December

Spotify: https://rb.gy/9abmmz

YouTube: https://twtr.to/MC8jr


Why do I know this record?

After waking up, I immediately laid down on the couch to finish my book.

No, that's not true. First I read my e-mail, checked up on the news and got hooked on Instagram Reels, which I oftentimes prefer to TikTok because the videos are shorter. The longer people talk the more they display their vacuity. And I must admit I'm fascinated by people, their lives, want to meet each and every one of them, but probably wouldn't want to hang with them thereafter. But that's the magic of social media, the people, the humanity. Not that I'm getting as much satisfaction from TikTok as I used to, however I do love the automobile clips, where they analyze problems and fix them.

And I'd love to talk about the book "The Late Americans," but it mostly focuses on gay people and the sex they have, and I find a lot of people who are not gay have a hard time tolerating this, they get squeamish. But what I liked about the book was it created an environment completely different from the one I normally inhabit, in my everyday world. Then again, too many writers center their books in Iowa, where they went to graduate school. And this book is about graduate school, and the questions lingering in the future, like what you're going to do with your life, and my life path has already been established.

And after finishing I sat at the kitchen table and started to dive into the "Times." I started with Maureen Dowd, with an anti-Trump screed. It's hard to disagree with her, but then I wondered how many Trumpers would be up in arms. Then again, these people can't cancel their subscriptions because they don't read the "Times" to begin with.

And there were endless stories about Trump in the Opinion section, and now the paper has some right wing writers and...why do I care what these people have to say? They've been wrong about everything else, they didn't see Trump coming and still can't figure him out. And the election isn't until November, enough already. (Not that I'm not rooting for Nikki Haley, miracles do happen.)

But on this extremely warm late January day in Southern California it's in the mid-seventies and Felice opened the windows and the bubbler in the birdbath was driving me crazy, distracting me, getting under my skin, so I got up to shut the windows and that's when my eye caught Alexa. I wasn't looking, but I saw what she had to say, and it was "December."

Now oftentimes Alexa will display the last cut you told her to play. I didn't call out "December." Did Felice? But I couldn't imagine that. And I sat back down to the "Times" and my coffee yogurt and...

I couldn't get that line out of my head. You know, that descending guitar intro.

Not that I was a big fan of "Shine." Although I must say that stutter in the pre-chorus and the chorus itself are infectious. But I didn't foresee it being the number one hit it became, at least on rock radio, when that was still important. "Shine" was ubiquitous. Back in the eighties, right?

Well, actually, no. "Shine" was a smash in 1994, after Nirvana and the Seattle sound supposedly wiped hair bands and mainstream rock from the airwaves.

Not that Collective Soul was a hair band, it wasn't even a band at first.

But I loved "December." Not that I would have put it that way prior to today. I always liked it, but thinking about it and playing it this morning made me smile.

And think about how I was not the only one who knew it. EVERYBODY knows it. Because it was a different era.

MTV in the nineties was not as powerful as MTV in the eighties, and certainly not as new. And there were now half hour shows, and non-music programming. But the imprimatur of the station made the rest of media fall in line. And MTV reached everywhere. And we still tuned in, if not quite as much. So, if it was on the station...

But conventional wisdom is the nineties was when rap infiltrated MTV. And that is true. Along with expensive videos made by pretty faces with little talent. So why do I know every beat of "December"?

Which somehow makes me think of Matchbox 20, or Matchbox "Twenty" as the band insists. And although that's a great Carl Perkins song, with a legendary cover by the Beatles, does anybody know what a matchbox is today?

I guess thinking of "December" made me think of "Push." Which is a great cut, but I didn't realize it until I heard the acoustic version recorded in the Star Lounge of radio station 98.7. I bought a CD of performances on the station, at Music Plus, on a bad Love@AOL date. Well, it was a little more complicated than that. I drove to the far west valley to sit down at a sushi bar where the woman professed love at first bite, which freaked me out, but by time I'd calmed down she wasn't as infatuated, and then I played Van Halen's "And the Cradle Will Rock..." at top volume on the Alpine/ADS system in my car and that sealed the deal, as in she put her hands over her ears and insisted I take her back to her automobile.

And at this point there's tons of acoustic takes of "Push" out there, but what this slowed down version made me do was focus on the lyrics, which are great. That is, unless you see "push" as physical as opposed to emotional.

And looking at that first Matchbox Twenty album... It's got four hits. And the one that resonates with me most these days is "Back 2 Good." Don't we always want to get back to good?

And I know all these songs. By heart. And I'm not the only one.

Now there are a lot of hit songs, tracks that climb the chart and then disappear, from not only the chart, but your mind. But that is not "December."

It's that hypnotic guitar figure, that sustains. And the dark vocalizations. And then the whole thing speeds up:

"Don't scream aloud
Don't think aloud
Turn your head now baby, just spit me out"

I didn't even know the song was entitled "December" for the first trillion listens. Not that another lyric sticks out. It's a track you know by the sound.

And I'm not a good forensic listener, but are those strings, or maybe a keyboard that give the song a sense of majesty?

And then the record takes a complete left turn, just before 3:30:

"December promise you gave until me
December whispers of treachery
December clouds are now covering me
December songs no longer I sing"

And then again.

And again.

And then these words are blended with the verse and then...

You get that guitar figure once again, and it's all over, with a hard finish, not a fade-out. WHAT WAS THAT?

Yes, the structure is not traditional. And yes, Ed Roland does mention "December," but at this point it's all a wash of sound.

It's like they performed the track in one place, and then moved down the road, over hill and dale, marching to another.

Not that I could tell you what it was all about, but through the magic of the internet I now know it's about Roland's anger/dissatisfaction with the band's original manager.

Huh.

On the surface not a song that would be a hit, part of the firmament, but it was!

And nothing is that big today. Forget Zach Bryan, even Morgan Wallen and Taylor Swift's hits don't reach as many people. They're well-loved by their fans, but not everybody is a fan. But we were all fans back then. Of not only this cut, but music.

And then something changed.

Music was the driver of the internet revolution, with Napster. And unlike seemingly every other media vertical, music figured it out, you can get all the music for just over ten bucks a month. Not in TV. Not in news. Probably not ever.

And with everything at our fingertips...

Everything's smaller, including music itself.

As for cuts like "December"? They're nowhere to be found.

Where would you be exposed to them anyway?

The industry wants something narrower, or blander. Edgier. To appeal to the people in the silos. Active Rock is hard-edged. And a lot of hip-hop has edges too, when it's not cartoons.

And if you're sitting at home, writing a rock song, trying to become famous...

That paradigm doesn't even exist anymore. Oh, you can write it, but the odds of people hearing it are tiny.

This is not a lament for what once was. This is just a reminder of what once was. The goals of quality and ubiquity or worth shooting for. It's just a matter of how you achieve this.

In the old days the record labels found unknown talent and foisted it upon us. Today the labels just try and maximize what the data says already has an audience. The tail wags the dog.

Then again, we can't even agree on the news, what are the odds we can agree on what music to listen to?

Then again, "December" was one of those cuts you only had to hear twice to be infected by, to be moved, to want to hear it again. Not once, because its magic was somewhat subtle, but once your head rearranged itself to be open to it...

Not that the nineties were a paragon of musical excellence, of musical breakthroughs. But somehow "December" doesn't sound quaint, it still retains its edgy, meaningful quality.

And I'm doing some research, trying to find a video, and I stumble upon the band's performance of "December" at Woodstock '99.

No one has anything good to say about Woodstock '99.

And most bands can't replicate the sounds of their hits live. It's more about a feeling, being there, connecting with the record in your head.

But I'm watching the video and soon the guitarist starts playing that figure. On his Japanese guitar in front of a wall of amps, when that was a feature of rock and roll.

And another guitarist is playing a Les Paul.

And then Ed Roland steps up to the mic with an acoustic around his neck and...

The hairstyles are dated. Making me realize this is twenty five years ago. But this is not the festivals of today, with a zillion stages. This is a veritable sea of people focused on Collective Soul singing "December." It's like a visual Dead Sea Scroll.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qj24-kU6CUc


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