The Loop : Saves the Day - Stay What You Are

Saves the Day - Stay What You Are (2001)

This was one of many bands I discovered through my older brother. Before I had the money or the means to get my own music, my days were spent sneaking into his room and taking his records. I don't really even know what the process was of him introducing these bands to me, maybe just hearing him play it or him deliberately making me sit down to listen to them. I remember distinctly a pop quiz he gave me once before I could take a CD, mostly about Dave Grohl's rotating musician status or which Rage Against the Machine album was featured in the poster on his wall. At any rate, I'm forever indebted to him for my hobby/job/obsession with music.

This album meant a lot to me because of how real it was. Up to this point, my music choices were either Christian ska bands or bands that mostly talked about girls. I realize that if you read through the lyrics of Stay What You Are, you'll find illusions or direct references to girls/relationships, but my fifteen year old self had very little understanding of love. I understood things like loneliness, friendships, figuring out my identity, assuming the role of being a grown up in a few short years, etc., and I feel like this album followed those themes on a more personal, selfish level than others I was listening to. I also appreciated that it didn't isolate it's female listeners, as many emo bands tend to do in this boy's club. They even had a song that was from the point of view, more or less, of a girl struggling with societies standards ("Cars and Calories") .

Aside from it's deeper meanings, this is one smart and catchy record. Songs like "At Your Funeral" "Jukebox" and "Freak" became anthems at the shows and were much easier to sing along to than the more "punk" melodies of Through Being Cool or Can't Slow Down. I know that turned off a lot of fans, but Saves the Day were not only adapting, but setting a bar for a darker tone of emo. I read recently that they were just a few years too early with this record, which I agree with. A the time, fart bands like Blink 182 and Sum 41 were dominating the Warped scene, so for a band to come out with an unapologetically self-depricating record wasn't quite understood in masses. It still exists in a place for a lot of the fans who discovered it then and discovered it now and in my opinoin, despite my love for the completely underrated In Reverie, is still their best record.

The Loop : Disclaimers and Honorable Mentions

I spent the last four hours or so compiling lists for The Loop series, digging through my iTunes and dividing up all the albums I wanted to include into their respective categories (2000-2003, 2004-2006, 2007-2009) I searched through old journal entries and my old high school website that had a long list of what I was listening to back then. It was an exhaustive process. However, I think I have all of the albums I wanted. That being said, I started to over-think things (as I tend to do) finding records that missed the cut offs and wanting to include entire discographies that span over several cateogries, etc. It made me a nervous music nerd. However, I've come to terms with the boundaries I set for this and want to put a few things out upfront:


1) There are a lot of GREAT albums that are not included in these lists. Bands like songs:ohia, Chase Pagan, Aqueduct, White Stripes, etc. I also had certain songs that I loved, but not full records, as it goes. I consume more music than most humans should, so I made sure to cut it down to the albums that I can remember completely geeking out about. I'm talking multiple repeat plays during the day, saw the concert, bought the shirt, put it on various mixtapes, changed my views about music kind of albums. There were a lot of close calls, but the guidelines I've set will hopefully make for a pretty awesome and comprehensive list.

2) I was once a 16 year old girl: There are gonna be a lot of "really?" albums on here. But that's why I've called this series "10 years of Unapologetic Albums" . . . because I'm happy to admit them (mostly in this first month - high school) All of those pop punk and ska bands meant something at that time and opened up a lot of doors as far as discovering music and finding all the ways TO discover music. That and I probably thought the boys in them were, like, SO cute.

3) I might choose just one record from a band with an extensive catalog: For the most part, I was able to choose THAT album that got me into the band, even if I loved their previous or following work. A couple of them I might double up if the albums fell in the same time period, depending on the case. It may not be the Pinkerton of the collection, but it's the one that I connected with the most for whatever reason.

and finally . . .

4) There were a ton of albums that missed the cutoff: It killed me to have to cross certain albums off the list because they fell in the 90's, or even worse, 1999 (I'm looking at you, Clarity) I was musically raised by an older brother who discovered a lot of his stuff in the 90's, not to mention that I was a ska kid, so most of those albums were in and around 1996 (seriously). It broke my 14 year old heart to not include some of them that meant SO much to me, so I'm going to post a one-time only "honorable mention" list, for those records off the top of my head that came out when I didn't have a car or income:

• Weezer - The Blue Album ; Pinkerton
• Jimmy Eat World - Static Prevails, Clarity
• Wilco - Summerteeth
• Catch 22 - Keasby Nights
• Dance Hall Crashers - Honey, I'm Homely
• The Hippos - Heads are Gonna Roll
  
• Fenix TX - s/t
• Elliott Smith - XO, Figure 8, Roman Candle, Elliott Smith (basically everything)
• The Insyderz - Motor City Ska, Skallielujah
  
• The OC Supertones - The Adventures of the OC Supertones
• MXPX - Pokinatcha, Teenage Politics, Life in General, Slowly Going the Way of the Buffalo
• The W's - The Trouble with X
• Reel Big Fish - Turn the Radio Off , Why Do They Rock So Hard?
• The Aquabats - The Fury of the Aquabats
• Less Than Jake - Pezcore, Hello Rockview
• Jefferie's Fan Club - Nothing to Prove
• Allister - Dead Ends and Girlfriends
• Incubus - S.C.I.E.N.C.E. , Make Yourself
• Goldfinger - Hang-Ups
• Neutral Milk Hotel - In an Aeroplane Over the Sea
• No Doubt - Tragic Kingdown
• Oasis - (What's The Story) Morning Glory?
• Pavement - Brighten the Corners
• Philmore - EP
• Noggin Toboggon - Snapcase
• Radiohead - The Bends
• The Ataris - Blue Skies, Broken Hearts , Next 12 Exits

That probably isn't everything and there are a few records I'm combining because the band meant that much (get ready for a whole geek out on Five Iron Frenzy) but I set these rules for myself and I'm going to keep them. I'm just hoping I don't die / hate music by the end of this process.

And here we go . . .

The Loop : 10 Years of Unapologetic Albums

I think most people in their mid-twenties eventually run into their "quarter life crisis". You spend your first 20 years reaching milestone after milestone only to fall into the post-college slump of agelessness and the realization of just how long life is. This is not always a bad thing, of course, but as you get older and look retrospectively, there are so many of years of experience and things yet to experience that it gets overwhelming.

As I was getting ready this morning, I started to think about reaching the end of this first decade of the new millenium. I remember what New Years 2000 was like, drinking soda until WAYYY too late with my two best friends, then running outside to the back yard screaming "Happy New Year!" to blanket suburban Arizona. While imagining how we were ever so young, it occured to me that 2000 was when I started high school and more or less crossed over into shaping my adulthood. In thinking of the vastness of life, ten years of time from then until now is a lot when you've only lived 23 1/2.

By all intents and purposes, these may have been the most defining 10 years of my life. I went from awkward . . . to more awkward. I completed my schooling and (apparently) became a grown up. There were a lot of milestones in a short period of time, many of which had a soundtrack. So much has changed not only in my life, but in music the last 10 years, and it's amazing to think of how much music I've consumed in a decade, and how much consuming music has changed in that same period of time.

So where is this going? Everyone loves a good retrospective. I'm sure music mags are already compiling their lists, and blogs are digging through Wikipedia pages to find the early 00's b-side collection that is their top album. For me, it's a desire to revisit some of the records that placed a musical timestamp on these years. Music means a lot to me now, but I want to get that gut feeling I got when I put on a CD that I had to sneak in and steal from my brothers room. To feel the rush of picking out a mix of albums and one by one recording them to a mixtape. In an age where music is so accessible and sometimes saturated, I want to work for my memories again.

That's where "The Loop" comes from. There are certain things that remind me of when I first started investing into music. Cigarette smoke, sweat, feedback and handstamps. And in those things, I tend to circle back frequently to The Nile Theatre in Mesa, AZ. While it has been closed since 2004(ish), this venue still sparks some serious geeking out amoungst my AZ friends when mentioned. I already named my old radio show on The Blaze 1260 AM "The Basement" for The Nile's smaller room that often featured local bands. I still feel though that The Nile needs to be a part of this, so I've named this series, "The Loop" because of the Loop 202. My brother (or whoever was driving me) would take the Loop 202 East to get to Mesa from Scottsdale. Everytime we'd merge and we'd go from heading South and curve into East, my heart would explode in excitement. I could see the city and feel the rush of how close I was to seeing one of my favorite bands. No matter where I had been, everything circled back to not just that building, but what it represented in music, culture and forming my identity. It's a crossroads, it's a direction, it's whatever you want it to be.

So there you go. Over the next three months I'm going to take a section of this decade, then circle back and talk about albums that meant a lot to me during that bracket of time. Here's how it will work:

October : Albums from 2000-2004

November: Albums from 2004-2007

December: Albums from 2007-2010 and eventually my top 10 of 2009.

It won't be chronological ( I don't have THAT much time on my hands) , but it will fall between those time periods. After failing miserably at my "Sounds from The Basement" series, I hope that "The Loop" series keepts momentum. I feel like it will. These won't always be albums that are critically acclaimed, and some I'm usually too embarassed to admit to, but this music meant a lot to me in the time it did and much of it still does today. I have no apologies. That's what music is about, after all.

Cheers to 10 great years. Ready, set, go.

-Smashley

SFTB #3 - Colorstore/Sweetbleeders Double Feature

So since I fell short and didn't do last night's post, I decided this would be a good time to revisit the appearances of Colorstore and Sweetbleeders. Two for one. Like this blog post. Here's why:

I first heard Sweetbleeders at Stinkweed's during their annual sale at the old Apache Blvd location. I remember being completely immersed in all they had going on and spent the rest of the night trying to figure out what they were called. I eventually caught up with them a few years later, buying the CD and rocking it on The Basement. It was unpretentious and one of those records that made you feel like you were floating.

I eventually got them on an episode of The Basement and was surprised when I saw Mark from Colorstore there since he played with them. I hadn't had a chance to see them live since the Stinkweed's performance and didn't put it together until I saw him there. It turns out that they are, for lack of a better term, inversed of each other, with Robin taking lead in Sweetbleeders and Mark taking lead in Colorstore. It may not be easy to hear on first listen of both bands, but each album has distinct differences, even with the same minds creating them in different capacities. It's fun to take the two and make it a point to listen carefully, which is what music should be anyway.

Later that semester I had Colorstore on, with Mark at the healm, and used the song "Lunatic" on the Sounds from the Basement compilation. The whole situation got me thinking, especially after moving to NYC, how interesting a scene Arizona has. The biggest difference between what should be the music capital of the world and AZ is that musicians are actually fostered in the desert.

It seems as though every band has a member of another band that has played with another band who collaborates with someone in another band to form a band that played with the lead singer's side project. You'd go to parties and meet other musicians and the bands were careful to look out for one another. One of my favorite things, although I don't know if it exists anymore, is a group of a few art district bands that created a checking account to save up and support each other when they go on tour. That is trust, and that is what a community is about.

I haven't felt that here, but maybe I haven't been looking hard enough. I feel like no band is truly a "New York" band, but Arizonans are so proud to be from AZ and anxious to work and create together.

That's really lucky.

Check out more:
www.myspace.com/sweetbleeders
www.myspace.com/colorstore
www.purevolume.com/theblaze1260am

Photos:

Sweetbleeders - Jan 2008

Colorstore - Feb 2008

SFTB #2 : Dear and the Headlights

This day and age, I find it hard to believe that there is any sort of "formula" to exposing music. There are certain ideas that work and some that don't, but we are in an era where there is so much music to consume and so much time needed to do so, from band and consumer alike. It's hard to have conversations with friends in bands about their futures in music because there is no real answer, but for many bands from Arizona, the idea seems to always pop up:

"All we want to do is go by the Dear and the Headlights plan"

Recently, the Phoenix New Times called ,"The most important band in Arizona", and with each step in their career, it's becoming more and more clear that they are. It isn't so much about exactly what tours they are on (well, Warped Tour, Jimmy Eat World, Paramore and Coachella, to name a few) but that they represent so much of what Arizona bands, or any self-supporting band, are. They never really had a "plan". They're just people who stood outside every show with demo CDs for free (which surprisingly isn't as common anymore) They're the ones who played up to 5 or 6 times a week, sometimes without a PA system, sometimes to only 20 kids. They're the people who went from relative obscurity to touring the majority of the year while trying to create new music in the process.

But most of all, they represent that good people and good music do exist in this business and can be successful. It's the core of artist development and a band that I feel represents everything I wanted to do with The Basement. I was lucky enough to have them on not once but TWICE, and work with them in varying capacities over the years. It gets a little sad when I don't see them for several months at a time, but I know that it is possible for a band to be organically grown and fostered and still come out on top.

The song featured on Sounds From The Basement is "Paper Bag", from their Small Steps Heavy Hooves album. I wish I could speak for the music as well as it speaks for itself. Just watch the video above.

More photos from both appearances:
April 2006

April 2006

January 2007

January 2007

www.myspace.com/dearandtheheadlights

SFTB #1 : Skybox and the Secret Past of The Basement

It's only appropriate that I start of my "Sounds from The Basement" series with the band that started it all : Skybox

Originally, The Basement was intended to be a ska/punk specialty show. I grew up in what is lovingly referred to as the "AZ Ska" scene in high school and spent most of my weekends and hostess paychecks on tickets to shows around town. It's actually where the name "The Basement" came from in general, as a tribute to the small stage in the basement of The Nile Theatre in Mesa. I'm sure many people who were around in those days can attest to the fact that despite the fact that the volume of shows increased over the years, not much can compare to nights spent inhaling sweat mixed with cigarette smoke mixed with the smell of Mesa at The Nile. It's when things were truly organic, you found out about shows from people passing out flyers outside and you felt part of a real community.

My very first show was January 22, 2006, shortly after the start of Spring semester of my sophomore year. I slotted a prime-time slot : 8PM-10PM on Sundays. Lots of people home doing homework and directly competing with The Edge 103.9's ska/punk show. I was going to just go off the playlist as planned, but a few weeks prior, I saw that Skybox, a local band that I had worked with on a show the Spring before, was releasing their first full-length CD the Friday after my first show. I really enjoyed them and they got a lot of praise at the show, so I reached out on MySpace (myyyyyyyspaaaaaaace) and asked them to come in and play a few songs and promote since it happened to be the same week. As it were, Skybox had very little to do with ska or punk, but with The Blaze's local show up in question and having done a few misc. in-studios during the Fall, I figured it would be fun.

The morning of the 22nd rolls around and I'm on my way to my horrible retail job, bright and early at 10AM. I have a bad habit of turning off my phone before I go to sleep because my friends have bad habits of texting me at 2AM, so I didn't look at my phone until I stopped at the gas station and saw about 4 missed calls from Tim, the lead singer of Skybox. I check my messages and hear:

"Hey Ashley, it's Tim. So, we're outside The Blaze right now and it's locked. It's about 7:30AM, which I think is when you said to come in but no one's really here, so yeah, call me back."

I quickly called back, freaked out that I had told them 7:30AM, even through I meant 7:30PM. I talk to Tim who realized that their drummer had misread my message (that did say PM) and they had all gotten up, battled their hangovers, and were ready to play at 7:30AM on a Sunday. This still goes down as one of my favorite stories from The Basement. Ever.

Needless to say, they all went home and went back to bed, came back and did an incredible set between my ska/punk music (since I didn't really have a formula at that point) and provided the very first recording of the show that they had up on their MySpace for a while, the songs "Crickets" and "Batman on Crack". "Crickets" is the song featured on Sounds from The Basement and is a fuzzy, organic tune with so much amazing instrumentation, it takes a few listens just to pick up everything that was going on in round-robin they set up in the room.

Ultimately, this performance inspired me to change the format of my show to one hour ska/punk, one hour local music and bring in more guests as the semester progressed. Eventually (as we all do) I grew out of ska/punk music and as I dug deeper into the local scene, I decided to dedicate the entire show to local music and a weekly live performance/interview. Skybox made me realize the kind of resource I had and the good people I could work with and expose some great music.

Skybox has since moved to Chicago (and MO, respectively), gone through a few line-up changes and shifted the direction of the music. They are gearing up to release their next full-length, with the lead track "In a Dream" released for free on their website and is an incredible example of what this band is capable of. They continue to play shows in the Chicago-land area (including recently with Ben Folds) and I am anxious to see what's next.

Check out more at:
www.skyboxmusic.com
www.myspace.com/skybox
www.purevolume.com/theblaze1260am to download "Crickets" for free.

In a Dream

Photos from the first episode of "The Basement"
1/22/06:

The very first playlist

More playlist, more ska ska ska

Skybox performance (and not enough headphones, as always)

Skybox and I, them holding an "I Listen to The Blaze 1260AM" license plate holder, me wearing stupid pants

Goodbye "Sounds from the Basement"

So begins my triumphant return to blogging . . .

Many of you who knew me in college knew that I worked at The Blaze, ASU campus radio during all four years. And those of you who were around near my final semester probably saw about 9,000 messages about my show "The Basement" and a compilation of live performances that has been available online called "Sounds from the Basement".
www.purevolume.com/theblaze1260am

Each week I would bring in a local Arizona band and sit down, talk about their music, play album tracks and give them the mic for 30 minutes to play an acoustic set. It felt like a waste to have all of these saved up just for me, so I put them all up for FREE download on PureVolume and had a nice release show at Modified (which coincidentally was my last show in Phoenix). It was a great night with great friends and the compilation has existed as a time-stamp on some of the bands that have made huge waves in the last year or so since it's been out : What Laura Says, Dear and the Headlights, Kinch, Skybox, This Century, Raining and OK, Captain Squeegee, Matt Reveles and more.

In order to post all of these for download (about 17 total, plus videos and pictures) I had to buy a subscription to PureVolume, which expires on September 15, 2009. I've decided to take the page down entirely at that point not only to say goodbye for myself, but to let the music exist where it did and encourage the next wave of whatever that is to continue on.

If you are interested in hearing some really cool, organic tunes, you now have approximately 30 days to visit, stream and download. I had a conversation wih a friend about what band may put Arizona on the map again, and you have about 17 here that have a fair shot. You decide.

That being said, I'm going to update my blog each day with either a picture or video from the bands featured and some that aren't and share some stories about them as I had gotten to know them over the years. I want to introduce you to some new music that just so happens to be concentrated into this one compilation. I hope, even if only for a few people, that it's a reminder that music exists through PEOPLE, not a machine, and college radio is as organic as you will get. For those of you who have just met me in New York, this pretty much meant the world to me, and will probably always make me the most proud as I continue on in music.

Time starts . . . now.
-Ashley