Sunny Daze for President, Joe

Attempting to transcend the context; finding it's not really possible.

I'm walking down the Parkway in search of tranquility of the hidden kind. I am holed up in an office that doesn't have windows and it's slowly infecting me like carbon monoxide. When I go outside, I don't bring my iPod anymore, and it hurts. I like walking around and listening to music, but for the last six months, I've been afraid the earbuds are going to block out the sound of my work-issued cellphone bleating an emergency signal that one of my workers needs help. But I took a break today. A certified break, with iPod firmly on PLAY. Walked down the street. Sat at a fountain. Put my head in my palm as my arm leaned against my crossed knees, and I closed my eyes. Might've fallen asleep for a second there, you know how it goes.

I think we put too much emphasis on "changing the environment to change how we hear music." I do it all the time, sometimes on purpose. I let my mood and my environment dictate how I feel about the sounds entering my ears and my brain at that time. I guess there's nothing wrong with it, I just feel like, for whatever reason, today I'm against the idea. That I want to get past it, know music for what it is not what it does and where it does it. Maybe I'm feeling that way because Sunny Daze & the Weathermen are playing joyous music, and I don't feel the joy.

The sun helped! That's the most basic way to put it. I hate putting it that way. I hate being basic. The "sun" and "Sunny Daze" connection is too trite. It's the truth though. It doesn't make any sense to listen to this upbeat garage rock music stuck inside a dusty windowless government office. I found joy in being free from that, even temporarily, just sitting on a bench, in front of a classic public fountain, and listening to the sounds of summer while I enjoyed summer with my other four senses as well.

Sunny Daze for President is a joyous album that is so simple that it borders on being dumb. You have to turn your brain off for this one. There's nothing wrong with turning your brain off, I'm just warning you, it's required. The lyric I keep hearing through every spin is "this pro quo is quid," which doesn't make any literal sense ("this for this is that" in a literal translation?). But of course, neither do many of the popular hit songs' lyrics in music history, songs by anyone from the Kingsmen to BTS. You can lean into how dumb it is. Just turn that goddamn brain off, and let it flow. Wait, is that one chorus saying "we'll get McDonald's on the way"? I can't tell. Ah shit, who cares, amirite?!

There's this prevailing sense that I sometimes forge chains for myself and then regret when they are locked on and I lose the key. I'm talking about choosing a career path that led me to being stuck in an windowless office, pushing paperwork for a paycheck, not being able to listen to bright sunny garage-psych-pop music the way it was intended, due to obligations blah blah blah. I'm also talking about Record Club, I think, about how this is the sort of album that you'd pass to a friend and be like "hey, here's some random shit I found on page eighteen of a google search for garage rock, you might like it," and that could be that, that could be the full fucking analysis of thing, and yet we have fit the chains on our typing fingers and chosen to type a self-imposed 1000 words minimum about the album that doesn't need all those words. There's not really any "breaking free," and most times I don't want to, I'm very comfortable in my heavy chains, thank you. They're more like a weighted vest during a thunderstorm. Most of the time.

It's derivative, the music. Nothing you haven't heard before (don't let the made-up term of "flower punk" distract you, and lovely as it is to imagine that the term was created in self-awareness, knowing that bands like this need made up genres consisting of one single band in order to survive). Quickest way to get there using Record Club artists is to connect La Luz to King Tuff. Quickest way to get there outside of Record Club is to connect psych-mode King Gizz to Tomorrow's Hits-era the Men. I'm thinking about what I said about Wand—who exist in the same cube of psychedelia but on opposite vertices—being like bands I've heard of before, and knowing now that that's not a bad thing, that if they sound like bands you like, then you're probably gonna like them. Maybe it's easier to like but harder to love. Sunny Daze is too derivative to love; Sunny Daze is too derivative of bands I like to not also like them. 

I also tend to overrate artists if I've never heard of them before I listen to them. I love the idea of "discovering" someone, and I'll tend to fudge the numbers to make that happen. Where did Sunny Daze & the Weathermen come from? Picked out of a random assortment of artists with the word "Sunny" in their name, and chosen on a poll almost completely arbitrarily, I assume. It's cool to find a band under those circumstances and ALSO really like the album. It doesn't happen too often, when Record Club is the first of many steps for an artist. The bands we listen to and write about here are either already established in the social consciousness, or else they start too small that they'll never make it big. Sunny Daze are most likely of the latter sort. But why not elevate them within our small circle? That's my feeling, that it feels good. And so the grade at the bottom tends to be a little inflated.

That's all context, though. I'm trying to escape that. I don't need the weather to tell me whether to like the Weathermen. I don't need to examine the foundational ideals of a music club to say whether the music within that music club is up to snuff. I don't need to listen to it here and then there. I should just be able to listen, and report how I feel. Was I to do that now, on my eighteenth listen today, in my office, just me and the music and the blog, eyes closed, all external stimuli cut off 'cept for the staticky sounds of Sunny Daze's rough excited vocals and the rollicking backing band behind him, I would say that: I enjoy this. It makes me happy. That should be enough!

GRADE: 4 pukes out of 5