In thinking about an album recently, I realized it was just about 20 years old. That thought had me down a fresh rabbithole of ideas about albums that came out years ago that I haven’t written about in ages. It can be argued I haven’t really talked about music at all in recent years, but yeah. How ’bout that nostalgia?
The thought slammed into a wall when I went to see what – if anything – I was writing about musically in 2003 to jog my memory of the time. Probably half that year I was in some sort of tense state with my boyfriend at the time, and I just happened to land at a spot where we had been fighting. I didn’t meaningfully read what I wrote then but I skimmed enough to ruin my day. I should have known the only thing I was going to find was frustration and disappointment around that time, that I should have just stuck with the obvious then-new musical contributions and called it a day without trying to fact-check myself. Alas. I am dumb.
“Thee” album of the time for me was Thirteenth Step by A Perfect Circle. It came out 20 years ago this week. I immediately liked it and it became a fixture of the time. I listened to it enough into the future that it lost its connection to the moment, but for a while it was the soundtrack to all that fighting we used to do. I’ve never fought with anyone like that. Until that point I was generally passive, far sooner to wander off to not return from people/situations that bothered me or to just endure whatever was wrong. The same thing kept coming up, boiling down to him not trusting me and inventing scenarios and intentions and moods I didn’t have in his head, and I eventually couldn’t take it and the ongoing tension flipped to fighting. And so we fought, and didn’t stop until after we broke up, and that’s the headspace I digested the album in. Later it sooner reminded me of other things, but for a little while it was my musical escape from dealing with that shit.
I don’t intentionally listen to APC much anymore, just for overdoing it in the first place and not for dislike or negative associations (well, aside from particular headspaces). The album will shuffle on and I probably won’t turn it off, but I won’t be actively listening, either. After 20 years it does sound boring and a bit aged, but I’d still give it a general thumbs up. I did listen to it a lot for years, after all.
The other one that comes to mind that I was listening to that year is Sleeping With Ghosts by Placebo. More initial memories associated with the same relationship negativity. I remember Placebo was supposed to be in state on tour, and I really wanted to go, but I didn’t know anyone who knew them and might be willing to go with me… which left boyfriend, but he was across the world. I didn’t have the funds to go alone. I didn’t end up seeing Placebo live for another few years and that was a highly negative experience because I made the mistake of being a woman in public that day. So there’s that. Interesting to look back on an album with a title like that, with songs like “The Bitter End” and “Protect Me From What I Want”, and see the synchronicity there. I wanted to be in that person’s life forever back then… but it was not meant to be.
I still listen to Placebo sometimes, but it’s not with much purpose. They shuffle on, I usually approve.
Of bands I was actually listening to in 2003, continuing on leads to Marilyn Manson. I remember getting The Golden Age album close to its release. I wanted to like it, did to a point, but there was no lasting value to it as a whole. I ended up listening to older MM a lot in the next couple of years, but TGAOG kick-started not following new music. Sometime later I started getting weird vibes and decided, despite intention to see bands that I liked when I was younger that I hadn’t seen, not to see him/them live. And not long after that came accusations and seeing him fail at logic on TV from evident drug issues. I ended up deleting what music I had from them off my hard drive. I get random songs stuck in my head sometimes which reminds me of how shitty all that went. It looked like an act and it seems it was not.
Muse’s Absolution came out that year. I didn’t have the album for another couple of years, but I knew “Hysteria” as my boyfriend threw it at me. I thought the vocalist was a lady. Does it not sound like a lady singing? Unrelated, I thought the music given to me was too basic and radio-esque. It felt like another symptom of what was wrong with Music These Days. Why was my boyfriend subjecting me to this? I ended up returning back to Muse later, loved them for several years there and they put on one of the prettiest shows I’ve ever been to, but I don’t really listen to their newer music. Still makes me smirk remembering that one time when my computer blue-screened while I was listening to “Citizen Erased”. Anyway, I like smart bands, evidently including those I once thought were too commercial for me, I just wish I liked their more recent music more than I do.
I don’t exactly recall when I picked at Fever to Tell, but I was definitely listening to Yeah Yeah Yeahs in 2003. “Maps” was a big deal song at the time. Another failed memory but nevertheless about 2 years later I randomly caught a live performance of them on TV and was enthralled by Karen, of her mild weirdness and confidence in performance. No idea what I saw anymore. She’s only 3-4 years older than me, so it felt a bit like “oh, I could be doing that”… if things had been different in many ways. She felt like a potentially decent immediate example of something I could relate towards into the near future. Be weird, be confident. I lost interest in the band at their next album but came back around in 2013. Last one was alright but it’s safe to say I’m in a different headspace than I was at 20 so it doesn’t hit the same way, even for the ways they’ve also changed. And yet I still wish I was rich, I’ll take you out, boy.
I started listening to Peaches after I saw the movie Lost In Translation at home (in 2004?), and I think maybe I only knew “Fuck The Pain Away” for a bit. So I think I missed Fatherfucker in 2003. But I heard it pretty soon after. Hey, lookit that, it’s 20 years old on the 23rd. But then and for a while, I was not super on board with Peaches as a whole because, well, I’m me. The hyper-sexual, brash, loud confidence thing felt like an other person thing. That’s fine, good for you, but it wasn’t me. 20 years later, I get the line “I… you… she… together, come on, baby, let’s go” stuck in my head easily, so it seems it’s had a lasting affect, regardless of what I thought of myself two decades ago. Back then I liked “Tombstone, Baby” a lot because of the bass and the relative lack of obscenity, and I still do, but it got a lot easier to enjoy her music in general over the years as I let go of that former self-perception and realized we are but dynamic beings. Who asked for a fucking philosophy lesson in a paragraph about Peaches? Anyway, I’m ready for a new album.
[In checking something, google led me to this 2003 review. Who’s surprised that someone named Matt didn’t “get it”?]
I just saw that The Dresden Dolls will be touring again – right on time for the 20th anniversary of their self-titled. I doubt I was listening to them specifically in 2003 but I did catch them into the next year. By then I was healing from the breakup I had and deciding I wasn’t likely to deal with “boys” too much anytime soon. Hearing “Coin-Operated Boy” was a reflection of how I was feeling, if an amusing one, and “Girl Anachronism” drove the point home after being treated like I was both by my ex and situations further in the past. I never really paid mind to the album as a whole thing but those songs are fantastic for break-ups. They’re also terrible earworms as, in coming back to edit this, they’re still stuck in my head.
I checked for other music that came out in 2003 that I wasn’t actually listening to exactly then. My on-computer collection is lacking so it’s hard to do a proper assessment.
An obvious choice is Mastodon. I didn’t listen to them at all until 2006, but Remission is one of those Something Else kind of albums (and technically it came out in 2002 but it had a version release in 2003). I absolutely fucking love “March of the Fire Ants”, “Where Strides The Behemoth”, and “Mother Puncher”. “Where” alone – fucking yes please, where do I sign up for 20 years of this? But that’s not what happened. Who knows what the hell happened. It sucks. Maybe bands just aren’t able to keep up status quo when they put that much of themselves into however many amazing songs, and everything after is just an echo or a distraction without dramatic personnel changes. We get what we get?
Mastodon was supposedly cosplaying High on Fire, so it seems apt to then discuss Dopesmoker. I didn’t hear that album for another few years either, but it’s obviously made a mark. I’d say Mastodon and High on Fire made more of a general mark on my tastes, but Sleep’s important. Their 2018 album is one of the best albums in whatever huge stretch of time you want to go for today. Decade, millennium? Definitely S-tier for stoner rock and doom. And it may not have happened had Sleep not experienced the fuckery they did trying to release Dopesmoker originally. They were a cult-status sort of once-upon-a-time when-the-world-was-beautiful-and-nothing-hurt band when I sampled them. A 63 and a half minute song?! Why? Oh right, because musicians are ridiculous. I like the idea. I like that someone actually went for it. And it’s a silly song, on paper. Listening, however, can be a chore. Imagine all of the music you could have listened to instead of a single hour-long song. It feels tedious… but I don’t hate it, either. With my frustrations in regards to ye olde old white guys and the genre attracting folks with addiction issues, it might be easier to just hate it. But nope. Time to go make some more stupid desert art. Fallow tha smoke JERUSALEM. (Hey, I made it through the whole paragraph without referencing shirts or psychedelic twin baby jesus! Isn’t he a cute fucking brain damaged weirdo that should never be in charge of anything ever? Oh, speaking of cute, I hear OM might have a new album coming…? I shall also be. har har.)
I need to stop somewhere, so let’s stop at Tomahawk. I also didn’t hear Mit Gas in 2003, and I also picked them up closer to 2007. And how. I god-damn-mother-fucking LOVED this band in 2007. The line on “Mayday” – “I’m putting in my two weeks notice as of two fucking weeks ago” – resonated HARD at that time. I felt a lot like that… about my job, about basically everything. I wanted to do music and was struggling to relate with anyone about it. I might get fleeting, superficial connection in passing at best, but no one seemed to give a shit about what I did. I remember being pissed off at a friend for confusing a memory seeing two separate bands for the lack of giving a shit that they’d seen either of those bands, like the experience wasn’t about music at all for them. I remember trying to offer music elsewhere and getting nothing in return. I remember talking to friends I didn’t connect with musically around the time and it feeling empty anytime music came up. I remember seeing Mastodon, coming in to work the next day covered in bruises, feeling like I Survived and really wanting to see them again ASAP, and already knowing that me talking about Mastodon was going to fall flat because these people weren’t much past radio and weren’t listening to metal. One of them randomly asked me if I knew Cake. Seriously? You’re not bringing a plastic butter knife to my gun party. In any case, I was super frustrated around then. Listening to Tomahawk was nice to burn off the annoyance, but even more contributed to the frustrating because it was just me thinking they were fantastic as far as I could reach. Towards the end of the year all that lonely frustration led around to finding a certain heavy community, which led to finding more music on my level as well as some useful and interesting musical connections. Oh, and the blog. I started the blog and immediately posted Tomahawk, because that’s how it was.
And for all that? I find Tomahawk in general almost boring now. How did I go from “Anonymous = best, most creative album of all time ever” to this? I remember how I felt, I know the motions of movement that led around through their music, but I’m not even sort of listening to it like I was. Fair enough, since it’s been 16+ years, and people need for change. They were good for something. As were all of these other bands.
I didn’t know that I’d write this much for this long so my intention was to also revisit 2013… but, my hands and ears need a break so I’ll take a rain check. Retrospectively thinking of my musical journey after 2003, it’s apparent how much of an impact that boy sharing “Hysteria” (among other things) at me had, of how us fighting made me want for things that didn’t have fuck-all to do with him, leading to me to return to Monster Magnet, finding SR-dot-com, snaking around several paths and ending up back on the heavy that became feature. Would I have listened to Meshuggah or YOB eventually, anyway, given my prior appreciation for Tool (they toured with either band)? Perhaps. I also think it’s highly probable that I would have found SR anyway, just later. But I think if he and I had stayed together, fighting or not, he would have attempted to mold me until I was a total reflection of his fears, and that would have sucked for my musical journey. I don’t think I would have challenged myself nearly as much, wouldn’t have gone on exploratory journeys to the same extent, wouldn’t have made projects out of listening to bands/styles/years of music and therefore would have missed out on a lot of musical self-education. That ex would have thrown a gasket at the idea of me doing things I did in the name of more music. (Solo bus trips across the city/state? NO.) And I don’t know what I would have done with my time, who I’d be, how I’d be different besides the immediately obvious from the fallout of breaking up… but it does make me grateful that I finally had a “fuck this shit” moment, turned on 80s radio for a bit as a neutral buffer, and returned to surface with KYUSS!!!!!.
Is this an ad to tell you to break up with your shitty boyfriend?
Winamp: immediately plays Ashnikko. A fair response to the question, there, Winamp.
Counterpoint: Idles. “I want to cater for the haters: EAT SHIT.”