More Than Ever: Bedhead

A popular theory—mostly amongst people who have very little authority to devise such theories—suggests that the vast majority of people have defined their musical vocabulary by the time they've reached their early 20s. What this generally means is that your "favorite" music—that which sets the standard for what will forever be your yardstick in all future listening—has been carved out in your impressionable high school and college years, and that most people will only understand music in the constructs of that time. This is why, for example, "Classic Alternative" radio stations have any legs to stand on—because most people have no interest in hearing things that challenge them beyond what they've understood in their youth. (This may also explain the popularity of Coldplay, but I'm not entirely sure.)

Another popular theory (or one popular with me, anyway) is that when a person plays rock music throughout their formative years, those persons—as they begin to unlock the previously magical mechanics of song structures—are much more likely to become disenchanted with the confines of pop music. In their adult life, these musicians—the smart ones, anyway—have mostly given up on the practices of "pop" music altogether; finding its structures rudimentary, and tedious to play. Instead, they gravitate toward the alienating, often indulgent structures of more complicated musicianship. This is also why traditionally good musicians typically have some of the worst taste in music.

So here's what I'm getting at: if only for the sake of my record collection, I'm sort of glad that I never learned to play an instrument as a kid. Because I'm perfectly contented in my boring ol' pop music. The boring-er the better, in fact. Because in my formative years, I spent most of my time listening molasses-y, hyper-intentional slowcore bands like Bedhead.

Bedhead began in Dallas in 1991, largely as a partnership between the brothers Kadane—Matt and Bubba. After the self-release of a seven inch, Bedhead aligned with one of Texas' only other notables—releasing WhatFunLifeWas, their debut, on King Coffey's (of the Butthole Surfers) Trance Syndicate label. Like most slowcore bands—Codeine, Low, and Galaxie 500 being the most notable—Bedhead's music was more defined by what it wasn't then what it was: it wasn't complicated, wasn't a spectacle, and most obviously, wasn't fast. It was dramatic if only for its sheer lack of dynamics. It was deliberate, melancholy, stark, thoughtful—and ultimately, sort of boring. But it was also lyrically brilliant and highly personal—just the sort of navel-gazey depression soundtrack I needed as I graduated into my 20s... by which time most of the bands that defined the sound had long broken up.

The band seemed sort of doomed from the get-go—always taking a backseat to Matt's academic career, the band only toured when he occasionally returned home to Texas from his new home in New York, with other members regularly stretching all across the globe for a variety of non-band pursuit. But in the whole of their seven-year career, Bedhead managed to release three full-lengths and two EPs (plus a couple of posthumous ones)—each successively better than the last—before calling it quits in 1998.

Their final proper album—the Albini-produced Transaction De Novo—was absolutely life-altering for me; giving me some of my first tastes at a true personal musical aesthetic with a vision that still maintains a lingering impression. It's bands like Bedhead that—sort of for the first time—introduced me to a music that I would want to make, and if I hadn't had the sort of patience for simplicity that I always associate with musical naivety, I may never have had the patience for them. Not that Bedhead were novices, by any means—they were just simple by intention. The sort of simple that most anyone could probably play. Not the sort of thing that dudes who play classical guitar are typically going to want to rock. And I sort of believe that even if I did eventually become virtuosic guitar player, I now have the sort of foundation in my life where the shitty taste in music won't necessarily come with it. Because when i was in my early 20s, I had bands like the Greatest Band of All Time on my side.