Aardvarks Aattic Blog

The Change Rock The Edge 102.1

On Saturday, January 23rd The Change played The Edge 102.1 streetfront studio's Steamwhistle Indie Club ; a small venue to be sure; much better suited to a summertime gig, what with it's ceiling to floor pane glass windows across the vast majority of the studios considerable street front. Yet once [check] struck the first chord of [check] the minus [check] tempertature just vanished. This was only my second time seeing the band in an electric setting, only serving to reinforce my first impression of them electric a mere mater of months before at [check].

Now, when you reach my advanced years [49 if you must know] odds are you have already gone through any number of music appreciation stages. This tends to follow a fairly set progression:

1) Oh My Freaking God, I've Never, Ever Heard Anything Like That Before
2) Oh My Freaking God, Nothing Else Compares To (artist refernced in #1, henceforth referred to as your first musical love)
3) Oh My Freaking God, Who The Hell inspired (your first musical love)
4) Oh My Freaking God, Why Have I Never Heard This Other Band Beofre
5) Oh My Freaking God, Why Did I Waste So Much Time Focusing On (your first musical love)
6) Oh My Freaking God... I Love Music

It's a bloody shame then considering the fact that a staggering number of people never, EVER, get past number 2 just previously referenced somewhere up there previously. Which is more than just a little more tragic than your run of the mill tragedies. Kind of reeks of 70 year olds lurking around wearing tie dye shirts and faded levi's expounding upon why nothing worth while ever happened in  music once Dylan went electric back in 1965 at the Newport Jazz Festival. I would rather die than become one of THOSE. When you have spent a lifetime in love with music and have progressed beyond number 2, beyond number 4, perchance to progress, dare i say it, beyond number 5 and light upon number 6; that, for me, has always been the ultimate.

Falling in love with a song, an album, an artist is all about growing up musically. Fixating upon that song, that album, that artist for a lifetime is a crime and a tragedy rolled up into one.

So you might ask, what the does that have to do with The Change?

Well, if you are a number 2, then probably not much. If you are a number 4, 5 or, dare I say it, 6, then quite a lot I think.

There comes a point in every music affecianado's life when you must sit back and take stock of the music you love; why am I just not drawn to anything recorded past 1976, 1977, 1978 (insert your appropriate year here); is there something wrong with me? The long answer is, no, there isn't anything wrong with you. It just so happens the short answer is the exact same. When someone spends their entire life in love with a certain musical style and they awake one day to realize all the music they really, truely love is at least 10 years old; well, it can be pretty traumatic.

I have always tried to keep an open mind as well as an open ear to new artists, new bands, new songs, new CD's; but it hasn't always been easy. I'll tell you right here and now that Rap has, by and large, never done it for me. I understand the genre; I understand the origins, the wheres and the why fores. It has just never spoken to me on a viseral level. Now I did say "by and large"; there have been a few Rap artists that I have come to appreciate, largely because they wore their musical roots on their sleeve. Beat poetry of the late 50's early 60's, R&B from the same era; that, to me, is the paternaty of Rap music.

The whole American Idol mentality just leaves me cold. While there have surely been talented singers on the show they are being invested with some kind of musical legitamacy just by the fact they have, quite literally, won a game show. A game show more talent based than many of them to be sure but, what the fuck?

There are Indie radio stations bringing the cutting edge of new music, with all of it's teen angst revamped for the current generation; but I've lived through the uber raw reality of that years ago and come out alive on the otherside. Which kind of belies the thoughts and emotions expressed in that music. I lived it; I felt it with all of my being; yet I came out relatively unscathed on the otherside. So, while I can appreciate the words, while the music can take my soul on a magic carpet ride, I just can't loose myself in the message that music brings anymore.

Which is why happening across a band like the Change can have such a profound effect upon you. You, of course, being me.

If you are like me, how many times have your sat back and thought, what would it have been like to have been there when Elton John played that fatefull series of shows starting off the night of August 25, 1970 at the legendary Troubador Club in LA; when The Beatles rocked The Star Club in Hamburg, Germany or The Cavern Club in Liverpool in the early 60's; to have been there during The Rolling Stones eight month residency as house band at The Crawdaddy Club in 1963; at one of the mighty Led Zeppelin's early stints at LA's Filmore West or Boston's famed Tea Pary.

Growing up when I did the answer would be countless times. Then, out of the blue and quite accidently comes a fledgling group. A group which, as I have mentioned before, wears it's influences on their sleeve without being derivative; a group which takes old themes of love, angst and loss and brings them alive in the modern era; a group which, like most truely great groups, resists the temptation of lacing their set with "covers"; eschewing them for all original compositions.

Who out there has seen the movie "Almost Famous"? Anyone? Anyone? Beuller?...

Before each and every gig they play The Change go into a huddle onstage; what is said or discussed amongst them I can only speculate. In my minds eye I hear the fictional band Stillwater from Almost Famous going into their huddle and chanting

This band knows where they came from; this band seems to know where it is that they could potentially go.

You're right, how can anyone ever know that. Truth is, they just fucking rocked. They still do.