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I Wish Hard Rock Stations Had More Class

It’s not easy being a rock ’n’ roll fanatic some days, especially when it comes to the choices I have on the radio dial. Oh, don’t get me wrong: The Boston area has plenty of great stations, especially RadioBDC and Rock 101 in Southern New Hampshire.

But some radio stations, in the Boston market and beyond, that play my kind of music have to ruin it by appealing to the lowest common denominator.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:0pbEg5765Mvvalwn5E6ZWN]

It’s always been this way, of course, and once upon a time I didn’t mind. One of my local stations, WAAF, has cranked up a humor based on sexual crassness for as long as I can remember. Hell, this is the station that brought us shock jocks Opie and Anthony. They shocked Boston until April 1998 they told their listeners as an April Fools’ prank that Boston Mayor Tom Menino was killed in a car accident while transporting a young female Haitian prostitute. In more recent years, I’ve tuned in to hear women on the morning show being asked about the shape of their vaginas.

As a 20 year old, I loved this stuff. But somewhere along the way I grew up, and my radio stations didn’t. (The RadioBDC DJs, formerly of WFNX, have always been more mature in this regard.)

It’s a drag for two reasons:

  • I can’t listen when my kids are in the car, which is most of the time.
  • Thanks to the Internet and, more specifically, Facebook, I have to see a lot of meathead comments from WAAF and its followers. This morning, for example, WAAF posted these comments above pictures of the women they talk about:
    • “Here’s math teacher Iowa Ashley Nicole Anderson who allegedly had relationships with FOUR different students! Would you??”
    • “Here’s Mandy Caruso, the cosplayer dressed as “Black Cat” who was upset about being sexually harrassed at NY ComicCon.”

The comments to the latter post have a few mature comments, but most of them are abusive name-calling. One jerk calls her a “cumdumpster” and someone else asks, “What does she expect when she looks like that?” Forget that these women are human beings, prone to all the mistakes we’re all prone to. The woman in the latter case did nothing wrong. She was at a comic book convention and was in costume. That doesn’t give some asshat the right to ask about her cup size.

I’m no prude. I do come from Revere, after all, and have been known to swear like a sailor. When my sons let the bathroom humor flow, I admit I laugh inside even as I’m scolding them.

But there are lines I’ve decided not to cross anymore. I want my rock ’n’ roll delivered to me by DJs whose thinking and sense of humor are something above the Stone Age stuff.

I’ve unliked the WAAF Facebook page and don’t plan to listen to the station again anytime soon.

Thankfully, I have RadioBDC and, when I want to cut out all the talking, Spotify.

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Led Zeppelin Gets Me Through the Rain

A while back I wrote about how Van Halen’s music helps me through  the winter blues. Too much rain can depress me, too, and for that I’m finding a remedy in Led Zeppelin.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/S4v-_p5dU34

Like most teenage rock fans, I listened to Led Zeppelin nonstop, studied every lyric and guitar solo and read any book in which they were at least mentioned. I remember reading Hammer of the Gods when I was 15, and though I know the band members never liked that book, I absorbed it obsessively. There were always rumors that the band was cursed for making a deal with the devil. I never believed that. They had their lows like any band, including the deatha of Robert Plant’s son and drummer John Bonham. But for me, the music is all that ever mattered. And this music didn’t come from Hell. No fucking way.

These guys channeled something that came straight from Heaven. They rocked hard, but some of my favorite songs were done acoustically. Zeppelin drew from every culture and used every obscure instrument known to man to get their sound. Folk is as integral to their sound as heavy metal. The song I used for today’s Mood Music is one of my favorites and cuts to the heart of the matter on rainy days like this, when I’ve given to blue moods:

These are the seasons of emotion and like the winds they rise and fall

This is the wonder of devotion — I see the torch we all must hold.

This is the mystery of the quotient — Upon us all a little rain must fall.

Which brings me to another point: Robert Plant has always gotten his due respect for vocal prowess, but he is also one of the most underrated lyricists who has ever lived. Those lyrics in particular speak to me on a day like this, when I’m given to cursing the sky for handing me more gray instead of the sunlight I crave.

I’d even go as far as to say that a song like this makes me appreciate the rain.

I stopped listening to Led Zeppelin for a long time, not because they fell out of favor with me, but because I was simply exploring other bands and genres. My interest was rekindled by the film It Might Get Loud, in which Jimmy Page, U2’s The Edge and Jack White get together to share the stories and techniques behind their best-known songs.

Here’s a preview:

Also rekindling my interest is the new concert film Celebration Day, in which the surviving members of Zeppelin and John Bonham’s son, Jason, do a reunion performance in 2007. Here’s a preview:

This stuff permeates my soul and helps me see the joy in life, even on my most depressed, pissed-off days. Thanks, gents.

Led Zeppelin Flower

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The White Stripe of Dissapointment

An old friend from Revere went to NYC to see Jack White perform at Radio City Music Hall this past weekend and walked away crushed. She waited an hour and a half to meet him, but he blew past everyone and hopped into a waiting van. No hellos. No autographs.

“What a disappointment. Just waited an hour and a half for him to just dash out and jump in his van,” she said on her Facebook page.

Then he put on a dismal performance, insulted the crowd repeatedly and stormed off stage after barely an hour of performing.

“Wow! Just can’t get any worse. As if earlier wasn’t bad enough, JW decided to blow off his entire audience and killed his show and walked after an hour because the crowd wasn’t loud enough for him,” she posted.

And so went the latest lesson of how our musical heroes sometimes fail to live up to their gifts when the human being behind the rock god armor is exposed.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:09QZAEmdbq28OaNyqTOEvY]

I’ve never been snubbed by a favorite rock star, but I’ve been disappointed by my musical heroes over the years and it sucks. A couple examples:

  • Vince Neil. I wanted to believe the Mötley Crüe vocalist learned something after his 1984 DUI accident, which killed Hanoi Rocks drummer Nicholas “Razzle” Dingley and injured two others, leaving at least one of them with permanent brain damage. Neil was unharmed, did 30 days in prison, did 200 hours of community service, and paid millions in restitution. Over the years, his drinking has remained on full display, but I assumed his days of drunk driving were over. Then, two years ago, he was sent to jail for drunk driving in Las Vegas.
  • Axl Rose. The Guns N’ Roses vocalist regularly shows contempt for his fans, going on stage hours late, storming off stage before the show is finished and, in some cases, sparking riots in the process.

The common element for me is that both men front bands that were very important to me as a disgruntled teen. Instead of taking all my anger, grief and sorrow out on other people and stealing cars, I listened to Mötley Crüe and Guns N’ Roses. The music wrung out all of the violence within me and kept me sane. Because their music did this for me, I assumed the artists were the nicest guys on Earth, living on some higher level of existence.

Sadly, in the case of these two, it didn’t turn out to be that way.

But I still listen to the music. It still speaks to me and keeps me grounded. I feel the same way about Jack White’s music.

I’ve learned to divorce the personalities from the music. Maybe that’s a survival instinct. I know people who refuse to listen to a band that includes musicians they consider assholes.

Part of my reasoning is that these stars are flawed human beings like us, not gods. They have good days, when they are nice to everyone they come in contact with. And they have days when they treat their fellow human beings with contempt. It could be that White was simply having a shitty day. Maybe he got some bad news or simply wasn’t feeling well.

Whatever the case, he should apologize for his NYC clusterfuck. We’re all human, but fans are paying customers, and you have to make things right with your customers if you want them to stay customers.

Even so, I hope my friend doesn’t stop listening to White, especially if the music has helped her in times of need.

Jack White
Photo credit: Douglas Mason/Getty Images Contributor

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The Song Remains Not the Same

My fingertips are sore and black because I’ve practiced my guitar playing every day since pulling it from its box on my birthday 11 days ago. They hurt like hell, but it’s a very satisfying pain.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:69GD80i2vo9xdHbxFw4USw]

My technique is still all wrong because I haven’t had face-to-face lessons yet, though I’ve been using several lessons I found on YouTube. Despite my lack of proper chording so far, I’m finding that I can make sounds that sound good to me. I define “good” by the sound’s ability to take my brain someplace else while mysteriously helping me exist in the moment at the same time.

That may sound strange, but it’s how I feel.

I’ve also quickly remembered where I left off 19 years ago, when I last played the instrument.

Once my skills and confidence are at a more comfortable level, I’ll start recording bits of what I’ve been doing and put them on the SoundCloud page I set up this week.

I’ll even start singing and writing lyrics again, making the best with what I have.

Future posts in this blog will be more musical as a result, with my own stuff for mood music, complete with lyrics to follow along with. How long will it take me to get there? I don’t know, but I’m in no great hurry.

I love that I’m able to do more with music than simply being a bystander. For me, rock ‘n’ roll has always been a source of strength in times of trouble. As I’ve said before, the more angry metal I listened to as a kid wrung out any real violence in me and probably steered  me away from a life of crime.

My musical tastes remain heavy but not quite so angry. I don’t consider Van Halen an angry band. They play hard, but the lyrics are all about living, loving and having a good time, troubles be damned.

But I don’t think rock is the only vehicle.

I know others get the same salvation from classical, country, folk and jazz.

If the music takes you from your ugly place, it’s all good — no matter how out of tune it may be.

That said, I really need to get on the ball and get those lessons.

Bill on guitar

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Get Well, Eddie Van Halen

Funny thing about life: Just when everything is humming along and all is right with the world, something devastating comes along and kicks your ass back to the stone age. So it seems to be with guitarist Edward Van Halen.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:3xMZrNrfyKUUqQVtoR13ml]

Last winter, Van Halen released its “A Different Kind of Truth” album, easily its best effort since “1984,” in my opinion. The band then embarked on a massively successful tour and seemed to be enjoying the hell out of it all. They tossed old songs they hadn’t performed in decades onto the set list, to the delight of fans.

Looking at all the footage from those concerts on YouTube, you can see Eddie enjoying himself and playing better than ever. It’s been good to see, especially since most of us wrote him off as death bound after seeing his drunken, often-incoherent performances of the mid-2000s. He’s been through cancer, a hip replacement and alcoholism. But on the 2012 tour, he looked every bit the man who had beaten his demons.

Then the band abruptly put the tour on ice at the start of summer, and the rumors started circulating: Were the band members fighting? Was Eddie drinking again?

This week, we got the answer from the Van Halen News Desk and other news sites:

Eddie Van Halen underwent an emergency surgery for a severe bout of diverticulitis. No further surgeries are needed and a full recovery is expected within 4 –6 months. Van Halen’s scheduled November 2012 tour of Japan is currently being rescheduled and the band looks forward to seeing and playing for their fans in 2013.

CNN gave this update yesterday:

Eddie Van Halen is home recovering from surgery.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame guitarist had an operation for diverticulitis, an inflammation and infection of the intestines.

According to a rep for the rock group Van Halen, the guitarist first developed the condition while on tour.

When he came off the road, he had a serious flare-up.

Eddie Van Halen spent three weeks in the hospital after surgery to remove the infected intestine, [resulting] in another infection when he popped a few stitches.

His home recovery is expected to last four to six months.

We love to put the famous on big pedestals and then gawk when they fall off. But they’re human like us. Sometimes they’re riding high. Other times they’re getting kicked in the nuts.

I’m one of those fans that will hang on every news item and video featuring the band. It’s not merely about being a fanboy. It’s about how Van Halen’s music was there for me when I was fighting all the demons of childhood. It’s about how Eddie’s recovery from addiction inspired me to do something about mine.

It’s about how Van Halen’s music pulled me through many episodes of winter-induced depression.

Through its music, Van Halen has been there for me. So wishing Eddie well is the least I can do. I can also relate to his current troubles, having had my own colon trouble. Colon ailments are hell, especially something like diverticulitis.

Get well, Eddie. We’ll see you in 2013.

Eddie Van Halen

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Time to Make Music Again

When asked what I want for my birthday, I usually say nothing. I don’t want people spending money on me, and I don’t want to be greedy. But this time, with my 42nd birthday only days away, I asked the family for something specific: an acoustic-electric guitar.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:3t8Id5r985SAZ9o5EGrUtk]

I used to play guitar, though I was never very good at it. When I had a band and was writing music, I sang and wrote lyrics. I couldn’t really sing, mind you, but I could write lyrics, and that’s all that mattered. With the guitar, I’d stand in the middle of the basement in the old house in Revere and make noise — out of tune, no attention whatsoever to proper technique. I just made sounds that spoke to what I was feeling. I had an Ibanez strat model Sean Marley gave me one Christmas. Desperate for money to pay bills one year, I sold it. That remains one of the biggest regrets of my life.

So here I am, 20 years later, about to turn 42, and I want to play again. This time I want to learn how to play the instrument properly and write music that goes with the written words I hammer out daily.

There are several reasons the desire has returned. The biggest is that one day a few months ago, my therapist told me that no man should die with his music still inside of him. That line hit me more than anything he’s said to me in the last year, because unlike his suggestions that I quit coffee and do yoga every morning, something deep within me knew he was right on this one.

Though I stopped being in a band and singing in the mid-1990s, my passion for music has never abated. I write a lot about my love of metal music, but I like a lot of folk, too. That’s Erin’s influence for sure. On our wedding anniversary three years ago, we went to the Newport Folks Festival, and I walked away as a fan of the Avett Brothers, The Decemberists and Gillian Welch. It was one of those life-changing days.

I also approach the posts in this blog like songs. They’re meant to be timeless and stike an emotional chord. I put older posts on my Facebook and Twitter streams every day because to me it’s kind of like being a DJ. I’m playing a collection of songs repeatedly, like any good DJ does.

I also think making music would be another effective tool to fight my addictive behavior. If a guitar were lying around, there are many days where I’d pick it up instead of my laptop.

Call it a midlife crisis urge, if you will. To me, it’s just part of my never-ending push to become a better man than I am now.

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Former FNX DJs Get Second Chance on Boston.com

In a recent post about WFNX being sold and gutted by Clear Channel, I predicted that this would not be the end of the story. It turns out I was right. Boston.com announced this morning that it’s launching a live streaming radio station featuring alternative music and well-known personalities from WFNX-FM.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:6x7B9cDXyH4X7lCwH6B40o]

In a Facebook exchange this morning, longtime DJ Henry Santoro told me: “All I can say right now is that they came to us, and the magic started happening from the very first meeting.”

“The Boston.com station will have a presence on the website’s homepage,” reported Boston.com, “and it will feature a variety of live programming: music, commentary, contests, interviews, and exclusive online content.”

Effective today, the following former WFNX employees will become Boston.com employees: DJs Henry Santoro, Julie Kramer, and Adam 12; former program director Paul Driscoll; former sales rep Johnny L. Lavasseur; and former operations and promotions director Mike Snow.

The launch date for the new streaming radio station will be announced later this summer, according to Boston.com.

As a kid who received a lot of solace from the music these DJs played during the darker periods of my life, this is great news to wake up to on a Monday morning.

Raise your coffee mugs, and toast a second chances.

WFNX Logo

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When Fakes Go for the Kill

We do a lot of stupid things to gain acceptance among others. Many of those things go back to being a fake. Some of you have been guilty at some point. So have I. The question is if anything good can come from our shenanigans.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:3prDBxwP2kuDQQ94tApMl2]

I’ll start with myself. Someone who means the world to me recently suggested that I’m the star-struck type. I love making friends with musicians, especially when I’m a fan of their music. It sounds sick, but I’m kind of proud that some locally famous “rock star” types read this blog and think I’m worth having a conversation with. I get the same way when respected people in my industry give me the time of day, not to mention other writers. Sometimes, my desire for acceptance in these circles will influence how I dress and even how I talk.

I’m almost ashamed to admit it all. If there’s any redeeming aspect of this, it’s that my star-struck nature has led me to some real friendships — friendships that have made me a better person. And if someone is an asshole, I’m not going to try being their buddy no matter how much I love their music or respect whatever else they do for work. Still, I can’t deny the behavior exists.

It’s all the funnier because I can be the most judgmental fuck on the face of this planet when I see other people being fake.

When the wannabes think it’s cool to throw verbal bombs online to get attention (some call this trolling), I’m quick to stare down my nose at them. I pat myself on the back for not being a troll in these moments, but is that really true? I’m a product of the news business, where editors try to make headlines as attention-grabbing as possible. One could legitimately call that a form of trolling.

I know people who turn fake when they want the world to think they’ve found the perfect soulmate. They post lovey-dovey comments to each other on Facebook all day and jam cyberspace with pictures of them hugging and smiling. Then you find out from people close to them that it’s all for show, that they argue all the time.

There are those who want to be accepted in wealthy social circles even though they may not have a lot of money. They max their credit cards out on clothes and cars to look the part and kiss asses all day in the country clubs and five-star restaurants. Then they go home to their leaky roof, chipped paint and stack of unpaid bills.

Then there are those who want to be accepted so badly in the political world that they’ll pull their principles inside out and say whatever will make people like them. Mitt Romney, this year’s likely Republican nominee for president, has been accused of being this way. Al Gore was accused of it, too, as was John McCain. A pity, because they all show signs of greatness when they’re being themselves.

I think one of the reasons some of us become addicts is because we know we’re fake and want to numb the shameful feelings that go with that look in the mirror. I think it’s why some of us suffer from depression, too.

Nothing sucks quite like knowing you’re not keeping it real. Being fake is exhausting work.

So what do we do about it?

There’s probably not much we can do because we’re dealing with flaws at the very core of human nature. For my part, I just try to figure out who my real friends are along the way and try to nurture those relationships. Maybe some of my friendships started with me being a star-struck idiot (those friends would probably laugh at this, because they know they don’t qualify as genuine stars), but the ones that became real friendships have made me better.

Or, at least, it’s made me take a sober look in the mirror more often. Hopefully, the man that emerges over time will be the real deal.

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Why Reports of WFNX’s Death Are Premature

During this blog’s hiatus a terrible thing happened: Boston’s Phoenix Media/Communications Group sold WFNX 101.7 FM to Clear Channel Communications, essentially killing another bastion of Boston rock.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:2SUqPdYx8dh1s1yjqeGszW]

It saddened me on many levels. Through Facebook I’m connected with some of the DJs, and I’ve enjoyed their posts, but I could see and feel their pain on that social networking site after the sale was announced. I was also reminded of how WFNX was there for me during many difficult times in the late 1980s and 1990s. I felt equally bad when WBCN met the same fate a few years ago.

Some will argue that these stations lost their way in recent years — and their points are valid. But that’s not the point. These stations are still living, breathing entities and should be treated as such. We humans often lose our way. Sometimes we stay lost until we’re forgotten or we turn up dead. Other times we find our way again and people love us all the more for it.

For the latter reason, this post is no eulogy. It’s about things in life going away and coming back, always different but usually better.

The signs of life after FNX are already evident. Sunday, the day The Boston Globe ran an article about FNX and the precarious state of Boston rock radio, DJ Julie Kramer announced on Facebook that she was engaged. Her job at FNX may be over, but her life goes on. You can’t keep the strong ones down.

Meanwhile, a petition drive to save FNX is gaining steam, and there’s always the opportunity to bring the station back via the Internet. BCN has been reborn online, though the message hasn’t gotten through to enough listeners to call it a success story yet.

Much of my music listening has shifted to the Internet. I like Pandora, though I like Spotify a lot better because I’m able to find most of my favorite albums there. One could argue these newer choices are what’s killing traditional rock radio, but I think we’re simply in the middle of a transitional period. As terrible as it is to see revered radio stations die, the story has a long way to go. In the years to come, I think we’ll see a more complete marriage between traditional radio and the Internet. We’re merely traveling through the fog right now, lost and disoriented. It sucks, but the fog always burns away eventually.

Saturday Erin and I went to a charity concert that was teeming with mourning FNX fans. My friends Pop Gun opened the show and did a blistering, satisfying set. They were followed by New Wave legends The Psychedelic Furs. The latter band was never my cup of tea, but I enjoyed them and was amazed that I knew as many of their songs as I did. They can thank FNX for that. People still hunger for alternative rock in this town. FNX’s sale leaves a vacuum, and we know by now that nature never allows a vacuum to go unfilled. Who better to fill it than the former DJs of WFX?

The possibilities are endless. And even if FNX doesn’t come back, the station will always live on in our memories. Allow me to share some of mine.

As a kid from Revere with a boulder-sized chip on my shoulder, I turned to heavy metal to sooth me after my brother’s death, family rancor and too many Crohn’s Disease flare-ups to count. In the 1980s, a good Boston metal station was hard to come by. There was WAAF, but their DJs were always too juvenile for my tastes. I loved BCN, but they never played enough of the heavy stuff to keep me satisfied.

I turned to WFNX not because it was playing metal. It wasn’t, obviously. I gave them a try because my late friend Sean Marley was a fan and back then I copied everything he did. In doing so, my musical horizons were broadened in wonderful ways. I discovered bands like The Ramones, REM (I don’t listen to REM these days, but I liked them back then), The Pixies and Nirvana and DJs like Kramer, Angie C. and Duane Bruce, who could play kick-ass music and conduct themselves with class instead of going for the shock value. In the first years of my relationship with Erin, we both enjoyed FNX. And when Sean Marley died, I turned to FNX for the comfort of bands like Weezer.

In more recent years the metalhead in me has re-asserted itself, but I’ve continued to love the bands FNX introduced me to. I’ve also come to enjoy the Facebook presence of its current and former DJs.

Clear Channel can never take that from me. And it can’t kill a powerful musical movement as long as there are people around to pluck the torch from the ground and re-ignite it.