HLLLYH (former Mae Shi) – Flex It, Tagger
There are many reasons for joining a band, and none of them are anything worth bragging about to a school counsellor or on a job interview. You’ll be able to impress other musicians, sure. And somebody writing a sitcom might include a character that resembles you at some point. At best, and if lucky, your grandchildren will be impressed by your stories.
While there are some who fight to get recruited in a well-known band with the hopes of becoming a professional musician and earning a ticket to music industry events, those folks are fewer and fewer. And while there are some who join a band so that they can impress their friends and spend the Summer being gawked at, these aren’t the majority either.
Folks in bands have just chosen this over joining a hippie commune or running away with the circus. There wasn’t much of a choice, there ain’t much of a career path, but there ain’t much that’s better. That’s at least what HLLLYH, formerly known as Mae Shi, remember on “Flex it, Tagger.” The band’s brand of spirited terrorist-indie should be enough to elicit a reaction out of you hearing this through your headphones, as it must’ve done from the audiences who first heard these musicians.
Dead Tooth – Jack Dawson
We all have someone to blame. And why not? Did all the action hero rock stars who strutted before us, claiming to have never taken any mind to any rule, think they weren’t going to shape our view of the world? We bought tickets and everything.
The lure of bad decisions is powerful and keeps the entertainment business, for the most part, working. It’s why kids save up money for those aforementioned tickets, and why they trade cards of their favourite rotten scoundrels. Dead Tooth know a thing or two about it.
Because, as you lie in your apartment seeing pink elephants dancing across the walls, you feel inclined to retrace your steps. Surely, there must’ve been one moment where there was no turning back. Surely, there’s someone who’s responsible for all of this.
“Jack Dawson” is the man who started this beautiful downward spiral for the songwriter in Dead Tooth, and he can’t get off the hook for this one. It doesn’t matter that he’s a made-up character. Like JFK tormenting Bavarian waiters, Dead Tooth’s Zach James used these romantic stories to propel him onto a life of adventure, travel and chemical experimentation. Where did it start? Once the first tear was shed at the end of “Titanic.” It’s yet another tale of terrible movies inspiring great songs.
