Daily Jam - Laughing Stock

Grandaddy is one of those bands that will always be tied to certain point in my life...in this case it's college and working as a deejay for the college radio station.  Here's a track from their 1997 album "Under the Western Freeway."  Listen to "Laughing Stock" below, our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - He's Simple, He's Dumb, He's the Pilot

“Did you love this world, and this world not love you?”

Sometimes this world disgusts me, the veritable shit whirlpool of bad culture, bad politics, bad ideas, and bad people becoming all too much to bare. There’s an unending downhill flow of problems and inaction, a levee breaking under the strain of an uncertain future, a future dominated by ignorant talking heads spewing their greed and intolerance and outrage to a deafening degree. Climate change deniers. Racists and homophobes. Misogynistic trolls. Assholes. Donald Trump (or pretty much every other politician.)  It’s like somebody flushed a toilet on the world. And it all makes me so angry, the inevitability of our impending failure as a species, succumbing to our very nature.

It’s worse since I became a father.

The challenge in raising my sons is trying to maintain the sense of worldly or universal wonder that all kids should have, while at the same time keeping things in realistic perspective for when they get older. But I don’t want to sound to bleak about it: “Sorry kiddos. Your great grandparents really made a mess of things, and then your grandparents made it worse, and then your parents were just too damn jaded to care about it anymore.” I hope my sons' generation can do better and do more than those that preceded him…they have to…or maybe they’ll just find a way to get off world, to try again someplace far, far away.

Which finally brings me to Grandaddy’s “He’s Simple, He’s Dumb, He’s the Pilot,” the first track from the 2000 album, The Sophtware Slump. The song is a spacey, downtrodden lament, the narrator calling out to the “2000 Man” floating in space, resisting the calls to land, and refusing to accept our world as it is any longer. When he finally comes back, he finds that nothing has changed, and that the whole of our crumbling planet only urges him to get with the program and join the rank and file. Become part of the shit machine. Rot with the rest of us.

It’s hard not to feel that way in the current climate of our world and culture at large. Everything’s a distraction, and everything stinks. I don’t want it for myself, and I certainly don’t want it for my sons either.

At least the song is beautiful.

“Don’t give in 2000 Man.”

Listen below, our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - A Valley Son (Sparing)

Much to do before Thanksgiving on Thursday, but for now i'm just floating away with the sounds of Grandaddy.  Listen to "A Valley Son (Sparing)" below, our Daily Jam.

Grandaddy

February will see the release of a new Grandaddy album, the first of all new material since the passing of founding member Kevin Garcia in 2017.  Check out the melancholy, pedal steel featuring "Watercooler" below and pre-order the "Blu Wav" LP here from Dangerbird Records.

Daily Jam - So You'll Aim Towards the Sky

I am so tired.  So very, very tired.  This week has been brutal, and next week is looking to be the same.  So let's let the soothing, melancholy sounds of Grandaddy float me away.  Listen to "So You'll Aim Towards the Sky" below, our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - Saddest Vacant Lot in All the World

Stuff from the '00s being 20 years old now makes my damn brain explode.  Anyway, here's Grandaddy with the now 20-year old "Saddest Vacant Lot in All the World," our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - Levitz

This weekend, i got to see a whole lot of old friends i haven't seen in over a year.  I got to meet babies and toddlers i didn't get to last year.  And i got to hug all of these old friend and kids for the first time in over a year too.  Hooray vaccinations!  Here's Grandaddy with "Levitz," our Daily Jam.

Grandaddy

Grandaddy's 2000 album "The Sophtware Slump" was and still is one of my favorite records.  And for its 20th anniversary, the band's Jason Lytle performed the whole thing on an old wooden piano.  The stripped down versions of the tunes are just as quirky but with an extra layer of melancholy.  Listen to "Jed the Humanoid" below and download "The Sophtware Slump...on a wooden piano" here via Dangerbird Records.

Daily Jam - Collective Dreamwish of Upperclass Elegance

Every album i adore is increasingly getting as old as i am.  It's the natural order of things but jarring nonetheless.  Here's "Collective Dreamwish of Upperclass Elegance" from Grandaddy, our Daily Jam.

Sonic Advent Calendar: Day 15 - Alan Parsons in a Winter Wonderland

Part Christmas tune, part parody, part ode to the joys of Alan Parsons Project, Grandaddy's "Alan Parsons in a Winter Wonderland," the band's contribution to the 2000 charity album "It's A Cool, Cool Christmas," is a fun and quirky little nugget of synth-psych holiday cheer.  Listen below.

Grandaddy - A Lost Machine

Reunited synth-drenched psych pop band Grandaddy are releasing their first album in 11 years in March (on my birthday no less), and i'm loving the wonderful, melancholy "A Lost Machine," a song that keeps with the band's technology anxiety as metaphor for the human condition motif that they've perfected to a tee.  Watch the video for the song below and get "Last Place" next year on 30th Century.

Jason Lytle covers Dwight Yoakam

In the late 90's/early 2000's, i was a hopeless devotee of the synth-psych-folk-pop band Grandaddy.  They made magic over the course of a couple of EP's and albums before they began to repeat themselves and eventually dissolved.  But man, there was some good stuff in there.  Former lead singer/songwriter Jason Lytle has continued to make music and just released a live recording of a house show from earlier this year.  The performance includes some stripped and raw version of classic Grandaddy songs and this excellent cover of Dwight Yoakam's "A Thousand Miles from Nowhere."  Listen below and get the whole album here.