Albums for Eternity with Bottle, the Curmudgeon

I got to listen to it at 5:30 this morning on my drive to work, but now i'm finally getting proper headphone time with From Red Dirt To Red Planet, the new album from Steven Stark Music. It's fantastic from blast off to sleepy time.  Top 40, Alternative, R&B, Country, Adult Contemporary, Yacht... Rock... yep, it's all that plus some funky disco, a proper movie sample, a bunch of awesome collaborators, and the triptastic cacophony of Passengers, all guided along by Victoria Liedtke as the ship's computer.  Such a great concept, a group of Oklahomans getting the hell off this jerk of a planet on the next spaceship to Mars. It's really really spectacular, and i'll link to the official youtube playlist at the end so you can go check it out for yourself.  But man, i gotta tell you, it's so frustrating to not be able to just pay to have this thing pressed on vinyl. I'd pay to press a hundred or 3 just to have a physical copy of my own if i could afford it....

I had a friend named Joey, and he loved Deftones. Then one day it was like he wasn't allowed to like Deftones anymore, and i thought that was weird. I assume Katy Perry's mom grounded him for eating Satan's breakfast cereal or something and moved on with my life. I like Deftones a lot more now than i did back then, even their self-titled 4th album. They were originally going to call it Lovers, but Chino thought that was too up the nose.  Remember when i talked about self-titled albums and how that's really hard to pull off in the middle of your career? Well yeah, critics at the time kept harping on it as a terrible change of direction that wasn't exciting. Nope, sounds unmistakeably like Deftones to me. Granted, Ichi - there's an obvious absence of turntable scratches ('cause Deftones rightly didn't want to sound like all the terrible 2003 younger brother Nu-metal bands they hooked on stereophonics in the late 90s), Ni - it is like a giant wash of mopine...

I bet most people only know Great White's cover of Once Bitten Twice Shy. If you know Ian Hunter at all, it's probably as lead singer of Mott The Hoople, or the guy who wrote Cleveland Rocks. That's a shame, Ian Hunter is great, and his self-titled debut is top to bottom Rock'n'Roll fire.  There's not much to say really, other than this is a masterclass in Glam, intelligent stories that are completely believable, massive singalong choruses, crunchy riffs, wailing leads, and charisma that never edges over into macho boastfulness. Most of all though, it just feels honest, and that is refreshingly addictive. Good stuff. Really good stuff.

Tom Carson's Rolling Stone review of Wave by Patti Smith Group is crap. Granted it's from 1979 when the album came out, but the overwhelming critical sentiment at the time was always to call everything a let down, an overwrought piece of self-indulgent hackery. The whole thing comes across as Tom Carson gleefully getting his chance to say shitty things about Patti Smith. Doesn't tell me anything about the album, it tells me there was some personal reason to put down whatever she did on whatever album she made. Criticism doesn't tell us about the subject, it tells us about the person narrating.  First, Wave is not even close to being a mainstream album by any standard you care to mention. It is all over the place, the things she sings are not immediately understandable pop gemstones you can pick up and put in your pocket like pretty rocks, whether you want to tackle it or not, there's a difference between Patti Smith and Patti Smith Group and this is the last album f...

I loved the most recent Tears For Fears album so much, i happily snatched up a copy of their big hit sophomore album when i stumbled across it. Who doesn't love Tears For Fears? Jerks, that's who.  And yet, having now heard it (it's pretty great), i am still no closer to an answer to my real question. That question is of course what is the big chair? Is it one of those actual humungous chairs people have their photos taken in? Did they climb up in it to sing these songs? Is it just a weird euphamism for a throne? Are these toilet songs? I don't mean are the songs flushworthy, i mean are these the kind of porcelain postulations of philosophical purport one pondered in the pre-portable phone era when reading material was equally non-available?  Like i said, i still don't know. Maybe it's just like growing up and you don't have to sit at the little kids table anymore. What i do know is Broken is a literally weird/fractured prelude to Head Over Heels (which is d...

I feel like there was a thing i used to do. You know, like i'd sit down and do a thing, and share it, and then do another thing, but i can't seem to remem-  I AM THE GOD OF HELLFIRE, AND I BRING YOU... some albums to review.  Jeez, no need to shout, dude. Oh, thanks, yeah, reviewing albums was the thing i do. Soon as the ringing in my ears subsides we'll enter The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown.  Truth in advertising, this thing is top to bottom loony tunes. Calling it Psychedelic is kind of not at all an adequate preparation for the total auditory assault you're about to endure. It is glorious, but i'd suggest being stone-cold sober on the ground floor for your first trip through this tunnel of terror. How you do a more terrifying I Put A Spell On You than the original is a top shelf trick in my book, but that's like the tamest song on the whole album. Most Psych Rock/Soul is like a friendly hug from a human shaped alien in the safety of an actual person's liv...