Albums for Eternity with Bottle, the Curmudgeon

Tonight's album is from the imagineer of Maximum Ames Records himself, Nate Logsdon. I heard about Nate and sent him an email when i moved to Iowa. The cool guy that he is invited me down to his favorite coffee shop/record store and then just invited me along to a board meeting for the local radio station they were building. I have a copy of Mumford's Triple Trinities (that's a great portrait of Nate doing his Ray Liotta impression from whichever Shut Up Sheep movie that was), and i love it. This is one of those albums that is going to confuse, amuse, and abuse your brain. Nate is an interesting character in his own right, and he takes a very literary approach to songwriting. He does a lot of other stuff too, and i'd really like to get back in touch with him. In the meantime, enjoy this really interesting mish-mash of indie ska folk funk sillyness.  https://youtu.be/ltOiKsz4IB4

I've got a weird record for you tonight. It's Sing Along with the Grasshoppers.  But, but, but, that's just a rip off the Chipmunks! To which i reply: among like a dozen other groups. And, Dave and Alvin and Simon and Theodore were really just a musical version of Chip and Dale, which evolved out of the mice from Cinderella, which used the relatively simple concept of recording slow audio and speeding it up. Which is to say, it's hard to copyright the idea that you can playback recorded audio at a faster speed. I mean it's the standard technique for the person on the other end of a phone conversation from at least the 40s. Is Eddie Maynard and his Orchestra better than Ross Bagdasarian and his Orchestra?  No? Can you even tell the difference?  Nooo??? Does it matter?  Noooooo????? Everybody sounds pretty much the same if you record them in a low octave at 1/4 speed and play it back 2 times faster. Need i even mention Sir Mix-A-Lot's "Buttermilk Biscuits?...

What do you get when you cross spaghetti and meatballs for dinner, looking at Jupiter and stuff through a telescope, and my wife reading a post about translating Allstar into Aramaic and back? You get the shocking revelation that i adore the first Smash Mouth album, Fush Yu Mang. Believe it of not, this is pop punk/ska and the songs are super catchy. They do other retro things too. It's easy to make fun of Smash Mouth, but it's the traditional running game, and it's effective. Possession time is much higher for a running offense, and all of a sudden that long pass takes the defense by surprise. Lately, i've been thinking about the past. I love caffieno and a mean spaghetti sauce. I think i'm just paranoid. I moved away from all the whiny neighbors.  Fuck it, let's rock. If you only remember them from Shrek, or Lizzy McGuire, or something, then you're missing out. Their first album is snarky, fun, catchy, not embarrassing at all. Are they just the west ...

Heart Like a Wheel was Linda Ronstadt's big breakthrough, so let's hear what she did next. I know it's going to be country, maybe a little rock hiding in there, but the cover suggests i'm actually going to like it. Here's the deal, that's a concept cover. It just screams showbiz vs. reality. She picked songs by her friends and got them to write the lyrics in their own handwriting for the fold. So, before we even start this is easy. It will either be awesome or absolute rubbish. There isn't any mediocre middle room to flounder in with a concept like that. What are the criteria? Well, either she's a great singer, or she's not. Either the songs are cafefully chosen to be about that conflict between outward appearance and inner turmoil or they are pointless misogynistic drivel. Either she had a killer back up band, or she wanted to watch the can of thermite drop right through the engine block of her career. I think you can guess where this is going...

I've been relatively silent for a day or two. I hope you didn't miss me too much. I've been quite busy, actually. I really am cooking a book. Two books actually, but who's counting? I'm feeling sassy, let's take a gamble on a compilation from Roulette Records. You're a winner! Wait a minute, what did these bands win? Great news guys, you're so popular, we're going to publish one of your songs on this compilation and give you no royalties a month for the next two years (then whack you)! Thumbtack shoulder smack, i wish i could unhear My Boy Lollipop by Millie Smalls. How was that enjoyable, even in 1964? Maybe that's unfair, but there is absolutely no preparation for her nasally cheese grater of a voice. It just smacks you right in the temple, then disappears into more familiar 60s Soul. Nevertheless, this is a surprisingly good comp. Cue the laughing out loud, it's a "mob label" formed in a desperate attempt to pay off gambl...

I told you it wouldn't really end. I'm not going to force myself to do it every night anymore, but i am going to start putting my paypal.me at the end of these posts. If you enjoy reading these things, please send me a few bucks so i can buy more records. I like doing it, but i don't like having no money. Now, without further ado (or perhaps with a minimum of parenthetical ado), on with the show! Holy guacamole, a can of frijoles, you will not believe what showed up at my house earlier today. This one time back in April i thought it would be insane to order a record from Switzerland. Swiss label WRWTFWW records reissued an obscure 1978 album by French composer Dominique Guiot, L'Univers De La Mer. I gave up on it in June, but here it is. As best i can tell, this thing involved 3 countries and at least two international importer/exporters. Swiss label, German exporter, and an importer in Washington who wrapped it in cardboard and mailed it to me in Iowa. That is in...

How do i end this project? Well, in some ways it will never end. The idea was to pick up an album and interact with it; connect it to real life, try to figure out why it exists, what value it might have right now, what story it might tell. A lot has happened since last September, but the overwhelming ethos is negative and horrible. As far as public discourse goes, we've reached the entitlement stage. By that i mean, everyone is turning to blame and shame in a desperate attempt to "return to normal." Surely by now you know that i think that's a ridiculously childish mentality. By complete coincidence, i read a book called The Ethical Assassin by David Liss yesterday. It's a good book because the core sentiment is that we are inescapably ideological creatures. The hard to accept truth is that this country, and the American ethos in general is mean, lazy, and extremely unethical. The climax of the book is the realization that our society has a place for thieves...

Whose the most maximal minimalist in the tiny universe of Pulitzer Prize winning composers who didn't like serialism? John Adams. He asks the question, what do you do after minimalism? I wanted to use the pun post-malonimalism, but it's too awkward to do it properly (and that's how you insert an unusable pun). To answer that question, you obviously have to define minimalism and take it to its logical end. If the minimum requirement for a piece of music is a single process that logically unfolds and returns to its original state, then when you remove the process itself you are left with simply pulse. That pulse can be rapid or infinitely long, but the pulse is all that remains this side of nothingness (what are the chances we step across that line tomorrow?). Adams assembles his music from little kernels of musical thought. Highly repetitive gestures that wriggle and mutate and accumulate to form larger structures. Critics often call him the most interestingly boring c...

You know how much i like coincidence. Well, it just so happens that i took the liberty of writing tonight's album review yesterday. I knew what it was going to be and what i wanted to say, so it's ready to paste here after i tell you that i came home to the coolest surprise ever. Sam sent me The Science of Discworld II and my favorite musical of all time! The book was mine, the DVD was his. Now, I don't actually believe that Karma is real, but i do think it's a handy little scorecard, so i have to retaliate, i mean reciprocate, in a comparable fashion. In the meantime, please enjoy tonight's trip into the tragedies of human history while i grill some hamburgers and watch the creators of South Park and friends be ridiculous... It's easy to rag on Kronos Quartet. As far as ensembles go, they are annoyingly omnipresent celebrities. They've done some really cool things, such as their weird thing with the Tiger Lillies, but like i've already mentioned yo...

I have 4 more albums to complete this project. Did i intentionally plan it out to end on Sunday? No. Is it going to end with a Paul? Yes. Do i know what i'm actually going to write? No. Did i pick them because the composers share their first names with the Beatles? Yes, of course i did. I've taken the liberty of substituting Claude for Richard (Ringo's real name), but only because i had already decided i wanted to listen to Debussy's solo piano music before i came up with the theme for these last essays. Calgon, i mean Peter Frankl, take me away.... Debussy did not consider himself an Impressionist composer. Rather, if he had the word, he would have called himself a Symbolist. Symbolism is a moderately complicated philosophical orientation, but to quote Mallarmé, it is "to depict not the thing but the effect it produces." He was not particularly interested in being serious, and he and Satie got along quite well. He wasn't particularly well regarded fo...

I don't feel like trying today. Let's listen to Klemperer conduct Mozart's 40 and 41. It's hard to complain too much about Mozart's two best symphonies on one record, but the first movement of 40 is just slightly too slow. Articulation is obviously improved, but it's uncomfortable. Other than tempo, the playing, blend, and dynamic contours are really top notch. And it's just that first movement, the rest is great. Overall, quite a lovely recording of Mozart's last two symphonies. Next

I've always been intrigued by the notion that random crap that happened the year you were born is interesting. I told you i've been listening to David Foster Wallace talk about stuff, and he gave a graduation speech once where he said the real value of education is giving you the choice to break out of that self-centered view that existence is a tedious personal offense. It's practicing the ability to choose how you interpret a situation that leads to a meaningful life, and what you worship can have a profoundly negative impact if you're not careful. What would be the opposite? Dionne Warwick's 1980 album No Night So Long. Pretty impossible to pretend that isn't a dead animal coat, isn't it? I don't have any moral queeziness about fur, or leather, or feathers, or eating animals; it's mass production and consumerism i find deplorable. Statues don't do it for Dionn, falling in love gets her high. I mentioned she got her start as a replacement S...

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_lbBD9Q_Uutm0SueaJB7erJe0G0lvW6aqE I don't have to be that guy, but since they are currently getting the full meme treatment, i think we should all give a little love to the Pioneers of the intense Utah Reggae scene. Next

Do The Grassroots deserve a greatest hits album? More importantly, are The Grassroots even a band? I know that may seem like a weird question, but it's hard to distinguish the so called band from every employee who had nothing better to do than show up to work at Dunhill Records in the 60s. I mean, it's a producer/songwriter project, like Fever Tree, or the Monkees, or Steely Dan. Steve Barri and P.F Chang, sorry Sloan, aren't ever credited as part of the actual band (they play "various instruments"), it's just a revolving cast of touring musicians who didn't actually make the recordings. Most of their records were actually played by the Wrecking Crew, and at some point every Dunhill staffer got a songwriting credit. More importantly, i've never heard any of these supposed hits on a radio anywhere ever. I don't disbelieve that they had big hits and gold records, i just wonder how much the notion that it was a fake band played into their obvio...

How can i relate to a world that i feel is broken? To the minds that i feel won't open? And how can i speak life when all i see is death? I was gonna rag on the Grassroots, but then i heard "Right Now" by Fire From the Gods, and it's such a great song that i figured we should just listen to their album American Sun (just like i did for Volbeat). That's what a radio single is supposed to do, and it happens so rarely these days that i feel like i should point it out. I haven't listened to it yet, so here are some of my expectations. I get a variety of vibes from Right Now: Sevendust, early Faith No More, a twinge of Linkin Park-y Nu Metal, but also a kind of TV On the Radio feeling of new sincerity. I've been listening to David Foster Wallace interviews the last couple of days so it's fresh in my mind. I don't think any of you are surprised that the lead singer is black. I've just listed all the musical nuances the single brings up in my mind...

Originally, i was thinking i would make this post 366 to complete the project (a full year of album reviews), but as Cartman so rightly pointed out, i do what i want! Contrary to what i may have led you to believe, Sweeny Todd is my second favorite musical. My absolute favorite musical in the entire universe is Cannibal, The Musical, but i don't have it any more. I somehow managed to hang onto the weird Germano-Spanish erotic cinema i found at Barnes and Noble one day two lifetimes ago (Vampiros Lesbos, and She Killed in Ecstacy), but i think i let someone borrow the greatest thing Trey Parker and Matt Stone ever created, and i'll never see it again. Such is life. Luckily, Soylent Green isn't the only thing made of people. The real question is, which is better; the original cast audio or the partial original cast stage performance? Now, i'm not gonna stand here and lie to you: any Angela Lansbury is great Angela Lansbury, she's amazing. Who doesn't like...

And then you say "blah blah blah, of course Jimi Hendrix and Otis Redding are awesome, why are their appearances at the 1967 Monterrey Pop Festival so historic? Well, this is the first American performance by the Experience. They walk out, play 40 minutes of kick-ass rock, and then he introduces Wild Thing by telling the crowd he's about to do something crazy, does it, then lights his guitar on fire. Otis Redding crossed over from his small but loyal audience to mainstream stardom, playing well past the agreed curfew, because the crowd rushed the stage and no one dared stop the magic. I bet you didn't know Otis Redding wrote "Respect." The best part about that song is that it takes on completely different meanings when Otis or Aretha sing it. 6 months later he died in a plane crash, so this is generally considered his high point. Both sets are great, and the recording quality is just ludicrously good for a live festival recording. Like most everybody, i wis...

Shhhhhh. The King of Soul is singing. We aren't going to go into any of the circumstances of his death, because Bertha Franklin very much did shoot and kill him, just like Claudine Longet. The sticking point in this case is that the question boiled down to whether or not she was afraid for her life, and there was no plausible evidence to the contrary, unreliable witnesses with questionable occupations and subsequently damning circumstantial evidence or no. Ok, i like conspiracies as much as anyone, so my theory is that he was indeed flashing cash at the restaurant and that Carr and Boyer had the typical hotel owner/call girl arrangement. Franklin didn't really know anything, and night shift motel work is pretty sketchy on the best day in the history of motels. I don't believe it was premeditated, so we just have to say yeah i guess i believe she was scared shitless. She only shot him thrice (probably 'cause the first shot rendered her deaf and even more scared, unle...

You can have Swan Lake, the 1812 Overture, and The Nutcracker, but let me have The Sleeping Beauty. It's my favorite Tchaikovsky ballet, musically speaking. It's a battle between good and evil leitmotifs, but eventually Tchaikovsky says screw it, everybody gets a theme. Obviously, you don't get the full two hour ballet on one record, just the condensed orchestral suite. . They wanted him to write it, and he was quite willing, but mentioned that nobody really cared about Swan Lake so don't get your hopes up too high. He died before it got really popular. I actually have the full Swan Lake on vinyl, but that's not my favorite, so Ballet-centric Orchestra conducted by child prodigy turned youngest faculty member of the Curtis Institute, Joseph Levine. Not to be confused with the famous Russian pianist Josef Lhévinne who was much older and a classmate of Rachmaninoff and Scriabin. Interesting American legal douchebaggery. Disney owns the trademark to "Princes...

Let's listen to the theme from Babe (both in and out of the city), i mean the thing they play at the French Pavilion at Epcot, i mean that Fitzgerald/Keeley song, i mean the Organ Symphony, i mean the Symphony (avec Organ), i mean Camille Saint-Saëns' 3rd and last (or 5th if you count the 2 he threw in the trash can) symphonic work that's technically four movements squashed into two, and features 6 hands and 2 feet worth of virtuosic keyboard shenanigans that everybody uses in some project they worked on at some point. It might be the most famous work from the Romantic period you might vaguely recall hearing somewhere sometime. That's pretty high praise for the barren wasteland of music that happened between Beethoven's 5th and Strauss' Also Spracht Zarathustra in the minds of 20th century pop culture. Ugh, that lame old emotionally chromatic sap is so passe. Except John Williams. Total innovator, that guy. Give me the musical Xanax of Lorde or Billie Eilish a...

Hello, Prism. It's good to see you again. Last time you're song was used to wake up some astronauts. What you got this time? Whole lotta synth, apparently. This album was pretty much mediocred by everyone, but i don't really understand why. Maybe i'm not as discerning as some, but this sounds like good Canadian 70s hard rock. Some great guitar solos and occasional horn sections and synth noise everywhere like nobody could find the mop. I mean if you're just completely over keyboards and "space sounds," and you don't like being reminded of Styx or Europe (not subtle either, like there's an 8 year statute of limitations on stealing Canadian rock riffs or something) then hate on it, i guess. I don't think it's too far fetched to wonder if the "Final Countdown" was nothing more than rewriting "Crime Wave." Crime Wave is a great song, but everybody's like "pfffft, filler, next." Man, i can't name '...

I don't even know where to start on this one. Trinidadian funeral practice turned american party dance? Chubby Checker being typecast as a dance song singer? That lawsuit he had with Hewlett-Packard over a penis guesstimate app for WebOS? The truly confusing Quantum Leap episode where Scott Bakula taught Chubby Checker how to do the limbo? I'm really only qualified to talk about one of those things. I agree, he's a great all purpose Rock & Roll singer, and i can't tell you how much i wish they let him sing other stuff. He's great. He got his start from an exec who liked him. The story is Dudeguy McWhatshisface sent Chubby Checker's first song (a classroom skit concept that gave him the chance to do impressions of famous singers) to his friends and clients as a Christmas card. The response was so overwhelmingly positive that they gave Chubby Checker a career measuring shoe sizes, no wait that was the WebOS app, i meant singing dance songs. You know The Tw...

I was going to write about how TMBG's John Henry is a great album simply because it informs you that there is a famous Belgian painter named James Ensor. How cool is it that they can actually inspire you to pick up the googlemaphone and look up a turn of the century artist? Then i remembered we're having the idiotic statue fight again and that's from Apollo 18. "The statue got me high" is pretty apropos. Maybe i can squash both of them into some sort of box (or possibly bag) of beef. Believe it or not, the ridiculous string of short musical ideas called "Fingertips" from Apollo 18 is probably the first ever attempt at misusing the "shuffle" function on a cd player. Even more hilarious, they play the whole thing for their Tiny Desk concert (they do, go find it, it's awesome). TMBG are one of those bands that everyone is allowed to like. They are silly, they are thought provoking, and they have no interest in messing with anybody. Floo...

John Zorn's Calculus is tonight's album. These are 2 long-form pieces for piano trio. If you aren't familiar with Zorn then you're in for 40+ minutes of complete ADD. If you're a little familiar with Zorn's work then you'll at least know that he's primarily concerned with the way that a piece unfolds. Everything is fair game, but he's controlling how long, what mood, who plays when, how it progresses from one state to another, what kind of stuff is happening in any particular window of the gigantic architectural facade. This time it's piano/bass/drums and they are longtime, well practiced Zorn collaborators. Don't get hung up on technical stuff, just listen to how each instrument sounds in relation to the others and how they all work together to give the sense of musical action. I can't tell you what that action is because it's your own personal response that matters. How you hear it matters, and no one has words to actually explain...

Billy Howerdel was Tool's guitar tech (among many other bands). You know, the guy who changed strings, and tuned guitars, made sure they were plugged in, and stuff. Maynard said he'd write lyrics if Billy formed his own band, and thus A Perfect Circle was born (Billy originally imagined a female singer, and now it's a duet). It's more fiddly than that obviously (like signing to Virgin Records so no one mistook it as a silly side project), but that's how Maynard works. Let him know when you've got the music written and he'll make up word things about stuff for it. He writes whatever he can hear himself singing for that particular track, and in general he's really good at it. Did i ever mention he did a duet version of Disco King with Bowie? The original lineup was kind of slapdash, too. Whomever they knew that wasn't doing anything else at that moment. It's like a secret sideman supergroup. Mer de Noms (literally "waterfall of first names...

... and then i thought of that phrase "it's all Greek to me." Let's watch my favorite movie version of a German expressionist take on the classic Sophocles work, Electra. German expressionism, so spell it with a k: Elektra. Hello, Fischer-Diskau! I happen to like Richard Strauss, especially his operas. Strauss had a lot of stress for an apolitical composer/conductor. Musically speaking, he was considered a successor to Wagner, and Wagner was you know who's favorite composer. Conducting wise, he was offered the position Toscanini quit in protest. Strauss' daughter-in-law was Jewish, he intentionally performed works by "banned" composers, hired a Jewish Librettist, wrote pieces that derided the Nazis, and gladly got fired. He used his influence to legally keep his daughter-in-law under house arrest during the War. Sadly, he wasn't powerful enough to do much for her extended family, but he tried. So much so, that he was specifically pardoned by ...