A daily dose of vinyl from my personal record collection (and CDs and online albums). A little history, a couple jokes, and some personal anectdotes about the stuff i'm actually slapping on the turntable every night.
This might be my longest album review ever. But i swear a couple times, so it's worth the read ;) How could i possibly mention Jefferson Airplane, The 4 Seasons, and Frank Zappa in the same context? Zappa said "this is rediculous" and a few years later The 4 Seasons said "you know what, Frank is right. This IS ridiculous." To which Jefferson Airplane said, "Oh. Ok. Got it." The real question is: which one is the most transgressive? Zappa said stop fighting, you look like idiots. Jefferson Airplane said i guess if love and community is a bad thing, then sure we're criminals and we'd be happy to move out into the fields and live peaceful lives without your garbage, let us go already. The 4 Seasons said hold my champagne for a moment. In 1969, The 4 Seasons released the single most ironic, acidic, extravagant, and downright befuddling album ever created, The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette. Zappa was accused of writing "shitty doo-w...
Speaking of New Wave, I just listened to the penultimate J. Geils Band album, Feeze Frame, and it is awesome. You know the title track and Centerfold, but i highly doubt you know the album closer, Piss On The Wall. It's not even really reviewable, to be honest, it's Freeze Frame, couple songs, Centerfold, couple more songs, and Piss On The Wall. I guess i could rehash what Post-Punk/New Wave New Wave was all about (actual dance club Rock & Roll with quirkily expensive synth leads), but you know The Cars and The Motels and Talking Heads. Believe it or not, the Ramones were considered New Wave rather than Punk in the beginning. Now we'd call them Pop Punk, but the point is that Rock in the late 70s existed on a spectrum from Corporate Cock to Nerdly Neurotic Pocket Protector, and in 1980/81 J. Geils Band said hold my beer, I gotta take a leak, how's this for "radio-friendly, twitchy nerd Rock with huge sing-along choruses?" Freakin' awesome, dude, freak...
Merry Christmas, everybody. A lot of things happening behind the scenes around here, so I've been quite quiet in the album review department. Well, guess who showed up. No, not the Guess Who, just The Who, and their 5th album, Who's Next. The title, of course, is a double entendre. On one hand, it's just a regular old single-disc studio album. On the other hand, the cover art implies they all just took a piss on that 2001 inspired monolith in the middle of a slag field. After Tommy, Townsend was working on another massive multimedia distopian rock opera called Lifehouse, but they eventually dropped it and let Glyn Johns pick whatever songs and arrange it how he liked. The end result is widely considered The Who's best album, and one of the best in general. No argue from me, it's a Random Crap album about living life. All the songs are great, i'm sure you've already heard most of them a thousand times, but they sound completely coherent from start to finish...
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