Albums for Eternity with Bottle, the Curmudgeon

The first George Harrison solo album, the first solo album by a member of the Beatles, the first album published by Apple Records, the thing that Oasis song is actually about, the soundtrack for a film called Wonderwall. The film is about a man spying on his neighbor through a peephole. Two different worlds separated by a physical barrier. The album is a literal autobiographical metaphor for George Harrison's infatuation for Indian music, culture, and religion. The tracks are a mix of Indian and Western instrumentation, and it's a very deliberate attempt at creating "world music." This is what Harrison was doing while John and Paul were making Sgt. Pepper and Magical Mystery Tour. This is a wonderful album of creative pieces by a serious composer, but it's not a cerebrally cathartic album for me. I find it quite mentally taxing. Partly that's because i don't really like George Harrison's compositional style, and partly because it inhabits the s

I don't understand this album. Who are The Rascals? Looking at Freedom Suite, i think they're an obscure proto-punk band and this is a massive politically motivated concept album. Let's go down the basic wikipedia checklist. Rock band? No. Hit songs? I don't know any of them by title. People involved? Nope, don't know any of them either. Lester Bangs called it excessive. No, sounds normal to me. Someone else called it psychedelic. No. It's not "trippy" or "outside the box" or experimental at all. Again, what the hell am i listening to? This is R&B/Soul. Not "blue eyed soul," straight Soul (doesn't matter that they're white or that there are moments of Baroque Pop). The songs are vague, but they are real songs. But, this is a double album, and the whole second record is instrumental. The instrumental half is quite fun with a happy birthday jam, a huge jazz inspired drum solo (a good one at that). A 15 minute jazz-

I'm on a mission. That mission is to learn to like Their Satanic Majesties Request by The Rolling Stones. I think i can do it. One, this album is a self made monstrosity because they were completely drugged up to the point of getting arrested, their manager actually quit and Bill Wyman was close to that point, they had absolutely no one to tell them anything was too much or too dumb, and it was anybody's guess who would show up every day and how many superfluous hangers on they might bring with them. So the way it sounds is off the table. Two, it's a complete rip off of Sgt. Pepper and the band unanimously agreed it was a disaster, then abandoned psychedelic experimentation all together afterward. About a month before the intended release they freaked out and just bashed everything together as best as possible. I can totally respect that. The songs aren't about anything, so there's no need to actually analyze the lyrics. This is just pure studio improvisatio

I finally own a copy of Thomas Dolby's first album, The Golden Age of Wireless. Believe it or not, there a 5 different versions of this thing, and i have the US version of the original. The cover is different from the UK original, they swapped an instrumental track for both sides of his post album single, and used an alternate version of "Radio Silence." These pre "She Blinded Me with Science" versions were never released on CD, i have the mini LP anyway, and i'll never find the UK original, so i'm fine with it. I talked a lot about him in my previous post, so we can just skip to the album itself. Not surprisingly, it's an album about technology. More specifically, it's about the merging of technology with our lives. Dolby consciously pairs electronic and acoustic instruments, and sings about how we actively use technology in our modern lives, what that does to our mental state, and how we might love or loathe it at a subconscious level. Th

So, what did Bob Geldof and The Boomtown Rats think about America in 1979? Not a lot of positive things, it turns out. With 2 UK hit albums under their belt, they spent quite a bit of time over here trying to gain some international notoriety, and then they wrote an album about that experience. It's called The Fine Art of Surfacing, and damned if we just don't even bother. We're lunatics. It's hot, it's freezing, we kill ourselves, and kill kids at school, gossip, play dress up to pretend we aren't miserable, and the only thing we know about all the drugs we take is what color the pills are before we swallow handfuls of them. None of it ever f-ing stops. Just being here is enough to drive you insane. Back to Ireland and some fresh air for us! He's not wrong. Granted, i was literally a sperm while they were exploring our bounteous insane asylum, but it hasn't gotten any better now has it? Make no mistake, this is a concept album. The concept is Am

Let's explore the more overtly political side of Industrial. The first two SPK albums are real industrial noise, but their third album is  industrial synthpop. Industrial music has a few characteristic traditions: the heart of a band is usually a guy with a sequencer, acronyms are intentionally undefined (coming up with funny interpretations is actually part of the fun), and there's very little indication if any particular idea or topic is serious or ironic. SPK is New Zealand musician Graeme Revell's journey from industrial noise, through political/philosophical synth pop dance music, to a further career in film scoring (and you have definitely heard his music if you've seen a movie in the last 20 years. Machine Age Voodoo is the first completely synth-pop oriented album, intentionally commercial but built on a definite industrial foundation. Lyrically, you might feel very uncomfortable with the overtly socialist/communist mindset, and that's actually the p

Nowadays we associate "new wave" with the synthy, jerky pop/rock of the late 70s and 80s, but at the start it was indistinguishable from punk (especially in the UK). Real punk wasn't an actual musical genre, it was an attitude. That attitude was "this urban/suburban world our parents created is crap." That attitude evolved along two distinct lines, synth pop and alternative rock. The former simply abandoned to whole issue and reveled in the electronic inhumanity of commercial pop (whether escapist or critical, it's meant to be highly refined popular dance music) while the latter delved even deeper into the reason being outcast and miserable isn't fun at all. Boomtown Rats are the start of that alternative rock lineage, but they cross over into the Kinks, Cars, Blondie world on occasion. They are an Irish rock band, and Bob Geldof is their vocalist/songwriter. He's much more famous for his charity work (Band Aid, Live Aid, etc.), but his band was

Lords of Acid is the EDM project of Praga Khan and which ever female vocalist was hanging out with him at the time. Their sophomore album is considered an industrial album, and now would be a good time to really delve into what that really means. When i talked about Throbbing Gristle, i mentioned the idea that this is music from an "industrialized" mindset. Machinery, violence, noise, force, the removal of nature and humanity for mass production and consumption. It very much originated in England, but found a second home in Chicago. From the very beginning it was the genre of the margins of society: LGBT, LaVayan satanism (which is really just complete individual freedom), anarchists (both classical and destructive), and any other marginalized groups felt drawn to the violent crash of sampled drums, chainsaw guitar riffs, electronic chaos, and just talking about the horrible side of life in general. The common thread is provocative (like punk) electronic music emphasizing

I've always been meh on Godsmack. Something about their debut album feels off, but i think i'm the one who's wrong. Godsmack wasn't discovered, or manufactured, they didn't get lucky. They paid for their first album themselves, but it got so popular that the little label that published it legitimately couldn't afford the scale of manufacturing and distribution. So they signed with a major label that could invest that much money, remastered and slightly reorganized the tracks, and they're still recording and touring today. People sometimes call them nu metal, but that's just wrong. They are hard rock with industrial undertones, and it is blatantly obvious that they graduated from the Page Hamilton school of guitar riffage. They are Helmet's little brother, who can't decide if he's a  cult kid or a biker. It's got the samples and electronics of industrial and hardcore, the dropped d riffing of the simplest Helmet or Tool, Zakk Wylde-esq

Here's an insane story. I was listening to Burl Ives Sings Pearly Shells and Other Favorites, and i had three thoughts. 1) i kind of like Burl Ives, but i don't want to write about this album. 2) i should write about about a band's whole discography. 3) let's binge all 5 Nirvana albums. Why not the standard studio 3? Because Incesticide is their best album, and Unplugged is special. Actually, all 5 albums are completely different beasts, and altogether they paint a picture of a band who cared about 1 thing: playing songs. The constant thread through every album is the complete exorcism of every ounce of negative energy infesting these human beings. Obviously it didn't work, but you can hear Kurt Cobain exerting every ounce of physical and mental energy just trying get it out of his system. "Grunge" isn't a thing. Every nirvana album is both the exact same and completely different. They are the same because Kurt was a professional songwriter from

Dave Grusin is technically a jazz pianist, but he's also a pretty notable film composer (even some movies you've actually seen). But did he make psychedelic noise rock? Absolutely. I doubt he's proud of it, but i have his soundtrack to a movie Roger Ebert called "a lot better than you might expect [but the book was much better]." High praise, indeed. I don't need to see the 1968 sex-farce Candy. Little known fact: i stopped caring about movies after The Matrix Reloaded (2003), and i abandoned attentively watching them altogether after Occulus (2013). Anywho, let's attack this for what it really is: a jazz pianist writing symphonic psych-rock that builds toward a Steppenwolf song. That's a reasonable concept, and i don't need to know the actual source of the structure; like the tone poems of Smetana or Straus. Yeah, a psychedelic tone poem based on two songs by John Kay for a movie based on a book that's a satire of pornography. How's

If you've never heard Stan Getz, the general consensus is that his 1967 album Sweet Rain is the cream of the crop. They call him "the sound" because, well, he's about the smoothest sax player ever. Not lightweight or boring, but double-digit aged whisky smooth. He's heavily influenced by South American music, and a pioneer of Samba and Bossa Nova based improvisation. Notable highlights from the nastier side of his life include going to prison for robbing a pharmacy for morphine, being abusive to his actual wife and children, and stealing João Gilberto's, the "inventor" of bossa nova, wife. He didn't kidnap her or anything, she just ran away with him when he went back to the states. They didn't actually marry because his real wife didn't want to be bankrupted by divorce (yes, that did frequently happen in a world where businesses didn't hire women to do anything more than answer the phone or type letters). It's generally hint

I might be the grumpiest old man in the universe today. 2 days of traipsing through 3 foot snow drifts to feed animals and drive kids around in a blizzard is enough to make anyone steaming mad at the universe. So let's sip this rum and orange juice together, while i break out  The Supremes and soothe whatever's left of this savage beast. Where Did Our Love Go is their second album. It's the first hit "Motown" album, the highest ranking for a female group ever, 3 number one singles, 89 weeks on the charts, and the first number 1 on the new R&B charts. Diana Ross currently has a net worth of 200-something million dollars, and this is the album that made that happen for everyone involved. I've already talked about my respect for Motown in general, and Holland/Dozier certainly didn't hand these lovely ladies stinkers. I'm gonna listen to their 10th album too (The Supremes Sing Holland-Dozier-Holland). Sure, we could delve into the questionabl

If you remember way back to our first encounter with Melanie, you'll be pleased to know that i still have no idea what she is. I don't mean that as an insult, i just can't wrap my head around her sheer complexity. Everything i said about Gather Me applies to Stoneground Words, and more! She's a folk singer, but way more complex than her peers (Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell). This album has all sorts of background musicians, guitars and organ and harmonium and sax and electric bass and congas, and more, and somebody presses the gospel choir button occassionally. Her tonality and song structures are complex, even when the lyrics are borderline silly. She warbles and melismates like she's on the edge of a nervous breakdown. The best story about her is that she completely ignored the fact that the Powder Ridge Rock Festival was totally cancelled, 30,000 people showed up to buy drugs anyway, and she played for that wacked out audience through a PA powered by ice cream

Tonight's album isn't what you think. I mean, obviously it's a Jack Jones album, but that's not what i'm really listening to tonight. I'm really listening to my all time favorite arranger blow his contemporaries out of the water. Jack Jones is primarily known as a pop singer, but 1962's I've Got a Lot of Livin' to Do is one of his forays into big band jazz. He's great, and i really do like his voice. His output is consistently high quality (though the vocal reverb on this album is borderline obnoxious), and that means we can turn our attention to his supporting ensembles. Three band leaders support him on this album.  Billy May only does one track (and his orchestration is booooooring), so it's really a grudge match between Pete King and Marty Paich. Paich is the winner, hands down. My love of Marty Paich is well documented (possibly to the point of nausea), but i think you can hear the difference on this album. May's scoring make

Let's play female vocalist album roulette. I've pulled 6 out of various crates. I'll shuffle them around and pick a number for tonight's review. Will i like it, will i hate it, who knows? The suspense might malfunction and kill us all! It won't, guns and women are both perfectly safe so long as you don't pretend they are toys. If nothing else, i am a man of my word. Chamber 3, Barbra Streisand's What About Today, is locked and loaded. Fire at will. Google tells me 58% of people who told google whether or not they liked it didn't. Wikipedia tells me it's 33.33% of Babs' unranked albums (meaning anybody who did buy it told 12 friends not to buy it), and the phrase "first attempt at recording contemporary pop songs," confirms that nobody likes this thing. So, i should find loads of things to compliment.... I know exactly why people didn't like this album. It has nothing to do with Barbra, the song selections, or the messag

You know what? You can all shove it. Snoopy for President. I like The Royal Guardsmen a lot. They aren't weird or obnoxious, but their songs are good. They're all over the map style-wise, but it doesn't sound contrived. It's more like they can play whatever style you want them to play, as long you don't mind a completely different style for the next song (they are campaigning across all the constituencies, after all). Thankfully, they deliver on their promises. An enjoyable listen whenever you're in the mood for lighter (but well written) 60s pop-rock. Next

Sometimes i feel guilty for not liking an artist or an album. For example, Tom Waits, or Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' Murder Ballads, or the third Portishead album, aptly titled Third. I flicked over to NPR on the drive home just in time to hear a flashback of Brian Eno telling Bob Boilen about how excited he was by a Portishead track, and they'll be my focus tonight. Like i said, i feel bad for not liking Third. After the agonizing 11 year wait, i wanted real trip hop again. I still don't like it, especially now that the other iconic band famous for exponentially extending the space between albums dropped what i consider to be an acceptable Tool album. Double especially considering when Failure finally decided to make another album after a decade plus hiatus, they said to themselves "it has to be a real continuation of Fantastic Planet, or we should just abandon the whole thing now." Luckily, i'm in charge and i can decide to watch the Roseland concert

I don't know about you, but today feels like a good day for some elevator music. I probably use that term more broadly than most people, and i rightly or wrongly include orchestral/big band arrangements of popular music regardless of intent. Today i'm listening to Billy Vaughn's arrangements of hit songs from 1962. I could probably do a reasonable survey of musicians whose master recordings were cremated in the 2008 Universal fire, and Billy Vaughn is one of them. His story is pretty interesting. He enlisted in the National Guard for a year, but then that pesky WWII thing happened. Luckily, he was considered too important as a musician and composer to play dodge ball with bullets and heavy artillery, and pretty easily made a career out of playing any instrument lying around after it was over. He went to college, fell back on being a barber when he couldn't find a gig, and pretty much just made anybody who crossed his path happy and/or wealthy. By the numbers, he was

Every band that has ever existed has one good song. I genuinely believe that statement, and tonight's band is one of my personal least liked bands of all time. I hate them. Every radio single was worse than the one before it, and i wish they did not exist, especially the one that is permanently lodged in my brain, ready to devour my sanity in moments of critical stress. Just like last night's album, i loved the soundtrack song so much i went and bought the real album. The song is "Suffocate," the soundtrack is Scream 3, the band is finger eleven. Unlike Machines of Loving Grace, i detest finger eleven and it's surprising that i still even possess their second album, The Greyest of Blue Skies. I literally haven't heard this album in 20 years, but i remember being really unhappy for listening to it. I'm going to listen to it with an open mind though because i only remember track 7, everything else is practically my first hearing. Keep in mind though, &qu

As should be completely obvious by now, i have a deep and complex love of listening to recorded music. Even music i subjectively hate (like say, Country) has a right to exist, if only so that i can actively hate it while saying "you're more than welcome to love it." But, like everyone else, i have a favorite type of music and it's industrial rock from the early to mid 90s. You've all heard of NIN, Marilyn Manson, and Rob Zombie, but they are very much the Brad Pitt, or Leonardo DiCaprio of their genre. Nothing wrong with them, perfectly appealing, boring old superstars whose albums are actually hit or miss because being palatable (for a given value of palatable) was more important them. I want the real meat of the genre, the lifestyle bands who managed to eke out their own lasting successes. Ministry, KMFDM, Die Krupps, Gravity Kills, Stabbing Westward, Sister Machine Gun, Skinny Puppy, early Thrill Kill Kult, Front Line Assembly, and tonight's selection M

It's been a very long day. It is also a sad day, as Neil Peart has died. I do not have any Rush albums in my collection, but i think the fact that there never have been and almost certainly never will be any Rush albums sitting in a used record shop is a better testament to their musical legacy than anything i could say. He was THE iconic drummer of my adolescence, and i can only hope that he was in some way satisfied with his life's work (musicians never actually are, you know). Rest in peace, Neil. Tonight's review

Is This It? Probably not, but it's a valid question. Let's travel back to that strange old year of 2001 and talk about The Strokes. They didn't disappear or burn out, they still exist, you just don't care. It's not your fault, really. It's theirs. Not because they did anything wrong, but because they succeeded in changing the entire rock landscape with their debut album. Their demo stirred up an actual bidding war, and when the dust finally settled they knew exactly what they wanted their debut album to sound like. They wanted to sound like a garage band from the 60s/70s who travelled in time to make an album in a NYC basement in 2001 that sounded like it was made in the 60s/70s. They wanted to sound like they were playing these songs live, but also sound like it was made with drum machines and generally cheap equipment. They wanted it to sound the exact opposite of what everyone else was doing. What they did was write catchy, peppy songs from the perspect

I wasn't overly thrilled with last night's offering from the Moody Blues, so tonight i'm going to say now This Is Cave Music (Ha! Get it? 'Cause the cover was a cave painting. Oh, how droll i am). I don't have the aptly self titled debut album by Moon Hooch, but since this one starts off with No. 6 of their initial compositions i'll take a moment to point out the first album was recorded in 24 hours in Brooklyn. They spent some money and took a little more time with their second album. There's some synths and vocals on it, but they are pretty ok and it works with their persona. For those who don't know, Moon Hooch is saxophone based dance/rave music. To put it in SAT terms, Electronic is to House as Acoustic is to Cave (again with the allusive humor: the band met in college. I'm on fire tonight). They honed their style busking in the NYC Subway, which contrary to what you might have thought requires an actual audition and license, unless you

So what do the Moody Blues have to say to their great grandchildren? Holy shit! I spilled my drink i was so startled by that opening. Oh yeah, going into space was a big crazy thing in 1969. The album was inspired by the moon landing (or the successful world wide medio-political hoax if you're the kind of person who believes a poor selling Moody Blues album was a vital step in the plot of our lizard overlords to brainwash us into believing that evil sciency stuff). There are quite a few threads of a story here, but for whatever reason i can't seem to connect them. Hi kids, i hope everything doesn't suck for you in the future. Do space people get lonely? I'm long dead by now, but we bury ourselves, so i'm actually part of earth again if you want to come visit sometime. Sincerely, your hippy relatives from England (that's a country on Earth). It also seems like it's meant to be one big multi-movement work, choruses reappear, they jump from a hundred ye

Paul McCartney had a farm E-I-E-I-O. And on that farm he made an album, Oh-my-lo-fi-no! That's not really true. Yes he owned a farm, but only because buying property is what wealthy people do instead of paying taxes. They're called liquid assets because you can freely slosh them around when necessary. He let the neighboring shepherd graze the land so it didn't appear vacant, and eventually bought more of the surrounding property to further discourage sightseers. If you follow the documented timeline, they spent 2 or 3 months there after John said adios jerkos. They were back in London before Christmas, and that's where McCartney actually recorded his lo-fi self-titled solo album. We ignore the fact that he's not some random schmuck, he is a corporate executive. When he walked into the New York offices of Apple Records even Allen Klein had to say "you're the boss." Go ahead, try postponing you're internationally renowned band's next album

It's time to listen to Uncle Meat. It's part of Zappa's much larger conceptual project No Commercial Potential. It was intended to be the soundtrack of a movie that never got finished. His larger vision was that it could all be cut up and spliced together in different ways but still be the same large scale experimental project. I think we forget the most important part of Zappa's music, though. It's supposed to be funny. You're supposed to be in on the joke. He did all of this on purpose, to get you to think. He wanted you to question who exactly is telling you what's acceptable, normal, logical. He wanted you to see the humor in playing serious music on cheap toys and strange sounds on expensive technology. He wanted to read in depth sociological essays about his work so that he could respond by saying "no, i just put random crap together because it was funny." He wanted certain parts to be completely out of step with others so you couldn'

So, Chicago Transit Authority. The band is pretty famous as the jazz rock standard, but their story starts at the bottom. Columbia didn't actually want them because they already had Blood, Sweat & Tears. But, since the producer of BS&T2 only did it so he could use the money to produce a band he actually liked, they didn't really have an argument to stop him. Then, because the band had spent the previous two years writing 4-7 minute songs, they said we'll only publish a double album debut if we get to keep more of your future profits than normal. Yep, Chicago sold their future royalties to make the first album. At least it's good, in part because Peter Cetera didn't write any of the songs. Geez, 4 days in and i already broke my new year's resolution to not be mean. Oh well, i'm sure Peter Cetera will get along just fine without my liking his songs. I like his bass playing, at least. Hendrix was actually a big fan of Terry Kath, believe it or not

I've been avoiding Offering, the debut Carpenters album for quite a while. Now that i've heard it though, it's weird. As far as my unwritten standard evaluation of albums goes, it's actually a pretty good album, but Richard is weird. I wouldn't call it a speech impediment, but something about the way he forms words is a sound i've never heard before, and it sounds like he's double miced, or using a bizarre chorus effect or something. And his arrangements are strange too. The songs he wrote are fine, but the cover songs are wacky. Every track is somehow different, but they all elicit the same "why are you doing that?" I gather most people had a similar reaction, because it was a flop until after their second album when they reissued it as "Ticket to Ride," with different cover art. Now, i personally don't buy into the fallacy that music speaks about the psychological state of it's composer/performer. Yes, they both had seriou

I noticed today that the strange part of the world who actually knows about My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult has finally accepted that they are in fact "industrial disco." The history of Wax Trax and Chicago industrial music is a subject worthy of an entire library, but MLWTTK is my favorite band to emerge from those humble record store beginnings. They are an unpredictable band for sure, and i definitely don't like all of their albums, but Hit & Run Holiday is an album i think every human being on the planet should hear at least once. This album is simply impossible to describe, because it doesn't actually belong to a musical genre as we understand them. It's actually a movie. I know that sounds weird, but the band is actually a movie. My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult was the name of the movie they were trying to make, but composing the soundtrack led them so far afield that they just shrugged and kept going as a band instead. All of their albums come f