As music fans, we all have bands we love with deep devotion. Some of them have been important to us throughout our lives. Maybe it was the first band that truly got through to us. Perhaps we discovered a particular song at a meaningful time while growing up, and went on to absorb everything from that group or musician. A special number of bands just feel timeless, their music lasting through decades, rather than attached to a certain era.
But then there are bands that we once loved but eventually let them go. Maybe that music was tied to a certain time in your life, the person you were trying to be, the friends and scene that was important to you then. A band could be associated with someone you used to date, and listening to their songs bring back something painful or uncomfortable. Or maybe your tastes simply changed. It happens. Music that spoke to you in youth doesn’t apply to your life now. Perhaps you just became more sophisticated as a listener. Or maybe you’re now less complicated.
Here at The AP Party, we had fun with our last group post and have been looking to do something as a staff again. Thinking about the bands and musicians we’ve outgrown seemed to be a good topic to visit. So here are our picks. We’d love to hear yours, either in the comments of this post, on our Facebook page or replies on Twitter.
Tim Livingston
Red Hot Chili Peppers: Still remember it like it was yesterday. My first Spring Break trip as a college student back in 2003 involved my friends and I going down in two cars from San Francisco to Santa Monica with a cooler full of booze and a CD changer full of tunes. At that time, I had gone to the Vans Warped Tour the summer before and thought I was so cool because I had Reel Big Fish and Pennywise CDs in my car. (And Jurassic 5, too, but I digress.) But the CD that was played most was Californication by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. And anytime I hear a song off that album, I remember the coastline north of Santa Barbara with me and my friends passing each other on US 101. It became a road trip staple for me throughout college in both my car and my friends’ cars.
But something happened along the way where I fell out with them. Maybe it was Stadium Arcadium not living up to the post-Californication billing or that I had moved on to other genres I enjoyed more, but at some point, I ended up just not listening to RHCP. When I became a Spotify regular, I remember going through my iTunes library and cherry-picking songs that would be nice to have in my new library, but the RHCP songs just didn’t resonate with me anymore.
After watching Sonic Highways, as they traced the musical histories of cities, it made me realize that some bands stay with you for as long as you’re a music fan, while others become blips you look back at, either fondly or not. You won’t hear me put on RHCP anytime soon, but even if I can’t necessarily stand them anymore, there’s a part of those bands that stays with you for a long time to come.
Ian Casselberry
In high school and college (and years afterward), Lenny Kravitz was essential music for me. I don’t think I was capable of making a mixtape without at least one song from him on it. “Let Love Rule” and “Rosemary” were go-to accompaniments for chilling out or enjoying adult beverages (and other diversions). I always felt “Mr. Cab Driver” was a terribly underrated song, and threw that one out there to sound cool. (“I listen to the deeper tracks, man!”) “Stop Draggin’ Around” and “Always on the Run” were always there for rocking out and road trips. There were probably few weeks that went by without blasting “Are You Gonna Go My Way.”
The knock on Kravitz from music critics was that his stuff was derivative, too beholden to his influences, too retro. His music wasn’t particularly creative. It didn’t sound fresh. That used to piss me off because I just enjoyed listening to those songs. But somewhere around Are You Gonna Go My Way, I began to get what the anti-Kravitz crowd was saying. Nowadays, I can’t even listen to that record. It doesn’t even take me back to when I enjoyed it. His cover of “American Woman” for one of the “Austin Powers” soundtracks was awful.
I knew I soured on Kravitz a few years later when a friend said his new favorite song was “Lady.” I was disgusted and could barely speak to him the rest of the night. That tune was everything bad about Kravitz in four minutes. “Be better than that,” I thought to myself. I’m not sure if I was thinking about my friend or Kravitz.
Dave Tobener
I was in high school at the height of the Seattle sound, when “grunge” bands would pop up every week with stupid names like Seven Mary Three and Puddle of Mudd. I stuck to the basics: Nirvana, STP, a little bit of Pearl Jam, and one of my favorites at the time: Soundgarden.
Man, Soundgarden had it all back then. They had a darker sound than your average Seattle band and their lyrics sure sounded deep to an aspiring teenage English major. Then there was Chris Cornell’s voice, something that sounded like he was busting his vocal chords on every song. He had a very distinct sound that drove every Soundgarden song. “Spoonman,” “Black Hole Sun,” “Blow Up the Outside World”… all of those songs were just KILLER. I remember being really upset when they broke up, but I still managed to buy Cornell’s solo debut album (I have it around here somewhere) and even followed him to Audioslave for a little while. There was no one better than Chris Cornell, and there were very few bands better than Soundgarden.
As I got older, went to college and then grad school, there was less and less Soundgarden on the radio. Their CDs fell out of my rotation, and I kind of forgot about them for a while. Then a few years ago, I bought a car with XM Radio and immediately found the Lithium station. Man, it was great! All of the grunge bands from my high school days on one station, commercial free. It quickly became my favorite station.
Then a funny thing happened: a Soundgarden song came on, and I couldn’t even make it through the entire song. All of the things that I liked about them in high school — the darker sound, the lyrics, the voice — none of that did it for me anymore. I just couldn’t listen to their music, and haven’t been able to since. They’re the only band I was really into in high school to suffer that fate, too. In fact, I found myself questioning how I could have ever been into them to begin with. Surely I had better musical tastes than that… my tastes are eclectic, after all! Is it possible I just wasn’t as cool in high school as I thought I was? No… that can’t be it.
Jeremy Klumpp
Foo Fighters: Like many grunge teens in the nineties, it was a no-brainer to pick up the first Foo Fighters album when it was released a little over a year after Kurt Cobain’s death ended Nirvana in 1994. Grohl wrote some really good, catchy rock songs on those first three albums, and with the help of directors Jesse Peretz and Michel Gondry, the band had some pretty hilariously odd videos.
It was the perfect combo to replace the angsty cloud that hung over the Seattle sound, and serve as an alternative to the nu metal scene that started emerging in the late nineties. As the decade ended — though my musical tastes kind of swerved, and I started enjoying artists like Pavement, Bjork, and Radiohead — I was also really into Queens of the Stone Age.
I’ll blame Josh Homme and QOTSA for my eventual tossing of Foo Fighters by the wayside because in 2002, Grohl actually joined the band for their third album, Songs for the Deaf, and during a QOTSA show at a small club in Detroit, I realized how much I missed Dave Grohl the drummer. Recently I tried listening to those early albums, but couldn’t get through them, and during the HBO series Sonic Highways (which I did enjoy), I actually turned the channel during the Foos song that ended each episode. Sorry Dave, I think you’re really cool, but I just want you to play the drums.
