Albums for Eternity with Bottle, the Curmudgeon

It's time to play good or garbage. Tonight's album is A Salute To Motown, by The Believers. I'd love to give you some historical or biographical information, but i can't find any. The best i can tell you is it's a Dick Glasser/Al Capps production. They aren't completely unaccomplished musicians and/or producers, but bottle tells me it begs the question: two white guys making A Salute To Motown that hasn't even made it to a wikipedia page, and has nothing but sub 3/5 ratings, what could go wrong? No, see, this seems totally legit. Unlike that abomination The Astromusical House of Pisces, or Disko Hits!, or the others, this is good. 1970, we're still the better part of 2 decades away from Berry Gordy cashing in his $132 million by selling Motown to EMI. Capps and Glasser only take production credits. All the tracks are Jobete Music tracks, the musicians are anonymous but really, really good.  So what is this? It's a funky, upbeat, borderline ...

I have another sealed record. Hows about we unprotect ourselves from it?  Woody Guthrie had a lot of interesting things to say about Fred Trump, but i don't have any Woodie Guthrie albums. Instead, i'll share a record i do have but wasn't already on youtube.  I wasn't saving this record for any special occasion, but now's as good a time as any to open a factory sealed 1981 pressing of some 70+ year old live Jazz recordings, a few made during the final years of WWII. I don't have any morals or fables or jokes, just sharing an amazing collection of live music from real musicians facing exactly the same tired old useless racism, sexism, and bigotry that we're still watching a large portion of our country defend because they don't know any better, or maybe they do know better but just don't care. I care. Here's Billie Holiday and Charlie Parker and Art Tatum and friends making a hard day's struggle feel a little less painful. This round is on me....

I didn't want to have to do it, but you forced me with your stupid Boston Tea Party memes and inability to understand that doing half a job is worse than not even bothering to start. You brought this upon yourselves you whiny snowflake canned bean diet secretly brony posers. I wish i had Edward Bland's Concerto for electric violin, but i don't. I've got his stunning orchestrations of incredibly famous songs on the most nauseatingly commercial album ever created by a charlatan astrologer, a hair stylist, and a fashion designer. Pisces is the sign of the poet or interpreter. I'll accept the latter title, but not because Carroll Righter says so. I'll side with Killer Mike on this one and say, oh ok Ronald Reagan was his fault. Put on your Oscar De La Renta unitard, rub some Paul Mitchell conditioner through your hair, and say it with me: astrologer to the stars, my ass. Ooooh, he wrote a book just for me? What human love can compare to the compassion of a fish, ind...

Here's another interesting album. The 24 Chopin Preludes played by hardcore Chopin enthusiast Alexander Brailowsky. He's famous for filling the space between WWI & WWII with six night concerts of Chopin's complete works for piano. The first time he did it he actually used Chopin's own piano for quite a few pieces. I'm sure that's where Coheed & Cambria got the idea for their Neverender concerts. Almost certainly. Without a doubt. But seriously, can you imagine touring all over the world with the entire Chopin catalog in your head every night? That's hardcore. I'm too tired to run up to the attic to fetch my scores, so we'll just lean back and watch the pretty colors flicker on the backs of my eyelids. Quite a relaxing hobby, i highly recommend it. Next

What self respecting music school burnout wouldn't snatch up Jan DeGaetani's 1976 recording of songs by Charles Ives? Not this one, certainly. It's hard not to pretend that Ives is a major influence on my own music. The vacillation between bombast and melancholy, modality and dissonance creating strange textures. What's harder to believe is the sheer coincidence of blindly picking a musical set at an insurance company, unknowingly making a Geico joke, my car breaking down, picking an organist from Oklahoma who died in a car crash, then randomly picking Ives (the most famous insurance salesman composer i know) out of my own top shelf collection. They are all very much coincidences, but you have to admit it would probably give a less aware person the heebie jeebies. Or, maybe that subconscious part of my brain is even more powerful than i am willing to accept. Either way, i don't wanna go back to work tomorrow. Dear millibillionaires, please find a more useful...

I waded back into the classical music pool yesterday, and i'm just not in the mood for modern day songs about our ongoing world war two reenactment. So here's an obscure recording from 1986 of pieces written well before things like bombing other countries were even possible. What's Andrew Lloyd Weber's little brother have to say? Quite a lot actually, because these were some impressively obscure pieces at the time. Victor Herbert actually played his own premier of his second cello concerto, then wrote some super famous operettas that completely overshadowed his other stuff, Elgar wrote a Romance for a bassoonist friend (and also made a cello version that no one ever heard until Webber's performance of it in 1985), and you know how common bassoon solos are.... Then there's the obscurest of all, Arthur Sullivan's mostly incinerated cello concerto. Julian and friends had to reconstruct it from 2 surviving copies of the cello part, and Charles Mackerras'...

Today's one of those days that makes me run back and quadruple check my karma score-card. I thought i should have been on the upturn, but clearly not. That's my problem, not yours. So tonight we'll just eschew all the words and listen to multi keyboardist Earl Grant be awesome. We're in for stormy weather tonight, and it just so happens that's the first track on his most famous recording, the Ebb Tide LP. He was born in Idabel, OK in 1931, and ignoring the risk of uncomfortable innuendo, my dude can manhandle an organ like there's no tomorrow. That's not a joke, the jacket blurb says, and i quote, "[he] coaxes even the most subtle tones and innuendos out of his instruments...." The album itself is like the greatest blues/jazz organ recital with full orchestra accompaniment. Sadly, my copy has lots of skips. Even more sadly, he died in a car crash on a trip to Mexico at 39. Worst of all, that damned Universal fire again. On the bright side, so...

Here's an interesting idea. Let's see if we can piece together the plot of a musical from just the songs. The only thing i know about Promises, Promises is that it's Burt Bacharach's first musical. I know a couple of the songs, but i have no idea what the story is. Should be interesting. Overture time, themes and stuff, excellent. Party on, Wayne. Sounds like Bacharach. Which is to say, Austin Powers levels of campy (Mike Meyers movies are tonight's cinematic sub-theme, apparently. I assume that's just the residual effect of last night's adventures in Canadaland). Onward! He's not so thrilled with his lack of achievements. But he's gonna be somebody. 3rd floor apartment. What weird timeshare agreement have they got going? Quick inflation math. 637.50 a month for a downtown apartment and your neighbors "borrow" it for an evening. Yeah, pretty dismal digs, my dude. Girl who doesn't notice him sitting in the friend zone bleachers...

I'll wager every crate combing curmudgeon has at least one tragic story where they forgot to actually double check the record itself, only to feel the bowel clenching despair of finding a k-tel compilation inside of a truly collection worthy cover. Mine's Blondie, but at least the record had one Blondie song on it. So be it. It's much less horrible if you go at it intentionally, and tonight's record at least has a novelty jacket. It's Jukebox Jive from '75. You know K-Tel, the Canadian infomercial company. Compilation albums, the Veg-o-Matic, Miracle Brush. Sure they're Winnepegan hosers, but at least they put out the actual original hits, unlike Pickwick or Kidz Bop. I even went and found the commercial for you: https://youtu.be/UI_4hEBasTE $6.99 on 8 track!? Quick, Marty, get us back to 1975! What do you mean the flux capacitor is broken? Fine, fetch me that 45 year old dinner plate, i wanna hear some Clyde McPhatter. You don't know Clyde Mc...

Now, some of you die hard collectors might find it painful when i do this. Tough. You can keep your mint in-box cabbage patch dolls, or your complete set of micro machines. One of the greatest joys in the life of any bottle like myself is opening a never been touched cut record from the glory days of the 99-cent target bin. Luckily, that is a luxury i can afford. And what an appropriate coincidence, it's Joe Cocker's 7th album from 1978, his only release from Asylum. Well now that the cardboard cut under my thumbnail is bleeding appropriately, and i've just lowered it's apparent value from $30 to $6, let's give it a spin. Oh man, that's good. It's British Big Band Blues (duh), the kind you might associate with your parents' 20 year high school reunion (unless you're younger than me, then that won't make any sense at all). If you only know the couple super famous Joe Cocker tracks you're really missing out. I've always thought of h...

... and the orchestra he rode in on, i mean ... and his orchestra! It's time for another grudge match. This time our contenders hail from the world of film and television sountracks. In the blue corner, weighing in at 1962, the Menace of Venice, Annunzio Paolo Mantovani. And in the red corner, needing no introduction, at a close 1963 (those few months aren't going to make or break him), Henry Mancini. They touch gloves and head to their corners. We're in for a real treat tonight, folks. These heavyweights of film score are true titans. Gonna be a great fight. There's the bell, and they come out swinging. And it's Mantovani on the attack, with a vicious left hook. Some referees might frown on leading off with your opponent's own piece, but bottle is no stranger to back-alley brawls and he knows this London release has a different track order from the first run Decca version, so he lets it pass. Plus, it didn't really connect, i mean there's a reaso...

I'm going to tell you the weirdest story. It came out of last night's random encounter between Burl Ives and Bob Dylan. Now, i've told you i avoid country albums for lots of reasons, but it's really just the simple fact that country gets to be so formulaic that's it's just not interesting anymore. Like if every track on a blues record was 12-bar, or if every pop track was I-V-vi-IV. That wouldn't be bad if they told a story with a real plot, or shed some interesting take on the human condition, but "i drink beer and i drive a truck, my girlfriend left me, and...," i don't give a flaming flamingo. But that's not to say i don't like or appreciate the music, i just don't want to carry it around in my head all day. But again, even the most remedial music history that mentions Bluegrass has a couple paragraphs about Flatt & Scruggs. So here's what's been bothering me. Blonde On Blonde is a deservedly historic album (196...

Thank you for your patience. We here a Bottle of Beef pride ourselves on our selection of hold music. Please continue enjoying Baja Marimba Band, have a glass of strawberry wine, and bottle will be with you shor.... Hello! Sorry for making you wait. I've got two more albums for you tonight, but this time the connection is completely musical. I'll get to that in a second. On paper, i should like these two records the other way around. The one i hate is the one i'm supposed to like. The reason is actually quite simple. I learned how to play every song on the second album from a transcription without ever hearing the originals. I know it sounds trite and condescending, but the version in my head is so much better than the actual thing that it's really uncomfortable to listen to it. On paper, there's no reason why i should like Burl Ives. So, i'm gonna pull out my "i don't need a reason" card. Burl Ives is great, end of story. I'd go as far...

I was right in the middle of writing about two other albums, but while i was searching for the second one i coincidentally came across this album. It's funny because the other day i was looking at my friend Tim Verv 's website and somehow came across some class notes where he mentioned Baja Marimba Band. They'd drive a modern day PR lady to spike her wine with tylenol3 (that's the one with codeine). Cultural appropriation aside, this is just great fun from some serious studio jazz musicians having fun. I've got a bad habit of starting a review then chasing butterflies, and i'm like 3 deep right now. Hopefully i can circle around and finish some of them. Until then, please enjoy the Tijuana Brass's younger brother, Chuck Barris's go to game show theme song performers, the Baja Marimba Band. Those were the days, indeed. Next

I couldn't leave my friends with an album they couldn't go hear, so how about some 60s folk from the Sandpipers second album, The Sandpipers. They were a trio who suspiciously always had uncredited female back up singers. Always. Live, recordings, sometimes two of them, and this one time they snuck a photo of 5 whole people on the back of an album. Sometimes they even let the ladies sing actual words instead of imitating a flute in the ensemble. Not the lady on this particular cover. No clue who she is, but she's pretty. That'll sell. Suspicious, indeed. They were famous for singing all sorts of random crap in foreign languages. It's actually pretty enjoyable, and i gotta tell you i had no idea how prominent the harpsichord was in 60s pop. Have you ever heard a Spanish translation of Yesterday? Well what are you waiting for!? Imagine talking to your friends and slipping in a mention of The Sandpipers singing "Michelle, me amore" with full on Mariac...

Remember that garbage off-brand disko album from Pickwick i shared a while ago? Well, here's a fairly legit compilation from their subsidiary Design Records (the one Lou Reed worked for).  Some lesser known songs from the Kings of '62 and The J Brothers (not the Phillipino pop band or the construction company). You're seriously telling me the google mapped part of the information sewer highway doesn't have anything to say about a completely non-famous new york singing group from a discount republisher with Lou Reed sitting in on guitar and providing something akin to lyrics? Oh, sure, it's janky as all get out, but you gotta do some real 3rd page search engine scuba diving research before you chuck things in the trash can. This is a little treasure of long forgotten b-sides and throw away songs in my book. I wish i had the ability to share it with you, but these things are definitely catalogued in youtube's copyright cross-check library. We wouldn't want...

I did a quick calculation, and my LP/CD collection is larger than 818. It's probably a little over 1,000 physical discs actually, and i've barely written about 300 of them (280 essays with many multiple album days). Wouldn't it be awesome if 20 or 30 people gave me a dollar every day for writing them? It would. Is it ever going to happen? No. For starters, i don't care. For second breakfast, it's not like you can run over to your local record store and buy any of them. For elevensies (my wife started watching The Lord of the Rings yesterday and these things creep into my essays like i have a cinematographic memory, or something), the fact that i've listened to about 500 different albums all the way through since last September is just beyond comprehension even for me, and i'm the one who listened to all of them. You guys would owe me thousands of dollars at this point. You're welcome, here's tonight's best of the best. I should have done this...

The humor of this trope hasn't worn out its welcome yet, so what the hell is a Rod McKuen? I've got a second appropriately socially distanced glass of Malbec perched conspicuously atop my composer's notebook with the associated bandcamp album in the background, the googlemaphone is primed and ready to deliver the ancient wisdom of the skin fleshed tome that is wikipedia (that's a pretty weak Evil Dead/Army Of Darkness reference), and away we go. The first thing is technically a song, but the second thing is definitely a poem, and unless i'm mistaken that's a terrible Clint Eastwood impression. And wouldn't you know it, wikipedia leads off with the fact that he sold more albums than books of poetry. In all honesty, i can see it. Once you get used to it, his singing is actually quite charming. He's no Sinatra or Torme or Martin or Ho, but he does have a certain charm. He's no Emerson, or Blake either, but that's just the wine talking. Ye...

I suppose i have to do it. I've been postponing it for ages, but i have the holy grail of Detroit garage rock self indulgence. The soundtrack of the White Panther Party, the reason Lester Bangs existed famously enough to get mentioned in an REM song: the first MC5 album, Kick Out The Jams. His actual review of the album isn't anywhere near as scathing as people pretend it is. It is a decadent album, it was way overhyped, but it is easy to learn to love it and change your mind. In fact, the only thing you can't do is get over the sheer shock of Wayne Kramer's falsetto on Ramblin' Rose. I still laugh every time. I can't help it, it's so shocking it's funny. What are we really dealing with here? Well, it's proto punk, it lives in that weird space between Ziggy Stardust glam and the Sex Pistols grotesque downward spiral. These guys were the real deal. They actually made more money playing shows than they did at their day jobs, so they quit going to...

We've edged past 11:00pm and you though i was gonna forget about an album. Nonesuch! You know better than that. Let's stick with flute, and hear some C.P.E. Bach. These are old-school sonatas for this new-fangled side flute thingamabob and harpsichord. 3 movements: slow, fast, faster. Frederick the Second approved, gallant, major keys, one theme at a time, and well under 4 minutes a movement, please and thank you. Bye bye Poland, see you again in a hundred something years after Napoleon defeats Prussia. It's like musicians don't understand why everybody loves war, or something. Nevermind, just put on your evening pantaloons and enjoy Rampal's take on some lovely duets from Bach 3.0. Two thumbs up from me. Next

I knew i still had some records up in the attic, so today i went up and retrieved them. I don't have a turntable or needle for 78s so i left that stack up there, but i brought down a big fistful of 33s. Some were given to me, some were picked up on random trips to random places, some were obtained in let's call it a dubious manner. I honestly don't know where this one came from, but i have it so let's give it a spin. You're looking at all the information there is, the jacket has 4 wonderful paintings, and the label gives you some unhelpful information about where it was recorded. It's called Symbolic Americana and it's by Phillip White Hawk playing a hybrid Lute/Guitar and singing. Time to fire up the google machine. Discogs tells me it's Sunhawk SR-4211, Phillip White Hawk is a Cherokee singer/songwriter, the first half is a reissue of his Returning Of The Medicine Horse LP, it's from 1976. Percival, IA is a bit south of Omaha/Council Blu...

Tonight's album is an interesting fusion of jazz and R&B from 1969. It's actually 4 jazz soloists and a backing band. The backing band was the house band at American where it was recorded and Herbie Mann brought along two guitarists and a vibraphone player and called it (not surprisingly) Memphis Underground. He played other instruments too, but he's generally regarded as one of the first specialized jazz flautists. If you don't consider yourself a jazz aficionado, don't worry. This album sounds like a funk/soul record with soloists rather than singers. You definitely know the Isaac Hayes classic Hold On, I'm Comin', and Herbie, Roy, Larry, and Sonny do a pretty ripping take on it. If the strangeness of the ensemble doesn't reel you in, perhaps a real proper distorted noise solo will. If you thought Free Form Guitar from Chicago Transit Authority was too tame, or that Pharoah Sanders was too restrained, you're in for a real treat. The secon...

I don't have to defend liking Don Ho, i don't have to defend moving from Grimes to Don Ho, the complete opposite ends of any musical spectrum you care to develop, but i do have to defend him from being seen as a "commercial sellout," from the perspective of his fellow Hawaiians. He was an aviator for the joint Navy-Air Force transport command from until he left the Air Force to help his ailing mother run her bar back home in 1959, coincidentally the same year Hawaii became a state. He'd always enjoyed playing and singing, and he started doing shows for tourists. He naturally got more and more popular as tourism became a major industry in the state, and made recognizing WWII Veterans an integral part of the show. It's easy to see why commercial pop was his focus, he wasn't trying to be a musical artist, he was just catering to drunk people who wanted to be entertained. A little Vegas on a tropical island. Does he go a little too far and step across the ...

What the hell is Grimes? I don't mean who, i mean what. The best answer i have  is Grimes: because...Japan. You might know her because you heard me randomly mention her when i was talking about something else a long time ago. Or, you might know her and her "partner" as recipients of the annual Name Your Child Something Even More Ridiculous Than The Prince Symbol Contest (i hear he's famous for something or other, but i live under a rock, or at least surrounded by rocks). Or, sadly, you probably just read that she's Elon Musk's girlfriend and cared no further. I don't care about that, i'm the internet's least interested music nerd. I know her from her 2012 album Visions which i randomly stumbled across and said "waaaaa?" I'm currently listening to her first album, Geidi Primes. I guess it's a concept album about Dune, that isn't actually about Dune at all. She didn't expect anyone to ever hear it, and feels moderate...

My friend Sam and i shared a tiny little inside joke today, and the telescope my wife ordered so she and josie could look at the stars arrived, so i thought i might try to share the galaxy of thoughts those completely unrelated things created in my brain today. And wouldn't you know it, there's a specific album hiding in there. Is it good? Ghastly green gravy, no, it's probably a faint unremarkable blob in your collective memories. But does bottle love it? Indubitably. The secret is just a boring old number, but it's source is a leather couch in a coffee shop in Bethany, Oklahoma and a guess the number game i programmed on my TI-86 graphing calculator. I also made a little picture book with the final punch line being a drawing of my middle finger, and somehow the phrase "el pavo de Diablo" and white-chocolate mochas for me and shots of espresso for him figure into it. And terrible cult classic movies, and playing doom, quake, and freddy pharkas frontier ph...

I write about other stuff i'm thinking about on facebook, and here's a two day long train of thought: 1) I think there is a fundamental flaw in our conception of the scaling up from "sole proprietor" to "company" to "corporation." That flaw is what i would call the ownership of labor. As we incorporate into larger networks of relationships we tend to confuse division of labor with acquisition of labor to such a degree that we begin to personify the incorporation itself. That's an incredibly dense paragraph, and requires very strict unpacking. First, this is a theoretical model. It cannot be elaborated by specific example until its constraints are fully defined. Second, real life examples are difficult to show because we all to some extent participate in the flawed reasoning i am describing. A sole proprietor is what you might call a dictionary capitalist. An individual who owns the means of production for whatever product they produce or...

How's that Kurt Braunohler joke go? Something like, He says "i can play the guitar like a mother f-ing riot," then proceeds to plink out the most awkward amateurish solo imaginable. It's a good joke, but he's wrong. That's a great little solo exactly how it needs to be played, on par with Paul Gilbert's inconspicuously astonishing 8 bars in the Mr. Big classic "To Be With You." The story of Sublime is pretty dismal (shock and awe, you gasp), but i watched it play out in real time. This little ska punk band from Long Beach, CA made two pretty popular independent albums, then stepped up to the big leagues for their 3rd (coincidentally the album that most critics say is single-handedly responsible for the 3rd wave of Ska). Damnit, i'm building up to the 3 strikes you're out baseball joke and i don't want to do it. Anyway, major league self-titled album, but Bradley is such an enormous heroin addict that they kick him out of the...