<\/div><\/p>\n
Note: the last song on the list is the only one that includes adult language, so consider this your warning.<\/i><\/p>\n
I discovered Tool shortly after the release of their 1993 debut album Undertow<\/i> through their original and dark videos on MTV for songs like “Sober” and the unfortunately named “Prison Sex.” Very early in the band’s career, I fell in love with their unique time signatures and creative song construction. The band’s sophomore album Aenima<\/i> (technically \u00c6nima<\/i>) featured more hard rock radio hits including “Stinkfist,” “H,” and “Forty Six and 2.” Amazingly, the song “\u00c6nema” was even released as a single and charted, although I can’t imagine how much editing must have went into that version. <\/p>\n
Our first clue that something’s not quite right with the song occurs in the first verse, when the line “Some say we’ll see Armageddon soon” is quickly followed with “I certainly hope we will.” By the time the chorus hits, Tool’s stance on Los Angeles is pretty clear: “The only way to fix it is to flush it all away,” soon followed by “Learn to swim, I’ll see you down in Arizona Bay.” Later, when describing the potential crashing of meteors, comets and title waves into the Earth, Tool comments with, “I certainly hope they will, I could sure use a vacation.”<\/p>\n
Early in the song we’re given a list of things to fret about (lattes, lawsuits, Prozac and cars) and later another list of things (L. Ron Hubbard, tattoos, junkies, insecure actresses, and hip-gangster wannabees) is preceded by a different F-word.<\/p>\n
“One great big festering neon distraction, I’ve a suggestion to keep you all occupied: Learn to swim.<\/i>”<\/p>\n
I was having a rough time many years ago at work. I felt like I wasn’t getting respect from my co-workers, nor was I getting the acclaim I thought I deserved. Some of this was real and a lot of it was in my head. I felt like a pawn, being used and abused. It was around this time that I first heard Aenema, and while I certainly didn’t hope to get hit by a meteor, I connected with the song’s suggestion: learn to swim. In any situation, whether it’s a bad situation at work or California falling into the ocean (thus creating “Arizona Bay”), there’s only one thing you can do: learn to swim. I found so much solace in this that I actually added it to my email signature for a while and wrote the phrase directly on my cubical with a black Sharpie marker. I’m sure my boss thought I was insane, but every time I looked at it, it made me smile. Eventually I moved to another area. I don’t know if the guy who filled in behind me was able to clean the phrase off the my old cube. <\/p>\n
If not, I hope he learned to swim, too.<\/p>\n
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Susan thinks I exclaim “This is my favorite song!” way too often. She’s probably right. In my defense, I do have a lot of favorite songs. Typically I shout this out in the car after my iPhone, set on shuffle, randomly delivers one of these songs through the car’s stereo. What follows is a pretty random list containing ten of my favorite songs. I have lots of other favorite songs to be sure, and for this post I removed obvious songs from the Beatles and Metallica and other big name acts in order to share a few songs that you… (read more)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8498"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8498\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14021,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8498\/revisions\/14021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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