The recent passing of DMX and a bunch of album anniversaries have had me roaming around with my rose-colored glasses on lately, meandering down memory lane to revisit the songs and my life at the time I first heard them. (Cuz what else am I going to do with my free time? I may have superpowers now that I’m vaccinated, but there still ain’t many options right now…) Since I know how much joy it brings you, figured I’d share some of both to fill up your weekend, really make this one for the history books.
In honor of Terry we’ll put it in reverse and go forwards to backwards, chronologically speaking, diving ever deeper into the annals of Sunshine lore with an increasingly excellent soundtrack to accompany us. First up, then, is the recent 15-year anniversary of the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s second album, Show Your Bones. Released three years after their classic debut, Fever to Tell, the trio reportedly struggled mightily trying to decide what direction they wanted to go in for their follow-up, recording and scrapping several albums’ worth of material (and nearly breaking up) before settling on what became Bones.
Unfortunately for those of us who loved the raw, fiery sound of their debut and the preceding EP, it marked the last time you’d ever really see that band again (and even here, only in fleeting glimpses). After this album, Nick Zinner’s flamethrowing guitar licks would be largely doused by buckets of safer, dancier fare. Drummer Brian Chase, whose wild, unhinged beats could previously send even the most resistant punks into a frenzied state (look no further than gems “Black Tongue,” “No No No,” and “Date With the Night” for easy examples) would recede further into the background, invoking all the danger of his accountant-like appearance on subsequent albums. And the bleeding heart of the band, frontwoman Karen O, whose untamed shrieks and psychotic energy represented one of the signatures of the band’s early sound became more and more subdued as they kept releasing material.
Not that this — or much of what followed, actually — was bad, mind you. Just that after you’ve seen what irresistible, life-altering feats bands like this are capable of, to see them do anything else is inherently going to be a let down. And so it is with Bones. You get your last tastes of that former band on tracks like “Way Out,” “Honeybear,” and “Mysteries” (which might be the best farewell to that old version of the band, with Zinner’s frenzied guitar throwing sparks next to O’s anguished wails and Chase’s galloping beat). You also get acquainted with the band’s future on tracks like “Gold Lion,” “Phenomena,” “Cheated Hearts,” and “Turn Into,” which are at turns weirder and more straightforward than anything they’d done before.
It’s very much an album of a band in transition and for that reason never fully grabs you or brings you back. Those of us who love the early version of the band have our handful of tracks, those who prefer the later fare have their handful, but none of us are completely happy and none are going to come to this album to scratch their respective itches. It’s textbook compromise (everybody loses!), but there’s still enough good stuff here to come back to now and again. For me it’ll always be for tracks like this one, the ripshit finale of the Yeahs v1.0, “Mysteries:”
Hopping back into the Delorean we’ll jump five years further into history to revisit the release of two fantastic debuts from artists on opposite sides of the sonic (and coolness) spectrum, yet two favorites of mine nonetheless — Pete Yorn and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. The former is heartfelt and melodic pop, the latter is dark, noisy rock. One summons the brightness and warmth of sunshine and love, the other the cold, black of shadows and death. One gets cracked on for being soft and overly earnest, the other for being inauthentic and insincere. Statements like the last ones prove my hypothesis that most people are mouth-breathing idiots with terrible taste, but will let you make up your own mind.
Yorn’s debut 20 years ago, Musicforthemorningafter, came packed with all the things that make it easy for people to nitpick — handsome, long-haired singer/songwriter bursts on the scene with a bunch of songs about busted hearts, booming hooks, and a TON of hype. He plays all the instruments on the album, which simultaneously impresses and chagrins, and he gives intimate performances that only enhance the effect, leaving onlookers gooey and snipers more steadfast in their snippiness. Only once you tune out the latter (if you ever listened to them to begin with) you realize just how good these songs are. And how many of them there are! This isn’t a scraped together affair with one or two songs surrounded by a bunch of half-baked demos — this is the quintessential classic debut, bursting with material that’s been polished to a scalpel’s precision over several years of hustling and gigs, just waiting for that elusive record deal and the potential shot at stardom.
No, this is a swing for the fences shot that absolutely murders the ball, clearing the wall by a country mile. It’s fifteen songs (fifteen!) that almost ends better than it began — and it begins with “Life on a Chain,” which is about as catchy a song as most artists hope for once in their career, let alone as the first track on a debut with 15 songs. (Yorn immediately follows that up with songs like “Strange Condition,” “Murray,” and “Closet,” which are every bit as good, just to rub salt in those other artists’ wounds.) In between booming heart anthems like those (and “For Nancy (‘Cos it Already Is),” another fave) are softer, more stripped back gems like “Just Another,” “On Your Side,” “June,” and “Sleep Better.”
It’s these latter tracks that really sunk their hooks into me all those years ago, speaking to the love-addled (and acne-riddled) fool I was. Two in particular left me routinely flat on the floor, the perfect soundtracks to my unrequited mess of a love life (and the many mix CDs made to that end) — “Lose You” and “A Girl Like You.” Even today those two immediately take me back to that time, laying in my dorm room trying to find “The Perfect Song” to break through the wall(s) of indifference plaguing me with the opposite sex. Unfortunately neither track worked, but that’s not Yorn’s fault — they’re still beautiful songs on a fantastic album. Check out “Girl” here:
The other half of this 20/20 split comes from the opposite side of the country (sunny California to Yorn’s fabled New Jersey), which is only fitting because of how dissimilar these two albums and artists are, representing opposite ends of almost all spectrums, as mentioned before. If the former hit you in the heart, this one hit you in the gut. If the former spoke to some of the ache and desperation one had in the romantic world, this one spoke to the hope and aspiration one had in the regular world — to be this mysterious, this dangerous, this flat out COOL.
And man, was this ever those things. The sound, reminiscent of faves like Jesus & Mary Chain and the Velvets before them. The look, all darkened silhouettes and black leather jackets. (Surrounded by swirls of smoke and blistering backlight on stage, further enhancing the effect.) Even the album cover was cool, looking a bit like the poster for some old film noir you might see in the early morning hours on TV. It was absolutely irresistible and borderline hypnotic — from the ominous opening strums of “Love Burns” you’re pulled in, waiting patiently for the beat to drop while the tension and danger build, and when it does it’s like being caught in the beam of one of those giant halogen lamps. You’re frozen in place, everything around you thrown into crystal clear relief, and you know trying to escape it will only invite more problems, so you stand transfixed, slowly simmering in its gaze while the album’s roar surrounds you.
That’s what it felt like then and what it still feels like now — this album just sizzles. From that opening track to successors like “Red Eyes and Tears,” “White Palms,” “As Sure as the Sun,” and “Spread Your Love,” the visceral mix of roaring guitars, bitter, almost threatening lyrics, and wave after wave of feedback almost literally fry your brain. Even more straightforward songs like “Whatever Happened (To My Rock and Roll)” cook (music about music is always a somewhat dicey proposition, but they, like JAMC, manage to pull it off effortlessly), while cooler, more subdued tracks like “Awake,” “Too Real,” “Head up High,” and “Salvation” provide the perfect counterbalance to the punishing rays.
I still remember stumbling onto these guys and immediately falling under their spell — you couldn’t tell if it was some long lost band surfacing again or some magic reincarnation of those older acts, but I loved it immediately and still do 20 years (and hundreds of listens) later. This album (and this act) remain one of my faves, even if they’ve lost some of their initial heat in recent years/outings. You can’t go wrong picking a highlight from this album, but this has always been one of my faves, particularly live, as they slowly build the menace and dread before destroying you at the end. Check out “Rifles” here:
We’ll take a brief pause in our time travel to note the passing of DMX again, whose death was a really unfortunate surprise last week. We’ll do so now because this is where X first burst onto the scene, chronologically — coming out of virtually nowhere 23 years ago to drop not one, but two huge albums in the same year (he remains the only rapper to have his first four albums debut at #1). From that point on he was virtually unavoidable for the next five years.
Fans knew from listening to his lyrics that he’d had a hard life (abuse, drugs, and prison were apparently just the tip of the iceberg, as described in these excellent homages) and unfortunately those demons increasingly got the better of him over the past few years. X had seemed primed for a potential comeback (and apparently has an all-star studded album recorded that we’ll maybe get to hear), so it was sad to learn that wasn’t in the cards.
I still remember the first time I heard him — it was at that hot mess of a festival Woodstock ’99 and I was somewhere back in the crowd, working my way to the front when this guy in orangish overalls EXPLODED onto the stage, growling, shouting, and exhorting the crowd, literally barking at us and telling us he couldn’t hear us/he was not playing. I may have heard his songs before, since they were everywhere at this point, but this was the first time I HEARD them, taking note of who this guy was in no uncertain terms as he annihilated the crowd. I was in from the opening salvo, which as I noted on the ‘gram I think I still have burns from 20 years later when he melted our faces off. Give that intro another watch or listen to its album version here (it remains one of rap’s best opening shots on album/stage), and tip your cap to the passing of one of rap’s greats…
Last stop on our magical mystery tour is for should-be Hall of Famers (honestly, how are these guys behind Todd Rundgren and Chaka Khan right now?!?) Rage Against the Machine, whose second album Evil Empire came out 25 years ago this week. This band, and these two albums, perfectly framed my high school experience and my exposure to them both at the front and the back end centered around a guy named Mike. When Mike first introduced me to the band it was our freshman year and I remember him handing me their debut CD and saying “these guys are great.” I remember looking at the guy on the cover, engulfed in flames, and thinking “ooh man, that seems aggressive” and then being almost literally blown back by the titular rage that erupted from the speakers when I actually put the disc on. It was too much for me, at the time — WAY too much.
At that time young Sunshine was still basically a child, blissfully listening to softer, safer things, like Moms’ Breakfast with the Beatles on Saturdays or Pops’ Soul Sundays with Reverend Al, Brother Ray, Sam, and Otis. Luckily, anger hadn’t really come into his life yet then. Fast forward four years later, though, and booooooooooooy was he ready. By the time Rage came back with Empire, I was an angry senior, seething at the loss of my mom, pissed at having to be in school and deal with all the nonsense surrounding college (something I didn’t really give a sh#$ about at the time, with all the jockeying for acceptance letters from prestigious places to try and impress those around you — people whose opinions I couldn’t have cared less about), so when Mike came into electronics class with their new album and started playing it on repeat, I was ready.
It was the prototypical island of misfit toys in there — burnouts and truants just looking to get an easy credit, supernerds taking refuge from the ridicule outside while building strobe lights and computers, a rebellious teacher being punished for his actions by having to deal with miscreants like us until he could finally retire. All of us packed in this room under the stairs in the basement next to the boiler room, as perfect a setting as you could pick for a posse such as ours.
And into this midst came Mike, who since the band’s debut had gone from straight-laced, clean cut kid to borderline burnout himself, rocking Zack-like mini-dreads while smoking pot and skipping class. I can’t say the transformation was caused by the band (though I’m pretty sure the hair was, in retrospect), but I can say his playing this album non-stop for almost an entire semester caused one in me. I still didn’t really understand WHAT they were so mad about (racism and injustice, sure, but talk of Mumia, Chomsky, and five-sided fistagons went straight over my head), but how that anger made them feel — from Zack’s seething howls to Tom’s frantic scratching, Tim’s lurking bass lines, and Brad’s thunderous drumming — made total sense. That cacophony was the perfect complement to my anger and would become a long-running soundtrack to similar seething over the years.
And what a tremendous racket it was. Even coming through tinny console speakers in the classroom, it was undeniable. This was when the video for “Bulls on Parade” was CONSTANTLY on MTV and I remember how unsettling it was at the time with its footage of random militants (“were these guys really trying to start a revolution/overthrow the government?!”), but even more indelible were the images of the crowd from the band’s live performance that were stitched in between. I’d never seen anything like it before — not only the violence and intensity of their response, but how it seemingly affected the entire crowd, bouncing and rippling like a cohesive wave across the entire stadium. That was the first glimpse I’d get of it and thankfully it would not be my last. (I’d see them several times over the years, including at the aforementioned festival with X, and they remain the most explosive, incendiary thing I’ve ever seen live.)
Over the course of that semester everyone in class got to know the album’s songs, whether they wanted to or not — Mike loved “Vietnow” and “Tire Me,” particularly its Jackie O line at the end, and would play them back to back over the outcries of even the most soft-spoken nerds after a while. I was drawn to the lurching “Snakecharmer” and “Down Rodeo,” which pulled at me like a riptide. And the closing “Year of the Boomerang,” with its stop/start dynamics, was one of everyone’s faves. 25 years later I still don’t understand everything they’re referencing — or necessarily agree with it when I do — but I continue to be amazed at how powerful a band this was. As I’ve noted here before, they’re the band I’ve thought about most during our tumultuous recent political history — first during the Bush reign and then even moreso during the previous administration, which dialed things up to infinity — and still consider it a bit of a shame they were only around so briefly.
This album marked the halfway point in terms of releases — they’d only put out one more of original material before the final covers album (which bucked the phone-in signal those albums can send, as they picked deep, unexpected cuts and made them sound like their own) — before breaking up and never recording together again (that we know). Tom, Tim, and Brad kept going under the Audioslave and then the Prophets of Rage monikers, while Zack all but completely disappeared, only appearing on one or two singles since. I was hoping maybe the reunion tour that got scuttled thanks to COVID might spark some of the old magic and a desire to record again, but we’ll have to wait until next year to see if that dream comes true. In the meantime we’ll have gems like this to keep us going — just like it has for the past 25. Check out “Snakecharmer” again and rock out with the rest of the basement dwellers:
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Insta’ Replay —
We’ll close with some more highlights from the ‘gram, so we can add them to the ongoing Sunshine Radio stream (always available on the Spots and in the upper right corner of the page here):
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- Check out the Joe Strummer compilation, Assembly, which pulls the best selections from his post-Clash solo work. It’s an interesting listen – the fire of his former band is nowhere to be found, but you definitely hear the reggae elements that helped create such an iconic sound when paired with their punk attitude and energy. Start with this one, “Tony Adams:”
- In honor of the Yorn/BRMC combo above, check out Burning Jacob’s Ladder who (like the former) plays all the instruments on his EP and (like the latter) “nails the sound of that band’s first two albums, all fuzzed guitar and darkened mood.” Check out “Dystopian Blues” here”
- Check out the Joe Strummer compilation, Assembly, which pulls the best selections from his post-Clash solo work. It’s an interesting listen – the fire of his former band is nowhere to be found, but you definitely hear the reggae elements that helped create such an iconic sound when paired with their punk attitude and energy. Start with this one, “Tony Adams:”
- In honor of X and rap’s rougher side, check out Gravediggaz’s debut, “where RZA of Wutang fame cut his teeth and first played with some of the elements that made that group so legendary. There’s the gritty subject matter, the martial arts elements, the wild man rapper routine that would later be perfected by ODB.” There’s even samples that will sound familiar — check out “Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide:”
- And while we’re at it, just cuz I’ve had this song in my head a bunch lately, check out Kendrick Lamar’s “DNA:”
- Give a listen to Finnish find Swires whose “frontman Allu Kettunen’s voice reminds me a bit of Alice In Chains and some of his riffs call to mind Machina-era Pumpkins (both good things).” Check out “Wait and Yearn” from their debut EP here:
- Also check out Dean and the Dagumn Space Villains, who aside from an excellently ridiculous/old-timey name, also make some really pretty music. Check out “Caveman,” a straightforward little love song that knocks you out despite barely being sung above a whisper most of the time. Lovely stuff!
- And last but not least check out New Orleans’ Yes Ma’am, a throwback band (like dust bowl old) whose high energy songs are sure to get you smiling (if not dosey doing) in your living room. Check out “Squishin’ Bees” here:
That’s it for now — until next time, amici… –BS