Stuck inside Classic Rock

January 10, 2010 5:42 pm | 18 Comments

Help! I’m trapped inside Classic Rock and can’t get out!

I grew up in the 60s and 70s listening to what is now called “classic rock”. My first album was Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Cosmo’s Factory. Ramble Tamble is still one of my favorite rock songs. I bought that album when I was 10 years old. I wish I was that cool but I was (am) not – my next album was The Partridge Family Album.

Through my teenage and college years I listened to the bands that make up every classic rock playlist: Allman Brothers, Grateful Dead, Rolling Stones, The Who, Steve Miller, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Bruce Springsteen, Led Zeppelin, Tom Petty, etc. I don’t listen to Partridge Family any more, but I listen to these other bands every day. My iTunes library is full of this music. My default station on both Pandora and Slacker is “Classic Rock”. And my main radio station is KFOG, home of “world class rock”.

Even though I love classic rock, I do like to mix in some new music now and then. New music that’s cut from the same mold, that is. Some new bands I’ve added over the years include Counting Crows, U2, and Red Hot Chili Peppers. That shows how old I am. I think of U2 as “new” – a band that’s been together for 30 years. I desperately needed some truly new music, so I grabbed the copy of Rolling Stone featuring the decade’s best songs & albums and went searching.

I found some great new (10 years old or less) music, and wanted to share what I found. What’s this have to do with web performance? I’ll get to that at the end. If you don’t want to wade through my music recommendations, skip to the bottom and find out what the connection is.

“New” Classic Rock

Here are singles I added via iTunes:

  • Wake Up by Arcade Fire – Theme song from the Where the Wild Things Are movie. You should listen to this song first thing every morning when you get up.
  • Take Me Out and No You Girls by Franz Ferdinand – Great lyrics to a good euro beat. Maybe danceable, but also capable of generating some headbanging.
  • Hurt by Johnny Cash – Johnny Cash covers Nine Inch Nails?! I had to listen to this and was hooked. With lyrics like “what have I become” and “empire of dirt” it makes you think.
  • One More Time by Daft Punk – Electro-disco dance mix. Play this in the car when the sun’s out and the windows are down, or the next time a dance party breaks out in your living room (whichever comes first).
  • Paper Planes by M.I.A. – I’m not huge on hip-hop, so I fell short of buying the album. But this catchy song featured in Slumdog Millionaire is a great addition to the playlist. My daughters and wife liked it – bonus points!
  • Float On by Modest Mouse – Singer Isaac Brock sounds like David Byrne in this song that mixes driving choruses with melodic lyrics.
  • Last Nite by The Strokes – A rocking song that’ll get you moving.

I buy my CDs on Amazon. Just this week a buddy predicted the music industry would soon stop making CDs. I hope not. I have so much music it’s overwhelming. I like holding a collection of songs in my hand, taking it with me in the car or on a trip, looking at the cover art, and reading the liner notes. All of this helps me better capture a mental picture of the music. I also believe artists arrange songs together and in a particular order to achieve additional impact. True or not, I like physical CDs. Here’s what I bought:

  • Fleet Foxes by Fleet Foxes – This was an easy, almost backward, transition from classic rock to new music. These guys sound like CSNY – harmonies and easy lyrics. Good listening.
  • Funeral by Arcade Fire – I bought the single of Wake Up on iTunes and then got it again when I bought the CD – not smart. But it was worth the extra $0.69 to have that one song for the few days it took for the album to arrive.
  • A Rush of Blood to the Head by Coldplay – Coldplay churns out hits, which is a turnoff for me. This album has hits, or at least songs you’ll recognize, like In My Place, The Scientist, and Clocks. But the lesser known songs on this album are what’s intriguing – Politik, God Put a Smile upon Your Face, Green Eyes – let’s face it, all the songs on this album are good or great.
  • Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots by The Flaming Lips – Wow. Incredible and hard to describe. It feels like someone used a Pink Floyd machine to translate a comic book to music. I listened to Flight Test and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 1 multiple times each day when I first got this. You can hear the influences from Cat Stevens (Flight Test) and Neil Young (In the Morning of the Magicians).
  • Only by the Night by Kings of Leon – You’ll recognize the track Use Somebody. I like the singer’s voice – it reminds me of Bob Seeger.
  • Z by My Morning Jacket – Southern rock meets Hothouse Flowers, with some early Who influence.

What’s the Connection?

It has been a few weeks since my last blog post. I’m having a hard time getting going again after the long holiday break. This blog post on classic rock was an easy first step back into the world of blogging.

But there’s more to it than that.

I’m slow getting back into blogging because I’m having trouble imagining putting down words that have value. Over the break I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig (for the third time). My mind is still swimming from the visions and thoughts stirred up by that book. Having experienced what an author is capable of with words, how can I attempt to do anything even remotely similar? I am not worthy!

It gets worse, or at least more complicated.

As I drive around listening to my “new” classic rock, I get the same overwhelming, swimming feeling. Many of these songs move me. They’re beautiful. Even the headbanging songs are beautiful. They’re beautiful in the way the artist has reached through the car stereo speakers and changed the way I feel. They’re beautiful in the way they connect and convey. Just like ZMM is beautiful and connects and conveys. And I stop and ask myself – Is my blog beautiful? Really what I mean is, can my blog connect and convey?

I’ve spent a lot of time over the last year thinking about and observing how we connect with each other through writing, music, art, movies, personal interactions, and the Web. I’ve been thinking about what makes those connections more successful, more enjoyable, and ultimately more moving. For my world I’ve been concerned with what makes a blog post, tech presentation, book, or piece of code more beautiful. It came down to asking and defining – What is Beauty? And that’s when I hit a brick wall. I couldn’t define it. I know it when I see it. I can experience it. But I can’t define it. How can I improve something I can’t define?

As I read ZMM, I realized this was similar to Phaedrus’ struggle to define Quality. And the connection Phaedrus found between Quality and what the Greeks called aretê, or Excellence, is similarly connected to what I have been calling Beauty, and is probably a better name for what I’ve been searching to improve. Quality, Excellence, and Beauty – they’re all the same, or at least closely related.

Quality, excellence, and beauty are, or at least should be, in our work. And that’s the connection. This music is excellent and beautiful, and I want to find that quality in the world of web performance, and find a way to express it and communicate it, and have all of us carry it with us as we do our work. As I read ZMM, I saw many similarities between web performance and motorcycle maintenance. I feel like there’s at least one more blog post on the topic, if not an entire book. Hmmm, Zen and the Art of Web Performance. I like it. But let’s see how the blog post goes first. Stay tuned…

18 Responses to Stuck inside Classic Rock

  1. Dmitry Chaplinsky | 10-Jan-10 at 6:46 pm | Permalink |

    Keep rocking, Steve!

  2. Mike Pirnat | 10-Jan-10 at 9:58 pm | Permalink |

    If you thought the Flaming Lips were channeling Pink Floyd on Yoshimi, check out their cover of “Dark Side of the Moon” (yes, they did the whole album!) It’s interesting and worth a listen if you’re open-minded.

  3. Alex | 11-Jan-10 at 12:51 am | Permalink |

    If you want to listen to a new record that sound like the good old 70’s rock you really should listen to “And We Were Crown” by “The Parlor Mob”

  4. Brett | 11-Jan-10 at 1:51 am | Permalink |

    The first thought I had regarding the question “What is beauty?” and “Is my blog beautiful?” was “Figure out what problems you are trying to help people solve and define the beauty of your blog by its effectiveness in solving those problems”.

    That is a typical guy’s perspective I think because we’re problem solvers at our core.

    I’m a one man band with the websites I make my living from – I do it all – design, SEO, writing code, writing content, etc, etc. I’ll get deeply into a certain subject matter for several days at a time – everything from page loading times to design to learning how WordPress functions at the core, etc etc.

    I’m constantly questioning the same things you are – basically, what do I need to do? How far do I need to take this particular aspect? How good does this one aspect need to be?

    And then I remind myself of what’s critical – building sites that solve problems and answer questions for people.

    I had one website in particular that was painfully slow. By following a ton of ideas you presented, my page loading times are dramatically faster – one page took almost 45 seconds to load – and now takes about 1.5 seconds – with the same content and presentation.

    Personally, you’ve helped me solve a major problem that effects my websites – and my life – in a major, major way. In my opinion, your blog is beautiful.

  5. wolph | 11-Jan-10 at 2:09 am | Permalink |

    I can assure you your blog is conveying :)

  6. Alvaro | 11-Jan-10 at 5:52 am | Permalink |

    Not everything needs a definition. I’ll keep reading your “beautiful” blog.

  7. Morgan Roderick | 11-Jan-10 at 10:28 am | Permalink |

    I can only recommend that you get familiar with Wolfmother, for a combination of old school rock with a little new mixed in.

    Am enjoying it immensely :-)

  8. Martin Sutherland | 11-Jan-10 at 12:33 pm | Permalink |

    Steve, this was a delightful blog entry on several levels. First of all, I love hearing people talk about discovering new music. Finding great new songs and artists is one of the great delights in life. I hardly listen to the radio any more, and I find that I get all of my new music recommendations through friends, blogs, iTunes, and eMusic. (Automating music recommendations is also a fascinating subject and I thoroughly enjoy reading Paul Lamere’s “Music Machinery” blog. Try “Help! My iPod thinks I’m emo” [http://musicmachinery.com/2009/03/26/help-my-ipod-thinks-im-emo-part-1/] for a great overview of some of the interesting problems.)

    Secondly, your thoughts about quality and beauty are interesting because modern web development is a field in which craftsmanship is as important as rigorous engineering principles. It’s a world in which the hand-made lives side-by-side with the industrial — a world of high-tech precision machinery controlled by individually carved wooden knobs and shiny brass levers. (Very steampunk, in a way.) The scientific and the artistic camps both deal with questions of quality and beauty in their own way, and have much to learn from each other. I’m definitely interested to hear more.

  9. Ben Boyle | 11-Jan-10 at 4:30 pm | Permalink |

    There’s definitely an elegance to high performance websites, and plenty to be found on your blog – no need to worry on that front!

    I’m confused by this spam blocker though, “5 plus twenty-to =” … never seem a spam blocker that involves phonetic typos before. I suppose there is beauty in that two ~:)

  10. Lovell D'souza | 12-Jan-10 at 10:42 pm | Permalink |

    You should try listening to death metal once in a while. Very soothing :D

  11. BorisK | 13-Jan-10 at 2:13 am | Permalink |

    We want Pink Floyd to cover Flaming Lips’ Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots

    http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=226054314426

    The amazing Flaming Lips have reinterpreted Pink Floyd’s classic album ‘Dark Side of the Moon’, and quite a sterling job they’ve done of it too. Now it’s the turn of those old rockers to do the same for the Lips best selling record ‘Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots’.

    Let’s make it happen!

  12. JP | 13-Jan-10 at 7:43 pm | Permalink |

    Nice music tastes ;)

  13. bob | 14-Jan-10 at 8:06 am | Permalink |

    Stick to the geek. If I need art I’ll go and look at a sunset.

  14. Richard Fink | 14-Jan-10 at 10:45 am | Permalink |

    Hey Steve,
    I didn’t know you were an old fart like me. In Internet Years, I’m one hundred and seventy three years old.
    I was at Grateful Dead shows that weren’t sold out. (Half-empty, in fact. Ahh, those were the days, getting home after dawn.)
    Yes, I too, find writing about music a pleasurable and easy segué.
    Phaedrus – haven’t thought about that book in years, a real blast from the past.
    Happy New Year.

    Rich

  15. Tom Byers | 15-Jan-10 at 7:23 am | Permalink |

    Hi Steve, enjoyed your post and wanted to say the comments about creating beauty are something I also got out of the ZMM book. In reference to how you beauty is created and recognized there’s some interesting writing by the architect Christopher Alexander who has been wrestling with the same things since the 60’s. He articulates them quite well in his latest books: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=kZtZ57_nz-UC&dq=christopher+alexander&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=eKLfcRVzM9&sig=EZGH49DPcOH6_5iASPlMygIKb5Y&hl=en&ei=pIdQS-u5PKPSjAeRw_WnCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CCAQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=&f=false There is also a book about transplanting this to software you may be interested in: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Patterns-Software-Tales-Community/dp/0195121236

    Not trying to plug anything, just wanted to pass on my own findings in this area :-)

    Tom

  16. Gavin Doughtie | 20-Jan-10 at 6:32 pm | Permalink |

    I wouldn’t feel too uncool. The Partridge Family and the Monkees had some genuine pop hits in their catalogs — well-crafted, catchy tunes that, if you listen to them today, will still manage to set your brain to “auto-repeat”.

    In the meantime, try The Ting Tings, Muse, and (if you can sort the lyric art from the deeply disturbing content), Eminem!

  17. Patrick Whittingham | 15-Feb-10 at 9:28 am | Permalink |

    Steve,

    My son got me into these 3 bands.
    * White Stripes : (best guitarist of ’00 ).
    * Yeah,Yeah,Yeah’s : reminders me of Joan Jett and the Blackhearts.
    * Sonic Youth: actually, been around since late 1970s

  18. Tiffney | 11-Apr-11 at 12:40 pm | Permalink |

    Hello,

    My name is Tiffney and I am handling marketing and Online PR for the first-ever Rock Legends Cruise. Headlining this 5 day cruise will be “That little ol’ band from Texas,” Rock and Roll Hall of Famers ZZ Top and George Thorogood and The Destroyers who bring their “Bad To The Bone” approach to the high seas.

    We were wondering if you could possibly give this once in a lifetime vacation any press on your blog in exchange for some autographed CDs, autographed pictures and posters from the many performers of this Cruise?

    Rock Legends Cruise is slated to depart Fort Lauderdale on December 1 of this year aboard The Royal Caribbean Line’s Liberty of the Seas. The unprecedented cruise will benefit NAHA’s mission to provide emergency assistance and self- help programs to the Sioux Native Americans living on reservations in South Dakota.

    Along with ZZ Top and Thorogood, the Rock Legends Cruise includes multiple performances from John Kay and Steppenwolf, The Marshall Tucker Band, Dickey Betts & Great Southern, Foghat, Johnny Winter, Molly Hatchet, Devon Allman’s Honeytribe, The Outlaws, Blackfoot, Pat Travers, and SwampDaWamp.

    It is expected that upwards of 3,200 music fans will be aboard the ship, one of the most biggest, fastest and luxurious passenger vessels in service today, served by a crew of 1,300 on 18 decks. With a gross tonnage of 160,000, it can truly be said that the rock-themed benefit voyage will be a “heavy” experience for both bands and fans. The ship, almost as long as four football fields, cruises at 21.6 knots, is scheduled for port stops in the Bahamas that include Coco Cay and Nassau.

    Any admat banners or videos needed to promote this Cruise are located at http://fanmanager.net/teams/rocklegendscruise. Please email me if you are interested and have a great day!

    Thank you for your consideration,

    Tiffney

    Tiffney@fanmanager.net

    http://rocklegendscruise.com/