In Case I Needed More Proof That My Childhood Has Been Shot and Dumped in a River But I Am Secretly Okay With It (A Music Review)

In my "Hurrr Durrr I Likez Da Muzikz" series, I delve into my "musical DNA" - the formative structure that defines my musical tastes/jackassery. I haven't reached the part where I discuss the impact of the band Linkin Park on all that (hint: it's large) but suffice it to say that against all other reason, I've stuck by the band, although my affection has dwindled over the years.

Remember Hybrid Theory? I certainly do. For better or worse, my favorite guitar drop-tuning (drop-C#) came from this album - Brad Delson used this tuning pretty exclusively (other than a 7-string on "With You" and Eb standard on "Forgotten") on that album and their follow-up (2003's Meteora), and arguably this album is what pulled me into rock music and its derivatives, because of the blend of rap and rock. Okay, not ground-breaking there, part of their popularity came precisely because in a saturated nu-metal/rap-rock market around the turn of the decade, they stood out over the aggro-frat boy antics of Limp Bizkit and the creepy-weird angst of Korn mostly on the strength of really, really tight production (Don Gilmore is in no way an earth-shattering producer, but it's hard to argue with his track record) and an accessibility that other bands didn't offer. Your mom probably knew who Linkin Park was, and she might have felt a vague sense of unease, but you could reasonably play their music without her totally freaking out. AND it sold 24 million copies this past decade, so...

But okay. Hybrid Theory and Meteora appealed to 13 - 16 year-old me, what with my "angst" and all, even as the post-hardcore/emo craze took over and bands like Linkin Park became passe, I stuck by them. I learned songcraft and some guitar from those first two albums; it never occurred to me that "getting" LP songs might not be such an accomplishment, after all. Still, you listen to my first album, you can hear the influence. I studied their DVDs, tried to emulate Brad Delson's guitar sound, tried to push my voice to sound like Chester Bennington's, and counted Mike Shinoda amongst my musical heroes for his multi-talented approach to music (emceeing, guitar, effects, production - I dunno. He just seemed to know what was going on.)

But what's interesting is that in the interceding time between Meteora and Minutes to Midnight in 2007, my tastes had shifted. I still counted Linkin Park among my "top 5" (at the time it probably would have been Thrice, Linkin Park, Metallica, Nirvana and... Alice in Chains? I had gotten into U2, but they weren't as heavily weighing on me at that point) but I was nervous about where MTM was going fall in the scheme of the new music scene, where flashy guitar and drums had become en vogue compared to concise chunks of slick production. You had Shinoda's solo project, Fort Minor, pretty much confirming what we already knew - he's a pretty okay rapper, decent songwriter, good producer, but you had to wonder if that was going to inform the direction of MTM.

And as it turned out, Minutes to Midnight wasn't really what anyone was expecting. With Rick Rubin attached, expectations were already high - and what came out was an emphasis on... politics? Kind of?

It was confusing. No one really knew how to react to it. "Leave Out All The Rest" sounded like a Savage Garden song, "No More Sorrow" sounded like a wanna-be Black Album-era Metallica, and really, where was Mike Shinoda? The interplay between the two vocalists was missing - the closest you heard to HT-era music was on "Bleed It Out." Some wondered if Fort Minor had siphoned away the rap, some wondered if there was really any "rage" for them to draw on - when your first two albums (plus remix album) are all multi-platinum, what, exactly, do you have be mad about?

Personally, I regretted having purchased the "deluxe" version of the album (with the "making-of" DVD) - it set my expectations too high. But I felt a little bit more even-handed/pragmatic in my assessment of the album: there couldn't be a final word on this album until the next one, 'til we saw the path they would follow and we could go, okay, that's why, that's where they were going, and maybe then it would make sense.

SO OKAY THEN. What are the haps, my friends?

Linkin Park of the first half of last decade is gone. Time to bury the body. You're not going to hear another "One Step Closer" or "In The End." The balanced blend of rap-rock is gone. Hell, I'm not even sure how much "analog" guitar/drums there is on most of this album - they've very much embraced a synth-driven electronic sound, for better or worse. And so judging it by judging the direction they took on Minutes to Midnight, yeah, the seeds were sown there. Remember how any guitar you heard was less about crunchy power chords and you saw Brad Delson using worn Stratocasters(?!)? Yeah, your drop-tuned PRS/Ibanez into Dual Rectifier days aren't coming back.

The identity of the band, as such, has always been focused on its dual frontmen, but in earlier days, there was still the sense that Linkin Park was a traditional band, not a concept/studio project. You could make the case that they tried to become "even more" of a traditional rock band on MTM, but on A Thousand Suns, I don't get that faceless group anonymity of a band at all. The showcasing is pretty firmly on the vocalists and the instrumentation supports that. You thought Minutes to Midnight was poppy? A Thousand Suns is a techno-pop album with smatterings of rock instrumentation.

Yes, "old school" Linkin Park fans, you're going to be butt-hurt because your rage isn't reflected in what you hear. It's time to grow up. Meantime, Linkin Park apologists: you know you don't actually win points for defending the band no matter what, right? Like, Mike Shinoda's not gonna show up on your doorstep after you post your 30th "OMG1! STFU if u dont like LP LP rulez 4eva" and hug you. (Probably.)

That said, if you come into this album with low expectations, you'll be... maybe not pleasantly surprised, but it turns out better than you'd think. The spoken-word interludes fall flat for me, but tracks like "When They Come For Me," "Blackout," "Wretches and Kings" have the kind of fire to them that you heard on "Bleed It Out" and are probably the closest nods to old school high-energy LP tracks. Unfortunately, these are also probably the STANDOUT tracks overall, other than a sort of random acoustic closer ("The Messenger") which, again, doesn't feel like it's so much a Linkin Park track as a Chester Bennington solo song. "The Catalyst," the first single off the album, is probably the most representative track of the entire album overall - there's still some rock instrumentation towards the end (though it's reminiscent of the boring U2-wannabe feel of "What I've Done), you have a vocal blend of Shinoda and Bennington, and it's got the electronic feel dominating the rest of the album. "Burning in the Skies," "Robot Boy," "Waiting for the End," and "Iridescent" sadly all sound about the same - a bland mix of Pop-era U2. It's almost as if you're having to hear "Shadow of the Day" (the very boring fifth track on Minutes to Midnight) four more times, and while Bennington has one of the more recognizable voices in modern rock, it's not THAT special to where I want to hear him crooning and crooning and crooning... unfortunately, as I mentioned before, this is probably a good indicator of what he will sound like from now on. They're not terrible songs; they're just terribly indistinctive.

I can accept this now. In some ways, it's almost as if Linkin Park were a dying relative, with MTM the diagnosis and battle of a terminal disease, and A Thousand Suns is the acceptance and dignified death. As other reviewers have mentioned, the majority of the band is on the better side of their thirties, and the empire they built on neatly-trimmed angst isn't even crumbling; rather, it's quietly faded away. The best thing you can do is acknowledge what they meant to you, celebrate what's still there, and continue moving on. There is nothing life or death important to be found here; it's just an album.

HURRR DURRR I LIKES DA MUZIKS (A series)

(Note: there is a very strong possibility that I abandon this after one or two posts. I apologize in advance... this is also why I'm not very good at building fences [HEYOHHHHHHHHHH].)

Because I tend to be (in my own mind, at least) exceptionally narcissistic and self-ruminating, the journey of my musical tastes tends to be a topic of frequent interest (again, to myself... okay, shut up. I spend a lot of time thinking and not talking. Probably for the best.)

I always find it amusing when I read the profiles of musicians in whom I have something greater than or equal to a passing interest; without fail, there is always a parent involved who "constantly played X" (where X = your choice of the Beatles, Stones, The Who, Zeppelin, 50's Chess Records bluesmen, Motown, etc.) Somehow this awakens their musical ear, or is some sort of sleeping giant seed waiting to burst into bloom, and maybe they take after a parent or relative or older sibling's desire/penchant for a particular instrument, or it's a church thing... okay, so maybe it's a little varied, but basically, it would appear that there's kind of a formula, based on the above factors, that inevitably plays out.

Hmmm. Perhaps this is why I am not a rockstar.

I remember the musical stylings of 99.3, KWAY-FM, out of Waverly, IA, somewhere between the ages of 3 and 5. It was, if I remember correctly, an adult-contemporary/light-rock format... and basically I seem to recall a lot of Whitney Houston, late-80's soft rock, and Kenny G. SO OKAY, we know that's not how I got started. But that was basically what I recall on the radio of my mom's car or in the house, at that age.

Fine. So fast-forward 2 years, different house, and now I recall... Barry Manilow? Good lord, "Copacabana." (One wonders what the statue of limitations is on child cruelty charges, in that regard. Thanks, Mom.) She had a greatest hits tape of his, but she also either had The Police's "Greatest Hits" tape or... it might have just been Synchronicity, now that I think about it, since to this day, the songs off of that album tend to be the most familiar of their work. Apparently, she also had at least one U2 album (War), but I don't recall hearing that.

I mean, the funny thing is, and I'm sure I'm not alone in this regard, music was just a weird concept to me when I was that age. I guess I understood that someone MADE the music, obviously, and I knew about bands, but my concept of rock bands was that they were scary, potentially evil groups of people. (The relative hilarity of this world view is doubly compounded for me by the fact that my parents, at the age I am NOW and younger, listened to BANDS. I mean, yes, they came of age in the late 70's/early 80's, and you had the slickly-produced artists [as individuals, I guess?], and perhaps they weren't necessarily into hair bands or punk rock or anything along those lines, but I mean... I don't even know what I mean. I WAS APPARENTLY KIND OF FUCKING SHELTERED, METHINKS.) Hell, for all I knew, the DJs I grew up hearing were just kind of picking music at their leisure and in whatever manner contented them; maybe music was just kind of a THING that happened and came out of nowhere. Anyway, I guess my point, as far as that goes, is that the eventually love affair and/or obsession I would come to have with music was not something that would have been easily predicted or even indicated by my behavior or the behavior of those around me as a young'un.

So I was maybe 8 or 9 and I remember perhaps becoming aware of music as its own thing, separate from the tastes of adults, something that I could actually understand as a CREATION of sorts. Naturally, I was turned on to this by...

...Green Day. Oh, and Coolio... and also Weird Al. (In fact, it's likely that I was introduced to Weird Al prior to Coolio, which really put a mind-boggling spin on "Gangsta's Paradise" for me. Also, yes, I was functionally retarded.)

Yeah.

So the neighbor kid across the street, child of a divorced mom (and of course, by the logic of my strict Catholic upbringing, partially and painfully predicated towards SIN NO MATTER WHAT) basically could watch, listen to, and play whatever the hell he wanted. I don't remember watching much in the way of TV over there, but I'm pretty sure I saw my first pair of bared adult breasts thanks to this kid (w00t?) and of course there was ORIGINAL Quake (HELLSPAWN!!!), and yes, Green Day's Dookie, which he had on CD, along with Weird Al's Bad Hair Day.

There was something in the snottiness of Billie Joe Armstrong's voice, something dangerous, and initially I was hesitant to pay too much attention to the songs because I could only assume that naughty things were being said. (The fact that this is, you know, kind of true, especially on "Longview," is besides the point.) What I love is, at the time, just based on the sound of "Amish Paradise," not the words, there was a definite feeling of unease for me, like I was doing something forbidden - maybe, I imagine, not all that different from hearing the first rock and roll records in the 1950's. But that was basically that.

I started playing viola in 4th grade, for reasons I'm still somewhat unclear on. In fact, thinking back on it, this seems like another decision, conscious or not, to just be a little bit different from what everyone else might be expecting of me. I know it caught my parents off guard - I hadn't shown any musical tendencies prior to this, and I'm sure they expected to suffer through your classic screechy starter instrument sounds before I finally gave up on it and went back to being a bookworm and... doing whatever else I did at the age of 9.

But they were wrong. I think after a few weeks I had a bit of a chip on my shoulder; in traditional orchestration, the viola's role is one of support and harmony, unlike your violins and cellos, those traditional carriers of melody - but my already formidable ego wasn't having that. I could already sense that the violinists received more attention than the violists from our instructor; we played in a clef that no other instrument used, and when I proudly told questioning adults that I played viola, more frequently than not this proclamation was followed with an explanation of what exactly a viola was. If anything, all of this made me hunker down even more, cling more tightly to this instrument of mine, especially when the great migration of musicians to BAND instruments occurred the next year.

EVERYONE was in band. All my friends, some of the "cool kids," whatever - string orchestra was the second-class citizen of the musical hierarchy at both the elementary and middle-school levels. Somehow, it was an upright, quasi-patriotic *snort*, even "more masculine" thing to be in band, to be a wind player or a brass player or percussionist, but to be a string player automatically cast some sort of "fag" shadow on you. Or at least that's how I perceived things. (Projected insecurities FOR THE WINZORS!!)

Well, whatever. Now, I could have really taken this to its extreme, pushed my parents for private lessons, practiced obsessively outside of school, attempted to teach myself music theory, but... well, I'm lazy. Maybe not lazy, but my time seemed better spent reading, or playing sports (poorly) outside with neighborhood kids, or slowly developing my fascination with (and misguided attempts to woo) the opposite sex. Fine. So what ended up happening was that I never learned how to read outside of the alto clef, time and key signatures remained vaguely frightening entities/major-pains-in-the-asses foisted upon me by my sadistic orchestra instructor, and the idea that any of this shit could actually be rationally tied together in some coherent manner didn't ever cross my mind.

I mean, I can't completely blame the public school system for not fully educating me in the ways of music - at a time where a good share of public schools didn't even HAVE publicly-funded music programs to offer to students, I was probably relatively spoiled in that regard, BUT, by that same token, music was taught in an assembly-line fashion: "learn your role (part), perform it correctly at the right time, end result is a performance with few mistakes." Our instructor's job, in other words, was not to educate and open our eyes on the wider world of music, but rather to make sure that we didn't make him look terrible at our semi-annual concerts, a trend I would note into my years of playing in high school (and partially why I quit.)

So while all that was happening, I at some point started to consciously develop my own music taste, of sorts. Mind you, it was still mostly influenced by what I could hear on the radio - for whatever reason (okay, we were poor, I guess) my family NEVER owned a CD player until 1997 or 1998, but ANYWAY, the station in question was basically a "best of 80's, 90's, and today" (which I find to be odd, given that this was STILL IN the 90's, but whatever) and what I really remember sticking out was the occasional 80's song. Yes. Once again, I had managed to shoehorn myself into another oddity, becoming probably the only 10-11 year-old in 1998 who would readily admit to loving the music that my parents listened to in college... thanks, Friday Night Flashback on Mix 96. No joke, I could easily identify most 80's pop hits, but had you played a year-end Top 40, I think I could maybe pick out the name AND artist of a total of 6 songs on there... let alone anything that was more, shall we say, underground, like hip-hop or hard rock. Those just weren't sounds I was hearing in my household... in fact, I recall that as a sixth-grader, we used to have some kind of "bring your own music" on Fridays in my homeroom, and I'm pretty sure I brought in Prince ("When Doves Cry") and Rod Stewart ("Maggie May"??)... Yes. I was a cool kid.

BUT! At the same time, I did acquire a CD player of my own (a cheapie, $25 AZ Jeans-branded one from JCPenny, as I recall) and through a couple of neighbor kids, I acquired Eminem's The Slim Shady LP and The Offspring's Americana... and I think one guy had a good share of Barenaked Ladies' discography, despite the fact that he was a year younger than me. (This same kid is also in prison now for having killed a guy in a gang fight, so... extrapolate from that what you will.) And for Christmas, I somehow ended up getting Weird Al's Running With Scissors, which, hey, was kind of awesome as an 11 year-old. Also, I recall that my dad thought it was hilarious, which was the beginning of a cautious sharing of music tastes that continues to this day.

What I remember is that at that point, I definitely recognized the "danger" in listening to Eminem and The Offspring. I still wasn't at a point where I recognized artists as more than just their songs, and there was definitely not the celebrity/larger-than-life factor for me at that point, but I was starting to take some sort of possession of my musical taste - if nothing else, it was your typical adolescent separation syndrome, maybe. I definitely had to hide what I was listening to, lest I incur the wrath of my ever-so-pious parents...

OH! And then boy bands happened. This, yes, I do remember quite well... and I suppose that's maybe where I started to make the connection between the music I heard and the "people" as I saw them. Mostly, I think, in the rabidly-retarded reactions that I saw from the girls in my age range, and in desperately (but on the down low!) listening to these songs and trying to UNDERSTAND what it was that meant so much to these creatures whose attention I craved.

[On the face of it now, I understand it much better - it was mostly image, excellent marketing, and some very well-written/produced pop schlock that came together in a perfect storm that also proved to be very profitable for the record industry... the ultimate in the shit not only sticking to the wall, but smelling like ROSES (cash?) as well.]

Naturally, me being Mr. Devil's Advocate/Contrarian Extraordinare, I had to find something in opposition (if for no other reason to at least attract attention by being argumentative. Um. This is also a strategy I have yet to have abandoned.) BOY WAS I IN LUCK. The neighbor kids were at this time getting into rap, so evidently this is what I chose to embrace (the alternative was not hanging out with them, but since most of my school friends lived a 15-minute car ride away and it was like pulling teeth to get my parents to drive me anywhere, you had to work with what you had available) - although, in all honesty, I never actually GOT INTO rap, in the sense that I knew who the hell I was listening to or what they were rapping about (aside from Eminem - and I think the reason for that was, as I *think* Chuck Klosterman once noted, I could actually understand what he was rapping), but if nothing else, it was the slightly discernible background noise that would inform the music direction I started to get into...

But we'll save that for the next time. (Next... post. Whatever.)

Thusly, I leave you all stranded in the year 1999.