Albums for Eternity with Bottle, the Curmudgeon

Ok, ok, i can't end it the way i was about to end it for the book version, the aftertaste is terrible. Luckily, i heard Exactly What You Wanted and i haven't reviewed the 3rd Helmet album, Aftertaste. I'm certain me picking a fight with Erlewine is exactly what you wanted, so let's do it.  He calls it bland, numbing, and a downright shame for such an intriguing 90s alternative metal band. His narrative is that they made the awesomeness that is Meantime, pushed too far to the experimental side with Betty, and failed to return to the grandeur of their original immediate and visceral hooky riffs and stuff. Disheartening.  You know what Stephanie? Thom Yorke says it best, we hope that you choke. I guess if it helps you sleep at night, we'll pretend like we care. See, although the sonic onslaught is indeed loud and cacophonous, the harmonic language is insane to the point that it's actually impressive most of these songs have an identifiable, dare i say, demonstrable...

E: copy and paste, copy and paste, at first i really hated it, but now it suits my taste...  To say that everyone was incredibly confused by overhearing Skip's spontaneous burst into Editor: The Musical is a bit of an understatement. Sandra sat up on her beanbag chair and tilted her head in amusement. Compy kept looking over his shoulder with a mildly agitated nose crinkle, Gladys rocked a little faster in her rocking chair, Bottle hummed some experimental counterpoint underneath, and the whole thing was occasionally punctuated by a far off screech and thud of a door as GREGORY moved from closet to closet. A different kind of Saturday, but not without its own bit of charm. I suppose you could say that for once the rooms weren't rearranging themselves, but rather the occupants had found different ways of inhabiting them. "What's the plan, Bottle," i heard myself call down through the floorboards. "No plans, the best plan of all," came the reply.  No argue...

C: i think you should talk about the corporate takeover of artists catalogs.  B: i don't disagree, but that's a tough one to tackle because both sides have legitimate arguments, and neither choice is a good choice.  C: what do you mean?  B: how could i possibly say Bob Dylan or Stevie Nicks are wrong for choosing to cash in their chips and settle for the current monetary value of their music? They aren't wrong, it's their music and their choice. You can't afford to buy Bob Dylan's publishing rights, can you?  C: well no.  B: who ever inherits them is just gonna sell them anyway. Regular people don't have the education and experience to make sound investment decisions as a legal business. At least this way they don't get tricked or robbed out of those future royalties. Now, i don't for one second believe Bob Dylan wants his music selling cars or funding the pet investments of UMG execs, but what other choice does he really have? You and i can't bu...

Why are we listening to Symphonie Fantastique? I just have the urge to hear it, i'm sure there's some subconscious reason we'll find out at some point. At first i was trying to work up some joke about some malformed breakfast cereal ( Cheerios my ass, those are Barely-Os), but that's beneath me. So i dug a little deeper and thought "ok, what is it really?" Well, i'll tell me so you can find out. This is like a large scale autobiography in the making about Berlioz driving himself crazy crushing on a girl, Irish actress Harriet Smithson. Movement 1 is all about how sensitive an artist he is, filled with passion for Beethoven and Shakespeare and Harriet. Then he's at a Ball and she's not paying any attention to him. Of course not, Harriet didn't attend the premier (and those who did didn't like it very much). So he learned how to write fugues and won a big fugue writing contest. He won (like i just said) and used the prize money to study in It...

I feel bent like a reed in the wind, so we're revisiting Machines of Loving Grace. I want to unpack Gilt in as much stultifying pedantry as possible, you know like i do with everything all the time. We got a poem and the title and the artwork and the lyrics which include "supply and demand" and everyone's favorite Jim Jones quote in a song called Serpico, and even though the allmusic review implies it's just the same song over and over, it's a damned good song with a lot of great heavy guitars and some bleep bloops. What a jerk, there's tons of variety.  I of course like all types of music, but Industrial Rock is like the core of my being. Supposedly their first two albums are much more synth heavy. I don't know, like i said, this album is a committed piece of art not a random throwaway stab at fame or selling bottles of colored sand or moving your cult to an epithetic socialist commune in South America. It's like ogres and onions, you know? Layers...

S: just out of morbid curiosity, what would you call this record store? B: Bottle's Music. C: that's not exactly an exciting name. B: i'm not exactly an exciting guy. Records and a coffee pot, what more do you actually need? I suppose customers, but who the hell knows where to find them? Forbes said albums were dead 4 years ago. Me and my friends are dinosaurs in the micro-machine age. You could probably make 9 or 12 fortunes if you could find a mechanism for snorting music or injecting it between your toes or smoking it, but what kind of sales pitch is "if you buy it now and don't open it for 20 years it might be worth $20 more than you paid for it?" I suppose i'd have to sell stereo equipment and replacement cartridges and cleaning brushes and who knows what else. E: but you'd need employees and an accountant and... B: why? I sell records, you buy them. Tell me what you want, enjoy a show twice or thrice a month, help Mr. Sandos carry groceries ...

I woke up with Rush's Time Stands still on the old brainbox of doom, so that can only mean 2 things. One, it's Sunday and we have to wrap up this adventure. Desmond TuTu) it's always about money and new exciting ways to take it away from people. So, as the innocence slips away, we'll listen to the complete noise chaos that is Damsel. Liz Phair?  S: i suppose that is fair, the last two albums were really enjoyable and very mainstream. But how are we supposed to actually do it?  B: all sorts of ways. We could answer Maynard's rhetorical question how can this mean anything to me when i really don't feel a thing at all?  Then again, overthinking, overanalyzing separates the body from the mind. I'm totally fine with that, but most people are not. Let's define our experience. It's only 4 tracks.  E: but that means they are super long.  B: yes, but there are only 4 of them. Plus there's a guy from Wilco here, so it's not like we're in a room ful...

I don't think i really need to tell you how bad a state of affairs it is when a Bottle such as myself can't even bring himself to open the freakin' record. Absolutely atrocious. It's a slippery slope, next i'll be trying to sell them for more than i paid to other people. It's true though, i totally wish i could wake up in the morning and turn on the open sign of my own record store. We'd do things the old-school way, invest directly in albums and split profits with the artists who make them, sponsor shows, hold signings, the works. It's probably a silly dream, but dream big i say. Anywho, next up is a fun little debut EP from the brother and sister duo The Haunt, nee Anastasia Max (their last name is Haunt). I have hand-numbered 40/100 on black splatter. It's funny 'cause that long dead news flash about the White Stripes not being siblings is in heavy rotation on my feed lately. How is stuff that happened 20 or 30 years ago that we all knew about...

I suppose you could call Mean Creek Power Pop or Indie Rock. They certainly wouldn't be completely out of place on a playlist with Wilco, or The War On Drugs, or Gin Blossoms, or even The Lumineers and The New Pornographers. It's much more downtempo Alternative Rock with crunchy guitars, a pinch of noise rock, and way more borderline falsetto than any of them, but that same kind of vibe of having no idea how you're actually supposed to be trying to figure out how to fit into the world. Nowhere near as Adult Contemporary as Train or The Wallflowers, so that's good. Maybe we should just call it Rock. At first i didn't hear the "Boston-ness," but it backhanded me across the face on track 6, Not To Dream, and now i can't unhear it.  If nothing else, The Sky (Or The Underground) is a thoroughly enjoyable listen from start to finish. It's not really challenging or experimental, definitely not energetic in a dance around the room way, but your head will d...

I have one more already opened record from this batch, the self-titled LP from Oak & Bone. The opener is called Oakener, so you should just expect pushing Hardcore Punk as close to the edge of Stoner Death Doom as possible.  Aspirin and alcohol aren't the most exciting drugs in music, but i think we can at least give proper credit for specificity.  I'm somewhat known for being really hard on lyrics, especially when they are terrible. These aren't. It might not be your cup of caffeinated beverage, but these are legitimate free verse poems delivered with what must be the world's strongest uvula. As screaming goes, this is appropriately mucus-laden while still maintaining a modicum of intelligibility. Many many many bands are much much worse and more famous. I might be totally biased by the particular bands from there that attract my attention, but Syracuse, NY does not come across as a particularly enjoyable place to live. In fact, that entire I90 run from Buffalo to ...

Today we go for Grind. I'd repeat the full conversation, but it's mostly unintelligible gargling and agonized screaming, not unlike tonight's album. That's not completely fair, you can actually understand the majority of words on this album. Be warned, it does not sound nearly as pretty as last night's Gunpowder Gray. A really fun thing about Grindcore is the microsong, a kind of uber-minimalist approach to encapsulating a complete idea and its execution using a much energy and as little actual musical material as possible. Napalm Death still holds the record with the single grunt that is You Suffer, but tonight's album has some really good attempts. It's the Robocop/Detroit Split "Dead Language, Foreign Bodies," and it will peel the paint off your brain walls. A lot of people don't like the more extreme side of metal, but as i keep pointing out, i'm not a lot of people on the outside. Granted, a lot of the people on my inside hate this, bu...

B: ok, i'm back. C: is that a batch of records in your pocket? B: among other things, but yes of course. S: how much are we going to suffer? B: possibly a lot, but who knows? We'll start off tonight super easy. Have you ever wished there was an alternate dimension in which fat sweaty Axl Rose was actually a skinny guy with long curly hair from Atlanta and Guns 'n Roses was slightly more of a Stoner Metal band? E: i can't say that i have, no. B: well great news, i have the self-titled debut of Gunpowder Gray and the lead off track is also called that. Really nice cover art on this one, don't you think? S: oh, well, yes actually. That's pretty cool. How are they going to ruin it? B: so judgy, jeez. Who said anything about ruining anything? I got 6 brand spanking new albums for 60ish dollars and only 10ish of those dollars were mine, thanks to my sister-in-law of not in any way doom. Discogs tells me crazy people have paid upwards of more than they actually cost fo...

Part 2 Bottle wandered aimlessly. It may not look like it from the outside, but us omniscient narrators are, shall we say, in on it. Most people leave you alone if you look like you know exactly what you're doing. The down side, of course, is that they tend to also think you actually do know what you're doing, and that leads to all sorts of unrelated problems. This particular meander through the endless corridor is particularly interesting, every once in a while while a door opens and a trembling bony hand extends holding a record for Bottle's inspection. He looks it up and down, flips it over, occassionally nibbles on a corner and wrinkles his nose a bit. Sometimes he hands them back with a slow shake of his head, sometimes he appears to somehow magically shove them in his pocket and waves goodbye. Occasionally a minion will run up to him and the scene repeats itself with a lot more bending and hand gestures and general conversating. Oh, he's turning back around and w...

B: well guys, i've got good news and bad news and worse news. The good news is my copies of Hum's Downward is Heavenward and Inlet arrived to day, and a whole batch of insanity should arrive tomorrow. The bad news is that i didn't get an unrelated thing i feel like i deserve, and that is the definition of demotivating. The worse news is i can't bring myself to crack open those Hum albums. I blame attempting to write about price verses value.  S: what are you talking about? B: not important. Let's just say there will probably be a different type of day shift in my near future, because why bother? E: what does that mean for us? B: nothing. Business as usual down here. C: um. B: yes, Compy? Is there something on your mind? C: are you feeling ok? B: not at all, but when has that ever stopped me? E: Sandra, i'm scared. S: perfectly normal reaction. One way or another, i have a feeling there's a lot of work ahead of us. C: uh oh. B: welp, i've got some proper ...

Part 1 Ok, OPEC. What is it? It's an intergovernmental organization (oligopoly) that currently manages 13 oil exporting nations in the Middle East, Africa, and South America. Malaysia chose to leave OPEC in 2016. Qatar and Ecuador did too in the last couple years. What is its goal? To stabilize oil prices among its constituent nations in order to help underdeveloped nations grow their national economies. In other words, OPEC wants to stabilize the value of global oil trade so that its member nations can effectively reinvest profits from the sale of oil back into their own economies. Where is OPEC's headquarters? Vienna, Austria. It was originally founded in Baghdad, but quickly decided that housing its headquarters in a neutral state was the most beneficial way to ease diplomatic tensions. Switzerland said GTFO, but Vienna said "ok, we don't care." What does OPEC actually do? It analyzes the global oil trade, publishes that analysis, and regulates the oil producti...

Hello, universe. Whatcha got in store for us this week? Ask and ye shall receive. I was doing some research on the recent global oil kerfuffles so i could randomly throw that into this insanity i keep making, and it quickly dawned on me that absolutely no one understands the structure of pretty much anything anymore. Where would i even start? You can't just jump right in to the creation and dissolution of OPEC+ because nobody understands what OPEC actually is or why it can't not exist or why it controls 44% of known global oil reserves, they can't understand how that happened without understanding the oil crisis in the early 70s that led to the collapse of the 7 Sisters (just as much a cartel as OPEC, but one we happened to have a say in), they can't understand that without reaching back to busting up the Standard Oil monopoly, and so on. But even that's not really approachable because A) nobody's had a proper economics class in 40 years so we have to talk about...

Part 2 - Carmine Appice ... well, Carmine Appice actually cowrote most of the songs, and the couple covers are instrumental arrangements, so it certainly seems like he's intentionally making a solo album instead of dicking around and getting high like Keith. That's already a much better start. Calling the band "The Rockers" is a little cheesy, but i've got no complaints if they actually do. I will say this, it's the straight-ahead, apartment rock 80s approximation of Carnivale with a couple tablespoons of slightly less than authentic Noir thrown in. As far as mental images go it's about as menacing as Beverly Hills Cop or Police Academy. I hear how it's supposed to appear menacing and sinister, but my disbelief is not in any way suspended. You didn't actually rush past a dozen mugging victims to get to the studio after a sideways drug deal behind a cargo container at an unbelievably unsecured dockyard. You woke up in your hotel room and put on your...

Part 1 - Keith Moon's Two Sides of the Moon Keith Moon is a lot of things, but i suspect prolific waster of other peoples' money is pretty close to the top of the list. Bad for investors, great for anyone who made their living cleaning up the debris left in the wake of his Tasmanian Devil like rampage through life. The story goes that in between a bunch of John Lennon produced album and the filming of Tommy, Moon convinced everyone to help him make a solo album so he could pretend to be a Beach Boy. He barely plays drums on his own record, instead just singing and taking tons of drugs and threatening to take a pick axe to the record exec's desk if he didn't pay for the elaborate cut-out cover concept. I've chosen to be delicate and not show the other side of the moon with an actual moon in the form of presumably that lady's butt sticking up in the air. Ringo Starr gets credit for naming this album. There's really no way this can't be terrible, so let...

Do The Knack hate women the way critics mansplain how much they like this album in spite of its misogyny? That's an interesting question. I don't remember My Sharona being that bad, Good Girls Don't is a little more iffy, ooh the track list is not doing you guys any favors, is it? No reason not to listen to it, though, so here we go.  - Let me out of this relationship.  - lamenting his inability to hit on passing strangers?  - oh Tara, you're totally right to be terrified.  - how selfish is she? This song is refreshingly vulgar, but not in an appropriate way.  - i know why, you're a douche bag.  - good girls don't. No, of course not, and you're a grade a jerk for pretending she was winkingly saying "but i do." She didn't.  Whoo-ee that's a Side A.  - My Sharona isn't quite so bad because he's actually singing it to her. He's literally telling her she's driving him crazy, and that's totally fine, she's an active parti...

We finished out yesterday evening with Tres Hombres by ZZ Top. Today we're gonna give The Moody Blues another try with On The Threshold Of A Dream. This album has literally been to the moon.  So, Compy, do that thing you do and remind me of all the reasons they're fantastic but for some reason I don't enjoy listing to them.  Unrememberably SQUIRREL!, Folk when i'm not in the moody for it, extreme limitations in recording technology, mildly hard to follow plotlines, yep that all sounds like a smorgasbord of wasting away in Rum and Cola-ville, aka it's my own damned fault. Clearly i'm confusing the band for Jimmy Buffet, and that seems like a completely unfair comparison.  So, first things second, we have to tackle this novella of prose and poetry, experimental fonts, bipolar critical response, you name it. Everybody has a thing or 5 to say. We might get to actually listening to it at some point, but this thing comes with a lot of prep work.  Believe it or not, i ...