Hear Ye, Hear Ye!

Fiat Lex and The Woeful Budgie have caused me to see the error of my small-minded ways. When I originally conceived of the Breakaway Music Review, my plan was to write and respond to my own questions. That, I now realize, might amuse me for a while but has a limited appeal. Plus, I now know that I have a reasonably decent amount of traffic, so I can safely open the floor without fear of feeling like a friendless loser. Therefore, anyone who wants can simply slap up a request in the comments on this or any subsequent Breakaway Music Review post, preferably in the form of a letter written in the voice of a teenager who is desperately trying to get approval for his or her favorite band. I figure between the power of the internets and my own fairly extensive collection I'll be able to come up with something to say about pretty much anything. I'll periodically write a review post and hopefully between me and anyone out there who has also read Breakaway/Brio (I'm looking at you, Woeful Budgie) we'll be able to come up with examples of the sort of letter that came in, just to give it that extra authentic flavor. So have at. Also, Fiat Lex, I came up with something totally off the wall to do for TMBG, so your wish will be granted...

I'm a Long Time Gone...

Okay, just so everybody knows, I'm writing this post as a flimsy pretext to tell a story that's awesome to me and probably one other person on the planet. But, really, do I care? Nope. And, hey, it gives me an excuse to actually introduce a concept I've been kicking around for a while and kind of want to do as a hopefully funny filler. Anyway, on Saturday night I went with a friend of mine to see the Gin Blossoms at Freedom Fest in Wheeling. For those who don't know, Wheeling is a northern suburb of Chicago and Freedom Fest is their big summer municipal party thing. Anyway, we ended up directly in front of the stage and spent most of the show within about ten feet of the lead guitarist, Mr. Scott Johnson. Now, back in the late nineties three Phoenix, AZ (actually, I think they're all specifically Tempe bands, but don't quote me) area bands broke up at about the same time: the Refreshments, the Gin Blossoms, and Dead Hot Workshop. When Roger Clyne and P.H. Naffah of the Refreshments decided to form Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers, they brought in Steve Larson of Dead Hot Workshop and Scott Johnson of the Gin Blossoms to play six-string, making the Peacemakers basically a Phoenix supergroup. Scott Johnson was around for Honky Tonk Union, Real to Reel, and Sonoran Hope and Madness before leaving when the Gin Blossoms re-formed. So, in the way that such things happen, my buddy and I were standing there joking about requesting Peacemakers songs. Now, don't get me wrong. I like the Gin Blossoms. I think of New Miserable Experience as one of the best albums of the '90s. But, still, the idea of requesting Peacemakers songs was amusing as all get-out. So during a lull between songs I yelled, "Play some Peacemakers!" directly at Scott. He proceeded to intro the next song with the riff from RCPM's "Better Beautiful than Perfect," much to my delight. During a similar lull in the encore I yelled, "Play some more Peacemakers!" and he tossed in the riff to "Easy" with this amused expression that pretty much said, "What the hell is some idiot in Chicago doing asking me to play Peacemakers songs?" Anyway, it was at least as much fun as the time Scott Lucas of Local H accused me of being a Limp Bizkit fan because I was wearing my hat backwards and I got in to an argument with him in the middle of the concert. Yeah, apparently I'm becoming "that guy" at rock shows. I should probably take a step back and evaluate the trajectory of my life. Then again, Scott Lucas is well known for getting in arguments with audience members, so maybe it was just my turn. I've seen Local H enough times by now, after all. Meanwhile, I figure now is a good time to use the Gin Blossoms to illustrate a point. See, back in the day I used to have a subscription to a magazine called Breakaway. By "back in the day," I mean junior high and some of high school. Breakaway was a publication of the good folks at James Dobson's Focus on the Family and it was designed to offer a high-gloss, monthly way of telling Christian teenagers how to be good little Christians. Its sister publication, Brio, was targeted at the teen girl segment. If you were a teenage evangelical living in Wheaton in the '90s, you were pretty much issued a subscription to one or the other. Now, in general, I actually rather liked Breakaway. I didn't fully realize at the time that I was being indoctrinated by its random articles about proper Christian living, but I think that was the point. There was one place, though, where I think I did realize what was going on, even if I didn't know the words. There was a music column in which some poor kid would write in about how much he really liked some band and the columnist would tell him whether or not it was properly edifying music. The response to secular music followed a highly consistent pattern. They'd say something good about the band in question or damn it with faint praise, find something to rip it apart, often a niggling little detail if the music didn't contain a lot of profanity or reference our dark lord Satan, then offer a Christian alternative. I don't think there was a single month that column didn't make me mad. I didn't know why at the time, but I do now. Turns out I didn't like being indoctrinated even when I didn't know what that meant and didn't dream that Christianity could possibly have anything other than my best interests at heart. So here it is, summer 2008, and I still remember two of those letters. The first was from some poor schlub who wrote in to say how much he liked the Gin Blossoms' New Miserable Experience. The reviewer said something or other about how they were catchy and fun and whatnot, but then took them to task for the song "Mrs. Rita," because "Mrs. Rita" was about going to get a tarot reading to find out if an old flame would come back. And, as we all know, the Bible don't condone no witchcraft. Now, this was almost defensible, but the review of Matchbox 20's Yourself or Someone Like You took the cake. There is a song on the album called "Girl Like That" that includes the lyrics "Well you've got to think with a girl like that/Any luck at all is better than nothing/Well it's better than nothing" (and, yes, that's a direct transcribe. I couldn't begin to tell you what possessed me to rip my old Matchbox 20 CDs to my computer. I'm even less sure why they made the transfer to my Zen Vision:M. But right now I don't care because, dagnabit, it's funny. Also, I can't tell you the last time I listened to this album, but I still remember the words. It's disturbing). These lyrics raised the ire of the reviewer because, as I recall, the Bible says a whole bunch of things in Proverbs 31 about a proper woman and you shouldn't be searching for just "any luck at all," but helping your Christian sisters grow to become good Christian women. Yeah, Breakaway was that deaf to metaphor and that willing to twist words around until they took on a completely different meaning than what they originally had. I mean, in high school my definition of luck with any girl who could get the words "like that" appended to her was, "She talked to me and knows my name." I don't think much has changed, sadly. And, now that I think about it, they probably had a problem with the song "Damn." But that's just a guess. So in honor of the fact that a good fifteen years down the road from that Breakaway review of the Gin Blossoms' New Miserable Experience I was up in Wheeling yelling at Scott Johnson to play Peacemakers songs (although, I should note, the Gin Blossoms didn't play "Mrs. Rita." But they did cover Elton John's "Rocket Man," and I'm pretty sure that Focus on the Family has problems with Sir Elton John...) and I still own my copy of New Miserable Experience from lo those many years ago, I'm going to start an occasional piece I like to call "Breakaway Music Reviews." I'll probably exaggerate things somewhat and I'll certainly be making up Bible references and my connection with christopop is so tenuous these days that I can't pretend to make many real alternate music recommendations, so there will be invented Christian bands aplenty. But this is performance art, man, and that will only make it funnier (I hope). Oh, and I saw Matchbox 20 live at the Aragon Ballroom back in, like, 1996. Probably after reading about how they're just not very Christian. Just thought I needed to mention that in the interests of full disclosure...