Alice in Chains - Jar of Flies

It has been one of those days. We played awesome games like "forklifts in the rain," "logistics with morons," "will the substitute UPS driver come back at our scheduled pickup time?," and my personal favorite "suffering manager, aka no overtime for bottle 'cause he costs too much." Somewhere in the middle there i got stuck explaining the truly bilious concept of the Friedman Doctrine, aka Shareholder Theory through absolutely no fault of my own, and it's times like this i usually remind myself what true suffering is by listening to country music. Not today. Today we're going to suffer with my least favorite technological advancement ever: piezo pickups. Plus I said "ant farm" the other day, so heroin up your hypodermics, it's Jar of Flies from Alice in Chains.

EP my ass, it's 30 minutes. 15 minutes per side, album on your lunch break, no garbage inner-most tracks to tolerate. Their original bass player couldn't handle Guns 'n Roses levels of heroin anymore so they replaced him with Ozzy's bassist of the same name. Something really familiar about a touring musician for Ozzy being credited for contributing to an album but somehow having their parts play by someone else... Mike Starr went through the normal treatment prescribed by doctors who don't care, but then said hey Dr. Drew, methadone is actually just as addictive, but without the fun part of actually being high, will being on your fake reality tv show help?

Hello Mike Inez, let's just jam on acoustic guitars for a couple days. My tinnitus is really acting up after being on tour for so long. Columbia actually wants to put it out? Ok, whatever. 

Some people like the sounds of piezo pickups, legitimately love it. Not Bottle. You know what would be even better? Piezos on the dead-inside sound of whatever hard plastic industrial waste product Ovation uses to make the salad bowls on the back of their guitars. Again, some people love them, famous people like Robert Fripp, even. You can have all of them, i literally have to stop myself from smashing them over the store clerk's head Animal House style whenever i forget how much i hate the way they sound and feel and dumbassedly test one out. That's just me. 

The music? Oh, sorry. Awesome album, all the songs are great, singing's great too. There's even a lovely instrumental with strings, and some glorious fret buzz on Don't Follow. But goddmnit the piezos are everywhere and it sounds like they're playing rubber bands and i hate it! The last track is the absolute worst. 

If you have no idea what i'm talking about, then great for you, just know that it sounds like playing a nylon string classical guitar ponticello with a jagged rock from the parking lot for a pick, and i'm in tangible agony over here. Maybe going back to work tomorrow isn't as bad as i thought....

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