Music is a powerful thing. It has the ability to make a person smile or bring a person to tears. And like it did for Craig Wedren -- the lead singer of the now defunct post-punk band Shudder to Think -- it can change people's lives.
In an interview with The Dartmouth yesterday, 30-year-old Wedren did not try to hide his failures or life hardships and above all, he shouted out his love for music.
"When I am broken up with my band and broken up with my girlfriend -- when I don't know who's going to pay for dinner -- the only thing I have is my music to believe in," he explained. "I always need to make sure that I love the work. I love the feeling I have while I'm working and I love the final product."
Indeed, Wedren's band and girlfriend all recently have gone their separate ways, but Wedren endures.
"You've gotta be in love with the process and product -- but it doesn't mean it's not discouraging and frustrating, no matter what the work it is."
When he was nine years old, Wedren decided he wanted to become a musician. "After I wanted to be a baseball player and a fireman, I realized that real people made music," he said. His first job as musician came in seventh grade, when a friend needed a score for a film for an English class. Wedren said he put together a band and performed a theme song for the film. Also while in junior high school, Wedren said he sang for a few bands, including a Sex Pistols and Bee Gees cover-band named Immoral Minority and a new-wave dance band called Freudian Slip. One member of the second band went on to play keyboards for Nine Inch Nails.
While attending prep school at University School in Shaker Heights, Ohio, Wedren started Shudder to Think with two friends when he was a senior.
"I joined the band, we hated each other and we stayed together for twelve years," he joked.
After prep school, Wedren moved to Washington, DC, where he said he tried to join some bands but had some difficulty because of his unique voice.
"I have an usually high-pitched voice that some people love and some people hate -- my vocal sound was more operatic, melodic and androgynous" than many people were looking for, he said.
But eventually, Shudder to Think thrived in Washington because of the city's extensive music club scene and interest in punk rock. While in the city, the band released a number of CDs on independent label Dischord records, including "Funeral at the Movies" (1991) and "Get Your Goat" (1992). The albums' unique blend of modern rock, punk, pop and a whole bunch of other music-types reflects Wedren's assertion that the band was "always crossing lines between a lot of different genres."
After moving to New York, Wedren attended classes at and graduated from New York University as an experimental drama major. Despite his deep interest and love for music, Wedren avoided studying music theory formally.
"I didn't want to study music because I thought it might ruin my childlike love for it," he said. Despite this, the experimental drama program in which Wedren spent most of his academic time still helped cultivate his musical interests.
The major was "about creating a new theatrical style and forum for music, and combining many different disciplines," he explained. "I didn't want to get heady about music, and I wanted to become a better performer."
Also during this time, Wedren became interested in doing work for commercials, television shows and films. One of his best friends started an MTV sketch comedy show called "The State" and needed a theme song for it written, so Wedren took on the project. He went on to score a number of episodes of "The State" and compose soundtracks for commercials. The band also signed with major label Epic, which Wedren said he liked despite the large company's bureaucracy.
After graduating from NYU, friend Jesse Peretz, writer and director of "First Love, Last Rites," approached Wedren and guitarist Nathan Larson about writing and performing the soundtrack for the aforementioned film. The band excitedly agreed.
"Shutter to Think was in the process of changing from a left-of-center, alternative art band to more soundtrack-oriented work that gave us the ability to try more things that encouraged more experimentation," Wedren said. Before doing the soundtrack, "we felt like we had straight jacketed ourselves into this [experimental, post-punk] genre that we made up."
But soon after agreeing to write the soundtrack, doctors diagnosed Wedren with Hodgkin's disease. He decided to tell Peretz he could not finish the movie and went to recuperate in Maine.
While in Maine, Wedren said his disease sparked a rebirth of Shudder to Think. Wedren, Larson and bassist Stuart Hill wrote and recorded over 20 songs in an "oldie-style genre" that Wedren said helped him get over his illness.
The songs "poured out of us," he said. After the band returned from Maine, they convinced music celebrities including Nina Persson (The Cardigans), Robin Zander (Cheap Trick), Billy Corgan (Smashing Pumpkins), Liz Phair and Jeff Buckley to sing the songs.
These songs then found their way onto the "First Love, Last Rites" soundtrack. While critics later panned the film, most reviews complimented the excellent soundtrack for "capturing the flavor of the photography in every scene" (reviewer Joe Barlow).
This success started "a snowball of sound work" for the band, and after Wedren's cancerous disease went into remission, the band went on to do the soundtrack for both Lida Colodenka's "High Art" and Todd Haynes's "Velvet Goldmine" in 1998. According to Wedren, Haynes wanted to use David Bowie music for his film, but Bowie would not grant him the rights. Thus, Haynes hired Shudder to Think to write some Bowie-like music.
Wedren said that "High Art" gave him a chance to return to his experimental roots.
He said the movie allowed him to "reconcile all of the ambient and more experimental stuff from college with the new stuff I was doing with the band." The score, which he said he based on the sound of rubbing a finger along the side of a wine glass, came to him while watching the film for the first time.
"I had this crazy idea of using something much more ghostly and feminine and kind of ambiguous, and I thought of the wine glass and the female voice," he said.
After this success however, Shudder to Think broke up in November of last year due to conflicting interests and friction between the band members.
"It was very VH1 Behind the Music stuff -- egos and girls," he joked.
Since, Wedren has done singing for the new film "Drop Dead Gorgeous" and for the new Verve Pipe CD. He has also composed music for Nike commercials, a Sky Vodka commercial and a Miller Beer commercial.
Wedren suggested that Dartmouth students interested in the music industry get to know computers well, because he thinks the future of music distribution will be through the Internet. He thinks aspiring, entrepreneurial musicians can be discovered if they distribute their music through the Internet.
He also warned future-musicians that such a career his highly unstable.
"One year, I'll make more money than I've ever made in my life, and the next I'll make less money than I've ever made in my life," he said. "It's feast and famine."
But above all, Wedren said that those entering the music industry must love their music, no matter what the situation.
"You just have to be diligent, patient, passionate, thorough, and make sure you are in love with your music, because that is the only thing you will have in the lean times," he said.
Craig Wedren will be on campus today and tomorrow to speak to film classes and participate in a question and answer session during Friday's screening of "Velvet Goldmine" in Loew Auditorium at 7:30 p.m.
