The Sordid History of Sousa's Horrible Musical Tastes

[C-MIL]

I like to pretend it's some Indo-Chinese prayer chant that translates to "hey, we are the ones that said 'Suck My Kiss', peace be with you and yours."

[Sousa]

Apparently it's from an earlier demo of the song where he just scatted over lyrics instead of singing because he couldn't come up with any (He would later come up with "I saw God and I saw the fountains, you and me girl sitting in the Swiss mountains"). The reason the scatting was in the final track is that Flea's daughter liked it.

Yes, I looked that up.

I'm listening to the next album and I miss Anthony Kiedis's cock-out posturing already.

[Sousa]

Fuck it, I'm doing this tonight because I never want to hear this fucking album again.

Creed - Human Clay (1999)

Oh god teenage sousa i hate you so fucking much right now. Holy shit. This makes Use Your Illusion look like Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. On a related note, can I just pretend Teenage Sousa was really into Goodbye Yellow Brick Road?

Right so. Creed.

Like I said before, Teenage Sousa was getting into introspective, spiritual music at this point. And like all teenagers, Teenage Sousa was pretty insipid. Creed and Teenage Sousa are like hand to glove, really. I was sort of vacillating on my Christian faith at this point, starting to question the spiritual parts of my own upbringing. That questioning was a big part of my interest in the next band on the list, but Creed filled a niche. They said time and time again that they weren't a Christian band, but let's get serious here. They wrote songs largely about redemption, and the only metaphor that singer Scott Stapp understood was Jesus.

So basically, Creed was "deep music" for teenagers who were raised in church and didn't really know any better. And. I mean. That's fine. For Teenage Sousa.

Oh my god you guys adult sousa hated this so much.

I will take a hundred thousand more Use Your Illusia over one more fucking Creed song.

Here's the thing about Creed. They are pretty much Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, and your "cool" youth pastor thrown into a telepod from The Fly at the same time. They wear their influences right on their sleeves and ape them to the letter. They work within the tradition without building on it at all. Mark Tremonti (also of noted EWB'S Least Favorite Band Alter Bridge fame) is competent at his modal Jerry Cantrell-esque guitar work. Scott Stapp is pretty much Eddie Vedder without the gristle. They pile all that on top of a heavy rhythm section. And they are super serious.

There is no reason for them to be popular taken at that, but they were for pretty much two reasons:

1. Scott Stapp is pretty

2. Jesus

This is what propelled Human Clay to debut at #1 on the Billboard charts forsaking virtually everything else about the band. They're pretty much a generic buttrock grunge band but they are so much worse. They're Alice in Chains without the edge, Pearl Jam without the social causes, Soundgarden without the bite.

I don't even know how much I can say about this album. If you've heard one shallow post-grunge band, you've heard them all. Creed is the reason why this entire movement took off, from big deal bands like Nickelback to "where are they now file" whiners like Staind to forgotten acts like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAocvKHUidg. This is the music that ate grunge and shat it out, turning it into a super-serious ego-fest.

And my god, what an ego-wank Human Clay is. As if I even need to say it, Scott Stapp is the sort of singer who demands more takes for his video for "Higher" because there weren't enough Christ-like poses (IT IS TRUE). It's modal guitar noodling with Stapp's sub-Eddie Vedder wailing over top of it, and it just goes on and on and on. Sometimes it's slow and bad; sometimes it's heavy and bad. And it's never subtle. If you can't figure out that the faceless man in "Faceless Man" is God, then don't worry, because every other metaphor on the album is also a heavy-handed metaphor for God (or Heaven, or Jesus, or Salvation), and if you've got half a brain you'll figure it out.

And it's all so selfish on top of it. Scott Stapp is, in 99% of all songs, a bold fighter on the verge of salvation and revelation, and when something is at issue then the world is at fault ("What If" is basically an entire song about how horrible all the lying motherfuckers around Scott Stapp are). At one point he even yells "I HOPE I HELPED YOU LIIIIIIIIIIVE" and oh my god you guys. Just. Just fucking go, Scott.

Can I be done yet?

Song Highlights:

"Wid Alms Why Dope Awn" - I have to be careful how I say this; I don't want you all to think I actually liked this song. But I like its sentiment. I sympathize with it now as a fellow father, and I'm on record saying that new fathers are basically adorable (Here's looking at you, Jeff Hardy!). "Welcome to this place; I'll show you everything"? Awwwwwwwwwwwwww. I mean yeah, it's basically all of that on top of horrible generic post-grunge buttrock, and yeah, the lyrics are so incredibly obvious, but it's nice that there's a song that feels like it was written by an actual human being instead of a caricature in a Bible study video.

"Faceless Man" - It's... okay, I guess? I don't know, I'm really reaching to put more than one song here. This one's kind of pretty I guess.

Song Lowlights:

(Assume everything not mentioned in Song Highlights is terrible; this is the particularly bad)

"What If" - WAAAAAD IFFFFFF WAAAAAD IFFFFFF WAAAAAD IFFFFFF WAAAAAD IFFFFFF WAAAAAD IF IIIIIIIII WAAAAAD IFFFFFF WAAAAAD IFFFFFF WAAAAAD IFFFFFF WAAAAAD IFFFFFF WAAAAAD IF IIIIIIIII. Oh dear lord. Heavy Creed is the worst Creed of all the Creeds.

"Beautiful" - In summary, "hot bitches are evil y'all." For a guy who loves his son so much he's sure not into the people that push sons out of their vaginas.

"Say I" - It's like Alice in Chains only wrote the WHYYYYY YOOOOOOOOU AAAAAAAAACT CRAAAAAAZYYYYYYYY part of "I Stay Away" and left off the rest of the song, and then you also remove its spine. If you can't tell I really really hated the first half of this album.

"Wrong Way" - It's not that Scott Stapp went the wrong way on his own. Scott Stapp is an invincible superman and somebody told him the wrong way. He hopes he helped you live.

"Higher" -

With the Benefit of Hindsight:

Get fucked, Creed. That was so much worse than I was expecting. I'm going to go detox on First Aid Kit for like five hours now.

NEXT: They're from the same place as Harley-Davidson motorcycles. I've been there! I genuinely don't know how I'm going to feel about this next one, but I am 100% certain it will not be worse than this.

[ROC]

Fun fact: Young ROC's first concert that he can remember was sitting in the nosebleed section of a Creed show circa Weathered. And by fun fact, I mean, OH GOD WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED OH NO ABORT ABORT.

[Skummy]

I can't stand the Chili Peppers normally, but I'll admit that Scar Tissue is - in places - a pretty cool tune. I've not listened to Otherside in probably ten years, but that one's alright too.

Nick Cave once said in an interview, when asked his opinion on modern music, "Every time I hear something on the radio and have to ask my kids 'what is this shit?', it's always the Red Hot Chili Peppers".

Fucking Creed, man.

[MalaCloudy Black]

Stapp and his family currently reside in Boca Raton. He is a Christian.^[38]

Thanks, Wikipedia!

Also, the reason I went to his wiki article in the first place, I thought there was some sex tape with him and yeah, there is. It's him and Kid Rock getting blown by groupies or summat.

For a while as a teen I was pretty into RHCP. I had Californication, By The Way, Mother's Milk, Freakey Styley and The Uplift Mofo Party Plan. I think Mother's Milk and Uplift.. are still my favorite albums of theirs.

[GhostMachine]

Creed is one band I can honestly say I've always hated. The only song of theirs I can even stand to listen to without wanting to either vomit or puncture my own eardrums (or both) is "Bullets".

As a DJ, I thankfully do not get requests for them much. And when I do, its always "With Arms Wide Open" that they ask for. Seriously. I've never ever had a request for a different Creed song. And every time its requested, I'm thankful I can mute the music on my end.

Surprisingly, I never get requests for RHCP. Go figure. Then again, I'm convinced most people quit giving a shit about them after Blood Sugar Sex Magik.....

[METALMAN]

Yeah, they only sold about forty million albums after that, didn't they? Absolutely dead in the water.

[VerbalPuke]

I never was a fan of RHCP, they never did anything for me. I'd always go for Primus if I wanted something of that ilk (and even that's a stretch to compare the two, huge stretch really).

The only thing I can say about Creed is that a buddy of mine had a bunch of "Creed Sucks" stickers and patches made in a graphic arts class we had together. The teacher initially wanted to veto my friend printing them because he was a christian, but my buddy explained that Creed was a band, the teacher was then cool with it.

[Sousa]

"Creed Sucks"

[Hobo]

Creed were never a thing to me outside of those WWF Desire videos.

RHCP were a thing because I knew who they were and other people I knew really liked them. I knew songs like 'Under the Bridge' and 'By the Way' and whatnot but I never once felt the urge to listen to a whole album.

Teenage Hbob was far to busy listening to Leonard Cohen.

[Sousa]

Now with actual links to the songs I talk about!

Live - The Distance to Here (1999)

MORE LATE 90'S ALT-ROCK, OH MAN YOU GUYS.

Live. Who the fuck? These guys.

More "spiritual" music with big guitar solos 'n shit. Oh god, it's Creed all over again, isn't it? As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure that Live toured with Creed at one point around this period (it was either them or the next band on the list). This one's going to suck as well, right?

Full disclosure right off the bat: Live is ridiculous. "Lightning Crashes" is a very pretty song, and it's indicative of the fact that Live are just as po-faced and super-serious as Creed in their own way. The album it comes from, Throwing Copper, was their most successful and also got some airplay out of

and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSHAqHA-SPc, both of which are also incredibly sincere and serious. The Distance to Here, the album I really liked, was led off by

and had very few other hits. It's bigger, more bombastic, and crazier than Throwing Copper, which in turn makes it much more ridiculous.

But I didn't hate it like I hated Creed's album.

Why not?

Here's the least demanded Buzzfeed list ever; let's call it "X Reasons Why Live Rocks and Creed is an Epic Fail That Will Make Your Jaw Drop LOL."

1. Live are a fully realized band and Creed is basically two guys. Creed is defined pretty much entirely by the interplay between Mark Tremonti's noodling and Scott Stapp's horrible Eddie Vedder impression. Live has their own big personality up front (the far superior Ed Kowalczyk, who's also the band's primary songwriter and probably the reason they eventually went to shit), but they've got good guitars and--best of all--an actual rhythm section. They're given more to do on Copper (which is a better album than Distance), but even on an inferior album, they still feel more like a band than Creed did.

2. Live are optimistic and Creed is a fucking downer. Creed is a band that can put out a song like "One," their big "let's all get along as a species to make everything better" anthem, and then make the chorus "I FEEL VIOLENT, I FEEL ALONE." Their first big hits were called "My Own Prison" and "What's This Life For?" The entirety of Human Clay is that the world is full of backstabbers and traitors and only stone-faced contempt for the world can get you out of it.

Live's thesis is "yeah the world kind of sucks, but there's beauty everywhere and love can help us rise above it." (Did I mention love? Because they do like five trillion times on this album.)

It's really no wonder I went from Creed to this. I was starting to feel a lot better about myself, coming to terms with an agnosticism that would later turn into full-fledged atheism. Creed was all about self-flagellation for penance, but Live! Live was all about love. I had a girlfriend at this point (on the Internet guys!) and was generally feeling a lot better about myself, so I drifted to another "spiritual" band with a more positive message.

3. Here is a video of a harp seal sleeping. Because I said it was a Buzzfeed list.

Okay, back to Distance on its own merits. Yes, it is way, way, way over the top and is ridiculous pretty much from beginning to end. But that's not a sticking point for me; I fully admit that one of my favorite songwriters ever is Jim Steinman, a man whose bombastic songwriting led me to enjoy a song by fucking http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDxoj-tDDIU. Ed K is cut from that stock; he caterwauls and howls about things like "A NUCLEAR FIRE OF LOVE IN OUR HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEARTS" on the reg. This is the version of Live that would wrestle. It's Live turned up to eleven.

But does that make it any good? Kind of. Live is one of those bands with a lot of passion but not a lot of range. It's a lot of mid-tempo post-grunge, competently performed, but if you've heard "I Alone" then you've heard most of this album. They slow it down for the occasional slow ballad, and sometimes they branch out a bit ("They Stood Up for Love" tries being funky to... mixed results), but ultimately they come back to what brought them to the dance a lot.

But when passion and optimism are together in equal measure, that's infectious to me. And while there's struggle here, there's also hope. That's why Live should've been a bigger deal while Creed should've petered out into oblivion much faster, the same way Live did. I still don't get why every song on the album is about love but Ed K also can't stop singing about hookers in every song.

Song Highlights:

- Sort of the thesis of the album, it's a driving rock song with the usual quiet verse-shout HEY!-LOUD CHORUS format. But it's got a nice hook to it. And the sentiment, even if it's sort of trite, is on point. "Don't believe that the world is empty, just too noisy to hear the sound." RIGHT ON, ED K.

- Live at their most melodramatic, but it's a great showcase for what I mentioned earlier about Live being a fully realized band. Great instrumentation pulls this one over the top, with Chad Gracey on drums being a highlight.

- Okay basically just the chorus. The verses are hilariously awful. NEKKID LOVERS FEEL THE BLOOD BENEATH THEIR VEINS and all that. But man, what a great hook on that chorus. IN SPITE OF THE HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE, YUUUUH.

- The loosest song on the album, with some nice swagger to it from all involved.

Song Lowlights:

- Surprising for me; I really liked this song as a kid. This was the album's second proper single and one I thought had all the makings of a big hit. It's a decent pop song, but it's a bit too much of a muchness, which is a common theme among the songs I didn't like.

- Almost into "so bad it's good" territory. This is Live's TNA wrestling persona in that it's Live turned up to 12. I CAN'T FIND MAH FAAAAAAAAAATE!

"We Walk in the Dream" - To give you an idea of how mediocre this song is, I couldn't even find it on YouTube. I mentioned earlier that if you've heard one Live song, you've sort of heard them all (with some exceptions), and this is the embodiment of that. The album is bound by "love" as a generic theme, and this song feels like all of the ideas that didn't fit into any other song rolled into one. Ed K can't even keep a proper rhythm.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxqYigFwUTQ - The second line of this song is "the island king of love" and it gets stupider from there. Ed sings pretty, but the song just sort of sits there. Dull and gushy.

With the Benefit of Hindsight:

Live sort of went to a weird place after this album, putting out tracks about how http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgdKMHoEFqk (look at the title! not a coincidence!), at which point they pretty much lost me. Ed K later turned out to be something of a giant douche, and Live were never heard from again. For me, they represent a time when I was becoming more comfortable in my skin but still boxing with God in my own way. This isn't a bad soundtrack to all that, to be honest. I don't know that I'd sit down and listen to it again for funsies, but I didn't hate revisiting it.

NEXT: I often joke about how liking this band makes me a giant loser, and I am right. But I haven't listened to this album in a few years despite the fact that I'm "the guy who likes _______________," so this should be a trip. Some of you have probably already figured out who I'm talking about.

SUPPLEMENTAL:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6_TGfDKpCM&t=1m11s

LOOKATIMDANCE AT 1:11. Awwww, bless.

[METALMAN]

Who? :/

[IDOL]

I like Live and Lightning Crashes Then again, I can still occasionally stomach RHCP, and Limp Bizkit every once in a while too.

Also One Tree Hill, FTW!

[Sousa]

Who? :/

No, Live, Who won't be on this list.

[MalaCloudy Black]

TEENAGE WWWWWWWWWWWASTELAND

Hey, do you guys remember adjunkie and how he was adamant that the Limp Bizkit cover of "Behind Blue Eyes" was just the best thing ever?

[Sousa]

B-I-Z-K-I-T. SAY IT.

[Sousa]

Counting Crows - August and Everything After (1993)

This one gave me a sad you guys. It is such a downer. Adam, sweetie, you want a hug?

At the time that I started listening to Counting Crows, a.k.a. The Band Sousa Mentions to Joke About How Terrible His Taste in Music Is, they were supporting the album This Desert Life, which remains to this day one of my five or six favorite albums ever.

was the single of choice from this album, and while I liked it, I didn't care for the whole album (yet!), and I'd bought August primarily on the strength of the song that album is known for. SHA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA, YEAH.

I had it for a long time and didn't give it a lot of thought until I went to a place called Buckeye Boys State between my junior and senior year of high school, during the glorious summer of 2000. Boys State was a fucking mess. It was a mock government retreat for YOUNG MANS ONLY (there was also a Buckeye Girls State, but guess which one got more money, more attention, and more time!). Two students were picked to jet off to Bowling Green University in northern Ohio for a week, to live with other 17-year-old balls of hormones for a while, and to have a mock government that dealt with "real" issues handed down by American Legion members who ran the group. On one day, Governor Bob "No Seriously Fuck This Guy" Taft came to visit. It was neat.

Sort of.

First of all, it was incredibly jingoistic. Not patriotic, but jingoistic, as in call-and-response salutes to the flag, loud U-S-A chants FOR NO RAISIN, and the assertion that "no cause for which our flag flies will EVER be in the wrong." This was in 2000, so it happened before September 11 turned the entire country into weird hyperpatriot assholes for a few years. It was also unabashedly Christian at a time when I was squirming my way out of my faith, and it was full of good-looking, ambitious trust fund kids in private schools who showed up in a fucking suit on the first day so they could be elected mock governor.

In short, it was a tremendous honor and a great opportunity, and I made a few friends (whom I haven't spoken to in about 13 years to give you an idea of how long those friendships lasted), but I was so lonely.

I spent most of my time when I wasn't working on government stuff (I was a city council member, which was pretty low on the totem pole and also required less work) writing, penning poetry, and going on long walks on my own. I fell into two albums harder than any other. One was the very unfortunate self-titled album by Collective Soul (with

on it), which I enjoyed for roughly five days longer than Boys State. The other was August and Everything After by Counting Crows, which I listened to pretty regularly for at least a few years.

I haven't listened to it in some time--despite the fact that I joke about being a Counting Crows fan, I mostly mean This Desert Life, Recovering the Satellites (the album

is on), and their more recent albums. I was trying to figure out why I wasn't drawn back to this album again, but in listening to it now, I realize why.

It is an incredible downer.

That the thesis of "Mr. Jones" is "When everybody loves me, aw son, that's just about as happy as I can be" (or "SHA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA, YEAH" depending on your frame of reference) says a lot, because it is a very, very lonely album. Counting Crows has always really centered around singer Adam Duritz, with The Rest of the Band being almost incidental despite being a talented group in their own right. Duritz is an interesting case in his own right, a singer who's struggled with depression and personal tragedy related to friends. He's pretty much shoegazing personified on this album, with song topics that range from "failed relationships" to "strained relationships" to "failing relationships" to "jesus christ this guy feels really lonely."

But Duritz is a good singer and Counting Crows are a pretty good band, and while this album's their most basic, they elevate the material pretty well. Most of it is pretty forgettable, but when it hits, it hits. "Round Here" hardly has a glimmer of light at all in it, but it's pretty and melodic and catchy. And Duritz is generally a good songwriter, even when he hits some awkward lines from time to time (The saddest song on the album opens with the lines "The circus is falling down on its knees, the big top is crumbling down").

So if you liked how upbeat "Mr. Jones" was, the rest of the album pretty much, well, isn't. It's dark, lonely, and sad. But it shows a band with promise--and I've always felt like they lived up to that promise.

Song Highlights:

- I wish this was the song that Counting Crows were known for. It's the song that got me hooked on the album, and to this day, it is so good.

- This is one of the most interestingly crafted songs on the album. It's a breakup song at heart--yes, another one about a failed relationship--but it builds nicely, with the lyrics and songcraft culminating in a final chorus and then stopping pretty suddenly. It's nice.

- It draws on Saul Bellow's very good novel Henderson the Rain King and is pretty melodic and nice--"Mr. Jones" without the SHA LA LA etc. One of the things about this album is that the songs meander a lot and go off course (particularly the vocals), but this one's nice and tight.

- I have no good explanation. I've just always liked this song.

- It's not on this album, but it was recorded during the same sessions, and it might be my favorite Counting Crows song ever, so I'm going to give it a nod anyway.

Song Lowlights:
"Omaha" - GETTIN RIGHT TO THE HEART OF MATTERS, IT'S THE HEART THAT MATTERS MORE. Ugh, this is the height of "sometimes terrible lyrics" that I talked about earlier.

- :'( There's a run in the middle of the album that is just so joyless, and this is the worst song of the bunch. That it fades right into "Rain King" is as it should be, because the album picks up after that point in a big way.

With the Benefit of Hindsight:
I am an old woman for liking Counting Crows, and yes, I do understand that. This one was fine, but I like the way they've honed their craft since. That they went on to have their biggest hits http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUypt2nvorM and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvtJPs8IDgU is... weird to me to this day. I'll always associate them with their darker moments, and while they're not as crisp here, I still like it okay.

NEXT: A quick nod to my favorite album ever because I would be remiss if I didn't include it at this point (yes, GoGo, this is the one you're thinking of).

[GhostMachine]

They even made fun of Counting Crows' lead singer on MST3K once......

[Colly]

Did Live ever put out an unimaginatively named live album? They should have.