By Hayley Dyer
HAYLEY'S COMPANION GUIDE TO MUSIC SAVED MY LIFE: EPISODE 1
Hey guys! My name is Hayley, I am very excited to announce our new podcast, Music Saved My Life! My friend Matt and I will be coming at you every other week with music (both new and old), stories, tangents, etc. I promise we love music and don’t take ourselves too seriously. As Matt is wont to say - nothing is worse than a lit bro douchebag. Looking forward to sharing and listening to music with you!
Episode One was largely inspired by a visit to the Dallas Museum of Art to see legendary journalist Chuck Klosterman’s Dallas stop for his X book tour. I’m a huge fan of Klosterman’s work. When I was in college I read Sex Drugs and Coco Puffs during my Entrepreneurship class. (I sat in the back row and my professor was extremely hard of hearing, so I don’t think he ever heard me laughing back there…) But yeah, anyways, now that I’m a small business owner, I look back and think “maybe that wasn’t the best class to ignore.” Oh well.
Back to our night with Chuck – as you’ll hear in the podcast (player embedded at the bottom of the page!), Chuck mentioned that his favorite band is KISS. “They’re not the best, but they’re my favorite” – Chuck (paraphrasing by Hayley). And since we didn’t know much about the band, we decided to listen to KISS’ 1977 album, Love Gun. Fun fact: when the album came out, a cardboard “Love Gun” was included inside the vinyl album cover (some assembly was required, though).
KISS (1977 members from left-right Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons, Peter Criss, Ace Frehley)
Well anyways, KISS isn’t really either of our styles. Matt is super intense when it comes to lyrics, so KISS’ basic rock tropes really didn’t do it for him. I was mainly just bored by the music as a whole – there wasn’t really anything complex about the various tracks on the album. It seems to me like the guys in KISS had a goal to become “Rock Stars” and that they did! Paul Stanley has recently come out to say that he hopes KISS will continue after he and Gene leave the band – that the band can continue on because it’s like a sports franchise. That statement itself makes me think that the band doesn’t consider the essence of the band to be their songwriting or music, that the essence of the band is the makeup and platform shoes and the costumes that the performers wear. I may not enjoy the music, but I appreciate their style. I’m sorry if we were a little harsh, but I’m really glad we jumped out of our comfort zone to give them a little listen!
screenshot from Shut Up and Play the Hits: Chuck Klosterman and James Murphy
In the second half of the podcast we waxed poetic about LCD Soundsystem and discussed their upcoming North American tour and the two singles they’ve released from their forthcoming album, American Dream. If you haven’t seen the documentary Shut Up and Play the Hits, I really can’t recommend it enough. Besides the interviews and behind the scenes content with James Murphy, the concert shots are great and transport you to Madison Square Garden.
Okay kids. Stay cool and wear your sunscreen.
Full disclosure, we recorded this back on July 8, so I will try to be quicker about getting everything edited and into your waiting arms and ears!
Appendix:
Mary Jane’s Last Dance (Freedom Fry Cover)
That Jeff Tweedy essay by Chuck Klosterman is called An American Radiohead and was published in his book, Klosterman IV. It’s available for purchase for $.99 on Amazon.
Phil Spector dispels the myth: “the higher the hair, the closer to God.”
I educated myself about Phil Spector. He was a millionaire by age 21. Biography.com states his occupation as “murderer” AND they highlight that he is a Capricorn. Uh… me too. In 2003 he was arrested for the murder of Lana Clarkson, whom he met at a House of Blues (not really relevant, but interesting.) He was sentenced nineteen years for her murder AND fun fact: he has not been allowed to wear any type of wig while he’s been in prison. Without his wig he looks a bit like Dobby, the house elf from Harry Potter.