Prelude and Ten

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 think... 

S: i always seriously think, i'm the full-fledged princess of an agrarian minion society moonlighting as HR Director of an imaginary media empire because holy hell can you even imagine if Bottle had no one to tell him to shut up once in a while? 

C: good point. Think he at least got something worth listening to? 

S: i have a feeling we'll get an earful, if that's what you mean, but even i can't suspend my disbelief enough to believe it will all be savory. Somebody's childhood is going to get wrecked. 

--- 

G: any mail today, Mr. Bridbrad? 

BB: no Gladys, it's Sunday. Plus, the only impending mail i know about was pre-ordered months ago and is currently somewhere in Australia. 

G: is it Sunday? Goodness me, i've been losing all track of time lately. This non-nightly sporadification of Bottle's listening fits is doing me a disservice. You smell that? 

BB: smell what? 

G: you got the cooties or something? It's powerful pungent. Mark my words, there's some kind of 1984 in the stewpot, i'm sure of it. 

BB: all i smell is the boggy melt water of False Spring. 

G: that too. Oh well, nothing new under the sun, i'm sure this too will pass. 

--- 

E: check. Your move Mr. GREGORY. 

PLEASE, JUST GREGORY, EMPHASIS ON THE GORY. I THINK, HOWEVER, YOU MIGHT HAVE BLUNDERED YOUR QUEEN. I'M NOT UNWILLING TO GRANT A MULLIGAN IF YOU'D LIKE. 

E: what? I'm up 2 pawns and crushing. 

SUIT YOURSELF. 

[Forced sequence of moves resulting in the capture of Skip's Queen] 

E: the hell? I resign. 

YOU SHOULD NEVER RESIGN, I AM PERFECTLY CAPABLE OF ALSO MAKING TERRIBLY SHORT SIGHTED ONE-MOVE ATTACKS. CHESS, AS THEY SAY, IS HARD. STILL, I SUPPOSE WE BOTH QUALIFY AS HEARTY, THOUGH PERHAPS SLIGHTLY LESS SO ME. LEAD ON, I SHALL SCAMPER THROUGH THE SHADOWS BEHIND YOU. 

E: i've got a bad feeling there's work in our future. 

INDEED. WELL CALCULATED. 

--- 

B: Gentlewomen, Ladymen, i've called you here for a very important mission. I can no longer abide the abysmal state of the recorded music shopping experience. Today broke me and i found myself doing a thing i never thought i would do. I bought records at Walmart. 

[Chorus of sarcastic gasping] 

You mock, but never in my life have i actually done such a thing. Certainly my brain is filled with childhood memories of the music section of Venture, TG&Y, Target, the glory days of a music store on every third corner, but i have never in my life stooped to buying music from Walmart. Mostly that's because they strongarmed everyone into heavily censored versions of stuff, but also mostly because it's Walmart. No offense to the good people of Arkansas, but the bad people of Arkansas did you real dirty while your back was turned. 

Anywho, i have a dream, and that dream is to wake up mid morning and go to work in a building with a medium sized sign that says "Bottle's Music." 

C: we could just hang a cardboard sign on your office door, if that would help. 

B: i admire your attempting to solve the problem as lazily as possible, Compy, but i will not be dissuaded. I need you to come up with an actual workable way for people to buy music from me. 

C: k, fine, i'll see what i can do. 

B: Sandra, great news, i absolutely don't want any employees, so you'll be my lead designer. 

S: K. 

B: Skip, are you still my typo guy? 

E: yeah, sure. 

B: GREGORY. I need music. It can be ours, it can be other peoples', it can even be things that aren't music. Books and coffee mugs are cool. Scare me up some commodities is what i'm saying. 

THAT SEEMS DOABLE TO A CERTAIN EXTENT. 

B: good. Go team. Imma sit here and listen to this stack of Classic Rock while i wait for a brilliant idea to strike. 

S: Bottle, before we go, i don't mean this the wrong way, but is this even going to remotely work at all? 

B: i highly doubt it. I mean i can reliably sell 4 copies of a thing once in a while, but strangers on the internet are practically immune to my lack of advertising funds, nobody cares about your music unless you're already famous, and virtually nobody has or listens to their album collections the way i do. I am ridiculous. 

S: knowing is half the battle?? 

B: just trust me that it won't cause any more brain damage than we're already suffering. Much as i'd desperately like to quit my day job, i won't. I will continue to write about it, but you guys should be well enough immune to it at this point. 

S: hmmm. Ok, we'll see what we see. 

B: thank you. Now if you'll excuse me, i have an album i've avoided reviewing at least twice to review. 

Ten: 

Is something wrong? 

Ya think? Of course something's wrong! My real dad's dead, i can't decide if i'm speaking in first or 3rd person, i just reenacted that scene from Basic Instinct with my own mom, the album began with the killing spree i'm about to go on because of all this, and high school students in the late 90s are going to slow dance to Black at Prom. I'm sorry, but Clarissa couldn't possibly explain any of this! 

Pearl Jam doesn't like how much reverb Rick Parashar put on the final mix of Ten. Reverb is the least of the problems on this trailer park carnival off-season monstrosity of bird woots and unintelligible Eddie Vedder mumblings. I absolutely adore this album, but it's 20 miles, 3 ogre guarded draw bridges, and a fire breathing dragon away from anything even remotely resembling acceptable dinner party conversation. What the fuck is this world running to, indeed? Homelessness, severe mental illness, incest, exhibitionist suicide, drug addiction, rape, the fact that we're all going to die. This was all Target had today, so i thought "this album is a lot like walking around Walmart, haven't done that in years, today i'm gonna just see what their Vinyl section looks like." Well it looks like everyone missed the trashcan after scarfing down 2 funnel cakes, a corn dog, and an ear of corn before ill-advisedly bungee jumping at the state fair, that's what it looks like. Christmas albums in late February, Queen and Carrie Underwood and The Best of Sinead O'Connor (no not joking she has a greatest hits album. Don't get me wrong, i actually like Sinead O'Connor, but the kind of people who like listening to greatest hits albums are exactly the kind of people who hate Sinead O'Connor) all mingling together without any vertical dividers. And that brings me to another beef i have, these new kiosks and shelves everyone has are too tall. I'm 5'4" (5'6" when i'm wearing my steel toed boots and not slouching). That does not qualify as short on any objective scale of humans. What 7-foot tall automatic-drafted basketball superstars are shopping for records at Walmart?! Shaq and Yao Ming and Dirk Nowitzki want the new Gorillaz album everyone says sounds tragically exactly like a Gorillaz album in spite of Thundercat's (the Bass player, not the cartoon Thundercats) best efforts? Go fact check that, all three of those fine gentlemen are 7+ foot tall (no clue how tall Thundercat is) and i highly doubt they shop at Walmart. They might pay someone to shop at Walmart for them, but i think you'll agree that is a completely different story. 

I know what you're thinking even if you don't know you're thinking it. You're thinking i hate people and i'm going to call people who shop at Walmart insulting names and such. You are categorically wrong, i hate Walmart not the people who shop there. I hate the corporation that reduces people to feeding its insatiable need to contain every imaginable commodity and villainizes anyone who wants to profit from merchanting their own wares and craftsmanship. Walmart is the land of just barely good enough to get by. They have the monopoly on last resort gotta make this measly paycheck last 2 more weeks existence, and they love it that way. Even worse, their marketing is specifically designed to trick you into believing that you're living large at discount prices, saving all that money for a family road trip to the Spam Museum or wherever. By all means enjoy the Spam Museum if that's actually your thing, but that's not the point. 

The point is that somewhere deep inside Eddie Vedder is saying that none of this is good, this isn't the way the world should be; "i don't question our existence, i just question our modern needs." Me too, Eddie. I had to confirm it for myself, and this album is exactly like being awake and sober inside a Walmart. 

Did i find some good stuff? The first and last Van Roth albums, a thing we all call Purple, and Ziggy Stardust. I'm not complaining that i had to settle for them, they're all things i legitimately want in my collection, but if all we're ever gonna get is repubs of Classic Rock (yes Pearl Jam and STP are every bit as Classic Rock as Van Halen by today's standards), and have to buy them at Walmart for lack of any better alternative, then maybe i will just Rip Van Winkle myself with a giant rubber mallet. Op, Sandra's giving me those "save it for an interlude" eyebrows, so guess i better try to summarize this pile of hot garbage. 

I am Bottle, i'm considering running for the office of actual record store owner/publisher and i'd like to know if you've considered the possibility of starting your own record collection and/or how likely you would be to blindly/recurringly fund my midlife-crisis fever dream of making some new ones happen. 

Pearl Jam of course spent most of their career intentionally dismantling the fame that came from this album, they are literally just a jam band named Pearl after all. No they aren't complaining about being millionaires, but remember that's merely the spare change from the billions they generated for Epic, and a drop in the bucket compared to Ticketmaster's monopoly racket. Funny to think the largest corporate ticket broker of the 90s couldn't handle a few million Taylor Swift fans, but only if you love gallows humor as much as i do. No humor on Ten, though. It might just be the most unblinking dose of cold hard reality ever committed to tape and smashed onto plastic. 

Join us again tomorrow for whatever my brain mouth vomits. Probably Van Halen, but i could always change my mind. Pleasant dreams, or at least not quite as gruesome as anything on Ten. Again, absolutely fantastic album, but maybe not for those with weakened digestive systems. Gotta have a strong stomach, a macabre outlook like mine, or at the very least a pet aligator and a friend named Sam who climbs up a ladder through your second story window, to unflinchingly enjoy this one.

Next