My friend Matt Fanale is currently conducting an experiment that he calls the 5 Day/ 5 Song Challenge. The idea is that you post one track a day that has influenced you or that you have been listening to a lot lately, tag Matt, then tag 5 others to share their tracks. Got it? Im still a bit confused myself, but Im a keyboardist, so theres that. My five semi-random folks are John Gambino, Eric Carter, Kimberly Blessing, Samuel Locke Ward, & Tina Fisk Ill doing a variation on Matts theme called 5 Days of 5 Songs That Saved My Life. For my first selection, Ive chosen Angelspits Wreak Havoc. I was having a really rotten winter back in 2007. I was depressed and Id been thinking about retiring from music. I was in desperate need of cheering up, so I wondered into Digital Ferret (at its old location) in search of some new music because music is always cheaper than booze. Patrick Rodgers (who will probably appear at least once more in these posts) was there and I asked him to recommend something. He popped a copy of Angelspits Krankhaus, which had just been released and played the first track A la Mode A la Mort - I was hooked. The music songs were amazing. The lyrics were angry & political but they also had a sort of sly humor to them and the music was wonderfully harsh and energetic. And then it hit me - this is a PUNK band! They were like early X but even more hyper. And the album culminated with a song called Wreak Havoc that sounded like an army of escaped mental patients running amok in particle accelerator. Its since become my Motivational song. I took the cd home and listened to about a dozen times in a row. And then I decided that I didnt want to retire from music and that if I ever got a change to write & perform again I was going to go at it like an army of escaped mental patients running amok in particle accelerator (a year later the Milkmen reformed). So, I was down and this cd lifted me back up again. Because thats what music does...and its still cheaper than booze. Angelspit, by the way, have continued to make brilliant records (seriously, theyre all great). And in the bonus department, I got to become friends with Zoog Von Rock, whose Church theory of songwriting is one of my guiding principles. And Ive become a huge fan of former Angelspit guitarist Valerie Abbey, and occasional Angelspit vocalist Helalyn Flowers. Ive also had the privilege of remixing an Angelspit track and building one of the synths used on The Product And to think, I was a hairs breadth away from giving up music and moving to a cave in Bulgaria.
Posted on: Sat, 17 Jan 2015 05:13:04 +0000
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