Rock n Roll is dead. <\/p>\n
Pat DiNizio is gone.<\/p>\n
For those who don’t know Pat was the front man and primary songwriter of The Smithereens. If you don’t know their records, you’ve been missing out. For decades. You need to fix that. I haven’t heard another band in 30 years that does straight up rock-n-roll as well, or brought as much tactile solidity to the songwriting.<\/p>\n
For you old folks, ask youself what the Beatles might have done if they’d stayed together, and been fresh and vibrant in the 80s.<\/p>\n
For you younger folks, these are the guys Nirvana listened to. <\/p>\n
Let me try to frame this for you:<\/p>\n
Start with the understanding that the mid-1980s were a dark time for guitar rock. Hair Metal was the product of choice. I spent my time listening to and plundering import bins for more challenging and extreme music to occupy my ADD brain, and found that there was systemic problem: There were relatively few bands that could put together a song that was innovative, musically interesting and lyrically sincere, much less sustain it for a whole album. I don’t blame the musicians – the corporate music system has always had it’s head up its ass, and I’ve heard so many stories over the years about how albums worth of songs were basically rewritten by record company producers to make them more marketable, homogeneous and bland enough for radio. <\/p>\n
I was 12 when I first heard their album “Especially for You”. I was being held prisoner in a hotel on a ski trip with my family and my only escape was my cassette player and headphones. I rummaged one of my cousins’ tape boxes and came across This album with sort of bright, abstract painting on the the cover. I listened to that tape non-stop for the rest of the weekend, and copied it at the first opportunity, to hold me until I could buy it, or wheedle the cash out of my parents. (Allowance days were also a dark period, and measured fractions of a dollar. Low fractions.)<\/p>\n
Cassette is a terrible, terrible music format. While in theory one can fast forward or rewind it to skip stuff, such activities killed cassette tapes on a regular basis. And so, cassettes taught patience. You mostly just sucked it up and listened to the whole side, and then turned it over, and listened to the other. But it’s worse than that: it’s the analog equivalent of a 22Khz sample rate. It’s bad enough that the bass guitar can seem nearly pitchless, and a lot of tapes are just so… lifeless. <\/p>\n
Keep that in mind when you read this next part. Side B was queued when I picked up that tape and stuck it in my knock-off walkman. You rolls your dice, you takes your chances. <\/p>\n
The bassline. That fucking bassline. It was huge, powerfully resonant. 8 bars before the band comes in. E minor. G major. E minor. G major. D Major. Filthy, overdriven open chords. You could tell there was a story there. And then the verse. <\/p>\n
“It was long ago….Seems like yesterday”<\/p>\n
And the guitar solo is… magically simple. It comes in with this run of fifths high up the neck that sounds like a rusty razor feels, hestiates, and then pulls back into some very talky bends, quotes a motown bass groove, and goes back to those talky bends that sound like private grief.<\/p>\n
“Blood and Roses” is a tragedy told in faded polaroids taken unknown years apart. I don’t know how much of that I grokked at the time, but there are very few songs that I can say I loved at 12 that I don’t feel slightly dirty admitting I still like today. <\/p>\n
The whole record is like that. It feels like it was recorded before Phil Spector ruined music production for 30 years. It’s not sterilized studio perfection – it’s a lively recording, it’s a comfortable recording. The rockers rock, and the slower songs are intimate, but not… cloying. Always touched with enough bitterness and frustration to feel real and true.<\/p>\n
About a year later, I heard “Especially for You”, the second album, “Green Thoughts” arrived. The opening track, “Only a Memory” comes in with a feedback build, and launches into a chimey open stringed motif which arcs into the verse backed with sharply struck rhythm guitars and a bass that just locks in the heartbeat of the song…<\/p>\n
I could go on for hours about this band’s music- There are 11 studio albums, after all – but what I want you to understand is that while there are a lot of bands and players that I love, and can do all kinds of bigger-better-faster-more, The Smithereens are where I turn when I wanted to hear the basics, to remember that what’s not there is as important as what is. When I wanted to stay awake on the road. When I need a break from Sturm und Drang. When I want to beleive for a while that there’s something OK in the world.<\/p>\n
I could tell you a few stories about meeting the Pat and the Smithereens, but right now, they feel oddly personal.<\/p>\n
The most important thing about Pat is that he was the kind of guy who wrote back to a 14 year old kid who was frustrated with his axe, and ready to give up, and that 28 years later, that kid still plays. via Facebook Rock n Roll is dead. Pat DiNizio is gone. For those who don’t know Pat was the front man and primary songwriter of The Smithereens. If you don’t know their records, you’ve been missing out. For decades. You need to … Continue reading
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