When I was about seven years old, I was introduced to my first record by an old man on a train. He was seated with three other older men, as the train car rolled through a warm summer’s evening. His face seemed weary and craggy with years of travel, and despite his small stature he drew me in and commanded my attention. With a voice sharp yet gruff, he dispensed life advice in exchange for whiskey and cigarettes, which he bummed from the silver-bearded man seated across from him.
After the conversation wound down, the old man put his head against the window and drifted off to sleep. And then, quite unexpectedly, this old man passed away in his sleep. He died right in front of me. And unbelievably, an apparition began to fill the train car. It was the ghost of the old man, looming large over the other men. The silver-bearded man was singing this song, and the ghost began to dance and sing along. Finally, the ghost pulled out a deck of cards, threw them in the air, and showered the train car with them. Then the scene ended.
I was seven years old, watching an episode of The Muppet Show. I was completely transfixed by what I had just seen and heard. And the song that the silver-bearded man and the puppets had been singing was absolutely infectious. “You gotta know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em…” It just completely took over my mind. What was this song? Who was that silver-bearded man? I was possessed with the need for answers.
And after demanding more information on all of this from my parents, they eventually bought me a cassette tape. 20 Greatest Hits by Kenny Rogers. And I played that tape until it wore out, on a little brown Fisher-Price cassette player. “The Gambler” was the greatest song ever written, according to my seven year-old ears. And for the next several months, wherever I went, that song came along in my head. Sometimes complete with the dancing ghost of an old man. And a group of puppets, their voices rising together in that rousing triumphant chorus.
It’s weird. Now that I look back on some of my earliest attempts at songwriting, they are replete with references to gambling and card playing. Despite the fact that I never cared much for either of those things in my real life. As I started to get into other music, I remember hearing gambling references in several Grateful Dead songs. And then on to Bob Dylan. And I began to see a metaphorical thread appearing. I followed that thread for a long time, and it led me to some amazing music. I owe the writer of “The Gambler,” a debt of gratitude for jump-starting a life in pursuit of beautiful song. Thank you, Don Schlitz. Also, while we’re at it, thank you to Jim Henson. And Kenny Rogers! I think of that little seven year-old kid in front of the television, stumbling on a seminal moment in his life. Ears in rapture to a truly great song. Worlds of possibility developing in his little brain. Future songs murmuring from somewhere far ahead in embryonic time.
Memory is a funny thing. Why did this record make such an impact on me? Was I merely seduced by Muppets with a clever hook? Or maybe it was my own budding interest in ghosts, cemented by the release of the film Ghostbusters at around the same time. Or maybe it was the fact that I almost died myself from anaphylactic shock resulting from an allergic reaction that same year. I can’t really know for sure. But that record, and that song, stuck with me. Somewhere deep in the darkness of my mind, the Gambler sleeps. On a train bound for nowhere. And there will be time enough for counting, when the dealing’s done…
The year before I moved to Israel, I worked at a restaurant in my neighborhood. I would walk to work through Seattle’s leafy Ravenna neighborhood listening to Meir Ariel’s 1997 record Bernard VeLouise, generally arriving at the restaurant somewhere in the middle of the fourth track.
Meir Ariel was an Israeli singer-songwriter often referred to as the Israeli Bob Dylan. On top of that, his ability to create words and turn phrases in Hebrew is heralded as somewhat Shakespearean. A supremely talented lyricist, he never enjoyed the fame in life that he found in death. He fought in the Six Day War (and the Yom Kippur and First Lebanon Wars), and he initially gained a following after he wrote a parody of a nationalistic song circulating in 1967 called Jerusalem of Gold, by Naomi Shemer. Ariel’s version was called Jerusalem of Iron, and speaks of the horrors he saw fighting in the city. In Shemer’s version the chorus is, “Jerusalem of gold, and of bronze and of light.” In Ariel’s: “Jerusalem of iron, and of lead and of darkness.”
Bernard VeLouise isn’t his best known record, but for some reason it was the first of his that I picked up. And when I say picked up, I mean listened to on Spotify. Seattle’s Easy Street Records doesn’t exactly have a well stocked Israeli music section. It was the last record the Israeli folk troubadour would release before his death at 57 in 1999, caused by an infected tick bite.
Before I learned how to speak Hebrew, I had no idea what the record’s opening track, “Etzel Zion”, was about. With an upbeat, meandering, Eastern European melody, and the word “Zion” (biblical Israel) in the title, I thought the subject matter must be some pretty heavy shit.
Later, once my Hebrew had improved, I learned that Ariel had in fact penned an ode to the fast food chicken schnitzel shop across from his apartment in Tel Aviv.
At Zion’s on the corner of Hayarkon and Trumpeldor
Between the post office and the Dan cinema
They put a lot of heart onto your plate
For just a little pocket change
They put a lot of love into your pita
And they don’t make you wait.
In August, 2014, in the midst of Operation Protective Edge, I was outside a hotel in Jerusalem, in a cloud of cigarette smoke surrounded by a circle of Israelis, listening to Meir Ariel on a shitty iPhone speaker. A string of military helicopters buzzed overhead and someone said it was the ceasefire team returning to the Knesset from discussions in Cairo. Then the rocket sirens started wailing and we had to scramble to the bomb shelter, with Meir’s music still coming out of the phone.
Six months later, I had two suitcases, and an apartment with a lease in my name waiting for me in Jerusalem. Everything else was up in the air. As my flight dropped below the clouds and the lights of Tel Aviv came into view, I noticed that the Israeli guy next to me had started sobbing, and I could tell it had something to do with the music he was listening to. I peeked over at his iPod. Annie’s Song by John Denver. Weird. I put on Bernard VeLouise. By that point, Meir’s music was no longer foreign to me. It was a comfort, a constant, when moving halfway across the world was full of so many variables.
A few years ago, an Israeli winery put out a limited edition Meir Ariel series of wines that featured illustrations found in his notebooks on the label. I wrote the song “The One Who Shines, The Lion of God” on a hot July evening in Jerusalem after polishing off a bottle. In English, the name Meir Ariel can be translated to “The One Who Shines, The Lion of God.”
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Keep up with Ben Fisher – and keep your eyes peeled for the release of Does The Land Remember Me? – here.
It’s back. More than 20,000 music and camping lovers from 41 states and 3 countries are expected for the fourth annual Hinterland Music Festival in St. Charles, Iowa, on Friday, August 3 and Saturday, August 4.
Grammy Award-winning country music and roots rock singer-songwriter Sturgill Simpson and South Carolina-based indie-rock band Band of Horses will headline the festival at Avenue of the Saints Amphitheater, just 30 miles south of Des Moines.
The 2018 event also features Scottish synth-pop band CHVRCHES, Denver folk artist Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats, classic Southern rockers Blackberry Smoke and up-and-coming country star Margo Price. R&B musician Anderson East, independent Melbourne busker turned singer-songwriter Tash Sultana, the energetic, piano-driven roots rock of J Roddy Walston and The Business, country singers Tyler Childers and Joshua Hedley will also perform. Completing the lineup are Iowa acts The Nadas, celebrating their 25th anniversary, and R&B synth gaze group Ancient Posse.
Hinterland enhances the unique atmosphere of Iowa’s beautiful rural landscape with music, camping and activities ranging from children’s crafts to after-hours campfire performances.
Gates open Friday at 3 pm and the music starts at 5:15 pm.On Saturday, gates open at 11 am and music starts at 11:45 am. Tickets run from $49 to $65, depending on the day and whether you get them in advance or day of. Two-day tickets run $95 to $110. Tent camping is available for $25 to $35 per person, and RV camping spots may still be available. Campers get exclusive access to watch more performers at the Campfire Stage both nights after the headliners.
It starts with a simple song and summertime in Michigan. The Apple TV is a brand new invention, and Dad is experimenting with playing music through his newest gadget from Best Buy. After several minutes of futzing, the silhouette of a giant mango tree against a backdrop of mustard yellow appears on the screen. The descending bass line of “Better Together” invites me to take a deep breath. I do. I sink deeper into the cushions of the living room couch and unwind for the first time Jack Johnson serves me a little slice of life. I stole the entirety of In Between Dreams from my dad’s computer. This was pre- streaming. Buying entire albums used up Grandma’s gift cards pretty quickly, so you learned how to be handy with other peoples libraries and the “Burn to CD” function in iTunes. Soon after I downloaded the album, it became the soundtrack of my life. Even when I wasn’t really listening, I’d just have it playing somewhere in the background. I’d find new music and start listening to some other stuff, but eventually find myself putting it on again and again. Every few months or so I’d claim a new favorite song, discovering something I hadn’t noticed before.
Jack Johnson was one of the first songwriters I heard that tackled abstract concepts in a way that really resonated with me. The songs everyone knows him by – “Better Together” and “Banana Pancakes” – were definitely the gateway drugs. But as I listened more, things started to change. Songs like “Never Know,” “Breakdown,” or “If I Could” introduced some really rich lyrical content and difficult life questions that I’d yet to be exposed to. For example, “If I Could” starts with the verse, “A brand new baby was born yesterday just in time / Papa cried, baby cried, said ‘Your tears are like mine’ / I heard some words from a friend on the phone that didn’t sound so good / The doctor gave him two weeks to live / I’d give him more if I could”. He unpacks messy aspects of life like death, love or even mundanity with such gentleness and keen observation – it really sets the stage for listeners to empathize, which I love. Beyond that, the succinct storytelling in songs like “Do You Remember” or “Constellations” inspired me to capture that same kind specificity of imagery in my own writing.
I must’ve been around fourteen when I’d listened to the record for the first time. I grew up listening to mainstream pop, The Beatles, and a whole lotta country radio, mostly because it was easy access. In Between Dreams was the first record I digested as a whole. The first record I felt I could claim as my own. It became part of my identity, in a way. Whenever I come back to his music, it brings back all these different versions of myself – almost like a musical reminder of who I am and where I came from.
I grew up in a small town surrounded by a lot of green open space. Living in LA – getting used to a desert climate and the over-development of land – has been a somewhat difficult adjustment for me. Jack Johnson’s music and especially In Between Dreams utilize a lot
of nature imagery and metaphor in the lyric. I listen to his songs, and I feel the way being in nature makes me feel – centered and more myself. I can always count on a little Jack Johnson to bring me back to Earth, both literally and figuratively. It’s my own little musical state park, so to speak – no matter where I am.
I’ve heard a lot of people refer to Jack Johnson as being “easy listening,” usually with a certain amount of disdain in their voices. Honestly, I get it. For the average touch-and-go listener, he’s this soft-spoken, happy-go-lucky dude from Hawaii who plays acoustic guitar and sings about banana pancakes. But for me, he’s a modest voice, pioneer of asking difficult questions, and vigilant observer of the most important simple things. Like Papa’s translations of the stories across the sky. Or sepia-tone lovin. Or resolve is just a concept that’s as dead as the leaves. I could go on for days. He’s the most underrated lyricist of our time (in my own very humble opinion, of course). And that’s my first record story.
I write this, now, in the early morning, mere hours after Hayley Williams, Taylor York, Zac Farro, and their cohorts in Paramore walked off the stage at Kansas City’s picturesque Starlight Theatre. I have always – since I was blessed enough to go to my first show at age 9 – preached the importance of live music in all of our lives. I took many of my friends to their first concerts growing up, have had some stellar moments myself, and have had the joyous opportunity to experience live performance consistently in my life. I won’t go more in depth into it all, but I think you get the picture. I’ve been around this block once or twice.
I’ve even seen Paramore before. Albeit, it’s been years since I was able to introduce the magic of Hayley Williams to a handful of my friends at Warped Tour 2007. And perhaps that magic wore off a bit, as I became slightly more jaded by my experiences, and didn’t feel the need to pursue Paramore’s musicianship as they climbed in popularity. It was never out of disdain for the band, or even a dislike of the music. In fact, as singles like “The Only Exception”, “Still Into You”, “Ain’t It Fun”, and others surfaced, I found myself enjoying them insanely in rotation on the radio. Because Paramore has that pop appeal, their songs incredibly catchy and produced to perfection.
But the words are what really get me. At the core of it all, I am a big believer in lyricism. If you miss the mark instrumentally, but you have a mellifluous chorus full of double entendre, intelligent verbiage, or raw emotion, then I’m likely to listen. Hayley Williams does that.
Hayley Williams did that last night. Songs the band had written at differing points in life, songs that others have been into since the moment the album dropped in 2017, those songs reached my ears last night. Perhaps I’ve heard them once or twice, perhaps more. But last night, I was prepared. Last night, I listened.
Hayley explained that After Laughter is her favorite work of theirs to date, as long as they’ve been enchanting fans around the world. This struck me as odd, as the synthy, 80s-influenced work followed a current mainstream pattern that hit me wrong to begin with. But she explained that the album was about something deeper, their individual struggles – including her divorce and struggle with mental health – masked with this upbeat, insatiable soundscape. But she said she enjoyed that aspect, because it wasn’t fooling anyone but they could still have fun on stage during tour.
And, really, that was such an inspiring sentiment. Increasingly, people are coming out of the woodwork, detailing their struggles with their health, whatever form that may take. I, myself, have struggled immensely with diagnosed anxiety and other health issues, and find it so incredibly refreshing when an artist who has experienced success becomes vulnerable for the benefit of the world around them. If only everyone could be that courageous.
The band slowed their set down for “26”, Hayley’s ode to her 26th year that she wrote for After Laughter. I focused on the lyrics. And I identified with them. This song was me when I was 26. I was scared, I felt limited creatively and emotionally, and I felt alone. Hayley’s inability to hold it all completely together during this song increased its vulnerability, deepened her connection with the audience. Because, after all, I believe everyone can relate to that song on some level, and it made for a beautiful moment during the show.
You best believe Paramore rallied into the evening, bringing out fan favorites like “Misery Business”, “crushcrushcrush”, “Hard Times”, and “Ignorance”, and – though they chose not to regale us with my personal favorite, “For a Pessimist, I’m Pretty Optimistic” – I realized that I’m on a very similar journey in my life. If we take time to open our eyes, we really all are. We are all “fake happy” sometimes. We go out of our way to please others, allowing ourselves to stay in dark places. We fall and we want to cry and we feel unsupported. We feel like there is no space for success in our lives. We have bad days.
But it’s live music, it’s that connection we all have to one another – enjoying musicianship and life in what can only be described as a sacred space – that keeps us all floating. We’ll all hit “26”. We’ll all have that “Still Into You” love. (I’m lucky. That’s the Paramore song I have been living out lately.) We all want “Ignorance” to be our best friends. We just need to be open to being vulnerable. And – without worshipping the artist themselves – we can find inspiration in what these musicians create.
I know I did. Since last night, I can’t stop writing. I had a dance party this morning to my two new vinyls (After Laughter, Riot!) already. And I feel awake.
***
Local band YOU MONSTER YOU opened the evening around 6pm, with a performance at the Applause Club inside the venue. As Paramore fans streamed in, they welcomed them with their fun and upbeat brand of alt punk rock. “This is a song that sounds like it’s about leaving a small town behind and moving somewhere else, but really it’s about crippling depression,” frontman Trent Munsinger explained to the crowd about their track “Dodge”, which perhaps opened up the mental health theme of the evening.
The band was full of quips, quite the entertainment to get the crowd ready for an evening of Jay Som, Foster The People, and Paramore. A couple of songs into their set, You Monster You performed one of their original songs for the first time in front of a crowd, with a stand-in guitarist. They hit all the right spots with it, and at the end Trent confessed he was happy it wasn’t a train wreck, while the band noted it was “a solid B+.”
I think it was 93 or 94, I must have been seven, we lived in an old mill town on the Willamette River, outside of Portland, Ore. It rained a lot. It was melancholic and beautiful.
I had my own CD player, I loved it, I painted it with glitter nail polish. I had two CD’s only at first. One of which deserves no mention (some Disney movie BS) and the other, Magical Mystery Tour by The Beatles. I remember buying them at the mall.
Listening and playing music inside while it rained outside was a big part of my childhood. I remember feeling like my CD player and my CD’s were gold. They were sacred. I would save up my allowance and go to the Mall and buy CD’s. My brother was always trying to sell me things. Once he sold me a nearly dead Lizard, it died within hours of me buying it. But when I could dodge his tempting sales pitches, I bought CD’s.
My Dad was a classic rock guy all the way. He was an elementary school music teacher, and mostly a pianist. When my brother and I were young though, I remember him listening to music more than playing. He would spend weekends rearranging the garage or the living room in our old farmhouse, listening to Fleetwood Mac or The Band or The Beatles or something at top volume. Our house was always uncluttered and I was exposed to a constant stream of really killer music.
I was taught to worship the Beatles at an early age, but my choice to go with Magical Mystery Tour over another record was partly the influence of a friend, and the fact that it was probably the only album my Dad didn’t have. Surely he had every other Beatles Record.
I can’t remember the name of this said friend, but my memory of her is like something out of a David Lynch film – but a kid-friendly non-violent David Lynch film. Play dates at her house were always unsupervised and bizarre. We would sit in her basement listening to her copy of Magical Mystery Tour. I think it was a tape. She was the only other 8-year old around who also dug the Beatles. I remember The Hanson’s and The Spice Girls being all the rage amongst my friends. I only knew her for that year, was it second or third grade? I can’t remember. She claimed to see ghosts and wore a lot of black for a seven or eight year old. I thought she was the coolest, jamming out to the Beatles in her basement, hoping for the ghosts to come.
My Dad (Like so many others) regarded the Beatles as the best band EVER; Of course I was massively influenced by them, I think it’s hard to find someone who hasn’t been influenced by the Beatles. I think it’s important to mention how into black music they were – John Lennon was the one who named Chuck Berry “King of Rocknroll”. Was it appropriative? Sure. Rocknroll was, as we all know now, created by black people. Some of their songs feature some sexist language. You have to see them in their context, growing up in post-War England. But what they did with it all – using the Indian music and western classical, all woven together with the power and magic of this Black American idiom. With acid! So in 2018 I could look at some lyrics and think they are less cool… But their musical genius is undeniable, and their work is canon.
The first album I purchased was ESC4P3 by Journey (1981).
I wasn’t familiar with their music, I just liked the album cover (I should mention that it was a cassette..I had just gotten my first “boom-box”). King Tut had toured through Chicago a couple of years before, and the Scarab meant a lot to me. So did the “1337 sp34k”–Google it if you aren’t familiar–on the cover. I spent much of late 1981 reproducing that cover in my school notebooks. I liked the imagery so much that I bought a baseball tee bearing the same imagery at the record store along with the album, still not having heard any of their tunes.
I had been brought up on The Clancy Brothers and Dean Martin and really didn’t care much for rock music, however I was determined to start “fitting in”. After all, I was 13 and I was tired of telling my schoolmates that rock wasn’t really music. Anyway, Journey is what I got. I told the other kids they were my favorite band, and I hadn’t really listened to another so I suppose it was true. I was informed pretty quickly that Journey was “a band girls liked” which I thought was just about as stupid as everything else. Within a year I had moved on to Motorhead and was in a whole other world of stupid. Before that, however, I stuck to my guns and picked up all of Journey’s cassettes through the Columbia Record and Tape Club. ESC4P3 remained my favorite and I continued to draw that album cover over and over.
It’s kinda funny, but listening to that album startles me to this day. It still has that 90s Platinum feel that simply is what it is…mostly due to Steve Perry being the Streisand of pop-metal. “Don’t Stop Believin'” is the highest-selling digital single of the 20th Century. I did think at the time that “streetlights…people…” was nicely abstract and potent. I can’t honestly say that I like the song. The feeling is more like love; the kind of love you feel when you’re thirteen and simply don’t know any better. It was also one of the first albums I listened to with headphones. Listening in my bottom bunk on my boom-box scared me sometimes. I had to take off the ‘phones and look around the room because it was so “real”. It was real. It was my first album. That’s all there is to it.
In the summer of 1984 I was four years old. I was over at my aunt’s apartment hanging out with my cousin who is about ten years older than me. She had some friends over and they were listening to music and dancing around listening to a tape that was unlike anything my tiny brain had ever heard, nothing like Conway Twitty, nothing like Itsy Bitsy Spider. The shit was FUNKY with electronic hand claps and a vocoder vocal part that kept saying “electricity” over and over.
I haven’t thought about this in twenty years and had to look it up before writing this.
It was the song “Electricity” by the band Midnight Star off their album No Parking On The Dance Floor. This record also has the track “Freak-A-Zoid”, which is a term I still use daily but didn’t know where it came from until right now reading their Wikipedia page.
This is the type of freaky electro funk that has stood the test of time. There is probably, right now as I write this, a hipster in a warehouse somewhere high as fuck on dolphin tranquilizers shaking his or her ass to this. Also, this shit is like 8 minutes long–it just keeps on giving.
Later that evening I was sitting at my granny’s kitchen table underneath the painting, that I think everybody’s grandparents have, of the old guy with the white beard and flannel shirt praying with a loaf of bread and a bowl of soup on a table in front of him. I’ve got one hanging in my kitchen and there’s also one hanging in the bar I go to. I don’t even know what it’s called but I love it. My dad came in and I told him about the song and he was like “Oh yeah, I know that song, it’s great! I’ll pick you up a copy from the record store.”
I was excited and couldn’t wait to listen to it over and over.
The next day he gave me this album. I put it on my little Fisher Price record player but it wasn’t the same. I said, “Dad, whats this!? Where’s the handclaps and the wiggly sounding synthesizer and the robot voice!?” He said, “Naaah, this is what you wanted right? This is the Police son! This is the shit!”
Turns out it was not “Electricity” by Midnight Star but rather “Synchronicity” by the Police. I’m not sure whether he knew he was making a mistake or not. Maybe he thought that I wouldn’t notice. Maybe he had been wanting to buy this record but was embarrassed and then relieved at the opportunity to purchase it under the guise of fulfilling the wishes of his son.
I was fucking livid.
Many years have gone by since the first time I listened to “Electricity” by Midnight Star at my cousin’s dance party in my aunt’s apartment in Shreveport as a young child. I’ve remained haunted by Sting well into my adulthood. This was strongly reinforced by his portrayal of Feyd Rautha in Dune. First you shit on Midnight Star and then you try to take out the Kwizatz Zaderach? You really gotta have ALL them fucking candles in your music video? Tantric sex, etc…
So, my first record was Synchronicity by The Police, but it was supposed to be No Parking On The Dance Floor by Midnight Star. I don’t know if its influence is immediately apparent in my songwriting but it’s there for sure. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat with my heart beating like an 808 hand clap and hear that sweet vocoder melody out there calling to me from the darkness.
