A Boring Example of Everybody Else
How the 'Blue's Clues' guy saved my musical life.

I can remember the day vividly. I was sitting at my work computer, minding my own business, when a friend IMed me with a very simple message: "www.steveswebpage.com." I clicked the link and poked around for a while, learning that the Steve in question was Steve Burns, the former host of Nickelodeon's "Blue's Clues" that many, not including myself, had presumed dead. There was talk on the website of space lobsters and brain control...something about the Flaming Lips. I thought to myself "big deal, guy's trying to get himself some attention. It's the Internet...that's what it's there for." But my tipster friend directed me to a section of the website that I had overlooked: streaming audio of a few songs from Steve's indie rock album, Songs for Dustmites. I gave it a listen and, within a few days, was trekking to the most obscure music store I knew of at the time to find the album.

I've now owned Dustmites for more than two years, and I still marvel every time a song from the album comes up on shuffle. Heck, I still listen to the album in whole at least twice a month. Before Steve, you'd find quite a bit of overproduced tracks populating my iPod, songs that had gone through the ringer of studio mixers one too many times and been left ripe for MTV to pick and feed to the teeny boppers. Today, if you were to look at my music collection, you'd see more music that sounds like it was produced in a basement, with hand-me-down equipment. Though it sounds muddy, the fact that it's exactly what the artist wanted listeners to hear makes this kind of music the quintessential definition of "pure." Without having been exposed to Steve Burns' music, I doubt I'd be listening to The Shins today, or Brendan Benson, for that matter. Steve opened the door to indie music for me.

Until Dustmites, I never realized that music could be so deeply personal to its creator and the trickle-down effect that feeling has on listeners. The music that I listened to before I heard Steve Burns was emotionally distant, carefully-molded-for-radio garbage. There's only a few songs from Dustmites that I would ever consider putting on the radio, if only because there's a few upbeat numbers in the bunch. But Burns' music isn't meant to be a feast for the masses to consume via ad-sponsored airwaves. There's so many songs out there that people adopt for their own feelings, claiming that the music speaks to them. Burns' music needs no filter to speak to you; you can hear the emotion in the lyrics, instrumentation, and in Steve's singing. Listen to the distant ">1" and "Stick Around," or the rocking "Troposphere" or "Superstrings," and you'll get my drift. It is a deeply personal experience, and if you can get into the music, it will most definitely get into you.

There was word a few months ago of a second Burns album appearing this summer. Though I've not heard anything more about it since the first rush of excitement, I'm confident that it will happen. But even if it didn't, I'd be forever in debt to Steve for what Dustmites did to my musical taste.