Episode 38 – The rot at the roots is the root of the problem…

Welcome to Songs That Don’t Suck, with your host Mark Bradbourne.

Welcome to episode 38 of Songs That Don’t Suck. Thank you for checking out the episode, as always.

One of the big things that I stated in episode zero way back when the podcast started was that social sharing of music ended when streaming took over as the main music consumption method. Because I believe in having discussion based in data, I did some searching for data and how people find music today, and I actually found one. So let’s dive into it a little bit. Now the thing that I found most shocking from this survey, which was done fairly recently, it was Q3 of 2022, it stated that only 15% of people find it difficult to find new music, which basically says 85% of people are okay with the way they find music. Now kind of looking into the demographics of it and the sources, one of the main discovery sources is YouTube, and that is followed by radio, except in the case of Gen Z, which the data showed that TikTok is number two.

Now when you think about these, YouTube is algorithm based as is TikTok, and radio is force fed by major labels. So really the only time you’re going to find music outside of your listening niche is when there are viral moments that happen in society. A good example of this was when Metallica was quote unquote discovered by this new generation of listeners when their music was featured in Stranger Things. The streaming platforms and their algorithms keep listeners in their niche for the most part. So while only 85% of listeners don’t think it’s hard to find new music, they are being fed music that they are already a fan of from a genre point of view.

Now I know for me, over the years my musical tastes have changed a great deal. When I was a kid, I listened to the vinyl that was in the house, right? My parents Motown Records, there was a couple of Village People singles. I ordered a Boxcar Willie vinyl off of TV. But that was kind of the music that I had, that’s what I listened to. Then I discovered FM radio and I was recording songs off the radio on cassette tapes, but I lived in a small town, so unless it was in the top 40, I wasn’t hearing it. Then on a trip to England, my cousin introduced me to Heavy Metal, which led me into Glam Metal and Hard Rock and Prog Rock. I was watching Headbanger’s Ball every week to catch all of those metal acts. And then MTV introduced me to Grunge when Pearl Jams Alive made the rotation on Headbanger’s Ball much to Ricky Rackman’s disgust. Then when I got into college, country music crept in and this was all due to the people around me. I was being exposed to new people and they had new musical tastes and we would go do different things and you were exposed to different things. And no algorithm could do that, right? It’s organic growth, it’s change in musical tastes.

It’s very magical when you really think about it, how chance can bring you to different points in time and points in musical taste. The podcast process has continued my musical taste transformation. Transformation might be the wrong word here, but I continue to find new artists to dive into, right? There’s definitely things that I like if you listen to the podcast, you know this. But the data showed that this is actually a generational trait. Gen X and older millennials were the last generations who experienced radio as a primary source of discovery, which they found caused us to engage more deeply with an artist and getting into, you know, the deeper catalog versus the transactional song-based relationship that younger generations are experiencing. The younger generations and music today is consumed very much on a song basis. People don’t sit down and listen to an album anymore, it just doesn’t happen that way. The whole thing is just extremely interesting. And I’m probably going to dive more into this survey at a later date, but I feel justified in what I said during episode zero.

Let’s jump into this week’s brain bending cover, shall we? This one is from the one and only Frank Zappa, covering a song only he has the massive balls and incredible music ability to cover, and it is Stairway to Heaven from Led Zeppelin. This comes from the 1991 album, which was from a series of four concerts I believe that were done in 1988. This particular album was called Best Band That You’ve Never Heard in Your Life, and it focused on the covers that he played during those shows. Now, when it comes to covers, there are some songs that are pretty sacred when it comes to other artists covering them. You’ve got to have massive stones or a massive ego. Either way, you’ve got to have massive musical skills to do that song justice, or you’re going to get torched.

Frank Zappa is and was a musical genius. His voice to me, I believe, is severely underrated. His composition and creativity were just off the charts, and giving Stairway to Heaven a reggae feel with these dashes of musical chaos thrown in by the way of these odd sounds and vocalizations that were happening, the horn arrangement that he did, the guitar solo, and then towards the end, when the song gets really heavy, this second vocalist sings that heavier section, and then they both harmonize on the end, and it is freaking magical. And then bear in mind, this is all happening live in 1988. There’s no backing tracks. There’s no sequencing. This is all happening with real humans playing instruments and doing things, and I can only imagine how incredible that would have been to be in the stage, or not in the stage, but in the crowd, watching what was happening on stage, it had to be mind-blowing. As you’re listening to this, yes, if you’re not familiar with Frank Zappa, very avant-garde, for sure, and he’s not for everybody, but if you’ve never checked him out, I suggest you to get out of your comfort zone and do so. I remember the first time I was exposed to him. Someone gave me a copy of Joe’s Garage, Volume 1, 2, and 3, and I was completely blown away. I do not remember who gave that to me to check out, but thank you, first of all, because it caused me to dive into more of his work, and I ended up getting really enamored with a song that he and the band did called The Black Page. It was primarily written for drums and percussion, and it was known for being nearly impossible to play. It earned the name The Black Page because the sheet music was so dense with notes. The page was basically black. So if you want to listen to it, there are live versions recorded, which is insane to think about, again, because it’s literally written to be nearly impossible to play. But there are three different drummers who have recorded it. Terry Bozio is one of them, and I forget the other two, but it’s crazy. Check out Frank’s Zappa. Like his catalogue, there’s some really, really good stuff out there.

All right, before we get into new music, I got a little story to share. Despite what my mother thought, I did not eat cake this weekend. I saw cake in concert. Now, how does one describe cake to someone who is not familiar with cake? I struggled with that. I had a dentist appointment on the Thursday before the show, and she asked me what I was doing this weekend, and I said, oh, I’m going to see cake in concert. And she’s like, who’s that? And after I finished Dying of Old Age, I stumbled a little bit and tried to explain what they do, but I failed. So I ended up pulling out my phone, and I played a couple of hits. I think I played The Distance for her, and then I played I Will Survive, which is their cover of the Gloria Gaynor song. And she kind of recognized that once I felt a little bit less dead, but still pretty much dead. But what I’ve discovered is that cake really defies his description. If you think about it, they have this lead singer who live sings in a completely different time signature and melody structure than he does on the albums, and it makes the sing-alongs a happy ball of chaos when it’s live. On occasion during the show, he will play an acoustic guitar, and it sounds like it’s being channeled through an old AM radio. It’s got this fantastic tinny quality to it. And then he also plays the Vibra slap on occasion. And then there’s this other guy who plays keyboards, and sometimes he plays hand percussion. Most of the time he’s playing trumpet, but then there’s also the more traditional members of the band playing drums, bass, and electric guitar. And when you put it all together, it’s this truly genre-bending amazing thing that happens. Now this was the first time I’d seen them live, and honestly, I thought it was truly incredible. And this was the last show of this tour. I hope it was not their last tour, because I really want to go see them again. Really, really good.

All right, let’s get into new music for this week. If this is your first time listening, welcome to the podcast. I’m glad you’re here. Each week I listen to a bunch of songs so you don’t have to. I listen to anywhere between two and 500 songs. I weed out all of the crap, and I try to give you songs that I think you’re going to enjoy. At least they’re the ones I enjoy, and I feel like that’s a fighting chance, right? I’ve got a pretty diverse taste. Now I will admit, the last few episodes I have been in a rut, I’ve been finding the same kind of sounds, and someone pointed it out to me, and I appreciate the feedback. So this week I pushed myself into some different playlists, and I think I’ve succeeded in breaking out of the rut. You guys tell me.

The first song this week is Mother Road from Grace Potter. Grace Potter to me is in the same vein and talent level as Bonnie Raitt. She just hasn’t had her massive radio hit yet, and at this point I guess it has to be a viral moment. Her most streamed song on Spotify is from the Disney movie Tangled. This tune is to me, honestly, right in line with all of the other Grace Potter songs, including stuff that she did under the name Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, which I guess was her band. It dances as a really cool line between rock and country, and it follows what I call the three chords in the truth doctrine. She’s not breaking any barriers or blowing any minds, but she’s creating really, really solid music. This is the title track of the latest album, and she’s describing this album as a reframing of her own history. But when it gets into this personal songwriting, it’s always nice when you can identify with the song, even when it’s in that kind of personal history bucket, right? Lyrically, I really identify with this song. I am a person who drives or rides my motorcycle to clear my mind. If I’ve got something on my mind or if I’m thinking about things or I’m having kind of mental, emotional, like I need a break, that’s what I do. I go drive around, and there’s comfort in driving for me for some reason. I don’t know why, but the one thing I do know is when I go to places that I haven’t visited in a long time, I’ve moved around a lot, so if I go to old hometowns, those memories kind of flood in. The stories bubble up, and I really love the shot of nostalgia that you get from those types of moments, and I guess I attach those to driving, so I love this song for that.

The second song this week is Born for Loving You by Big Thief. Big Thief is a band that I’ve been aware of for many years. I played with a band called The Singular, and a few of the members of that band loved Big Thief. I never got into it, but I was also 10 years older than them, so I don’t know if it was like a maturity thing where I was at her point in my life, whatever, whatever the reason. This song resonated with me, and as I was listening to it, if you know the podcast, you know me. I love a good story in songwriting, and lyrically, this one kind of moves this lovely story around a very deep, meaningful relationship from birth to death, basically. And it covers all the moments in between. There’s the second chorus, or sorry, the second verse, where there’s this awkward teenage description, and they write about from the first kiss to the first fuck. I just don’t think it’s luck. Really kind of clever tongue-in-cheek line, which the first time I heard it, I just smiled, and I was like, okay, I like this. The one thing, though, that I’d never noticed with Big Thief even though I have heard a lot of their music is the vocalists vibrato, and if you’re not familiar with what vibrato is, it’s best described as maybe a little wave that you hear in a voice when the singer holds out a longer note. It’s little moments like that that remind me that there are still musicians out here who are not relying on technology to make things perfect. They’re just out here making art, and I dig that. This song did make me want to jump back into their catalog and explore a little bit, because this marks their fifth album, and I feel like I’m missing out now. Sometimes you’ve got to come back to bands when you’re older, more mature, to appreciate them. You know, the musical tastes change, right? That’s what I was describing at the top of the podcast. The same thing happened to me, honestly, with the black keys. When they first came out, I lived in Akron, where they’re from. Didn’t appreciate them a lot. It was probably three or four albums in where I was listening to them, like, oh, this is fantastic. What the heck was I thinking? So there you go.

The third song this week, Alien Love Call from TurnStyle. Now, the song technically lists TurnStyle, Bad Bad Not Good and Blood Orange as the artists. So I can’t honestly say who’s doing what in this song, but I like it. My first thought when I heard this song is that it really felt old school to me. There’s a tone in the keyboards, which I believe is a Rhodes keyboard, at least that’s what it’s mimicking. The mixing and the mic-ing of the drums gave me a very retro vibe. Again, it could be just technical processing, but those two things together gave this really kind of old school feel to it, which I dug. The vocals are honestly, for me, a little over-processed, but it fits in what I think is going on, because when I dove into the lyrics, I feel like the words, the lyrics, and the voice is just being used as another sound in regards to the instrumentation, which is fine. Sometimes the words don’t have to make sense, because it fits what’s happening musically in the song. Now, me generally, you know, I like lyrics to tell me something, but the feel of this song really kind of carries it. As you’re listening to it, you might hear the drummer shift a little bit, and what he’s doing reminds me a lot of what Stuart Copeland did with the police, especially the cross-stick with kind of the softer grace notes, just screams Stuart Copeland for me. He did that all the time, and he also is doing some kind of more complex ride patterns, which is really tasty. As you move kind of deeper into the song, it changes again, and it gets a little more straight ahead for the solo, and then it dips back into that original feel, and this blistering trumpet solo comes out of nowhere. The entire build and structure of this song is just really cool, because it just kind of flows really nice, there’s some tension that happens, and it’s very interesting to listen to. Again, there’s nothing lyrically here, but the voices with everything else that’s going on makes a really nice package.

The fourth song this week is The Tree from Marin Morris. I can’t say that I’m a huge fan of Marin Morris, but there are songs of hers that I absolutely love. I think she is an incredibly gifted songwriter, and I first became aware of her when my daughter Jenna was playing her song from her, I think it was 2016 album called My Church, and I love that song. Just the metaphor that she pulls lyrically with that song is just fantastic, and I was really taken with her voice the first time I heard it, she’s got amazing power. She can belt notes like nobody’s business, but she’s also got this fantastic gravel quality when she needs it, and it’s just so good. One of the cool things that I noticed, and it happens all the time, but in this song the harmonies are all her, she’s basically layered her own voice, and it reminded me of me being in the studio, I’ve worked with lots of bands, obviously lots of singers, and we would always joke that the best person to vocalize with is yourself, so a lot of times when we would record backing vocals, the rest of the band while we might do it on stage, in the studio the lead singer would sing the harmonies without us, which is fine. The voice quality is the same, so when the different melody notes are sung together it blends beautifully, and this technique is on full display here on the tree, and it just kind of made me smile as I was listening to it. And like big thief singer, Marin has a really nice natural vibrato, but it’s different. Marin’s isn’t as variable, the wave isn’t as large, I don’t know if you know I’m describing that right, but when a singer is belting out the vocal the air is moving through the vocal chord much faster, and it straightens the vibrato out if you will, but you can still hear it if you’re listening closely.

The fifth song this week is Woven from Too Many Temples. Okay, I listen to this song a lot because there is so much going on in the song, so let me try and break it down. So let’s start with the foundation of the song. The foundation of the song is just this acoustic guitar, and it’s playing a very consistent, kind of, we call it a plucking pattern, a picking pattern, in the same chord, and it reminds me of this Beatles song called Tomorrow Never Knows. That song from the Beatles just has a single chord in it, and it’s this guitar, sitar, drone that’s happening, and then the bass part in the vocal and sound effects and reverse tape effects that the producer put together provide the variety of it. Too Many Temples is doing something very similar here. It starts with the acoustic guitar, and then a sitar actually comes in with the drone, and there’s also kind of a sitar lead part that starts to happen a little bit deeper in the song, and then the vocals come in, and as the song continues, they add more and more layers, they add strings, they add a bass guitar, they add additional voices that are singing different melody lines, and then towards the end of the song, there is a moment where the mix flips, so the vocals get pulled down and the instruments kind of flow over the top of it, and it becomes this beautiful wall of sound that would make Phil Specter proud. Really, really cool, like as you kind of listen to it, put headphones on, and just kind of close your eyes and listen to the way that the song is structured, because it’s just, there’s a lot going on here, and it’s really, really cool. And they on Spotify only have 59, like, verified listeners a month or whatever it is, nobody is listening to this band. I’ve got to go listen to more of their stuff, because if this song is any indication of what they’re doing, there’s a lot of magic happening here. Alright, that is it for this episode. As always, continue to spread the word to your fellow music fans, follow us on social media, check out the website, send me recommendations, I love you all, and… Thanks for listening, and until next week, keep searching for and listening to songs that don’t suck.