(The Black Keys is the best band you may have never heard of.)
I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving break filled with nothing but steamed vegetables and salad...maybe even a croissant or two. Being back home for the holidays is always great, not only because of the superior food (though I have learned how to make very exquisite PB&J sandwiches during college), but also because it is the best time of the year to catch up with some old friends that you never get to see while you are away learning things you will never need for your future job. I try to keep in touch with my best friends from high school, because in many ways I feel like I've made many of my life-long friends before I ever stepped into a college classroom being taught by a professor that spoke broken English.
For some reason, I've always had the weirdest taste in movies and music. I'm not a big fan of movies that are built to win awards, which is why I'll watch something critically frowned upon yet fun like Club Dread or Role Models before I'll watch something as acclaimed as The Hurt Locker ever again. I mean, my favorite Tom Hanks movie (and possibly just plain favorite movie of all-time) is The Burbs. To a lesser extent, I feel the same way about music. To me, relatively unknown bands have a lot more capability to give meaning to average people with their lyrics than a mainstream band does. I would much rather listen to a song that actually means something to the artist than one that is made purely to be heard on the radio twenty times a day. Maybe I'm on to something or maybe that is just the way I'm wired, but I do know I that I absolutely cannot ever make a successful party mix with my musical preferences (i.e. My failed attempts with Nick to incorporate LCD Soundsystem at our roommate Joe's ring dunk party.)
Over the break I was watching the A&M game at my friend Ken's house and had a conversation with my friends Kollin, Tyler, and Matt about music. These three guys are incredible musicians who have played at our church since we were in junior high school and are now in bands with outstanding record albums that I try not to shamelessly plug whenever I can. I, on the other hand, have no musical talent, and the biggest claim to fame that I may ever have is that my mom went to prom with a pre-famous-and-pre-Road House Patrick Swayze. (True story...though she eventually traded up for my dad...not only because his sense of humor and sports knowledge is vastly superior, but also because Red is still alive.) Anyways, we traded some bands that we thought each other would like...which is one of my favorite things to do because I pride myself in listening to bands that are rarely heard on the radio. (I know, I'm that guy.) However, one of these bands is slowly fading out of obscurity and into the mainstream limelight.
During my lone year at Oklahoma my roommate Rick and I would frequently visit a music store in Norman called Guest Room Records. While he actually owned a vinyl player, I mainly tagged along because I was usually tired of the mind games (lame inside joke..) and loved listening to the obscure bands that were usually featured on the headphone display in the front of the store. I discovered many of my favorite bands there. One of the most notable albums I found was a little gem called Keep it Hid by Dan Auerbach. After doing a little digging, I found his regular band, The Black Keys, and immediately found myself listening to nothing but the two-man group consisting of Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney. Starting with The Big Come Up, it became obvious that their old school, vintage rock-style feel was exactly what I needed. (I vividly remember the time when my friend Austin told me that Nick Drake was a dead guy from the 1970s. I was devastated; I could have sworn after watching this commercial in high school that he was an up-and-coming musician that was just trying to bring back the Simon and Garfunkel style of music.) The Black Keys always record their albums quickly and in unusual places. My favorite album of theirs, Rubber Factory, was named after recording it in an old rubber factory in their hometown of Akron, Ohio. Their songs are blues inspired and typically go against the bland music that you can find on your local hit radio stations. They were under-appreciated and a breath of fresh air from the mundane songs you here all the time. (With the exception of Creed and Nickelback. If you can't have fun laughing at them then you must not have a sense of humor.) So for the past few years, while I clearly wasn't one of the earliest to find out about them (their first few albums came out years before I started listening while I was Ray LaMontagne and Iron and Wine heavy), I prided myself as one of the few who was "in-the-know" about the greatest rock band most people had never really heard of while others were busy listening to Hinder. (Sorry, Rickesh.)
Going back to last Thursday night when I was watching football on TV with my friends, I slowly watched with mixed feelings as The Black Keys slowly dominated the television set. The fact that these commercials are some of the most overplayed ads on TV right now, along with the fact that Nick said that they had a breakout performance at this year's Austin City Limits Music Festival, did make me sigh with relief that my musical tastes can be more vindicated than my movie tastes. (In other news, I'd like to take this time to apologize to some of my friends for my Thanksgiving movie selection. Seriously, do NOT watch the movie Spike. Because although that cover should be a promising sign for a terribly good time, the RedBox description said nothing about it being a gothic love story. I thought it was going to be like a killer Sonic the Hedgehog. But instead of killing people by pressing Down B on the controller, the guy spouted poetry and tried to make some girl fall in love with him. Come on...at least collect rings or something.)
However, selfishly I guess I always want my bands to be like a pre-Miami Heat version of Chris Bosh: under-appreciated, supremely talented but relatively unknown, and innocent to the harsh effects of day-to-day news and radio coverage. Yet despite my concerns, I actually am proud of The Black Keys and am happy that they are gaining a larger audience and finding huge success. Recently they even toured with Kings of Leon, a band that randomly hit the mainstream faster than Andre Johnson destroyed Cortland Finnegan. I just truly hope that they can find a happy medium and not turn into post-Heat Bosh: overpaid, jaded, and crippled by the hype. Something tells me they will do it and I doubt they will even have to shave their heads to fight off the Predator jokes.
[Just a disclaimer, I may be off the grid after this post until after finals in order to pass Geology 101...(and yes, I am a senior currently getting weeded out by a freshman weed out class).]
-PB
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