Nostalgia is a dish best served cold

So it appears as if it’s been 10 years since Dave Grohl truly made out on his own with The Colour and the Shape. I’m not really ashamed to say that at that point in my life, the ripe age of 16 years, I dismissed and ignored this album pretty much entirely. I feel as if I’ve been fairly detached from most “modern rock radio” for several years (something I often regret) and it started around this time. I definitely remembering hearing songs like “Everlong” quite a bit from my friends but overall I was too busy digging in the used punk, ska and reggae bins at the Sound Exchange in Parkersburg and getting up the gumption to talk to the “super cool” clerks there order Violent Femmes or Dead Milkmen albums. Yeah, I was that kid and I enjoyed it.

So I kind of “missed out” on the fervor surrounding The Colour. This isn’t to say I haven’t dabbled in the Foo at times, but never really let it engulf me like it did so many of my peers around that time. But, since Org founder and lifecoach Aubin Paul holds it in such high regard, I felt like downloading it to give it a spin.

It’s times like this that make me wonder why people think that the underground is where the innovation is coming from. It seems as if so many bands that are getting attention right now like the Hold Steady are simply rehashing themes from the mid-90’s. I feel the same way about 90% of all indie rock right now - it’s progressed very little since “the mainstream” plucked bands like Soul Asylum from the budding alt-punk scenes of the time. I could easily see a track like “Doll” being hailed as “the epitome of restraint and emotion in a world of watered-down, bland imitators” or the classic “Everlong” resulting in a total scenegasm of epic proportions. And these songs definitely seemed to get this kind of attention. Ten years ago.

Phew. Gotta calm down. Otherwise I’ll end up ranting. I guess it’s just interesting how as I’ve gotten older I’ve grown to appreciate more of the music that was coming out when I was younger. I remember hearing Jawbreaker in High School, but I didn’t really hear them until sometime in college. It’s a similar story with bands like Fugazi, Hot Water Music and a few others. It’s weird how sometimes a few years of removal can really change the way you see things.

All this to say that Colour is a fun album. I still will never bow down and accept Dave Grohl as a superior songwriter to Kurt Cobain, but that could just be my clinging to 5th grade memories of Nevermind and that epic period of my life. I know that seems to be the unpopular opinion for males of my age, but…somethings are just special.

Keep reading to see an aborted rant… Deleted paragraph
This was to go after Ten Years Ago and ended up developing into a rant that is all-to-common and unneeded.

If we are looking towards the music as art that challenges us and helps us to look forward, I often feel like the underground is failing. Yes, you have the noisier side of things like 7000 Dying Rats or the Locust keeping us on our toes with their by now almost playing avant-garde art-grind, but rarely do we see new rock music coming out that feels important like Hüsker Dü, Fugazi or the like. Obviously this is partially because bands like this are literally one in a million, but why can’t (this is as far as I got)