Albums for Eternity with Bottle, the Curmudgeon

The sound of the end of the world. That's how Robert Smith described the 2004 LP from Scarling., Sweet Heart Dealer. Mark Deming gave it the kiss of death over at Allmusic by saying this is pretty good and "they have potential." Potential to flame out like 95% of all bands. I assume the Sweet Heart Dealer is just a former candy store owner who's been gentrified/property taxed out of his bodega and has a trench coat full of poorly tailored pockets filled with actual stale candy.  Scarling is supposedly a former Noise Pop band from LA that is now only a Noise Pop duo from LA. This was clearly the height of their marketability as far as The Cure was concerned, so i'm not too worried. I'll love it, you'll hate it, normal stuff, let's twirl. I should also mention, this was not an out of nowhere random band, this is the band Jessicka formed after Jack Off Jill broke up. Musically speaking she hasn't done much over the last decade. Who has, honestly? Mast...

27 years later, i think i've changed my mind. It can't be coincidence that i picked up and actually listened to Merkinball with fresh ears. Pearl Jam and Neil Young decided to make an album together after playing at an abortion rights benefit. That's not at all why i picked it off the shelf and decided to review it, but we can't unrecognize it after it has already happened. Times like these i just acknowledge that my subconscious works 24/7 and muddle through as best i can.  My original thought was "what are you supposed to actually do with this EP? Can you even really call it an EP when it's actually structured like a one off non-album single? Are the songs as mediocre as i remember? What do arrowheads and pubic wigs have to do with anything?" Plus, it's easy to say "Pearl Jam and Neil Young made an album in 4 days over 2 months," but you have to include the fact that Eddie Vedder was hiding from a stalker for 2 or 3 of those, and these are ...

You know what i've been unintentionally forgetting to do? Finish crocheting this damned otter. I haven't been avoiding it, it's just after a long day of forklifting and counting and running a warehouse i just don't feel like it. Shame on me. I promised my sister i would make it for her, and i never reneg. So, i think we'll start with Shame, Exposure's Bleeding Out, then dive into Dragged Under's 2 LP's, and at least get to the point where i can attach his wee beady eyes and stuff his head full of polyester.  That of course means i can't do proper internet research or write my patented in-the-moment reviews because my fingers are busy, but shutting up is a thing i allow myself to do every once in a while. We'll hit the kickstarter hard next week and see if we can't materialize an album, then look forward to the rapidly impending release of doubleVee's 3rd album, Treat Her Strangely. August has a Primus album arriving in it. Aw, who am i ki...

It's here! I have copy 218/300 of Shack by Hunting Lodge. Even crazier, Easy Listening included a copy of Bleeding Out by Shame, Exposure, recorded in 1982/83 but never actually released until Knox Mitchell personally mixed the original multi-track tape master and published it.  So i sent him this email:  "Holy smokes! I definitely wasn't expecting the Shame, Exposure album included with my order, but i'm super excited to check it out! Hope life's being as kind to you as possible, and cheers from out here in Iowaland."  If you can remember as far back as May 10, i really enjoyed the 3 albums i listened to by Hunting Lodge, and i'm super excited to check out Shack.  First though, we should talk about Bruce Licher at Independent Project Press. He mostly uses letterpress printing on chipboard and the resulting texture and old-school craft-fair feel is pretty awesome for the ear-splittingly cacophonous nightmare the remaining 82 of you could potentially be abo...

I'm no stranger to double-headers, but this one might be pushing my luck. I've heard tell that the second Lineart Skymall album is better than the first Lyndon Skyndler album, but that of course means i have to listen to them the right way 'round. Fffffffalright.  This particular CD has bonus demos, so we'll not listen to those and just stop at the song no band wants to ever hear requested at their shows. Nope, not even Lynyrd Skynyrd tribute bands actually want to play Freebird, and you can't convince me otherwise. What's their appropriately self-titled "Hello, Atlanta!" album gonna turn out to be?  1 - yeah, your family will definitely not approve of you marrying me. Good start, actually.  2 - what a coincidence that today's Tuesday and it's pretty much over. Still, don't like track 2 ballads, even if they're good songs on their own. I don't like them because you rocked me, but now you're not rocking me. Everything else is kin...

Hands down the best story about Houses of the Holy is that Storm "Inflate the Pig" Thorgerson's original submission for the cover art was a tennis court with a lonely racket on it. Jimmy "That Hurts My Feelings" Page was furious at the GWAR comparison, so Aubrey Powell did a complicatedly color manipulated overlay of two children at Giant's Causeway that he himself hated until he actually listened to the album at the actual Giant's Causeway. Where's Sleazy when you need him?  I have nothing against Led Zeppelin or their albums. Not a fan of the people they were at various times, but that has very little to do with the music, in my opinion. Houses of the Holy is quite interesting in that regard. It's their first non-roman-numeraled album, their last before creating Swansong, the only one with printed lyrics thus far, and critically speaking the apex of their career before the extravagance got annoyingly anti-productive. It's also a Random Crap...

We could do the whole shebang about the worst Jazz album ever intentionally created, but it's Father's Day, so we'll just pour a couple cups of coffee that tastes brown and enjoy the dad-joke that is Jon Benjamin/Jazz Daredevil's Well I Should Have (learned how to play the piano). Hilarious.

Today on What's on Bottle's Porch Today? It's this awesome album cover. I'm excited. Interesting question, do i know Beau Jennings? We have 4 mutual friends, we both left Oklahoma in 2005 (me to Denton, he to Brooklyn), he moved back to Oklahoma in 2012 while i moved to Iowa. I feel like we crossed paths before all that, but i really don't know. Regardless, Steven Stark reminded me that Beau Jennings and the Tigers have a new album out, so i bought it. It's called Heavy Light. Let's check it out. The very first thing you'll notice are the Tom Petty goes Indie Rock vibes of the lead-off track, Sunflower. The Comeback gives us a tinge of Springsteen meets the Cars in a track 2 upper for a welcome change. I love that, in case you didn't know, track 2 downers always feel totally wrong. I'm already hooked, and now there are Killers and Gaslight Anthem flavors. This is seriously good, catchy, ooh a real Bass-riff intro for I'm Reaching, Lord. Yeah,...

Somehow we've stepped into the looking glass and now we have the opposite story of 2112. Instead of threatening to dump Moody Blues for lackluster sales and creative doldrums, Deram said "this orchestra we're paying isn't doing anything productive at the moment, why don't you guys try something more interesting than Pop songs with fully scored orchestral interludes?" It took about 5 years of Tuesday Afternoon and Nights in White Satin in constant rotation to actually catch on, but all of a sudden became a top 10 album in 1972. Bizarre. Anyway, here's Days of Future Passed, the first concept album from Moody Blues, and also one of the primordial ooze puddles from which Prog evolved in the first place.  I'm not known for being a huge fan of Moody Blues albums, but this is by far my favorite of theirs. I absolutely adore symphonic Pop/Rock, and the melodic material here is super dreamy. Seriously, how freakin' cool would it be to see your local sympho...

And here it is, the album that turned Rush from wooden puppet/donky of childhood into a real boy, it's 2112. Soooo much back story, so little restraint from rambling endlessly about it on my part.  Yes, their manager really did have to make a special flight and personally convince the execs to give them one more shot before dumping them. Yes, they really did have to flip a coin between playing it safe and going out in a blaze of glory. Yes, they all read an Ayn Rand book one time. It gets complicated.  So first, the Ayn Rand thing. The novella in question is Anthem, and the credit to the "genius of Ayn Rand" was an attempt to acknowledge the structural similarities between the stories so that they didn't get sued for copyright infringement. We talked about that with Camel and Beastie Boys and Flaming Lips, so i'm not gonna rehash any of it (shameless plug, go buy my 4 books). Also, we aren't talking about The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged or Objectivism itsel...

Caress of Steel was by all accounts very nearly the end of Rush (much like Tarkus for EL&P). It was a total critical flop, even though fans have really warmed up to it over the decades. It was called everything from "tentative" and "completely unfocused" to "i'm not going to review this crap!" and we need some reasons why. First is that Prog was a real threat to the American music industry. Simply put, Prog is anathema to corporate Pop. Complicatedly put, Prog is an artist/audience genre, not a marketable fad that you can sink a lot of dirty money into and magically extract more clean money than you started with. Prog is an actual market that behaves according to actual economics, not a manufactured/regulated hegemony of tit for tat. The most unknown band of total losers can walk out on stage and blow everyone away, but that won't necessarily translate into record sales. Plus, Rush has been touring in support of Kiss this whole time, with the c...

Hello, Neil Peart. Ready to make everyone feel incredibly sorry for the poor guy who has to audition 5th after you? Great! Let's take a look at Rush's 2, 3, and 4 albums, they are a spectacular story with a real cliff-hanger of an ending. Fly By Night, Caress of Steel, and the piece de resistance that is 2112. I can't believe someone would part with them in the first place, but i also can't believe i stumbled across them last Friday. Lady Coincidence, she moves in mysterious ways.  We begin our story after the pretty normal making of Rush's self-titled Hard Rock debut. Only took 'em 6 years to make it, so they're way ahead of schedule. By the time they finished the tour they had the second album written and it was recorded and mixed in 2 weeks. Fly By Night is by my standards a perfectly acceptable random crap album. They felt like this was a new beginning, so they tried to showcase everything they could possibly write, and they totally succeeded. The label ...

I've gone and done it. Here is my first kickstarter page to fund the physical CD release of Fragile Moments (aka the least weird guitar pieces from my catalogue). There are a few different levels with appropriate rewards, but any amount you might be willing to spend on Bottle of Beef's very first physically published album would be fantastic. The goal is $400 and fundraising lasts for a month. You absolutely won't be charged if it doesn't meet the goal, but you'll definitely get a copy (probably well before September) if it does. Please consider sharing even if you're not interested in this particular CD, and good luck on your own adventure through this crazy universe. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bottleofbeef/fragile-moments-cd-release [The next day] S: Damnit, Bottle! Now we're getting tons of emails trying to sell us marketing for that stupid kickstarter. B: I know, isn't it hilarious? E: No. Hilarious is not a word i would even consider in th...

What about me? Holy Mary Stuart Masterson did i pick up an exceptionally good collection of used records today.  I'm proud of that one so let me explain. I got Quicksilver's What About Me, Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy, Days of Future Passed by Moody Blues, and 3, count 'em, 3 Rush albums. [Inhale] It's good (bene) ... and it's the month of June... [exhale]. We'll start with this moderately obscure 1970 Psych Rock album. Quicksilver Messenger Service has kind of been lost in the shuffle of history, but they really were 33% of the San Francisco Psych/Acid Rock allstars (get your LSD on) with Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead. Not surprisingly David Crosby also seemed to be passing through wherever they were at whatever time. By the time we get to their 5th album What About Me, though, they had kind of ditched the mile-long marijuanalogue style improvojams in favor of these things called "songs," so this album is actually surprisingly blun...

S: Knock, knock.  B: Sandra! Perfect timing. Should we listen to an actual Boots Randolph Album, or another random Country singer, or covers of Herb Alpert, or go totally crazy and listen to an album that has both Glen Campbell and Dionne Warwick on it for absolutely no logical reason whatsoever?  S: Oh, uh, i don't like any of those choices. I was just wondering why we're actually back here.  B: I dunno. I take that back, i was talking to Narzon, and it just wasn't working like i wanted it to, so i just kind of put out the psychic APB so you'd be here when it happened.  S: Who's Narzon?  B: Oh, yeah, you don't know her, she's like a rogue Auditor working through some stuff, and i didn't have anyone to yammer at so i just vaguely tried to imagine her as best i could. Sorry, hope you're not upset.  S: Have you finally lost it?  B: Lost what?  S: A finger hold on sanity.  B: Probably. I mean, it was a tenuous relationship to begin with, am i ri...

Chet, Floyd, and Boots. Originally released on budget label Camden, then a worse quality repub by Pickwick, then when CDs were invented, dubbed by Special Music. It's a 2-star album nobody ever bothered to review. But is it good? It's obviously three Nashville stars playing random stuff because the studio and pressing slots were already booked, so it should be perfectly lovely by my standards. That's the secret, by the way. The way pressing records actually works in the real world is that the manufacturing process is all pre-planned and ready to go. Print schedule, quantity, deadlines, it's all planned for no down-time from one stage to the next, all you do is plug in the actual album at the deadline, same way newspapers do it. The speculation comes from reserving all that manufacturing time next year and trying to plug in the best option for any particular release date. Or, if you're Paul McCartney, you just show up at your own label and scratch off "The Beatl...

Glenn Miller disappeared over the English Channel on December 15, 1944, but it wasn't until Christmas Eve that it was reported he wouldn't be doing his normal Christmas broadcast. The conspiracy theories are spectacularly ridiculous. The most logical explanation is carburator icing, because that's an actual real problem in aviation, unlike sending a Trombonist to personally negotiate a peace treaty with Nazi officials, which is not at all a logical war strategy.  Anywho, do i expect much from Spinorama's tribute to Glenn Miller. Well, i mean, their tag line for the album is "[Glenn Miller's] music will live on and will be listened and danced to as long as popular music remains popular." Did Yogi Berra write that blurb? So no, i don't, but maybe some history first.  Spin-o-rama is like the bottomest of the barrel in a proper corporate heirarchy of terribleness. Sister labels include such gems as Peter Pan, Parade, Prom, Rocking Horse, and other real con...

I don't know why my brain sometimes mixes up Glen Campbell and Pat Boone. It does some times, but thankfully the title of tonight's album is The Glen Campbell Album, so i don't have to worry about that problem. I do still have to worry about my phone demanding 2 Ns at the end of Glen, but that's more Skip's problem than mine (wink).  Fair warning, it's a Pickwick album. Actual named artist, though, so at least it's a coin toss in terms of audio fidelity. Unlike Chuck Thompson, Glen Campbell IS a famous guitarist with a vast catalog of session work and solo celebrity offerings. He's no Roy Clark, but he doesn't look too much the fool playing alongside Roy Clark as he often did. I know i mentioned he did an album with Tennessee Ernie Ford a while back, but i'm just not ready for that weirdness yet. Let's just do a singles compilation tonight.  These are Capitol recordings, so i kind of expect big orchestral backing, huge vocal reverb, the kind ...

Part 1 N: What if Country is just Mundane Metal?  B: Is that you Narzon? What are you, like the ghost in my Christmas presents?  N: I just mean, well, you're big into sarcasm, so what if it is? What was it last night? Things are Gonna Change Around Here? What if he's doing it AS the joke? What if the wink, wink, nudge, nudge part is really "we all know how terrible guys like this are, tee hee!"  B: Excellent tee-hee, but i dunno. You're calling Ernest Tubb the Slayer of Country. I mean, sure Alice In Chains was appalled by how people thought their actual misery was a cool thing, Axl was always in "no, seriously, i'm a dirtbag" mode, Neil Young's lamentable reverse psychology heroin epidemic... i can see it, i can read it that way, but can i believe it? How do you reconcile it with the very next sentence being "this is our lifestyle, and we're damned proud of it?" That sounds like Bottlean Mundanity on the surface, but my muscles are...

Bridbrad paused rocking for a moment. "You think he's really going to do it?" Gladys didn't pause at all. "Oh, if he does he'll do it, best not to think about it at all."  Tonight's just gonna be all over the place. I really do have 5 more Chet Atkins albums, but it's pretty impossible to review them. I suppose i could do like a "most random thing i heard on a Chet Atkins album" list, but that's dumb. One's as good as another, it's Chet Atkins playing guitar. Instead, we'll talk about being real.  What's the number one problem with a record label, aside from them lying about everything all the time? Overhead. You've got too many people doing barely anything productive in a make-believe city of pointless insider jibber jabber. You're leasing a building and equipment, employing people to write and read memos all day, you don't actually have any inventory, it's dumb and it doesn't help anybody.  I do...