Albums for Eternity with Bottle, the Curmudgeon

Cool is often objectively subjective, but sometimes good doesn't need to be qualified. I adore Huey Lewis and the News. There's a really interesting history of lawsuits about I Want a New a Drug, but i'll let you go read the little bit about his dust ups with Ray Parker Jr. on your own. I'm more interested in the fact that it's the only album named after an actual segment of "the news." You don't even want to know how many different ways he tried spelling his stage name. Half-right-ipedia is half right as usual, they got the Rock and New Wave part correct, but it's serious old-school Rock & Roll, saxes and harmonica style.  Absolutely true that Back to the Future was the reason people went out to find this album, but how could they be dissapointed? It's like 38 years later and though this old man's barely breathing, the heart of Rock & Roll is indeed still beating. I'm perfectly happy with small amounts of the old-drugs. As an a...

The books are done. Time to reboot the franchise.  Everybody who has a basis for comparison says Demons & Wizards is Uriah Heep's best album, and now i can say i'm no exception. This thing is phenomenal. There's prog, there's some heavy metal, there's a whole lot of bluesy endings to musical phrases, there's Dio style falsetto ridiculousness, everybody sings lead at some point, and it all just rocks. Yes, it's all kind of fantasy magic characters and stuff, but no it's not really a concept album. But wow is it fun. David Byron's vocals are dramatic and engaging, Gary Thain's melodic bass lines are just gorgeous, Ken Hensley is bloop-bleeping on every available keyboard, and there are legitimate moments of everyone spastically flailing their picks at an acoustic guitar. If nothing else it sounds like a group of people having fun, and that's a recipe for awesome in my book.

E: Bottle, i'm really lost here. I sort of get the coin flip metaphor, but i don't understand the point. B: oh, ok, that's sort of an easy one. We're stuck. Instead of doing anything, we're just flipping a coin without calling it in the air. The point is that we are literally ignoring the choice because we are somehow dissatisfied with 50/50. I don't know why, i mean statistics says 50/50 is better than nothing. Still, that's not the real answer to your question. The real answer is that we're afraid of all the consequences, even the good ones. E: ok, sure, what's your point? B: let's look at it like binary logic, but with goods and bads. Good + good = good, and bad + bad = bad, right? E: yes? B: but that's not the whole story. A good thing that turns out bad is bad, but a bad thing that turns out good is still bad; a different kind of bad, but not everyone has such a discerning palate. The end result is that 3/4 of the possibilities are some ...

B: I really should save it for this year's Beefoween, but i need it today. Ow! What was that for?  S: It told you last year.  B: oh, right, "i hereby outlaw...." i was hoping you weren't serious, but a boot to the head rings loud and clear. May i proceed?  S: of course, i still have a one more boot, though.  B: understood.  I've got good news and bad news. The good news is tonight we're listening to Rob Zombie's first solo album after White Zombie broke up. Maybe we'll save La Sexorcisto: Devil Music, Vol. 1 for actual Halloween. The bad news is we have to navigate this ethical vegan, PETA award thing. We are Sex-bob-omb, and we're here to sing about demons and living dead girls and rescue farm animals in our spare time!  I'm joking, i hate the industrial food complex too, possibly more than most Vegans, ethical or not. I disagree with PETA strictly in terms of their approach to living living people and their eagerness to treat them in a decide...

Speaking of alternative hipster rock, am i the last person on earth who still remembers all of the lyrics to Semi-Charmed Life? Remember when Michael Stipe needed someone to transcribe It's The End Of The World As We Know It and physically hold the sheet of paper up in their Unplugged? As far as i recall, Third Eye Blind never did an Unplugged, but i have referenced them several times over the last 2 years. Let's not jump off the skyscraper and instead listen to their self-titled debut.  My fellow discerning drugs in music listeners will know that Alcohol is obviously at the top of the pyramid, with Marijuana being his Vice-President. Below that we have the Twilight tandem of Heroin and Cocaine. Bit of a free-for-all below that, but basically you have Amphetemines, Hallucinogenics, and Barbiturates. Third Eye Blind fall under the influence of cleaning your entire bathroom with a toothbrush, because "Ooh-wooo, Meth!"  We're going to have to put the question of Step...

Coldplay was super-famous, right? I'm not saying that as a joke, i just have this notion that  everyone but me knows about their entire career. I literally only remember Yellow. Butthole Surfers told us Jet Fighters never die, and i'm just gonna go ahead and say it's because their Parachutes worked properly.  I do remember that they were hailed as the new Radiohead because tons of people detested Kid A and thew their copies out the window like my friend Stephen did. I honestly didn't know Post-Britpop was a genre. I do know Chris Martin grew sour on Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop and started not being a vegetarian after they separated. I have no interest in anyone's dietary proclivities (not by choice, but i've eaten quite a few animals on the list of things people think are off limits).  Somber and slow music with happy-ish lyrics is a pretty solid recipe in my book, but none of this stuff is actually in my head. I do know the band actually thinks this album is com...

Kay, so we’re back in the Folder of Doom, and I guess I have to point out that the last time Butthole Surfers made a studio album was 2001. They were originally making an album titled After the Astronaut in 1998, but they stopped giving a crap for 3 years. Released in August of 2001, so yeah. You remember their one weird hit song Pepper, and you probably remember being really sorry you checked out anything from their back catalogue. Good. They didn’t want you to like their music. They truly did not care. I adore them. So, yeah, the baby shooting laser beams at fighter jets was total coincidence. What’s not a coincidence is that they didn’t really like this album at all. I could pull out all my Bottle Battle cards and go to town on behind the scenes stuff, but all the drums are made to sound sampled even if they aren’t, there’s very little actual guitar work of Butthole Surfers “quality,” and if I didn’t know any better I’d say someone who thought they were important repeatedly screamed...

I don't want to scare you all, but we're getting down to the wire. I'm lost, how the hell do we end it? I mean, i'm down to a few really weird things that even i don't want to listen to, i feel guilty splurging given my existential dread, but none of that compares to the sheer agony of another round of Halloween, Thanksgiving, and [shudder] Christmas albums.  I thought about making GREGORY'S album the end, but i'm in this nasty "want it to sound really good" headspace, i miss not caring if it sucked. I have to close out Bridbrad's ridiculous Auditor subplot, something about Communism vs Planned Obsolescence, we have to decide whether or not to stick our forks in the toasters and become a real media empire, i'm applying for closed-captioning transcription jobs and seriously looking into alternate teaching certification, it's a freakin' mess. This imaginary world is just getting too crazy complicated for one little Bottle to contain, ...

Tonight is a special treat, Arrested Development. Unbeknownst to Lindsay, i don't mean the TV show. Don't get me wrong, it was quite a good show, but i'm for lack of a better term a curmudgeonly music critic. Forget Michael and George Michael, let's hear Speech and Baba Oje and the rest of the crew talk about why problems got them pessimistic. Maybe not literally 99 of them like JAY-Z, they are the positive conscious alternative to Gangsta Rap, after all. Tangent: I have Snoop Dog's debut album in the Folder of Doom, but the story arc just isn't giving me a good entry point. So, G-Funk on the back burner, the representatives from Tennessee have the floor (they're actually from Atlanta, but the song's not called "Georgia," Coincidence isn't omnipotent. Regardless, oblique Green Day reference for those who still have their Bottle Bingo cards at the ready).  3 Years 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life of... a band that spent that exact amount of t...

I occasionally thank you guys and gals for sticking with me, and now is one of those times. Thank you. I hope you understand that my point is neither to try to play on your sympathies, nor to force you to do anything other than really think about how you feel. I know that's extremely confrontational for a lot of people, but this segment of Bottle's Life is all about the not lying part. I like to think i understand me fairly well, so i'm trying to show you all of it.  The honest truth is if you expect me to say working hard, getting along with everyone, being punctual and reliable, helping others, etc. is the secret to success, then you might want to brace for the impact of the shovel i'm going to smack you across the face with, you know, like the 2x4 in Tommy Boy. How many of the "get a job" crowd are perfectly happy with their own job and wouldn't rather be at home sitting on the couch? I'm perfectly happy with my job, and i could live completely with...

I usually avoid this hallway. So much garbage, so little value. Still though, plenty of quiet for thinking. Maybe the Lady of the Heap has some good advice. Hey, Lady? You in here? L: Bottle? It has been a long time. How are things progressing? B: Up and down. It’s a wacky ride out there. Not sure the end is ever going to materialize. The Auditors are really pushing and warping the boundaries of reality, you know? L: Yes, yes, I know. Doesn’t help that they aren’t real enough to punch in the gut. B: Exactly! Hard enough to conceptualize real people, let alone the imaginary consequences of their actions. L: Well, you know me, I like a good tirade as much as anyone. Go on, pour it out. B: Ok, you asked for it. One of the biggest problems I keep running into is that there are no actual billionaires the way people think there are. They get this glazed look in their eyes when you tell them those Lords and Ladies don’t have any actual money the way regular people have a jar of quarters, or e...

Mastodon is probably going to release new music this Friday, what better time to break out the last one in my collection, Blood Mountain, the Earth one. I really should find copies of the 3 albums i don't have. Anywho, story time about the wacky adventures of climbing a mountain in Georgia to put a crystal skull on top so you can kill the reptilian part of your brain and ascend to a new level of human consciousness.  I love Mastodon because the concepts for their albums are like Jeopardy answers for "Things Marijuana Might Say." Then they actually go do it, and the only possible response is "that could have turned out really stupid, but somehow it didn't. Great job guys." Really, you say it out loud and it's laugh out loud ridiculous, but then you pop in the CD and it's like Homer drooling and saying "doughnuts."  Kay, we got a hero. He's looking for a crystal skull. Hello, mountain, you sound a lot like what the next album is going to ...

Earlier today: Some days the hopelessness of the situation is too much. Today is one of those days.  That's not a cry for sympathy or some passive-aggressive guilt trip, it's objective reality. Today i am mentally and emotionally broken by the weight of $250,000. I'll be fine later once i rearrange some brain cells and shove it back in a bottle, but that doesn't make it go away, it doesn't make the next 20 years of trying to live on $900 a month any easier, it doesn't fix my falling apart car, it doesn't actually make anything better. I say this with all sincerity, there's no reason for you to care other than human kindness. I have to be in a position to give you something you want in exchange for your money. You are in some similar situation as well. That's where the hopelessness rears its ugly head. I have to scrape and claw and worm my way into your brain, i have to beg and plead without begging and pleading. It rots my soul from the inside. You d...

Oh, Lorde. Alright, go ahead, give us the exit to eternal Summer slacking. Where are we going without even knowing the way? Here's Solar Power.  That was foreshadowing, by the way. Fallen Fruit sounds exactly like a Pharrell Williams reverse-engineering of Fastball's The Way. But that's not why we're here. We're here to stare at Lorde's crotch. No, that's not why. An album, yeah that's it, she made an album 4 years after. She's like a prettier Jesus, or something. Oh, oh, now i remember, Royals made her a one-hit wonder but what she really is is the Alternative to something. Who or what, though? Billie Eilish and Phoebe Bridgers spring to mind. St. Vincent, maybe?  Note to retailers, placing a sticker over said crotch-shot actually makes it worse. Remember when they placed the parental warning so that it looked like Kendrick Lamar was saying DAMN. and feeling dejected about the world warning you that his ideas and opinions are dangerous? Well, all th...