Last time I told you about how I started developing my taste for music. We've listened to music themes from movies, cartoons, anime and video games and now we're ready to go for the big and juicy part...
But before we go on, there's something I must mention,
An important message I must bring to your attention:— Mike Muir (Suicidal Tendencies, “Send Me Your Money”)
After I published and edited (and re-edited) the first part, I found out that I forgot to add a couple of music bits that are important parts of my music taste in the early days. Some of these bits are actually better suited here rather than in Part I, because they might provide a better context, considering the time period (and genres) described here. Let's start with an honourable mention first and continue from where the Part I left off.
Occasionally, music presented in Part II may be a tad louder and heavier than in Part I. To make your life easier I'll provide links to the lyrics when I can. Also, this part is going to be a long ride, so grab a huge glass of your favourite cozy drink and strap yourself in!
Listener beware: many of the songs here fell victim to the Loudness War. If you hear weird volume fluctuations and sounds reminiscent of an old cheap Chinese boombox with blown speakers — your hardware is OK, it's the songs that are damaged.
One of the first pieces of music I got on my own computer (besides the ones from videogames) was a track I found on a CD that came with the December 2002 (#24/129) issue of the GameLand magazine. This was the background music track taken from a feature demo of MadOnion's 3DMark 2000 PC graphics benchmark, written by Finnish composer Tero Kostermaa. This tune has rhythm, guitars and electronics — just the way little Serge liked it back in the day. If not for this track (and this magazine!), my taste in music and games would've probably been very different from what it is now.
Let me paint a picture for you: the year is 2003, the mainstream music industry is bursting with money because it had just found not one, but two vaguely-defined milkable genres loved by the masses: “Rap” and “Alternative Rock”. These two umbrella terms were used to the fullest to describe any music genre with either rap-like singing or (sometimes "and") guitars in it.
And it's so goddamn profitable, you might forget not to do slavery!
— Bill Wurtz, (“History of the Entire World, I Guess”)
In the midst of this music landscape, EA Games releases a successor to my favourite racing game of all time (the one featured in Part I): “Need for Speed: Underground”. While this new game lacked the lush scenery, luxurious sportcars and panic-inducing police pursuits of the predecessor, instead it had plenty of night-time city races and car customization, being heavily inspired by The Fast and the Furious movie. And EA wouldn't be EA if they hadn't come up with a killer soundtrack for the game, which they did and filled the game with some good tracks from all over the mainstream “Rap/Rock” spectrum with a couple of unique electronic gems on top: “Doomsday” by Overseer, “Two-lane Blacktop” by Rob Zombie and “Born Too Slow” by The Crystal Method are great for speeding in the streets, “Action Radius” by Junkie XL tells a story of a dream coming true, “Fortress Europe” by Asian Dub Foundation paints an unrealistically gloomy picture of a distant (not so unrealistic and distant now) future, while “Get Low” by Lil' Jon & the East Side Boyz makes me appreciate EA's decision to intervene and change the lyrics in some of the songs (you'll see why — even the censored version on Apple Music is worse than the in-game edit).
In 2004 and 2005, EA releases two sequels to the Underground, called “Underground 2” and “Most Wanted”. The first one expands on the car customization options and introduces an open city to explore, but the second one… Oh boy, Most Wanted took the best stuff both Underground games and reintroduced police pursuits, long awaited by the fans since Hot Pursuit 2. And once again, EA didn't hesitate to fill the soundtrack of both games with some wild music representative of the era. Although there are not as many songs here that I personally like, compared to the Hot Pursuit 2 and Underground, there are still some gems that turned out to be a preview of what's going to creep into my playlist later. Among my favourites from Underground 2 are “The Death & Resurrection Show by Killing Joke and “Black Betty” by Spiderbait (a cover song, originally performed by Ram Jam), while Most Wanted had bangers that made me question my music preferences yet again: “Decadence” by Disturbed, “Shapeshifter” by Celldweller & Styles of Beyond, “We Control” by Hyper and (last, but not least) “You'll Be Under My Wheels” by The Prodigy…
Like stop!
Bring it back, bring it back.
We got that balance, keeping us on track…— Mike Shinoda (Fort Minor, “Petrified”)
…but I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's rewind for a bit and get back to 2003~2004 period: a couple of things happened back then, and I want to share them with you.
Around that time a miracle came to our house: a real 56K dial-up modem! Which meant that now I could connect to the Internet and get all kinds of things, preferably for free! (Keep in mind, that this was early-00's Russia, where rampant piracy was more of a blessing than a curse.) And what does a kid want to have when they have access to the world's biggest library of stuff at their fingertips? Games!
Even though I quickly realized that I won't be able to download a modern PC game (e.g. WarCraft III, how modern is that now?) over dial-up, I found out about these little programs called Emulators that allow you to run software (and games!), originally made for different platforms, on PC. To me, this was like a treasure trove: a near-unlimited supply of games that are small enough to be downloaded over dial-up in no time and guaranteed to run on my computer. And, what do you know, some of these games actually had some awesome music, worthy of being added to the list I started in Part I. Some of these games became the first installments in game series (or genres, or even media universes) I grew to love. Some of these themes may sound oddly familiar later.
Among all these games there was the one that stood out the most: “Killer Instinct” by Rare. A pseudo-3D fighting game that was different from Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter series, KI had memorable characters, beautiful graphics, fresh and sophisticated gameplay with an advanced combo system and killer (hehe) sound design. And there was a cherry on top of this cake — music. A soundtrack, being a debut work of composer duo of Graeme Norgate and Robin Beanland, was so good — this was unheard of in fighting games of the era. To add insult to injury, the game featured dynamic music, i.e. the stage music would change depending on the situation in the game. The title theme and the character theme of Cinder (quite literally a man made of fire) have had a special place in my heart since the day I first heard them. Also, the title theme can also be considered a first Sad Boi Detour of this part.
Since now I was “old enough” (but not really) to watch movies as well, I had a new source of music to please my sonic receptacles. Even though it turned out to be not as vast of a source of music I liked, compared to animation and videogames, there were still some tracks and artists I gladly listened to back then and still do today. In terms of music, two of most influential movies for me were the first “Spider-Man” and “Resident Evil”. Ironically enough, both movies are screen adaptations of comics/animation and games, respectively. Spider-Man introduced me to a Canadian alternative rock band Theory of a Deadman, with their song “Invisible Man” acting as a stand-in “second” theme song of the movie, while Resident Evil gave me “Name of the Game” by The Crystal Method (whom we already know from Need for Speed: Underground) and “Invisible Wounds” by a band called Fear Factory. Also, I have to mention a story about the half-vampire vampire hunter “Blade” (another screen adaptation of a comic book), which planted a long-waiting seed with an appropriately-named “Pump Panel Reconstruction Remix” of “Confusion” by New Order.
I wasn't really interested in stuff people around me listen to, since most of it was either really sterile pop music, or worse — a genre of “prison culture” music insanely popular in Russia at the time. But one day I overheard local kids listening to a weird remix of two different bands, which at first glance shouldn't be mixed at all: Pain and The Prodigy. The remix itself sounded wonky, but it got my attention anyway, so I decided to find the original songs and give them a listen. A right decision, because both songs were awesome in their own way. “Diesel Power” by The Prodigy is a monologue on how good (both lyrically and musically) the band is, while “Shut Your Mouth” by Pain is a story of a person who grew tired of being pushed around and told what to do, and who decided to take their life in their own hands.
Time goes on, I spend my time playing video games, listening to my humble music collection, checking out local music TV channel every now and then and thinking that life is good. All was well until one summer afternoon I turned on the TV and saw something that changed my life forever.
I could've said that I regret seeing what I've seen, or that I wish things were different, but no — I like the person I turned out to be, and a big part of my journey (in music as well as in personal stuff) kicked off on that day.
To provide some context: At the time the music scene appeared to be somewhat polarized because of that “Rap/Rock” split, and little 9~12 year old humans, being social animals unburdened by things like empathy and common sense, and agitated by school and puberty starting to kick in, would gladly accept that polarization and base their whole personalities on one of the spots of that spectrum, thus finding their tribe and a target to attack. I wasn't quite sure where to place myself yet so I was taking my time deciding if I want to stick with crunchy guitars or to jump on the rap bandwagon when the revelation came to me in form of a music video for “Somewhere I Belong” by a band called Linkin Park.
At this point I must remind that I barely knew English at the time, so I barely paid attention to the lyrics and just enjoyed the music and tried to guess the overall vibe from the tune and the vocals instead. All titular/lyrical coincidences with life situations are purely unintended and random, and weren't noticed until much, much later.
The effect this song had on me can be compared with the effect Christianity had on late-classical era society: this new thing was The Ultimate Thing™ that made people instantly discard and demolish everything that was there before and start building temples and basing their life and being on this new thing with utmost zealousy. Заставь дурака…
Now I know that it's possible to mix Rap and Rock and still get a good song. Now I know that I don't have to choose one and throw away the other. Now I can enjoy crunchy guitars, fried vocals and elaborate spoken word feats at the same time.
And I want more.
I was so dumbstruck by this song that I made it my mission to find and get Every Single Song Released by Linkin Park, Ever™. My quest started off with a click of a mouse — even though I couldn't just download everything over dial-up, I still could listen to Internet radio, which I did! And, to my joy, one of the stations played another LP song from the same album (“Meteora”, 2003) — “Don't Stay”, a “farewell” (to put it mildly) letter to the band's previous label management, who tried to force them into playing the way the label thought would result in more sales. Later I saw the music videos for two other singles from Meteora: “Faint” (a story of emotional struggle under pressure and consequences of disconnecting one's behaviour from their feelings) and “Numb” (a message to all control freak parents who have plans for their kids).
This is where it gets interesting: back in the day I absolutely hated “Faint“ and “Numb” could easily be my №1 Sad Boi song. Now it's the other way around — I like (and somewhat relate to) the former, and couldn't care less about the latter. Still, I'll include both here for the sake of completeness.
One song that is certain to be the numero uno Sad Boi song of this period is “From the Inside” — on one occasion I even sang (or rather tried to sing) it aloud together with my childhood friend (looking at you, Mr. Nigyrcome) until the neighbours started banging on the radiators. It was afwul and cringy, but I regret nothing!
Some time later, my quest would lead me to the first great prize — a pirated MP3 compilation CD I bought at a bus stop that contained all major releases by Linkin Park up until that time, along with some singles, b-sides and an entire bootleg album of songs ripped off different unrelated artists, retagged as Linkin Park and labelled “Erection”.
Penile disappointment of an album aside, the CD was more or less faithful with its contents so I finally could enjoy the entirety of Meteora and other LP albums. Among these tracks I found two more songs off Meteora (another stick-up to the old label / strained relationship story “Lying From You” and the Sad Boi Song runner-up “Breaking the Habit”) and even more gems on the first studio album “Hybrid Theory”: “Papercut”, “With You” and my two personal favourites: “Points of Authority” (a song about abusive relationship and the trauma it may cause) and the aptly named “A Place for My Head”, which tells the tale of a person who is “related to people they don't relate to”.
Being in love with a band that only has 2 studio albums can be challenging, because there's only so many songs to listen to. Fortunately for me, LP has tons of material besides the full-length albums: EPs, singles, rare one-shot songs, demos, a full-length remix album and even some old/different versions of songs released under the band's previous name, Hybrid Theory (yes, same name as their first full-length album). Many of these songs weren't officially released until nowadays, with anniversary limited editions of Hybrid Theory and Meteora. Among those findings my favourites are “High Voltage” (both the pre-Linkin Park-era version and the version featured on the first official single, “One Step Closer”), “Wth>You” (a remix of “With You”) and “Dedicated” — a humble reminder to every single artist out there so that they remember who they're making the music for.
At this moment I've already finished (or so I thought) my transformation into a fully-fledged self-proclaimed paladin of the temple of The One True Band That Makes the Best Music. Even worse, I started having internal conflicts about what side of LP (the "Rock" one or the "Rap" one) I like better. During this period, I started dabbling into some… less canonical parts of the LP universe, like Mike Shinoda's (LP's "rap" voice) solo project “Fort Minor” and MTV's mash-up album titled “Collision Course”, featuring LP stuff mixed with songs written by Jay-Z.
Listening to Fort Minor turned out to be a really interesting experience, because (I think) it was also the first time I actually went online and searched for the lyrics. The stories Mike tells us in “Remember the Name” and “Cigarettes” touch the topics of putting effort into one's work and of artists (and fans as well) being caught up in lies for the image and coolness sake. And then there's “Kenji” — a painful story of Mike's Japanese family who moved to the USA not long before the WW2 started. Even now, listening to the song gives me shivers.
Opposed to Mike's work as Fort Minor, the Collision Course album was much more light-hearted and provided an unusual twist to the already well-known songs by mixing them with similarly well-known songs by a rapper named Jay-Z. I don't know if this album helped to attract parts of Jay-Z's fanbase to LP (or vice versa), but it certainly gave me a weird mash-up song to remember: “Dirt Off Your Shoulder / Lying from You” is as weird as it sounds, and I think the rap verses sung by Jay-Z are a good fit here.
And then there is the song that I didn't pay that much attention to at the time, but ultimately it was the song that tipped me over to the "Rock" side for good. The irony (and the heresy) of the situation is that this song is not even an LP song, but a real wolf in sheep's clothing — a cover song called “Wish”, originally written by a band called Nine Inch Nails. Dissecting NIN lyrics is it's own can of worms, so for now let's focus on pure impressions. And boy, did the song impress me! The raw attack of the instruments, the aggression, the attitude — everything is so different from what I heard before, and the vocals (courtesy of Chester Bennington, the "Rock" voice of the band) hit the spot for me.
Every single fan of every single band (maybe except for one band I'll tell you later) has a point in their life when their favourite band suddenly stops making them happy. It may happen because the band does something the fan doesn't like, or something may happen inside the fan's head that makes them reconsider their life and their music taste as well. In my case it was a bit of both.
Initially I planned to name this section “The Betrayal” or even “The Sellout”, but the title you're seeing now fits the mood much better. Besides, I just have to finish the post with a religious pun as well.
As you now know from the previous section, 2005-to-late-2006 was a fruitful time for me in exploring the heavier side of LP and also discovering some similar and heavy stuff, like the aforementioned Nine Inch Nails cover song and the hot-and-heavy soundtrack of the Need for Speed: Most Wanted game. Despite hearing all of this stuff, I kept my faith in LP and had high hopes for the upcoming album, which was rumored to be the heaviest and the most complex work the band has done to date. Until then, I kept listening to all obscure songs and demos by LP I could find, hoping to sate my appetite. Unfortunately, most of that stuff has either vanished into the ether (i.e. was never officially released) and/or didn't have a significant influence on my music taste, so I won't include it here.
Time went slowly, the band took its' time, and then year 2007 happened. Hallowed by many kids of my generation as the best year that ever was, filled with all kinds of cultural blasts from every direction, for me it had been a pretty smooth and unremarkable (in terms of music) until April, when LP finally released their new single, “What I've Done”. The song became crazy popular immediately and was also featured as the theme song for long-awaited Transformers movie that came out a couple of months later. For me, though, it was the beginning of the end.
Being an LP fanboy I am, initially I was happier than ever to hear a new song by my favourite band. But at the same time, deep inside my subconscious, there was a feeble sense of unease — something was off. The band's sound was off, their appearance was off as well. Telling myself to not jump to any conclusions yet I decided to wait until the album is released. A couple of months later, “Minutes to Midnight”, named after the Doomsday Clock, hits the shelves and sounds exactly as you'd imagine a "sad pop rock" band would sound like. Hearing this after full 4 years of silence from the band felt like a personal insult, even more so because of the fact that they ditched their Rap/Hip-Hop part together with the heavier side, morphing into something that sounded like a generic rock band with zero attitude and as much creative taste (the same thing will happen to another band in 2008, and both cases will share one of the causes — both albums would have been produced by Rick Rubin).
Spending some time listening to the album and losing the last bits of whatever respect I had for the band (in its' current state anyway), I started remembering that there is music besides my once-loved idol. First steps out of the bubble were actually steps back in time — I happily revisited the stuff I liked to listen to before 2004, namely the Need for Speed soundtracks and those assorted songs from various sources I mentioned in the end of Part I and throughout this part. But I still needed something else. Something that is heavier that the heaviest of LP. And now I had to diversify my "portfolio of idols" (so to speak) as well, to save myself from possible disappointment down the road. I just need something to start, or better yet — somebody to guide me into new and unknown lands…
This part took too much time and mental capacity to complete, mostly due to the fact that I had to deal with the traumatic experience of revisiting Linkin Park all over again. I hope the next parts will not take as much time, since there's less trauma to tend to.
I hope you had a good time reading this and listening to the music. I also hope you didn't die of boredom or cringe halfway through the post. Thank you for your patience and your time, and I hope to see you again soon!