Albums for Eternity with Bottle, the Curmudgeon

What horror show of an album do you think Bottle will bring out tonight?  I dunno, Skip. He's never really been a fan of holidays in general. I mean, he'll play along, but you can always tell he's thinking "every day is [insert holiday] in my head, why's this one special?" Plus, he hasn't sent me out to find anything in a while, so it'll be a surprise to all of us. Maybe Sandra has a guess, try calling her.  Skip picks up the phone and dials Sandra's extension, 4446. Ring, ring, click...  You have reached the office of Sandra D. I'm currently in another castle, but if you'll leave your name and a brief message, i'll deal with it later...  No luck. She's probably out painting mustaches on all the garden gnomes.  I doubt it, Skip, it's too windy to do anything out there today. Guess we'll just be surprised. What's that scratching sound?  Oh, it's just GREGORY decorating the hallways with cobwebs and rodent entrails. Ha

Delaney and Bonnie captured the imagination of America with their brutal string of robberies and murders, and their almost titillatingly secret unmarried sex life. I'll be voting against everyone on Tuesday in Knierim where they robbed the State Savings Bank... ... no, i'm sorry, i'm being told that i've confused my Bonnies again. I must have misunderstood the title for a headline. Motel Shot appears to be a concept about the kind of late night jam sessions traveling musicians would have with their touring companions after the gig. Duane Allman, Gram Parsons, and Leon Russell appear courtesy of their own handlers, and Christgau gives it an A, for whatever that's worth. I've never heard it before, but i do know that they had a reputation for being spectacular in concert and underwhelming on record. I have no basis for comparison, so roll that beautiful bean footage (i also know i've used that joke before, but the image of eating canned beans on the lam was to

I still have hundreds of albums we could listen to, but not really anything to say about them. Since that's my problem, not theirs, we'll just listen to the crazy second album by The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Freaky Styley. George Clinton produced this album. No, you heard me right, THE George Clinton agreed to produce the album for 25k, let Anthony get through his heroin withdrawls at his house, helped write and arrange the 30% of the album they hadn't written yet, and let his drug dealer do the interjections on Yertle the Turtle as payment for all the cocaine they were snorting. He's the one (Clinton, not the drug dealer) who said take Africa by The Meters, but rewrite it about YOUR Africa, aka Hollywood. This is pre Frusciante/Smith funk fusion. Not rock with a funk background like the Chili Peppers you know, but funk with a punk attitude and style. Flea and their manager contacted Clinton because a) they hated the way their first album turned out to be watered down and

Who's ready to talk shit about a pretty sunset? No, i don't have any more Modest Mouse records, but i do have The Band's third album, Stage Fright. Critics were confused by the contradiction between the jaunty, not at all nostalgic roots rock, and the not particularly jaunty, borderline cynical lyrical content. Good. I'll fully admit, i didn't like it much the first 5 or 6 listens, but that's because it wasn't relevant until now. Tonight it's perfect. When it's all said and done i'm going to have more than one write in vote for several offices in Calhoun County, IA, because it's unelect everybody season. They should just change the county slogan to "we're tired of people living here and wasting valuable pig farm acreage." I'd probably get assassinated 3 hours into my political career. You don't know the shape i'm in. I think i like The Band better than the Grateful Dead. Like i said, it took me a while to like it. Th

You know, i gotta tell you, i'm just so tired of all of it. I'm tired of BH, and Microsoft, and Amazon. I'm tired of the idiotic bipolar politics. I'm tired of the ridiculous notion that corporations are people. I'm tired of dressing up modern mercantilism as some kind of global ambassadorship. I'm tired of listening to people use "the economy" when they mean "the stock market." I'm tired of people blaming each other for shit happening instead of making that shit less painful for everyone. I'm tired of the wealthiest americans acting like they shouldn't have to pay full price like us poor people do. I'm tired of robo-calls and b2b sales. I'm tired of everyone shirking their responsibilities and trying to sell me marketing tips. I'm tired of insurance companies being an investment front instead of the social safety net they were intended to be. I'm tired of tradesmen fighting with urban planners when they have freak

I need to feel good again. Obviously real life isn't going to make that happen, so we'll have to turn to the glorious world of headphones to soothe the savage beast. Now, your old friend Bottle doesn't really go for the sunshiny beach volleyball type of feel good, he likes to dive head first down a dark alley and say "oy! Mate. Show me something worth my time." Trip hop isn't really a genre. It's the name everyone gave the downtempo dj scene in Bristol in the early 90s. Believe it or not it's an evolution of House more than anything. Trip hop is really just 3 groups: Massive Attack with or without Tricky, Tricky on his own, and Portishead. Sure, lots of other groups make Trip Hop, like Groove Armada and Sneaker Pimps, even Bjork and Poe dabbled in it. Homogenic is widely considered a sort of Trip Hop masterpiece. Bottle says yes and no on that one. Trip Hop is just slow breakbeats, jazz or soul sampling, and atmospheric electronics. You can fit Bjork i

It seems like nobody but me likes Wonderworld. Critics and fans found it underwhelming, the band wasn't happy with it because they were burning out, fighting, and recording in Germany (a disruption to their standard process rather than a refreshing change of pace), and everyone says it lacks conceptualization.  Not shockingly, I disagree. I think it's a good album. Maybe we just need to better understand what Uriah Heep really is. So, here's my completely non-intuitive appreciation of the history of Uriah Heep, and why Wonderworld is actually one of their best albums.  Uriah Heep didn't becone Uriah Heep untill Ken Hensley joined in 1969. They were called Spice, and Spice was Deep Purple's lovingly adopted little brother. Hard Rock, Heavy Metal, and Progressive Rock. Not three seperate genres, all three genres at the same time. Why? The simple answer is that the band thought adding a keyboard player would work really well, and once Ken was there they all quickly agr

Interesting fact. The piano on the cover of Supertramp's Even In the Quietest Moments is actually covered in real snow, and the sheet music isn't Fool's Overture, it's The Star Spangled Banner. They left an empty piano shell outside at a ski resort overnight, and this is the album before Breakfast in America. I don't completely agree with Christgau, but his sentiment is pretty great: most prog-rock is pretentious background schlock that's all too hard to ignore, but this album is modest background schlock that sounds good when it slips into the ear.  I'm biased because 1) i just like Supertramp, and 2) this is what Breakfast in America is actually about. I pointed out that album was about Hodgson and Davies having very different world views but making and playing this music gave them a common purpose. They wrote most of their songs separately and then fleshed them out as a band in sound checks and rehearsals. Their styles are quite different, Davies is very

Last but not least, here's The Greatest Songs Ever Written (by NOFX). They even remastered them with better equipment like George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. Whatever Didi Wants isn't on it, but most of the rest of the best of are, so i can't really complain. I am moderately pleased at the coincidental splash down on the cover. Well, that was 2004. Just about the only thing we didn't get was a summary of how terrible LA is. One major metropolis is pretty much like any other, i suppose. I'm back to being a foul-mouthed, unpatriotic adult surrounded by spoiled children hoarding someone else's paycheck. Please don't vote for Trump, it wasn't funny the first time, and i can't afford enough guitars or albums or rum to survive the sequel.

And so we move on to Reise Reise, that flight recording of an album that takes us all the way to the scene of the plane crash. Amerika, ist wunderbar.  Last time i picked a fight with another critic, if i remember right. This time we'll just call it like it is. America is just jacking itself off while Russia watches. Ignore the rest of the world, wall up the ugly parts so you can't see them anymore, say "i just don't feel like it," and claim that's the nature of the beast.  Oh, did i get eMOTIVe and Reise Reise out of order. Sure did. Oh well. Accidents happen. Part 11

Friends of the show will tell you that i've called myself heavy-handed on several occassions, but i don't have Maynard James Keenan money. He's Wreck-it Ralph. He straight up paid to have A Perfect Circle release an entire album of covers of protest songs on election day. That's what "executive producer" means.  Jesus fucking christ! Toy piano and whispering for the opening Crucifix cover. It's your choice, peace or annihilation. Imagine the nuclear wasteland version of Imagine. It doesn't let up either, just one gut wrenching soliloquy from the barren wasteland after another, and we end on the Maynard Choir's version of Joni Mitchell's Fiddle and the Drum. I dare you to smile. Obviously, we're not dead. A whole lot of American soldiers and people from the middle east are, though.  Would this album still be as downright soul crushingly depressive if Kerry had won? I don't know. Probably not, it might feel like wearing one of those world

Then in September, a thing happened that nobody ever thought would actually happen. Brian Wilson finally released Smile. You know, the album that finally snapped him and led to life long psychiatric therapy.  I'm cringing as i say this, but i don't actually like it. Sorry for accidentally lying at the start. Well, half a lie. I'm thrilled he was finally able to finish it, i'm thrilled Van Dyke Parks rewrote it with him, i'm deeply sad that Brian's life was such a struggle and that his dad was a grade a hole that feces falls out of, but it's not my thing. I'm not saying it's bad or dumb or that we don't need a break from the sheer emotional misery of the last 7 albums, but i know what's coming next and you picked kind of a bad time to pull it together and use that verse as the chorus for that other song and tell me about eating vegetables and the great chicago fire of 1871, Brian. All i hear is the rhythm of the war drum, and those vibrations

I've already written about these next three albums, so i'm not sure what to say about them. Mastodon, Green Day, and Chavelle. I suppose if the first 3 albums were loosely based on the book that Blade Runner was loosely based on, then these are not unlike that. You got your Moby Dick meets Norse mythology, the anti-W/America is actually horrible statement of teenage malcontention, and the straight up depression of living inside an electronic coma. It's almost like everyone just picked one thing about that Incubus album and ran with it. Leviathan, American Idiot, and This Type of Thinking Could Do Us In, check 'em out before the plane crashes somewhere out in the Pacific. Part 8 

Christgau is just wrong about the sophomore album from My Chemical Romance. Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge is phenomenal. The concept for the album was the demolition lovers from the first album are killed in a gunfight, but the devil tells the one who looks like Gerard that Helena is still alive and they can be reunited if he harvests 1,000 souls or whatever, but then their grandma died (hence calling the first song Helena) and it sort of devolved into more general loss and depression than proper narrative. It's emo with a self-deprecating sense of humor, what more do you want? It's also a non-stop aural assault that can only be described as cinematic. Every track is a self contained scene in this weird horror fantasy western crime dramedy. Even the credits are laid out like a movie poster. Best of all it's 39 minutes, with more meaningful content than any of the 50 to 70 minute monstrosities i've been constantly complaining about. This is a serious contender for best

Speaking of strained relationships, Skinny Puppy made an album in 2004. Making The Process in 1996 kind of killed them. Hard drugs and just plain being sick of each other sent cEvin and Nivek in opposite directions (i'm pretty proud of that one). But, through the process of not taking hard drugs anymore, working on each others' solo albums, and working with bands who were inspired by Skinny Puppy in the first place, they decided to be friends again because they were a huge part of each others' lives. The greater wrong of the right is corporatization, by the way. They sent an invoice to the Pentagon for using their music without proper authorization to torture people in one of our other torture prisons. I suspect they got stiffed on that one.  Everybody nowadays imagines 27 shades of left/right, but it's only 2: social heirarchy on the right, social equality on the left. That distinction is not the same as Republican/Democrat, or conservative/liberal. Corporate hierarchy

I'm sure you're not surprised to know that the punk revival of the late 90s spawned a whole lot of little brother bands playing pop-punk. Obviously the big brother bands that started that wave are going strong, Blink 182, Sum 41, and the ganddads who are Green Day, but there's a whole second tier now with Paramore, Yellowcard, Simple Plan, and this band, New Found Glory. I didn't care much, mostly because i was in the middle of getting my Master's degree, and the whole scene isn't that great. They also belong to that wave of christian bands who found bigger success by not pounding their faith over everbody's heads like leftover 2x4s and folding chairs at Wrestlemania. Tonight's album is awesome though.  You wanna talk about catchy songs? Catalyst is chock full of 'em. Awkward lyrics are par for the course (Incubus had tons of 'em i didn't mention), and New Found Glory has a very particular thing about relationships being difficult when you

Welcome to 2004. Highlights include landing fancy dune buggies on Mars, finding out the US was wrong about weapons of mass destruction and that we have a secret torture prison (don't worry, we'll find out we have many more in the future), Reagan dies, and 4 goddamned more years of W.  Musically speaking, it's turning to shit. Don't get me wrong, there are some amazing albums from 2004 that i don't own, but mostly it's bands that aren't popular yet, best of albums for no reason, the first trickle of albums about how much we hated W, and the rest of the world is pretty sick of us as well. Bottle's collection begins in February with Incubus.  I don't like A Crow Left of the Murder. It's too long, it's completely unfocused, the concept evaporates after 3 songs, and how can you be nu-metal if you aren't in some identifiable way metal? Turntables and occasional fast words? Is Beck nu-metal? He had two of the damned things and he's closer to

I was trying to figure out what album to write about next, and i somehow ended up realizing that i have 11 albums from 2004. Maybe we don't do just one. Maybe i put some effort into it and do an Adventure Time? No, that has rules i can't break. For starters c-biscuit has to participate, and I'm not gonna stoop to lying about it just to give him credit for work i did myself. Next of all, i've already written about a few of them (and i still haven't found the cases for my Chavelle CDs). So, yeah, 2004 according to Bottle. What could possibly go wrong? Here they are in all their glory. Actually, there's only one i don't like. I wouldn't call it bad per se, i just don't like Incubus's A Crow Left of the Murder. The other 10 are awesome.  So, i'm not going to write about an album tonight. Instead, we're going to listen to the parts of 2004 i paid for, in order, and you can get a head start. Here's the whole list for anyone who wants to hea

So what's the deal with Skid Row? They were a functional band for two albums over 3 years, but it took another 3 or 4 years to finally fall apart. Unlike Christgau, i think Slave To The Grind is waaaaaay better than their debut. But is their debut bad? Again, Christgau thinks they are both bad, but given his preference for catchy tunes with a minimum of sexism and cliche, Skid Row is obviously the better album. So let's tear it all apart.  I don't think we really need a historical rundown of the band, but it does help to understand that we're in New Jersey, and Bon Jovi literally owns them. Rachel and Snake signed away their royalties in exchange for Bon Jovi's publishing support. Standard pyramid deal, and eventually they got a little bit of their own money. It's much more complicated and intricate than that, but like i said we're in 1988 New Jersey, and we're talking about rebellious teenagers whose only available hobbies include bar fights snd sex. Ar

Color me confused as hell. How is this record this good? I don't mean the tracks, they are generically 60s in quality, and i don't mean the mastering, it's way too hot across the board, i mean the physical record.  As far as i can find, Pricewise was a Scepter imprint that has a discography of 5 albums. They lasted about a year. This is the 3rd record they put out from 1965. Obviously, the quotes are cautionary, they're saying "don't worry, the next 5 years of music will be crap." Let's be real, this is the carryover of the 50s, it's dance crazes and prom fodder. And no, it's not pleasant to listen to, these are dubs of dubs with nasty clipping and the sounds of the transfer machinery thrown in (i lowered my master volume and it's still there), but the gaps are pretty much silent with only the tiniest bit of dust popping. If i cleaned it it would be near perfect. It's immaculately VG+ garbage!  I often wonder when i read record reviews,

Shortest album review i've ever written: On November 29th, 1957, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Ahmed Abdul-Malik, and Shadow Wilson played a double header at Carnegie Hall. SHUTUPTHISISIMPORTANTANDIWANTTOHEARTHEMSPEAK!

Here's the old map of hell, Ministry's 3rd album, The Land of Rape and Honey. One of the first industrial metal albums, it sounds like it was mixed and mastered through a broken megaphone.  Don't be too put off by the title, that was the actual slogan of Tisdale, Saskatchewan in the 80s because their entire economy was based on rapeseed and honey. Rapeseed is part of the mustard/cabbage family, and it's a major source of vegetable oil and biodiesel. It's literally second only to soy beans in terms of world protein consumption. I may not like Branstad's legacy of selling the whole state of Iowa to corporate agribusiness, but the fact that Trump took a dump on his entire life's work of selling Iowa soy to China instead of letting Brazil cut down even more rainforest to farm it for them is pretty terrible. True story, Branstad supported Trump, was handed the Ambassadorship, and then Trump started the trade war and ruined the whole thing. Brazil's chopping d

I love everything about tonight's album, except the way it sounds. I hate more than half the mixes, i hate the godawful louder than thou mastering, and i hate the overemphasized low-mids.  I love the songs, i love the melody/harmony, i love that we're back with Brett and Epitaph, but it's 2007 and how many times have i mentioned how much i hate everything from the early 2000s to now? I'm positive it's because of ear buds. Yes, my dislike is heightened by how much vinyl i listen to, but i like how those mixes from the 60s to late 90s sound. That's what i like. I like shitty casette dubs of recordings in barns and garages and bathrooms with cars and crickets in the background redubbed back to CD. I'd rather listen to scratchy poppy moldy vinyl than the 300hz drone of a sonic vacuum cleaner. Yeah, it sounds like a vacuum cleaner to me. The world has moved on and i don't feel any need to keep up. Two or three days of nothing before 2005 and i can relearn to

Wanna know a secret?  That's a bit of a loaded question coming from you, Bottle. So, do you? Ummmm. Noooooo, don't try to Pink Floyd your way out of it. Wanna know a secret? No. Ok, then i won't tell you. Damnit, Bottle! Fine, what is it? No. You already decided you didn't want to know. I won that game. Yes, but now that means i really want to know what it is.  Exactly, i'm better at this game than you. Tell me. No. Grrrrrrr! Ask politely. Hhhhhhhhhh. Please? No. Ask properly. Hhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Bottle, do you have an interestingly confusing confession you'd like to share? Funny you should ask. As a matter of fact i do. I've never told anyone this, so hush hush, ya know? Sometimes, late at night, while the Beefettes aren't looking, i sneak away to my super secret office, lock the door, and...and....listen to Yanni. He's awesome. What the hell is wrong with you? Nothing, Yanni's awesome.

Let's talk about Cake. No, i take that back, let's talk about Robert Christgau. He is one of Bottle's mentors, after all. There's great albums, A. They are rare. There are good albums, B. They are less rare. There are also various levels of hilariously bad albums. In between lie the honorable mentions 1, 2, and 3 star. Why? Because these are albums that people predisposed to like them probably will. I like the idea that most albums fall into the 3 star system between good and bad albums. I also like that he will listen to anything and make an honest assessment of it within his established likes and biases. I'm the Todd in the Shadows version of that. I honestly don't know what to say about Cake's first album, Motorcade of Generosity. It's unique. I mean, yes there's irony, but it's not IRONIC. There are some sarcastic lyrics, but it's not SARCASTIC. Christgau calls it "unambiguity from the near side of cool."  Oh, i got it. The bana

Biohazard invented rap-metal. They didn't mean to, it just happened. Inner city Brooklyn doesn't sound like much fun, the way they tell it.  I have no idea what you think about Biohazard, but they're literally screaming "stop being terrible to each other! It really sucks!" Best state of the world address i ever heard.

In a dimly lit room, 3 fuzzy figures sit around a card table. A bare lightbulb pendulates slowly above them as the muffled conversation becomes more animated. .... oh no, i'm not gonna pick one. I did Adventure Time, remember? Look where that got us! ...but i can't pick one, he always knows it was me, and won't criticize it at all. It's your turn, Marvin. I just fix the typos. I'm not qualified to make creative decisions. Do the thing i taught you, Mr. Compiler. With what?! He's chewing through albums so fast even i can't keep track of what he has or hasn't written about.... Oh, sorry...uh...read that all again, but this time imagine that the picture slowly comes into focus and we can see Skip, Sandra, and The Compiler arguing over stacks of records strewn about the table. Cinematography is hard work, and i'm not even sure i know why i'm doing it, or where here is, or who i am. I must be dreaming. Oh well, back to work. Over there, that stack of

I did a lot of stuff today, and in the process i found 3 CDs hiding in the garage. It's pretty near impossible to do an Adventure Time with them, but the fact that they were out in the garage means they really do have something in common: i love listening to them. Not in the sense that they are fantastic albums, or that they are the best, or anything like that. Just pure unadulterated joy of hearing them play while i work because there isn't anything crappy enough to distract me. Come to think of it, that's actually a pretty short list, and i can list them in no particular order: The Offspring - Ignition Breaking Benjamin - Phobia Chavelle - Wonder What's Next & This Type of Thinking Could Do Us In Mastodon - Leviathan & Crack the Skye Avenged Sevenfold - City of Evil & Hail to the King Bad Religion - Recipe for Hate & Stranger Than Fiction By pure coincidence, that's 10. Top 10 albums Bottle can listen to without cutting his fingers off with a circu

Tonight on Disasterpiece Theater, we bring you a delightful dialogue from B and C. Bottle: alright C-spot, run and fetch me another $20 adventure time. Don't put too much thought into it though, i just want new old interesting things to listen to. ...several short eternities of muzak later... C: ok boss, i went a little over this time and had to pay sales tax, but i had a few bucks to chip in. B: how kind of you, let's see what we hear with the smell of our thoughts. Gather 'round kiddos, it's $26 Adventure Time with Bottle. This time it looks like we're judging the books by their covers. Phoebe Snow looks like she has something important to say, let's let the good times roll. If this album is any indication, then we're going all over the place. There's a clear blues/jazz foundation, but she veers off into every direction at any moment. One moment it's jazz, then country, then Doobie Brothers or Neil Young type soft rock, southern twang to soul style