Albums for Eternity with Bottle, the Curmudgeon

You might say "yeah, ok, but BLOOD. would make much more sense as the last track. It just would."  I'll just wait for you to work through that one. Go ahead...  ... "oh, is this like one of your out of order things? The tracks mean different things because of their placement, or something?"  Yes, to some extent. It's not supposed to be a secret, the collector's edition has the tracks ordered backward. The CD has a different track order from the vinyl. That was an intentional decision in the studio, and yes you are supposed to understand it both ways at a minimum. Concepts weave through multiple songs, and that has a striking effect when you compare the forward and backward versions in your mind (pick whichever is which, i call BLOOD. the forward version). Either way it's intended to flow from start to finish. It's a proper album, not just songs. The working title was What Happens on Earth Stays on Earth, but eventually it became clear that the al...

Picking up from an off-hand comment i made over the weekend, let's listen to DAMN. Our context is that the album won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize. What was the official statement of award?  Ms. Canedy said the board's decision to award Mr. Lamar, 30, was unanimous. The board called the album “a virtuosic song collection unified by its vernacular authenticity and rhythmic dynamism that offers affecting vignettes capturing the complexity of modern African-American life.”  Before we go any further, we have to define what we aren't talking about. We aren't talking about the back and forth over whether that description is condescending, or whether it was more important for the Prize to award Kendrick Lamar than it was for Kendrick to win a Pulitzer, or about the complicated history of the Pulitzer Prize in general, or whether someone else should have won. We're taking the whole thing at face value. The story is that the committee was having discussions about the award, and th...

... and me being me, i simply can't not follow the Gerard Smith wormhole and listen to TV on the Radio. I also can't do the $40+ for a copy of Return to Cookie Mountain on vinyl. I can't. We'll just have to do the extended version on youtube with 4 bonus tracks, including El-P's remix of Hours. Bowie loved their first album, and here he is singing backup vocals on Province.  The story is that Gerard Smith (the one who is no longer with us) was busking in the subway and Tunde just kept giving him money until Gerard recognized from from the movie Jump Tomorrow and he asked Gerard to join the band for this sophomore album. Their very first self release was title Ok, Calculator, and their musical influences are all over the place. They are still together, but they've been on hiatus since 2019 like everybody else. Their last album from 2014 feels like eons ago, so who knows if we'll get more or not? Let's just add them to the list of awesome musicians from Br...

Sweet! My copy of Gerard Smith's Lullabies in an Ancient Tongue arrived. Modern day Pagan Celtic Grarage Rock/Metal from the outskirts of Detroit? Yes, please. No, this is not the Gerard Smith from TV On The Radio who sadly died in 2011, this is the Gerard Smith of Bill Grogan's Goat and this is his Covid Crisis album of stuff he had to get out of his head, but wouldn't quite work with his actual band. By most definitions this is Prog, and i don't have a rebuttal other than Celtic Garage Prog. It's also the first time i actually chose albums on purpose. You might not care, but reviewing U2 yesterday wasn't a happy coincidence and that feels suspiciously like lying in the bowels of the cockles of my heart. Luckily, it worked, because it turns out that Bono and the Edge didn't give a crap about Irish music until Bob Dylan asked them "you do know what i do is just the modern American version of Irish balladry, right?"  Critics have nailed one thing ab...

Holy smokes, i was just trying to check out a band a friend recommended, but i somehow wound up at that godforsaken hell hole where all the worst parts of facebook go to the same daycare as Rosemary's Baby. Reddit, i'm talking about reddit. It's awful on purpose, but not even in a way i can ironically respect. It's 4-chan without goals in life.  If you're new to Bottle's Blasphemy hour, then you need to know that the political compass is actually a Klein Bottle and you have no way of knowing which direction you are facing or going or came from. Supposedly The Interrupters were big supporters of Ron Paul and somehow got mixed up in Alex Jones' recurring brain hemorrhages and they are industry plants like Pussy Riot and Tramp Stamps, and really you're missing the original 2 points A) you have to actually already be musicians, and William Riker) the thing they want you to do has to actually be salable. Ska is not salable. Now, i'm totally on record as s...

Alright, let's hear The Joshua Tree by U2. Were they the first famous Irish rock band? Maybe. They came from Punk and by 1987 were barely starting to have an opinion about the wider world. This album is weird because Bono specifically wanted the theme of the album to be America. The mythological America, not the Bob Geldoff "that place is insane" America. The result is that the desert (Joshua Tree, obviously) is his metaphor, and the losing side of the American Dream is what he's trying to really experience. Nobody really "got it" when he wanted wide open sounds and straightforward lonliness in pop song form, but they just went with it and eventually this album popped out. It's produced by Eno and Flood, so they didn't pick guys who suck at that atmosphere, and it shows. This might be the loneliest sounding album I've ever heard, like you could walk for miles and die of thirst before seeing another person. But, it's a peculiarly Southwest pic...

You know what, no more words. The people who most need to understand them either don't or merely refuse to listen. So, we'll just listen to Solitude by Cloudkicker. It's a delightful 3 sides of progressive death metal instrumentals that he recorded during the Summer of 2020 when most of the world went on hiatus. I still worked every day and wrote books about it in my spare time, but that's beside the point.  One of the frustrating things about now life is that as amazing as this album is, there's no score for me to analyze. There's not a physical representation of the music that i can study and compare to other works and write about. I miss that. It would be ridiculously impractical to transcribe it, or find other musicians to hang out with me and learn to play it for fun and intellectual gratification. There's nobody out there saying pertinent things about it for me to compare and contrast my own opinion. That's ok, i can just enjoy listening to it. It...

I said i think Shaving Bag is a better album than 224lbs. I did, it is, but this is still pretty awesome. Gavin was wearing a helmet, but it didn't cushion the impact as well as one might hope. Like Forgetaboutit, this is mostly gibberish. That's ok, it's supposed to be gibberish, they're poor and hungry and abusive to each other and she has 14 industrial strength hairdryers that Barf and Lonestar and the Dink Dinks have to carry through the desert. Did you know everyone interprets Glycerol wrong? Toby Huss isn't on this submarine, Gavin's trying to heal the burn wounds from lighting his gravy train on fire. I'm an alien, you're an alien, it's a beautiful rain, beautiful rain, beautiful rain... of gloppy room temperature gravy.

I'm excited. In a few months we should have a new Mastodon album. That's a long time, but we can kill a few of those minutes by listening to their 2017 Cold Dark Place EP. 3 leftovers from Once More 'Round The Sun and one from Emporer of Sand. My review of Emperor of Sand wasn't as down on it as most, but it is true that it's nowhere near the top of the list of Mastodon albums you might recommend to a friend who doesn't know Mastodon.  Let's ignore all of that and pretend we randomly snatched it out of the air in a post-apocalyptic world where they put albums inside relief packages and drop them from helicopters. In the spirit of that context, let's try to understand what we're dealing with.  We'll just have to trust them on the temperature reading, but it is by all objective standards dark. It's also a forest and the auxiliary artwork (not pictured) focuses on a heart made out of tree roots. If we get out the binoculars we can see a silhouet...

B: Alright, Sandra, what's the punishment for my semi-secret crimes again Misogynist 'Merica? S: well, there's good news and there's bad news. The good news is that you can follow it up with any album you like, but the bad news is that you have to listen to one of the 4th of July appropriate albums in your collection first. B: aw man! There's only 3 of 'em, and 2/3 of those feature the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. S: i can shuffle them if it will help. B: nah, i'll just cut the bullet into bite-sized pieces and listen to Lee Greenwood's Greatest Hits. S: really? I mean, it's your choice. Seems a little harsh to me. B: i think i'll be ok. I'll wash it down with The Best of the Righteous Brothers. I'll be fine. S: ok, good luck. For what it's worth, i'm quite delighted by your essay on a personal level. B: thanks. That means a lot. Welp, time to listen to Dudeguy McGuilttrip try to win back his woman by fake apologizing for repeatedly b...

Legend has it that if Wayne Shorter told Miles Davis to play a note, that is the note Miles Davis played. Wayne has more than a couple important votes for both Best Jazz Composer and Best Improviser of All Time. Who am i to argue? Here's his own band's most popular album. I'm not saying it's their best because Jaco Pastorius is on bass, but i am wacko for Jaco. I guess you could say it with a long A, but Waco for Jaco is definitely not the implication i'm going for here. It's "jock-o" by the way, because he was tall and athletic, and that's how nicknames work.  Jaco's favorite instrument was a 1962 Fender Jazz Bass with the frets removed. You know what he called it? Take a guess. The Bass of Doom. It was stolen in 1986 and was found at an instrument shop 20 years later. Robert Trujillo helped Jaco's family buy it back from the store owner, 'cause Metallica money. You can go find a cheap clone right now if you want a cheap clone. Or, you...

So freakin' many subgenres here on Bottle's Beeflieve It, Or Not. Hard Rock, Soft Rock, Yacht Rock, Not Rock, we may or may not stop, drop, and roll, we might zoom into the Bronze Age and decapitate our enemies, we might stop throwing pieces of land at each other and focus our attention on the Soul, or let our hair down and get Funky, but we so rarely get just plain old vanilla flavored Rock. Real Vanilla is an orchid, by the way, and unless you've got a super special moth farm on the side, you got to hand pollinate those bad boys. Then there's the sun drying and the hoping it doesn't rain. Labor intensive stuff for the most scientifically complicated flavor we call "plain." So, tonight it's just Rock. The kind of Rock that's so classic we needlessly invented a qualifier for it. Classic Rock. What's Classic Rock? Journey? Nope. Foreigner? Nope again. Bottle's taxonomy is very clear on the subject, let's take a peek. Classic Rock: Things...

Chris von Rohr wanted to be a chef. That didn't work out, so he formed an AC/DC tribute band named after a flower he saw one time. His friends said "Krokus is perfect, the"rok's right there in the name." Critics hated them. Ok, originally they were so prog-rock that when their singer quit Chris had to change his name to Phil and stop playing drums. Then it was time for the 80s, and they all decided to hire a singer who could help them make an actual AC/DC album. Critics hated them even more, but damned if actual people didn't enjoy it and they finally made Headhunter. They were gonna retire in 2019, but Covid, so they might get to play a couple nights in England in early 2022. Yes, Krokus has always been pure schlock, but damnit they are good. I like listening to them. I personally like them better. Yep, i'd rather listen to Accept or Krokus than AC/DC. Nothing against Australians, these songs are more interesting to me. Headhunter is a pretty great Heavy...

From Break Out to Breakaway. I'm somewhat astonished that people feel the need to point out that the cover of Art Garfunkel's second solo album is a staged photograph. 'Cause you know, i was under the impression that that's just how he rolls and a random guy in a bar with a camera said "say deadpan," gave the polaroid to Art as a fan pic, but instead of signing it and getting back to the Art life he asked "can i use this as the cover of my next album?"  I might have been known to apologize to the Legion of Garf a time or two, but tonight we're just gonna let him speak his mind. Wikipedia tells me this is unadulterated Soft Rock, this is his best selling album, a random dude at Allmusic implied that one Art Garfunkel vocal take is basically the same as any other, but you can ignore that because the songs and arrangements are good. I say as long as you don't sound as much like Petula Clark as Petula Clark does you're doing ok. Plus, none of...

All i can manage to push from my lips is a string of absurdities. Mine's more like obscenities, but i hear ya, sisters.  I know i love the Pointer Sisters, but i honestly forgot how much i love the Pointer Sisters. A lot a lot.  I quite like the ironic twist of their most successful and popular album being called Break Out, especially since it was their 10th. The Sisters didn't like the title at all because it made them think of breaking out in a rash, or breaking out of prison. They got no say in what it was called, it's a "producer's album." That might strike you as unfair, but we aren't going to dig into it this time. Instead, we'll conceptualize the process with the understanding that the Pointer Sisters were highly successful and super popular performers. Remember, early on The Tubes were their frequent warm up the crowd opening act. The key point is they were performers, not recording artists. They had a massive audience, and that means there was...