Monday Night is for the playlists... a.k.a. time to get your drink on since there literally might not be a tomorrow...

God Save Us All, except Trump.  Seriously, Fuck Trump...  

On the eve of the Election 2016, or as it's better known (insert your favorite John Oliver alternate election name joke here, my favorite being "America's Shit Salad Fuckstravaganza 2016"), I wanted to live it up a little and let loose.  After all, it may literally be my last chance to listen to music and drink as an American.  Let's allow music to take our minds off of the Green Bay Packers' second consecutive loss and our possible pending doom come the morrow.  Enjoy!

The Cardigans - "My Favourite Game"

Jennifer Lopez - "Waiting for Tonight"

Starting this shit off with a two-fer.  Speaking of two-fers, any Gran Turismo 2 fans out there?  One of the most ridiculous things my buddy and I used to do, for hours and hours on end, was firing up the old Playstation, putting GT2 on in head to head mode and playing "tag" with the cars we would choose.  We would stay up all night, racing around the track trying to elude whichever one of us was "it."  We had some epic battles.  Seriously epic fucking battles to the death.  Sort of, but more like stay up all night rocking Jennifer Lopez's "On the 6" on repeat until one of us literally passed out from exhaustion.  "Waiting for Tonight" is the perfect song for three in morning driving, video-game style.  It really gets you in the zone.  One of my favorite things about my then best friend, was the fact that we could, unabashedly, enjoy silly pop music like Jennifer Lopez or Britney Spears or Mandy Moore with no judgement.  Definitely not something I shared with anyone else, being a twelve year old in rural Wisconsin.  For men, listening to Jennifer Lopez was generally frowned upon, to put it nicely.  We enjoyed just being fucking goofy and listening to goofy things.  Lots of great times...

Beach Slang - "Bad Art and Weirdo Ideas"

I know, right?  Fucking left turn immediately but this song kills me.  There just aren't many songwriters who can actually fucking write lyrics worth a damn anymore.  This muthafucker can.  I don't know his name because I hate googling things like that.  Fucking great and smart Rock N' Roll, Punk, or whatever you want to call it.  But whatever you call it, just be sure to also call it awesome.  He focuses a lot on the sense of being "alive," which hits me right where I need to be hit sometimes.  This album, masterfully entitled "The Things We Do To Find People Who Feel Like Us," warms the deepest parts of the cockles of my heart and makes me want to find a couple dudes or chicks to start a more hard-rocking version of Bradley Wik and the Charlatans.  I fall in love, rough, with records that inspire me, and this one definitely does.

The War on Drugs - "Red Eyes"

Well... This song has everything I hate about hipster music, but, for some reason, I can't help but listen to it.  They do the stupid "douse everything in reverb" nonsense, I can't understand a goddamn word this fucker is singing, the bridge sucks, the song feels loosely structured and not crafted into its' best possible version, but, despite all of that, I still rock out to it.  Go figure.  Fuck...

Paul Simon - "Kodachrome"

Let's cleanse the palette with this one.  Paul Simon might've been a huge asshole by all accounts, but, fuck, could he write a tune.  I love it when he says "my lack of education hasn't hurt me none."  That's my life.  In this day and age, people look at a (relatively) young man who says he intentionally skipped college quite strangely.  Most people don't understand what I got was so much more valuable.  I spent my college years, the amazing/terrible/hopeful/hope-killing years, traveling this great country across and back playing music.  Believe you me, I've seen more shit than I would've wasting my time learning shit I learned on my own for free anyways.  Maybe I would've banged a few more chicks, but, then again, maybe not.  I'm a relationship type of guy.  Asperger's and depression make it hard for me to be alone for any significant amount of time.  I almost found out the limit of that once, and I don't want to do it again...

Mos Def - "Hip Hop"

Early on in my getting-to-know-hip-hop-music days, my good buddy gave me this record, "Black on Both Sides," along with Talib/Reflection Eternal's "Train of Thought" and Aesop Rock's "Labor Days."  Holy muthafucking shit is that an education on some great hip hop.  I can't thank him enough for introducing me to so many great artists.  Listening back to "Black on Both Sides" makes me sad, though, as all of the issues he poses are still quite prevalent, and getting worse (thanks Trump, you cunt).  You can go back into hip hop further and hear the same things.  After all these years, it's depressing to see we haven't moved forward hardly at all.  It's fucked up.  There's a world full of people who don't look exactly like white Americans and somehow that's hard to accept for some people, and Trump is playing on that ignorance/fear.  Goddamnit.  Please people, don't let him become president...

Stevie Nicks (feat. Don Henley) - "Leather and Lace"

Stevie and Don Henley?  Uh, yes please.  Do I really have to say more?  If I had to pick one song to describe my relationship with my girlfriend, this would definitely be it.  Not sure if that's a good thing or not, but, well, it's true...

Pearl Jam - "Given to Fly"

For all of those who watch "Touring Band 2000" religiously, as I do, you'll get this one.  This is easily one of the highlights.  Fuck, it's just beauty incarnate.  Truly.  That's all I have to say about this one.

Neil Young - "Albuquerque"

This album, "Tonight's the Night," is one of the main influences on my new album.  I love the rawness of the songs and the recordings, which fits the songs fucking perfectly.  Sometimes, the best way to display the stories is to scale back the production.  This song sounds like I want all my songs to sound like.  I know this record was initially rejected by Reprise Records, but goddamn, did they fuck up.  Labels rarely understand.  Wilco made a movie about it...

Roy Orbison - "It's Over"

Someday, I might be able to listen to this song without tearing up, but not tonight.  I wish that when I grow up I can write songs like this.  Obviously, I'll never be able to sing one note in my life as beautiful as Roy, but I wish to God I could.  I really do.  This song is so beautiful and magnificent.  That fucking vibrato, those sad notes.  Roy was truly a once in a lifetime talent.  Johnny Cash spoke very highly of him, and given his "Black and Night" concert, Roy was clearly respected by his peers.  Well, I use "peers" loosely as not many could touch his level of talent and songwriting.  As far as male singers go, Roy's in a rare class with Otis Redding and Jeff Buckley.  Nobody tops Otis, ever, and I mean FUCKING EVER, but Roy comes close.  These are the kind of artists that make me feel so vastly unable to convey the same level of emotion, pain, hope, love, despair, happiness and longing.  At least I know where the bar is set...

Wu-Tang Clan - "Da Mystery of Chessboxin'"

Nine year old Bradley couldn't fucking comprehend this shit.  All I knew was that I loved it.  I heard "Protect Ya Neck" first on MTV and fell in love.  I ran to the library (yes, the library) to check out this CD and revel in it for a couple weeks.  I had friends who liked Biggie and Tupac, but even so, it was hard to convince rural, white Wisconsinites that "Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)" was brilliant music.  Needless to say, I listened to this a lot by myself.  The music I couldn't listen to around others was usually relegated to the Walkman while cutting grass.  No one could hear what I was playing and it was probably better that way.  I could listen to anything I wanted away from my judgmental friends.  Or, I guess, "friends," as I would find out later.  Maybe I'll tell you the full story sometime, but for now let's just say I ended up punching one of my best friends in the face because he stood behind my (former) friends when they were verbally abusing the only black kid in our high school.  Shit kicked off and punches were thrown and he came to the defense of his lifelong buddy (which is hard to blame him for on that front, but it's obviously not acceptable given the circumstances) and I had to defend myself, and basic human decency, and hit him before he hit anyone else.  It was a strange, confusing time for me and I ended up without friends for a while.  But high school kids don't make great friends anyways and I found out the older kids had better weed.  So, I guess it was a win-win for me.  I won morally and in smokin' that shit while watching WWF on Mondays.  Life is weird but Karma is for real.  For real...

Speaking of Karma, I can't imagine what will happen to all of you who vote Trump tomorrow...  How about we don't find out...  May God have mercy on us all...

Quantifying the Unquantifiable or some other shit like that. Yada, yada, yada, something about musical influences...

Quantifying the Unquantifiable… Or, in less twatty terms, ranking my early influences according to a different set of criteria.

I promise, that at some point, these posts will be less like playoff wins by Kansas City sports teams:  incredible to experience but so few and far between.  I intend to make this more like a Volvo, perhaps not quite as flashy each go round, but if you live long enough you can watch the odometer swing back to zeroes… Well, maybe that didn’t quite fit but you get the gist.  Then again, given that my Packers (yes, I am an owner so I can call them “my” Packers without having to cut this short to head to my head-shrinking appointment to talk about my stalking and possessive behavior) play the Washington Injuns (insert equally offensive, racist name here) tomorrow, I may be in an entirely different mindstate for the next month or so and, therefore, unable to write through the pain of admitting Kirk Cousins somehow defeated Aaron Rodgers in a playoff game.  It’s bad enough that, in some sick twist of fate, Kirk is actually favored to win.  I know a certain #12 does not like that, Mr. Cousins.  Mr. Rodgers is most certainly a lot more pissed off about this than I am, and I already ripped a sink out of the wall or started a one man riot and flipped a car (a smart car, but still, it counts) or whatever other Hollywood-type display you prefer for outwardly showing anger.  Enough rambling, onto the good stuff! (editors note:  The Packers won, of course, so hopefully everyone who was dumb enough to bet on Kirk Cousins, yes Kirk Cousins, in a playoff game against Aaron Rodgers is on permanent time-out)

Last evening, I was enjoying the warm glow that subtly and gently washes over one who has enjoyed a fine glass of bourbon or two, when, as is often the case, I started to think back on my younger days and how I came to be where/who/what I am today.  The obvious place to start, the place where one of those runway people who direct the planes with the big glowsticks would point to, is music.  I was sifting through my mind-grapes, and I began to look at the term “Musical Influences” in a different way.  Now, normally I would pass over the thought of the question and just give my normal Springsteen, Petty, William Joel, Dylan, etc. but on this night, and perhaps due to the warmness of the glow I was enjoying, I started digging much deeper than that.  Yes, those musical giants are, without a doubt, the ones who shaped much of the way that I  perceive, ingest and “outgest”(neither my brain, perhaps as a result of last nights “glow,”  nor Merriam-Webster can provide an antonym for “ingest” which seems really fucking weird to me.  As a result, I’m sticking with “outgest”) music.  But, when thinking in terms of a more measureable impact, I’m drawn to an entirely separate group of bands and albums that 16 and 17 year old Brad Wik(as he was known back then) used to forge the steel frame of what would eventually become to be known, and lovingly referred to, as My Life.

There were no specific criteria to compose the forthcoming list, but I was trying to apply an overarching cause and effect-type theory to achieve the, sort of scientific but not really scientific at all, results.  For example, 16 year old Brad Wik loved Stevie Ray Vaughan a lot, and I mean a lot, but the very first band I ever played in played no SRV, was not a blues band by any means and therefore, SRV had little to no tangible effect on my life thereafter.  However, our band did play “Corduroy” by Pearl Jam, thus making Pearl Jam much more “influential” in regards to this exercise.  SRV was one of my main motivations for picking up the guitar, but had I not participated in my high-school era band, I likely wouldn’t have pursued the insane notion of music as a career (which, in retrospect, was probably a terrible decision, but somehow even 28 year old Bradley still believes fully he can become successful as a musician; however flawed his thinking may be).  That being said, my high-school era band (“Third Production” I believe it was called) carries the most weight for this, and subsequently, I believe, for my life.  I guess that makes Jake my equivalent of the escape pod with R2D2 and C3PO inside that begets Star Wars.  I owe him a very large “thank you” which I will never fully be able to express with words alone…

Without further ado, here are the results (in no particular order, though I’ve numbered them for some ridiculous reason):

1. Modest Mouse – The Lonesome Crowded West

After all the years I spent listening to Springsteen, Dylan, Neil Young, William Joel and Meatloaf (why not?), I would have never fathomed that a record like this would change my life.  “Trailer Trash” straight up blew my mind.  I had never heard anything like that before and was wholly unprepared for what that song would do to me.  It became a staple in band rehearsals after libations had flowed…

2. Radiohead – OK Computer

I can’t imagine anyone growing up in the same general era as me wouldn’t have this on a top five list.  Then again, there are a lot of things that I can’t imagine.  Like how many times Jake would play this on his acoustic guitar and we would drunkenly sing/yell-a-long to this, full of the spirit of youth; and Fleischmann’s…

3. Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Weld (Live)

At first glance, this might seem like the outlier on this list.  I know, it wasn’t supposed to inlcude the “pillar” type artists but I’ll never forget playing “Fuckin Up” at our first ever, and acoustic, by the way, show and badly “fuckin up” one of the changes, to which, Jake replied “Well, I guess that’s why they call it that.”

4. Pearl Jam – (any of their Live Bootlegs but mostly the 11/6/2000 Seattle show and the 10/22/2000 Las Vegas show)

I can’t underestimate the importance of Pearl Jam to 16 and 17 year old Brad Wik.  I almost left off Neil Young because the two songs we covered were also songs Pearl Jam covered:  “Fuckin Up” and “Rockin’ in the Free World.”  After finding out that Vedder, like most of us, was also a huge fan of The Who and Neil Young, my classic rock and alternative rock worlds aligned; and I was subsequently blinded by the eclipse, never to recover…

5. R.E.M. – Automatic for the People

Not only does this album contain my favorite R.E.M. song, “Nightswimming,” but is, in my opinion, their strongest front to back offering.  Coming off of Out of Time, they somehow took their game to another level.  Also, amazingly, I’ve since had the pleasure of working with the one and only Mr. Ed Brooks (who mixed this incredible album).  He mastered both “Burn What You Can, Bury the Rest…” and my new album, yet to be released.  He is such an amazing person with some fantastic stories.  Sidenote:  I am, once again, listening to “Nightswimming” and crying gently.  There are only maybe a dozen songs that can do that to me:  “Hallelujah” by Jeff Buckley, “Fade Into You” by Mazzy Star, “Bold as Love” by Jimi, “The Trapeze Swinger” by Iron & Wine, “Gold Miner” by the Fraidies, “At a Medium Pace” by Adam Sandler come to mind, though that last one is for different reasons…

6. Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

There are so many things in this record that shaped my vision of what could be possible in music.  This record was noisy and chaotic, sweet and simple, rockin’ and reckless, tight and dry(taking this one off, someone else make an inappropriate joke for once); it was so many different things that I never imagined could coexist.  The vision Jake and I worked towards was heavily filtered through this album.

7. Oasis – (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?

Every motherfucking song from “Hello” to “Champagne Supernova” is certifiably a goddamn hit.  Everything about this album is so fucking cool.  The Gallagher’s had swagger for days, and a uni-brow bigger than mine, no easy feat.  Of course, we also covered “Wonderwall” coming up (who hasn’t?  The easiest way to get chicks to notice our band was to play a song they actually liked and knew.  Unsurprisingly, no chick ever complimented me for knowing all the words to “Visions of Johanna”or “Desolation Row”) and every band I’ve played in since has covered at least one song by Oasis, and it’s usually from this album.

So, there you go, fuckers…