New band releases first great album of 2010

This is a love letter to my favorite album of 2010, so far.
That album, Titus Andronicus’ “The Monitor,” may also be the craziest one of the year, as it’s a punk-rock concept album about the Civil War featuring a song called “Theme from ‘Cheers.’” The “Cheers” in that title is indeed the bar from the famous television show.
Titus Andronicus hasn’t made a big name for itself, yet. Its debut album, “The Airing of Grievances,” was released on an independent label in 2009, and other then a small cult following, most music fans probably never heard of it.
The band would have been off my radar, too, except once in awhile record companies will send me free CDs, in hopes I’ll write about them. Most of these CDs are worthless except for the jewel packages they often don’t come in anymore, but every now and then something catches my ear.
“The Airing of Grievances” caught my ear, mainly because I had read a few reviews about the band comparing it to The Replacements, one of my all-time favorite bands. Plus, Titus Andronicus is from New Jersey, home to Bruce Springsteen, who is my favorite rocker.
I liked it a lot because it sounded as though The Replacements and Springsteen had a child, and that child grew up listening to nothing but The Clash, Rage Against the Machine and his parents’ music.
When I heard the band had a new album out, and I realized the record company wasn’t going to send me a free copy, I made a trip to Radio KAOS to purchase it, and fortunately owner Randy Wagner had it in stock, like he usually always does with those obscure titles other stores don’t carry.
From the first listen it was clear “The Monitor” was a bold artistic statement and a huge leap forward for this band, one that in a perfect world would propel them into stardom.
“No, I never wanted to change the world, but I’m looking for a new New Jersey/Because tramps like us, baby, we were born to die,” belts lead singer and guitarist Patrick Stickles in the opening track, “A More Perfect Union.” He quotes and then dismisses Springsteen in one line, and by the end of the track he’s sarcastically calling for people to “rally around the flag.”
Throughout the album the band makes references to the Civil War. It doesn’t make much sense, but truly, what concept album has ever made sense? The plotlines of The Who’s “Tommy” and of Green Day’s “American Idiot” are probably some of the most comprehensible ones, but even those are sometimes non-sensible.
A good concept album, like those examples and like “The Monitor,” will have one or two main themes, with songs built around them, and those themes are often vague enough to apply to other things in life other than what they seem to be about.
So while Titus Andronicus is often referencing the Civil War – it even includes Stickles’ high school history teacher reading excerpts from Abraham Lincoln speeches throughout it – that war could also be the war people often wage internally with their own selves.
For example, in “Theme from ‘Cheers,’” Stickles sings: “But while we’re young, boys, everybody raise your glasses high,/Singing, ‘Here’s to the good times, here’s to the home team./Kiss the good times goodbye, oh yeah,/Kiss the good times goodbye.’”
Throughout the song, which is the standout track on “The Monitor,” the narrator is clearly aware he’s not doing a service to himself by drinking, but as long as he’s young he may as well have fun. By the end of the song he’s begging for someone to give him a whiskey.
The song reeks of booze and cigarettes, but that’s what makes it so fun. Especially for old geezers like myself whose days of hanging out in taverns are long behind us.
By the end of the album, the band returns to New Jersey in a 12-minute epic titled “The Battle of Hampton Roads.” It’s a journey I’m glad I took, and one I highly recommend others to take.

Why the world needs Axl Rose

Remember Axl Rose? Probaby not, since he disappeared when Nirvana happened.
He was the volatile lead singer of rock and roll’s greatest band in the world from 1988 to 1991 – Guns N’ Roses. Every guy wanted to be him because every girl wanted to be with him. And every band during that time period tried to imitate the Gunners, even if they were just superb imitators themselves.
Then he disappeared after the vastly underrated punk covers album, “The Spaghetti Incident,” in 1993, only re-emerging briefly to fire the other members of Guns N’ Roses, make an appearance or two at the MTV Video Music Awards, headline a few money-grabbing tours or leak a few songs from the forever-in-progress “Chinese Democracy,” an album that always seems ready to come out but that never does.
As a middle school student in 1988 when Guns N’ Roses released “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” an ode to Axl’s model girlfriend that turned their 1987 album “Appetite for Destruction” into the best-selling debut of the 1980s, I immediately became addicted to Guns N’ Roses. The hard-edge of songs like “It’s So Easy” and “Mr. Brownstone,” contrasted with the power ballads like “Sweet Child” and “Patience,” along with Axl’s seemingly endless personalities he created by singing in five different voices, was candy to my Midwestern ears.
Never before and never since have I experienced so much dynamic emotion, both anger and love, from a single band. Axl’s voice hit a vein that made my arm hairs stand straight.
His tendency to rant about a variety of issues in concert and interviews made the subject matter of GNR’s songs seem real. People credit Kurt Cobain and Nirvana with bringing raw emotion back to music. Those people are wrong, though. Axl was doing it before them; he just wasn’t as subtle. Need examples or proof. Go to YouTube and type in “Axl rant.” You’ll get dozens of them, including several that started riots.
But to understand why the world needs Axl, you need to know about a specific one from 1992 in Chicago. During a concert there, he spent seven minutes ranting about his family and how they messed him up. Some concert-goers booed him, wanting to hear music instead of a therapy session. He responded by telling them that although they may not have had home lives that messed them up later in lives, the person next to them may have had this life. And he wanted those people to know they should not let others bring them down.
And then he disappeared. It was obvious Axl had emotional issues because of a messed up family life, but it seemed he had overcome them. He fronted the biggest band in the world, he married (and divorced) a supermodel, he earned enough money for him and any future children and grandchildren to be set for life, and he could do anything he wanted with his career because no record executive was going to tell him otherwise. Unfortunately for fans, he went away, only teasing us every once in a while that he was going to come back, making it appear that his emotional issues were a problem still challenging him.
A comeback would show the world, and all those fans who listened to him say they shouldn’t let others bring them down, that life is all about overcoming obstacles. Axl’s emotional issues were the result of a bad upbringing. We need to know, from him, that he beat this barrier.
Since the last Guns N’ Roses album, I have graduated from high school, from college, begun a 10-year career, got married, bought a house, had a kid and have gone through five different vehicles.
I still cling to the hope Axl will return soon. He will release “Chinese Democracy,” and he will show us, at age 45, that he didn’t let anybody bring him down.