The word epic, as referring to music from our generation, has become somewhat anachronistic. Today DJs live mix six-hour sets of music non-stop, creating one massive weave of multi-genre mind lining. Jam bands have broken beyond cult borders, and 20-minute songs no longer seem daringly artistic on merit of length alone. So what makes an epic?
The word itself incites horrible memories of Milton and Ulysses dragging on and on, constantly searching and prodding and doubling back both linguistically and within their respective story worlds. This idea should become a reference point, because all of the following tracks establish themes, break down character narratives or otherwise tangle on endlessly in search of something or everything all in one gulp.
An epic song cuts deep and has a very real effect; these are not light plastic pop tumors that go platinum. Something about these songs will strike a nerve. Or annoy the hell out of the average music listener. Either way, the songs are doing what they are meant to do. They are affecting people.
The other point to ponder is how these songs differentiate themselves from the “classics.” Nostalgia is a curse that kills creativity. Why should someone born in 1983 bask in the bong smoke of some long-winded 1962 “you had to be there” farce? The druggy, entangled epics of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon have nothing on the tranced out zone of Phuture’s gut-wrenching “Acid Tracks” or the stoned drone of Sleep’s crowning achievement in doom (“stoner”) metal, “Dopesmoker.” Sgt. Pepper was stuck yearning for yesteryear (that deadly nostalgia again) and the Eagles wrote trite ditties, while Tortoise and Public Image Ltd. struck out in all directions at once and imploded upon themselves within writhing song structures. Other “classics” like “American Pie” and “Freebird” are so played out that they’ve basically become parodies. Even the holy grail of our parents’ epics, “Stairway to Heaven” is clouded in sketchy songwriting credits (see Chocolate Watch Band’s “And She’s Lonely”) and an almost adverse overindulgence. It’s time for some new tunes. So snap these tracks up into your ipod and let ’em rip out some of your heroes (and old favorites) by the roots.
**Jane’s Addiction, “Three Days”/”Then She Did…”**
In most contexts, a true epic is a rare thing. But Jane’s Addiction’s magnum opus, Ritual de lo Habitual, features, one could argue, an album full of them. Though these two tracks are the most epic. The image-rich suite “Three Days” grows Akira-like for 10 minutes into a torrid biblical orgy, then collapses post-coitally into the lush, naturalist counterpoint of “Then She Did…” The two songs summarize the best of Jane’s Addiction, updating Led Zeppelin for the end of the century.
–Adam Arnold
**Osymyso, “Intro Inspection”**
The mother of all Generation Why? epics, “Intro Inspection” is a 12-minute electronic masterpiece built from 101 samples of famous (and infamous) intros. Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side” dukes it out against Brittany Spears, U2 and Survivor. Chaka Khan, the Prodigy, the Sex Pistols, the Monkees, Aqua and of course Slash’s immortal “Sweet Child o’ Mine” riff are plastered across each other in a slithering soundclash orgy as Osymyso switches his attention to two or three new intros every few seconds. The MTV-bred, hard cut kids will gobble this down like Kool Aid E. This is the kind of musical mash-up that twists your head backwards. Linda Blair would be proud.
–Christopher J. Ewing
**Modest Mouse, “Stars are Projectors”**
“Stars are Projectors” is a microcosm of Modest Mouse’s astoundingly epic album, The Moon and Antarctica. This song captures the ontological musings of the album as a whole by presenting the Descartian notion that our reality is actually a dreamscape. Meanwhile Issac Brock’s vocals are double tracked to evoke a spacey atmosphere before a scorching e-bowed electric guitar leads an extended instrumental section featuring a violin and warbly, reverb-soaked drums. “Stars are Projectors” represents both the soft pondering side and the gritty emotional side of The Moon and Antarctica while being the only track with a substantial instrumental portion.
–Aaron Granat
**Radiohead, “Paranoid Android”**
If Radiohead burst onto the scene with “Creep,” it was with “Paranoid Android” that they truly came into full form. Thom Yorke’s vocals were given full command, sailing high above approximately six guitar solos, many of them featuring two guitar lines. Yorke crooned, “When I am king / you will be fast against the wall” and spat “God loves his children / yeah” against an equally indecipherable and epic animated video from Magnus Carlsson, featuring a character named Robin, an axe-wielding psycho and a flasher who lives in a tree.
–Ryan Swan
**Television, “Marquee Moon”**
At 10 and a half minutes, Television’s “Marquee Moon” the title track off of their 1977 album, stands as early punk’s most grandiose and possibly the musical movement’s most beautiful epic. Tom Verlaine (with his dominating punk squelch and insane guitar doodling) leads the group of solid musicians (which was a rarity in early punk) through a disconnected narrative about graveyards and Cadillacs and embracing life, spewed out across a wandering guitar composition. Complete with a false ending and bumbling (but in a really good way) pre-chorus, “Marquee Moon” yearns to be heard in its entirety — the radio edit being merely a representation of something great. It’s hard to imagine any other dueling punk mini-opera sounding so fresh ever again. A close runner up for best ’70s punk epic is the Tubes’ goofy, glammy, gunk-filled “White Punks on Dope,” which also has a fake-out ending.
–Christopher J. Ewing
**The Swansons, “Shallow Grave”**
No one has heard of the Swansons, who released one album on Interscope before getting the corporate axe. A pity, as the New Haven, Conn., band was fun to watch and to cheer on as the unexpected underdog. The final track of Shake (their sole CD) is a perfect six-minute album closer, building, upon slowly palpitating bass and drum interplay, to climactic strains of what might have been East-coast grunge. The picturesque vocals of Lauren Fay are the layer of frosting on this obscure musical doughnut. It stands emblematically for all bands killed in the wake of “alternative” rock.
–Adam Arnold
**NOFX, “The Decline”**
“Where are all the stupid people from? / And how’d they get to be so dumb?” So begins “The Decline” by NOFX, a punk song like no other. In a genre whose artists rarely produce anything more than three minutes long, “The Decline” clocks in at an impressive 18 minutes.
The song makes up its own E.P., which was released in 1999 on NOFX lead singer Fat Mike’s Fat Wreck Chords label. With lyrics focusing on the absurdity of American culture, including but not limited to religion, drugs and suicide, “The Decline” marks a huge transition for the band and a milestone for punk in general.
–Molly Webb
**Sonic Youth, “Total Trash”**
Sonic Youth has always been known for its tendency to experiment with dissonant guitar textures in free form distortion and feedback. This approach to sound can be a bit grating, as anyone familiar with the group’s most abstract experiments knows. Sonic Youth, however, achieved the perfect balance of song craft and noise craft on its masterpiece album Daydream Nation. The song “Total Trash” takes this balance to its most epic proportions. Its long runtime allows the band to establish the song’s melodic foundation before decomposing into waves of clashing distortion. The sonic breakdown and buildup is evolutionary noise as the seven-plus-minute runtime allows the song to transform gradually.
–Aaron Granat
**Sleep, “Dopesmoker”**
Originally titled “Jerusalem,” this bombastic song (an album in itself, clocking in at more than 63 minutes) was a gift from doom rock gods Sleep to their fans and basically ended the group’s recording career. The album has become a rarity, popping up online for around $50 a pop, “Dopesmoker” is definitely not for the weak of heart or the easily distracted. The track’s stoner drone is basically one riff cycling through an almost impossible to follow story, but the track is an important step toward a new breed of metal (see Fu Manchu) and an unbeatable exercise in excess. For a spazzy, hardcore competitor for best metal epic, look for Converge’s “Jane Doe,” a furious cluster of noise explosions and guitar violence.
–Christopher J. Ewing
**Cat Power, “Colors and the Kids”**
After a few years spent establishing an identity as a tormented, shy eccentric, Chan Marshall manifested her persona into the cryptic song cycle that comprises Moon Pix. The (anti)climax of the album is this beautifully droning two-chord piano-and-voice duet — a sort of sad, nostalgic, psychological travelogue. On a magnificent downer of an album, this song reaches the most serene depths of introversion.
–Adam Arnold
**Weezer, Only in Dreams**
Before they were Maladroit, and before they were waxing philosophical over the Pinkertons of the world, Weezer made it’s name with sing-along classics. “Only In Dreams” clocked in at over five minutes. Since described by fellow pop-rockers Ash (who cover the song on their DVD “Free All Angels”) as a song rife with “amazing sexual tension,” it starts soft then goes absolutely crazy, first fading out into muted guitars, then building into all-out chaos as Rivers Cuomo shows why he writes the songs at full volume while Brian Bell keeps up the fuzz.
–Ryan Swan
**Versus, “Crazy Maker,” “Crashing the Afterglow”**
How Versus has continued to wallow in obscurity is an even more dumbfounding conundrum when one considers the infrequency of truly “epic” songwriting in the post-grunge era. These two songs, respectively from 2 Cents Plus Tax and the follow-up Afterglow EP, pack a climactic intensity that Beethoven would have envied. What start as plodding, melodic exercises grow into brain-dissolving walls of literate angst. Few other bands can write such successfully grandiose songs, compelling with only the barest prerequisite pretension.
–Adam Arnold
Epic Ending
For those still thirsty for a few more grandiose meanderings into the new world of epic songs, here are a few more final suggestions. For the post-punk, non-rock elite out there looking for something to boggle minds, check out Tortoise’s divine opus, “Djed,” a 20-plus journey into a prime cut of Chicago “post-rock” bliss. For an earlier influential track, Public Image Ltd.’s opening for their Metal Box album, “Albatross,” worked as a starting point for modern groups like the Rapture and Interpol. Hip-hop heads have the classic spin and scratch masterpiece of Grand Master Flash’s “The Adventures of Grand Master Flash on the Wheels of Steel,” a name that couldn’t have kicked out anything other than an epic. Chill-out fetishists should look to Spacemen 3’s drowning monotone flip-out, “How Does It Feel?,” Orbital’s perfectly traveling soundtrack “Belfast,” Art of Noise’s “Moments In Love” (Madonna’s wedding song) or Josh Wink’s remix of Radiohead’s “Everything In It’s Right Place.” Arty trivia nerds should enjoy enigmatic tracks like Neu!’s “Fur Immer (Forever),” Can’s “Mother Sky” and Salif Keita’s “Tekere.” And rock the lifestyle digital with selections like Giorgio Moroder’s video game style blaster, “The Chase (Midnight Express),” 808 State’s “Pacific State,” Cosmos’ “Take Me With You” and Infusion’s recent club knockout, “Girls Can Be Cruel.”
–Cristopher J. Ewing
