All Killer, No Filler: The Importance of Music In My Life and All The Rest

BY: CHRISTIAN HOLMES (@HOLMESYWRITES)

An image of Scott Weiland taken from Stone Temple Pilots's Interstate Love Song music video

If you know me personally, you'll understand that I have a deep passion for listening and playing music. Music has been a vital part of my life. It has taught me things that otherwise I probably wouldn't know. Personally, I think music is one, of the many things, that give my life meaning. Music picks me up when I'm down. Music makes me go from happy to blissful. It's something I can never get bored of. Music is like the cream of the crop. It's one of the finer things in my life.

Now many people ask me, “How would you define music?” I always thought that was a good question. You can't see it. It doesn't take a physical form. It's just there and you're listening to it unfold. I can't define it, so that's why I am going to quote one of my Notes From The Universe (NFTU are pretty cool. They're like inspirational emails you can get for free on a day to day basis. I'll leave a link somewhere so you guys can sign up for it). “You know how when you visualize something every day, to such a degree that you can literally taste its reality? And you believe in the likelihood of its manifestation with all your heart and soul? And as often as you think of it, in at least some small way, you prepare for its arrival?”

To me, that’s what music is. It gives you goosebumps. It is like a form of meditation. It takes you away to a different place. Music is like a drug. It's addictive, and it gives you a great high. You don't just go to cloud nine, you go to cloud ten. There's no hangover, and it's not hard to consume. You won't go to jail if you get caught listening to it… unless you illegally distribute it. There's so much music to go around that you'll never get stuck listening to the same thing over and over. Like, honestly, in a nutshell, music is beautiful. And that's why I can't live without it.

When I was younger, I liked to think that all music was good in its own way, but as I grew older my opinion slowly began to change. When I was a young feller, I loved AC/DC. I had all their records on CD. I had a huge poster of Angus Young on my wall. Than I slowly started to get into Metallica and Guns N’ Roses. Than I developed a love for Pink Floyd. Than Mötley Crüe came along. Then came Stone Temple Pilots, Nirvana, and Pearl Jam. And oh shit, I picked up Enema Of The State and I instantly fell in love with Blink 182. My music library just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger, until the point that I used up all my memory on my 32GB IPod Touch and I had to buy a cheap Sony 8GB MP3 Player to support my ever growing music library.

Over the years, I have fell in love with many other bands. Blue Rodeo, The Misfits, Big Wreck, Rancid, Alkaline Trio, Rage Against The Machine, Soundgarden, The Smashing Pumpkins, Oasis, The Clash, The Tragically Hip, and Pantera, just to name a few. There's many more I didn't mention. But as I started to love these bands more and more, I started to investigate further into their respective histories and that's when I developed a deep appreciation for their 'influencers', I like to call them. The bands that inspired these bands I love today to write music. In a way, it's really cool to see what my favourite artists and musicians are influenced by. Its cool to see where they came from musically.

The history of music has always intrigued me. It's something else to know that folk and classical music inspired country music. Obviously, country artists and blues musicians basically helped to influence the first rock n’ rollers. Rock n’ rollers gave birth to punk and metal. Punk gave birth to grunge music. To me, that's fucking cool! That's why I respect all the older artists from other genres like B.B. King, Johnny Cash, Muddy Waters, Stompin’ Tom Connors, Buddy Holly, Leonard Cohen, Elvis Presley, Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons. Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Lou Reed, and many more. That's cool shit. It's crazy to think that a guy like Lead Belly, who was a folk musician, could inspire a guy like Kurt Cobain so much to the point where Cobain finishes off Nirvana's MTV Unplugged set by playing Where Did You Sleep Last Night? That's just awesome in so many different ways.

And that's why I get pissed off a lot when the younger generation likes to say an album like American Idiot by Green Day changed the music landscape forever. Don't get me wrong, it's a great concept album and it made Green Day relevant for the first time since 1994, but in no real way did it changed the landscape of music. Put it this way, The Wall by Pink Floyd and Tommy by The Who changed the music landscape. Hell, you can even say Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles and Dark Side Of The Moon by Pink Floyd changed the music landscape forever! They were really the first big concept albums of our time. Without those albums being made, the idea of a concept album would have never been popularized to the point where you could pick out a concept album from a normal record. So, in other words, American Idiot would have just been viewed as another record and nobody would have truly appreciated the brilliance of Billie Joe Armstrong’s story telling abilities that make the album standout from all the other stuff that was coming out in the 2000s. You have to respect the old stuff before you can love the new stuff. That's always been my mindset.

That's why I love to see and hear bands cover songs that have influenced them. You kind of get an idea where they're coming from musically. Obviously, every musician is going to try to establish their own ‘sound’. But it doesn't hurt to have influences. Blink 182 was influenced by The Cure. Metallica was influenced by The Misfits. Rancid was influenced by The Melvins. Anti-Flag was influenced by The Dead Kennedys. Alkaline Trio was influenced by The Violent Femmes. To me, I think it's important to know your roots. It'll always help an artist stay true to their sound. That's why I never mind a band covering a song at their concerts. I always liked that. I know some people don't but I see no harm in it. I guarantee you a lot of bands will be covering or referencing Nazi Punks Fuck Off over the next couple of weeks after all the shit that went down in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Anyways, I have a couple more bones to pick before I finish this piece off. I'm a huge fan of 90s alternative rock and grunge music. The scene in Seattle gave us so much. Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, and Alice In Chains. Obviously, there's a lot more bands that made it big in the Seattle grunge scene. But the thing that always gets me going about 90s music, is the lack of respect for Scott Weiland and Stone Temple Pilots. It pisses me off that guys like Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder get put on a higher pedestal than Scott Weiland. Don't get me wrong I love Cobain and Vedder, they're both great musicians, and their music will continue to inspire many musicians for years to come… but c'mon man, where's the props for Weiland? Stone Temple Pilots are an amazing band, and arguably one of the most underrated bands of all time and of that era! They helped get alternative rock music from being played in small clubs to being played in stadiums. Put it this way, my dad watched Stone Temple Pilots open up for The Rolling Stones at the CNE in Toronto just after they released their debut album Core. He said most of the seats were empty. A few years later, Stone Temple Pilots headlined a sold out show at Maple Leafs Gardens in Toronto in support of their album Purple. That's impressive. Not to mention, fucking inspiring!

You see, I know many of the music critics view Stone Temple Pilots as a rip off band, stealing their sound from other bands from the Seattle music scene. In a big way, I think that is an ignorant assumption, because if you pay close attention to the scene, NOBODY FUCKING SOUNDED LIKE STP! Read Everybody Loves Our Town by Mark Yarm or Grunge Is Dead by Greg Prato, the musicians that were interviewed in those books ALL AGREED that Stone Temple Pilots WERE IN A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN! Put it this way, Stone Temple Pilots was the Led Zeppelin of the ‘90s. Which means Stone Temple Pilots would be the Led Zeppelin of the ‘60s and ‘70s. That's saying something!

And if you've never listened to their debut album, Core. Do me a favour and give it a listen. Dead & Bloated is one of my favourite opening tracks to a record. It's right up there with Welcome To The Jungle. And from there, the album just keeps getting better! All the songs from start to finish are 11/10 masterpieces. They all have their own unique feel. Scott Weiland’s voice is just so raw and beautiful. And it's a testimony to why he was one of the “voices of a generation”. So if you like Scott’s voice on Core, you'll love Scott’s voice on Purple. Especially on Interstate Love Song. I get goosebumps every time I hear his voice on ILS. You know how when you meditate, you are spouse to ‘find a happy place’. My happy place is on the rooftop where Scott Weiland sits in the Interstate Love Song music video. I think of that place and then I think of the chorus to the song where Scott belts out “Leavin' on a southern train / Only yesterday you lied, / Promises of what I seemed to be / Only watched the time go by / All of these things you said to me”. It just puts me on cloud nine. It gets me so high. It's like one of those rare feelings that you only get when you really least expect it. It's just so surreal. And that's why I fucking love Scott Weiland and Stone Temple Pilots! They are extremely underrated. If you're going to rave about Kurt Cobain And Eddie Vedder, you have to rave about Scott Weiland too! (RIP Scott. You may have past but your music lives on). That's not just the STP fan boy speaking, it's the unbiased ‘90s music critic speaking as well.

And the last thing, I want to rant about is my problem with the music industry today. I find that music has lost its soul. Musicians don't even bother to use real instruments nowadays. For Pete sakes, most musicians don't even write their own music. And the music that gets written for them has no meaning. It's just another generic song about partying, getting laid, and/or doing drugs. To me, that's not music. Now don't get me wrong, there's still good musicians and bands out there writing good music and keeping shit real, but for the most part, the music industry today is a joke. It's all about money and not about the music. Most musicians sellout and move away from their sound to get a big record deal and put shitty poppy songs on the radio. Thank God, Papa Roach got their shit together and put out a good album in Crooked Teeth and had an awesome single, that being Help, because besides that and Kill The Lights by The Glorious Sons, all of the new wave music sucks. And although I love the new Blink 182 record California (Deluxe), you can make a strong argument that they are shifting away from their older sound and trying to be more electronic. It sounds good, but that's kind of technically selling out. That's why I appreciate NOFX’s new album, because they didn't sell out.

Enough with that, let's put an end to this shit show. As you can see, imma solidified music nerd. I love all sorts of music, and I obviously am very opinionated when it comes to music. I think I should say that I respect all music, because if you're on the radio, you're obviously doing something right! But I prefer to listen to 97.7 HTZ FM and stay away from today's version of popular music. As Bob Seger would say, “Just take those old records off the shelf / I'll sit and listen to 'em by myself / Today's music ain't got the same soul / I like that old time rock 'n' roll”

So here's my old records, if you want to check 'em out. It's what I like to call the Soundtrack Of My Life.