Uncle Dave's Music Club Guest Spectacular

Entering into the COVID lockdown, I had a whole bunch of feelings. Fear. Hunger. Boredom. There was a tiny bit of motivation there, as well. Well, more like fear. As in "if I haven't accomplished anything awesome on the far side of this thing, that's going to suck."

This was one of the ideas that I had during that time. It seemed like it would be kind of cool to collect the musical ponderings of a few other individuals and to share those with you, so that you could keep yourself entertained for a few minutes while you whiled away your lockdown boredom.

I reached out to a bunch of people tangentially connected to bikes to see if they wanted to contribute a recommendation, along with a short story on why they made it. Two guesses on how well those messages were received. It's my own fault, really...raising my own expectations like that.

But miracles do happen! I got a few responses! Once I had collected those, put them all together, and then read the resulting monstrosity, it felt like this hadn't been a very good idea at all. It's one thing to tack a musical recommendation on to the end of some other nonsense, quite another to paste a few disparate recommendations together and call it something. So I shelved it.

And then the guilt appeared. "Jeez Dave. You asked people to do something, and then you didn't do anything with it. That's pretty bad of you." That made me feel pretty terrible.

In a nutshell, this fairly closely follows the process of any of my stories. Inspiration. Disappointment. Guilt. Sadness. Indifference. Publication. Since poorly thought out ideas have never stopped me from posting stories before, I'm dusting this one off for you all, as we ramp up for our second Covid wave. Hopefully it provides you with some enjoyment. And if you've ever thought you had the perfect musical recommendation to send my way, now's the chance for you! Better to post it here as a comment I won't read, than to send it my way as an e-mail I will ignore.

And that's it! The first and last ever Uncle Dave's Music Club Guest Spectacular.

Dave Smith - Photographer and man about town

Thanks Sam.

For indie-rock nerds, we have all had a person in our lives who was there to drop the needle on our listening habits at a critical and formative time - for me, that was my friend, Sam.

The first thing that you need to know about Sam is that he is one of the nicest and most generous people you will ever meet and he’s a walking lexicon of music. The mixtapes that he used to create for his friends were carefully curated with custom covers crafted from the pages of National Geographic and featured esoteric names like “the algebra of need.” Buried within the tracks of crowd pleasers, he would sprinkle in a few songs that were meant to challenge the listener and it was in these tapes that I was introduced to deeper cuts by Hüsker Dü, Big Black, Polvo, Mudhoney, Eno, and the entire Creation Records catalog of fuzzy, atonal guitar.

As these songs became layered onto my already defined love for metal and punk rock, my own record collection swelled into the 1000s and it became a bit of a game to try and find a band that Sam hadn’t heard of first. And it was fucking impossible. To stay ahead of me, he would spend hours pouring through magazines, chasing down every band he heard of in liner notes and would stay up until well past late, listening to Patti Schmidt on Brave New Waves. He was unbeatable and to add insult to injury, every once in a while he would drop a new tape in my hand just to remind me of that fact. One time he casually flipped me a tape with, “The first song on the second side is one I think you’ll really like.” I look back at that moment and I remember he was smiling when he handed over the cassette but what I think he was really saying was, “I’m still the king, motherfucker.”

I can’t remember the art on the handmade cover or the name Sam had inscribed on the spine but I do remember driving around listening to the usual fuzzy indie rock when the tape clicked over to side two. From the very first clack on the edge of the snare, to the taut snap of the drum skin, the metronomic clatter of Nosferatu Man has had me in its teeth and some 25+ years later, it still hasn’t let go. Sam, I admit it - You’re still the king, motherfucker. Thanks for handing me that first tape way back when and cementing my musical biases forever.

PS: Sam, I discovered Scratch Acid and the Jesus Lizard before you.

Slint - Nosferatu Man

From:

Slint - Spiderland

Of course Dave's recommendation had to be something related to Steve Albini.

Cooper Quinn - Something something NSMBA, and busiest human in the universe

Initially, I regarded an email from Uncle Dave asking for a Music Club selection as an honour. Shortly after that faded, "um... f^%#". A song? One? Oh and include a very short story. How do you select one song, from bazillions? And 'short' stories aren't my forte. My brain churned.

People are gonna judge me on this. Dave is gonna judge me on this. Does the song have to be esoteric and unknown? New? Old? I feel like Dave has seen most of his selections live, does that matter? Should it be a 'song of the times' for everyone isolating; this could be something cheerful, upbeat, and optimistic about the post-COVID future, or dystopian and dark? Or should it be an immortal song; one I think will stand the test of time in my heart, and the world? Or what about the Songs That Make Me Think About Mountain Biking genre (I would note this genre is almost exclusively songs from 1999-2005 VHS tapes. Most of them are bad, and their only redeeming feature is nostalgia.)? Or should it [list goes on for several hours...]

Anyway, I spent way too much time thinking about this, no longer have room for even a very short story, and landed on a single song I'm ultimately dissatisfied with. I hope you're equally uninspired by my selection.

I asked Cooper for a recommendation, because Dave Smith promised me it would be "esoteric metal". Instead, we got some NOFX. Fuck me. This is the mountain biking equivalent of being promised a day in Whistler, and instead you get dropped off at the crappy, city-sanctioned skills park that's down the street from your house.

Natbrowni - Former NSMB commenter extraordinaire

Natbrowni is a man that I've met once, and whom I refer to as my North Vancouver pen pal. I first met him in the NSMB comments, and then we started e-mailing one another, somehow. He was one of the people that I felt I could trust to tell me if something sucked or not. Then he stopped riding bikes and stopped reading the site. For years he's been telling me to listen to this...fuck...I don't even know. Like I'm going to take music recommendations from some random guy on the Internet that I know through bikes.

Here is a gift for you. Another is Christmas by OLD MAN GLOOM. I should clarify that for those who are unfamiliar. This is not a Christmas album. It’s so named in reference to the generosity of OMG creating this record for your listening pleasure. No shit. The first song, called Gift, begins with a solid riff and a slow chant of “This is a gift”, before slamming into indecipherable growls and heavy riffage. By now I hope you can tell that OMG do their thing with tongue very much in cheek. While I truly do love their music, which is a legitimately artistic take on metal and ambient for the most part, I love the band because it’s pretty clear that they make music exactly as they want to, and they do it to have fun with each other. I find this authenticity refreshing in a world of divisive misinformation and social media vanity, and you should too. Purity is a virtue after all. The only potential missing piece for you is how much you like to bang your head. Have a listen to The Volcano to see if OMG is to your taste.

Honestly. I read that description and I do not want to listen to any of that. But, sticking with the spirit of the article, for you guys, I'm going to do it. Okay. Here we go. Clicking on the link, and...It's very...what is this? A documentary? Jesus Natbrowni, you did not follow the rules, at all. Here's a direct link to some of what he was talking about. This is closer to what I was expecting from Cooper.

Caleb Smith - Kona guy

Caleb came at this sucker, guns blazing, but then broke the rules and didn't give me even a sentence worth of story, and stopped taking my e-mails. Still, it's a good recommendation, and it allows me to post the awesome Natas segment from Streets on Fire. Wheels of Fire? Whatever. Firehose is pretty good, too.

You should watch this Natas documentary as well, because he's a pretty fucking awesome guy.

Uncle Dave's Music Club

I feel obligated to add a Music Club to the bottom of a Music Club themed article. I feel badly that you probably won't make it this far, because this is a good one! I've been listening to Run The Jewels 4 a fair amount over the last few months. I didn't bother to search out any of their videos for the album until today, and I regret that. Even though people pretending to sing/rap over their own track while participating in unrealistic situations is my least favourite genre of video, this one for Ooh La La is bonkers!

Sorry,

Uncle Dave