I've never felt particularly patriotic, but in the summer of 2010, during one of the most exciting showings by team USA in my life, I could at the very least conflate rock songs' nostalgic lyrics for something like patriotism. 

Enter two crucial factors: (1) an unsupervised dorm summer with my buddy Neil (pictured above) who had a car and (2) the sort of surprise release of The Gaslight Anthem's third album American Slang​.

If you've read more than five words by me on any music or band, you know list making and arbitrary rankings delight me. I don't think I'm a terribly organized person, so the idea that I am so delighted by sequence, order, oBjEcTiViTy, perplexes me. The only thing I can think to explain it is that I'd be willing to do anything - even something resembling math, playing with numbers, whatever - to spend a spare moment talking too much and thinking too deeply on something I enjoy.

That brings us to The White Stripes. Specifically, their sixth studio album Icky Thump, which was released on this day fifteen years ago.

Now, if you've read more than five words by me, you'll know The White Stripes are my favorite band. You might also know that my first release as a fan was their fifth studio album, the deliciously weird Get Behind Me Satan or that my first favorite of their vintage releases was White Blood Cells or that I originally hated my now top three WS jam "Ball & Biscuit." You might know that now my favorite album of theirs circles around episodes two and three, De Stijl and the aforementioned White Blood Cells which itself enjoyed a big birthday last year. Self-titled sneaks up in the mix every so often, and who can forget their first love? Elephant with all its radio-friendly razzle dazzle is too good to ignore (especially "Ball & Biscuit" how the fuck could I have been so wrong about that song???).

What you wouldn't know, what you wouldn't ever know, or see, is me say Icky Thump is my favorite White Stripes record because in the grand order of the universe, if you have a favorite album by a favorite band - even if it is a revolving door of different options - that means you have to have a least favorite album.

Happy birthday, Icky Thump! Here's fifteen fast facts about the best-worst album* a band has ever put out

​It seems impossible that Sink or Swim, the debut album by The Gaslight Anthem – who are ending a seven-year hiatus this fall with a tour and new music, is fifteen years old today. Part of that is because during a listen this morning, the songs sound as fresh and prescient as ever, but also because it seems impossible the concerns of my life at 17 years old were only 15 years ago. Here’s some quick math: I have lived (just about) half my life (so far!) since Sink or Swim came out. Let’s ignore how it troubles the math that I didn’t receive The Gaslight Anthem via Matt’s older brother via Matt until a year after Sink or Swim’s electric release.
 
For now, let’s just focus on the irony that an album concerned with long drives in classic cars on summer nights now has its learner’s permit.

​“We used to drive all night / all over town”

I am going to try not to overstate it, but, if this isn’t your first tonydegenaropoetrydotcom blog post, you know that’s a fool’s errand for me. I of course will overstate it. Strap in.

Rachel & I are moving home.

I can’t even let that hang as simple a sentence as it is. “Rachel & I are moving home” could mean anything or it could mean nothing. We’ve had so many places: Mississippi, Northern California, Southfield, Livonia, our parents’ houses, my uncle’s house. Columbus, really, is the least of our-places out of all of our places.

We had too short a time at Otterbein and then we both left.

Thank god we came home, not a location but to each other, because we of course came to be miles and miles and miles apart.
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But now we’re going Home. To our families. To our friends. To their children!
In other words:

Listening to Panda Bear's third solo album, and first real critical hit, Person Pitch which came out on this day in 2007 is like stepping into a time machine. But, like, a time machine that goes back to a less efficient machine era. Also, a much bitchier era for me personally.

It would be disingenuous for me to celebrate the 15 year milestone for a few reasons. First of all, a lot of digital ink has been spilled on Person Pitch and most of it far better and far more musically and technically literate than I could ever be, so instead, let me tell a story about this album that has literally nothing to do with this album.

I’m applying to jobs right now, so I’ve typed in the words “Otterbein university” and clicked that I graduated in 2012 so many times recently that they’ve become meaningless. Reflex. Like Tim Henman’s nasty backhand on the tennis court (be that winning the Paris Masters on indoor carpet or on a flat screen tv in Virtual Tennis 4 on Neil Brown’s Sega Dreamcast) the flick of the fingertip striking left mouse to condense four years of my life into a data point for an HR stooge to vet, if I’m lucky, to then pass on to English, Writing, Rhetoric & Composition, and Humanities departments and programs all over the Great Lakes region of the Midwest. Four of the most important years of my life, some keystrokes, an autofill entry, entry on a drop-down menu.

Keystrokes, autofill, drop-down menu. Keystroke. Autofill. Drop-down menu. Four of the most important years of my life, three clicks away from what is currently the central focus, the summation, of not only the four years of my time in undergrad by everything beyond that: San Francisco’s poetry adventure, working as an adjunct at University of Michigan Dearborn, my Ph.D. program. Half a life of school and work crammed into a blink-and-you-miss-it section of a document.
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But that’s been the year, that’s the game, the real rise-and-grind mindset isn’t driving ostentatious foreign cars, it keeping your nose down and leaning on the memory of the good times you’ve boiled down into line items on a CV to carry onto the next good time. God willing, you can hang onto that good time a little longer than the last good time. In higher education, its tough to find firm footing, let alone plan some roots.

But that’s okay because sometimes the roots go ahead and walk with you.

​Part 1: We Go Back
“over and over our song on my brain / I go back / we go back and I play it again / how far we go back is how forward / we’ll go”
For one sublime week in October 2019, Animal Collective played a brief run of shows in the Southwestern United States. Returning to their pre-Painting With form, Panda Bear, Avey Tare, Geologist, and Deakin debuted new jams, focusing their sets around unfamiliar, quizzically pre-formed ideas.  In fact, less than half of the songs played in their average setlists were old cuts, including a return of “For Reverend Green” (which they hadn’t played since 2006 when previewing Strawberry Jams) and Merriweather Post Pavilion-era favorites like “On a Highway” and “No More Runnin.”
Also included in some of the sets from this tour was the massive 20+ minute epic “Defeat (Not A Suite)” that had even earlier origins.

The year between The White Stripes and “Love Interruption” I turned 21, which seems like a momentous age when the worst thing that happens in your life is your favorite band calling it quits, or the best thing in your life that happens is when the guitarist from that band announces a solo tour. This year, between 31 and 32, I got a house, a Ph.D., a kid, and somehow in the mix with all of that Jack White is going to release two more solo records. Some things change and some things don’t change and some things have a way of looking different, while staying the same. 
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Here's 10 and 11 things about the end of The White Stripes and Jack White’s Blunderbuss.

It was a cliché to talk about the 2020-ness of 2020, so I'm loath to mention that 2021 kept up with that same energy. But, as the previous trip around the sun was, this too was a strange year. Like all facets of life, my music listening habits were askew. Unlike 2020's hundreds of mileage spent listening to music on long, hot runs, my legs just didn't have it in me this year. Or when they did, I wanted to listen to podcasts like a big dork. The benefit to listening to tons of music pods is you can think about music a ton, but the downside is you spend less time listening to music. And the tastemakers on your pod end up impacting what you listen to. I guess that's not really a downside so much as an interesting observation. Last year I started listening to Steven Hyden & Ian Cohen's Indiecast pod, and Cohen's AOTY ended up also being mine. That was only a taste - my whole top ten (spoiler alert) is more or less Cohencore, which is a joke that like 12 people on the internet would get. Pods! Community!

Anyway, I want to run through some albums I enjoyed (and, in the case of Jan-August, vaguely remember enjoying) and talk about what was going on that month as to excuse how it seems like I only listened to fourteen new things this year.

​This is the one where I try to tell you we were wrong about Nickelback. If you aren’t receptive to that I implore you to keep reading. Twenty years into this century is long enough to draw out a new millennium’s malaise of ironic, self-sabotaging and arbitrary dislike of, well, anything. But perhaps nothing in music world is as universally loathed as Nickelback’s 2001 album Silver Side Up. For the band, it was an exciting and enormous breakout. For fans, it was the very end of their hard rock days, a final rattle before setting into more pop country and southern rock soundscapes on their more insipid, less fun work that is worthy of the disdain. “Photograph”? Garbage. Silver Side Up? Perfect hard rock album. Let’s go.
Despite what all your Tool’s or Smashing Pumpkins might suggest rock doesn’t need to be “smart,” I love Melon Collie as much as your average music fan, but damn, is rock supposed to be difficult? Despite the utterly indifference of a Julian Casablancas with long hair, dark sunglasses and a leather jacket strutting in their neat little outfits, isn’t the point of rock music that shlubby dudes in bad jeans and a ringer t-shirt get to be cool? I don’t want to relitigate Gen X’s war against commercialism but aren’t we, mostly, happy when our rock and roll bands get songs in tv ads? I couldn’t give a shit that The Raconteurs are trying to sell me an electric car, I get to hear “Salute Your Solution” during daytime tv now! Yes, The White Stripes playing little dive bars across the Midwest is more “cool” than seeing an alterative rock radio superstar group play a solid out sporting arena, but wouldn’t you rather riffs bounce off of the widest radius possible before slamming back into your brain? I’ll put it like this: The Beatles don’t make Revolver until they make “Hold Your Hand” first.
And now that I’ve evoked The Beatles I can give our good Canadian friends Nickelback their due. Similar to the lads from Liverpool, Nickelback are four dudes: two brothers Chad and Mike Kroeger (lead guitar and vocals, bass respectively) and two Ryans, Peake (rhythm guitar) and Vikedal (drums). Silver Side Up was their third album and was as inescapable as their massive single, “How You Remind Me,” released in June, ahead of the album’s September 11, 2001 release date.
Its funny to celebrate the milestone this album is crossing, and its even funnier to “celebrate” Nickelback. As the most hated band in rock and roll music, the idea of praise for their last true hard rock record seems as foreign as a time before Chad Kroeger’s weird ramen noodle hair was memed into oblivion. Not for nothing, the gang seems to have a pretty positive attitude about their universal hatred. Before Silver Side Up, they were an indistinguishable hard rock band from Canada. After, they slid into alternative pop country band.
In its moment, Silver Side Up neatly argues against the cool guy garage band rock moment in New York, Detroit, and elsewhere. Similarly, it makes for a nice antithesis to Radiohead’s dour and experimental Kid A/Amnesiac one-two punch. Instead of innovating, or instead of being challenging, Nickelback dared to do something conventional. This is not to say they are in a class of their own, but for every “How You Remind Me” there’s a dozen “Blurry” by Puddle of Mudd or “Wasting My Time” by Default. Both totally forgettable songs compared to what I believe is the single best rock song of the first decade of the new millennium. You know that Elvis album, “10,000 fans can’t be wrong?” “How You Remind Me” sold a million units, and a million people definitely can’t be wrong.
A counter-history on this band and this album is a fool’s errand though: you’ve already decided how you feel, and for better and for worse, Nickelback put the lightening in a bottle and moved on with their ridiculously successful career after Silver Side Up. So much for not making it as a wise man! We, popular culture, have a fixed opinion on this band and I can only suggest you reconsider, and give it a fair shake. There’s ten good rock songs, which is all anybody should expect from a rock record.
For a while, I wondered if sounding like a good rock song was different than being a good rock song. Twenty years with Silver Side Up presents an answer: a hard rock, riff heavy collection of unpretentious songs, made and presented in total earnest is not only the most perfect form of “Dudes Rock,” it is also the most perfect form of how fun, if not a little mindless, rock music can, and should be.
In “Good Times Gone,” the album closer, Kroeger asks, “where the good times gone? / all the stupid fun / and all that shit we’ve done / where the good times gone?” Man, they’re right in front of you. And in an assessment of Nickelback’s legacy (weird sentence to write I know) those good times are both before and ahead of Silver Side Up. The album is six times platinum in the United States. Every album they’ve released since has been huge and somehow, Nickelback still is a pop culture punching bag. I hate to evoke the same argumentative tactics I did in middle school, which coincidently was where I was at in my life when I bought Silver Side Up on CD, but maybe everybody shits on Kroeger and crew because they’re jealous! In “Woke Up This Morning,” which has as good a guitar riff as anything Jimmy Page every played, Nickelback laments: “I’m hating all of this,” and bemoans “I felt like shit when I woke up this morning.”
That song is more than likely another song about a former flame. But, what if the “I” in that song is actually one of Nickelback’s million antagonists preemptively calling the band dead on arrival: “I paid my last respects this morning on an early grave / already said goodbye nothing left to say” is as good a write off as anything else said about this band. Read that way, “Woke Up This Morning” holds a mirror up to the scores of joyless haters. Having to face yourself – “a loser all my life I’m not about to change / if you don’t like it, there’s the door nobody made you stay” – would make me feel like shit too.
This is to say in order to be in favor of Silver Side Up you also have to be against the concept of “guilty pleasures.” “Money Bought” describes a character who “has a toke and makes a joke about the alley man / never pleasured from the treasure in a garbage can.” Maybe its damning by faint praise, but I believe Nickelback dares us to consider the alternative: finding pleasure from “the treasure in the garbage can.” Not that an album peaking at number two (behind friggin’ Jay Z’s The Blueprint) after being released on the literal worst day in modern American history could really be considered garbage or anything.
In Silver Side Up we are given tales of scorned lovers, a ballad about a man who has lost it all, a Johnny Cash-meets-Megadeth domestic abuse revenge fantasy, and the biggest rock song of the 21st century. The songs are good, they come and go, never once outstaying their welcome. There’s a tight cohesion track and track, and the focus – despite the tone of each song – remains steady. These four dudes wanted to make us a rock record and they did exactly that. Who the hell are we to reject that?