Stuck inside Classic Rock

January 10, 2010 5:42 pm | 18 Comments

Help! I’m trapped inside Classic Rock and can’t get out!

I grew up in the 60s and 70s listening to what is now called “classic rock”. My first album was Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Cosmo’s Factory. Ramble Tamble is still one of my favorite rock songs. I bought that album when I was 10 years old. I wish I was that cool but I was (am) not – my next album was The Partridge Family Album.

Through my teenage and college years I listened to the bands that make up every classic rock playlist: Allman Brothers, Grateful Dead, Rolling Stones, The Who, Steve Miller, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Bruce Springsteen, Led Zeppelin, Tom Petty, etc. I don’t listen to Partridge Family any more, but I listen to these other bands every day. My iTunes library is full of this music. My default station on both Pandora and Slacker is “Classic Rock”. And my main radio station is KFOG, home of “world class rock”.

Even though I love classic rock, I do like to mix in some new music now and then. New music that’s cut from the same mold, that is. Some new bands I’ve added over the years include Counting Crows, U2, and Red Hot Chili Peppers. That shows how old I am. I think of U2 as “new” – a band that’s been together for 30 years. I desperately needed some truly new music, so I grabbed the copy of Rolling Stone featuring the decade’s best songs & albums and went searching.

I found some great new (10 years old or less) music, and wanted to share what I found. What’s this have to do with web performance? I’ll get to that at the end. If you don’t want to wade through my music recommendations, skip to the bottom and find out what the connection is.

“New” Classic Rock

Here are singles I added via iTunes:

• Wake Up by Arcade Fire – Theme song from the Where the Wild Things Are movie. You should listen to this song first thing every morning when you get up.
• Take Me Out and No You Girls by Franz Ferdinand – Great lyrics to a good euro beat. Maybe danceable, but also capable of generating some headbanging.
• Hurt by Johnny Cash – Johnny Cash covers Nine Inch Nails?! I had to listen to this and was hooked. With lyrics like “what have I become” and “empire of dirt” it makes you think.
• One More Time by Daft Punk – Electro-disco dance mix. Play this in the car when the sun’s out and the windows are down, or the next time a dance party breaks out in your living room (whichever comes first).
• Paper Planes by M.I.A. – I’m not huge on hip-hop, so I fell short of buying the album. But this catchy song featured in Slumdog Millionaire is a great addition to the playlist. My daughters and wife liked it – bonus points!
• Float On by Modest Mouse – Singer Isaac Brock sounds like David Byrne in this song that mixes driving choruses with melodic lyrics.
• Last Nite by The Strokes – A rocking song that’ll get you moving.

I buy my CDs on Amazon. Just this week a buddy predicted the music industry would soon stop making CDs. I hope not. I have so much music it’s overwhelming. I like holding a collection of songs in my hand, taking it with me in the car or on a trip, looking at the cover art, and reading the liner notes. All of this helps me better capture a mental picture of the music. I also believe artists arrange songs together and in a particular order to achieve additional impact. True or not, I like physical CDs. Here’s what I bought:

• Fleet Foxes by Fleet Foxes – This was an easy, almost backward, transition from classic rock to new music. These guys sound like CSNY – harmonies and easy lyrics. Good listening.
• Funeral by Arcade Fire – I bought the single of Wake Up on iTunes and then got it again when I bought the CD – not smart. But it was worth the extra $0.69 to have that one song for the few days it took for the album to arrive.
• A Rush of Blood to the Head by Coldplay – Coldplay churns out hits, which is a turnoff for me. This album has hits, or at least songs you’ll recognize, like In My Place, The Scientist, and Clocks. But the lesser known songs on this album are what’s intriguing – Politik, God Put a Smile upon Your Face, Green Eyes – let’s face it, all the songs on this album are good or great.
• Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots by The Flaming Lips – Wow. Incredible and hard to describe. It feels like someone used a Pink Floyd machine to translate a comic book to music. I listened to Flight Test and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 1 multiple times each day when I first got this. You can hear the influences from Cat Stevens (Flight Test) and Neil Young (In the Morning of the Magicians).
• Only by the Night by Kings of Leon – You’ll recognize the track Use Somebody. I like the singer’s voice – it reminds me of Bob Seeger.
• Z by My Morning Jacket – Southern rock meets Hothouse Flowers, with some early Who influence.

What’s the Connection?

It has been a few weeks since my last blog post. I’m having a hard time getting going again after the long holiday break. This blog post on classic rock was an easy first step back into the world of blogging.

But there’s more to it than that.

I’m slow getting back into blogging because I’m having trouble imagining putting down words that have value. Over the break I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig (for the third time). My mind is still swimming from the visions and thoughts stirred up by that book. Having experienced what an author is capable of with words, how can I attempt to do anything even remotely similar? I am not worthy!

It gets worse, or at least more complicated.

As I drive around listening to my “new” classic rock, I get the same overwhelming, swimming feeling. Many of these songs move me. They’re beautiful. Even the headbanging songs are beautiful. They’re beautiful in the way the artist has reached through the car stereo speakers and changed the way I feel. They’re beautiful in the way they connect and convey. Just like ZMM is beautiful and connects and conveys. And I stop and ask myself – Is my blog beautiful? Really what I mean is, can my blog connect and convey?

I’ve spent a lot of time over the last year thinking about and observing how we connect with each other through writing, music, art, movies, personal interactions, and the Web. I’ve been thinking about what makes those connections more successful, more enjoyable, and ultimately more moving. For my world I’ve been concerned with what makes a blog post, tech presentation, book, or piece of code more beautiful. It came down to asking and defining – What is Beauty? And that’s when I hit a brick wall. I couldn’t define it. I know it when I see it. I can experience it. But I can’t define it. How can I improve something I can’t define?

As I read ZMM, I realized this was similar to Phaedrus’ struggle to define Quality. And the connection Phaedrus found between Quality and what the Greeks called aretê, or Excellence, is similarly connected to what I have been calling Beauty, and is probably a better name for what I’ve been searching to improve. Quality, Excellence, and Beauty – they’re all the same, or at least closely related.

Quality, excellence, and beauty are, or at least should be, in our work. And that’s the connection. This music is excellent and beautiful, and I want to find that quality in the world of web performance, and find a way to express it and communicate it, and have all of us carry it with us as we do our work. As I read ZMM, I saw many similarities between web performance and motorcycle maintenance. I feel like there’s at least one more blog post on the topic, if not an entire book. Hmmm, Zen and the Art of Web Performance. I like it. But let’s see how the blog post goes first. Stay tuned…

18 Comments