“What We Listen to and Why,” feat. Josh Buergel: A Discussion and a Playlist

Imagine our delight in learning that software engineer Josh Buergel was not only a boardgame designer, but a simultaneously mordant and self-effacing capsule writer and tireless curator of music at his Five Random Songs blog. Josh indulged BGS in an exploration of stuff we love—and how people and delicate circumstance pushed our listening lives in new directions.

BREAKUP GAMING SOCIETY: I began by de-digitizing my morning and making a mental note of the random song snippet that was in my head when I woke up. It seems to arise from the same part of my mind where anxious second voices offer unwanted running commentary, but it was a good track: "Santa Cruz" by Fatboy Slim. 

I've revisited several tracks from Better Living Through Chemistry and found them even stronger than I remember. I overdosed on hip hop between '87-'94, but the UK big beat stuff became a staple of my mid-late '90s listening because it recalled the thrill of discovering hip hop: those Big Beat producers loved breakbeats, scratches, punchy vocal samples.

There are worse ways to start a day. How did your musical day start off?

JOSH BUERGEL: I came to Fatboy Slim from a different direction, as I was a big fan of The Housemartins back in the day, so knowing that Fatboy Slim was Norman Cook made me more curious than I otherwise would have been. I was never a huge Big Beat guy. During that time period, I was mostly consumed with indie rock and noise rock, but I definitely sampled it here and there. 

I have to relate one of the dorkiest anecdotes I have: I was in debate in high school (that's not the dorky part, or at least, not all of it), which meant that I spent a fair bit of time hanging out with other high schoolers in motels with limited supervision. However, this didn't result in any of the bacchanalian hijinks that the movies of the time would have led me to expect. No, it mostly led to things like "gluing ceiling tiles back in place with spray cheese" and "teaching ourselves how to play bridge." 

One time, as we sat around a room listening to The Housemartins, a favorite among that group, we decided that we were going to record our own little cover of it. In the absence of proper recording equipment, we disassembled a headphone and secured it at the bottom of a lampshade, giving us a makeshift mic. We gathered around and did a shout-sing into a lampshade, recording straight to a cassette tape, belting out "Sheep" as best we could. Did it sound terrible? You know it. Did we have fun? Absolutely. Did we get yelled at to keep it down? I think you know the answer to that.

Anyway, my musical journey this morning began when I woke at 4 a.m. out of unspecific anxiety. As my unfocused mind tried to go back to sleep, it flipped through my mental songbook and settled on the punchy intro to the Slackers' "Every Day is Sunday” Not the whole song, mind you. Just that intro, looped into infinity like a klaxon for the world's coolest old-timey fire engine. It's reminiscent of the horrible old Wiseblood track, "Death Rape 2000": seven and a half minutes of three notes drilling their way into your skull. At least I didn't have that in my head, I suppose.

Where did you head after Big Beat? For me at least, I had to purge "Every Day is Sunday" by actually listening to the tune, and I headed from there to listen to the rest of the album, which is a treat.

BREAKUP GAMING SOCIETY: Ah, remembering your penchant for ska guitar from my Five Random Songs listening. Hopefully that killed the earworm.

One note on Fatboy Slim and The Housemartins: I had London 0 Hull 4 on tape in high school and didn't uncover the connection until I'd been listening to breakbeats for several years. I hope you have that recording you made somewhere.

Mid-'90s to early aughts began my tutelage: My boss, Tim, and two of my colleagues, Michael and Sam, took me to school. There is no algorithm that will ever replicate the range and depth of stuff they turned me onto. And they'd do it in the coolest way possible: I'd hold forth on the handful of things I knew about, and they'd be like, "Yeah, I love that shit, but check this out." I knew a lot about a little. They knew the best five adjacent alternatives for everything I would rattle off. Electronic, psychedelia, punk and art punk, metal, jazz, garage rock, soul...

One of my favorite lessons: closing the bars one night and ending up at Sammy's place. I had a Photek CD I had just bought on the strength of a good review. The first track was good, and I was trying really hard to like the rest, it being well-reviewed and all. I tried to impress Sammy with it. It played for 30 seconds and he slurred, "We're not listenin' to this fuckin' porno music." Then he threw in My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by Eno and Byrne and just fucked my head up.

JOSH BUERGEL: Alas, I think that hotel-room Housemartins recording, scratchy and distant, is lost to time.

The value of a music guru in one's life cannot be overstated. In high school, as I began to develop actual music tastes and begin to explore what I might like, the closest thing I had to a local music guru was my oldest sister. And obviously, that was wildly unacceptable to a fourteen-year-old. This obstinate, rock-headed stance meant that I was slow to recognize that my sister's taste was really good, and led me to disdain The Clash and Elvis Costello for years. Youth is wasted on the dippest of shits.

I had friends in high school who were also exploring underground music. It was a challenge to find stuff in pre-internet days in Spokane, WA. The key guru in my life at that time was an anonymous dude that my debate partner (shut up!) and I met at a debate camp (SHUT UP!) at the University of California at Berkeley. 

As he lived in a far cooler part of the state, he had access to far more information about underground bands. When he caught us listening to Nitzer Ebb in the dorm while reading through newspapers for things we could egregiously take out of context, he started talking to us about industrial. It became clear that we didn't know a whole lot—sure, Nitzer Ebb and Nine Inch Nails, but those bands weren't hard to find. And we knew about Big Black, so that was pretty cool of us, comparatively anyway. Rather than disdain us as the hopeless busters we obviously were, he decided to educate us.

He wrote down a whole bunch of bands on a scrap of paper. Just off the top of his head, he threw down a canon of industrial and underground shit for us to track down, a Rosetta Stone, but for clattering noise and angry shouting. It became a quest for us find records from this list, some of which are still very much favorites. Einstürzende Neubauten, for one, was on the list, and they're not only absolute geniuses and one of my favorite ever bands, they're even still going. 

Foetus was on the list, and JG Thirlwell's catalog is untouchable. And that marks referencing his work in each of my installments thus far (he's half of Wiseblood). Coil was on the list, and God only knows how some random high schooler knew about them, but they rule and Horse Rotorvator is a stone-cold classic. And so we go. When I went off to college, I made sure that I got a transcription of the list to take with me, and I continued to hunt for records from it even then.

But beyond the actual contents of the list, which mostly ruled, what that list did was give me the courage to take shots on things. For whatever reason, prior to that point, I was cautious about buying new music and seeking new artists. I was eager for new sounds, but still conservative about things. I had to have some significant exposure to the music before I was willing to have a go. I gradually expanded my exposure to music, but at a slow-ish rate. The list, though, gave me permission to have a go at stuff based on vibes, a quick recommendation, a capsule review, a shared music label, whatever. Buying a blind record went from scary to thrilling, and that was a sea change in my relationship to music. My tastes exploded in that last year of high school and through college, fueled in the latter by getting involved with college radio and new friends big into music. But it all started with one guy at debate camp who made a list.

So, what's your list? You meet an eager kid, just starting to explore music, and want to blow them away. Who are your five acts that you want them to learn about?

BREAKUP GAMING SOCIETY: To your point, you gotta grok what direction the kid's headed in if the recco's gonna stick. Cool recent story: Gal who works at the coffee shop I sometimes hit on Main St. Sweet kid, very talkative. Told me she was into classic jazz lately, “..like John Coltrane." After taking a couple seconds to process that fact, I got her to throw an Ella track on the shop's system—I was on a Clap Hands! Here Comes Charlie kick at the time—and to keep an eye out for Lee Morgan, particularly Sidewinder. In hindsight, I'd tack Sidney Bechet, Hampton Hawes and Django in there for good measure, what the hell. That's five. That seems like a good exploratory starter kit for a young person who's receptive to jazz.

If it's out of their emotional frame of reference, it withers. Got another kid at the smoothie shop to listen to "Gates of Steel" by DEVO, but that's only because I found out during register chit-chat he didn't know who DEVO was, and I got all strident and weird and messianic about it. On the subsequent visit, found out he'd actually listened to it. He made some polite observations, but he didn't care about that shit. He didn't have a bridge to it. The bridge has to start on their side.

JOSH BUERGEL: It's my suspicion that for most people, it's basically impossible to predict what I'll call a breakthrough record. Once someone decides they like a genre or scene or whatever, they can and will explore freely within that genre, and will probably be pretty open to recommendations within that genre. The reason that list of bands worked for me is that I was already into industrial, so it was a way to explode that interest out in every direction. And sure, some of those bands pushed the envelope—to describe Foetus as like anything else is probably foolish—but those bands had a track record of appealing to fans in the genre, so it worked. But if that same list was presented to a kid who was mostly into what we called college rock at the time (R.E.M. and the like) or post-punk or new wave or whatever, it wouldn’t take.

There are blessed moments where a special record breaks through genres, knocks down the walls surrounding our tastes and shows us that we might love a different genre. I can name some of those records easily off the top of my head: Raising Hell showed me that I might love hip-hop (and Three Feet High and Rising and It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back taught me I definitely did). Those three records are, of course, stone-cold classics, inner-circle hall of fame records that have been praised in every corner, and deservedly so. 

But the tricky thing about a breakthrough record is that there's no real way to predict it. An album has to hit someone with the right sound, at the right time, in the right mood. It's an alchemical process, pure serendipity, and the only way it's ever happened for me is just happenstance. I hear a thing in a store, on the radio, at a party, at a friend's house, wherever, and I get a blast of magic through my head. 

The album that cracked the door to punk open for me was Allroy's Revenge, by ALL (the band that descended from the Descendents). It hit me just right. I couldn't explain why, but it sounded great to me, and I made a copy of my friend's CD and listened to it a ton. That led me from there to other work by them, by the Descendents, other SST stuff, the Dead Kennedys, and on we go. But that breakthrough record? Nobody could have predicted it.

It's why, to this day, I just try stuff. Records that I don't know, bands that I don't know, genres I don't love (but might soon), all kinds of things. It's an attempt to capture lightning in a bottle again, and I'll never get tired of chasing that high. It's getting harder and harder for me as the years go on, but I'll never stop.

I got through all of that without saying I'm not qualified to talk about jazz. Not bad!

BREAKUP GAMING SOCIETY: So, what track most recently created that serendipitous (and increasingly evasive) blast of magic out of nowhere for you? Let's hear it.

JOSH BUERGEL: Good question! I used to be kind of an off-and-on again metal guy. I always loved Metallica because I have ears. I really enjoyed Slayer after being curious why they were on Def Jam and getting my skull crushed by Reign in Blood. I learned about Napalm Death in college and just slowly added metal bands I followed gradually over the years. But I never really went out seeking things. Wasn't my scene, you see.

By 2013, that stable of metal bands that I liked had grown enough that I think most rational observers would conclude that I was a metal fan, but I still sort of resisted that notion. The record that pulled me over the line from "Yeah, I like some metal, but not a ton,” to "I suppose I'm a metal guy" was from Altar of Plagues. It got a nice writeup in the AV Club, so I picked up Teethed Glory and Injury. I was sitting in the parking lot of my son's preschool, having arrived early for pickup that day, and was listening to it in the car. It was riveting. Sure, I'd listened to black metal before and even enjoyed some of it, but the visceral impact of the album hit me just right. I got to "Burnt Year" and it all clicked. That song, in that parking lot, on that day, tipped me over. I became a metal guy.

I'm not sure I've been hit quite the same since then? The previous one I can really remember was when Easy Street Records in West Seattle put on "Up From The South" from the Budos Band in the store in 2005 while I was waiting for my table at the nearby Mashiko. It was instant love. I became rabid about soul instantly, especially the new wave of stuff at that time. I'd been at least an occasional soul listener, as any hip-hop fan sort of invariably is, but that record and moment really kicked it into overdrive. So, every eight years-ish I hit one of these on my own? 

Those aren't the only records I've fallen in love with over that time, of course, but those are time where my tastes shifted and came into focus, and my path of seeking music bent in some new direction.

BREAKUP GAMING SOCIETY: My revelations this summer came from revisiting bands that I could hear with new ears now that I'm no longer a teenager (well, not in most regards) and don't stridently base my whole identity on which group listens to what. With gentle nudges from two friends who pointed me at tracks I never listened to from For Those About to Rock, I spent about two weeks this summer, mostly drunk, just listening to Thin Lizzy, Cheap Trick, Motorhead and AC/DC. I went after grainy concert videos. Weird late-night showcases like Don Kirshner's Rock Concert salvaged from the VHS collections of diligent obsessives. Listened to stuff other than the handful of tracks that FM radio ground into the dirt.

I was like that Ford exec in Ford vs Ferrari when Damon's character took him for a little spin in the monster he and his fellow senior brass had commissioned, but hadn't experienced. It's a great scene. He was weeping at the end: "I had no idea!"

The last instance was something like that divine visitation. I was legless in my kitchen, somewhere in the temporal warp between midnight and false dawn. The accent lights I placed all over my kitchen transformed its hideous and dated surfaces into an ethereal rock club. I think I listened to "Southern Girls" by Cheap Trick 15 times in a row. Each replay my brain was picking out new small touches that made it work: the pristine backing vocal melody on the chorus, the way Rick Nielsen's reverb-y tricks over Bun E. Carlos' lunchbucket drum intro make you salivate for that first big downstroke chord. The joy was absolute.

I used to think I'd go watch the Battle of Hastings or see Charlie Parker play at Harlem clubs if I had a time machine. Give me that option today? I'd just rewind a few weeks and do that night again.

JOSH BUERGEL: The point about not caring who listens to what is certainly one of those gifts we gain with age, and it's without a doubt a valuable one. Young Josh wouldn't be caught dead listening to country (Uncle Tupelo didn't count, maaaaan). My dad always derided the stuff, which was omnipresent in eastern Washington, and I certainly absorbed his contempt. And while I haven't come around on pop country at all (it's bad), learning more about country has been a nice journey. I'm certainly not well-versed or anything, but there's some outstanding music out there, and I don't even flinch at the sound of a twang anymore.

Broadly, I think there's a lesson there that only took decades to sink in, which is if something has stood the test of time and still appeals to people, there's probably something of value there. And it's worth seeking that value and learning about it, not just to see if it's for you, but even to acknowledge that it's there. 

Plenty of stuff will come and go, not really have much of a legacy. But if it did and found an audience, "Why?" is a great question to ask. Why do people still get amped by AC/DC? Why does Cheap Trick still sound like a million bucks today? You can unpack the micro, like you are, and find brilliance at that level. You can let the macro wash over you, let out a little "Fuck yeah.” Doesn't really matter, because if you pay attention, you can hear the quality, and it'll click.

BREAKUP GAMING SOCIETY: Yep. Speaking of which, you deserve to know that your efforts with Five Random Songs were not wasted on me. You're one of my Music Influencers, as proven by the fact I now have several tracks from The Fiery Furnaces on rotation and have for a couple years. At the time, it was lost on me in the hipster noise coming out of Brooklyn, but one night I hit Play on your site's embedded player...and I was sold.

So, good job, Mr. Save Stuff from the Cultural Memory Hole.

-FINIS-