$20 Adventure Time with Bottle

$20 Adventure Time with Bottle

B: I have a new idea. Let’s make up a new thing called $20 Adventure Time with Bottle. I’ll send C-student into some place that has used records, he’ll buy as many as he can for $20, and I’ll write about them. What do you think?

E:  Will this be a self contained essay, or the normal facebook/blog thing?
B: Both. See, the problem with a book is that there’s no instant gratification, and that means I get real uncomfortable, like I’m lying. On the other hand, facebook posts are useless for my ramblin’ gamblin’ style of verbal gunfighting. I’m thinking C-spray hands me a small collection of records, I run my mouth about each one, but also talk about what it’s like to do the whole thing. Sumo-wrestle the whole experience, you might say.

C: So I get to rummage through stacks of stuff other people threw away?

B: Yeah, totally.

C: I’m in. $20 bucks makes it a challenge for both of us.

S: Excellent point, C. I think I speak for everyone when I say you are making an excellent addition to our little crew.

B: That’ll do, C-pig. Mr. Jackson says Christmas me up a conundrum to crack.
WHOOOSH!

B: He’s way more enthusiastic than I expected. I still think it will backfire and give us all head lice, or something, but what do I know?

E: I think you’re being too self critical, like Sandra says. He knows how you think, and he certainly passed your secret test with flying colors.

S: Skip is spot on, Bottle. You have to remember that you work backward from a moderately unfathomable level of speculative reasoning. Not everybody sees the world as a Markov chain of hypothetical cause and effect the way you do.

B: Why not?

S: Shut up, Bottle. He’s back.

C: Ok, Boss. 20 on the nose. Read ‘em and weep.

B: Ooooh, interesting. 2 juniors, a 5-spot, and something I’ve never heard of at all. You working from a theme, or just adding up the price tags?

C: I thought the point was for you to figure that out.

B: Alright C-shanty, what do I know? 1) you are just a part of me, 2) I’m certain you read my year’s worth of reviews in about half an hour, 3) it’s all rock and roll to me. Here’s what I really think:

You had about 6 albums on the short list, all under $10. Prism was a no brainer, because A) I loved their first two albums, and B) last night’s Katy Perry album was Prism. Modern English is that delicious fluke of a one-hit wonder band that never should have cracked the top 40 but is actually amazing, and my collection is woefully lacking in new wave/post-punk gloominess regardless of quality or notoriety. Camel is probably the most famous cult prog-band this side of Klaatu, and you’re never going to find one of their albums on a junk shop floor again, and if I had to guess I’d say you mistakenly thought the last one was “Agent Circus,” and thought with a name like Smuckers…. It turns out that adding an “R” to make Argent doesn’t help me at all, but it’s a pretty safe bet it’s still some sort of prog. How’d I do?

C: When you’re right, you’re right. Good luck.

B: if wishes and buts were candies and nuts, we’d all be diabetic. Here we go.

1 – Prism – Armageddon

So, I listened to Katy Perry’s Prism yesterday, and I jokingly lamented that it wasn’t the Canadian rock band. What are the chances C-salt found their 3rd album today? 100%

Here’s Armageddon, the album they made right before their personal label declared bankruptcy. Man, it’s fantastic. It’s overwhelmingly arena rock, but not cheesy or dumb or drenched in pointless machismo. There’s some real adventurous stuff too, synths and horns and brief flirts with near-prog. The best part of this album is that it’s explicitly about “a final and conclusive battle between good and evil.” Everything is: love, jealousy, going on tour, politics. If borderline personality disorder was a rock band, this would be their album. Awesome! 5/3 stars, ridiculous and delicious. Find me their next 5 albums, C-Shore, I love these lost-in-the-shuffle weirdos.

2 – Modern English – Ricochet Days

You shouldn’t know any song by Modern English. You know one, and only one, because the entire song appeared in the movie Valley Girl. Yes, you read that right, a Nicholas Cage movie gave Modern English a #7 hit. It’s a love song written from the psychological perspective of falling in love while being actually terrified of nuclear holocaust, because who didn’t love the Cold War Era?? What you don’t realize is that I’ve already told the story of Modern English in the form of The Cars. Post-punk band makes album that nobody cares about, second album skyrockets them into public/critical awareness, critics slam their 3rd album, and band responds “who gave you a copy of it?” I haven’t heard their 3rd album yet, but I know the first two pretty well, even though I don’t own them. What I don’t understand is how you can listen to Mesh and Lace and think this is a New Wave band. That first album is borderline Industrial, not Joy Division copycats at all. I mean, they’re both British and not at all happy about being alive, but Joy Division sounds sad and lethargic while Modern English sounds like they got their arms mangled by the pasta extruder; similar mentality, completely different execution.

For their second album, the band basically says we never thought we’d make a pop album, but to be completely honest it was a hell of a lot of fun, and we still managed to give it our own peculiar nihilistic brand of irony. Then they moved to New York and disappointed everyone, thank goodness. What a bunch of posers writing extremely well crafted, broody but approachable synth-rock and living normal human lives afterward. Pfffft!

Ricochet Days is phenomenal, and you don’t have to pretend it isn’t. You don’t have to hear their evolution from pseudo-Industrial to the synth side of New Wave as anything other than them enjoying the whole process of making music. This isn’t Scritti Politti bubblegum ideo-irony, it’s the melancholy after the anger. It’s got that same kind of noir-ish darkness as Thomas Dolby without the agitated neurosis. It’s more like The Cure than anything I can think of while listening to it, and there’s more than a couple big surprises if you go into it expecting mindless neon dance floor fodder. Maybe the problem was that they weren’t actually weird or downtrodden enough, and making a great sounding record is anathema to the cause. I’ve probably been guilty of flaunting that sentiment in other contexts, but not with this one. It’s genuinely fantastic gloomy ennui from start to finish.

3 – Camel – Rain Dances

Camel is one of those confusing bands you’ve never heard of because they don’t write verse-chorus pop songs. Yet, the moment you sit down and ask “what’s this prog-rock thing I keep hearing about, then?,” you see them pop up everywhere. Rick Astley says they were his first concert experience and they “blew his mind,” and Opeth of all bands lists Camel among their influences. They are in fact that golden goose of a middle-ground band that achieved the weird level of success that let them live off playing actual music without going bankrupt or tripping into the Bermuda Triangle of corporate economics: enough money to live reasonably happy lives, not enough money for anyone to bother siphoning away into their own quagmire of cut-rate merchandising. Even their brief encounter with copyright infringement went away when they agreed to stop publishing the synopsis of Paul Gallico’s story, The Snow Goose, anymore.

Critics who bother to mention the band at all say “Mirage is great, everyone should buy it, please don’t make me listen to their other 13 albums.” Bugger that, here’s Rain Dances. Hello, Brian Eno, I assume you’re bringing some melancholic atmosphere to this garden party.

Prog can mean a lot of things to a lot of people, but it boils down to a single philosophical idea: a rock band is a legitimate musical ensemble, and we should play musically substantive compositions instead of 3-5 minute lullabies. No one agrees with us, so we’ll figure it out on our own and be perfectly happy with the 12 people in every town who actually enjoy listening to it. Your old friend Bottle is one of those 12 people who loves getting lost in the sound garden, because it doesn’t remind me of anything (badum ting).

There are some lyrics by the way, they just aren’t sing-songy rhyming couplets all the time. It’s from an original idea by Bert Ford (whoever that is). I imagine that idea was a kid looking out the window on a rainy day and imagining androgynously naked women performing a synchronized gymnastic routine, like any other normal kid would do. ??? I’m probably being too literal. It’s almost certainly more along the lines of Willy Wonkan pure imagination.

Music is the only way to tell me how you feel. Yeah, I’ll buy that. We are sailing in a ship that has no sails, after all.

Now, this isn’t the in your face, EL&P kind of prog, or your Moody Blues type of prog-folk, it’s that Steely Dan-ish light jazz/funk adjacent daydreamy type thing; super melodic and more wistful than spastic. More importantly, whether you like their style or not, it sounds incredibly fun to play. Most people might relegate it to background dishwashing/housecleaning music, but isn’t that exactly the same kind of pleasurably functional escapism Bert was clearly trying to channel with his concept? Have to pass the time somehow, am I right? If you like whimsical meandering solos and melodic electric guitars like I do, then this is a little slice of pure pleasure. Put on your galoshes and come dance in the rain with me.

4 - Argent – Circus

One more album to go before I try to sum up this 4 album Markov Chain of rumors. I still don’t know anything about Argent other than the obvious concept for this album: life is a circus. I assume it’s prog because what else could it be, but I’ll do the not so interesting real time jot down notes kind of review for this $2 naked high wire routine.
Yep, it’s the in your face kind of proggy weirdness: spooky. IN THE CIRCUS!!!!!! So far this is great. It’s 70s hard rock with the added deranged modulations and abrupt style changes you’d expect from conceptual music. It’s not drive time radio material, even by AOR standards, but quite enjoyably amusing. That guitar/synth duet near the end of Highwire is awesome. Ha! The Phantom of the Opera chromatic descent, with almost Gilmour-y vocals. Clown really is very Pink Floydy to my ears. What’s Side B have for us?

Ooh, that kind of Klangfarbenmelodie approach is cool, and I loves me some ham-fisted keyboard banging. 70s ballad that doesn’t seem to fit the album at all. Hello, weird stereo organ chorale thing. The jester only plays for himself, you know. Very Freddy Mercury.

Yeah, this is great stuff. And, I apparently paid 2 dollars for it. King sized Snickers bar or Argent on vinyl? No brainer, I’ll take that tragically underappreciated prog-rock concept album over a sugar rush most any day of the week, thanks.

What a great album. It’s completely coherent, stylistically focused with only that one obvious non-album single as time filler. It’s not cheesy or preachy like it easily could have been. Rod Argent was an actual member of the real Zombies. Oooooooh! He’s the God Gave Rock and Roll to You and Hold Your Head Up guy, and he went on to actually work with Andrew Lloyd Webber. Niiice.

To paraphrase the words of my hero DJ Lance Ramone, let’s go back and remember what we did in the last two days. Yo gabba gabba, Hey!

I compared Katy Perry to Rush Limbaugh by saying I have no idea if either of them actually believe the messages they sell or if it’s just the only things they know how to sell. Then, C-bgb handed me basically 4 random albums, and I proceeded to talk out of my ass. I called Roar fake feminism but defended it as a contextually appropriate message, then randomly ended up finding out Argent was responsible for the real feminist chorus “Hold your head up, woman.” I also can’t fail to mention that today is Labor day, and she recently released a facebook exclusive music video while pregnant (congrats on the baby girl from all of us at BOB) dressed as a clown playing a video game about life being a circus. So, it turns out all four albums were bands who eschewed fame and fortune for honesty, the whole thing is a ridiculous battle between good and evil, we’re all stuck in a fight we can’t win for the benefit of someone else, and it’s all just a Fleetwood Mac song: you can go your own way; you can call it another lonely day. Define your own purpose, do what you think is meaningful, and stop measuring yourself against the psychopathic tendencies of people whose only goal in life is to own the machinery of existence like humanity is just an ant farm on their bookshelf and you can just go collect more ants when they die.  I think all those big-business anti-trust evading corporate guys are lunatics. Who cares if Katy Perry believes her own message, I clearly do.

C: I’m impressed.

E: Are you a homicidal maniac?

S: How do you find all these coincidences by just randomly looking at wikipedia articles?

B: Pinkie swear, I don’t put any effort into it at all. It just so happens that I can’t stand the cognitive dissonance of the Republican party because Teddy Roosevelt said screw you guys and they secretly morphed from being the progressive voice of American politics into the right-wing money hoarders they are today by just constantly lying about it. I’m not a Democrat either, but at least they naturally became more and more liberal over the last century as the Southern white-supremacist Democrats increasingly said sign me up for that elephant ride to corporate town.

S: I’m sure we’ll all regret my asking, but what non-sequiter of a song lyric sums up your non-intuitive solution to the problem?

B: Go on, take the money and run? I got the pistols, so I get the pesos?? West end town in a dead end world??? I don’t wanna be buried in a pet cemetery????

S: Shut up, Bottle. Meeting adjourned. Everybody take Monday off.