Albums for Eternity with Bottle, the Curmudgeon

An impenetrable, unfriendly, ugly piece of challenging Rock music. That's Trent Reznor's description of the 2017 NIN EP Not The Actual Events.  Side A is some new songs with Trent's emotionally fragile singing, low-register mansplaining, and a lot of cheese grater-like noise. Normal NIN, not whatever ambient soundtrack weirdness they were doing throughout the early '10s. Side B is a few famous NIN tracks backward, because i guess why not? I'm honestly not sure which is more impenetrable. Whatever they are, they aren't actually that according to the title, so it seems intentionally unreviewable. Actively not trying to make anything that elicits an "oh, wow, that's awesome," so how do you even decide if they succeeded or not? I guess you don't.  Welp, there you have it. NIN did a thing and i listened to it in the way they say they prefer i listen to it. Yay?

I got my drink, i got my music, i will share it, but my catchphrase is "enough of that mopey junk." Hard to argue that isn't "bish don't kill my vibe," though, so tonight it's Kendrick Lamar's 2nd album (read major label debut), Good Kid, m.A.A.d. City, a short film by Kendrick Lamar. Several chart-appearing singles, but i think Swimming Pools (Drank) is the one that actually propelled him into the mainstream.  It's a coin-flip of an acronym, "my angry adolescence divided" or "my angels on angel dust." It's about growing up in Compton, partly autobiographical but used as a wider description of the experience of growing up surrounded by drugs and gang violence. It's a non-linear narrative, but it's very much an audio movie about a good kid slowly realizing how messed up the world around him actually is, and eventually getting out rather than being sucked in.  Stylistically speaking, we're hearing a kind of total...

Tears for Fears released an album today; it's called The Tipping Point. I'm the king of wishful thinking, it might be good. No, wait, that's Stabbing Westward. No, that's not right either. Head Left? Oh right, Go West. Ok, now that's straightened out. It's been about 18 years since their last one so who knows what to expect. Still, people are people... no, that's the ala mode guys. Man, 42 hit me hard.  Ok, Tears for Fears, which one were they? Shout, Head Over Heels, Sowing the Seeds of Love, Everybody Wants to Rule the World. No that's definitely not true. I don't want to rule the world, for one. Ben Burnley, for two, doesn't want to rule the world, he just wants to leave it colder. It's 9-degrees right now, so that's appropriate.  I guess Curt got frustrated halfway through and told Roland to "do it if you want but leave me out." Roland's wife died in 2017, he said the last album was their last album, so i guess they talk...

Great news! My 4 books are finished. I mean it, that's it, i'm not trying to write any more of them. From here on out we're just gonna let 'em be what they are as album reviews. Tonight it's the 6th Goo Goo Dolls album, Dizzy Up The Girl. The thing about the Goo Goo Dolls is that they are actually 3 different bands. You got John Rzeznik's Alt-Rock bangers, John Rzeznik's ballads, and Robby Takac's almost pop-punk sensibilities. Think Gin Blossoms/Soul Asylum, Goo Goo Dolls' biggest hits, and Alkaline Trio without the death humor for comparison, respectively. I like 2/3 of that, but the ballads are totally fine for what they are. This is a great album if you know that's exactly what you're getting into. I have an interesting history with the Goo Goo Dolls. It's roughly 1) Long Way Down is an amazing song, 2) oh, i can't find a copy of A Boy Named Goo anywhere, 3) i cannot afford to buy albums anymore anyway, and 4) Iris? It's fine,...

Today on Geargasm with GREGORY, we take a look at this thing from a box of many things that meandered it's way from the person who didn't want it to me, Bottle. It's a Tonor USB microphone. The model is really hard to read considering they didn't print it on the unit, but it was made in China and i think that picture means you shouldn't put it in a landfill or the fish might get cancer. That was uncalled for, i apologize. GREGORY, first impressions? IT HAS NO BUTTONS, NO MIC JACK, THE USB CABLE IS HARD WIRED, HOW ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO USE IT? You plug it into the rectangle hole and make noise at it. Anything? NO. SILENT AS A TOMB. Kay, what if i change these random settings? NO. STILL NOTHING. Alright... tweak this... reset that... turn every device volume way up...try saying something now. SOMETHING. Yep, now i'm deaf. Good news it works. Bad news, that's frightening because the JACK server can't detect it as a device at all. I don't necessarily mind ...

We could have a bit of a debate about the first Prog album. Most people would probably give that title to Days of Future Passed by The Moody Blues. Some would Argue In The Court of the Crimson King by King Crimson. I'm on the fence.  That Moody Blues album was literally a gift from the label: things are in a slump, why don't you guys try a pop album with orchestral interludes. The result is very much a concept album with a story, but it's really just a fairly standard Psych-Rock album of the time, no matter what anyone else says. You could definitely argue that it "created a new genre," but i don't think i can honestly believe it was written from that perspective.  In The Court Of The Crimson King, however, is very much Prog: the Rock band as ensemble, blending Rock, Jazz, Pop, and symphonic style composition into an eclectic amalgam that can't really be broken back down into its component parts. That's probably a needlessly fussy distinction. Ok fine,...

Heavy Metal. I believe the lineage is pretty much Iron Butterfly's Heavy, Steppenwolf's "Born To Be Wild," Randy Holden's held up Population II, and then the official first publication of tonight's album, Black Sabbath. It sits comfortably on a bunch of great lists: self-titled debut, records recorded in a day (mixing on day 2), set list albums, albums that start with rainstorms and/or church bells, probably more.  Is the title track the primordial ooze from which Doom Metal lurched into existence? I dunno, but my goodness is it chock full of goodness, so we'll roll with it.  Is it really all that and a bag of chips? Yes. It's raw, it's awkward, Iommi's double-tracked solos sword fight each other through your brain matter, Geezer's bass sounds like an absolutely disgusting monster that crawled out of a tar pit to mumble at you, Ozzy sounds more like Ozzy than you even remember, they torture a rusty harmonica, it is glorious.  But perhaps mo...

Dearly beloved. We are gathered here because we all know full well i can't stop. We'll just pretend to not notice last night's album ended with us fantasizing our own funerals, and i just happened to need card stock and paper towels. There are a few records mandatory for every record collection. I have quite a few, but i didn't have Purple Rain. Now i do. It's one of the specific albums Tipper Gore and the PMRC used to demand those important warning stickers. Darling Nikki is a bit of a freak. Golf claps all around for Tipper, how else would we know which albums to hide from the impressionable minds of our parents? It's also not lost on me that it's the soundtrack of Prince's movie about Prince's early days in the Minneapolis club scene and i had to unplug the USB cable from the mixer i'm using to record me reading my books about the things my ears heard over the last 3 years. The coincidences are astonishing. You might be under the impression th...

Noooooooooo! I was done. I had it all finished. Then i didn't like it so i added the third Helmet album so it would end with the end of an era. All i had to do was edit it, and upload it, and pay the people, and tell you about it, but no, of course not. Way off down a hallway some little voice said i should really do the whole audio book, like seriously 47 hours of me actually reading these things, and then another voice was like "you should totally ask your friends to voice the characters," and everyone else golf clapped, and i was like "noooooooo!," but totally yes I am definitely going to start doing that right after i feed the dogs, and then somebody was humming Badflower's Don't Hate Me, and i said "what could it hurt?," and it hurts a lot because This Is How The World Ends is fantastic, so of course i have to review it, but i'm stuck in this Faulknerian epic of a run-on sentence, and damnit i'm exhausted, but it's Imbolc and w...