Neutral Milk Hotel gets a spin

I don't know if you will care but I WILL tell you that I have been listening to Neutral Milk Hotel's phenomenal album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea every day now for the last 3 weeks and that you Have to listen to it and love it because it's that Fucking good. If you're an indie geek, you already know the album and have just made some derisive comment about how it's about frigging time I noticed it because You listened to it when it First Came Out and You went to the concert and got a T-shirt to show how oh-so special you are even though only your boyfriend/girlfriend will ever see it because it's buried with all your other concert shirts in the closet (What? Me?? Defensive?!). As for the rest of Civilization, my enthusiasm probably won't matter but I can't keep It to myself. The fact is that this album isn't First-Listen. First-Listen music is usually fun, always catchy and sells itself 15 seconds into the first track, assuming that the artist hasn't made the always-regretful mistake of placing a dialogue track on the first track. This is the method by which many people (and, unfortunately, record execs) evaluate their music. If a song doesn't grab them P.D.Q., then nothing is going to change their mind about the artist, no matter how hard I push 'em.

I have had this album sitting on my iPod since last October, but it wasn't until March that I finally Got It. Whenever I felt like listening to something new, I would throw it on. But then, I'd get a few songs into it and I'd started to get irritated, and finally pissed off with the wailing and the dissonance. I'd have to throw switch to a Death Cab for Cutie or Iron & Wine song just to chill myself out. I couldn't concentrate on anything when I listened to it, but I kept at it, though. I kinda liked "The King of Carrot Flowers Part 1" so the music never entirely dipped under the radar. Then, a few weeks ago,... I heard the frustration and anger and longing in the dissonance and felt the energetic, emotional arc and it carried me and with that kind of buzz of a long, epic movie or an all-nighter with good friends. Suddenly, I found myself at the end of the album, exhausted and thrilled.

It was a hard nut to crack, though. I kept that album in my iPod for months instead of deleting it out on the first listen. When I was in college, I barely gave a song a second chance. If I liked it- good. If I didn't- fuck it. Why the big change? Well, two reasons: 1) I started listening to the right people instead of the Top 40 rotation on commercial radio, and 2) I had experience. Even with the good word from bloggers and friends, I wouldn't have held onto that album (or a lot of my favorite music) if I hadn't endured the trial by fire that was the Move of 1994.

If I had moved to Los Angeles with any sense of preparation, I would not be the indie music enthusiast I am today. Prior to 1994, my taste in music was, to say the least, abysmal. My collection of audio tapes was highlighted by the likes of Bell Biv DeVoe, Poison and Paul Simon. The bravest musical choice I had made in the previous three years was when I purchased the cassette single of "Smells Like Teen Spirit". My old friend, Eliot, introduced me to the power of live, indie music by dragging me to see bands like Uncle Tupelo and Yo La Tengo, but I always scuttled back to my Top 40. I loved seeing bands, but I just wasn't engaged enough in the scene to know what was worth hearing. I was in the last year of film school and sleeping in my editing room. Eliot made me a couple tapes, but I'd barely get through a couple songs before I'd toss back into my case and whip out my single of "Mistadobbalina" for one more spin. It just felt like too much Work to explore college radio or buy something different. Music was largely background noise, or melodramatic theme tracks to express a mood or feeling. I know. I suck. I'm a bad, bad friend.

In May, I graduated and, two weeks later, was on the Road from Illinois to the Hills of Hollywood. It was a couple hours into the 4 day journey when the enthusiastic buzz in my head had abated enough for me to notice that the car was silent. I reached for my cassette tape case and immediately had one of those sci-fi movie memory flashbacks where some screaming engine noise accompanies a reverse-time collage of driving backwards down the road, into my parents' driveway as I turn off the car, walk backwards to the house and freeze-frame on the image of my cassette case, sitting innocently on my the kitchen counter. "Fucking hell," I proclaimed to my dashboard. Four frigging days on the road and I had forgotten all my music. I scrounged in the glove compartment in a desperate bid to find my copy of Rhythm of the Saints when I discovered one of Eliot's tapes. One side had Surfer Rosa from the Pixies and the other was Nothing's Shocking by Jane's Addiction. For four days, I had to choose between either this tape or the radio and if you've ever driven through the mountains of Colorado or western Kansas, you know that the radio is no kind of option.

I liked The Pixies from the beginning. There was no doubt about that. They were catchy and fun. True, they were a little Stop-Go, but the contrast had already been buffered by my introduction to the pop-catchier style of Nirvana that curiously seemed to emulate some of the Pixies stuff (hmmm). Jane's Addiction, however, was another story. I couldn't stand the lead singer with his high-pitched, off-key wailing. The only song on that side that I could stand was "Summertime Rolls". It was in the middle of the tape and if I fast forwarded the tape and counted to 30, I could listen to that one song before fast forwarding to the end and flipping back to The Pixies.

For 2 days, this was my routine. Then, somewhere in middle of nowhere, I got bored of the routine and just let the other side play. First, "Jane Says" started to sound a little better to me. Then, "Mountain Song" didn't turn out to be so bad. Then, "Ted, Just Admit It" was worth a listen. Maybe it was the heat of that 200 mile stretch of Utah desert. Perhaps it was the fact that I hadn't spoken 5 words to another human being in days. Somewhere, along that long road to Cali, my mental mania rose just high enough to peek over the fence and get a really good look at the Jane's Addiction mania on the other side, and it Liked what it Saw. By the time I reached the Santa Monica, I was wailing with Perry from "Ocean Size", all the way through "Pigs in Zen". Jane's Addiction wasn't a band any more. It was My Band. I had ownership of that frigging album because I had worked at it and finally Got It.

Sometimes, a little work will do you good (damned you Dad for being Right!).