Silverchair
Jul
'07
Up until this very moment I haven’t listened to any Silverchair music pre-Neon Ballroom since 2001. In middle school and high school, I was really into this band, in a sort of sickly obsessive way that required several hundred small magazine cut-out pictures covering my bedroom walls, rare posters, CD singles that could only be found through “past fans” who were selling them as they weren’t attainable through any website or record store, T-shirts most of which I don’t even remember anymore as I had so many, and numerous attempts to see the band live though my parents thought I was too young for concerts. They weren’t my first concert, though when I was in ninth grade I sometimes told people they were, because I was so enamoured with the idea of having seen them in middle school that I’d have rather lied to my friends than admit that no, I’ve never actually seen this band which I devote my life to in concert.
Sometime shortly after high school I sold all of my memorabilia except the Neon Ballroom limited edition CD + DVD (apparently going for $52 on Amazon!) which was purchased mid-1999 through the fan club (of which I was also a part, and I still have my Silverchair guitar pics, official fanclub card, and Llama Appreciation Society long-sleeved T-shirt). I decided that I didn’t like Silverchair anymore. I believe this was influenced by a boy, but I can’t be sure; my memory isn’t the greatest sometimes. I also recall disliking what I’d heard of the “new album” Diorama, so this may have had a large impact on my falling-out with this band. But it’s very true that sometimes I wonder what made me sell all those things which I went through so much work to obtain, which I will never have the time, patience, motivation, or willingness to regain. These were things that I would much rather still have, if not just for nostalgia’s sake, than to prove that I was alive and I had an interest that lasted more than five years and which I stuck with until it exhausted me.
Today I was looking at concert listings at a club I don’t like visiting but which sometimes has good bands nonetheless. There, staring back at me with big, blue puppy dog eyes was the word “Silverchair.” I remember them, I thought. I used to like them. I then decided to search for their website and remembered that with the release of the dreaded album Diorama, they also made their website entirely in flash. I hated that, too, and maybe my inability to access comfortably my favorite band’s website made me stray away. I didn’t feel betrayed like I did when Metallica was on the Mission Impossible: III soundtrack with that awful song which helped disillusion me from their awesomeness; rather, I simply stopped listening. Silverchair became a thing of the past, indeed, forgotten like the rest of my memories from that period in my life.
On the media page of their new website, which has colorful boxes that make me think, “yes, this is the direction they went in, and the direction I didn’t follow,” you can listen to minute-long clips of some of their songs. So for the first time since 2001, I’ve been listening to pre-Neon Ballroom Silverchair.
The first song listed, and thus the first song I heard, is “Abuse Me.” It’s amazing the effect those first few notes had on me. It’s not the same nostalgic yearning I sometimes get for Care Bears or Fischer Price Little People, reading Matilda by Roald Dahl or visiting the neighborhood I grew up in. I’m not sure it’s entirely describable, but it strikes me in a place which only ever hurts when my heart is broken. Maybe that’s it - maybe it breaks my heart to think of this past love of my life, this band which I grew up with and from which I drifted apart so easily, forgotten as though part of a passing wind.
I continue listening down the list: “Cicada,” “Faultline” and “Findaway,” and the feeling is wholly different than listening to the Freak Show songs. The Frogstomp songs remind me of a far past and a recent past; I’m listening to songs that have the same influences as the peppy punk songs I’ve listened to in the past few years on recommendation of a former best friend. They have the same elements. It’s not the sad feeling that walking on the moon is such an extraordinary accomplishment which opens up an unknown future that “Learn to Hate” and “Lie to Me” make; rather, it’s the feeling that “Israel’s Son” is like walking on the moon with other outerspace tourists. It isn’t a heart-break, just a nudge.
By the time I’m halfway down the list, listening to a song called “No Association” which I associated with myself and my life very strongly as a younger teenager, with such brilliant lyrics as: “Couldn’t care less if I died right now, who am I? I don’t know, you tell me! You seem to know everything else.” It’s at this moment I realize what’s going on - I’m listening to Silverchair. One-minute clips of the beginnings of each song are enough to invoke these confusing and moving feelings in me. Listening to “Madman” a moment ago, I heard the words in the back of my mind though it was instrumental on the original album. I had the imported “Shade” single with the lyrical version of that song, and I memorized all of it. I knew every one of these songs. And here I’m listening to it in a way that I would have never thought likely - through the website, sitting on my bed with a slight headache from lack of sleep. Back then, when you searched for “Silverchair” in Google, you’d get several pages of fansites and only after that, the Amazon.com link and Wikipedia-type of site.
“Pop Song for Us Rejects” comes on and I smile. It’s so happy and poppy and about such an unhappy and unpoppy subject. I loved this song at one point in time. I sang it, along with all the others, in my bedroom with the volume turned up so loud that I couldn’t hear the banging on the door to turn it down. I was so into it that sometimes I felt as though nothing else mattered. This small trip into the past has shown me how easy it is to be completely effected by something. It sounds entirely cliche, but Silverchair changed my life, and I have to give them credit for it somewhere.
The Silverchair shirts that I bought new are now sold as “vintage.” I’m crushing on this feeling.
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