I’ll be the first to admit that Chevy Chase’s 1981 star vehicle “Modern Problems” is not his finest work. But I’ve always gotten a kick out of it. So imagine my surprise when Ben French sent out a group email with the following observation:

I watched the 1981 Chevy Chase movie Modern Times tonight and was blown away by how bad it was. I had no idea Chevy did something this unwatchable at such a young age…

The only even remotely funny part comes when Dabney Coleman’s character, a pompous and highly successful self-help therapist/author, stands on a wind-swept beach, robed, sunglasses, bearing an early 80s personal recording device draped around his neck, recording a memo to self: “June 5. A partial list of my favorite things.” He seems to be ad-libbing as he starts with stuff like Mozarts Brandenburg concertos and “sunsets from my office window,” but then continues non-sensically: “Roots (pronounced “Ruts”), the book, not that television horseshit,” “collecting my $200 passing Go,” and “my Playboy interview.”

Anyone seen this? Other comments?

The rub is that Benton was apparently unmoved by what is without a doubt the funniest moment in the film, and also that he didn’t deem the overarching premise of “Modern Problems” worthy of mention. You see, Chase’s character gets toxic waste dumped on him, turning him into something of a freak. He winds up battling the Dabney Coleman character for the affections of a young lady, hence the beach scene. My reply below:

Wow. You aren’t even discussing the truly immortal scene at the beginning of the film when Chevy’s character uses his newly mutant powers to disrupt a ballet, including giving the dancers comically oversized schlongs and causing them to smash into the mezzanine level as they attempt simple leaping maneuvers. I have literally wept with laughter while watching. Wonder what that says about me…

And the answer to that very question? From Benton:

When I used adjectives like “bad” and “unwatchable” I forgot to ask, “I wonder if this movie is in Holmes’ top 10?”

They told me that the classics never go out of style, but they do, they do. Somehow baby, I never thought that we do too.

These are the first words you hear on Swedish band Refused’s 1998 swansong, “The Shape of Punk to Come: A Chimerical Bombination in 12 Bursts,” and they’re the perfect summary of this astonishing album: at once an instant classic that synthesizes any number of rock’n’roll substratas, wrapped in an acute awareness that nothing lasts forever — not even the revolutionary power of music.

You have to be pretty sure of yourself to choose an album title like “The Shape of Punk to Come,” but without arrogance or posturing, Refused simply crushes the competition here. Of course, the fact that the band was never heard from again after its release can’t help but leave the listener frustrated and wondering what American rock radio could have been if Refused became a household name in 1998 instead of Creed.

I first heard Refused in the fall of that year while sorting submission tapes for the CMJ Music Marathon. On the flip side of the cassette sent in by noted indie label Jade Tree Records were two or three songs that clearly did not belong with the instrumental noodlings of Euphone or the warped indie rock of Joan Of Arc. They were loud, confrontational and explosive, but I had no idea who had created them.

I surmised that Jade Tree had simply taped its own submissions over whatever album had previously been on the cassette, and even contacted the label to see if they could illuminate the situation (they couldn’t). I played the song I later learned was the “Shape” title track to several friends, who were just as blown away as I was but were of no help in discerning the band’s identity. I learned how to play the song on guitar, annoying my then-girlfriend by repeatedly running through the eight-note riff that serves as its foundation. I Googled the lyrics I could make out but the results yielded nothing.

All the while, I kept wondering: if the rest of the songs on whatever album this was were as good as the ones on my cassette, would my head explode in awe? It took years before I finally got my hands on “Shape,” but upon my first complete listening, I experienced something increasingly rare: a band not only meeting, but wildly exceeding my expectations, and embodying the kind of musical “missing link” I always hope to stumble upon.

In my alternate universe, the title cut could have been as massive as “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” its shouted chorus (“We’re all dressed up / we’ve got nowhere to go”) an easy rallying cry for younger listeners just discovering aggressive music. Its aforementioned main riff is a headbanger’s delight.

With its demands of “We want the airwaves back / We don’t just want air time / We want all the time all of the time,” “Liberation Frequency” rages like Fugazi in a cramped rec room. The message: you’ll never get what you want unless you’re prepared to make your voice heard, and all the better if you can do it armed with this kind of musical firepower.

Breaking from hardcore monotony, the songs take circuitous, complicated routes to get the job done, best evidenced via the whisper-to-a-scream detonation of “New Noise.” Out of nowhere, the track is interrupted by the bizarrely creepy sounds of old women wailing, only to rise again with even more ferocity as a previously unheard audience cheers its approval.

Adhering to the theme of the album title, Refused also stretches the definition of “punk” with such tracks as “Tannhauser/Derive,” an eight-minute spectacle of violin-addled tension-and-release rock that creeps toward oblivion as expertly as “Spiderland”-era Slint.

By contrast, the next song, “The Apollo Programme Was a Hoax,” is little more than a few solemn acoustic guitar riffs atop a lonesome upright bass line, the occasional harmonium countermelody and some mumbled lyrics from Dennis Lyxzen. For good measure, there’s even the 85-second “Brutist Pome #5,” an oblong slice of electronica that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on a contemporary Tortoise album.

And while Lyxzen’s screamo singing approach ensures his lyrics only occasionally sink in on first pass, he threads “The Shape of Punk To Come” through with some of the most self-aware, honest depictions of life in a modern band ever put to tape in the ’90s. It comes to a head on the melodic stomper “Summerholidays vs. Punkroutine,” which finds him struggling to identify the imaginary line between making a difference and simply wasting his time.

“I’m tired of losing myself to some stupid childhood dream of what I could have been,” he sings. “Money proves the point and I’m stuck between summer holidays and punk routine.” The seeds of Refused’s dissolution are then planted: “We’re all tired of dying, so sick of not trying / Scared that we might fail, we’ll accomplish nothing / Not even failure.”

Refused clearly wrestled with what its own music meant in the grand scheme of things, but “The Shape of Punk To Come” wound up as a singular achievement whose influence remains mighty years later. Lyxzen went on to form the (International) Noise Conspiracy, but that group has yet to pick up where Refused left off: rattling skulls, kicking down doors and filling brains with uncommon musical food for thought.

Click to download:

“The Shape of Punk to Come,” Refused

“Summerholidays vs. Punkroutine,” Refused

In the early 2000s, when Ryan Adams was being anointed the Lord God’s gift to rock’n’roll, I simply could not bring myself to give his music a fair listen. He seemed like an obnoxious, pretentious space cadet who’d written a few decent Dylan/Westerberg ballads and somehow converted the entire listening public into true believers. It took me years to go back into his catalog with non-judgmental ears, and I quickly realized how short-sighted I’d been. After dabbling with the handful of top-shelf rockers on “Demolition” (“Starting To Hurt” and “Nuclear”), “Rock’n’Roll” and “Love Is Hell” hooked me immediately, even though the overt cock/glam rock moments on those albums caused many “Gold”-era diehards to scratch their heads or jump ship entirely. I was then completely bowled over by “Cardinology,” which was my favorite album of 2008. Just when things were getting really interesting, Adams promptly broke up his incredible band the Cardinals and basically disappeared for a couple years.

He’s back now with a very quiet, very pretty solo album called “Ashes & Fire.” I like it, but I still really miss the more dynamic, band-oriented music he was making before his hiatus. His current tour is totally solo: just the now stone-cold sober Adams, a couple acoustic guitars and an upright piano. I was dubious about how much I’d enjoy a show in this incarnation, especially since I’d seen the set lists and they included hardly any songs from the albums I like best. But once again, Adams proved me a moron for doubting him. His Carnegie Hall performance last night was mesmerizing, as he effortlessly shifted from such quiet playing and singing that I had to sit on the edge of my seat to hear him, to songs of such sucker-punch power (“Crossed Out Name,” “Come Pick Me Up”) that I found myself choking up. At the risk of being insensitive, sometimes sobriety makes weirdo artists less interesting, but it seems to have left Adams’ quirky personality untarnished. His banter included at least two nearly complete made-up numbers based on what he thought audience members were shouting between songs, and an ongoing commentary about how Ratt guitarist Warren DeMartini was waiting in the rafters to jump down onto the stage while Adams covered that band’s ’80s pop-metal classic “Round and Round.”

For sampling, below find a stellar 2006 live performance of “This House Is Not For Sale” from “Love Is Hell,” and a similarly awesome 2009 version of “This Is It” from “Rock’n’Roll,” one of the only songs from that era that the Cardinals played on a semi-regular basis. And here’s my 2008 interview with a loopy Adams for Billboard. I still laugh when I think of “Chef Leppard.”

Click to download:

“This House Is Not For Sale,” live 10/11/2006

“This Is It,” live 9/26/2009

It’s gray and raining in NYC today, which can only mean: solo guitar listening sesh! Today’s favorites include Kaki King’s “Night After Sidewalk,” which is less bombastic than some of her clearly Michael Hedges-inspired thump-and-whack early pieces. I love the strange tuning of this song, King’s nearly flawless intonation and the resigned vibe of the main melody. King has gone on to record more traditionally rock’n’roll-type albums, and while they have their share of pleasures (particularly the trippy, Tortoise-like “Gay Sons of Lesbian Mothers” from “Until We Felt Red”), I’ve always been partial to the beautiful solo work that dominated her first two releases. She’s actually touring solo at the moment, so catch her if she stops by your neck of the woods.

Today I also offer “Ripple” from Windham Hill legend Alex de Grassi, who due to his presence on the label’s formative early roster alongside Liz Story, George Winston and his cousin, Windham Hill founder Will Ackerman, has been unfairly pigeonholed as strictly a New Age artist. Sure, some of his songs wouldn’t sound out of place on Mom and Dad’s stereo during Thanksgiving dinner or at the local yoga studio, but pieces like “Ripple” are much more interesting in a John Fahey/Leo Kottke way — both melodious and technically proficient. The rapid, arpeggiated picking at the heart of this song is reminiscent of his “Turning: Turning Back” as performed on the early ’80s “An Evening With Windham Hill Live” album, which is one of the most astoundingly awesome solo guitar pieces of all time, and certainly warrants its own post here at Grodin.

Click to download:

“Night After Sidewalk,” Kaki King

“Ripple,” Alex de Grassi

Lord knows you, dear reader, don’t need yet another take on the new Black Keys album, “El Camino,” which will surely propel the band even further into the stratosphere. As luck would have it, I’ve known Keys frontman Dan Auerbach since high school back in Akron — back even before he really knew how to play guitar. Randomly, he also was the first kid I ever met that had a pager. For old time’s sake, I dug up the first interview I did with Auerbach, for Billboard.com in 2003, just before he and drummer Patrick Carney embarked on a U.S. tour opening for Sleater-Kinney. Back then, it seemed like a huge deal for the fellas, who were still recording their music in a gross Akron basement. They were set to play the biggest venues of their nascent career, and were psyched about a forthcoming European tour. In the years since, I have been lucky to tag along with Dan and Pat at their own shows, mega festivals and various drinking establishments around the globe, and I’m supremely proud of their success. The best part: even though they are giant rock stars and have both left Akron for Nashville, they still have 330-area code cell phone numbers. Somewhere, Firestone High principal Cindy Wheeler is smiling. (Blurry) pic below is from the last Akron show I saw by the Keys, during Thanksgiving 2009, and here’s a brief side-stage video I shot of them back at Coachella in 2007.

Bitch Magnet are another crucial missing link in the lineage of ’90s indie rock, deftly straddling the post-Husker Du underground and the emerging math-y malevolence of Slint, Rodan, Bastro and Shellac. The group only lasted a couple of years (1988-1990), with frontman Sooyoung Park going on to form the under-appreciated Chicago sadcore band Seam. Previously almost impossible to find, their entire catalog was recently issued by Temporary Residence Ltd. as part of a three-disc set, and the group just played its first shows in nearly 20 years overseas (fingers crossed for 2012 U.S. dates). Maybe I’m not looking in the right places, but I am not aware of any current/new rock bands that sound as powerful as this.

During the second half of my tenure at Indiana University (1996-1998), I became obsessed with the music scenes in Louisville and Chicago, each conveniently located just a couple hours’ drive from Bloomington. I loved, and still do, the punishing, peerless post-hardcore of Lousville’s Rodan as much as the borderline smooth jazz-meets-Can stylings of Chicago’s Tortoise, and I went overboard exploring all the music in between. It was eye-opening to discover so many different strains of “indie rock” so close at hand.

When in Chicago for shows or to visit family, I’d inevitably wind up at Reckless Records searching for anything their barely communicative clerks had deigned to endorse. One such discovery during a Christmas 1996 trip was the self-titled (or was it untitled?) debut album from a group apparently called Directions In Music. It was kind of hard to tell, since the musicians’ names appeared in tiny white print on the cover under said title.

Indeed, a lot of people thought the so-called Chicago “post rock” scene was pretentious, and a release (on beloved local label Thrill Jockey) from a band with no real name or song titles certainly didn’t do anything to detract from that notion. But then “they” open the album with a propulsive instrumental built on dropped-D guitar licks that sound copped from an Allman Brothers jam, and whatever joke there may have been is now on you. With that out of the way, the trio of Bundy K. Brown (ex-Tortoise), Doug Scharin (Codeine, Rex) and James Warden proceed to conjure 30-plus minutes of majestic, mind-expanding soundscapes built equally on ambient noise, studio trickery and actual guitar/bass/drums interplay heavy on riffs and repetition.

“Directions In Music” quickly turned into one of my favorite albums, ever. I realize that’s a bold statement, and I’ve never really been able to come up with a compelling reason why. Sometimes music just hits you hard and stays with you from then on, and that was definitely the case here.

But as best I can tell, this album totally fell through the cracks, even among people well-versed in the prevailing instrumental indie music of the time. Because they weren’t really a band (having spent only a few days in the studio making the album), Brown and company never gave an interview about Directions In Music until I hunted him down several years later for Nude As The News. Brown, Scharin and Warden have barely been heard from since. For some reason, “Directions” isn’t available on Spotify, and although you can buy it on iTunes, there’s a grand total of one customer review (!!) of the album there. Still, 15 years on, I think this stuff sounds totally unique.

Click to download:

Track 4, “Directions In Music”

Track 2, “Directions In Music”

Oh, hi. How are you? Welcome to Grodin (as in, Charles. Come on. Who else??). I’m Jonathan Cohen, currently the music booker for NBC’s “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon.” Prior to that, I was a writer and editor for Billboard for almost nine years. To say music is a huge part of my life would be something of an understatement. I listen to it essentially all day long, everyday. But I’ve been a latecomer to experimenting with most Web 2.0 utilities for anything outside a professional context, and now the time finally feels right to take the plunge with something a little more personal.

What I’m planning to do with this page is to post (hopefully, at least once a week) reflections on albums, songs and artists that have inspired me at some point. Apart from the music I book for “Late Night” and covered for Billboard, my own personal taste is all over the place. So if a piece on a forgotten New Age pianist isn’t your style, check back a couple of days later for insights about and MP3s from that awesome reunited hardcore band, or a quick review of the arena concert I just saw by a multi-platinum pop star. Here and now, I may also go into way too much detail about a favorite scene from a crappy ’80s comedy, most likely starring some combination of Rick Moranis, Martin Short or John Candy.

Which brings me to the site’s name. Well, I’m just a big fan of Charles Grodin. If you don’t believe me, click here (sorry for the cracked images; this is an Internet Wayback Machine capture of Mark Groeschner’s late, beloved blog Public Nigmity).