American Bands

"Way down deep and in my heart Lies a soul that’s torn apart. Tell me, tell me what you’re after, I just want to get there faster."

"You know I’m, you know I’m not dead, I’m just living in my head. Forever waiting On the ways of your desire. You always find a way And through it all Into us all you move, Forgotten touch, Forbidden thought. We can never have enough."

"Could have known I would reveal. Should have known I would conceal your way."

"Faith lies in The ways of sin. I chased the charmed, But I don't want them anymore."

"My daydream seems as one inside of you. Though it seems hard to reach through this life, Your blue and hopeless life. My daydream screams bitter ’til the end. The love I share, true, selfish to the heart, My heart, my sacred heart."

"Freak out and give in. Doesn't matter what you believe in. Stay cool And be somebody's fool this year. 'Cause they know Who is righteous, what is bold. So I'm told."

"I used to be a little boy, So old in my shoes. And what I choose is my choice. What's a boy supposed to do? The killer in me is the killer in you, my love. I send this smile over to you."

"Bleed in your own light, Dream of your own life. I miss me. I miss everything I’ll never be.And on and on, I torch my soul to show The world that I am pure. Deep inside my heart, No more lies."

"I'm all by myself, As I've always felt. And I'll betray my tears To anyone caught in our ruse of fools."

"So let the sadness come again, On that you can depend on me, yeah. Until the bitter, bitter end of the world, yeah, When God sleeps in bliss."

"Who am I to need you now? To ask you why? To tell you no? To deserve your love and sympathy? You were never meant to belong to me.And you may go, but I know you won’t leave. Too many years built into memories. Your life is not your own."

"Take me away, I'm gonna find you. Take me away, I'm gonna find you. 'Cause nobody else could ever mind you. Take me away, I'm gonna find you."

"Whomever wants you alone, Whomever wants you atoned, It's with this prayer, I disown Whomever wants you alone."

"So swallow hard the serpents Of many tags and faces hid in masks, Coiled 'round this lung until the last. He’ll crack your boots, young pagans 'Cause like you, I was hatched to traipse on cold And seventeen's a long drawn way from home."

"Stumbling before you speak, Stunning and stunning and stunning the black. You turn turncoat, Inward to seek out all your hopes. It's your signals That hurt me most.We’re in the middle, We’re in the middle: Ghosts."

"Lovely girl, you're the murder in my world, Dressing coffins for the souls I've left to die. Drinking mercury to the mystery Of all that you should ever leave behind In time."

"Find first obsessions before yourself A candlesong for where you are. You can't escape this, like someone else. Your love remains."

"I feel that something ain’t right; No fear but reasons that I can’t cite.Tear down the sun, Bring down the sun. I’m not everyone. I’m not everyone. I’m not everyone."

"The earth laughs beneath my heavy feet At the blasphemy in my old jangly walk. Steeple guide me to my heart and home, The sun is out and up and down again.I know I'll make it, love can last forever Graceful swans of never topple to the earth."

"And I don't even care To shake these zipper blues. And we don't know Just where our bones will rest. To dust I guess, Forgotten and absorbed into the earth Below."

"Never let the summer catch you down. Never let your thoughts run free. Even when their numbers draw you out. Everything I want is free. ‘Til the end ‘Til the end ‘Til the end I’m gonna love you 101 percent. I’m gonna love you ‘til this ends."

"That we don't even care, As restless as we are. We feel the pull In the land of a thousand guilts And poured cement."

"But please, you know you're just like me. Next time (Time), I promise we'll bePerfect, Perfect, Perfect strangers down the line, Lovers out of time. Memories unwind.So far, I still know who you are, But now (Now), I wonder who I was."

"When they say What it's worth, The world tells you first. And you know Where to hurt.The world's on fire so The world's on fire so The world's on fire so Have you heard?"

"I don't mind what you're running 'Cause you and me we're just something. Don't just hang what you're running on I don't mind we're so alone."

"Nails to the quick Daddy died and liars lie. A bit more than sick A dash in bittersweet What's that make of me? Save a lost thing, No choice but a choice to leave.Can't you make me believe? Up where the others dare. What chance have I, what chances we? Would fight in love's affair."

"Bands as one-dimensional as Crowbar usually don't deserve much recommendation, but when stylistic imperatives are mastered so thoroughly, even the most single-minded deserve credit and respect. Crowbar will never get any credit for subtlety or diversity, yet they are one of heavy music's most obscure and delightful gems. Purity has its value, and New Orleans' all-time sludgiest exports have plenty of it on display within each of their recordings. [...] [Their early songs are] completely uncompromising and catchy in a slowed-down Black Sabbath-meets-Melvins-meets-Pantera kind of way."

"You can be a jazz player and be respected by musicians, but the rest of the world doesn’t care. [...] We’re going to play a game: name a jazz player that means something."

"It sounded like they’d jumped on to what I thought we ought to be doing. That was what I wanted us to sound like and here was somebody else doing it. It shook me to the core. … The Band had done it without even trying, and I harbored that as a weapon of resentment against Jack [Bruce] and Ginger [Baker] — who had a lot more respect for what we were doing than I did."

"Zapp, later known as Zapp & Roger, exploded the world of funk music with their trademark bumping grooves and vocoder talk boxes."

"At this point, the guys behind Big Gigantic are bona fide funk experts."

"Hirax became a fixture in the Los Angeles metal community before they achieved broader recognition, beginning with 1985’s aptly named ‘Raging Violence,’ released by Metal Blade, of course. The band was led by vocalist Katon W. de Pena, whose idiosyncratic vocal style alternated between vicious snarling and semi-operatic screams, thus mirroring his bandmates’ bi-polar blend of blazing thrash and classic metal."

"Fripp and Co. were never afraid to experiment with their sound. Not only relying on the regular intricacies of prog rock, but classical, folk, and early elements of heavy metal that influenced the likes of Black Flag, Nirvana, and Mastodon. The band's 1960 debut In the Court of the Crimson King remains one of the most influential albums in music history."

"Galaxy 500 never altered its trippy, somnambulistic formula, but what a splendid formula it was."

"When it comes to the absurdly resourceful bench of progressive rock bands, King Crimson were probably the most versatile of them all. Certainly, they were the most adventurous, with ceaselessly shifting line-ups inspiring entirely new sounds. One could play a song from their first, third, and fifth albums and the average listener would have no clue it was the same band. And that, in some regards, is the premise and essence of progressive rock."

"Though they could easily be considered an “experimental” group as well, Dance Gavin Dance are the Sacramento-born post-hardcore group that, though the lineup has changed quite a few times, have always held a special place in alternative music history. Their influences range from MF DOOM to the Temptations, as well as other post-hardcore groups such as At The Drive-In. Mixing harsh and clean vocals, they take note from classic hardcore and prog-rock genres, though it’s the technical attention and structuring of the songs that set DGD firmly in the post-hardcore hall of fame."

"In high school, if you were playing any kind of music that wasn't dance, or just something that was really different—you know, rock, metal or hard rock, anything like that—then you needed to look like it. You needed to look like a bad dude, and we just looked like normal dudes....It wasn't about trying to impress everybody, because we looked at those types of people as weenies trying to do that stuff ... We just wore our normal stuff and we didn't really think about it. It just kind of happened that way and I think because we were searching for an extreme style, coupled with this no image, who-cares-what-we-look-like thing, then I think we fit in to that new movement that we discovered a little ways later, the whole Bay Area thrash scene."

"She’s my sex bomb baby! Yeah!"

"San Francisco’s Flipper made music that sounded like the opposite of what most would consider sexy. And for that matter, it didn’t even sound like what most of us would associate with punk — where loud and fast once ruled, Flipper played slow and sludgy. Black Flag would do likewise in just a couple years, but in 1982 there was little that sounded like Flipper, and even less that sounded like “Sex Bomb,” a drunken mess of a punk song that took the template of early garage rock from the ’60s and stretched it out over seven minutes, simplified the lyrics and blasted lots of gnarly sax all over it. It feels nihilistic — the same thing over and over again, gradually becoming messier and messier, with no narrative or point to speak of."

"Big Black had noise-rock down to a science. The band essentially had no midrange. Bassist Dave Riley held down the low-end, while Steve Albini and Santiago Durango opted for extreme treble, which was made all the more piercing thanks to a penchant for playing with metal picks. With the industrial thump of drum machine “Roland” keeping rhythm, and a habit of setting off firecrackers on stage before playing, Big Black essentially created misanthropy you could sing along to."

"Founded by Gorilla Biscuits guitarist Walter Schreifels, Quicksand were at the forefront of the post-hardcore/alt-metal wave in the ’90s. And that’s exactly the point in hardcore history that the beginning of “Fazer,” the intro track of their debut album, hints toward."

"I’m gonna shine out in the wild kindness and hold the world to its word."

"American Football made an EP and a self-titled album in the late '90s that didn't garner tons of attention at the time of their releases, but in the years that followed, the sparse and emotional sound the trio created became an influential emo touchstone. Their stature grew, and when they reunited in 2014 for a handful of shows, the outpouring of love and support they received spurred them to make the reunion a more permanent venture."

"We’re playing the 80s. Other bands are still playing the 70s."

"American Football still stands as one of the most important bands for the genre and it’s [Mike Kinsella's] twinkling, technical guitar work that forms the foundation for the group. His chemistry with guitarist Steve Holmes, and the ways they weave in and out of each other on “Never Meant” and “I’ll See You When We’re Both Not So Emotional” are remarkable."

"You can’t miss what you forget."

"By the fall of 1999, the members of American Football were done with college, with emo, and with American Football itself. The trio had decided to break up even before the release of their first full-length; thus, the album turned out to be a farewell from a band that had scarcely introduced itself. American Football was also a rebuke of the Midwestern scene that had been shaped by the incalculable long-tail influence of Mike Kinsella’s previous one-album supernova Cap’n Jazz, rerouting emo’s bloodline from hardcore toward minimalist jazz and meditiative math-rock. [...] After the bursting of the Myspace bubble, hundreds of bands took Kinsella’s elliptical expressions of hope and heartbreak as unfinished business, rebuilding the genre on a foundation of open-tuned Telecasters, capos, and red and black flannels. Yet, while the sound of American Football is remarkably easy to replicate, its spirit of wistful carpe diem remains forever elusive."

"The date on the sleeve says 1978, but a cursory listen to Van Halen’s debut tells you that it is, by some distance, the greatest guitar album of the 1980s. [...] Listening to it is a joyful experience, and that love of music gave meaning to every note they played."

"When faith abandons me I hope it does it honestly I still howl like an animal in the darkness And I'm reminded by the blood on my clothes I can't stand what I've become; I'm shivering to spite the sun We come together and we're overwhelmed by the loneliness I want oblivion all the time I want oblivion all the time I want oblivion all the time I want oblivion Burn slow There's no rush You're right Always right"

"If There Is Room To Move, Things Move"