Albums for Eternity with Bottle, the Curmudgeon

Damn! I take 1 day off and everything malfunctions like nobody else knows how to do anything. No overnight transfers to check in, UPS label mixups, corporate software changeover confusion, now i guess i'm on call for potential jury duty from April to July. Everybody all "bottlebottlebottle, what're we gonna do?!," but i'm like "none of this stuff is hard or meaningful, or even remotely important." It's all stupid pointless complexity for the sake of someone who isn't me getting a merit badge or unlocking a new achievement and it's exhausting.  Like, seriously i got asked why the shipping cost of a 45lb box from Marietta GA to Badger IA was $289. I get that that's exorbitant. It is, we call that "prohibitive pricing," you're supposed to find some other alternative. Regardless, i have to explain that UPS charges the higher of package weight or dimension weight. An actual 45lb box would only cost like $25, but dimension weight ...

No way around this cringeworthy opening line, "big brother is watching you" hits completely and disturbingly different in the context of Ten and Van Halen. Let's all listerine that taste out of our mouths and just listen to 1984 on its own terms. Eddie and Diamond Dave and the producers had been having intense creative differences for a while. Mostly Eddie wanted to expand Van Halen's creativity with keyboards, because Van Halen had serious synthesizer money in the early 80s. Dave and the production squad always put up a fight. In fact Dave had previously refused to write lyrics for what became Jump at least twice before. But, while Eddie was having his new Studio 5150 built (named after the California code for temporarily committing someone who represents danger to themselves or others due to mental illness into involuntary psychiatric custody), all he had on hand was an Oberheim OB-Xa (retailing for around 5,000 1982 dollars; that's about $15,500 by today's ...

Interlude:  E: where are we going with this, Bottle?  B: awfully editorial of you for asking, Skip. What if i said "dunno?"  E: i'd think you were lying.  B: i believe you, that's totally a thing you'd think. I don't plan this stuff, you know? I really do just pick out whatever strikes my fancy from the available options, then try to write about the sculpture they form when you stick 'em all together. This one is definitely lending itself to a kind of "hate the game, not the player" sort of thingamabottle.  E: how so?  B: well look. Pearl Jam was pointing out just how unsavory and depressing actual life was in 1990/91. Yes it has a fair bit of hyperbole and sad boi melodrama, but that's a legitimate reaction to being pounded to a greasy pulp by the meat tenderizer of the mid to late 80s. Equal and opposite reaction sort of conservation of energy type thing.  E: so what, you're gonna blame Van Halen?  B: no, actually. Don't you see, we...

Prelude: Attention! All minions on deck, Heartiest to the Con, directly to the Con, do not pass go but by all means collect any spare change you find on the way. This is not a drill, i did a thing and it was icky. Details will be distributed on a need to know basis. Cap'n Bottle out.  ---  C: What do you think he did, Sandra?  S: i don't know, but between Trump assembling his election squad for 2024 at the same time he and his lawyers are being sanctioned and fined a million plus dollars for wasting the federal judiciary's time with frivilous lawsuits, everybody having hissy fits over books being edited, people having no comprehension of the fact that corporations are really just glorified landlords with no actual stake in the businesses that make up their investment portfolios, and recently being forced to attend his own 43rd birthday, i imagine he got desperate enough to look for records in a place he wouldn't normally look for records.  C: you don't seriously thi...

Wouldn't it be nice to have a Regenerator button? About as likely as riding a mammoth through the snow to Avalon, but King Buffalo certainly does not fail to deliver a refreshingly uplifting, bouyant, immensely satisfying voyage through the cosmos on the back of your eyelids.  From appropriately trippy hallways of echo work, through mountain crushing riffage and grooving bass lines, to astonishing fuzzed solos and lush synths, Regenerator really does deliver the goods.  What else is there to say? From top to bottom and in all the nooks and crannies, King Buffalo has the ability to seep into the fiber of your being and make everything pleasantly vibrate. I'm still not sure what i should do now that i've accomplished 43 laps around the fireball, but at least the soundtrack for this next day of the rest of our lives is delightful. Prelude and Ten

Blue canary in the outlet by the lightswitch, i implore you, must i really binge listen to these 30 waltzes all in one go?  Fine.  Bottle of Beef trepidatiously presents the Longines Symphonette Society's proud presentation of the Treasury of Waltzes from the Family Library of Beautiful Listening. We've officially exceeded my prepositional phrase quota, so that's fun. I can't help but notice, however, that my boxed set is missing both the enthralling 16 page booklet chronicling the history of waltzing and any indication as to who or what actually performed the 30 waltzes i'm about to hot dog eating contest into my brain. All i know is that Divisional Vice-President Eugene Lowell produced it, so i assume these are random recordings from the 1940s, because The Longines Symphonette Society was a mail order side hustle subsidiary of daddy Cartoun's Longines Watch Company. They literally bought the entire Capital Record Club catalog and republished random boxed sets ...

If you're wondering why i haven't been writing much lately, 1) you're weird, 2) i am existentially tired, and 3) i've been listening for the sheer enjoyment of listening and that makes for boring essays. Tonight it's one of my several thousand favorite albums in the universe, Saosin's Along The Shadow.  I am of course me, as in Bottle, so i feel the need to crassly point out that being the lead singer of Saosin is an observably terrible thing for Anthony Green to do to himself in terms of the heroin addiction that relapses when he does, but it is a beyond phenomenal album to listen to so i am needless to say very conflicted. Not about the album though, Along The Shadow is simultaneously the most beautiful and heart-wrenchingly tragic things my ear brains have ever listened to. It is most definitely Post-Hard-Emo-Core, so your milage may vary, but at least you know i fully understand how weird i am when i say it's absolutely gorgeous.

[Several hours hours after it arrived on my porch] Oh so good. Ok, i could do my normal silly things, and i could bore you to boredom with the back story of Steve Reich and this official "director's cut" of his 3 string quartets, but i think i'd rather just say a few things about the actual object in my hand and ears. I can't help you much in the liking Steve Reich's music department, other than to say i adore it. I don't like that it's 45 RPM because buttons and forgetting to press them before and after and stuff, and the juxtaposition of old speech recordings that have a ridiculously high noise floor with current hifi dead silent multitracking in a multi-million dollar treated space is a coin flip, but Mivos sounds absolutely gorgeous and the playing is phenomenal. As the only comprehensive recording (because he wrote them all a decade plus apart from each other) i very much like that they are presented in reverse chronological order, and i also very...

Look, i'm the first in line to love an album everyone hates and yak up a hairball all over some supposedly great terribleness, but sometimes an album is just "meh" and there's nothing you can do about it. We already established i love Pat Benatar, and her third album Precious Time is totally listenable (if chocked full of awkward songwriting and an unnecessary cover of Helter Skelter), but even i can't stretch my definition of a great album enough to include it.  For starters, i don't have any idea how half the songs fit the concept of Precious Time. I guess if we really twist it around and consider all of the songs examples of how we waste the little bit of time we have then it all sort of makes sense, but a lot of these songs are super weird character pieces about an evil genius kid who shoots people when he get angry, an "actor" who somehow has a Mercedes but never gets cast in anything and somehow faux Reggae adds to the meaning, and more than on...

https://hellometeor.bandcamp.com/album/earth-journos   Whether you're a fan of Ambient Vapor Mathtronica Instrumental music or not, there's no denying Hello Meteor's concept game is off the chart, and today's release Earth Journos is nothing short of spectacular.  Fans of the Seagull of course know what to expect, but anyone new to this particular trip might find some explanation useful. As is often the case, we find ourselves contemplating some newly found relic of the mystery, intrigue, and mundanity of life as an interstellar citizen of an alternate reality 1990s. This time around it's a disgruntled propagandist questioning the intentions of their corporate overlords, complete with missing persons, dubious motivations, seemingly pointless technology, and a mysterious force/substance called "eso." They appear to be narcotics smugglers. Delicious.  Musically speaking, the perfect soundtrack for a rainy boring Tuesday lunch nap, but really whatever type of...

Random hobbyist facebook troll is right, i'm a profoundly mediocre fly-over state musician who pointed out he was being a self-righteous jerk. Not sure either of us win a prize for that. Sure, i started it when i could have just ignored it like i often advise people to do, but the US has kind of built a reputation for itself as being full of belligerant self-righteous assholes and he certainly wasn't helping my case that most of us actually aren't that at all. I could certainly be wrong in that assessment, maybe we are, but i've chosen my perspective. We're mostly tired people making the best choices we can in a world that only offers up bad choices, and i personally balance slogging through all the menial labor by writing about listening to my record collection. Never said being a celebrant of mundanity was a particularly virtuous or rewarding career, but i'll stand by my decision that the unrelenting pursuit of "greatness" is an overall underwhelming...

Primal Therapy is a largely dismissed and unsubstantiated form of psychotherapy developed by Arthur Janov that attributes current psychological distress to the capital P Pain of childhood trauma. Fun fact, according to the theory every person has that trauma and every person needs treatment. How convenient. Not to be confused with actual memories of that trauma, the goal is to experience and fully process this "primal Pain" so you can be a real Pinocchio again. Also not to be confused with Bottle Therapy, which is the much more straight forward approach of "accurately call it whatever it is and deal with it," no student loan debt or repeat visits required. Granted, you do have to take a swig to determine whether or not it can safely be poured down the drain, but i'm still walking the talk, aren't i?  Not surprisingly, everyone blames Yoko for breaking up the up to 18 month long yet surprisingly affordable (audible eye roll) course of treatment. John and Yoko...

Oh wow, 1,000. Flew by like molasses, didn't it? Not only that, it didn't even end serendipitously. I still have 2 albums from this last batch, more in pre-order status, a gift card i found down beside my car seat, a couple empty shelves...  But is this it? Is it really over? Is this all we'll ever get out of it? We disagree. We're supposed to disagree and neither side is supposed to win the fight. The fight is stupid and we're supposed to recognize that and move forward knowing that we are both trying to accomodate and respect each other in spite of that disagreement.  As for using that to metaphorically describe Republicans and Democrats, Republicans want to punish people into complacency, Democrats want to help people who need help. Both of those perspectives can and do go horribly awry, but i'd rather be on the side of trying to help and failing than the side of "screw you, my corporation is more important than people." Democrats do something and R...

What else is there to say, Jeff Beck was legend. As basically the first guy to experiment with feedback and heavy distortion, he's arguably the godfather of Psychedelic Rock. Critics love to pretend his albums are "uneven" or "ungraceful" but they aren't listening to a guy simply love playing guitar. That's what i hear on Blow By Blow, his funky instrumental Jazz Fusion jam album from 1975. If you can't hear the smiling then your listener needs a tune up, this is just plain fun.  More than that, Blow By Blow is inspiring. Yeah, it makes me want to pick up a guitar and noodle around.  I get it, it's hard to review an album of nothing but high quality music, but this is great stuff. Highly recommended.

You're gonna love this one. Turns out my brain confused Melissa Manchester for Martha Davis. In my defense, the title of the album puts that damned Toni Basil song on repeat (hey Ricky what a pity you're a low down heel, [clap clap] hey Ricky!), and i'm a self-proclaimed idiot who pleads no contest and accepts my punishment of listening to whatever this Adult-Contemporary Blue-Eyed R&B album turns out to be. I'm hoping this Ricky guy turns out to be a dirt bag, but que sera sriracha (it's ridiculous how much i enjoy that joke).  Why does You Should Hear How She Talks About You remind me of Material Girl? "You're a minus zero on the scale of me." Not gonna lie, that's pretty stellar. It has an undeniable Pointer Sisters energy, and an actual sense of humor. Weird shift to none of that for I'll Always Love You, but who am i to say she can't hate him one moment then love him after he leaves?  Vangelis just not even the least bit hesitant t...

The good news is that i found my keys after 5 days of searching and i have a record to listen to for each one of them, the bad news is that there was a devastating earthquake in Turkey/Syria. Cringe away, i only said it like that to highlight the disparity between my piddly-assed "bad brain days" and real life tragedy. You don't slap a karma flavored bandaid over it. It's heartbreaking, and i hope we can put aside any pretense of political posturing to aid in any way we can. So please, take my silly stories for what they are, levity and perspective from a grumpy old man who only pretends to be old and mostly isn't grumpy at all. Existentially tired, sure, but rarely actually grumpy.  "Psssst. Bottle. I'll give you 2 Pat Benatars, a Melissa Manchester, a Jeff Beck, and whatever surprise Yoko has planned for 2 Jacksons and an Abraham."  Sold! Who said that? Oh, probably that guy running off down the alley. Oh well, at least he wasn't kidding. At th...

It's so hard to review a King Buffalo album. Any of them. They're all fantastic. They sound like the best parts of Tool, Mastodon, and Russian Circles all smashed together in a psychedelically pulverizing rocket ride through the cosmos with the most killer hypnotic riffs and grooves and almost hallucinatory voice inside your head vocal reverb. The Burden of Restlessness is not surprisingly about the mind-numbing insanity of being stuck inside your house for day after endless day, and then finally seing light at the end of the tunnel. I personally never get bored, but i gather for them it's like having your brain ooze out of your eye sockets. Awesomeness from start to finish, go buy all their albums, review over.

Speaking of rainbow bears, i bought arguably the most well known Grateful Dead album, American Beauty. Fun facts, Touch of Grey was the only radio hit they ever had, and this is way before that and before they adopted the marching bears design. Unfun fact, people call them "dancing bears," but the band was like "are you daft? These bears are clearly marching."  Regardless, they changed their name to Grateful Dead because there were way too many other bands also called The Warlocks and everyone agreed it sounded cool. Wide array of drug embellished versions of the choosing ceremony in the Dead mythos, but the core fact is Jerry Garcia got it from some book.  The Grateful Dead are benevolent ghosts/angels who are eternally thankful to the person who buried them rather than leaving their dead carcass by the side of the road. Again, i personally prefer the metaphor of existence being an elaborate but ultimately temporary electro-chemical tire fire, but i freely admit th...

The level of complete delusional insanity needed to be upset about the logo Pink Floyd designed for the 50th anniversary of Dark Side of the Moon is mind boggling. Yet, there they are hating rainbows and being shocked that Pink Floyd aren't particularly fond of the right wing conservative perspective. It's hard to comprehend, but then again it's easy to understand why. In the end it's all about creating artificial scarcity to feed the need to make existence meaningful. This is merely my opinion, but Economics is really nothing more than a globally manifested form of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Everything perfectly lined up but always out of reach, the metaphorical dangling carrot approach. The point, my friends, is that there is no dark side of the moon, we merely only ever see the same half of it. And then, when everything lines up just so, we can't see it at all. Hooray for geosynchronisity.  The irony of the "woke" phenomenon is that the anti-woke cr...

Ah, Wetware. They're a Brooklyn based Industrial Electronic duo, says so right on the cover. They're also VST plugin preset enthusiasts, or so my ears tell me. Pantomime sure sounds a lot like a thing i published a long time ago. But anywho, i was very confused when i repeatedly saw them labeled Avant-Jazz. I don't even know how to begin to refute that, i'd have to invent things for this to not sound like at all.  As for the "for fans of..." thing, i don't really put much stock in it. You could love Throbbing Gristle and still think this is mindless jibber jabber. You could love the bizarre direction Graeme went after most anyone associated with SPK left and/or died. I'm not familiar with Liasons Dangereuses. This does have a Throbbing Gristle quality to it, but it doesn't quite capture the grotesqueness the way i'd like. It's suitably grating and obsessive-compulsive though, so that's good. Actually, i think it's the fact that this...