Albums for Eternity with Bottle, the Curmudgeon

I've lighthearted poked fun at quite a few budget labels over the years, but i haven't done RCA Camden. Two reasons A) i haven't reviewed any (though i do have a couple Living Strings albums hiding around here somewhere), and parallel lines) RCA Camden wasn't actually some crap money grab to laugh at.  It was headed by Ethyl Negy Gabriel, the documented first female record producer for a major label and the first female A&R producer in the industry. She produced albums by Elvis and Mancini and Perry freakin' Como. Go read about her, she's a serious trailblazer who took Camden from the edge of bankruptcy in 1959 to a multi-million dollar subsidiary by the mid 60s, and became the first female Vice President at RCA in 1982. You go, girl.  Tonight's album is a comp from 1964, and it sounds great. I mean it, this is a legitimate rundown of the RCA roster at the time, and it's every bit the "Musical Revue" it purports to be.  So what's the ca...

He'd thumbed through the stack twice now. It was awful. Solid attempts at coherence thwarted by unreadable gibberish, terrible rambling grumpiness falling from the window ledge and just barely flapping its wings at the last second. Skip never felt like he was doing much of anything, but the evidence seemed to indicate otherwise. Maybe a new approach was in order. "Bottle! What are we doing here?"  "I dunno, i'm a world before i'm a man," came the reply.  Interesting. Skip loosened the slipknot he'd used to tie the makeshift tie he'd weaved out of blissful boredom and kelp. "K, let me know before we do it this time."  "Aye, aye, Skipper."  Hoist the anchor, he chuckled to himself. Let's set adrift, i guess. The Greatest Stars and Songs

Today is Memorial Day. It is a day of remembrance and honor for those who died in the service of the Armed Forces of our Country.  As you may or may not know, i tend to avoid reviewing albums on national holy days for the simple fact that my often critical deconstruction of a phenomenon into its structural foundations is to me a dishonestly opportunistic pursuit at times like that.  This small project, however, is unique in that we are looking at the received perception itself. The phenomenon in question today thus becomes how did i arrive at reviewing Combat Rock by the Clash on Memorial Day? We'll start with the basic structural foundation that led to any album being reviewed today, then look a little deeper at the implications of the 3 basic interpretations of the phenomenon, namely intention, coincidence, and agency (not necessarily in that order).  On Friday i decided to buy some number of albums to review this weekend. I ended up buying 3 and i correlated each to on...

S: Oh, shut up, Bottle. No one has unfollowed you.  B: Darn, i'll have to try harder. I was really just seeing if i could coax you out of your office. Wanna play a game?  S: No, Jigsaw, i don't.  B: The puppet's name is actually Billy, but close enough. GREGORY didn't bite, but i know he's lurking around here somewhere. Whaddya think i summoned Skip with? It's obtusely hidden in my chemtrails [wink].  S: Did you seriously just wink at me?  B: Nope, i unseriously winked. You're a princess, am i wrong?  S: No, you're right, the chlorine to urine ratio is 60/40 on a good day. I dunno, something surreptitiously Socialist?  B: You've still got it.  S: My cancer is sun. Why now?  B: I wanna be real. Not necessarily successful, but actually fund some records.  S: Look, i hate Milton as much as anyone, but he's not wrong. The music you publish is terrible. The books are still full of typos and some of the page numbers in those indexes are, to us...

I really don't know Lana del Rey's music. She's vaguely SadPop in my mind, but everything i've read leads me to believe she's actually like roman-à-clef 50s/60s Noir type songstress. Apparently Chemtrails Over the Country Club is more Country than Baroque Pop, but again, no basis for comparison.  Roman-à-clef is really just "autobiohraphical fiction," Dragnet style. The French authors who really developed it often made actual appendix-style documentations for the hardcore fans. If you've ever wondered if that's what i do in my writing, no it's not. I create a structural straw man of bits and pieces and banter with it, but you mostly only get my half of the conversation. If you happen to have said or done something similar i'm not singling you out, i'm saying i've already heard it a thousand times and i don't believe that you actually believe it. I get the sense that people know Lana del Rey is singing about them personally with ...

Why is My Morning Jacket's 9th album self-titled? We talked about this, therefore i reject it. Bottle (that's me) officially christens this album The New Studio Album.  Let's play a game. It's not exactly Judge A Book By Its Cover, more like What Am I Supposed To Think?  We'll take critical descriptions, my own naive readings, and my first listen, and see if i'm even remotely close. 2 out of the 3 are completely new to me, so i'll only be pretending 33.333% of the time. As baseball batting averages go, that's pretty great. Meatloaf is apparently cancelled from performing in public because he can't remember the lyrics anymore, so we can't use that reference. Can you guys and gals all get together and agree to cancel something that actually matters? You get paid to write blog posts, i don't. Seems like you could use that platform for practically anything, rather than the ad copy you currently produce. If you think my typos are bad....  So, i...

Chapter 1  GREGORY drummed his fingers on the ancient oaken desk with the eldrich symbols carved around its borders. If he had a nose he would have scratched it, but he didn't so he didn't and that was that.  WELL THEN, he intoned with all the subharmonic subtelty of a trunk full of tectonic plates colliding. His voice is a little boomy, if you hear what i'm laying down. I SUPPOSE MY PRESENCE WILL BE EXPECTED. IT WAS A LOVELY NAP WHILE IT LASTED.  With that, GREGORY stood up and walked to the dimmest corner of the room. Raising his arm, slowly extending his bony finger, he traced an ancient looking rune in the air and watched as a swirling portal slowly opened in the fabric of space. When it had finally assumed the size and shape of a doorway, he slunk his head forward and plodded into the darkness. As soon as we start to pan away, however, we hear him clippity clop back and quickly grap a record off the shelf.  MIGHT BE CHILLY IN THE BUNKER, I'LL JUST GRAB MY MORNIN...

So, now we put on our contemplation caps and ask the question: am i being meaner, more judgmental, more critical about this collection than any other music i trashed? Skip and Sandra would probably say yeah, i'm unbottling a big batch of prejudice. My response would have to be "kinda hard not to when that's literally the purpose of this project."  I'm still hearing interviews with our Sherriff saying that no one can prevent these kinds of tragedies, it's impossible to pinpoint who will actually "snap," so the best thing we can do is treat it like a fire drill or a tornado drill or like Russia might bomb us at any moment. Now, on the surface that might seem like rational talk from a benevolent authority figure dealing with a tough situation. It's not, it's actually antanagoge: when life gives you lemons, map out a strategy to hide from a murderous lemon rampage. I'm sure we can all find our favorite episode where Andy Griffith did exactly ...

(May 24) Eenie meenie miney matkins, It's time for an album from Mr. Chet Atkins.  I've got 6 more of 'em, but i think in the interest of everyone's sanity i'm going to lump 5 of them together as essentially various collections of random guitar pieces. The last one we'll save for later because it's a real album. No spoilers, though, tonight it's a total buffet from 1964 to 1972.  But you know what? I can't. I can't just put on the headphones and ignore that Elementary School teachers and children were murdered. I can't flip on any device without somebody being more concerned with a teenager's legal citizenship status than the fact that murdering teachers and children is even a thing that happens ever, at all, for any reason.  America has a serious gun violence problem. The loudest broadcast voices in this country say the solution is more guns everywhere at all times so we can shoot more bad guys without ever firing up the brain cells resp...

It was the cover of this whole run, so of course we'd listen to it eventually. Why not now, as the coincidental continuation of mentioning Eddy Arnold's unpopularly popular switch to Pop? Originally, Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass was just his own trumpet overdubs imitating Mariachi music, but by this point it was The Wrecking Crew. After Whipped Cream and Other Delights got huge, he hired actual touring musicians and officially made them a real band, hence the grammatical name change. Sure, we're flirting with disaster by waving the red cape of cultural appropriation around, but i highly doubt there's a vaquero solitario a pinin' after shaving cream lady (studio lights generate way too much heat for dairy products). Plus, Dolores Erickson was a professional model, so this was certainly not the most horrible photoshoot she ever participated in. With its roster of food songs, and Herb Alpert never hesitating to point out that they were expressly dopey white guys (tw...

Speaking of Eddy Arnold, here's the 10 Country songs the Tennessee Plowboy loved to sing (as opposed to all the other "records after records" that sold "magic millions" that he wished he could dump in the river like a sack of kittens?).  I honestly don't have any basis for comparison in terms of fame or notoriety, this is the first time i've ever heard of him. So, we'll do the numbers. Nashville innovator in the 50s (so, like a Les Paul Doppelganger), 85+ million records sold, 147 charting songs (2nd only to George Jones, with whose renown i am acquainted), so yeah, guy is pretty objectively famous for his time and milieu. Then he went Pop and everyone got all upset, just like Modern English. That's a fun coincidence.  Behind the scenes it's all the same tug-of-war. Just when you got your thing down pat somebody up and innovates and you get all "back to normal when i was raking in the dough, not you!" Well, from my point of view ...

If you didn't know, i'm just as fascinated with the concept of Communism as i am with music. People love throwing around the terms communism, socialism, and marxism as short-hand for "a thing i don't like," but clearly not understanding that they sound as ridiculous as i do saying "Die Antwoord sings in Afrikaans." That's like saying i'm writing this essay in North American.  So, the one that has always confused me the most goes something like "Communism works on paper, but...," or "Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff." These statements are absurd because they imply that Communism is an actual thing that exists. It's not. Communism is an invented idea that can be believed in to accomplish some tangible social improvement. It was constructed as an alternative to Heaven or Nirvana or Shangri La or Bali Hai. The difference was that it came with a practically applicable instruction manual for getting en...

But Bottle, what if i don't want to pay full price for an actual guitar genius? Is there a knock-off, bargain bin, Beverly Hillbillies guitar album i can feel embarrassed buying?  You know i got you covered. Our favorite British holding company turned American record label, Pick mf'n Wick, hired 3 studio scabs to do instrumental versions of songs by Eddy Arnold. Now, you know you're gonna get a lot of rhythmic fluidity without all that unpopular improvising in between, the backing tracks will sound atrocious, and you won't actually recognize or fondly remember any of these songs, but at least you'll get some terribly campy cover art to warn you in advance.  It goes without saying that i unironically love this. You read that right, un- not post-. It sounds like 5th graders recorded it, and that's a compliment. I love it because it's not even trying to be good. Pickwick totally owned their style of imitation pancake syrup by just absolutely not giving a crap. ...

"You're being too mean."  Who said that? Was it you? Yes you, short guy in the shadows, i know you're there. No sense hiding.  The figure noticeably slunk forward, then hesitantly walked toward Bottle's desk. That's me, by the way. Skip's not here to fix my habit of slipping into 3rd-person. Miss that guy.  "You're being too mean," repeated the shadowy figure.  Oh, it's you. Narcon [snap] marzipan [snap snap] Narzon. Sorry i called you guy. Don't the Auditors have a thing against gender distinction?  "That is true," said the shadowy figure. Nevertheless, i am who i am. Not exactly legion.  Good for you. Shake it up, break the mold, you do you. I'm being mean on purpose, it's what i call meta-rhetorical sarcasm. I liked that Chet Atkins album a lot. I love the sound of people playing guitar. Good, bad, left-handed, with or without all the strings, it's my favorite instrument. What i don't like is having to fil...

Once upon a time, a man decided his thumb should do one thing while some of his other fingers Ministry of Silly Walked their way through the surrounding neighborhood. That man was Merle Travis, and everyone agreed to name his new style "grrr [thunk] screw it, i give up!" Well, everyone except Chet Atkins. Sweet mother of Christmas albums, i've got 7 of these damned things! Go ahead and count 'em, if i'm lyin' i'm dyin'. Sorry, sorry, alls i'm trying to say is i've got 27 albums here, so even if i tried to just wad him up into a brain-melting 7-album listening session, we've still got like 2 weeks (at my speed) of listening material to get through, and that's not counting all the country records i already had but never reviewed. What's a boy named Sue to do? We could just shuffle 'em back into the rotation, i suppose. Or, i could do like a proper forward chronology of all the ones i have, like i did with Bowie or Nirvana. I dunno...

I expected to get a box of records. I did not expect to also get an Ibanez Artcore. Guess we'll have to turn that into a gigantic project, huh? ... but what do i call this thing? Maybe  Yay! I found the subset of friends who are in my head   Or maybe  Drawn to the suffering like mosquitoes to a bug zapper  Maybe just  Of Course, That's What's in the Box  Yep, title accomplished. Good job, Bottle. Now on with the onset.  Prologue  A sound reverberated through the cosmos. It was not a simple sound, and if you tried to compare the various available descriptions of said sound you might find it sounded any which way but coherent.  Skip woke from his face-on-keyboard nap with the mental image of tires squealing on asphalt. A lot had happened since his office pod crash landed on this deserted beach, but all of it blissfully uninteresting. The part before that was enough excitement for 3 lifetimes. Still, even after hurdling through untold light...

Part 5 - Skinny Puppy - Too Dark Park Well, this week has been a pile of something best not described in detail. We'll get to that, but first we can talk about this article that popped up on my feed today. It's target content marketing obviously, given what i've been writing, but actually i have no argue. I haven't heard a couple of those albums, but there's no reason to complain about Revolver's list if you want a broad survey of what's in peoples' minds when they think of Industrial. Every one of those bands encapsulates something essential about the genre, even if i personally haven't toured every single room in the dilapidated mansion.  So, i think we should end this not at all thorough or academic survey of Industrial by listening to Skinny Puppy's Too Dark Park, if only because i keep seeing monsters and losing my mind.  https://youtu.be/LRJ2fVQ60Pc I am intensely, extremely, terribly uncomfortable talking about the death of Trevor Strnad. ...