Albums for Eternity with Bottle, the Curmudgeon

I was going to write about something else, but you know who reminds me of the Ramones? Volbeat. They also remind me of Social Distortion and Misfits. I think Volbeat is the closest thing we have to an actual modern day punk band (they're labeled metal about as convincingly as Kenny G is labeled Jazz). They're Danish, and just like Golden Earring (the nearby Dutch), you wouldn't know that from listening to them. "Die to Live" has totally infested (in a good way) my mental jukebox over the last week or so, so we might as well go listen to all of last year's  Rewind, Replay, Rebound on youtube together. They definitely have a split personality, and the first track highlights their somewhat strange 80s hard rock meets 90s alternative vibe. It's Volbeat light, less filling, tastes underwhelming. Not bad, just not the part that actually interests me personally. Pelvis on Fire is more like it, and showcases their real Rockabilly roots, with impressive compo...

The Ramones sold out. How dare they pick up acoustic guitars, and sing love songs, and change drummers, and play guitar solos! Says a moron. It's the Ramones. Road to Ruin. The one with I Wanna Be Sedated (my theme song). It's 60s pop played as loud and distorted as possible at the time. It's where hardcore pioneers Bad Brains got their name, for crying out loud. And, if your head isn't bobbing hard enough to bite your tongue in half while you talk trash, then you're not listening to it right in the first place. Get outta here with that nonsense. Next

You're all gonna cry "blasphemy!," but Wildflowers is my favorite Tom Petty album. I love earlier Tom Petty, but you have to know that i was a die hard MTV kid. The video for You Don't Know How It Feels was a big deal. I don't know if it was the actual first continuous shot music video, but it was pretty highly talked about. Plus, the various attempts at censoring the chorus were hilarious; how turning "joint" backward or changing "roll" to "hit" (i assume they were misguidedly thinking like "going to another bar"?) made it any better is beyond me. Regardless, all three big hits are stellar (It's Good to Be King is very much one of his best songs altogether, lyrically/musically/emotionally), but the deep cuts are really interesting too. Some say the softest tracks are borderline sloppy but they had to wait twelve more years before Highway Companion came out to validate that opinion (it's certainly MY least favori...

Fans of the show will undoubtedly know that i have a deep love of serendipitously coincidental happenstance. It just so happens that today is my birthday, and tonight's album is Cage the Elephant's sophomore effort, Thank You, Happy Birthday. I just picked it up because the cover art is pretty awesome, i'd never really heard much of their earlier stuff, and didn't give it any actual thought (didn't even notice the title). I've written about a bunch of bands that left England to live here, but these guys went the other direction, leaving Bowling Green, KY for the outskirts of London. Strange. The story i guess is that they did like a Beatles or Prince style thousand song recording session, decided they didn't like any of them, dug deep into their personal side project material and struggled to mash 12 of them together like an imaginary compilation album. I don't NOT believe them, but they hint at feeling a bit embarrassed by their own eagerness to b...

I'm from Oklahoma City. I know the Flaming Lips from before She Don't Use Jelly actually propelled them into the mainstream on MTV (tonight's album simply bouyed them well above one hit wonder status). I've seen them so many times in concert, opening for Smashing Pumpkins, headlining with Liz Phair and Starlight Mints, etc. Next time we're back in my hometown i'll drive you past Wayne Coyne's houses (where his infamous front yard bathtub google maps photo happened). My CD of Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots has been missing for a long time (it's probably stuck in the busted cd changer in my car along with Queens of the Stone Age's Villians, and some other gems). Luckily i found it on vinyl, and i couldn't be happier. Unluckily, the estate of Cat Stevens cried copyright infringement and the Lips still give them a big chunk of royalties from Fight Test (no comment, the most pointed comment of all 'cause Wayne knew they'd bitch and just s...

It's always sad when i don't bring home an instrument to bang around from a trip to the big city, but i did splurge and buy almost a week's worth of albums to talk about (4 records and 2 CDs). I don't know where to start... ... so Neutral Milk Hotel, i guess. I have no idea what sparked the renewed interest in their second album 10 years ago, and i won't pretend that i knew about it before a couple years ago, but both their studio albums were just sitting at Barnes & Noble. Now they are in my basement. Every youtube music persona has some grandiose narrative to tell about this cult underground classic, i won't be able to add much of anything other than to tell you that the instant you hear Jeff Magnum sing "two headed boy" it will be permanently lodged in your frontal cortex. Anywho, spin spin spin the black circle (that's a Pearl Jam reference, if you're keeping score). In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is 32 years and 12 days old as i...

Here's a really strange album. Not strange in itself, but strange because it's impossible to contextualize. Admit it, The Doors without Jim Morrison doesn't exist. You don't have to feel bad for thinking that, because it's true. The problem is that most of the tracks were just waiting for Morrison to come back from Paris and participate. It's a Doors album, but it's not. Some bands can keep going, some bands have to rebrand themselves. They didn't try to replace him, but Ray and Robby aren't Jim and on more than a couple tracks they're clearly trying to be. So, while you can pretend to ignore it, the ghost of Jim Morrison haunts this record because they wrote it for him to sing. They also made it sound too nice. In my earlier review i mentioned that their "evolution" was as much a product of recording equipment as anything, and this one goes too far. There aren't any "bathroom" vocals, there's practically no re...

I am of course biased. I love my friends and i love their music. Right at the top of the list is Steven Stark and Noonish Moon. He is an Oklahoma composer, multi-instrumental performer, teacher, and all around great guy. Today is the release of his crowd funded EP, Chapman Street, and i'm going to gush about it. Noonish Moon is his pseudonymous indie-pop project. It's hard to pin it to a specific genre because he's a serious composer writing synthy pop-rock, but it's peppy, indie, dreamy, literate, nuanced, modern feelings music, the kind where a Prince cover seems completely appropriate (and he did one not too long ago!). I put my money where my mouth is and helped fund Chapman Street, and you're looking at my drawings as the artwork (for which i made a little money). How cool is that!? I also have the benefit of watching the whole project unfold from the beginning and occasionally sharing my thoughts behind the scenes, so to speak. The new EP is heavily in...

174 is an odious number. That means it has an odd number of ones in its binary expansion (even numbered binary expansions are "evil"). Phi X 174 was the first DNA based genome to be mapped, the first virus model to be synthesized in a lab, and is still used as a control for testing sequencing equipment and personal protective equipment. 174 is the atomic number of Unseptquadium, a theoretical element formed in the gravitational collapse after a supernova. None of which matters. Saying random interesting things about the number of essays i've written was just a cheap trick for introducing the random interesting things i'm going to say about tonight's album Dream Police... ...by... ...Cheap Trick. They got their name from a comment about Slade ("they used every cheap trick in the book"). Each band member has his own consistent character/persona/image/wardrobe, and they ham it up great. I never paid much attention to them growing up, other than noti...

Let's go back to my dad's records tonight for a double header. It's John Mayall's Empty Rooms and USA Union. I've unintentionally been listening to albums about fictional women. I thought it might be a nice change to listen to songs about a very specific woman, Nancy Throckmorton. Not every song is about her, it's more a chronicle of their relationship, and his experience in general, during his Laural Canyon tenure. The point is when he says "her" or "she" he's talking about a real person. What makes these albums interesting is that he hired friends and acquaintances he'd been making to be "the band," not because he particularly wanted to, but because polydor kept demanding albums. What i've noticed about John Mayall is that people talk about him like he was some sort of mastermind bandleader. They call musicians who played with him "alumni" the same way they might describe someone's tenure in King ...

I'm gonna go on record and say Razorblade Suitcase is better than Sixteen Stone. They are both pretty good albums, but critics have the impossible job of having a strong opinion about the album on top of the stack. So, they cheat. They find something in common with another band, and pretend that's obvious. Critics hated Bush's sophomore album. They said it sounded like Nirvana (it doesn't), the songs weren't hook heavy radio fuel (sure they are, maybe not your radio, but someone's). They confuse Albini for the source of the sound rather than the giftwrap. They mistake Gavin Rossdale's tangential metaphors for Kurt Cobain's pleasure of speech. They think an album has to punch you in the face to be good. In short, they don't actually care. Sixteen Stone is a classic alternative rock album. Every song is approachable, recognizable, evocative. It has really crass moments and borderline melodrama (a big seller at the time). It's a great album an...

If, like me, you need an antidote to Bad Company's bad album, Desolation Angels , i've got you covered. It's from my personal stash of trip-killers, and it's The Cars (the self titled debut). They are self aware, the women are fully autonomous humans (some are dumb, some manipulative, but all independent individuals), and love (however confusing) is exciting. The Cars had been playing these songs for years in the bars of Boston and the surrounding east coast, so that's at least part of the reason Bad Company's throwback sound was pretty unappealing. Man, you really wouldn't know that i adore early Bad Company, would you? Don't worry, The Cars made a couple terrible albums themselves. It's like a new theme, bands that start out strong then turn pretty garbage by the end. Oh wait, that's every band. Why do you still put up with my nonsense? Go listen to whatever you like.... Next

What am i supposed to do with Bad Company's fifth album? Mike DeGagne tells me it sounds better than their fourth (even though the addition of keyboards and other stuff doesn't make it exciting at all), it's definitely better than their next (and Paul Rogers's last), and it's an unfulfilling listen in spite of it's great moments. It sold well, but the next one didn't, so everybody gave up on them, i guess? Is it bad? Is it only underwhelming if you love Bad Company's earlier albums? I don't know, let's find out. What the hell are Desolation Angels? I know it's  half of a Kerouac novel, but Paul Rogers had wanted to use that title for an album with his previous band, so this album clearly can't be about the actual book. Angels of desolation? Angels of the desolate? Angels who are themselves desolate? Are the band members angels? Are the songs angels? Are they just songs about the clash between fantasy and reality? Is the cover just the...

I know you only know one Toto song (you actually know quite a few, but that's not the point). It's ok. They aren't everbody's cup of random ingredients. And they are random. Toto is not a concept album band, or a niche band, or a hit after hit after hit band. Like Steely Dan or Spinal Tap, they exist purely on their own terms, and you're either along for the guided tour or you're just saving a little energy for a stop or two on the running board. Critics pretty much flip-flopped for every album they made, because critics are just making it up as they go. The band thought it was funny, because they were too. Toto isn't subjectable to standard critical analysis. You have to take them at face value as a group of guys who made whatever music their brains produced without any larger plan or ulterior motive. I resurrected their second album Hydra from the moldy catacombs of doom, but this essay is more about an underlying web of connections that's been l...

I have Rush's second live album, Exit...Stage Left. After my merciless tirade against last night's album, i need something positive to talk about. It's a lot of their best (and best known) songs, the cover art has allusions to every previous album, and it's Rush. They are quite simply masters of prog-rock as an artform. They weren't simply a band, and they didn't simply write songs, they were true composers for their ensemble (the progressive part of the genre). They aren't simply "jams," the pieces have real complex structures, different sections, moods, functions, Peart's lyrics are more narrative than rhyming couplets (and rarely just verse/chorus modules with an interlude or two). I tend to avoid live albums for the simple fact that hearing most bands "perform" their music live serves no purpose. Not so here (and not just because i don't have any of their studio albums). Hearing them perform this incredible music is spec...

When i agreed to be the bus driver for this field trip, i told you there was only 1 rule: listen to the whole album. I didn't tell you the secret second rule, which is always be completely honest (perfectly fine to be wrong, change my mind, skim over details, whatever). I haven't broken either of those rules, and tonight is no exception. What the crap is THIS? It damned sure isn't 1969 Three Dog Night. For starters, it's not rock. It's the mediocre-est of Blue Eyed Soul. I'm clearly lacking the proper context of the double-digit evolution of their albums, but i certainly don't want to hear it happen in real time. The prelude is an awful "Entrance of the Gladiators," and the first track (their last charting single) has a toilet flush in it! How apropos. There's a terrible David Clayton Thomas impression called "Put Out the Light" (about as good as Beacon Street Union's Elvis, or Danny Kaye's Louis Armstrong). Yep, that...

We're all just going to pretend that i didn't have a near nervous breakdown today, and listen to Queen's third album, Sheer Heart Attack. I don't plan these coincidences, i just leave plenty of space for them to happen. Most everyone sees this album as the turning point for the band, from a perfectly lovely prog-rock group to the intentionally flamboyant, good naturedly pretentious, and overly dramatic titans of Hard and Glam Rock that we all know and love. But this wasn't really a calculated move by the band, in fact this album was pieced together out of nowhere exactly like the title might imply. They were on tour in the US with Mott the Hoople (aka the band whose only real fan was David Bowie) when Brian May found out he had contracted hepatitis from pre-Australian vaccinations and they flew back to England. They wrote many of the songs while he was recovering, then he also had a stomach ulcer and they just "left some space" for him to record his gu...

Tonight i went through the worst of the moldy records, trashed the jackets and washed a few. First up is the quintessential self titled debut, Van Halen. It's still a little scratchy, but no major skips after a quick dish soap sponge bath. This album is a classic, and most every song on the album is a rock radio staple. It's essentially a live album with some guitar overdubs, and it wasn't until people became interested in what the band was doing afterward that sales finally took off. Gene Simmons paid for their earlier three track demo. They used that demo to get some big sold out gigs, and when Warner Brothers bit they took their live set into the studio ('cause that's all they had). The price tag of this album sounds insane at $40k for what it was in 1978 (a glorified set list), but holy hand grenades it's still mind blowing today. You can't deny that Eddie was a genius, and i honestly can't name a more current guitarist who can carry an entire ...

So, one of my real criticisms of country albums is that they are disproportionately pop albums. All the songs are there to be hits, obviously not all of them will be, but that's the only reason they are there. There's little continuity, no proper narrative structure (i don't mean a story, i mean an unfolding series of events/action). Usually, pop albums amount to a day in the life with ADD. Country, more than any other genre is a hardcore business based purely on record sales. That's not a bias, that's an objective fact; Country stars are either professional songwriters (as an actual job in an office with a paycheck) turned performer, or a groomed celebrity from the start. Country, in any of it's various flavors, is not an experimental or adventurous genre, it's a lifestyle genre with a real and discerning demographic, and if it's not going to make money it isn't worth publishing. That's why Emmylou Harris's Quarter Moon in a Ten Cent Tow...

Oh no! Here it is the end of the night, and we didn't get a chance to jam! And with that Violent Femmes reference, let's listen to their 2016 album We Can Do Anything (which i have on vinyl!) Allmusic grudgingly says it has a right to exist. Screw whichever useless freelancer uttered those words. If ever there was a band that deserved the label "alternative" it's Gordon Gano, Brian Ritchie, and their current snare drum player. Violent Femmes is literally the least commercial band in existence, and probably the most famous folk-punk band (Meat Puppets are the only other band to reach the same level of renown, but they stray from the genre frequently). They can be silly, or shocking, or sentimental, or downright dark. John Zorn played in their backing horn section for a while. This is one of the more stripped back albums in their discography, completely acoustic with a few accents (a lot like The Red Headed Stranger). It's by no means minimal, but defi...

Oh, life is bigger. It's bigger than you and you are not me. I don't own Out of Time, but i do have other R.E.M. albums, including their fifth, Document. The first thing you should know is that this doesn't sound like 1987 at all. This album is an entire decade ahead of it's time. The second thing you should know is that "It's the End of the World as We Know It" is two years older than Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire." The third thing you should know is that this album is explicitly about the concepts of fire and labor. The fourth thing you should know is R.E.M. comes from the same wildly eclectic music scene as the B52s: Athens, GA. It's not a concept album in the way i've been describing them (see what i did there ;) ). Some critics point to Peter Buck's encyclopedically comprehensive rock guitar stylings, some point to Michael Stipe's ability to write obscure but relatable lyrics that manage to be h...

THREE NIGHTS ONLY! LIVE IN YOUR LIVING ROOM, JUDAS PRIEST SELLS OUT!! That's stupid. Everybody calls Killing Machine a terrible turn to Arena Rock. What were they supposed to do? Heavy Metal wasn't a mainstream genre in the 70s, but Judas Priest was getting too big to not play enormous international concerts. They had to fill those stadiums, and the only way to do that was to appeal to a much broader audience. The evil gothic priest image wasn't gonna do it, so leather and motorcycles and sing-along choruses seemed like the only possible choice. Remember, Priest was a pre-New Wave heavy metal band; they were competing with punk and glam and Black Sabbath, and nobody was really sure that this would work in America. That school shooting Bob Geldof felt perfectly fine satirizing? Let's change the title to Hell Bent for Leather and not sabotage our profits off the bat, guys. Why not try an acoustic ballad, yeah of course, make it sound evil, obviously. Yes, there a ...

I've been avoiding a lot of the country albums in my collection. The reasons are many, and complicated, and much too hard to formulate for even my longest winded of posts. But i love Willy Nelson, and i definitely can't neglect the recent gift of his best selling 18th album, The Red Headed Stranger. What makes this album special? For starters, it's an honest to goodness concept album (my favorite). It's the story of a fugitive who "killed his wife and her lover." The Juice is loose, indeed. Jokes aside, his well negotiated deal with Columbia gave Willy full creative control. Now that's a deal. They seriously thought Willy was playing a demo recording of the intended album when he turned it in. What it must have felt like to have Willy Nelson tell you to your face, "tough shit you have to publish it," i can only guess. Then, when it sold millions and somebody made the album into an actual movie starring Willy, it had to sting. Why is it so...

My friend John gave me the records that have been sitting in his garage for decades and Ozzy's Diary of a Madman is there. How could i resist? It's his last album with Randy Rhodes, his first album with Sharon being "manager" and like the 47th lawsuit he's settled out of court. She fired and replaced the bassist and drummer because those dirty rat-bastards had the audacity to ask for money to buy food while they recorded their parts for free. The new guys  didn't try to pass it off either, from day one they told anyone in earshot that the actual recordings weren't them and the Osbournes finally had to give them something when it was all said and done. If i didn't know better (wink, wink), i'd say musicians getting ripped off by business executives was pretty standard practice... Tangent: the written English language desperately needs a sarcastic tense, or declension or something.... Where was i? The best part about Ozzy is he's actual...

Glass Houses is Billy Joel's New Wave Album. No it's not. It's his Rock album. No. It's Billy Joel's version of punk.... No no no. You're missing all the points. 1 - that's his actual house, that he lived in. 2 - new, old, doesn't matter, it's all rock and roll. 3 - Billy Joel stopped writing music because he felt like his turn was over. This was right smack dab in the middle of his turn, and writing complex stories about actual life was definitely his home field advantage. He's about to throw a rock through his own front window, the album starts with the glass breaking, and he proceeds to live out his rock and roll life in the songs. You feel how you feel, you do what you do, life is what you make it. It's all the same story, go live it. It really is the same story. The album really is Billy Joel's version of all of it. Every possible version of the rock and roll love story. I don't want to grow up, oh crap i already gr...

Here's a fascinatingly complex story. Imagine you and a few friends sing a song or two in the school talent show. Another classmate, says "you're fantastic and i bet we could all get rich if you make records for my mom's record label." None of you really want to be professional singers, but you're teenagers and Mary's mom it turns out isn't joking around.  You record a couple songs, you perform at actual gigs, all the money you're supposedly making is going into a trust fund that you'll inherit when you turn 21, it's all going great. You're confused when Mary's mom sells her label to a bigger label for $4,000 dollars of 1950s money, and you aren't popular anymore. But, the new label hands you back to Mary's mom who says "that's because they didn't know how to distribute you properly, and we just took them for suckers, wink." Then you find out it was all a lie, there's no trust fund, you don'...

I've been listening to albums that, regardless of how they turned out, the bands very much wanted to make. Let's go the opposite direction and listen to an album that was made under 100% duress by everyone involved. Emerson, Lake, & Palmer couldn't quit or do anything else until they made one more album. They had basically defected from England because England's tax burden on musicians was ludicrous. I make no judgement on that, but it's a pretty common sentiment and it's the basic explanation for why a lot of them retired to the US or non-British controlled island nations. They had always had internal bickering and went through periods of hating each other, but this really was the end. Emerson gave Lake side a to write whatever songs he wanted to write, and used side b for a large 4-part work of his own. Their lyricist didn't really have time to collaborate with them (and they weren't talking to each other anyway), Emerson wasn't actually ...