfied in a way that brings a certain level of comfort and reliability and sometimes you don't know these things unless somebody introduces them to you I've always had an interest in telling people about songs I think are good because things like this wouldn't have ever of been found if I didn't hear something ask the question of who or what and then went on to give it a chance what my thing with this is I was tired of seeing the same meaningless garbage getting shared over and over again because people are machines that don't want to experience something new but rather they want to hear the same garbage over and over so I tried to fix that by telling people about a new song every day because maybe just maybe somebody was going to hear it and have the same experience I did because all it took for me to discover this band was hearing one of their tracks on a cassette tape to get me to eventually listen to their catalog of material and become a life long fan.
The first person I ever fell in love with I showed her this band and her expression of wonder and amazement was something I can't put into words she was the first person I ever felt truly felt the same thing I did and I've yet to ever have that level of closeness again but I know deep down inside it's out there somewhere and that person is a thing of the past kind of like the only other woman who told me outright start a blog already and buy a copy of Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd the memories are there but the people are long gone and time has taught me that it's not the end of the world that they're gone and have moved on with their existence and like I told myself 8 years ago it's time I about do the same thing I'll admit I feel like I am going a bit overboard with my ending this little old blog of mine and the whole throwing myself a show thing but you know what I have to let it end with something because I need some validation for all the efforts I ever put into doing this so I can know that moving on was the best decision.
Catharsis, the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions that's what this piece is that is the best love song all time it's not spilling your guts, it's not screaming on a mountain top, and it's not saying that the other person is your one and only it's saying that somebody is a certain level of discomfort and wonder that you can't possibly come to understand on your own and you want them to help you come to make sense of it all and possibly be with them for the rest of your life it's more than happiness it's a cathartic release you chose to share with the world and hope that they feel the same.
Sam's Song of the Day was my catharsis and it's been a fun 9 years but this relationship is over and I'm going out in style so wont you join me in letting me know that I can do this?
I remember a long time ago I was at a show at Minibar and I was talking to one of the local DJ's of the newest alternative music station here in Kansas City and I remember telling him my odd theory in regards to the most likely end result of modern music consumption habits within the next 50 years and him only ever referring to local music as “regional music,” and at the time I was sure it was something he'd been told by an A&R executive from one of the many nation wide studios he was apart of and in the process of trying to come up with something to write about the end of day's headliner that conversation still seems to be present for me and I'll expand upon that in a bit but first let's get to talking about Scruffy and the Janitors as a group.
Kind of like The UK's what we have here is a band that's an end product of the garage rock explosion of the early 00's and if I were to simplify these guy's I'd say they're a lot like Cage the Elephant in that they are this kind of dirty mix of blues and punk that's an unapologetic roughhousing track after track after track with their first Major EP Anglo being chocked full of them from the scorching opening track, "Ms. Crucio," and the popular, "Dirtleg," these guy's were a very no nonsense group of mother fuckers that made music that was very invested in it's roots and unwilling to compromise.
Now fast forward 4 years and a host of life changes then we get to Scruffy of today no longer willing to flesh out their set with Cage the Elephant covers they put those years of relentless touring to use and put out Modeling is Hard my favorite album of last year and what is it that made it that way for me?
Well let's go back to the idea of “Regional Music” for a second and kind of take that into consideration when talking about Scruffy because what they are at the end of the day are 3 guy's from St. Joseph Missouri all in their early to mid 20's trying to make it in a world that's unlike that which their parents lived in a town that I can describe as a city with a small town vibe to it's locals because if you ever see these guy's in their hometown you have a very communal experience of a lot of their closest acquaintances rocking out to a local act, singing along every word, and partying it up like it's their last night on earth because for them it's like a means to kind of escape their small town and partake in something larger than the sum of it's parts and it's that effort that kind of seeps through all of Modeling is Hard it's an album that is starting to move away from the more overt Cage the Elephant tones of a tune like, "Dirtleg," and instead you get a wide variety of sounds from the angry punkish tunes like "The Spins," and "You got hit," the slower more melancholic "Carry Me home," the psychedelic combo of, "Feelings," and "Elephant," and of course the outstanding title track this album reeks of a bunch of guy's that are doing their thing to not only make their own but give a voice to their community of hard working individuals looking to make something out of nothing and this record really brings forth those feelings especially for someone like me that's spent a good chunk of time following these guy's around, talking with them, and kind of inching my way into their community even if I still feel like an outsider looking in.
I can't really overstate just how much this collection of tracks knocks it out of the fucking park people "Flesh and Bone," and "Modeling is Hard," are some of my most listened to tracks last year and they are just some outstanding rift filled rockers that leave me screaming along and banging my head and the combo of "Feelings," into "Elephant," is something to behold whenever they close a set with it just this intense acid trip of a pairing that is like that scene in Dumbo where the elephants are all trippy and cool before things get heavy and fucked up and you find yourself screaming, “FUCK FUCK FUCK,” at the top of your lungs it's quite a god damn hell of a time only to then start all over again depending on how you're listening to this album.
On a more personal note this record is one of those few I've heard in a long time that seemed to fit in a certain place for me that also oddly enough lined up with this story I'd been writing for quite some time as I listened to it I was able to imagine these host of made up characters having intense moments of confrontation to the various tracks of this album and when I hear those songs I just want to put them in motion in some sort of visual fashion so in helping me achieve a goal I've always wanted I can also showcase respect and perspective for a piece of work I find very near and dear and a group of people who I have a lot of respect for their addition to the craft, but alas all I really could do for this project is give it my #1 and 2 year end spots respectively and while that's something that garnered me a whole lot of views I'm not a hundred percent sure if it's even a fraction of a way to explain why you should feel the same way about this collection of tunes and group as I do.
I mean you can go see them on Saturday with me that's a thing that'd be appreciated all around because trust me it'll be a thing for sure and just the way to go out.
Thanks for reading about the 3 chosen acts for my farewell to this blog they're 3 groups of hardworking individuals that I expect to go somewhere in due time and you should come and appreciate them with me because if I'd waited any longer then I wouldn't of been able to have the ability to book them because big things are going to come I can guarantee that for sure.
Oh and on one last note stay tuned for this Valentines day for the last big piece of this website and if a few non-writing related things can fall in place for me I should have something special for after the show but until then have a wonderful day and listen to all these fucking bands!
