Albums for Eternity with Bottle, the Curmudgeon

Everybody brought their helmets? Ok, here's the dooziest of doozies in my album collection:  I can't count all the times i haven't reviewed System Of A Down's Mezmerize/Hypnotize. At least once in every major story arc, but probably more than that. How do you review it? How, Skip, how? It's worse than Year of the Black Rainbow or Automata. They hate LA, they hate war, they hate right-wing 'Merica, they hate the genocide of their people, and rightfully so on all those counts.  On the other hand, they are like one of the biggest illusion bands ever. I don't mean they are fake or worthy of derision, i just mean that their decade and a half of inactivity is purely about money and "creative differences." They still play big shows, they all want to make more music, just not each others' music, and they can't agree on how to pay each other. That all sounds suspiciously like they aren't actually friends anymore, more like childish grown ups kni...

Alright crew. It's time to fix this thing for real. The governor of Georgia thinks DST shortens the actual amount of night time, the guy who loaded mulch into my car decided i get black instead of brown, it's sleeting in April, some people still think killing each other is the best way to stop people from killing each other, and i don't have any more bottles. Believe me, it hurts to exert this much authority, but... Skip. Make the first book look like the second book. 11pt Palantino, odd pages on the right, quadruple check the final pdf for pagination errors.  Compy. There's still false references in the first index, and the second index doesn't exist yet. Sandra. First cover is fine, second cover gets a red and yellow color scheme, 'cause somewhere out there there's a Russian mouse who will get the Use Your Illusion reference and giggle. Bridbrad. Stop pretending you aren't the narrator/writing writer of all this cosmic space fantasy war silliness. GREG...

I've mentioned In Utero a couple times, so you already know A) it's the "adult" part of the Nirvana chronology and B) it's not supposed to be trendy mainstream music.  It is, by most any standards for music or lyrics, disgusting. I love it. There are lots of back and forth and contradictory stories about the whole process and their relationship with Albini, who i believe called them "REM with stomp boxes," but i think it boils down to three things: 1) Steve Albini didn't want anything to do with anyone who wasn't an actual member of Nirvana, 2) Nirvana hated Nevermind and being famous, and 3) Albini characterized every band he worked with as "losers at the mercy of their label." Regardless of what anyone says about it, these are song about what it was like to be Kurt Cobain, and he clearly didn't enjoy being him. The finished product has a lot of tweaking that Albini wasn't happy about, but it sure sounds like he just pointed a ...

Today we'll listen to Bernstein's 1979 Tokyo recording of Shostakovich #5. Is it proof of the rehabilitating force of the Communist Party, or the Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy segment of Ren & Stimpy? That, of course, depends on you. Our old friend Structuralism says it means all the meanings it is capable of meaning. Well, unless you're lying and it didn't actually mean what you said it meant for you. I know that's confusing, but remember that Shostakovich said whatever Shostakovich thought Stalin thought Shostakovich should be thinking and the actual truth of anything is completely absent.  At least WE can all agree what constitutes unpremeditated murder again. Good.

I'm in a weird mood. Let's listen to the score for the movie The Rocketeer. You've heard a lot of James Horner's music, but i thankfully don't remember this movie. I remember that Jennifer Connelly is in it. One thing i can tell you is this is exceedingly sappy, decidedly American Classical music. Like, even Copland and Groffé would make the "why's there Elmer's Glue in my mouth" face. It's very "Back to the Future Part III" to my mind. Sure there's mystery and romance and adventure, but in a nauseating way. Horner, like John Williams, had a tendency to straddle the "borrowing" fence a little to conspicuously for the legal teams of many estates, and reused his own themes enough for movie critics to notice, but we all know where commie indonesian lady Bottle's feelings tend to land in that game of lawn darts: i didn't ask for the stuff you did to get stuck in my brain, and it's not like i just photocopied your...

S: Pssst. Pssssssst. Oi! Bottle!  B: Yes?  S: It's mid April.  B: So?  S: You told me to remind you, remember?  B: Did i? Whoa, watch where you're pointing those eyebrows. Gimme a second...carry the one...flip it and reverse it... oh, yeah! We're supposed to find out if that Christmas album by The Vandals works out of context. Fire up the old yuletube log.  Believe it or not, The Vandals have the same problem as Kansas. Remember how critics  hated Kansas for being Kansas, but hated then even more when they started being Foreigner instead? Well, for some reason that i can't understand, critics don't like The Vandals because they keep making music that focuses on juvenial humor. Guys, that's what this band is, that's their box of raisins. If you don't like it, stop reviewing their albums. If your review is "i don't like The Vandals," then my response is "why did you interrupt what i was doing to tell me that?"  Merry Christmas, here...

The number of holes i dug today is ridiculously around a hundred. My whole body hurts. Rum and coke number two is gently fizzing, and my copy of Deltron 3030 is rotating. Glorious. Once upon a time, Ice Cube turned to his cousin and queried "Del, what the hell is a Funkee Homosapien?" Del probably had some crazy answer for him, but the real answer is that Del is THE funkee homosapien. As a kid he was super into computers and writing poetry, and when he heard Grandmaster Flash he said "that, that's the kind of poetry i want to write." He thinks rap is a legitimate art form, and he is prolific, to put it mildly. He formed this super group with Dan Tha Automator and Kid Koala. He wrote the entire concept album in less than 2 weeks. It's the story of a former mech warrior in the year 3030 who rap battles to defeat the corporate overlords who made rap illegal, but gets captured and has his memory erased. "Conscious Hip-Hop" might not be a familiar subge...