All That Was Old Is New Again

I was talking with a friend at work about the new record from The Gaslight Anthem. His point, if I remember it rightly and frame it correctly, is that TGA are too derivative for him, that they ape the Springsteen vibe to too heavy a point and that there is nothing original present. I agreed in that the album, well the entire catalogue, is derivative but that most music has no choice but to be derivative because pretty much everything that can be done has been done. He didn't think that was true so I said let's leave this topic for a future happy hour. That works for me because it gets me an opportunity to work on my argument. HA!

Here's the lead single off of their new album Handwritten. The song is called "45" as in revolutions per minute, not a caliber.

If you take away the fact that TGA are from New Jersey you still get the Springsteen vibe. It's got that mid-70s Bruce earnestness and energy thing going. If I had to pick a record they most channel it would Darkness At The Edge of Town. Here's that album's leadoff track, "Badlands."

So the potential knock is go-do-your-own-thing-an d-stop-copying-other-people. That's a really hard thing to do whether it's consciously or unconsciously. Music is something that all musicians have embedded in them. A specific genre or band or artist leaves an imprint and it becomes near impossible to get away from it. For me, I find the songs I write mirror a band called Vigilantes of Love. Their song structures are pretty standard but lyrically they are a bit verbose and, as my wife chides, plot-y. Every song of theirs seems to have a story to tell and mine do to. I think that's just how my writing gravitates. I did not start writing with a desire to mimic what Bill Mallonee does in VoL it just sort of happened that way. You can take any band out there now and point to another band before them and say "They are just doing that!" Unless you are Radiohead. But if you are still playing guitars and want them to actually sound like guitars there is no band you will not get compared to or accused of stealing from.

Here's another story from my band. I wrote a song and brought it to the band and we played it and everybody seemed to dig it. Patrick the bass player said the verses sounded a bit too "Sunny Came Home" (the old Shawn Colvin hit). I hadn't heard that song in years and years but I reflected on that and got the comparison and said I would work to change it. When I tried it I thought anything I come up with is going to sound like something else. There's no way around it, it's just whether you spot it or not. Another point, Tom came up with a new riff. He played it and after the first time through it I started laughing, not because it was bad but because it sounded exactly like the start to "Fly Me Courageous" by drivin' n' cryin'. Tom had never heard DNC and when I pulled out the iPod and played it for him he just had to grin and say "oh well."

So what is TGA going to do? Brian Fallon obviously grew up listening to a shitload of Springsteen. If he didn't well then it somehow rubbed off on him, or he's just wired the same way musically as Springsteen. That's not to say he's as good as Bruce but he's got the same "connections" for lack of a better term. I think with all rock and roll you have to build on what has come before. I used to joke and say we might as well just start re-doing Chuck Berry licks because everything has been written so let's just copy from the beginning. I think every band has an obligation to their efforts to build on the previous. Oasis called an album of theirs Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants. Everybody copies the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. If you play guitars you copy the them. Nobody has ever been denigrated for redundancy more than Oasis. But does it make "Rock n Roll Star" any less of a song? By the Giants album they at least had the good sense to poke fun at it, assuming Oasis has a sense of humor.

Back to the point. Music is organic, it's continually evolving and building on what's next. It is going to be very difficult for someone to come along and play something that one can say "I have never heard anything like this before" and mean it. The job of the musician is to expand on it. To take it up a notch. Or if they can't do that just have a killer melody and say something interesting. And if they can't do that then just have fun making a racket. Creation is not always pretty but it's always a blast.