OK, I broke down and learned how to play Death Cab for Cutie’s “I Will Follow You Into the Dark” and the Plain White T’s “Delilah” on guitar. I’ve heard those songs on the radio all summer, part of me cringing at the insipid sappiness, and the other drawn by the folksy, stripped-down genuine nature of those tunes. So, ever the fan of a ballad, I figured out how to play the songs. Now I just gotta figure out how to get those friggen songs out of my head …

I picked up the new Foo Fighters CD (well, requested it for a birthday present) and the Silversun Pickups’ “Carnivale.” The Foo Fighters — quite possibly my favorite band all-time after Nirvana — opened things up musically with this album (as influenced by their recent live acoustic sets). Granted as of this writing I’ve only given the album one listen (and I admit that often this is a bad time to develop an opinion about a project), but it just feels like this one’s not grabbing me like ever single other FF album has (or even going back to Dave Grohl’s first release, on the B-side of Nirvana’s “All Apologies” single). For the first time for me, things are starting to sound the same with them. It’s almost like somewhere along the way a band forgets how to really grab people and things get watered down. Another band I’ve seen this in is Weezer — which rivals FF for No. 2 on my all-time list. While Rivers Cuomo’s songwriting is still sharp (as is Grohl’s, don’t get my wrong), I think many would agree that their first album, the Blue Album, is their most endearing. And while their newer releases have better production and maybe adhere closer to pop structure and are more technically sound, there’s a certain character that’s missing. Do bands become more detached from their audience and art as time goes on?

I hope that never happens to us.

ROCK!
=Ben=

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Tags: ALL BLOGS, BEN'S BLOGS

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