Dad Rock, Revisited

One of the few upsides of having been a real judgemental dickhead when I was younger is there’s all this great art I dismissed out of hand then that I can discover now.  Here are some bands and albums I used to hate that I was big time wrong about.

Fleetwood Mac   

I used to joke that I lived my life in a Fleetwood Mac Free Zone, which was constantly moving, three foot radius that revolved around me.  Their hyper-produced, glistening blow rock was antithetical to everything I thought popular music should sound like. Though I’ve always loved, “Dreams” because of Stevie Knicks witch-like hypnotic abilities, the rest of their songs seemed like they were written to be listened to when you’re half asleep.  Somewhat ironically, I fell in love with “Rumours” on a trip to Los Angeles which was full of spiritual awakenings, largely triggered by a very, very stoned listening to “Rumours” on vinyl. This listening, and the guttural sobbing which accompanied it, helped me get in touch with my grief surrounding a screenwriting career that never quite took off.  I later read a book about the recording of “Rumours” which changed the way I think about art and collaboration. The record was made by people who could barely stand to be in the same room as one another, yet they had such devotion to their art and the process of artistic collaboration they made an album which is so perfect it’s sold 40 million copies.

Supertramp:
I didn’t understand how a band that sounded like Supertramp could be a band anyone took seriously.  The singer’s voice is so weird, especially when it slips into falsetto, and the rhythms and instrumentation on “The Logical Song” and “Breakfast in America” felt so bizarre and off putting to my young ears, I dismissed them out of hand as an anachronism from the 70s. But PT Anderson uses them so brilliantly in his movies, particularly “Goodbye, Stranger” in MAGNOLIA, that they became meaningful to me and I ended up checking out their Spotify page.  Around this time, I was spending a lot of time with my infant daughter and we were listening to a lot of music together because it helped keep us both relaxed in the midst of all the changes of me becoming a father and her becoming a person. Supertramp consistently soothed her, so much so that for the first 15 months of her life, every single time I put my daughter to bed, we listened to “The Logical Song” and every single time she fell asleep peacefully in my arms as the acoustic guitar chords of “Give a Little Bit” began.  Though I can never hold my infant daughter in my arms again because she’s a toddler now, I can always listen to those songs and remember more vividly those precious moments which are otherwise gone forever. Supertramp’s music, which meant nothing to me and seemed silly and off-putting, is now the marker of an era, a pinpoint in the timeline of my life; like a time machine, for the rest of my days hearing their music will snap me back into those first uncertain months of fatherhood.

Elvis Costello and the Attractions:

Though I was friends with a lot of people who liked Elvis Costello, his jive-ass crooning always rubbed me the wrong way and his songs never quite rocked hard enough for my edgier punk tastes.  But when I was getting into vinyl, his records were all over everyone’s Top 100 Albums of All Time List so I figured I’d check them out. Boy am I glad I did! Elvis Costello and the Attractions first record, “My Aim is True,” sounds like a bar band playing at a dusty old club I want to go to every single night for the rest of my life.  The second album, “This Year’s Model” is the sound of an explosion sustained for 35 minutes and 44 seconds. I don’t want to write about them anymore, I want to go listen to them, that’s how good those two records are.

Live’s “Throwing Copper”  

I didn’t fuck with Live because they were a little too mainstream for my tastes in 94.  My friends were mostly metalheads who made fun of me for liking Smashing Pumpkins, so there was no social currency to liking Live.  By the time the singles from the album were climbing the charts in 95, I was way too into punk rock to find Live interesting. But “I, Alone” was on the radio a couple weeks ago so I revisited “Throwing Copper.”  Tthis album BANGS! The singles “Selling the Drama,” “I, Alone,” “Lightning Crashes” and “All Over You,” are all pretty perfect pop rock songs, replete with hooks and interesting guitar work. The album’s production, done by Talking Heads’ Jerry Harrison, creates a lush, full sound that’s like the bastard son of Counting Crows and Pearl Jam.  Ed Kowalczyk’s voice is rich and layered and their lyrics are tinged with elements of christianity, which makes them naturally more thought provoking and mature than their contemporaries. They probably don’t belong on a list with Fleetwood Mac, Supertramp and Elvis Costello, but if you remember even kind of liking their songs I think you’ll love revisiting them.