City Sounds
(or: reviews of bands I overheard at our practice space)
from "You Idiot"

Have you ever wondered where music comes from? Have you ever stopped and stared at your radio and thought “Gee, I wonder how they came up with that part? I totally didn't see that mosh breakdown coming!”?
      If you're like most people, the answer is probably “No”, or “Get away from me”. Fair enough—you probably don't actively think about such things, figuring that music is a lot like a Chicken McNugget: you don't know or care how it came to be, but it's here now so who gives a shit. However, I bet that given the opportunity you WOULD be interested in hearing your favorite band write their songs (or “jam out”, to use the technical term). I mean, why else would “demo versions” of songs be (occasionally) popular? Why else would bands release videos of themselves playing shit in the studio? Well, cuz it's a neat way to hear how parts of a song changed during the writing process, how much better or worse the final version of a tune is, how exactly a band like Metallica crafts lyrics like “I'll wash your back so you don't stab mine”, and so forth.
      Problem is, unless a band specifically decides to release something like the aforementioned demos or studio video, or maybe a “we need smack money” outtakes and rarities album, it's essentially impossible to get a chance to witness the writing process. However, I happen to be fortunate enough to rent a room at the City Sound practice space in Minneapolis, where I get to hear bands writing and demo-ing songs all the time. Not just one or two bands, either—we're talking up to 30 bands, sometimes all at the same time.
      It's a wide swath of genres, too-- if you position yourself correctly, you can hear from the hallway intersection an unholy blend of jazz fusion, 89.3 The Current-esque Indie Pop, double-bass-drum-fueled gargoyle metal, and synth-heavy goth jams. It's awesome! And it's especially awesome when, at some random show around town, you'll look up from your beer and exclaim “Hey, I know this song! This is the band from room 26! I heard them write this, man!” Or, alternately, you can just nudge your companions and say “Watch the bass player during this next part. Trust me”, and receive gazes of wonderment moments later. “B-but... they said this was the first time they've played this song! H-how... how did you know that funky line was coming?”
      It's pretty slick. Unfortunately, unless you rent a space at City Sound you're not able to get in on this action. So: I'm going to do the next best thing and go undercover for you, dear reader, and report back on what local bands are up to. That's right-- you'll get to read about bands you've never heard of before slowly writing songs that you might hear in the background while at a bar some day. Contain your excitement.

Deep Purple Band
The riff to Deep Purple's Smoke on the Water is recognized, along with that one Chicago song and maybe that one Violent Femmes song, as the first, simple thing someone trying to learn guitar tackles. If a person progresses beyond that point, they're well on their way to being able to play the instrument. If they don't, they'll likely never pick up a 6 string again or at the very most will annoy people at parties with their faint knowledge. i.e., “Whoa, hand me the axe, brah. Check out what I can play. Duh nuh nuh, nuh nuh nuh aw fuck, sorry dude. I'll pay for that”
      With this in mind, I was hella (yes... hella) confused at the sounds of someone struggling to play this riff through the practice space walls. Getting ahead of yourself there, buddy! You rent a practice space after you figure that one out. But then a few minutes later the notes changed up a little – a few added in, a few held out longer – and it was clear it was a song that sounded like Deep Purple, not exactly like Deep Purple. That's a step in the right direction, obviously.
 
Verdict: Well…. not bad, to be honest! The altered riff has some potential, but the key is going to be layering enough shit on top of it so the average listener doesn't immediately think “Whoa... they're covering fucking Deep Purple?”. Similarly, the overall strength or lack thereof of the song will depend mostly on the vocal melody accompanying the riff, but I didn't end up hearing that-- my cab arrived before I heard if they progressed beyond the initial riff-writing, so I dunno what the song ended up sounding like, if it was even finished at all. But, as long as the final result keeps enough distance from Smoke on the Water, and as long as the vocals sound alright, I think I'd probably give it a thumbs up. 
      As a side note, actually covering Deep Purple at a typical show would, I assume, cause a 15 second jolt of confusion in the audience as they think “Wait, is this an ironic cover, or an earnest cover?” If the settled-upon answer is “ironic” people will start getting into it. Earnest, however, will earn the band sneers and derision.

Metronome Band
Hearing other bands in a practice space is unavoidable and after awhile you get pretty good at tuning it out. The drop-d riffage and guttural howlings down the hall might be terrible and unbearable at first, but soon enough they'll recede into an almost calming wave of white noise. Similarly, I used to live next to the Leaning Tower of Pizza and the first couple of nights it was hard to sleep due to the sound of their rooftop fan, but after awhile I got accustomed to its consistent hum and it actually helped me doze off. So what I'm saying is, the bands in a practice space are like a fan on top of a pizza shop. If you think about it.
      Anyway, sometimes this fails when a band is so loud, bad, or annoying that your system of tuning them out is rendered useless. There is simply no way of blocking them from the front of your mind as their suckiness obliterates everything in the way. It is pointless to try to play music with your own band; the yowls of a Nickelbackian “keeps... me.. COOOOOLLLLD” will be all you can hear.
      The first time I ran into something like this was when I heard the City Sound security alarm go off and mistook it for someone playing keyboard very, very loudly. “This is so fucking repetitious!” I remarked to one of my bandmates. More recently, a similar noise was heard down the hallway. BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP it went. “Did they change the alarm sound?” I wondered. Walking out into the hall, I realized that it was actually a metronome coming from one of the rooms, and either all of the band members using it were in the final terrifying stages of deafness or their drummer really, really sucked because the volume was clearly at the “ear bleeding” setting.
      A metronome, in case you don't know, is used to help a musician, usually a drummer, keep time by emitting a beeping (or whatever) noise in a specific tempo and time signature. Oftentimes the volume will be set low enough where you'll only hear it if you get off-time—if you're on, the beeps will be drowned out by your drum hits. So what the hell were these jokers doing? If the metronome was set so loud that we, five doors down, had to abandon our practice, how could they possibly be able to play anything while in the same room as the accursed thing? Were they trying out some silly stage gimmick where they all play inside of separate steel boxes? Or was I witnessing the practice of a particularly boring and half-assed form of noise music, where the practitioners simply hit a button on a Radio Shack metronome and then stare at the crowd? Or.... perhaps someone was practicing drums, had a heart attack, and then hit the volume knob on their metronome as they fell to the floor?
      Figuring that my ears are doomed anyway, I leaned in closer and was able to discern that the people inside were, in fact, playing standard indie rock music along to the beeps. Unbelievable. Their volume choice really made no sense. It'd be like having a navigation system in your car that screamed “TURN LEFT HERE MOTHERFUCKER! TURN LEFT HERE MOTHERFUCKER!!!”
      Unfortunately, you can't really ask your neighbors to quiet down at a practice space since noise is sort of part of the deal, so we ended our practice early and just drank a bunch of beer. However, when I went to the bathroom a bit later I saw that someone had placed a garbage can directly in front of the offenders' door and taped a sign on it that read “Beeper Goes Here”. Yes!

Verdict: Well, these motherfuckers will keep perfect time at their show, that much I can say. As for the song, it was pretty well buried beneath the mechanical blipping and blopping so it's hard to give it a straight forward thumbs up or thumbs down. But I'll try. The tune they were playing sounded, from what I could tell, like a run of the mill indie pop song that would fit in somewhere between Cities 97 and the Current. So... thumbs down!

Hardcore Band
Alright! This band, with a hardcore, fuzzed-out guitar sound and a rapidly delivered set of catchy chord progressions that would probably remind you of Minor Threat or one of those first few Black Flag 7”s, is one of the few outfits residing at City Sound that actually will make you stop mid-vending-machine-run and take a closer listen. “This is…. good?” you think, listening closer to see if maybe you heard it wrong or to see if they'll fuck it all up with a ‘yeah, bro' mosh part.
      In this case, they don't fuck it up at all—the band continues to play hardcore music of the actually-catchy variety. I mean, not to sound like a drooling grandpa who can't tolerate music beyond a certain tempo, but I really can't get behind those hardcore bands that simply scream out their vocals in a rat-a-tat-tat fashion, their melodies basically following the drum beat, seemingly employing speed for the sake of speed. Those sort of bands tend to be forgettable, all the songs running together in a blur, and they sure as hell pale in comparison to a band with some actual songwriting chops like Minor Threat where you could probably sing along to each song after hearing their record for the first time. To use more contemporary examples, bands like, say, Strike Anywhere or Fucked Up are way more interesting and likely to get repeat listens than a run-of-the-mill crucial/brutal hardcore band.
      Anyway: this band is doing it right. They're tight, they can write a solid tune, the tempo doesn't feel forced, the songs don't all sound exactly the same, and the vocals – while hard to hear in the mix—seem pretty alright. The guy's not howling, shrieking, or doing that ridiculous whispering thing.
      As I stay and listen to another song, I can't help but think about this band and the band from years ago that I keep comparing them to—Minor Threat. It floors me to realize that the first record of theirs came out fucking 26 years ago! And it makes me wonder: when that record first came out, did anyone seriously think the sound would still – if done right – be fresh a quarter of a century later? I mean, yeah, I'm sure some people growled “hardcore is fuckin' forever, pussy” or whatever, but did anyone actually think the ‘Minor Threat sound' would live on for decades? I'll be honest: if I had been old enough back then, and someone asked me if I thought hardcore music would exist and be vibrant in 2007, I would have responded “We're all going to be fuckin' dead by then! But if there is music it'll be some bullshit robot / new wave crap”. Hell, if you asked me right now the same question, but regarding 2032, I'd probably give you the same answer.
      So I guess the question is, will this genre of music ever be exhausted? Not necessarily in the sense of popularity, but as far as bands still being able to crank out versions of it that aren't outright rip offs? (I mean, as much as this band sounds like Minor Threat, there isn't a single moment where I think “Hey! That's a fucking Minor Threat riff they're stealing! Motherfucker!”) Will we still be treated to records in 2032 that could be categorized as a fresh update on the genre?
      My guess is yes. Although unlike, say, jam bands, hardcore music has relatively few tricks (meaning, while a jam band can say “check it out, we added a tuba solo to our bullshit”, a hardcore band can't get too weird without becoming something else), the fact that I can hear new HXE songs all the time and dig them means there's probably plenty of unmined territory. Sure, there's only so many chords and so many ways to play them, but the well isn't dry yet and presumably won't be for a long time.
      I consider knocking on the door to get the band's take on all of this, but decide that interrupting their song to ask them a question like “so, do you dudes think your style of music will be relevant in 2032?” would be a well-deserved invitation to a thorough beating. So instead I check out one more song and then head to the vending machine to get some peanuts.

Verdict: Like I said: pretty fucking good!

80s Band
“Twinkle twinkle, little star” the guy sings. “How I wonder WHAT you are”. Those appear to be the actual lyrics, not dummies used to figure out a melody. Damn. He's singing them over an 80's-ish keyboard riff (and by that, of course, I mean a riff that sounds nothing like music that actually came out of the 80s and everything like the stuff people have decided to refer to as 80s music). I expect the next set of lines to be along the lines of “I am a teapot, short and stout”, but instead it's “Stop! You know who you are! You're looking for love! In a topless bar”.
      These lyrics confuse me – not necessarily “bad”, but just all over the map – and the music isn't my bag but is likely to be enjoyed by those who dig synth-heavy 80s style indie-pop. “Synth Heavy 80s Style Indie Pop” is a pretty inane way to describe a band, but I'm pretty sure you know what I'm talking about. Here's the thing, though, while we're talking about this kind of music: this band, and this style of music, as I mentioned above sounds nothing like anything that came out of the 80s. Look, I was in 3rd grade as that sorry decade limped to a close so I wasn't an active participant or listener, I admit. BUT—I remember the sort of crap that was blaring out of boomboxes back then, and the vast majority of it in no way resembles the genre known today as “80s music”… I mean, if your band sounds like something that would fit in comfortably on the soundtracks to the Breakfast Club (“don't you, forget about me”) or Teen Wolf (“well he sure don't look like his gramma/but his teeth are pearly white”), then you could realistically portray yourself as a participant in some sort of ill-advised 80s revival. But shit like the Killers? C'mon. The fact that you bust out the keyboard every now and then and use the disco drum beat isn't enough by itself.
      Watch for this trend to continue, too. As the phenomenon of Inexplicable Nostalgia creeps along, eventually we'll see bands that are described as “90s music”, and they'll probably sound like an Alice in Chains and Nirvana mash-up. Grunge is Back! Well guess what, crap like Limp Bizkit, Prodigy, and Matchbox 20 all dominated the musical landscape for long periods of time during that decade too and I bet no one is going emulate them and be called a 90s band.
      Uh…. anyway, I guess my long-winded point is that it's ill-advised to try to pin a sound on an entire decade in the first place because that shit changes around over the course of 10 years and nothing you choose to represent it will do a sufficient job. But, if you *had* to make an actual “90s rock band”, they would basically sound like, in my opinion, a mixture of Creed and Third Eye Blind (Note: I'm not advising anyone to actually try something like that). And if you were forced, at, say, gunpoint, to make an actual “80s band”, it would…. well, I actually don't know what that would sound like. Maybe Huey Lewis and the News mixed with Trixter and a shot of Devo? I dunno. But it wouldn't sound like this Twinkle Little Star band!
      Of course, this is a relatively ridiculous rant because the band at the practice space didn't even refer to themselves as an 80's band; their style just reminded me of that supposed genre and I felt the need to comment. So there you go.

Verdict: There are people out there who will dig this. You can dance to it, which is a rare thing to come across in the City Sound building. Usually the closest thing to dancing to a band here would be the involuntary spasms that hit while you vomit up all of the booze you were forced to drink in an attempt to get into the band's shitty indie/shoegazer music. But this band—well, they use that one disco drum beat a lot so it invites actual dancing. 
      Bottom line, this sort of band would not bother me if they were playing in the background at a show I happened to be at. So, that's something!

Conclusion: Other than the metronome assholes, these examples are all pretty good – or at least tolerable – and represent close to the best that City Sound has to offer. I didn't review the really bad stuff – the guy who plays lightning-fast triplets through an effects pedal for agonizing hours at a time, for example—but believe me, it's out there.       However, if you happened to stumble across a show featuring the Hardcore Band, the Deep Purple Band, and the 80s Band, you'd probably have a good time and you wouldn't regret spending $5 on it instead of a burrito. And now, because you read this article, you'll have a vague idea of what to expect. You're welcome!