Episode 40 – “Your quippy jokes, they mean nothing”

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

Welcome to Episode 40 of Songs That Don’t Suck. That’s right, we have reached the big 4-0. Thank you for listening as always.

This week, I got to scratch a name off of my performing artist bucket list, and if you follow me on social media, you know that that was Peter Gabriel. I’ve been wanting to see Peter Gabriel live for such a long time, but it turns out he actually hadn’t been through Cleveland since 2002, so that actually makes it really difficult to see him. But this was absolutely, without a doubt, among the top five shows that I’ve seen. And considering that he is 73, that is incredible, honestly, because I’ve said it before on a lot of different episodes of this podcast. Sometimes artists need to hang it up, but I can say that his voice sounded as great as I expected it to, and high notes, low notes, everything was there, and the show was just an experience. So he has an eight-piece band with him, so nine people on stage. The show started out with him coming out and doing a monologue, just kind of talking about him and life and AI, it was just really weird, and I just didn’t know where he was going to go with it. And then Tony Levin comes out on stage, which, holy cow, what a monster player, and just as much as I wanted to see Peter Gabriel, I wanted to see Tony Levin live. So Tony came out and they sat around a fire, like a campsite, and played Washing the Water, which is really cool. Then the rest of the band came out, and they did Growing Up, and then they kind of moved away from this kind of campfire and got into the rest of the full stage show. It was just a very intimate start to things, and it was really, really cool, considering like some of the bombast and big opening numbers that you see with some of the bands who are touring. But Peter Gabriel has always been a very introspective and just smart performer, and he’s such a great storyteller, and the way that he put this show together was just incredible.

So the music was phenomenal, the band was amazing, and he worked with a bunch of different digital artists to create the light show and the backdrops. So there was all this beautiful digital art that accompanied the songs, and just some really cool lighting things that I’d never seen before. So the one thing that I noticed was there was a lot of circular mirrors, and rather than lights shining just on the stage, they would actually focus the lights on the mirrors, and then the mirrors would reflect the light, so it was really kind of a cool effect. Yeah, and okay, he’s 73, and they had an intermission, but he played for three hours. That’s like just incredible to me. The other incredible thing is that, I mean, he’s had hits over the years, but 11 of the songs that he played are from his album that has not been released yet. He’s released a few songs off of it, but most of the audience just didn’t know these songs, but they were phenomenal. They’re fantastic, and he sprinkled in some hits, and I was absolutely not disappointed at all. It was absolutely amazing. And if you’ve been a longtime Peter Gabriel fan, you know this, he just doesn’t play any of the Genesis stuff. Like that chapter has always been closed for him, and everything that he was doing was his solo work, which was really cool. So 10 out of 10, amazing show. If it’s still touring, if it’s going through your town, by all means go and check it out.

All right, this week I’ve got a fun brain bending cover. It’s from one of my favorite bands. It’s from the band Guster, and it’s their cover of the Talking Heads song, Nothing but Flowers. Now, when it comes to Guster, I will admit that I am a bigger fan of their earlier material versus the later material. In this song, which was recorded for a live album, the album is called Guster on Ice, and it’s probably right before the transition point for me. The shift that Guster made was an important one. Brian, who was lovingly known as the Thunder God, he was the drummer, or he is the drummer and percussionist, and he made the correct choice to change the way the band was playing. So from the first album through Lost and Gone Forever, everything they did was hand percussion, and he beat the living hell out of the drums, and after the show, he would soak his hands in ice baths because his hands would be swollen due to the playing, and basically, if he would continue to do that, his hands would basically be useless. They would be arthritic, and it’d be end of Guster. So they started to transition away from that, and he started to play more drum kit. For me, I don’t know if it was just me getting older, or I just really liked that percussive sound because it was just so different. I don’t listen to them as much, like after Lost and Gone Forever. I listen to probably the next three albums, but I’ve kind of moved away from them since then. But this song was just a great reminder of those early days, and if you’ve never seen early Guster videos, or if you’re not familiar with Guster, go to YouTube and search for Guster on Ice and see how he was playing, because it really was something. And like I said, selfishly, I kind of preferred that early sound. But regardless, this is an amazing song, and it’s an amazing version of it. If you’re not familiar with the Talking Heads, or have you been, but go check out the Talking Heads too.

All right, let’s get into some new music. That’s why we’re here, right? If this is your first time listening, welcome, glad you’re here. Each week, I listen to a ton of new songs. I hope to find five songs. I’m not successful this week is one of them. But I wade through the crap in the hopes that I can share some songs with you that you might like. Regardless of genre, I kind of listened to a whole bunch of different things. So let’s get into it.

The first song this week is Blood Orange from Linka Moja.

When this song started out, I thought it sounded like doll parts from whole, but after the first part of the verse, the feel totally changed, and the whole thing started to move in a bit more interesting direction. When it comes to songs and chord progressions, there’s a formula, thanks to something called the circle of fifths. And basically, there are intervals in music that feel really good to listen to, and then there are intervals in music that are dissonant or don’t feel good. The most popular chord progression, you’ve probably maybe heard this reference of a one-four-five chord progression. And that’s basically the bass chord, whatever that bass note is, is the one. And then it goes to the fourth in that scale, and then the fifth, or the perfect fifth of that bass chord. Then it resolves back to the one chord. Most songs, most pop songs follow this one-four-five chord progression. This song doesn’t do that, and I will readily admit I am not Rick Beato. I can’t pull the guitar out and be like, oh yeah, that’s a G-sharp minor chord with an elevated seventh. I can’t do that. So I can’t tell you exactly what the chord progression is playing, but if you listen to it and kind of compare it to any other song, you’ll notice that instead of going kind of the one-four-five-one, it’s dropping in different intervals. It still sounds cool, but it might feel a little different as you’re listening to it. So if it does, let me know. But to me, it just felt really cool, and I really liked it.

The second song this week is How to Hold a Knife from Quannic. Now when it comes to drummers, some play on the beat, some play behind the beat, and some play in front of the beat. This drummer is playing in front of the beat, and you can feel them really pushing this song forward. A lot of that, I think, has to do with the grace notes they’re putting in and where they’re putting it in, but it gives the song a definite sense of urgency. If you’re looking for other examples of drummers in front of the beat, Dave Grohl is a good example of someone who I feel plays in front of the beat, especially on the earlier stuff. So if you listen to Nirvana’s Stay Away from the Nevermind album, you can hear that pretty well, I think. But Dave also does what’s required of the song, especially now he’s matured as a player. But Taylor Hawkins also played in front of the beat, and it’s really interesting now because Josh Freese, who is playing for the Foo Fighters now, plays more after the beat or on the beat. And you can hear that in the songs, especially the faster ones. Josh tends to lay back a little bit in the pocket. So it’s really interesting and very nerdy of me to point this stuff out. But there you go. You’re here. You’re here for learning, right? Lyrically, let’s get back into the song. Lyrically, it’s very punk in the way that there are very few words to this song. And oddly, it’s being sung in what I hear is almost like a Thom York, Radiohead kind of style, which is a cool juxtaposition to this pushing and pulsing drum part. And the more I listen to it, the more I realize why it caught my ear, because there’s all of these really cool little bits of it that are thrown together, and it just makes for a really cool song.

The third song this week is Bad Influences from Finding Bella. This one is short and sweet. This is one of those songs that honestly just caught me in the right mood. And I think it probably has something to do with the Peter Gabriel show and the mindset that that put me in. This song, and maybe it will catch you the same way, it reminds me of this graduation speech from a few years back that actually got put to music and was a bit of a hit. I think it was called Remember Sunscreen. This I hear as the updated version. It’s almost more of a rage rant, though, and then it drops knowledge as to how to live a great life. You only live once, stop moaning. I was grinning ear to ear each time that I listened to it, and it’s probably going to hit my rotation pretty hard, because there is a lot of times when I hear people living their lives and I’m like, why are you even like concerned with this, like just get over and let’s go.

The fourth song this week is I/O. , and it is from Peter Gabriel.

So I see the demographics of the folks who listened on Spotify, and while the bulk of my listeners are Gen Xers, I do have some millennials and some Gen Z folks who listened to the podcast who might not be familiar with Peter Gabriel. And as he’s been releasing singles from the new album, I thought this was a good chance to share one of those and talk about him a bit. So he started as the lead singer of Genesis back when they were considered a prog rock band before they hit their 80s pop run, and he was the ultimate stage performer. He would dress up in these fantastic costumes. He had this iconic voice, amazing lyricist, and if you want kind of a place to start with Genesis, you could start with like The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway or Selling England by the Pound, both great albums. Now after he left Genesis, Phil Collins moved from the drums to frontman, and that band went in the different poppy direction. Peter Gabriel released four solo albums between 1977 and 1982. Then there was a movie called Birdie that he did music for, and then in 1986, he released the album So, which had probably his biggest hits, including Sledgehammer and Big Time, as well as In Your Eyes. Now he’s continued to release music over the years, and he’s toured, I think, less and less, like I said. He hadn’t been through Cleveland since 2002, and the one thing that I have always admired about Peter Gabriel is how introspective he is and how good of a storyteller he is. He is very much a world thinker, and he presents that to the audience, and I think he challenges his audience in a lot of ways. I. O. is the title track of his upcoming album, and based on what I’ve heard and the stories he was telling during the concert, there’s a lot on his mind about how we as humans see and interact with the world on a larger scale. He talked about tech and AI a lot, and how it could be good and bad, and this song is really talking about how we as humans are connected to the world, and everything that we hear, everything that we see and experience, that is all input for us, and everything we do, whether in response to or against or what have you, whatever our reaction is, that is our output, and we are all part of this same world, even though we don’t necessarily see that all the time.

That whole concept reminded me of this book I had just read called Upgrade. The TLDR of it, it’s about DNA editing. It’s obviously fantasy, or fiction I guess, and it’s set in the future, and basically humanity’s got like 50 to 100 years before climate change completely does us in, Florida’s already underwater, New York’s already underwater, and there was this huge tragedy that happened in DNA editing, and it gets outlawed, and it’s policed to prevent these future catastrophes from happening. The main protagonist actually edits her children’s DNA and upgrades them to be superhuman in a lot of ways, and the hope is that they will finish her work to save humanity from this global issue of climate change, and the two siblings argue about is it right or wrong. But basically the crux of the story when we kind of get into it is that humans today, we have Neanderthal DNA, and that causes us to only be concerned about our direct tribe, probably 15 to 20 people that are like immediately connected to us. And if you think back to early man hundreds of thousands of years ago, they lived as nomadic tribes and their immediate concern was the survival of that small tribe.

That DNA lives on in us, and it’s encoded in modern man, and it makes it difficult for the majority of humans to take on and really think about global issues because it “doesn’t affect them directly” until it’s too late. It’s the need for evolved thinkers among the human race, those who fight for change, those who fight for the rights of others, that only really bring about the real change. And that’s kind of the whole crux of the book. It’s a fascinating read, and honestly, I think the author is correct. Most humans don’t really think on a global scale because if they did, the world would be a much different place. I’m guilty of it. When 9-11 happened, it was the shock of the day, but I got over it pretty quickly because I didn’t know anybody who was directly connected to it. And in the back of my head, I’m like, well, people die all the time in the Middle East and in Africa, there’s genocides, but most of us are like so disconnected from those larger global happenings that it doesn’t really affect our day-to-day as it doesn’t change the way we think about things. So anyway, that’s probably a rant for a different podcast, but the whole IO concept and just the show really put me in this mindset about thinking about it, so I hope you forgive my transgression there. All right, that is it for this episode. As always, spread the word to your fellow music fans, follow the show on social media, check out the website, songsthatdontsuck. net, and thanks for listening, and until next week, keep searching for and listening to Songs That Don’t Suck.