Albums for Eternity with Bottle, the Curmudgeon

What horror show of an album do you think Bottle will bring out tonight?  I dunno, Skip. He's never really been a fan of holidays in general. I mean, he'll play along, but you can always tell he's thinking "every day is [insert holiday] in my head, why's this one special?" Plus, he hasn't sent me out to find anything in a while, so it'll be a surprise to all of us. Maybe Sandra has a guess, try calling her.  Skip picks up the phone and dials Sandra's extension, 4446. Ring, ring, click...  You have reached the office of Sandra D. I'm currently in another castle, but if you'll leave your name and a brief message, i'll deal with it later...  No luck. She's probably out painting mustaches on all the garden gnomes.  I doubt it, Skip, it's too windy to do anything out there today. Guess we'll just be surprised. What's that scratching sound?  Oh, it's just GREGORY decorating the hallways with cobwebs and rodent entrails. Ha...

Delaney and Bonnie captured the imagination of America with their brutal string of robberies and murders, and their almost titillatingly secret unmarried sex life. I'll be voting against everyone on Tuesday in Knierim where they robbed the State Savings Bank... ... no, i'm sorry, i'm being told that i've confused my Bonnies again. I must have misunderstood the title for a headline. Motel Shot appears to be a concept about the kind of late night jam sessions traveling musicians would have with their touring companions after the gig. Duane Allman, Gram Parsons, and Leon Russell appear courtesy of their own handlers, and Christgau gives it an A, for whatever that's worth. I've never heard it before, but i do know that they had a reputation for being spectacular in concert and underwhelming on record. I have no basis for comparison, so roll that beautiful bean footage (i also know i've used that joke before, but the image of eating canned beans on the lam was to...

I still have hundreds of albums we could listen to, but not really anything to say about them. Since that's my problem, not theirs, we'll just listen to the crazy second album by The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Freaky Styley. George Clinton produced this album. No, you heard me right, THE George Clinton agreed to produce the album for 25k, let Anthony get through his heroin withdrawls at his house, helped write and arrange the 30% of the album they hadn't written yet, and let his drug dealer do the interjections on Yertle the Turtle as payment for all the cocaine they were snorting. He's the one (Clinton, not the drug dealer) who said take Africa by The Meters, but rewrite it about YOUR Africa, aka Hollywood. This is pre Frusciante/Smith funk fusion. Not rock with a funk background like the Chili Peppers you know, but funk with a punk attitude and style. Flea and their manager contacted Clinton because a) they hated the way their first album turned out to be watered down and...

Who's ready to talk shit about a pretty sunset? No, i don't have any more Modest Mouse records, but i do have The Band's third album, Stage Fright. Critics were confused by the contradiction between the jaunty, not at all nostalgic roots rock, and the not particularly jaunty, borderline cynical lyrical content. Good. I'll fully admit, i didn't like it much the first 5 or 6 listens, but that's because it wasn't relevant until now. Tonight it's perfect. When it's all said and done i'm going to have more than one write in vote for several offices in Calhoun County, IA, because it's unelect everybody season. They should just change the county slogan to "we're tired of people living here and wasting valuable pig farm acreage." I'd probably get assassinated 3 hours into my political career. You don't know the shape i'm in. I think i like The Band better than the Grateful Dead. Like i said, it took me a while to like it. Th...

You know, i gotta tell you, i'm just so tired of all of it. I'm tired of BH, and Microsoft, and Amazon. I'm tired of the idiotic bipolar politics. I'm tired of the ridiculous notion that corporations are people. I'm tired of dressing up modern mercantilism as some kind of global ambassadorship. I'm tired of listening to people use "the economy" when they mean "the stock market." I'm tired of people blaming each other for shit happening instead of making that shit less painful for everyone. I'm tired of the wealthiest americans acting like they shouldn't have to pay full price like us poor people do. I'm tired of robo-calls and b2b sales. I'm tired of everyone shirking their responsibilities and trying to sell me marketing tips. I'm tired of insurance companies being an investment front instead of the social safety net they were intended to be. I'm tired of tradesmen fighting with urban planners when they have freak...

I need to feel good again. Obviously real life isn't going to make that happen, so we'll have to turn to the glorious world of headphones to soothe the savage beast. Now, your old friend Bottle doesn't really go for the sunshiny beach volleyball type of feel good, he likes to dive head first down a dark alley and say "oy! Mate. Show me something worth my time." Trip hop isn't really a genre. It's the name everyone gave the downtempo dj scene in Bristol in the early 90s. Believe it or not it's an evolution of House more than anything. Trip hop is really just 3 groups: Massive Attack with or without Tricky, Tricky on his own, and Portishead. Sure, lots of other groups make Trip Hop, like Groove Armada and Sneaker Pimps, even Bjork and Poe dabbled in it. Homogenic is widely considered a sort of Trip Hop masterpiece. Bottle says yes and no on that one. Trip Hop is just slow breakbeats, jazz or soul sampling, and atmospheric electronics. You can fit Bjork i...

It seems like nobody but me likes Wonderworld. Critics and fans found it underwhelming, the band wasn't happy with it because they were burning out, fighting, and recording in Germany (a disruption to their standard process rather than a refreshing change of pace), and everyone says it lacks conceptualization.  Not shockingly, I disagree. I think it's a good album. Maybe we just need to better understand what Uriah Heep really is. So, here's my completely non-intuitive appreciation of the history of Uriah Heep, and why Wonderworld is actually one of their best albums.  Uriah Heep didn't becone Uriah Heep untill Ken Hensley joined in 1969. They were called Spice, and Spice was Deep Purple's lovingly adopted little brother. Hard Rock, Heavy Metal, and Progressive Rock. Not three seperate genres, all three genres at the same time. Why? The simple answer is that the band thought adding a keyboard player would work really well, and once Ken was there they all quickly agr...