Inspirado

Revolver

The Beatles

I was very late to appreciating The Beatles. Their music is like the air we breathe - it's everywhere. In advertisements, in movies, in the grocery stores, in the elevator, and even in the bathroom. It's sort of like AD blindness when scrolling through search results.

Maybe it was my nonconformist, punk rock, counterculture upbringing. Dunno, I just never got into them. At some point I had to learn a tune for a party or something and was taken by how perfect it was as a song. It was on. Off to the public library to find out everything I could about the fab four.

After many listens, reverse engineering (to the best of my ability) their full catalog, as an album Revolver is my jam. A masterpiece, a magic trick that leaves you in awe and keeps you wondering how they pulled it off. Showcasing the range of musical styles and eclecticism in their songwriting...

The punk guitar solo in Taxman, the staccato strings in Eleanor Rigby, the spacey sitar in Love You To, the odd time bridge in She Said She Said, the dissonant piano in I Want to Tell You, and the groundbreaking hypnotic looped drums and bird squawks in Tomorrow Never Knows. Way ahead of it's time, it straight up sounds like Beck to me sometimes.

This record must have felt like it was from the future when it came out. Not one song exceeding 3 minutes, some as short as 2 minutes. Each one so captivating you lose all sense of time, making them feel twice as long. Fourteen songs and still only a total time of 35 minutes. Incredible.

Five Leaves Left

Nick Drake

I remember the first time I heard Nick Drake. I was living in Austin, Texas. Driving home from work, listening to college radio. When this voice captured me. I was so moved by it, I had to pull over to give it my full attention. I listened to the next few songs, waiting for the DJ to say what they had just played. I didn't have a pen, so I just kept saying his name over and over, until I got to Waterloo Records.

A very original approach as a singer songwriter, his finger style guitar playing and rhythms created a dense fabric of interwoven lines - a tundra for his voice to glide over. Such a short music career and tragically passing at just 26 years old, he did manage to leave us with 3 albums.

The odd time signature of the opening track (Time Has Told Me) immediately grabs your attention, but when Richard Thompson starts cooking on slide guitar it's over - you're reaching for the rewind button.

Just when you think it can't get any better, River Man limps in like an old man with a bad knee. Then the established opening major chord suddenly shifts to minor and has you tilting your head like a dog hearing something in the distance. The stuttered pause on the second beat of the 5/8 time signature is so cleverly placed, it takes 8 bars before you realize that waltzy feeling isn't 6/8 at all - and when the hauntingly beautiful strings are in full crescendo it's melancholic bliss. This song is so beautifully crafted that everything that follows is overshadowed by it.

Zero Sum

The Smile

I am definitely a Radiohead fan. As they matured as a band, many folks compared them to Pink Floyd. I can sort of see that, but what I dig the most about them is how bold they are. Considering they were almost instantly famous with Creep, they weren't satisfied with just maintaining commercial success. They grew artistically with each album. It's fair to say they got weirder too, but I see it more like they got better at deconstructing sound and songs. Sort of like how Picasso's earlier work was more realism, and then he explored isolated color palettes, and finally peaking with the abstract and bent styles of cubism and surrealism.

I became a fan with OK Computer. My band at the time were also into that record, so we sort of sounded like that.

The following album (Kid A) always makes me think of New York City, because that's all I was listening to while walking the length of Manhattan back and forth exploring districts and parks. While they were writing Kid A Thom was into anything Warp Records was putting out (so was I), and that's definitely reflected in this record.

My favorite album is In Rainbows, it's great to listen to while cooking dinner.

The Smile is not Radiohead, but Thom and Jonny are the core of both bands. The Smile being just 3 people (Skinner on drums) their sound is more stripped back, but the intimacy of that sound really grabs your attention like a spotlight. Everything played is economical, nothing wasted.

I chose to highlight this song (Zero Sum) because of the lyrics. I love Thom's lyrics - explicit or abstract, they are memorable and roll off the tongue.

A Forest

The Cure

The most impressive talent of Robert Smith and his band is their alchemy of making lyrically sappy love songs somehow sound both celebratory and sad at the same time. Just Like Heaven, In Between Days, Pictures of You, Friday I'm In Love.. Great songs, classics - how do they do it?

In high school Disintegration was the jam. Johnny Depp (circa 21 Jump St.) hairdo, wearing all black, puppy love heartache. Driving around in my Jetta with the Alpine deck and a full Case Logic of CDs and tapes.

As I've gotten older though, I've found myself more drawn to A Forest. Originally released as a single A Forest starts with such patience, building up in the intro, by the time the bass comes in you are hypnotized. So minimal you hear every instrument clearly, but the overall effect is a massive vast space that drips with somber. Still somehow uplifting. This is a sound I am drawn to, and often find myself dwelling there when meandering around looking for something on my guitar or bass.

Houses of the Holy

Led Zeppelin

I'm with Jack White when he says, "“Well, I sort of don't trust anybody who doesn't like Led Zeppelin".

When I was a kid growing up in the Pacific Northwest, Zeppelin was more popular than The Beatles. Classic rock filled the airwaves, and there were stations that dedicated 1 hour blocks for "getting the Led out". At that age though, it might as well have been muzak to me.

The first time I "heard" Led Zeppelin was at this lock-in at a local church in Lahaina, Maui. Something to keep kids in the area from getting into trouble after dark, they would lock us in behind a 10ft fence and let us skateboard off launch ramps in the parking lot all night. Drinking soda and copious amounts of junk food, we were wired all night. This kid was rocking out to something on his Walkman, and I asked him what it was. He pulled off his headphones and started to hand them to me, when he suddenly stopped and pressed rewind. After a loud click sound, he hands me the headphones to put on, maxes out the volume and presses play.

After this whirling sound, I hear someone screaming "Hey hey mama..." and then this huge explosion of sound. Stopping and starting again until it just all out starts rocking. I was stunned. A deer in the headlights. The kid chuckled a bit and left me alone to listen to the entire tape. Pretty sure he turned me on to Sabbath too.

The Zeppelin album I listen to most is probably Houses of the Holy. The opening track (The Song Remains the Same) goes so hard and gets you fired up you're exhausted by the end of it. So, the follow up of The Rain Song is brilliant. It goes against all intuition, but works perfectly. Rain Song is a tune I have learned and forgotten how to play several times. I spent so much time playing that song, I always had a guitar sitting around in that tuning. Resulting in at least an albums worth of material using that tuning - except I tune the low D to C, making it more open C (add9).

I could go on and on about every detail of every track, but let's just say it rawks 🤘. With just one corny tune (The Crunge) - still, I couldn't imagine listening to this album without looking for that "...confounded bridge".

Grace

Jeff Buckley

Definitely a major influence on me, Jeff's talent as a singer and guitar player was like Page and Plant in one body. His range of musical knowledge and taste was immense. From Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan to Nina Simone to Bob Dylan to The Smiths to Leonard Cohen to Bad Brains, and on and on. He was a walking, talking, performing encyclopedia of everything music. Sadly passing away at the young age of 30, he left us with just 2 albums.

Jeff was a musician's musician. His ability and vulnerability was both inspiring and unnerving at the same time. I was obsessed with him for years. It was just like how Zeppelin impacted me, and I was just starting to get better as a musician. So learning how to play the songs on this record and the next sort of altered my DNA forever. His music taught me how to get lost in sound and feel it deeply - being overwhelmed with so many emotions simultaneously, it brings you to tears. I was an addict, I had to detox from him.

For years I intentionally avoided writing anything that sounded even remotely similar to his sound, trying to wash myself clean. I think that did help me sort of find my own voice/style/isms, but sometimes when I listen back to something I just wrote, I can still hear a bit of him and I'm fine with that. I embrace it now, and even lean in to it sometimes.

If you haven't heard this record or never gave it your full attention, please give it a listen. It might change your life, it changed mine.

A fantastic documentary by Amy Berg was just released about Jeff called, "It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley". Check it out here.