So Amazing, So Different, So Brilliant, So Peter Gabriel

So Amazing, So Different, So Brilliant, So Peter Gabriel

In 1986 the infrastructure for cable television finally made its way to Sandy, Utah.  I still remember the day we got a flyer on the door from Insight Cable letting us know they were ready to install cable in our neighborhood.  My Dad was completely ecstatic that finally ESPN and MTV were coming to our house.  I was excited that finally I was going to have more than 5 channels.

Back in the good old days before MTV stood for Mundane Teenage Vomit it once stood for Music Television and it showed music videos instead of 24 hours of reality television.  Prior to having MTV the only access I had to music video were shows like Solid Gold and very rare concerts on PBS and specials on network television.  Having access to MTV was a huge deal.  I still remember watching Utah Jazz games and Major League Baseball with my Dad and brothers and flipping back to MTV during the commercial breaks.  One thing that made MTV unique (and sadly led to its downfall to a degree) is the variety of music on MTV.  As much as hard rock and heavy metal very much ruled my world in 1986, MTV was very influential in facilitating a forum in which I was exposed to music, both awesome and terrible, that I would not have initially been exposed to otherwise.

I was already a huge fan of the Phil Collins era of Genesis at age 9.  However, at that time I had no idea Peter Gabriel was the original lead singer of Genesis or that he had a very extensive solo career.  One Saturday morning after Saturday morning cartoons ended my brother Scott and I were flipping through the channels, ended up on MTV, and I saw the video of Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer” for the very first time.  It was by far the coolest and most unique music video I had ever seen.  It fits the music perfectly and showcases a plethora of animation and film styles.  Peter Gabriel really put his acting skills and creativity to the test just to make this music video and pulls off a masterpiece.  Even people who are not fans of Peter Gabriel’s music love this music video.  In addition, the music video for “Sledgehammer” became a new benchmark for the quality and creativity of music video as an art form.  Musically “Sledgehammer” is the perfect mixture of Latin drum beats, jazzy horns, mixed with rock and roll and a quirky set of lyrics.  As much as the music video got my attention, the song is just plain awesome and has made a very lasting impression on me.

In 1987, my father joined the BMG music club with the offer of get 10 cassettes for the price of one.  What made this offer ever cooler is that my father let me and my brothers pick two cassettes each for the mail in offer and I picked the cassettes of Vital Idol by Billy Idol and So by Peter Gabriel.  A couple of weeks later the cassettes arrived in the mail, and I went bicycling through my neighborhood with So playing on my Walkman.  I’ll be the first to admit this album musically was not what I was expecting at all.  I completely expected all of the songs to be in the vein of “Sledgehammer” and “Big Time”.  To be honest after my first listen I did not really know what to even make of it.  I gave it a couple of more listens, but I just could not get into So. 

In 1989, the movie Say Anything starring John Cusack came out and MTV started to play the music video for the Peter Gabriel song “In Your Eyes”.  The first time I saw the video for “In Your Eyes” I was completely taken back.  It was simply one of the most beautiful songs I have ever heard.  At this point of my life knew a very extensive amount of love songs, power ballads, lust anthems, and romantic songs from Broadway, but none of these songs actually reflected what I thought love was really about.  What made “In Your Eyes” so special to me is that as I heard Peter Gabriel sing it is that I knew Peter Gabriel meant every word of it and I could feel that.  It was a song that really spoke to me about what I perceived love to be about, love is not always easy or instant, and there are a lot of ups and downs, but seeing that love in a girls eyes, is what makes it worth it.  I was 12 years old when “In Your Eyes” was a hit song and I hit that special time in a boy’s life when out of nowhere, girls are now exceptionally attractive and I had my very first crush on a girl in my neighborhood named Jennifer L.  At this point in my life I was the neighborhood metal head, bicycle and roller blading dare devil, and in all reality the odd and kind of there kid (I’m sure there is one in every neighborhood).  I wanted Jennifer to like me so bad, but I just did not know how to act around her, she would only talk to me if she really, really had to, and my attempts to impress her were horrible at best.  But I had a very hopeless crush for the first time in my life and I lived for just seeing Jennifer at school or around the neighborhood.  “In Your Eyes” at that point really summed up how I felt about her, however, such as the case with most first crushes, nothing ever happened between us, but the memories are very precious to me.  “In Your Eyes” is currently in a six way tie with “More Than Words” by Extreme, “You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth” by Meat Loaf, “Making Love Out of Nothing at All” by Air Supply, “She’s Got a Way” by Billy Joel, and “The Flame” by Cheap Trick as my favorite love song ever.

Thanks to MTV showing the video of “In Your Eyes” at age 12 I decided to dust off my cassette of So, hopped on my bicycle and gave it another listen.  This time the album blew me away from the from the sounds of the Hi Hats that open the song “Red Rain” the album captured me.  Every song on the album is unique and yet they blend together so perfectly.  The most miraculous thing at this point is I was listening to a lot of AC/DC, Rush, Iron Maiden, Ozzy Osbourne, Guns n’ Roses, and Aerosmith, and yet Peter Gabriel fit in perfectly with all of it.  Forgiving the fact that radios and Walkman’s were banned at Union Middle School and would be confiscated if a teacher caught me with one, I always had mine with me, and would listen to songs as I walked from one class to another (provided I wasn’t chatting with my friends).  Because I had so many cassettes I usually had two different tapes with me almost every day and my friends were always interested in what the tapes of the day were.  All of the heavy metal stuff my friends were pretty cool with and envious of, if I brought Elton John, Billy Joel, or James Taylor I usually got teased pretty bad by my rocker friends, and surprised and impressed my other friends, but for some reason, everyone was pretty cool with Peter Gabriel.  He was one of the first musicians I was ever into that for the most part, everyone liked him.  Heavy metal and Peter Gabriel could co-exist very well in my musical universe and So became one of my favorite albums.

When I was 15 years in 1992 old I was a sophomore at Hillcrest High School and I was happy as a clam.  I loved the whole experience.  My last class of the day was an LDS Seminary class where our course of study was the New Testament.  Many of my best friends in High School I met in this seminary class.  Our classes always started with a prayer, a spiritual thought or song from a member of class, and then our lesson for the day.  A very sweet girl, who would become one of my best friends in High School and the first girl I would ever ask on a date named Amy gave the spiritual thought to start the class one day and she played the song “Don’t Give Up” by Peter Gabriel and shared a scripture.  I’ll be honest in saying that “Don’t Give Up” was at that time what I considered to be the weakest song on So.  At this point it had been a couple of years since the last time I listened to So and this time “Don’t Give Up” sounded amazing and the message of the song reached me. 

Now we fast forward about 10 years.  It’s January of 2003, I have earned my Associate of Science in General Studies from LDS Business College and I transferred to Utah State University and relocated to Logan, Utah.  I was very excited to arrive at Utah State University and I had been looking forward to going to school there for quite some time.  However, I was working part time for $7.00 dollars an hour and financially I was dirt poor and struggling to support myself in Logan, Utah.  In order just have enough money to buy groceries I had to stop buying CD’s for a little while which was a huge sacrifice for me.  During this period of my life I went through my old cassettes and CD’s that I had not listened to in a very long time and I was able to find some hidden gems in my own music collection which helped to make up for not being able to buy new music.  One day when I came back to my apartment after a long day of classes my roommate had downloaded a bunch of music and we listened to a bunch of it together.  He then played the song “Red Rain” by Peter Gabriel.  Forgiving the fact I had heard this song before, it had been 10 years since the last time I heard it and I don’t know what came over me, but this time “Red Rain” just penetrated me to my very core.  The song literally took my breath away.  At this time I was in my first Calculus class and a C++ software programming class that were incredibly difficult and were literally eating up every ounce of my time just to stay caught up in the classes.  To make things more difficult there was a lot of tension between me and my roommate.  “Red Rain” summed up exactly how I felt and the huge amount of stress I was going through.  After I listened to “Red Rain” with my roommate I immediately went into my bedroom, dusted off my cassette of So and for the first time in at least 10 years I cranked it up on my Walkman and went for a nice long evening walk through Logan, Utah.  Once again So completely blew me away.  I just could not get enough of it and it became of my very favorites when I was attending Utah State University.   I would later dust off my old cassette of Security by Peter Gabriel and that very quickly became another favorite. 

While I was attending Utah State University I was finally able to pay off my car which made my financial situation a lot better.  I bought several of Peter Gabriel’s other albums and really enjoyed them.  At the same time I was a fan of progressive rock, and other than “I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)”, I had never heard any of the songs of the Peter Gabriel era of Genesis.  I bought the CD’s of The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway and Genesis Live by Genesis and just was completely floored by both of them.  Peter Gabriel is a much different musician in Genesis compared to his solo career, but the music he creates in Genesis is the some of the best progressive rock ever made.  I would own all of the Peter Gabriel era Genesis CD’s before I graduated college.  Peter Gabriel was very much part of the soundtrack of my life while I attended and graduated with my Bachelor of Science in Finance from Utah State University.

When it’s all said and done So is Peter Gabriel’s most successful album.  It received four Grammy award nominations, is noted on several best albums of the 80’s and best albums of all time lists, several of its songs have been recorded by other artists (Queensryche has a superb cover of “Red Rain”), and it is hailed by many critics and fans alike as Peter Gabriel’s masterpiece.  Peter Gabriel this year is celebrating the 25^th anniversary of So by performing the entire album of So live on his upcoming tour and I will be at his Las Vegas show this October.  Peter Gabriel’s So holds a very special place in my heart, the album has expanded my musical horizons and has several of my most cherished memories tied to it.  I am glad that this is an album that is loved by so many people and will continue to stand out for years to come.

Space Oddity: An Unexpected All Time Favorite Album

Space Oddity: An Unexpected All Time Favorite Album

There is not an artist in the history of rock and roll that has explored so many paths and places in the musical landscape as David Bowie.  When I was growing up my father had a huge box that was completely full of all of the 45 lp’s he had bought and every once in a while my Dad would pull out this box and play his old 45’s for hours and this is where I heard “Ziggy Stardust”, “Suffragette City”, “Starman”, and “Rebel Rebel” for the very first time when I was a kid.  Although I am sure my Dad played me his 45 of “Space Oddity” when I was 3 or 4 years old, I didn’t really remember it.

Transitioning forward to the year 1989, it was really early on a Saturday morning and that particular evening I could not sleep so at about 2:00am I was flipping the channels between MTV and VH1 back when they used to show music videos just killing time before my newspapers arrived for my morning route.  During the wee small hours of this morning I was tired and spacy and VH1 played the music video for the song “Space Oddity”.  I thought it was the weirdest song I had ever heard in my life and I did not like it at all.  At 4:30am my newspapers arrived, I folded them up, and started to do my paper route.  Although I was listening to something like either Van Halen, AC/DC, Rush, or Aerosmith on my cassette Walkman “Space Oddity” kept playing in my head to a point where it was starting to annoy me pretty bad.

When I finished up my paper route my father had arrived home from the evening shift at the post office and as I was having breakfast with him I was telling him that I saw a video for “Space Oddity” and how much I thought the song sucked.  Then my father told me about the first time he heard the song “Space Oddity”.  It was 1969 and he was serving as an LDS missionary in Los Angeles back in the day when AM radio strictly played pop music and FM radio was commercial free and played very different and more experimental music.  On FM in Los Angeles late one evening he heard “Space Oddity” and thought it was one of the most far out and coolest songs he had ever heard and it reminding him of some amazing days on his mission.  He even knew how to play it on the guitar.  It was one of his favorite songs of all time.  However, I did not share the same sentiment my father did and I still felt like the song was kind of out there and weird at age 12.

About a year later I was the record shop with my Dad and I bought my cassette of Changesbowie, one of David Bowie’s greatest hits albums.  I bought it mainly for “Ziggy Stardust”, “Suffragette City”, “Jean Jeanie”, “Diamond Dogs”, and “Rebel Rebel”.  However, “Space Oddity” was the very first song and I didn’t really feel like fast forwarding past it so I gave it another listen.  This time I caught the vision and like my dad I thought it was the coolest song I had heard.  It was just so different.  The thing that captured me the most about “Space Oddity” is that the song instantly took me into the vacuum of space and I really could feel the isolation from friends and family, and yet still be amazed by a view of the world and space that very few people get to behold with their own eyes.  Changesbowie became one of favorite cassettes and the song “Space Oddity” sounded especially good at 4:30am when I would be throwing my paper route.

When I was 14 years old my LDS ward was doing a road show (a musical stage production involving all of the 12 to 18 year old youth in my ward and written and composed by the members of my LDS ward).  I was recruited along with the other members of my Teacher’s quorum to dress in black clothes with dark sunglasses and bandannas portraying a gang trying to lure the main star into our mischievous and no good ways by singing a quasi rap song in the road show.   Being the 14 year old way serious rocker with a reputation to maintain at Union Middle School participating in this road show is something that was pretty high on my blatantly uncool list of things to do.  But my parents, being good and devoted parents, made sure I was part of this road show with the youth in my ward.  For my costume I wore a torn up AC/DC shirt, a black and white hair metal styled wig, black sunglasses, and I wore my bandanna over the lower half of my face.  I at least looked like I was ready to commit armed robbery, that I had already done hard time, and I frankly I thought I looked pretty cool and I did not really resemble anyone else in my ‘gang’ of Teachers which was even cooler.  My mother found out about my costume from other members of my ward.  She was ok with all of it, but she thought the bandanna was too over the top and she was trying to convince me to take the bandanna off of the lower half of my face and I would not budge on removing it.  A few days later after the next rehearsal I came home in full costume and my mother looked at me in my costume and started to sing “Space Oddity” with the alternate lyrics of “Ground control to Major Dumb, please take off that bandanna and never wear it again!” and I started laughing really hard.  At this point I decided to remove the bandanna covering my face from my costume and my mother, and for that matter the director of the road show, were very happy.  This version of “Space Oddity” is still a running joke between me and my mother.

My junior year of high school in 1994 after being addicted to my cassette of Changesbowie for many years at that point I finally broke down and started to buy some of David Bowie’s albums on CD.  I instantly loved The Man Who Sold the World, Aladdin Sane, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, Hunky Dory, and the live album Ziggy Stardust: The Motion Picture.  Shortly after I graduated high school I bought a CD of the Space Oddity album.  Having been a fan of the song “Space Oddity” for so long I was really excited to give the album my very first listen.  The album opened with the song “Space Oddity” this was pretty much a straight up folk album.  With the exception of Bob Dylan, at this stage of my life I was not really embracing of folky/acoustic music and I thought the album was really weak and very disappointing compared to the other David Bowie albums I really enjoyed.

In 1998, I had just come home from serving my LDS mission in Pennsylvania, which to this day is one of the hugest growing experiences of my life, and I was adjusting to civilian life again after being away from home for two years.  At this time I was working as a casual clerk (temporary worker) for the U.S. Postal Service in Salt Lake City and I was working 12 hours a day, six days a week, and had very little free time from July to December of 1998.  My job at the post office was very physically demanding and during this period of my life and I generally did not really want do anything on my days off.  On one of my rare days off I was relaxing in my bedroom just listening to music and at that time I was listening to a lot of Alice Cooper, Grand Funk Railroad, Queen, Dave Matthews Band, Sheryl Crow, and James.  I was just in the mood for something different and I looked through my CD’s and saw my copy of Space Oddity and for whatever reason I decided to give the album of Space Oddity another listen.

The song “Space Oddity” came over my speakers which I sang along with and really enjoyed.  However, after serving my mission and not listening to my CD of Space Oddity for three years I had a completely different experience.  This time I finally got into it.  It was a straight up folk album with very unique lyrics and the album just had a very emotional, personal, and stripped down feel to it.  In a way, I cannot imagine this album being done with an electric guitar; it would take away from the beauty of Space Oddity.  The song that just entered my heart the deepest was the over 9 minute epic “Cynget Committee”.  Although many musicians wear their hearts on their sleeves with their lyrics, a number of them tend to hide the true meaning of their lyrics and prefer to have lyrics that through storytelling and poetry convey their thoughts and feelings, rather than blatantly discuss their innermost thoughts and feelings.  “Cynget Committee” is lyrically a very rare glimpse into some very personal experiences of David Bowie’s where he felt very used, alienated, and disillusioned, my favorite lyric that conveys this is “Who praised their efforts to be free?  Words of strength and care and sympathy.  I opened doors that would have blocked their way.  I braved their cause to guide, for a little pay”.  To me the boldest lyric of the song, where David’s feelings of alienation really peak is “and the road is coming to its end, now the damned have no time to make amends”.  “Cynget Committee” is one of my most favorite David Bowie songs ever and because it’s long and fairly obscure this song remains a hidden gem (in fact, I bought I David Bowie guitar book specifically to learn this song).

In all reality, as much as David Bowie has many albums and songs that I absolutely love, Space Oddity has gone down as my favorite David Bowie album.  It’s one of his most unique and he very radically changes direction with his next album The Man Who Sold the World in 1970 and many times throughout his career.  I admire how David Bowie is not afraid to explore many different styles and has one of the most fascinating volumes of music and careers in rock and roll.  I think that is another reason that Space Oddity is such a special album to me is it is the most traditional and stripped down album David Bowie has ever made, yet it is still very uniquely David Bowie.  In addition, albums like Space Oddity are the reason why even if I buy a CD and I don’t really like it, I still keep it in my collection.  There have been a few other albums besides Space Oddity that sounded a lot better to me years after I had bought them.  Because of my experience as an LDS missionary my tastes in music became broader and my tastes had expanded by the time I finished my mission and albums like Space Oddity sounded great and fit right in with everything else I am listening to.  It never ceases to amaze me how my tastes in music keep expanding and growing to include so many genres of music and how music that initially was not that appealing, becomes some of my favorite, as was the case with Space Oddity.

What is this that stands before me? The First Black Sabbath album: The birth of heavy metal.



What is this that stands before me?  The First Black Sabbath album: The birth of heavy metal.

The atmosphere of the rock and roll scene in 1969 is one of the most interesting in the history of music.  There was the San Francisco Bay Scene that hailed Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Country Joe and the Fish, Grateful Dead, and music that was all things peace, love, and the counterculture movement.  Down in Los Angeles there was what I view as the early hard scene with bands like the Doors and Love, the folk rock scene with bands like The Byrds and Buffalo Springfield, the plain bizarre scene with bands like the Mothers of Invention, some of the best pop and contemporary music of the 60’s, and the one and only Beach Boys.  New York City had it's own unique scene with artists like Bob Dylan and Simon and Garfunkel in Greenwich Village, bands ranging from Vanilla Fudge to The Velvet Underground, and some of the greatest songwriters in history including Neil Diamond, Carol King, Gerry Goffin, Burt Bacharach, Hal David, Jerry Leiber, Mike Stroller, Laura Nyro, and Neal Sedaka, all housed in New York City's Brill Building.  In the Midwest, the birth of the American hard rock and to a huge degree the future punk scene was happening with bands like the Amboy Dukes, Alice Cooper, MC5, Grand Funk Railroad, Bob Seger System, and The Stooges as well as the one and only Motown scene.  While over in England it was the tail end of the bands that would immerge from the British Invasion scene with The Beatles still being the top dogs.  However, at this point in the late 60’s many bands immerged that were heavily influenced by the American blues scene.  Bands like John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, Rolling Stones, and The Yardbirds had for many years at this point incorporated a lot of blues into their music and bands like Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac, Cream, Savoy Brown, and Wishbone Ash emerge and firmly establish the British blues scene.  The original Jeff Beck Group and Led Zeppelin also immerge and set up a huge foundation and standard for heavier blues based rock and roll.  During this amazing period for music in England a blues based band called Earth would develop a sound that although based in blues, was very heavy, dark, and extremely different from the bands that influenced them, Earth would change their name to Black Sabbath, a very fitting name they took from a famous horror movie starring Boris Karloff of the same name.

When Black Sabbath got their first record deal they had very little money to record their debut record.  In November 1969 for the cost of £500.00 they entered Regent Sound Studios in London, turned on the recording equipment, performed what was their live show (most of the songs were recorded in one take with Ozzy doing the vocals while the rest band played, a practice very rarely done in the studio), and 12 hours later the album was recorded, mixed, and complete.  On Friday, February 13, 1970, the self-titled first Black Sabbath album was released and along with Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, the birth of heavy metal was now official.

Now let’s step into Mr. Peabody’s Way-Back Machine and transition back to the year 1993 in the thriving suburb of Sandy, UT.  I was 16 years old and I had saved up my money from washing dishes at the Chin-Wah Chinese Restaurant and bought my very first CD player.  Because CD’s were a lot more expensive than cassettes, for the first couple of years I owned a CD player I went out of my way to buy stuff that I did not own at cassette (I owned about 500 cassettes when I bought my CD player).  I had been a fan of Black Sabbath since I was 10 years old at this point and owned a few of their albums, but for some odd reason I had never bought their first album.  I was at a record shop going through a bin of $9.00 CD’s and there it was, the first Black Sabbath.  I had never heard any of the songs off of it, but for the price of $9.00 I could not say no and I bought it.  Since I did not have a CD player in my bright yellow 1989 Dodge Shadow at that time as I drove home with the first Black Sabbath album I honestly thought and was fully expecting this album to sound more like Paranoid or Master of Reality.  Little did I know what was lying in wait ready to strike.

I walked into my parents’ house, ripped the plastic off the CD as fast as I could, and put the first Black Sabbath into my parents’ CD player.  The sound of a very rainy day accompanying the sound of a very faint church bell came over the speakers creating a very unique atmosphere, then suddenly and without warning Tony Iommi loudly strums an F# and the album is off and running!  I was completely taken back, it had loud and intense chords mingle with very slow and eerie riffs in between bursts of musical energy in the song “Black Sabbath”.  Then where this song becomes even cooler is the last segment when Tony Iommi starts to play the closing riff and the tempo really speeds up.  And that was just the beginning of the CD, then came “The Wizard” with Ozzy Osbourne on the harmonica, a classic blues style song taken up a few notches.  Then the song segments of “Wasp”, “Behind the Wall of Sleep”, “Bassically”, and “NIB” came on and I was again completely blown away.   The foundation of all of the legendary guitar riffs and loud bass lines which would make Black Sabbath famous, and the rest of the album was flawless.  It immediately got a second listen after it wrapped up for the first time.  What made this album so unique to me is the album for being so amazing, it still had a very loose and live feel to it.  It has a feel to it that no other Black Sabbath album has ever been able to recreate, making the album really stand out.

I immediately pulled out my bass guitar and figured out how to play the songs on the first Black Sabbath album and very indirectly Geezer Butler was my bass teacher.  I consider him to be one of the greatest bassists in the history of rock and roll and has one of the most unique playing styles.  When I was 21 I was started to learn how to play guitar and after two years of being completely self-taught I could do a few things, but I still wasn’t great.  Then one day I was in a guitar shop and the guitar books for the first Black Sabbath and Paranoid were on the shelf and I bought them immediately.  These books were challenging for me to learn, but I learned something about my playing style that would help me greatly improve through Black Sabbath.  I don’t know why this is the case with me, but if I can play on song on bass (even if the bass line is incredibly simple) I am over half way there on figuring out the song on guitar.  As I strummed these songs on guitar for the first time the bass lines were immediately in my mind, I positioned my fingers accordingly, and then from these books I was finally able to learn the chords and a lot of the leads.  Just how Geezer Butler had indirectly been my bass teacher, now Tony Iommi had indirectly became my guitar teacher, and I would make my first major quantum leap as a guitarist. 

Tony Iommi is one of my favorite guitarists in history, besides learning the songs of Black Sabbath and his playing style, he has been inspirational to me for his perseverance and drive to become a great guitarist.   In 1965 when Tony Iommi was 16 years old he worked in a metal shop and on the last day of his job he accidentally cut off the fingertips of his middle and ring fingers on his right hand.  Tony, being a left handed guitarist, was very devastated and uncertain if he would ever be able to play guitar again.  However, Tony’s manager came to his house and brought him over a record by legendary jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt and was amazed by what he was hearing.  His manager then mentioned that Django could only play with two of his fingers because of a horrible injury to his hand caused by a fire.  This encouraged Tony to continue playing guitar despite the injuries to his right hand.  At first Tony tried to play the guitar right handed and just couldn’t do it.  One day he found an empty plastic detergent bottle and melted it down into two fingertip sized plastic globs.  He then took a finger nail file and started to file down the globs into a shape where he could use them to play the guitar.  The next problem was the plastic did not have enough friction to hold the strings down when playing.  Tony then cut a small piece of leather into two pieces, re-melted the plastic to insert the leather into the artificial fingertips, and once again used his trusty finger nail file to get the friction in the leather just right.

Once Tony had made his own artificial fingertips, the battle was only half over.  In order for the artificial fingertips to stay on his fingers when he was playing he could not push down on the guitar strings as hard as he was used to, he then started to use lighter tension strings on his guitar and had to retain his fingers not to push as hard.  Most guitarists when they play are feeling for the frets and strings so they know where their hand is as they play.  However, because of Tony’s artificial fingertips, in two of his fingers he could not feel the frets or the strings.  He had to completely retrain himself to where he instead had to really listen for the notes rather than feeling for the notes.  After a very massive trial, Tony was able to overcome what happened to his right hand at the sawmill that unfortunate day in 1965.  I am a firm believer that God will never give us a trial that we cannot overcome and during some of the hardest trials I have gone through I have reflected on Tony’s experience.  It has been my experience through my life that the times of my most intense trials I have experienced the most substantial growth and that God will provide a way for all of us to overcome our trials and it may not always be the easiest way, but it is always the best way.

During the fall and winter of 1998 I was working as a temporary at the U.S. Postal Services main office in Salt Lake City, UT, primarily running an OCR letter sorting machine.  The original four members of Black Sabbath had reunited, performed some shows together in the U.K., and were releasing a new live album with a couple of brand new songs.  I was listening to a radio show where Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Bill Ward were being interviewed about the new record and just loving every second of it.  Then the reporter asked where Black Sabbath would begin their U.S. reunion tour and straight out of the mouth of Ozzy Osbourne he said “New Year’s Eve in Phoenix, Arizona”.  My jaw about hit the floor, I have family in the Phoenix area and I knew I could pull off going to see this once in a lifetime concert.  I immediately emailed one of my cousins in Phoenix, he bought the tickets, and my brother Alan and I planned our travel to Phoenix for the concert.

The concert itself was one of the biggest events I have ever attended.  It was Black Sabbath with Pantera, Megadeth, Slayer, and Soulfly at Bank One Ballpark.  We were able to get a nice spot on the field of the ballpark and just enjoyed the show.  All of the supporting bands were excellent!  Then it came time for Black Sabbath.  I will never forget how when they entered the stage by being raised by platforms below the stage.  I was completely taken by surprise.  Then the sounds of the faint rain and the church bell started to play over the P.A. and they went right into the song “Black Sabbath”.  I was completely amazed.  I never thought I would ever see the fully reunited Black Sabbath and they did not disappoint.  My cousins, older brother, and I had an amazing time!  One thing that makes this show very special to me is shortly after my cousin bought us the tickets for the New Year’s Eve show in Phoenix, tickets went on sale for the Salt Lake City show.  I was pretty excited that I would be able to see Black Sabbath twice.  But as the tour progressed due to health and other problems only a hand full of the shows of Black Sabbath reunion tour actually happened and the Salt Lake City show actually got cancelled twice.  If Alan and I did not have gone to Phoenix we would not have been able to see Black Sabbath at all.

We spent a few fun days with our family in Phoenix before we headed back to Sandy, UT.  One of my favorite memories of this trip was Alan and I on the way home were north of Flagstaff, Arizona, I was speeding and ended up getting pulled over by Arizona Highway Patrol.  I got out the registration and my driver’s license and was chatting with the officer hoping I would not get a ticket while at the same my older was snacking on some Wheat Thins and spraying some cheese on them.  While I am talking with the officer the spray cheese bottle ran out and a popping sound came out of the bottle.  In a blink of an eye the officer pulled out her gun and was in a defensive position which scared the tar out of me to be bold.  Then she apologized and said “I’m sorry boys, but when I hear popping like that I react”.  I accepted her apology and I think because she realized he scared me pretty bad she gave me a warning rather than an expensive ticket.  This still ranks very high as one of the most enjoyable and memorable vacations Alan and I have ever been on.

The first Black Sabbath album is considered by many to be the flagship heavy metal album and is still influencing many talented musicians.  It is an album that simply cannot be duplicated and 42 years after its worldwide release has earned Black Sabbath a place in the rock and roll hall of fame and the album is today ranked by several critics to be one of the best albums ever made.  It’s amazing what can happen in the studio when a band has very little money and time, but has an amazing amount of creative energy. 

Paranoid Ironmen and Fairies are dining on Rat Salad.

Paranoid Ironmen and Fairies are dining on Rat Salad.

In the VH1 series Behind the Music episode which profiled Black Sabbath, a critic whom I sadly cannot remember his name said something to the effect of “If in the 60’s you did not feel loved and felt completely alienated, Black Sabbath was singing for you”.  In the 60’s musicians like The Who, The Doors, Cream, Jeff Beck Group (with Rod Stewart on vocals), Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, and several others created a firm foundation for what would become heavy metal…and then came 1970 and with it came Black Sabbath!!

Transitioning back to my childhood at an exceptionally young age I was very well versed in heavy metal.  My father especially loved AC/DC, Van Halen, Rush, Scorpions, Styx, Journey, Deep Purple, and Kansas when I was a kid as well as a wide range of music which my brothers and I enjoyed listening to with my Dad.  My father liked Black Sabbath very casually, but his take on them at that point in the 80’s was he had bought Paranoid in 1970 and could not really get into it (however, he did see Black Sabbath live in Salt Lake City in 1972).  Other than sporadic airplay of “Ironman” and “Paranoid” I did not know the music of Black Sabbath all that well.   But thanks to an amazing chain of events in 1987 would introduce me to Black Sabbath and greatly influence my musical direction.

Shortly after my older brother Alan started middle school in 1987 he crossed paths with a friend that had a cassette of Paranoid he was trying to sell and Alan bought it from him.  I still remember coming home from school that day and Alan had ‘Ironman’ cranked up on his bedroom stereo and just being thrilled.  As much as Alan gave the cassette a few listens, like my dad, other than the very classic songs ‘Ironman’ and ‘Paranoid’ he could not really get into it either.  One of my favorite activities as 10 year old kid was going bicycling through my neighborhood with my cassette Walkman cranked up and a hip bag full of cassettes to pick from (I am so glad they invented the iPod).  From the moment I pushed play on my cassette Walkman and the opening chord of ‘War Pigs’ I was completely flabbergasted!   My energy went through the roof as I biked through my neighborhood like I was being chased by Wile E. Coyote as I listened to Paranoid for the very first time.  Forgiving the fact that the song ‘Planet Caravan’ did not do much for me at age 10 (but I would grow to love ‘Planet Caravan’), this cassette was awesome.  As much as I was already a fan of heavy metal, something clearly set Black Sabbath apart from other bands, even other heavy metal bands.  The guitar heavy and dark, the bass was cranked up, the drumming very quick, intense, and methodical in the vein of Keith Moon and Ginger Baker, and the vocals of Ozzy Osbourne had defined and for me at the point redefined heavy metal.

With Paranoid at age 10 I have really discovered a gem.  In the 5^th grade there were a lot of my classmates that liked Bon Jovi and other metal that was way main stream as well as all things top 40 pop, however, only one other kid in my grade into metal other than me, which made me very different amongst my peers.  I was literally the only person listening to Black Sabbath (and for that matter AC/DC, Rush, and all of the other stuff I was into at that point).   Through my life since elementary school Paranoid has become one of the standards I have used to judge a lot of metal music.

It’s tough for me to narrow down what my favorite song is on Paranoid, the first one to come to mind is ‘War Pigs’.  In the 60’s as the Vietnam War was in full force many bands wrote countless anti-war songs.  As much as many of these songs are hailed today as classics (“Take It Back” by Cream, “Subterranean Homesick Blues” by Bob Dylan, and “Fortunate Son” by Credence Clearwater Revival are some of my personal favorite 60’s antiwar songs), however some of these songs to me are very fluffy and the central thesis was more about we can defeat war by dodging the draft, free love, and using drugs.  ‘War Pigs’ in my opinion is the greatest antiwar song ever written.  The lyrics make a very bold statement about the political motives and all out horror of war without sugar coating anything.

My most favorite song on Paranoid is “Fairies Wear Boots”.  This is going to sound weird, but to me this song is in many ways the heavy metal equivalent of “A Whiter Shade of Pale” by Procal Harum, in the respect that it just has a haunting feel to it that I have never quite been able to put my finger on.  I especially love the guitar solo that ends the song as it fades into an unknown destination.  To this day my car stereo and my iPod get cranked up a little louder for “Fairies Wear Boots”.

When I was 14 years old my parents gave me a bass guitar they had purchased from my uncle and I started to learn how to play.  By the time I was 15 I was good enough at bass that I could get around on the instrument.  I was ready to learn more challenging bass lines and I looked to Geezer Butler of Black Sabbath.  Bass guitar books in 1992 were hard to come by and because this was before the glory of the internet, the only option I had to learn Black Sabbath on bass was to put on my tapes and figure out the songs.  I used to listen to Paranoid over and over again while attempting to play along on my bass and in less than six months I had the whole album figured out, which was a huge milestone for me on the bass guitar.  For the first time I felt I was a good bassist.

As time went by I would later purchase the Master of Reality and Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and some of Ozzy Osbourne’s solo albums which I also really enjoyed, however, Paranoid was always the album that stuck out the most.  When I turned sixteen years old I got a job washing dishes with my older brother at the Chin-Wah Restaurant in Sandy, UT.  At this point I was earning a lot more money compared to my paper route and I bought my first CD player.  One day I was going through the bin of $9.00 CD’s at a records shop and I bought the first Black Sabbath album…little did I know what I was in store for (see my next blog).

Let’s Say Hello to Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

Let’s Say Hello to Goodbye Yellow Brick Road



While I was growing up in Sandy, Utah, I was proud to be part of the metal scene.  Because I started going to concerts with my Dad at age 11 I had a lot of way cool rock t-shirts and for the most part I always looked and acted the part of the passionate rocker when I was in middle and high school.  However, to this day I have discovered that when someone discovers that I am into heavy metal, they automatically assume that metal is the only musical form that I listen to, which has never been the case throughout my musical journey.  On my iPod when I put it on random it can literally go from The Beach Boys to Motorhead, Billy Joel to Alice in Chains, Tori Amos to Steely Dan, and Depeche Mode to Rush.  Variety is truly the spice of life and music is not an exception. 

One of my favorite singer/songwriters ever is Elton John.   My parents’ were able to catch him live a couple of times in the 70’s and are fans of his music.  My brothers and I starting building our individual music collections at a very young age and we would borrow from each other’s collections very regularly and often without asking permission.  When I was 9 years old my older brother Alan had the cassettes of Elton John’s Greatest Hits and Greatest Hits Volume 2.  I would borrow these quite a bit from him.  However, Alan was pretty addicted to these tapes as well and I was not the best at asking for permission or returning them in a timely manner.  One day Alan was at the end of his rope and asked for the tapes back immediately.  The next day I snuck into his room and took the actual cassettes of Elton John’s Greatest Hits and Greatest Hits Volume 2, but I left the cassette cases in his room.  Several weeks went by before Alan even noticed they were gone.  However, the inevitable day came when Alan was in the mood for some Elton John and opened up the cassette cases to discover to his dismay that the cassettes were not present.  He was pretty furious and I once again returned the tapes to him.  This game of cat and mouse would continue for years.

When I was 11 years old I landed my first job as a paper route delivery boy and I was making an amazing $80.00 a month, which was excellent money especially at my age, and the rapid expansion of my cassette collection began.  One early morning while I was doing my paper route the Elton John song “Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding” came on the radio.  I had never heard this song before and I was completely amazed by what I had heard.  However, because the length of the song is over eleven minutes hearing it again on the radio was a narrow possibility.  But I just could not get “Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding” out of my head.

A few weeks later I was at the record store with my Dad thumbing through the cassettes and I came across a copy of ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ by Elton John.  Where I was a little intimidated is the cassette was over an hour long and I only knew 5 of the 17 songs.  It was a lot more of a time commitment than I was used to.  But I decided to buy it.

The next day when I did my paper route I listened to side one of the cassette and I was completely blown away by it.  Not only was it awesome to hear all of the hits songs, but the songs that were not released as singles were just as good and “Grey Seal” and “This Song Has No Title” very quickly became favorites.  All in all side one of ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ was way cool.

The following morning I listened to side two of ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’.  I thought that “Sweet Painted Lady” and “The Ballad of Danny Bailey (1909 – 1934)” were both pretty good; however, the second side has a very different feel and personality.  Side one was the commercial/radio friendly side, where side two, many of the songs had a darker theme to them and was very much a big step away from side one.  I didn’t hate that side of the cassette, but at least at age 12, other than “Saturday Nights Alright for Fighting”, I just couldn’t really get into the second half of ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’.  It was just so different the Elton John I was used to.

A couple of years later when I was 14 I was running some errands with my mother and suddenly to my surprise the Elton John song “All the Young Girls Love Alice” came on the radio (to this day the one and only time I have ever heard this song on the radio).  This song did not do much for me two years earlier, but now I thought the song was way cool.  I gave the second side of ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ another listen on my paper route the next morning and this time I caught the vision and “All the Young Girls Love Alice”, “Dirty Little Girl”, and “Harmony” quickly became favorites.  In the two years since I had last listened to side two of ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ my musical tastes had grown and devolved further. 

What I think makes this album so special to Elton John fans is the range of musical styles and genres Elton show cases on this album.  ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ stays true the style of the hit songs that made Elton famous with “Candle in the Wind”, “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”, and “Bennie and the Jets”, dabbles with country music on “Roy Rogers” and “Social Disease”, explores Elton’s dark side with “Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding”, “All the Young Girls Love Alice”, and “Dirty Little Girl”, and straight up rock and roll with “Saturday Nights Alright for Fighting”.  There simply is not a weak song on this album.  What amazes me the most is once Bernie Taupin presented Elton John with the lyrics, Elton John composed the music for ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ in three days.  Elton John had successfully caught lightning yet again.  In addition, the album fully show cases the musical talents of Elton John’s guitarist Davey Johnstone.  In my opinion Davey Johnstone is one of the most underrated guitarists in history.  Elton John’s music throughout his career has explored many genres and styles and Davey Johnstone can play all of them flawlessly.  On ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ Davey’s guitar work perfectly complements and enhances every song on the record and really gives an edge to ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’.  To me it’s a real shame that Davey Johnstone has not received the credit he deserves for being such a great guitarist.

Every time I listen to ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ I am reminded of one of the most intense evenings of my life.  When I was 17 years old in 1994 my mother’s lower right leg was starting to swell up and was causing her a lot of pain, a condition called Cellulitis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellulitis).  One particular evening the Cellulitis was causing her an intense amount of pain and she wanted to go see an urgent care doctor.  My father most of life worked night shift and asked me to take my mother to the doctor because he was getting ready to go to work for the evening.  I grabbed my cassette of ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ (when driving around with my mother I always make sure that I am listening to something she enjoys), put it in the cars tape player, and my little brother and I drove her to the urgent care Doctors’ Office.  My mother was in a lot of pain and I was driving like a mad man on the freeway to get my mom to the doctor.  It was very intense as Scott and I waited in the waiting room hoping that the doctor would be able to help out my Mom.  Later, the doctor entered the waiting room with my Mother in a wheel chair and instructed us to take her to the hospital immediately.  At this point it’s close to 10:00pm.  We once again helped my mother into the car and I drove like an Indy 500 driver on the freeway to get my mother to the hospital.  When we arrived at the hospital there was a nurse waiting for us with a wheel chair for my mother and she was very quickly whisked into the hospital.  The doctor and nurse would not allow Scott and me to follow her up to her hospital room and asked me to go to the Emergency Room and help them check my mom into the hospital.  The first question the woman at the desk was if I was over 18 and I told her I was not.  She then told me that by law I could not legally check my mother into the hospital and that they would not allow me to go up her hospital room (ultimately because in my opinion the doctors did not want me in the way while they were taking care of my mother once she was admitted to the hospital).  This made me pretty mad and I became very insistent that I be allowed to go see my mom, or minimum get the phone number of the room they were putting her in.  My brother Scott, thankfully being much calmer than I was in this situation whispered to me “settle down or they’re going to call security”.  I begrudgingly accepted defeat and exited the emergency room lobby with my little brother.

After such an intense ordeal I decided that we would take the long way home, just so I could at least calm down.  As Scott and I cruised State Street back into Sandy, UT, we listened to the last five songs on ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ (“You’re Sister Can’t Dance (But She Can Rock N’ Roll)”, “Saturday Nights Alright for Fighting”, “Roy Rogers”, “Social Disease”, and “Harmony”) and it helped cut down the tension and frustration I was feeling as well as Scott immediately started telling jokes and using his great sense of humor to ease the situation.  When we arrived home Scott and I said a prayer for our mother.  The hardest part for me was my father worked night shift at the main United States Post Office in Salt Lake City and we were not allowed to call him at work unless it was an emergency, so I had to stay up and wait for my Dad to call home during his break.  Scott went to bed and I listened to ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ quietly on the living room stereo.  My Dad called home a little after midnight and I filled him in on what went down that evening.  I’ve never been happier to just go to bed in my entire life. 

Throughout my life it never ceases to amaze me how music has such a calming and soothing effect regardless of the intensity of any situation, which has been the case with ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’.  It’s the perfect combination of melodic pop, straight up rock, and experimentation with a wide variety of musical forms.  Currently, this is Elton John’s largest selling studio album at 7 million copies and is #91 on Rolling Stone Magazine’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list.  ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ has successfully passed the test of time and I still consider it to be some of the finest music from Elton John’s very extensive and successful career.

Octavarium: The Beethoven’s 9th of heavy metal or how I learned to love and embrace Dream Theater.

Octavarium: The Beethoven’s 9^th of heavy metal or how I learned to love and embrace Dream Theater.

The decade of the 90’s was a very interesting and transitional decade in my musical journey.  I still loved heavy metal and I was very loyal to the bands I got into during the 80’s.  But where the 90’s became very difficult musically for me was when heavy metal went through the power ballad phase.  There are several power ballads that I absolutely love (“More Than Words” by Extreme, “Save Your Love” by Great White, and “Patience” by Guns n’ Roses are three of my very favorite metal power ballads).  However, it got to a point with heavy metal where many metal bands felt like they had to do a power ballad (even Metallica did one) and heavy metal was softening up.  In 1991, Nirvana put out Nevermind, which completely blew me away, greatly influenced my future musical direction, and to me was more metal than what metal was at that point.  However, I still loved and was loyal to the heavy metal bands I grew up with, but Nirvana introduced me to a whole new music scene, specifically punk, and I started to explore a lot of music outside of the realm of heavy metal.  Unfortunately, there was still some great heavy metal emerging through the 90’s that got lost in the shuffle while I was exploring other music.  I think Rich Wilson, Dream Theater’s biographer and author of Lifting Shadows, Dream Theater’s official biography, summed up this period of the 90’s for the heavy metal scene while discussing the Dream Theater album ‘Awake’, “In spite of the plentiful redeeming features on Awake, press reviews were generally subdued. It must of course be remembered that it was released just as the shoegazing, miserable purveyors of the fad known as grunge were taking hold. The British press in particular seemed dazzled by the work of Kurt Cobain and his cohorts, and anything that wasn't based around three chords or packed with lyrics championing depression as a lifestyle choice was in for a hard ride”.

In 1992, I was initially introduced to Dream Theater when Salt Lake’s KBER used to play “Pull Me Under”, which I thought was a way awesome song, but it wasn’t quite enough for me to buy the CD of ‘Images and Words’.  Two years later when Dream Theater released ‘Awake’, many of my friends who remained very loyal to metal after Nirvana made it introduced me again to Dream Theater.  However, at this point it was 1994, I loved the early days of grunge (specifically Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, and Stone Temple Pilots) but I did not really like the direction grunge and alternative rock went.  At that point I am listening to a lot of Smashing Pumpkins, Weezer, Black Flag, The Misfits, Rollins Band, Sex Pistols, Danzig, and Ministry.  I thought ‘Awake’ was an ok CD when my friends played it for me.  But I was having issues with metal and I did not give ‘Awake’ a fair chance.

Now we travel forward in time to 2007.  Dream Theater was coming to Salt Lake City on July 30, 2007, and several of my friends were way exited for the show.  In addition, Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, Jr., signed a proclamation making July 30, 2007, Dream Theater Day in the State of Utah.  As it turns out the Utah Governor as well as two of his sons are huge fans of Dream Theater.  I did not attend the concert, but several of my friends did and gave the show very rave reviews.  At this point Dream Theater was on my radar.  I thought to myself that the mere fact that Dream Theater was even able to survive the 90’s, a decade that was not friendly to their brand of progressive metal, was a pretty miraculous feat and I started to feel like perhaps I had misjudged them.

In October 2007 one evening I walked from my apartment to Graywhale CD by the University of Utah and started thumbing through CD’s and I eventually end up in Dream Theater’s section and I looked over a copy of ‘Octavarium’.  I immediately noticed that the song ‘Octavarium’ was 24 minutes long.  I have never shied away from long songs and I am a fan of the music of Genesis, Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, Yes, and Rush, all of which have few very lengthy songs that I just love.  I thought to myself that the song ‘Octavarium’ is either the most boring jam session on Earth or it’s a total masterpiece, there just can’t be any middle ground.  My curiosity got the better of me and I bought ‘Octavarium’ forgiving the fact that I had never heard any of the songs off of it.

Once I get back to my apartment I got cozy on my couch and put ‘Octavarium’ in my CD player.  The moment the song ‘The Root of All Evil’ came across the speakers and my reaction was immediately “holy crap Batman!!!!” I could not believe how awesome this song was and I immediately turned my stereo up.  The next song was ‘The Answer Lies Within’.  It was the first mellow metal song I had heard in ages and I was impressed.  In fact, it was awesome to hear a power ballad that was so much the opposite of the standard metal ballad.  I was extremely impressed how Dream Theater could go from straight up metal to a power ballad so flawlessly.  The rest of the CD was just as awesome and then it finally came time for the song ‘Octavarium’.  The song begins with a very Pink Floyd like atmosphere and evolves through several movements and as the song progressed I was just more and more blown away by it and when I didn’t think the song could get any better, then the ‘Razor’s Edge’ movement begins and the orchestra joins in to wrap up the song, it was the most amazing song I had heard in ages.  With ‘Octavarium’ Dream Theater pulled off a 24 minute masterpiece that I now hold in the same regard with the songs ‘2112’ by Rush,’Karn Evil 9’ by Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, ‘And You and I’ by Yes, and ‘Supper’s Ready’ by Genesis.  Within one year of my first listen of the CD of ‘Octavarium’ I would own all of Dream Theater’s CD’s.

When it’s all said and done, Dream Theater is the worst case of me misjudging a band in my musical journey.  If I gave these guys half a chance back in 1992 I could have gotten into them in high school.   However, because I did not rediscover and embrace Dream Theater until 2007 not only did I discover ‘Octavarium’, but I discovered an extensive catalog of amazing music and I felt like I had discovered a gold mine.  In addition, Dream Theater reintroduced me to the metal scene which at that point I had not really followed since 1996.  I have discovered so many great bands currently making awesome music through Dream Theater.   Throughout their career Dream Theater has successfully combined everything that is awesome about heavy metal with everything that is awesome about progressive rock and have established themselves the premier band of the Progressive Metal scene, one of the best live bands in music, and they have some of the most serious and passionate fans and I am extremely glad to be one of them.

Dream Theater with Governor Jon Huntsman, Jr, and the Dream Theater Day Proclamation on July 30, 2007.

You are now entering ELECTRICLARRYLAND. Population?!?!?!?!?!

You are now entering ELECTRICLARRYLAND.  Population?!?!?!?!?!

“Have you ever heard of the Butthole Surfers?”  One time I asked my buddy Jeremy this question when we were about 12 years old and we both had a good laugh and it became a running joke.  When we were in high school there was a Butthole Surfers song on the radio and Jeremy asked “What band is this?” and I said “It’s the Butthole Surfers”.  Then Jeremy asked “Really, what band is this” and I again said “The Butthole Surfers”.  Jeremy was a little shocked and said “Brent, I thought you made that band up!”

I had first heard of the Butthole Surfers in the mid 80’s when I was growing up in Sandy, Utah.  They got no airplay in Salt Lake City and finding indie punk albums in my hometown was fairly difficult, but the name had my attention.   By the early 90’s other than the occasional video on MTV’s 120 minutes and very rare airplay on Salt Lake’s X96, I still did not know much about these guys other than stories about their live shows, but the very few songs I had heard by them I at least liked.

I got my introduction to the Butthole Surfers when I was serving as an LDS missionary in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania in the summer of 1997.  I had a new companion transferred into the area and he musically was a fan of industrial, punk, ska, and alternative rock and had a soft spot for swing (the Squirrel Nut Zippers were starting to happen at that point).  One day when we had finished working for the day we arrived back at our apartment and a box had arrived from BMG for my companion and ELETRICLARRYLAND by the Butthole Surfers was in the box.  We were playing the board game Axis and Allies when my companion put this CD in the player.  From the beginning the song “Birds” immediately got my attention, “Cough Syrup” was the coolest song I had heard in ages, and “Pepper” was so different than anything I had ever heard and we were only three songs into the CD.  While we listened to ELERTRICLARRY land my companion ended up kicking my butt at Axis and Allies while I was more paying attention to the music coming out of the CD player.  When the CD ended I asked my companion what he thought and he said “it’s ok”.  I said back “What do you mean it’s OK?! This is freaking awesome!” we gave it a couple of more listens and he still didn’t like the CD all that much and it just got better and better when I was listening to it.  The Butthole Surfers had taken the basic vision of punk and added elements from psychedelic, heavy metal, electronica, classic rock, as well as the bizarre and abstract (Zappa-esque) and created a punk/alternative album that had an amazing amount of depth in its sound and finally the Butthole Surfers received some commercial success for being that weird punk band from San Antonio, Texas.

When I returned home from my LDS mission in 1998 ELECTRICLARRYLAND was one of the first CD’s I bought.  I was starting to learn how to play guitar (I am a self-taught guitarist) my approach was to put on a CD and just play along with it and ELETRICLARRYLAND was a CD that I played along with regularly.  I still remember how thrilled I was when I got “Cough Syrup” figured out completely on my own and this album was crucial in my evolution and development as a guitarist.

Where ELECTRICLARRYLAND became especially endearing to me is when I was attending the College of Business at Utah State University from 2003 to 2005.  I was one of those rare college students that would wake up at 5:00am to study until about 1:00pm on the days I didn’t have class, go to work, in the afternoon, and then go to the gym or do something fun in the evening.  I hated having to study or do homework in the evening and I went to great lengths to avoid it.  But when midterms and finals started to approach I would buy some two liter bottles of Mountain Dew and study into the wee small hours for a few days completing those last minute semester projects and cramming for midterm and final exams.  The recipe of ELECTRICLARRYLAND with Mountain Dew and sleep deprivation in the name of University education was a pretty magical combination and got me through some pretty intense all night study and project work sessions.  After I graduated college I later found out that Gibby Haynes and Paul Leary of the Butthole Surfers met when they were Business students at San Antonio’s Trinity University (Haynes graduating in Accounting and Leary was one semester shy of completing the Master of Business Administration Program).  Perhaps that is part of why these guys sounded so good when I was in the College of Business.

The audience of the Butthole Surfers is a very unique one.  In October 2009 I went to see the Butthole Surfers at the Urban Lounge in Salt Lake City.  As I walked from my apartment to the concert I couldn’t help but think about what kind of people would be at the concert, since I was pretty used to being the only weirdo in my group of friends who was a fan of the Butthole Surfers I wasn’t sure what to expect.  When I arrived at the concert there were three other guys were in line with me.  Slowly, but surely the other 200 weirdos showed up and got in line.  I felt a very odd and strange sense of community.  The one factor all of us had in common is that all of our musical tastes were very odd and went all over the place (I got a lot of complements for the King Crimson shirt I was wearing.  I was not expecting one person at this show to even know who King Crimson was).  Because the stage at the Urban Lounge is only 1.5 feet high getting into position by the stage is very important and was able to get right at the front of stage.  Paul Leary and Gibby Haynes were directly in front of me the whole show and it was a lot of fun.  Above all this is one of the most unique concerts I have ever to and the audience at the Butthole Surfers is one of the most unique groups of people I have ever been around.

And now the most controversial part of this blog.  In my opinion ELECTRICLARRYLAND by the Butthole Surfers is what I consider to be the best album of the 90’s (I’ve had several of my friends debate with me pretty intensely over this).  The 90’s were a decade where being alternative and non-mainstream was the train of thought in the music scene.  Some bands were able to pull this off and became legends (in my opinion bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, Soundgarden, Beck, Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, and Offspring), but when alternative became mainstream to me it lost some of its edge and the bands did not have the depth that the bands I view as legendary did.  But in 1996 the Butthole Surfers, a band that had been strange, unique, non-mainstream, and had definitely been doing their own thing since the early 80’s emerged with ELECTRICLARRYLAND and to me definitively define what the heart of grunge and alternative rock was all about in a way no other band could without sacrificing what makes them unique.