Episode 005: Ben Conley: The Los Angeles artist makes some humorous and high-energy punk rock
Today on the podcast we are featuring the Los Angeles punk rock/blues artist Ben Conley. He has a bold and refreshing sound that is emotional yet also upbeat and exciting. Learn more about Ben and listen to his track “Thanks for Something.“
Show Notes and Full Show Transcript
Intro music
Just popping in to give you guys a heads up. This podcast contains paid promotional content. That means we were compensated for the feature. All opinions are our own and we only choose to represent music that we truly dig. Now on with the show.
Hey everyone welcome to the podcast. Today I am talking about the Los Angeles artist Ben Conley. If you’re a fan of punk rock music, Ben Conley is one artist who should be on your radar.
Wanting to know more about Ben did some research looking up to see when he started and to find out a little bit more about him. I came across a website Metal Head Community and thank you guys so much for having more information about his background.
So it turns out that he actually started music just last year in 2020. His first single was called “Cocaine Head” after that he released three more singles. They included “Me and That Devil” a demo from 2020. “Thanks for Something” another demo from 2020. And then this year he released “Thanks for Something” again and that’s the track I that first heard which I really enjoyed.
Music is always so much better there’s that heart and emotion in it. Ben definitely has done this with his music. I think it’s something that has been with him for a while. According to his bio, he says that “music is the sound of emotions” and he basically uses music to channel his life experiences into song. Experiences he’s had and struggles throughout his life. He’s struggled with mental health and he had heartbreak. Also, he had struggled with drug addiction. He also had struggles with self-realization and who he was. But he took all this negative energy and turned it into something positive through music.
This is a great thing because you have negative struggles you have negativity in your life and if you can channel it into something positive then it’s great. He also has an awesome sense of humor. He’s very tongue-in-cheek and witty. His music is exemplary of that as well.
The outlet of music is also great just for growth and learning from your experiences. It puts things into perspective to make you feel that even though things can be really crappy there’s always something to smile about. There’s always something to be thankful for.
I think Ben definitely conveys this a lot in his music. It’s really cool when artists put their personal struggles into music. I think it makes it a lot more authentic. This song is authentic. It has a very real sound to it.
So what you can expect from Ben is something raw and very skin on bone. That’s what we get in this new song “Thanks for Something.”
This sone was another one of those personal struggles. It was actually written after a breakup. It’s a sarcastic flip on that saying “thanks for nothing.”
It basically talks about how when you’re in that relationship and everything seems perfect and the person is perfect. You have this whole idealization of them. You kind of see them for something they may not really be until after you break up with them. Then you’re like “oh crap that person totally was not right for me.” That’s basically what this song is about. It’s talking about how they were in this whole ideal of what they thought the relationship to be when in reality it was not really that.
They were just in that relationship love potion where everything seems great but then you break up and you’re like “oh man this person was totally not the right person for me”
It’s cool that he makes light of it. He’s kind of like getting through the breakup by talking about it and making fun of it. Being humorous and saying “like hey, you know thanks for something even though you really didn’t help me. Now I feel like I’m in a better place.” So that’s good, right?
Though it’s a short track. I think it’s only, it literally clocks out to about a minute and 12 seconds. It’s gonna be over before you know it. But it has a lasting impact. It will be with you and it will make you want to listen to it again because it has a lot of fire.
It has a lot of energy. It has a lot of upbeat. Especially if you’re into punk music. This is definitely, one of those quintessential punk tracks that have a lot to say and a really awesome sound.
Another thing that’s interesting about Ben. He’s done all the instrumentation on this song. He played guitar, bass, vocals, as well as digital drum programming. So that’s pretty neat.
He’s kind of like a one-man band. When it comes to his sound and bands that you would put in a similar bucket with he’s been compared to artists like Clutch, At The Drive-In, All Them Witches, and The Black Keys.
Ben’s also been getting a lot of love from the blogosphere. I’m gonna take a short break but when I get back I wanna chat a little bit about all the great stuff that’s been said.
“This song was written a few days after a breakup. A sarcastic flip on saying, “Thanks for nothing”, this song details the hard and fast nature of the relationship and acknowledges the idealization the writer had towards his former partner.”
Break
Part 2Hey guys. I am back. And now I want to chat a little bit about the perception of Ben on the blogosphere. He’s been getting a lot of really great rave reviews not only for his song but also for the music video that accompanies it. And I want to mention this before I forget it because he does have a really cool video. And the video is him in the shower and he’s literally washing off. I would assume it is metaphorical for him to wash away his relationship. Watch the video on Youtube It’s a fun video to watch.
I always like to look and see what other people are saying about music. I find myself to be a very nice reviewer and I don’t like to nitpick or criticize music because I feel like music is so different and everybody has different opinions and you know what one person thinks may not be exactly what the other person thinks.
I tend to like things and I tend to like a lot of things. I have a very varied. I guess, a lot of different tastes in music. I’ll listen to something and go “ooh I like that and it could be completely different genres. So I was interested in seeing what people were saying about Ben Conley.
And the reviews were positive. He had a lot of positive things said about him in the song and his music. This is great and I thought it was interesting that his music was featured on a metal site. The website was Metal Head Community. I thought that was interesting because you know you don’t really think of punk as metal. They both do have high energy so in that respect, there is a similarity among them.
Overall, he’s had good reviews. A lot of the websites that featured him had nice things to say about his song and his energy. There was one that was funny. It literally started with the sentence “Punk!!!!” That was on Noho Arts District Which I thought was funny. They had a really cool review. They had really great things to say. Also, Tatto.com had a good review. They featured him as well in CaliforniaRocker.com.
There was a good quote on Tattoo.com. It was in regards to David Gerrold’s and I don’t know if I’m pronouncing that correctly. His observation basically of “Life is hard. Then you die. Then they throw dirt in your face. Then the worms eat you. Be grateful it happens in that order.”
I really like that quote and I feel like it resonates well with this song, There was also a mention of this song being great for a TikTok video. It was on the website AlternativeNation.net. I thought it was really true. This song is short but you get the whole song and it’s perfect for TickTock.
As I said, I’m not really a big criticizer and I find to look on the positive side of things I guess. I think about what I like about the song verse what I don’t like about what I like about the song.
When I did look at the reviews I was kind of interested to see what other criticisms were out htere. What people were saying or what they didn’t maybe like about the song. One thing I came across was that they thought that the standards were kind of just decent. They said that it wasn’t properly balanced and it was kind of not really polished.
I wonder if that was something he was going for with this song. Because it is punk rock and it’s raw and sometimes a lot of punk rock is distorted and doesn’t sound like polished music.
Regardless of all that. I enjoyed the music and I’m excited to see what else Ben has to come out with. According to Aupium.com this is the first song off his upcoming debut EP called “Things to Do In Willaims, AZ.”
So enough chatting about the track. How about I play it for you and then you can let me know what you think?
WARNING! Just want to give you a heads ups that there are a lot of F-bombs dropped in this song. So if you’re sensitive to explicit lyrics you may want to fast forward the podcast by about a minute and 12 seconds.
Now without further ado, here is “Thanks for Something”
Play the track
I hope you enjoyed learning about Ben Conley and listening to his music. If you have any comments you can leave an audio message at the link below.
For more on Ben Conley, you can check out his website, Benconleymusic.com. You can also follow him on Facebook (www.facebook.com/benconleymusic), Twitter (www.twitter.com/benconley_music), and Instagram (www.instagram.com/ben.conley.music).
Hope you enjoyed today’s podcast. Look forward to seeing you in the next episode
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