YOU GET ME CLOSER TO GOD

Picking a favorite is hard for me. I don't have a favorite movie, I don't have a favorite restaurant, and I don't have a favorite song. Maybe that says more about me than I want it to, but it's true. I don't want to be pigeonholed into something forever.

This is where you tell me that favorites can change, but come on. If it changes, was it ever really your favorite? That's way too heavy of a concept for a god damn blog that I post on twice a year, so let's just move on.

I do have a favorite band. That one is easy—even though it's a choice that only became clear over the past few years. It's Nine Inch Nails, and it's not particularly close.

I always *liked* them (as you can see here, here, here and various other posts), but I never fully appreciated the scope of the music that Trent Reznor and co. had been making. Hesitation Marks was what got me to start paying attention again, then they released three EP's over the course of about 16 months between December 2016 and early 2018, which got me even more invested. I went back and listened to the soundtrack work that Reznor—and now the only other full time member of Nine Inch Nails—Atticus Ross did on THE SOCIAL NETWORK and GONE GIRL and was all the way in. I saw them live twice last year (both times in Las Vegas) and was more impressed with them each time.

After I got home from the show last December, I sat down and made a playlist of my favorite (there's that word again) Nine Inch Nails songs. I throw it on while I'm working quite a bit, and it's probably my favorite thing to write to. That probably says a lot about how I work. Anyway.

CARELESS WITH A DELICATE MAN

It's sort of insane to me how many people think that Fiona Apple hasn't done anything other than the "Criminal" music video (which is still incredible). That song came out in 1996, and it's still just as good today as it was 23 years ago.

But also? Fiona Apple is just really, really talented.

None of her other stuff has been as massively well received as "Criminal" (which was actually the third single off her first album), but she's been making great songs ever since. She's eccentric, massively private, and doesn't  really seem to care that she's as famous as she is.

"Criminal" was such a commercial success, that everyone who heard that song first, just assumed that all of her stuff sounded like that. Then when they heard the weird Jon Brion orchestral arrangements behind her whispery vocals on her follow-up album When the Pawn..., they mostly checked out. Extraordinary Machine wasn't any more accessible, and the masses just kind of forgot about her.

Apple doesn't tour regularly, she doesn't perform very often, and she's mostly out of the spotlight. Every once in a while she pops up with something, but mostly she just keeps to herself. She has no social media of her own, and the only one she even acknowledges is a Tumblr site called Fiona Apple Rocks. While she doesn't use it herself, she regularly emails the person behind the site with pictures, and notes to post. She may be the last person regularly using Tumblr in 2019, which is a feat in and of itself.

A lot of her stuff can seem depressing, but there are even more songs that are bright and fun. This playlist is a mix of both, probably leaning more towards the latter. If you have a favorite that I left out, leave a comment (does anyone still leave blog comments?), so I can give it a closer listen.

THEY DON'T LOVE YOU LIKE I LOVE YOU

I was late getting into Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

The whole New York rock revival started right as I was getting into hardcore, and anything that wasn't on Trustkill, Ferret, Equal Vision, or HydraHead wasn't worth my time. I wanted breakdowns and screaming, not grimy garage rock played by a bunch of art school kids.

I paid almost no attention to Fever to Tell, but I knew about it. I had MTV at that point, but it was mostly to watch VIVA LA BAM, PUNK'D, and THE REAL WORLD (I still remember things about Tonya from the Chicago season, and Trishelle from Las Vegas). The videos for "Maps" and "Y Control" were on a lot, but just didn't do anything for me. When Show Your Bones came out a few years later, I started to come around. All the girls I knew worshipped Karen O, and listened to them all the time. Every time I went into visit one of them at work—whether it was at a coffee shop, second hand clothing store, or salon—the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were playing. I still didn't own any of their albums, but I knew their songs, and started to appreciate what they were doing. When they played at the outdoor spring festival (whatever it was called) at the University of Utah in April of 2006, I started regretting never seeing them in a smaller venue. Their performance was awesome, and I could only imagine how fun they would be in a small club like DV8.

It's Blitz! came out in 2009 (it's the only album of theirs that I ever bought), and Karen O did the soundtrack to WHERE THE WILS THINGS ARE (a movie that I loved but will never watch again so as to keep it that way) for Spike Jonze that same year, and I was fully on board. A few years later, she teamed up with Nine Inch Nails to do "The Immigrant Song" and I thought my heart was going to explode. I finally embraced what everyone else saw in 2003.

The few years after that were a weird time for music. CD's were dying, streaming was just getting started, digital downloads with vinyl represses were the main selling point, and download blogs powered by MediaFire was mostly where everyone stole music from (half my hard drive is filled with pirated music from download blogs that I didn't actually want, but wanted to have). I lost track of a lot of bands during that time, and I mostly forgot about Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Then, last winter, Karen O teamed up with Danger Mouse for Lux Prima, which is a fine record, but it just made me want to listen to "Maps" and "Cheated Hearts" again. To make it easy on all of us, I made a playlist for them and the rest of my favorites ("Gold Lion" still annoys me, so it's not there). It's a good way to spend an hour.

I still don't care about most grimy garage rock played by art school kids, but I'd much rather listen to that than breakdowns and screaming.

JESUS CHRIST LOOKS LIKE ME

I don't think there's a middle ground when it comes to Type O Negative—you're either all in, or you're out.

I am 100% in.

Their dark, gothic, vampire metal just fills me with so much joy that I will listen to them for days on end, and not regret in the least.

Type O Negative was formed and fronted by a man named Peter Steele, in Brooklyn, New York in the late 1980's. Steele was 6' 8" tall, with long black hair, and looked like an actual vampire. He was very sarcastic, and had a strange sense of humor, which led to some great lyrics, but also got him in a lot of trouble with people who didn't quite understand what the hell he was doing. One of my favorite stories about him (aside from being a cat guy, and writing the song "Bloody Kisses" about his family cat that died after 17 years) is that didn't think the band was ever going to really go anywhere, so when they did eventually sign a record contract, he was reluctant to quit his day job as a garbageman for the New York City Parks Department.

Hot tip: Don't search Peter Steele if your safe search is off. He posed for Playgirl once, and once you've seen those photos, you'll never be able to unsee them.

I put together a playlist of my favorite Type O Negative tracks. So turn the lights down low, light some candles, and let the darkness wash over you.

THE ANGST IS REAL

Does everyone go through phases of what they watch? I do, but I also make a real effort to switch things up as I go along. Everyone binge watches things now, we just don't talk about it because we're all terrified that someone else is ahead of us and could potentially spoil it for us.

The trick to that is to lay low for a few weeks (which isn't hard for me, because I'm home a lot), watch every single episode of something, then casually bring it up in conversation to see if anyone else is caught up, and wants to talk about it (me with BROOKLYN 99). Other times, we find a show that's so dumb, but so entertaining that we almost don't dare admit that we spent so many hours with it (also me, with BANSHEE and BELOW DECK).

When I binge TV shows, I have to switch it up between seasons. I like to think about what I just watched, what it means, and where things might go. To do that, I need something totally different. In between each season of BROOKLYN 99, I watched all the JASON BOURNE movies. During SUPERSTORE, I got really into stand-up comedy again, and finally got around to watching all three John Mulaney specials that are on Netflix. A little while after, while those jokes were still fresh in my head, I came across a Twitter thread called "Pop Punk Bands of the 2000's as John Mulaney Quotes."

It was a very niche thing, and right up my alley. I laughed at it for days. The girl who started it kept adding to it, and other people kept replying with their own suggestions. Some of the choices were spot on (Fall Out Boy still makes me laugh), and some of the replies just made me roll my eyes (get out of here with your Black Veil Brides and 21 Pilots bullshit—those bands aren't pop punk), which sums up Twitter pretty accurately.

But it made me think a lot about the bands included, some of whom I still listen to, and some that never appealed to me even back then. So I took cues from that thread and built a playlist. The first half of it is songs and bands that I actually like, and then it kind of drops off from there. Taking Back Sunday, Sum 41, Good Charlotte, and Panic! At the Disco all deserve to be on this playlist, but if I'm being honest, I'll skip those songs every time. Paramore was a band that I never got into, but they've been getting stuck in my head a lot lately, and this video has a lot to do with it. And I couldn't even bring myself to add Yellowcard or All Time Low. I tried, but it just wasn't happening.

Did I leave out anything that should be on here?

OH HELLO.

I'm at a loss with this thing.

Every time I think about writing something here, I change my mind. I have no idea if anyone still reads blogs, but my suspicions say that they do not. Everything is on Instagram or Pinterest, and both of those sites are pretty boring (in my opinion) now. I still look at IG every day, don't get me wrong, but it's not as much fun as it used to be. There's no rhyme or reason to any of the post orders, story viewers (the most fun part of that god damn function!) disappear after 24 hours, and no one really knows how to use it anymore. I barely even post on Twitter or Facebook anymore. I'm just bored with all of it.

Anyway.

I've still been writing, but it's mostly stuff that I doubt anyone will ever see. Maybe that will change one day, but most likely they'll just live in my Google Drive or on my desktop forever. Sorry you'll never see any of it, but that's okay.

One thing that I have been having a lot of fun with lately is Spotify. Making playlists is still really fun for me, and I've been doing a lot of that. My new plan is to use this blog to share those playlists and write a little about each of them. Sometimes the playlists are themed, and sometimes they're just random collections of what I listened to that month. Rather than spill my guts through words that no one wants to read, you can get a sense of my state of mind through music, which everyone loves!

It's also going to help me flex a muscle that I haven't used in a long time. Writing about music was a HUGE part of my life for a while, but then it just stopped. I wrote about local bands for the U of U newspaper, did touring band interviews and show previews for City Weekly, and waxed intellectual about hardcore and punk music for SLUG. I also ran a little SLCHC blog called Grudge City Activities (RIP, because we forgot to renew the domain and now they want $5,000 for it, but archived at http://gcactivities.blogspot.com) with my friend Dan Fletcher for a few years. Listening to songs and writing about them is fun, and I want to do more of it. So I'm going to.

You can find me on Spotify (trevorxhale) and listen to all of the playlists, or you can just check back here every once in a while and see what I've been up to.

Let's see how long this lasts.