nine volt heart: a music blog

Although I have been obsessed with music as long as I can remember, I’ve often felt like an impostor when it comes to talking to other music nerds. I often feel like my knowledge isn’t encyclopaedic enough, like not having listened to the Beatles’ entire catalogue somehow gives me less of an authority to listen to any music at all. That’s why, many years ago, I asked for the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die for Christmas.

The book does what it says on the tin – it compiles 1001 albums that the editors deemed most noteworthy or important from the 50s to today. My copy, published in 2009, only has a handful of albums from the early 2000s, but I felt like I could handle modern music – it was the stuff from years ago that felt harder to sink my teeth into without a guide. It felt like a great starting point to me at the time. “If I listen to all these albums, surely I’ll know enough to count myself as a ‘real’ music fan,” I thought.

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These were some of my earliest concert shots, taken with a digital point-and-shoot when I was 14. My little camera gave me very limited control over my settings, and it couldn’t cope with the blazing sun and the stunning colours of Hayley’s outfit, but I managed to edit and salvage these few shots. Paramore was a really fun band to shoot – even back then, Hayley was so dynamic and vibrant and such a joy to see on stage. I still get excited and inspired thinking about this show all these years later.

Please credit ninevoltheart when re-posting. These photos are also available on Flickr.

Click ‘keep reading’ to see the other 9 photos!

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I never would’ve thought a 63-minute song would be my thing. 63 minutes of droning guitars, minimal, repetitive lyrics, and only slight changes between sections – I’m pretty sure a younger version of myself might have wondered if that even qualifies as music in the first place. While I was sceptical the first time I listened to it, Sleep’s Dopesmoker (1998) has quickly become one of my favourite albums. It’s a soundtrack to a meditative flow state that reminds me to find nuance in repetition, to pay attention to the details, and to breathe through it all.

When I hit my thirties, I almost immediately started taking supplements, eating more vegetables, and going to bed at the same time every night. My younger self is thoroughly disgusted at these developments. The worst part, though? I started meditating. I didn’t take it too seriously at first; it was just another item on the long list of things I’ve tried in the hopes of improving my mental health. But slowly, it started to become a bigger part of my life, opening my mind to new ideas and possibilities.

The same thing happened with Dopesmoker. I didn’t take it seriously the first time I listened to it. It’s an hour-long droning song about weed; how good could it possibly be? Then I listened again, and another time, and again after that. Over time, it started to seep in. It started to make sense. I realised it was a much deeper pool than I’d expected when I dove in.

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This interview with Heath Saraceno of Senses Fail took place at the Vans Warped Tour in Ventura, California on July 11, 2006.

Do you have a lucky object that has to be with you when you’re onstage?

I try to always be wearing two shoes. I think that’s very important. Some people only wear one and I think that’s really ridiculous. I understand not wearing any shoes, but I need the balance of two shoes, so I would say two shoes.

If you could see one band in concert, dead or alive, which band would it be and why?

That is a very good question. I would love to be able to go back in time and see Led Zeppelin play live, I’m talking like in the mid- to late-seventies. That’d be incredible.

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Just over four years ago, I went to My Chemical Romance’s return show at the Shrine in Los Angeles. Since then, I’ve been thinking about reunions and comebacks, and how we as music fans relate to them. When bands reunite, as MCR did in 2019, that reunion creates two separate sets of fans: one group that is excited about the reunion as a way to revisit the past, and another group that never left, for whom the band is not past, but has always been present.

I fall into the latter category when it comes to MCR. Since their reunion, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about (and being mildly annoyed by) the fans who thought of MCR’s return as a nostalgia trip, as revisiting their ‘teenage emo phase’. For so many of us, MCR wasn’t a phase, and the band getting back together has been something that has helped us reconnect with something that has always been part of us rather than something we left behind. I found myself at MCR shows in 2022 wondering why these other fans don’t seem to realise or care that my friends and I have been here all along. Where had all these people come from? Why were the people who made fun of us in high school for liking this band suddenly showing up at their concerts?

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