Exit Music: All Us Gonzos On A Strange Ride

By: Charles John Babcock, Managing Editor

We’re all Gonzos in our own way (that’s slang for weirdo, if you don’t know). But being a part of the YouTube generation means we’re not just in remote control; we’re in a total coup over the media world. The Internet has held over the previous fetish-obsession of the 1990’s and allowed our youthful skins to bask in it. Off-beat, awkward, quirky, and maybe even “Zooey Deschanel” is an adjective at this point, but whatever word you want to use, there’s music ripping masks off of itself and its own genre.

There’s plenty of tripped out material for the long ride between fear and loathing home for this graduating Bloomsburg senior.

Let’s focus first on two artists from the 4AD record label. First, SpaceGhostPurp and his “Blvckvnd Rvdix 66.6 (1991)” mixtape. There are the strange names, the ghost of 1990’s hip hop hanging in SpaceGhostPurp’s music like moss from a particularly trendy tree, and a track like “Tha Phonk,” with a haunting beat, sexually explicit lyrics, and precarious insert samples of a woman presumably moaning (though it sounds like a loop of a tortured scream). The lack of emotional resonance for the drive home is something rather alarming, though in other places on the mixtape he may go in interesting places, he hasn’t yet crafted a track that emotionally captures something from the 1990s like Tupac or Biggie.

On the complete other side of spectrum is Grouper. A female singer-songwriter not easily dismissed is one sly way of putting it. More accurate would be a goth and reverb-ed out construction of a female by a female. Grouper’s track “Heavy Water/ I’d Rather Be Sleeping,” is possibly the most emotional resonant any singer-songwriter (outside of perhaps Katheleen Edwards and country queen Lucinda Williams), that it can get. The perfect tune for thoughts of the cosmic burden of existence, as well as getting out of bed, the track strikes a cord and reminds me a lot of my years at Bloomsburg, slow days of the muddiest town in Pennsylvania in bright sun.

There are of course all types of remixes and varities of changes to songs that take tradition and turn it on their heads. Bloomsburg days seem like inaccurate photocopies of their own yesterdays.

Interesting looks back at songs make up suburban genres like Witch House and Drag. Perusing things like bandcamp.com, you’ll find these eventually. Both of these genres take a lot from Houston rap culture, particularly the codeine influence of the remix style “chopped and screwed” as perfected by the Swishahouse collective (check out UGK’s “Diamonds and Wood” to get a great example of the remix genre). There are remixes of contemporary pop trash, like “When The Chains Break” a Drag version of “Cannibal” by Ke$ha, which is done fantastically by DEERDUS† (check out their ep “Blank Looks on Teenage Girls”). Avoid bands like SALEM who ride Goth-Rap cliché and mediocre hipsterism hard, though their Britney Spears track “Till The World Ends” is a must YouTube (how non-conformist, YouTube as a verb).

There is of course a cream of the crop when it comes to Drag and Witch House, namely PARTY TRASH. The drag of “Will You Be There” by Michael Jackson (R.I.P., YOLO), is immediately post-ironic and classic, not to mention emotionally crushing, and can be seen as MJ asking for love, PARTY TRASH looking for fans, or a recent undergrad fumbling his way on Route 80.

Exit Music: There The Sad Ones Were

By: Charles John Babcock, Managing Editor

Sadness and isolation in our rainy little valley have plenty of soundtracks. Whether it be the bleeding minimalism of James Blake’s “Limit To Your Love,” or the hung over decay of “The Fall” by The Weeknd, Bloomsburg is well bereaved in this respect.

The feeling of graduation at this point is one of desperate breaths, the kind you get when you’re being drowned, or getting a broken heart. 

Driving out of Bloomsburg on May 12 will be something like a catharsis wrapped in a tear stained baby blanket; this is what my therapist tells me. Between the staring out of windows and the dulcet tones of “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now,” especially that wonderful falsetto, graduating seems even farther than it did four years ago.

All of these songs mentioned so far, with their pain and anguish, even their falsettos, can’t bring about the happier part of the coin. Sure, it is easy to wallow in self-worthlessness and watch your other graduating friends buy Adderall in the library on the first floor. 

There are bittersweet songs though, such as “Romantic Streams” by Sleep ∞ Over, with the near-disembodied singer, a voice of a scorned lover, and shivering synthesizers (I personally prefer the sad water flow of the Balam Acab remix, with its intermittent bits of optimism). There’s also “With Your Friends (Long Drive)” by Skrillex, whose own disembodied voices, without real, audible, understandable speech, convey the same feelings through a seemingly completely new language of sampled voices. Those “music-purists” who think only “real instruments” can convey things, hopefully read an earlier column; for those who didn’t...get off planet outdated already.

Sure, I could be cool and list Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ In The Wind” as the perfect song for these emotions. Bittersweet and encompassing, the legendary song creates a picture perfect route out of town, with a landscape out the driver’s side window, and all the memories on a hill at my back. Of course, to hell with the classics. I didn’t go to school during Bob Dylan’s highest days.

Something contemporary to these days would be Burial’s “Fostercare” or “U Hurt Me.” Yet, the UK electronic music God that is Burial doesn’t seem appropriate for such a rustic area until visions of urban decline reach the eye within the coal region (I think as a culture, we’re all just fracking away our futures, anyway).

Probably the only song I like from the 1990’s is “Motorcycle Drive-By” by Third Eye Blind (I also like Wu-Tang, so that remark is untrue.) The continuous haze of the song is poignant and delightful. “Motorcycle Drive-By” didn’t come out during my tenure at Bloomsburg, but it is still in the running though for my discovery and caring about 90’s music during my stay here. 

Along the lines of sad electronic pieces mentioned earlier is Pittsburgh’s own Rivka, a kind of doom chillwave, with “Hey (Feat. Hope Vanucci)” off of Rivka’s wonderful self titled release (check rivka.bandcamp.com if you’re interested). The song is over-saturated in sun, the complete feeling for the weather lately. It also strangely reminds me of a party attended with a former Voice staff member, where we entered a bedroom decorated with a drumset and a queen size bed, where strangers were walking up to what appeared to be a helium tank and filling balloons while inhaling the balloons. This song fits the Exit Music criteria of providing nostalgia, the correct emotions, but sadly lacks the sing-along vocals required for such escapes. Perhaps outright sadness isn’t the correct option for the exit soundtrack to a college career.

Exit Music: Indie Rock, Paper, Scissors

By: Charles John Babcock, Managing Editor

This column received its name from a Radiohead song. Now, before you jump down my throat that Radiohead is not cool enough for an exit song, I would like to tell you: you’re right.

We’ve all seen “The Breakfast Club” and its rousing Rock ‘n Roll ending, a fist of defiance in the American system, exactly the kind of moment one should seek for leaving their undergraduate days. It says it all, that you’ve made it out alive, despite their best attempts to thwart your life force.

The awful state of rock’n’roll shouldn’t be shocking. The messiahs of The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, and other social rebels have become socially beloved fiends. The mystery of “gasp” group sex and drug fueled rage isn’t the average now; it is the norm. The love everyone creedo is the typical advice given out to the disaffected youth. The emo(tional) are scoffed at for not being drugged or sexed enough. Fall Out Boy is probably the biggest Christ of the Rock movement in recent memory; can anyone say they have snarl?

At Exit Music, there’s an attempt to be the pretentious gasp of I-Knew-This-Before-You, but I think this understanding of Rock is evident (the irony of devil horns will be cut from this article in a moment of silence for victims of recent crimes). So, what’s the soundtrack to drive out on?

Poliça’s new record “Give You The Ghost” and its standout and single “Lay Your Cards Out” is the most ballsy Rock that’s been heard in...oh, I don’t know, since maybe the Foo Fighter’s last record (that was sarcasm). The Sade vibe and auto-tune are everything that Rock was, a co-opting of other styles to make a sexual and rebellious feeling generate. Of course, anyone with any understanding of my feelings for Bloomsburg would know that sexual copulation is the last thing I want to illicit on my drive away from Boozeburg.

Bands like Fireworks and The Wonder Years are fine. They’re inoffensive. The points they make on religion, and seemingly the unfortunate demise of American Suburban Youth are duly noted, but where does that kind of guitar sound lead us? Sure, “Pumped Up Kicks” by Foster The People is faux-violence, kind of like the term post-internet is faux-important. No one outside of hipster Brooklyn cares about the shoes, and no one inside of Brooklyn could be buggered to listen to that vapid sound of, again, American Youth eating its own tail.

There may be some doubt; if Americans are leading us astray, then perhaps foreigners can do the job? Certainly they always have in Rock before. Coldplay? Is New Jersey considered foreign? Does that mean that My Chemical Romance is the hope I search for? The Pains of Being Pure At Heart sound like a britpop band, with their dreamy blend of vocals and shoegaze vulgarity of guitar tone. They’re from New York. Their excellent song “Belong” is a cascading and rebellious tune in itself. That’s probably the only foreign song one can think of in these troubling days.

If you haven’t figured it out, I’ve been stepping over the obvious issue. Rock Music is dead. I’m sorry, society, but you heard it here first: that term is no more. Instead, we have things like Indie Rock (guys with American Apparel outfits), Pop Rock (guys trying to sound like the Fray/Coldplay or Nickleback), Folk Rock (guys with beards), and Chick Rock (women singer songwriters, which is, truly honest and unrelatable for a Y-chromosome bearer such as myself). Welcome to the future, where there is not one rock; there are many stones.

Exit Music: A Good Rap Is Hard To Find

By: Charles John Babcock, Managing Editor

Rap music might be the most heard of our generation. Things like Kanye West’s “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” record is indicative of how men in Bloomsburg live, more so than any other record, and has far too many charming songs to drive out of town on.

Exit Music seeks to find the last song for my personal life in Bloomsburg, and while a song like “Keep Your Head Up” by Tupac is fitting of having strength to leave on, it isn’t for the town. The town with all its post-Flood hysteria can’t hold a candle to the misery of West Coast MC’s like Tupac or Ice Cube, the latter with his fantastic “Today Was A Good Day.”

The new boys in rap like Drake and his Toronto based friend The Weeknd are direct correlations to the party life of a college student, all of the glitz and vomit inducing faux glamour that co-eds suffer through to feel cool, free, and of course #YOLO. Codeine drug infused purple colors saturate the core of Drake’s “Take Care” album, and all of the Weeknd’s mixtapes have the drugged-out gloom that comes with a hangover in the only town in Pennsylvania. Is this feeling of post-apocalypse the kind of soundtrack to the bittersweet swag that leaving college induces? Only if things go really bad from here on out.

 Of course, there is also Chris Brown’s record “Deuces,” which is again a kind of bad break-up hip hop. Is Chris Brown R&B? What does that term even mean anymore? The Weeknd could seem like R&B, and so could Mike Posner and any other rapper-singer these days. 

There is of course the self purported Trillwave trend of the likes of A$AP Rocky and ScHoolboy Q. “LiveLoveA$AP” in its entirety is a vulgar and trill denouncement of everyone but self and crew; while this is a fitting sentiment to the rest of the world following graduation festivities, it is just too severe a worldview for something optimistic. The two men together on the song “Hands On The Wheel,” a driving song like none other is at times lethal, though the feelings are again, like most on Q’s “Habits and Contradictions,” too violent to drive along with.

The socially conscious rappers like Jay Electronica, Kendrick Lamar, and post-modern master Lil B are all fitting to exit a town with a strange sociological divide that hides on the faces of townies and snowbirds alike. The rapid fire wordplay of those rappers, except Lil B, is too technical for a bad driver like myself, and Lil B’s best cuts are at times dragging and in need of headphones, not car speakers.

Philadelphia native Meek Mill should of course be inconsideration, though too many of his records lack the emotion that should carry out a freshly freed undergrad. Meek Mill’s Maybach Music Group boss, however...

There’s something sinister about driving around Bloomsburg at night to Rick Ross’s signature snarl, like a kindred soul of the college male sneaks out when he raps “She had a miscarriage, I couldn’t cry though / Cause you and I know she was only my side hoe.” “Live Fast, Die Young,” a cut from Ross’s “Teflon Don” record, isn’t a thesis on Bloomsburg masculinity, or even the partying in-the-face-of-death Jersey Shore attitude we’re all guilty of; it is however, one hell of a song to blare at 2 a.m. on a Wednesday morning, but not the song to driving out on 11.

Exit Music: Emotions in Electricladyland

By: Charles John Babcock, Managing Editor 

Bloomsburg is a bore for anyone awake at four in the morning. If you’re on the internet, you’re bound to run into popular culture hell, and for insomniacs and genuine night owls, when driving route 11 or walking around campus isn’t enough, you’ll run into old MTV interviews with Madonna bragging about how electronic music didn’t have emotion until she made “Frozen.”

This is a typical assessment of electronic music, which is of course now one of the most dominant genres, with breakout genres like dubstep being featured in ridiculous television advertisements, and Skrillex and Deadmau5 at the Grammy’s. The emotional mileage of all music may vary. I’ve heard death metal that makes me bored and long for engaging talks with Elementary Education majors about the educational effectiveness of coloring, and minimalists bleeps from the likes of James Blake creating a genuine feeling of sadness and weeping.

Every once and a while, Spin will run some article about how DJ’s are the new rock stars, and that probably says more about the state of rock music than electronic; it is interesting when thinking of all the rock bands that aren’t doing it these days. When old folks like the Foo Fighters are taking home Best Rock Grammy’s and softies like Bon Iver are alternative champions, what’s the world come to? It’s come to destroyed beats and sound effects.

The emotional longing present in a song like Skrillex’s version of “Cinema,” or even the semi-bored wafting of chillwave greats Washed Out and their song “A Dedication,” are too emotional for driving out of Bloomsburg on. Sure, with Skrillex you get the kind of post-9/11 sentiment gurgling of loops and synthesizers eating themselves, but it isn’t something I can look at Carver Hall and be like, “Yes, that’s right, I would like this to be in my rearview and hear this.”

Instrumental electronic music is out (Exit Music Rule: Must have sing-a-long lyrics), but tracks like “We Found Love” by Rihanna, which romanticizes the kind of debauchery and drunk and/or drugged out vibes of Bloomsburg’s most A students, are perfect. We did find love in a hopeless place, and plenty of 40 ounces and Keystone Lights and dealers. I imagine that looking at Carver Hall in the rearview while that is the soundtrack will produce a vague fading out montage of my life in the movie that will play in my memories for years.

Along with Rihanna, there is the ultra and sleek implementation of dance music that emotes on the floor, as well as through speakers of a reflective youth (though I will consider myself at my mid-life once I’ve graduated). “Without You” by the annoying David Guetta and grown and sexy Usher is a song that feels like something someone should want to leave college to. It really is the vocals though, as Guetta’s production is his typical generic, though that guitar sound, the light picking, is something remarkably done, especially in its cover by Glee this season.

Though there’s also the ridiculously eloquent mash-ups that people like 3LAU have been producing. Aside from silly and fun tracks like “Dubsex” and “Rave Dirty,” there’s real sentiment in bits like “Girls Who Save The World,” with its expert integration of what will be 2011’s best moment of the drugged out Britney Spears singing, “Dance until the world ends.” Of course, I can’t really connect with this, as it has some ghost of actual femininity behind it that I can’t identify, not because I’m a man, mind you, but because I’m an imbecile driving away from somewhere I spent 4 years and attempting to capsulate it in a song which won’t be longer than 6 minutes.