Many of us can link a certain album to pivotal moments in our lives. Whether it’s the first record you bought with your own money, the chord you first learnt to play on guitar, the song that soundtracked your first kiss, the album that got you those awkward and painful pubescent years or the one that set off light bulbs in your brain and inspired you to take a big leap of faith into the unknown – music is often the catalyst for change in our lives and can even help shape who we become.
In this Love Letter To A Record series, Music Feeds asks artists to reflect on their relationship with music and share with us stories about the effect music has had on their lives.
SoSo’s Harrison Zatschler – Blink-182, ‘The Mark, Tom & Travis Show’ (2000)
The once popular “Live Album” format has seemingly disappeared in recent years. From Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged in New York (1994) to Johnny Cash At Folsom Prison (1968), these records allow listeners to live (or re-live) some of the defining moments in contemporary music history. Far more than just a fill-in between studio albums, they also served as a gateway for new listeners to discover new artists. This was an era before streaming, where studio albums were stacked with more experimental tracks to appeal to die-hard fans. A Live Album contained the artists’ more easily digested material, in a format designed to keep the listener engaged.
Still, The Mark, Tom, and Travis Show was so much more than this. This album did contain hits like ‘Dammit’ and ‘All the Small Things’, but more critical to the 15-year-old me listening to this album for the first time, it also listed tracks such as ‘Blow Job’ and ‘The Country Song’.
Whereas other Live Albums were designed to capture the atmosphere during the performance, and show off the skills of the members, The Mark, Tom, and Travis Show captured the relationship between three friends. Where you’d usually hear “How you doing (insert city here)?” you got “You guys think it’s weird – to shit your pants while your sleeping?”. It’s wholesome in its depravity, and listening back to it now, absolutely heartbreaking given the current relationship between Mark and Tom.
Musicians will generally point to a song or album that lit the spark, inspiring them to learn an instrument or write music. I can’t pinpoint anything in particular that drove me to create music, but I can say without any doubt that The Mark, Tom, and Travis Show is what inspired me to be part of a band.
The chemistry between these three mates is infectious, it’s hilarious, and most importantly, it’s just a whole lot of fun.
So, thank you The Mark, Tom, and Travis Show. Thank you for your overuse of inappropriate jokes and toilet humour. Thank you for playing the songs at least twice as fast as they should be, with little regard for what note gets played where. Thank you for making me want to join a band.
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SoSo are a Sydney pop-punk outfit who’ve just unleashed a new single dubbed ‘(Shit) Love Story’ – produced by Stevie Knight (Stand Atlantic, Yours Truly).
A rowdy, infectious ode to a long-term relationship gone south, the love story may be shit but the song is anything but. This is big, bad punk-rock ripper!
Watch the official music video below.
