Albums for Eternity with Bottle, the Curmudgeon

So, yeah, if you can follow the unwritten train of thought that leads from R.E.M.'s Monster to tonight's album pick, then knowing nod from me to you. That's some unsavory subject matter, right there. We're listening to Traci Lords's album, 1,000 Fires. If you're certain you're curious i'll explain it somewhere that isn't a public facebook post. For now though, let's just say i was gonna write about the 1995 Mortal Kombat soundtrack, but learned that Traci Lords did actually make a full album, so now i can't not listen to it. You remember her from the Jonny Depp classic Cry Baby. No, not Rikki Lake, the blonde one. No, not the ugly blonde, forget it. The Mortal Kombat soundtrack has a Juno Reactor remix of the lead off track, Control. They did a lot of the music for The Matrix, so you are actually familiar with their kind of industrial tinged techno. The whole soundtrack is a who's who of 90s Industrial Metal and EDM. But, we're here t...

Understanding Monster: 1) it's the R.E.M. album, not the Steppenwolf album. 2) i didn't like it then, but now i do. Got it? Great. Good night everybody. Ok, ok, there's more to it than that. It's actually a fascinating album, and it isn't simply another R.E.M. album like you might think. I've talked about quite a few albums that were interrupted by real world things: riots, medical emergencies, airplanes crashing into skyscrapers, etc., and this album had a couple of its own. We'll get there, we just have to set up the real context first. Critics mistakenly labeled this album Grunge. You already know i don't think that's a genre, but it does have some common tropes of the time period: crunchy distortion, character pieces, and a cynical view of celebrity and fame. The monster is fame, and the deaths of River Phoenix and Kurt Cobain are an integral part of the album because they were Michael Stipe's actual friends. River ODed while they were demoin...

Available here. Guys, guys, girls, and skeletons, look what just arrived, our book. We did it. We have 14 copies of my first 365 album reviews. Check 'em out. Whadya think? Uh, i think we got confused and formatted the page numbers to the wrong side. Sweet, now everyone can use both top and bottom corners for flip book animations. I'm appalled! Who would do that to a book? Relax, Sandra, it's my book compiled from facebook posts, remember. Not exactly Pulitzer material, am i right? Bottle? Why's there no bottom margin? I admit, i was afraid of that. I was trying to cut down on page length, but i squeezed a little too hard. I suppose i could have used a smaller font, but i didn't. We could fix those things if we wanted to. Maybe for the next one. Now though, we gotta Kai Risdoll this litter of puppies (do the numbers, if you're not up on you NPR personalities and their catchphrases).  The $49 setup fee is my cost. In the great ledger in the sky, i'd claim is ...

You guys remember Judgement Night, don't you? Emilio Estevez, Cuba Gooding Jr., Stephen Dorf, and Jeremy Piven getting chased through the ghetto by Dennis Leary and his gang of drug dealing murderers? No? Well, I do, so we're gonna listen to the soundtrack.  Brilliant idea, pair an alternative rock or metal band with a rap group. Some amazing songs on here. There are a couple "meh" songs, though: i'm looking at you Cypress Hill and Sir Mix-a-Lot. The point is that this is real rap rock, not rock bands rapping for no reason, and it's fantastic. My two favorite tracks are Another Body Murdered by Faith No More and Boo-Yaa Tribe, and the title track by Biohazard and Onyx. You might remember B&O from their collaborative version of Slam. I love, love, love Onyx, by the way. I loved them when i was 11, and now i'm gonna go binge watch their videos. See you tomorrow, when i might have exciting news. Hopefully Dennis Leary doesn't blow up my RV and send Ev...

Darned if we didn't just keep on rotating, i turned like 7,000 years old today. Kidding, i'm 41 now. Did you know that 41 is an incredibly boring number. Yes, it's on a bunch of lists of types of numbers, but those types of numbers are moderately useless. So, because Sum 41 feels way too easy, let's listen to the only album i know for sure i received as a birthday present. Here's the actual last album by The Pogues, Pogue Mahone.  Critics didn't like it, but since it's the rock-bandification of the Irish phrase they got their name from, who cares? That phrase, by the way, is "kiss my ass." Shane MacGowan is nowhere near this album, he got fired two albums ago. Doesn't matter, it's still completely enjoyable Irish folk rock, and they all called it quits afterward. Luckily, not before covering one of my favorite Bob Dylan songs, When the Ship Comes In. So, there's a distinction we have to make. This isn't punk rock from Ireland, this ...

As you might suspect, my brain plays music virtually non-stop. It's quite jarring when it does stop, actually. It would be natural to assume that my nightly albums have some effect on what actually plays on the mental jukebox, but not as far as i can tell. I am at the mercy of an imaginary subconscious dj so unpredictable a random number generator would say "damn, this guy is good." Every once in a while, though, an ear worm from the real world gets in there and replicates. I've been hearing Cindy Loo Hoo sing the chorus of And So It Went for 4 days now, and i guess we'll just have to exorcise the demons by listening to Death By Rock and Roll, this year's 5th album from The Pretty Reckless. I love the title track, i love the follow up single (though 4 days is testing my patience), but i don't expect to like it. Albums have been pretty dismal these last couple years (at least the few i've been interested enough to listen to), but there's only one wa...

I miss having Failure's 3rd album, Fantastic Planet, on my shelf. It's a wonderful album, no matter what Dean Carlson says. You could condense his entire review down to "Simpson's did it. Nirvana's better, and Failure doesn't write catchy songs." Sure, think that if you want, but it's dumb and you're an incomplete human being with a limited mental toolbox, Dean. I'm sure you're a mostly wonderful person like most people, but if we were having a conversation i'd probably tell you to go away.  We're riding the chemtrails of Tool, and Tool was a big supporter of Failure, bringing them on tour. APC even covered The Nurse Who Loved Me. Wait, i did too, that's hiding somewhere in Mopey Time if you know where to look, wink. The point of the Tool discography was the fact that the discography itself was structured around the content (intentional or not). The cool thing about Fantastic Planet is that they structured an unstructured album....

Can we do your EP, GREGORY? I'D RATHER NOT, BUT I SUSPECT YOU WILL ANYWAY. WHY? Well, we did the Tool discography, and you hide in the shadows and screech, why not? Plus, i like it. It doesn't have words for anyone to interpret wrong. Well, there's the titles, but you know, no lyrics and stuff. Are you a pirate? NO, THAT WAS MY BROTHER, ROGER. WE ARE A SEA FARING FOLK. So what's it about? 11 MINUTES. No, what are you trying to say with it? HELLO? C'mon, it's your chance to tell us about it. Hook us in, make us want more, really connect. I AM AN ANTHROPOMORPHIC SKELETON, I THOUGHT THAT WAS UNDERSTOOD. Hhhhhhh. You're killing me, Talls. Give us some insight. I BARELY OBSCURE THE VIEW, I HAVE NO INSIDES, YOU CAN SEE THROUGH MY RIBCAGE. Ok, how did you make the EP? I WAS RUMMAGING AROUND IN THE CLOSET WHERE YOU KEEP ALL THE STUDIO GEAR. THINGS MADE NOISE WHEN I TOUCHED THEM. P(NMI)T ASKED IF HE COULD PLAY OVER SOME OF THEM. Oh, well i mean, yeah, that is a liter...

And so, we return to where we started:  Someone told me once that there's a right and wrong...but, it must not be true. How did we get back to Opiate? Well, i somehow wound up, at the end of the Tool discography, being tired of waiting. That wasn't intentional. I didn't plan it. Is it coincidence? Is it my subconscious? Is it structural consequence? Did Maynard have anything to do with it? Is the entire 27 year process intentional, or serendipity?  My answer, of course, is that it is all those things. There are no morals to these stories, because there is no morality, or rather, because morality exists only at the moment of action, a choice that leads to other choices, some expected, some unforseen, unpredictable yet connected. We abstract rules from the game by watching, test their validity by applying them to our own choices, reevaluate and continue. If consciousness itself is the eternal entity, fragmented across the shattered mirror of individuality, the puzzle pieces t...

Long-time listeners know my dislike of Amatuer Internet Interpretation Hour, and Tool's last album is a tragic favorite. It's about Trump, it's about vaccines, it's about mainlining fear... it's about whatever the words "fear inoculum" mean when placed together consecutively. It is an abstraction from their collective experience. Structuralism, ya jackasses, protagonist/antagonist in a never ending battle to see who can devolve the fastest. That's Tool, we pick up a wrench and idiotically bash someone's head in instead of using it to tighten the nuts and bolts that hold us together. And, we don't give pause until the blood is flowing.  We're back to calling out the abuser. Deciever means anyone who's lying. Also remember, we're trying to bring the two sides back together into one consciousness. How do you get through an argument? Well, you can focus on all the ways we disagree with each other and never solve it, just turn on the dop...

The fun thing about guestimating numbers is that you can find all sorts of coincidences. Is 10,000 days the length of time Maynard's mom lived after her stroke, or is it the orbital length of Saturn, or is there just some magical universal force that makes approaching 30 pretty awful? Great news, coincidence says all three are roughly the same amount of inaccurate, so they all get to be true!  I'm skipping over the increasingly lavish packaging, but there's more lovely Alex Grey, DMT inspired artwork. The album is sort of meant to be the moment of breakthrough. The DMT breakthrough is generally when you meet the elves and feel like you're living in the higher plane of the eternal, then they say you've still got work to do so see you next time. Individual experiences vary on the details.  We start out being unwilling to accept death, now we have to come to terms with it in often excrutiatingly painful ways, and finally we can step through. You get serious and intenti...

My first round of books has a tracking number, so they really should be here next week! Yay, but back to Tool.  Christgau called Lateralus "meaning mongering," and the 78:51 run time was universally seen as egregiously pretentious. Yes, it's long, but it's worthy of the length.  Tool is about challenging your perceptions. It took so long to make this album because it took 4 years to settle the lawsuits with their label. Copyright technicalities, contract options, if we hand the next album to you will you actually manufacture and distribute it or throw it in the dumpster and tank our career? We want a label that will actually answer that question. In the end, Tool won.  But, now a new problem. It's the year 2,000 and file sharing is a thing now. We all remember Metallica doing really nasty things to their fans, but Tool felt quite conflicted as well. This is a trickle down problem. At the end of the ledger, the major label doesn't lose anything, period. Like ev...

There are lots of interesting stories about Tool's career, too many for me to cover all in one go actually, but we get a 3 year gap before Aenima. Partly it's because their bassist left the band, but also because these guys do other stuff. Maynard has a foot in the stand-up comedy world, and his side project Puscifer was born as a way to improv on stage. He liked Bill Hicks a lot. He also eventually moved to Arizona and started his own vinyard. Adam is a full on sci-fi/horror effects artist. Danny was a session drummer and played with Carole King of all people before Tool.  This is also the pre highspeed internet world. 56k modems are brand new and psychotically expensive. It's hard to generate national buzz when MTV refuses to broadcast your videos, even after midnight. They aren't driving a van all over the country to advertise themselves like everyone before them. They also have the old school kind of multi-album record deals to deal with, but Wal-mart is demanding c...

So, when people talk about Tool they say "alternative metal." However, when they do, they invariably include Alice In Chains and Stone Temple Pilots, so it's jibber jabber. Sometimes they say "thinking man's metal," but fail to compare them to Helmet (Tool is nothing like Helmet, that's a lie they both used dropped d tuning, but critics use the same description for both bands). Genres are dumb.  Now, these essays aren't really in depth musical analyses, and they certainly aren't newspaper scuttlebutt, they are more like contextual frameworks, getting into the mindset of listening to them 30 or 40 more times for their real substance; trying to understand where they came from, or what they might mean for us now. Cultural artifacts. Yeah, my essays hold up the object and contextualize it from my personal point of view.  Undertow. What's this thing about? Well, it's definitely not happy-time, beers with the bros music. If ever an album deserv...

How in the world do you talk about Tool without mentioning bodily fluids, felonious inhumanity, sexual depravity, the more wackadoodle parts of Melchizadek's extension of Jungian Philosophy? You don't. You just accept that Tool is a giant wrench shaped like a dick, and fix the part of the plumbing of your house you broke last night. In my particular case it's the drain line for the kitchen sink/dishwasher. I was going to replace those 45s with a proper long sweep 90, but we didn't have any at work, so 45 + street 45 it is. You'll also need primer and glue, and a hacksaw (not pictured).  Luckily, there's only 1 piece i need to actually measure, so i can cut and dry fit everything before i climb up on the washer and drier to dry fit everything in place.  Tool's first album is the Opiate EP. It's not really offensive at all, unless you're a hypocritical abuser. They all met through the standard mutual friends who would also become famous route. These ar...

Rush Limbaugh has died. Surely some of you assume that i am jumping for joy on the inside, but that's simply not true. I adamantly disagree with many of the ideas he expressed, his manipulation of words to render intellectual discussion impossible, and his penchant for celebrity above substance, but he was no less a person. His loved ones no doubt feel the same grief at his passing that i did when my father died. All things must end. On this subject i can say only that his stance on issues clashed with mine not because our ideas were diametrically opposed, but because he made a great spectacle of obscuring the larger ideals of Liberalism that his ideology was founded upon. America, whether you choose to believe it or not, was founded on the principles of liberty and equality, two fundamentally Liberal ideas. The trick is to always remember that those ideals apply to more than just "people like me."  And so, may time work its magic for those who knew him, the same as it ha...

B: Gentiles and ladymen, a toast. E: A toast to what? S: What are you talking about? G: I LIKE TOAST, WITH APPLE BUTTER, IF AVAILABLE. B: We made a book. We made it real. Well, we set it in motion, it should corporealize in a week or so, then hitch a ride with the ghost of John Candy to our humble abode. Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, possibly even Home Alone if you a) don't fail to recognize WHY the cameo makes sense like everyone else, and b) don't realize that John Candy received a whopping $414 (no millions attached, just that sad little 3-digit number) for traveling to the set, ad-libbing the entire day, and then traveling home while losing money. Cab fare in Chicago is 3.25/2.25/.25, and his agent probably took $150. S: Seriously?  B: Which part? Doesn't matter, yes. E: ...but, but ... nobody exploded ... no flames shot out of things that shouldn't normally catch fire ... Carl isn't screaming from the other end of the hallway... B: So? Why did you think they...

I liked Sea Level's 2nd album so much i couldn't not bring home their self titled debut found combing the deepest depths of a mile long record row. Biographically speaking, this is 4 years after the Allman Brothers Band recorded Ramblin Man and Jessica, and barely a few months after Gregg and Dicky stormed off for whatever reason in 1976.  Critics have nothing to say. I don't have much to say. It's fantastic. Funky jazz and southern rock getting along like biscuits and whatever you really like on your biscuits. There's a reason Chuck Leavell became a highly sought after session player and a permanent studio member of the Rolling Stones, and it's cause he's great.  The concept of the band is very much "hey, we're a great band, screw Gregg and Dickie, let's just follow Chuck's lead. Seriously, go check them out, you won't regret it.

  ... and here it is, the punchline we've all been waiting for, i don't think we're in Kansas anymore, David Paich. Ha! The old Bottle switcheroo there. David Paich, Toto, you get it. Drastic Measures often require a sense of humor, and whoo! that bazooka as a chamber music instrument makes me chortle.  The bad news is that it's not a Kansas album. This is an Elefante Brothers 80s pop rock album, with 2 Kerry Livgren songs at the end (the 3rd Kerry Livgren song on side a is literally "sorry we're making this garbage album, everybody").  But, here's the thing, it's good. Really good. If you're completely averse to Kansas making a Foreigner album, then you're gonna throw breakable things at the wall, but if you just accept that this is a different band in a different genre playing songs about how frustrating this runaway train crash really is, then it's thoroughly enjoyable. They know they're crashing, we know they're crashing, th...

Let's try to wash the nasty taste of politics out of our brains with some jazz fusion. And, nope. Clearly we can't, even Jean Luc Ponty has something to say about demagoguery, and staying focused on removing its power over us.  Unfortunately, you put all your effort into it, but the critics get bored and accuse you of being formulaic, and boring. The trouble with that is that it's you, not the artist. You're the one who can't accept the larger picture. You're the stain that can't be removed without damaging the actual painting.  The trouble with Trump is that a lot of people mistakenly consider themselves part of the demographic he speaks to, the demographic he represents. So, let me try to describe the large scale problem as i see it.  First of all, there is no government, only groups of people doing things, and other groups of people reacting to them. That's not a silly pedantic philosophical statement, it's a framework for understanding the world....

I've been trying to write about all the messed-up and downright confusing ways people think about money, but it's too big and too messy. I can't find a good entry point. Screw it, let's talk about a fascinatingly bizarre way some people experienced the band Kansas. There are people walking around the earth right now whose experience of Kansas is "Leftoverture and Point of Know Return are famous albums and i didn't hate them, let's see if their previous album Masque is any good." Obviously, if you read my reviews, i've corkscrewed that particular view a little by inserting Monolith and Livgren's Seeds of Change, but it's a fascinating context to think about.  Hey look, it's a concept album about "reality" being a facade, and that's a face made up of sea creatures. Alright, i'm hooked, what fake way will this album portray the human experience?  Men and women need each other to be complete human beings. That is certainly...

Oh yeah, this is fantastic. If i could pump it straight into your earballs i would. Thanks, The Blendours! All the thumbs up.

We interrupt our regularly scheduled brain thoughts for this important joke i haven't yet tired of using: Dear Bottle, Merry Christmas, Last Week Bottle. Oooh, what'd i get me? Sweet! My very own copy of Return of the Skeleton by Surf Zombies. Thanks, me. Double oooh, a guitar pick and sticker. Thanks, Brook Hoover! I really can't recommend buying your future self presents from cool people enough, assuming of course you know yourself and your taste well enough to do a good job. Oh yeah, sounds fantastic guys. Keep up the great work, and cheers from the Basement.

Told you i'd find Waldo, on a freshly reborn Kerry Livgren solo album, of all places.  I told you the story about Kerry's fascination with the Urantia Book, and how it infiltrated Monolith, but during the tour for that album he had nightly debates with their opening band, and Jeff Pollard finally convinced him that The Bible was a more authentic chronicle of Jesus than that other book of space alien dream sermons, so Livgren's an Evangelical Christian now. Spoiler alert, there's two more Kansas albums in this run, and one of them is the last "with Livgren" album before he tornadoed himselves to Oz. No, i don't need to explain that joke, Skip. They get it. Get back to your actual work. Where was i? Oh yeah, Seeds of Change. Ahem, excuse me waiter, but what's this baby doing in my diamond?  The backstroke, sir. Shall i fetch you another? No, no, we're cool. Wait. What's Diablo Dio doing here?  Ah, a common misconception, sir. Though Mr. Ronnie Ja...

Skip! Wake up! Whozamfuggh. Wake up! You can't put candles there it's a fire hazzamfff. Skip! I'm awake, i'm awake. What? We're gonna do it. Do what? [Yawn] I was having such a nice dream. The book, man! The book. What book? A year in the life. We're gonna make it real. But, that means you've got some real work to do. You left a lot of things uncapitalized, and there's factual errors, and stuff. That sounds like work. Of course it is. You gotta edit it. Comply's gotta compile the cibliography. Sandra's gotta colorform it a cover with basic geometric shapes, and maybe a clip art bus and a portrait of GREGORY or something. Why don't you just do it? I liked sleeping, i could do that for eternity. 'Cause i gotta go wake them up, and send a carrier pigeon to find Bridbrad, and write tonight's album review. Hhhhh. Fine. Is there another computer lying around here? The one i was using melted after after i listened to Music That Sucks a secon...

Phone charger reacquired, here we go. First let's take a moment to appreciate the sheer giddy joy i feel when looking at the cover of Traffic's live album On The Road. It's beautiful. Next, let's appreciate that it has 4 tracks. Yep that's it, four extended live jams  that critics weren't thrilled about the first time around in shorter studio form. Some history on Traffic is probably in order. Steve Winwood formed Traffic as a psych Rock band, jammed with Hendrix a lot, then randomly quit to form Blind Faith with Eric Clapton. When that was over, he went back to his friends and they had a second go at Traffic, now expanding into Jazz Rock territory. That's why critics don't like this album. Critics hate it when you do whatever you feel like without their permission. Oh, sure, the playing is great, but who has an attention span longer than 3 minutes? Not us, Traffic sucks now. Bugger that, this is fantastic. I simply can't understand the mentality tha...

I bought a big bunch of records yesterday, but I don't have any story in mind for them. A lot of them are lead guitarist albums, though. I also left the charger cable for my phone at work, so i can't take pictures for today's album. Oh well, rainbows in the dark. Yep, I now have a copy of Rainbow's 6th album, Right Between The Eyes. Wait a minute, where's Waldo, i mean Dio? Oh, this is after he quit to join Black Sabbath. Don't worry, we'll find him in a totally bizarre place later this week. Hey, I know track 2, Stone Cold. A Classic Rock staple, that one. Rainbow was originally Ritchie Blackmore's hiring Ronnie's band Elf for a solo project after Deep Purple's lineup change and subsequent falling apart, but they became a hard rock and metal behemoth in their own right. Funny story about this album, Blackmore and David Coverdale quickly became not such good friends because Coverdale kept trying to claim copyright infringement any time Blackmore ...

Bottle's taxonomy of music criticism is filled with deep, probing questions like "what the hell am i listening to?," "who?," and "whaaaa?!" Today we get to use all three. Now, i think we can all safely judge this particular book by its cover. Space fantasy, of the wackadoodle variety. And those guys can't exist ouside the vacuum chamber of absurdity that is the 1970s. I'm not familiar with the band Starcastle, but this is clearly some variety of Prog, and there will be Moog. Oh yes, there will be Moog.  What's their story? The inner web of the networldtube tells me everyone thinks they're just Yes clones. Kay, that's not helpful, guess we'll just have to make up our own minds. Alright, first thing, it's going to take you a bit to get used to Terry Luttrell's voice. It's not weird or funny, but it is testicle clenchingly high. It doesn't sound like falsetto, i think he's just a legitimate Alto. That's tota...