Music That Has Changed My Life Vol. I

For several weeks I have been thinking about starting a column talking about some of the music that has my life. Since music has been such an important aspect of my life since I was about twelve hopefully this column will help some of you get to know me better. For this installment I am focusing on three particular songs. In the future I may talk about an entire album or an entire band. We shall see how this column evolves over time. Enjoy.

"Good Vibrations" - The Beach Boys - SMiLE

I really could not tell you the first time I heard this song, but I know that it was not until I was twelve or thirteen that I associated it with The Beach Boys. Perhaps I had heard it on the radio or on one of my dad’s tapes, but I do know that I saw this video at some point. Fast forward sixteen or seventeen years. This past summer I downloaded a stereo reconstruction of the unreleased Beach Boys album SMiLE by the bootleg group Purple Chick. (If anybody wants this collection, let me know and I will get it to you.) Now, “Good Vibrations” was never officially an album track, but because of the time period and studio production style it has been included on this compilation. What makes this bootleg version incredible is that it is a stereo reconstruction from numerous sources. The original was only released in mono. The stereo version just comes alive and sounds so full. It is much easier to appreciate the complexity of the arrangement and the color provided by the instrumentation, not to mention the lush harmonies.

I am not really sure why I like this song so much but it is quite emotive. The song is full of joy and love but there is also an underlying melancholy. Great music, like great poetry, is ambiguous and open to multiple interpretations.

“Victim” – Sunfall Festival – Monday 23

For those of you that know the story of Sunfall Festival, it pains me to know that they are probably the best band Utah has ever produced and hardly anybody knows about them. For those of you that do not know their story, I will briefly summarize. (You can go to their website and poke around and read about them.) Basically, they were a local Provo band. Scott Wiley, the guitar player, had studied sound engineering so they knew what they were doing onstage and in the studio. They recorded a demo of a new song, and kind of as a joke one of the band members loaded it up to garageband.com and entered it into a competition. A few months later they realized their song was climbing the charts on the site and they eventually won a $250,000 recording contract. I have heard differing stories from reputable sources that explain why they did not accept the contract, but in the end it did not work out. Any way, I was able to see them twice at Muse Music when they came out of semi-retirement to release a CD they produced with Paul Fox and then they called it quits.

Any way, the second Amy Gileadi’s harmony vocals come in, I am pulled into the emotion of the song. The lyrics are powerful yet simple. They are specific yet somehow universal. For whatever reason, this song speaks to me. I see so much of myself in the person to whom this song is directed. “Once you’re a victim, you’re always one.”

“A Shot in the Arm” – Jeff Tweedy – 1999-03-05; Palantine, IL; Harper College
“A Shot in the Arm” – Wilco – Summerteeth Demos

Included here is a solo acoustic version and a studio demo version to demonstrate how a solo acoustic song can be warped and changed with the addition of a band. Both versions stand strong on their own. One of my favorite things about Jeff Tweedy is that he can stand in front of an audience with just an acoustic guitar or with his band and the power of the song is about the same. “A Shot in the Arm” is an incredibly strong song. The chord progression is straightforward and almost simplistic. I think there are only four chords in the whole song. The melody is also very strong. What amazes me about this song is that there are three lyrical hooks: “Maybe all I need is a shot in the arm”; “Something in my veins, bloodier than blood”; and “What you once were isn’t what you want to be anymore.” The repetition of these three lines drives the song and the urgency of the message. This repetition is also mimicked in the piano lines. The musicality just blows me away.

I have to thank Doug for (re)introducing me to Wilco in April or May of 2006. They are probably my favorite band right now. I mean, The Beatles, U2, Led Zeppelin, and Pearl Jam will all have a special place but Wilco is my band now. As an adult, they are the only band to make me feel like I was discovering music again for the first time. That’s how important they are to me now. In fact, I regret not having their music in my life earlier, even though I had plenty of opportunities to get into them. I knew who Wilco was in high school when A.M. came out but I did not really get into the whole alt.country thing. I still remember seeing the album cover to A.M. in Media Play. Sometime after the mission I download a solo version of Jeff Tweedy covering “I’m Only Sleeping” by The Beatles and I thought that was pretty cool. Then in 2002 I heard some people talk about the brilliance of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot but I did not pay much attention. A year later, I was at Muse Music talking about possibly seeing R.E.M. at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Denver. (I ended up not going.) Corey Fox, the owner of Muse, said something to the effect that he was more excited about seeing Wilco, who was opening for R.E.M. Although Corey was kind of a cool guy, he was an aging hipster so I disregarded a lot of what he thought was cool. I really regret having judged his comments.

Then we moved to Nashville. Perhaps it was the complete upheaval of my life that allowed me to open myself up to new music. In April or May of 2006, Doug sent me Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. I listened to it several times, I immediately liked “Pot Kettle Black,” but because I was busy with school and depressed I did not sit up and take notice of the artistic brilliance of the album. When I was in Rio de Janeiro that summer I met a guy named Jonathan Risner who was a huge Wilco / Jeff Tweedy fan. He told me that if I ever had the chance, I should see Jeff Tweedy play a solo show. Guess what? January 17, 2007 is a day I will always regret. Jeff Tweedy played in Nashville. From what I’ve heard and read, it wasn’t his best solo show, but if I could go back in time, I would have gone to that show and then I would’ve driven to Knoxville to see him two weeks later. Why did I not go, you may ask? Well, see, I had my Portuguese M.A. reading exam on January 27. I guess I thought I could not sacrifice a night of studying to see a show. Boy was I wrong. It really was not until this past summer that I really got into Wilco – downloading studio demo sessions, bootlegs, alternate mixes, buying books, DVDs, etc. When Wilco announced a summer / fall tour for their new album Sky Blue Sky, I was disappointed to see they had not added Nashville to their itinerary. I played with the idea of flying to Salt Lake and then driving to Denver and seeing the show with Doug or maybe my Dad. That idea never panned out. Then I finally realized they were playing Louisville, KY. Why, that’s only two and a half hours from Nashville! I’m sure we would’ve had better seats if I had noticed this fact when the tour was announced, but it didn’t matter. Aimee and I saw Wilco. It was great. The concert did not change my life, but my life is certainly much richer because of Wilco's music.