Words. Ideas. Actions.

27 March 2023

I’ve talked about dates here before. Some are more memorable than others. Every date probably has significance for somebody, right? I mean, there are only, at most, 366 of them to go around, and — what? — 8 billion of us. That’s a lot of people cramming a lot of meaning into just a few dates. So, I was surprised when I realized this weekend that a date had passed without me noticing. And I want to remedy that tonight.

Saturday marked one year since Taylor Hawkins died. When I read that, I was stunned. It was simultaneously yesterday and ages ago. It’s hard to put into words the strange place Foo Fighters have in my life. I know I’ve written about them more than enough times at this point, so I won’t be focusing on my connection with them here tonight. Instead, I just want to talk about the first time I ever saw Taylor play drums. I wish I had more of the details documented, but as I remember it, I was watching a music performance on one of the late-night shows. In my mind, it was “Saturday Night Live,” but I’ve never been able to find the clip I originally saw. Odds are better that it was an appearance on Letterman. In any case, Allan’s Morrisette was the musical guest that evening. So, I was watching with a bit of a chip on my shoulder.

Around that same time, flanders was in our early days. We were writing and recording at a break-neck pace. For a long time, we practiced in a trailer outside of the first Cow Haus location on Lipona Road in Tallahassee. I had gotten a subway-sized poster for the then-new Napalm Death album, thanks to my volunteering on “Metal Madness” at V-89, and we flipped it over and tacked it to one of the sweaty walls of that unconditioned trailer to keep track of the names of all the songs we were cranking out. There had to be at least six dozen names scrawled in Sharpie on that big, white canvas. One of the earliest names listed, however, was concocted in the living room of Brain's house. He lived with a bunch of other musicians, so he kept his drums set up there all the time, and different local bands would roll through on different nights of the week, coordinating band practices around gigs and day jobs and shifts at the radio station. And, for us, “Simpsons” broadcasts. Back then, the flanders practice slot was Thursday night, from 7 until about 10, with a 30 minute break at 8:00 to watch “The Simpsons” on Fox. Is it any wonder why we ended up naming ourselves flanders (I was really pushing for Surly, though)?

Anyway, back to the point. We wrote a song called “‘You Oughtta Know” back in those early days. It ended up a manic staple on our early setlists, so we released it on our first cassette (I think. Honestly, all of this is suspect; my brain ain’t what she used to be, and I’m away from my “archives” at the moment). This was around 1994-ish. This part I’m sure of because we also took a break from practice one infamous evening in June of 1994 to watch an unfolding event on TV, then resumed practice to crank out a new song we immediately dubbed “White Ford Bronco”. (Again, apologies for another diversion, but that’s just where my brain is at tonight, as I wrestle with uncomfortable truths. I guess I run back to memories of better times, when finding joy was as quick and simple as heading to a friend’s house, turning some amps up loud, and piling up some distorted pop riffs with a group of people who always inspired.)

So, that’s basically the backdrop. I’m in a new-ish band, struggling to keep track of all the songs we’ve written, playing out anywhere and everywhere we can get a gig, and hoping to ride this nascent “Alternative” wave out of our day jobs and into pop-punk fueled financial and creative security. Obviously, that didn’t happen. We got notable airplay around the country, toured as much as we could, got an honorable mention in a “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” unsigned band contest, and even made it to the finals of a Musician Magazine/TicketMaster contest, where we got flown out to play a show at the Palladium in Los Angeles, along with eventual winners, The Refreshments. (Rumor is they used their winning studio time to record the song which later became the theme to “King of the Hill”. We used our losing prize money to record more of the songs which were documented on the back of that Napalm Death poster, and bought a 1977 Chevy Beauville so we could do more touring. Wow, the tangents are getting a bit out of hand tonight. I blame vacation brain, I guess. Back at it!)

Struggling band? Yes. Grasps at the brass ring? Many. More stories than we have time for tonight? Most definitely. This was all around the same time when other female-fronted, pop-punk acts started hitting our radar. The big, obvious ones were No Doubt and Alanis Morissette. We got lazily compared to them a lot. But those writers were just looking at our line-up and making those connections. We didn’t sound very much like either of them. For the writers who were really listening, they were talking more about Velocity Girl and Letters to Cleo and Scrawl. I always thought we sounded like flanders. But any time I saw No Doubt or Alanis Morissette with yet another huge audience, I was pretty jealous. Especially when I heard that Morrisette was performing her single, “You Oughtta Know” on TV screens across the States as well as all over her native Canada. 

Tuning in, one more time, to let the envy rein, I finally stopped to listen. And watch. And that’s when I noticed it. There was a whirling dervish absolutely destroying the drums in the background of the eponymous band I had grown disdainful of. Her band was solid. More than solid. I started watching even more of their live performances, each time marveling at the man behind the kit. I was awestruck. Each and every set was as if this guy had never played harder in his life. He gave his all. Every time. It was mesmerizing. It was inspiring. It was stardust. And as we know now, it was Taylor Hawkins. 

I obviously have a lot of musical memories I like to talk about. Some I’ve shared here, some only come out at parties or very infrequent band reunions. But getting one shot at a huge opportunity, and having that moment supported by the drumming of this man I had admired years before he joined Dave and Nate, is far and away one of my favorite sonic souvenirs. My disbelief that I had an opportunity like that is matched only by the disbelief that it‘s been a year since we lost him. Here’s to making more musical memories, however you can.

See you tomorrow?

03 January 2023

Tonight’s post is going to be a little reactive, I’ll admit. It comes in the wake of recent news that Foo Fighters look to carry on without Taylor Hawkins. And I’m having a hard time with that. I know that my thoughts are far from unbiased, but even as just a fan, I still feel conflicted. 

They are consistent, however. In my mind, there’s something a little sacred about a band’s lineup. I know that may be a strange thing to say, but there’s something unique about that special alchemy that comes from the same group of people creating something for years on end. And when that chemistry gets shaken up, the resulting concoction can be a bit diluted.

One of my favorite bands as a kid was Kiss. And they’ve had plenty of line-up changes. But those original four are the starting and ending of Kiss for me. Gene, Paul, Peter, and, obviously, Ace. I know they put out more albums without Ace and Peter than with them, but to me, that’s Kiss. Everyone else is just acting. Playing a part. Literally. Especially if they get hired to put on someone else’s makeup. 

Now, I’m not saying that good can't come out of the new combinations. But they should be their own, entirely new entity. Don’t try to recreate the original thing. Just let something new grow out of whatever disfunction called for the change in the first place. And call it something else. Look at Metallica. Or Slayer. Van Halen. These bands continued making some arguably great music after major line-up changes, but I think a rebranding was in order. If only to weed the Van Hagar out of a Van Halen streaming station.

Making music in a band is a fragile, and often time-bound, thing. As fans, we want to keep the bands we love in suspended animation, continuing to make the music we love over and over. But we’ll never grow that way. And neither will they. We should allow them to grow. To make new concoctions. We should encourage it, even. But when it happens, I want it rebranded. Because it’s not the same. 

There’s obviously a huge flaw in my logic, I know. Foo Fighters of 1999 were not the same as Foo Fighters of 1995. Those first recordings, as I’m sure you know, were essentially a Dave Grohl solo project. He had to build a band around those ideas just to be able to play them live. And that process takes time and fits and starts. After 20 years recombining the same elements in different ratios, though, you tend to understand what that Foo label is going to give you. A new drummer is definitely going to change that, whether it’s Josh Freese or Jon Theodore or even Hawkins doppelgänger Rufus Taylor. And it may be great. But it should be called something different. Either way, I’ll be at the front of the line to buy it.

See you tomorrow?

21 December 2022

Tonight is the Winter Solstice. And I feel like it’s making me a little more reflective. I had a pretty big win at work today, the end of my Xmas shopping seems attainable, and things at home are as quiet as hosting an impromptu sleepover can be. Overall, not a bad day. 

Yet, I still find myself falling into a long-held habit: self criticism. 

See, I’ve always been one to set high standards for myself. I think most of us do. But where it becomes problematic for me is the way my own reviews sometimes impede me from getting anything done, worrying that I’ll fall short of some self-imposed metric. It happens a lot. I’ve even written about it before. And because I’m still talking about it tonight, it’s obvious that I haven’t found a good solution yet. Let’s look at an example. Other than that life-changing moment I think I’ve already pretty thoroughly explored. 

Hold on a minute … As I am going through any and all of the times I’ve judged myself coming up short, I feel like I am just recreating the pattern that I came here to complain about in the first place. And I am trying to break that cycle, right? Is refusing to talk about a specific example me making progress? And should I let my therapist know about this breakthrough and that I don’t need tomorrow’s session? Probably not.

See, I think it just comes down to a fear of making mistakes. I know we learn a great deal more from them than almost any other method. But I’m so reluctant to try and fail that I give up before risking coming up short. Short of my own expectations. These posts, honestly, are a little bit of an exercise in trying to get better at trying and failing and trying again. I mean, if you’ve read even a handful of these Not Tweets posts, you know some are much better than others. But my hope is that practice makes perfect. After all, I’m still looking for perfect. 

See you tomorrow?