The Honesty of 90s Lead-Singer Rock 'Dancing'

I am an 80s kid, I lip-synced to Madonna and Fresh Prince at sleepovers, I wore neon legwarmers, and I crimped my hair. I watched Sunday morning cartoons and was scarred by Bowie's pants in Labyrinth.  I loved Return of the Jedi best based solely on the Ewoks.

I was a kid in the 80s. But I was a teenager in the 90s, and that's when I fell in love with music.

Recently my room-mate and I went on a 90s-music-video-binge. On this particular occasion it was sparked by the mention of Train's first-time-around hit Meet Virginia, and how much better it was than their recent Hey Soul Sister. Now admittedly this opinion is largely based on Meet Virginia having a time and a place for us, a sense of nostalgia, but it is also because the lead singer just looks creepy in the newer video! No, its not because he is older, its not because he looks like a messed-up version of Uncle Jesse on Full House, its because of his dancing.

Despite their recent rebirth, Train is a 90s band. The lead singer is a 90s singer. He should dance like he's a 90s singer in a 90s band, not all choreographed and slow and smooth! The 90s, especially Alternative Rock in the 90s, was not about smooth dance moves (unless you were the Backstreet Boys, whose dance moves were... well slightly more smooth I guess?). 90s Alternative Rock 'Dancing' was all about the grab-the-mic-walk-back-and-forth. Simple? Sure. Kinda dumb looking? Usually. Honest? Most definitely. These guys were singers, not spokesmen, not fashion models, not marketing creations. They were there to sing- not the most groundbreaking, innovative, creative songs in the world, but songs that were about what they were about. Songs about speeding down the highway, songs about recreational drug use, songs about breakin' up and feelin' bad about it. Songs about life. Average, everyday, un-choreographed life.

That's what everyone says right- about the music of their generation? That it was so much more honest, so much more awesome, so much more than 'this crap kids listen to now-a-days.' Except that that's not what I'm saying at all- I like much of the music 'kids listen to now-a-days,' in fact I absolutely adore quite a lot of it! Kate Nash wasn't around when I was a teenager, nor were the Decemberists. Most of the bands I listen to hadn't even met each other pre-2000. But most of them are also magical- they tap into the deeper unseen bits of the dust of the universe and turn it into melancholia, beautiful, and heart-pounding odes to the wonder of everything. That is not what 90s music was about. It was about Rock. It was about fast driving, and parties, and stealin' your best friend's girl. It was about being a 90s teenager, even if you weren't a teenager like that at all.

And it was about honest dancing. It was about mosh pits and jumping and waving your hands in the air while you got covered in sweat that wasn't yours, and ducked so you didn't get an errant shoe in the face. You can see it in all kinds of 90s music videos (from back when Much Music actually still played music videos...), the kinds of videos teenyboppers like Miley Cyrus and Justin Beiber try to replicate all the time. Promise by eve6, Third Eye Blind's Semi-Charmed Life, or The Oaf by Big Wreck all fit the bill- awkward rock dudes with guitars (or basses) stomping around, grabbing their mic stands, taking two steps forward and two steps back, singing their hearts out, lookin' kinda dumb and surprisingly sexy.

Maybe it isn't super-innovative. Maybe it isn't magical, or beautiful or awe-inspiring. But it is honest. Simple, straightforward, and honest. Its my music as much as any of what I listen to now, and I still love it every bit as much as I did back then. Which is a lot.

Soul-Time-Sing-A-Long

I love to sing along with songs. You know this about me (and possibly about yourselves!) though I don't think I wrote that quite properly... it should read:

I LOVE to sing along with songs!!! 

There are many things that make me happy, but this would be top five, maybe even top three.... actually more like top two. I love it so very very much. Very much.

There is something about singing in the car specifically.... in the summer, windows rolled down, driving way over the speed limit, with the music so loud your ears are ringing and singing so loudly that your voice goes hoarse (I actually once sang so enthusiastically to 'Bicycle Race' by Queen while on the way to work that I lost my voice and had to write things down for the whole day...) and I can't even put into words how much joy this brings me. I have tried on several occasions and just never seem to be able to quite capture it... However, on a recent road-trip I re-heard one of my all time favourite songs (I'm not afraid to admit it, its uber 90s alternative, and not exactly the most profound thing ever, but I can't help it, it speaks to my soul!) and was reminded of all of the things I love about singing in the car. As cheese as it is, this experience is so fully encapsulated in Open Road Song that I feel the need to block-quote it...

"I crack a window and feel the cool air cleanse my every pore, as I pour my poor heart out to a radio song that's patient and willing to listen, my volume drowns it out. Yeah but that's okay, 'cuz I sound better than him anyway, any day. Yeah my voice is sweet as salt. I search for comfort and I find it where I found it many times before, though times before can be forgotten..."

Its the singing-along part! The you-drowning-out-the-music part!  The finding-comfort-in-pouring-your-heart-out part!

Back in high school all of my car-songs needed to be of a certain type to be able to 'work'- loud, fast, rock. Thats's what car music was to me, but my car-music tastes have broadened vastly in the interim... From Sons and Daughters by the Decemberists to Valley Town by Elliott Brood they have widened to include songs that paint sweeping vistas, that use intricate harmonies and gut-grabbing melodies, not just those that are loud and fast. And yet the all important lyrical factor has remained unchanged. I know many people who would disagree with me on this, but lyrics are as important to a song as the melody, the production values, or the instruments its played on.

I sing along with songs. You need good lyrics to sing along to, and I need to sing along for a song to be real to me. Singing along is how songs seep into my soul and become an inseparable part of me. Its how they transport me in time (Semi-Charmed Life), its how they make me homesick (Oh Alberta), its how they make my heart burst (Wake Up)...

Two of my current favourites are Ghosts by Laura Marling and Gentleman by Said the Whale. Neither are all epic, neither are all loud, neither are what one might call all hard-core... but both have absolutely sweet and beautiful lyrics that melt my insides when I hear them and even more so when I sing along.

Whether the song is quietly beautiful or heart-thumpingly exciting- that feeling of flying down the open road, singing at the top of your lungs.... perfection.

Melancholia and Music

Sometimes its nice to feel sad. Not usually, usually its not nice to feel sad. Usually something happens, there's some sequence of events that makes it feel like your life is spinning out of control or like you just don't know what to do... Something immensely personal and upsetting gets you down and you just can't run away from it, because its inside of you. Sometimes what makes you sad isn't inside of you, its not something you can run away from, but it is something that affects more than just you, something that seems bad now, but might be okay later on. And sometimes, every once in a while, its kind of nice to feel like life holds some sort of beautiful mystery that will always elude you, like all of the things that seem not-so-great will one day be revealed to be the self same things that led to wonderment and joy.

I'm not good with definitions. I tend to make up my own very specific meanings for words and be willing to argue them 'till the cows come home ("an ass is not a dork, nor is a knob the same thing as a dink" will take me long into the wee hours of the morning...). This is by way of saying that this second kind of sadness, this one-day-it-will-be-important-that-this-sadness-happened type of sadness is what I imagine melancholia to be. And this type of sadness, this melancholia has, of late, been captured for me in the beautiful song Oh My God by the Wooden Sky.

Hauntingly beautiful and quietly sad, its made me feel like crying my eyes out and smiling my face off all day long.  Thank you Canadian music, thank you small timey bands, thank you art for once again proving your awesomeness....