Chapter 8 - BS&T

Chapter 8 

Upon this night that's not that dreary, Bottle pondered weak and weary, over many a forgotten self-titled album from yesteryears. 

While he pondered, nearly napping, suddenly there came a snapping, upon his conscious mind a tapping, some minion of subconscious trappings suggesting albums self entitled for the feasting of his ears. 

Suddenly awoke the Bottle, and combing through the crates full throttle, a scene we've grown accustomed to these desperate descending years.

A look of wild and fervent madness, a cackle filled the hallway's sadness, as Bottle scarce concealed his gladness, and bellowed at the evening's invisible engineers: 

Quoth the raven, I am Bottle, watch your step but do not dawdle, as we assemble ourselves for the listening to the Blood and Sweat & Tears! 

Before we get there though, i feel like i should map out how we got to BS&T, it's a crazy contorted hallway, indeed. I liked On!Air!Library! so much i found a copy for sale and sent money to Canada. Had to make it worth while though, so i bought some other random crap. We'll see if Canada still let's us buy stuff from them or not, but self-titled debuts seem perfect for Random Crap albums. 

First we have to unpack Random Crap, 'cause it sounds insulting. It's really not, Random Crap albums can of course be terrible if they aren't supposed to be random crap, but they can also be phenomenal. Gerard Smith's Lullabies in an Ancient Tongue is a fantastic Random Crap album. The Cars' Heartbeat City makes me want to intentionally hit a tree. Plus, he had to put a "2" at the end of his bandcamp page just like Buffalo Nichols, so Madam Coincidence is calling all the shots. 

It's a problem with language, there's only so many words to go around. If we all just kept inventing neologisms for hard to pin down ideas, we'd all be totally lost at sea and spend all our time arguing about what words mean instead of doing anything productive. The entry in Bottle's Taxonomy is "Random Crap," we just have to deal with it. It's not good or bad until we decide it's good or bad, that's my point. Self-titled albums, random crap to make the shipping cost worthwhile, we looked at a punctuation gimmick, there's a Yahtzee for that called BS&T. Their 4 albums are all random crap, 3/4 are self-titled with a chronological index, unlike Led Zeppelin i actually have them on vinyl, totally not as non-sequitur as my poor parody of Poe prompted by ending yesterday evening with Weird Al videos (totally logical in my reality, presumably insane from yours). I am a scholar of imagining the invisible machinery that makes us all appear simultaneously chaotic and predictable at the same time, after all. 

Can you do that? Name all your albums after yourself, add a number, then call it quits? Really? Whether you can or not, BS&T did, so we're really just asking is that cool or bad drool (as opposed to the good drool that flows when i really like what i'm hearing). See, i'm getting freakin' nowhere! 

It works because BS&T was a performing ensemble like the Pointer Sisters. Their albums could just as easily have never been recorded. The world of royalties and residuals, in case you didn't know, has basically disappeared because everyone intentionally adjusts their prices as high as they possibly can. The harder you "capitalist," the faster the inflation. They don't teach that one very often, but i assure you it's true. 

I'm gonna have to Sandra myself, shut up Bottle. Blood, Sweat & Tears. It works because, yeah, of course you can number your albums. It's hilarious when you do it wrong like Steppenwolf, annoying when you half-ass it like the Beatles, absolutely a horrible idea if you're Van Halen and only do it when you get a new lead singer. 

For BS&T, it totally comes across as "here's the new stuff we've been playing or will play live." These really are set-list albums like Van Halen (retroactively implied 1 like non-lunatics would do). Makes total sense to me. They ruin it by starting with their second album, so Blood, Sweat & Tears is actually number 2. Child is Father to the shut up and invent a time machine to go back and title your albums properly, Man. 

That sounded harsh. I'm not actually angry about anything, it's just nobody put much thought into any of this so it's tough going for a guy like me, you know? Oh well, we'll just chase butterflies and pee our pants every time David Clayton Thomas belts out SQUIRREL! Not literally, i'd have to check but i don't think he says the word "squirrel" ever in their entire discography; merely a metaphor. He can be startling if you're not paying attention, i tend to laugh out loud when it happens.

And with that meandering load of brain manure, we all know it's time to desperately wrap up this project before anyone loses an appendage. Sadly, it just dawned on me exactly which album we're inevitably going to listen to in Chapter 9, surely you can suss out tomorrow's revolver as well (wink, wink). Still 2 days until Thanksgiving pickles at Arlo's house, so at least i'll have Wednesday night to scrub my brain out afterward. Quoth the Bottle, toodles.

Chapter 9