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Sat Feb 17 2024
Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley
Though I generally prefer the 1950s Rockabilly Sun sides for the sheer ramalama, this Colonel approved polish job does have "Blue Moon". "Blue Suede Shoes" is killer. "Tutti Fruitti" just feels jizz-less.
4
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Sun Feb 18 2024
Licensed To Ill
Beastie Boys
When I was 12, this was a constant tape, along with RUN DMC. Both are equally responsible for why I love noisy guitars. It's weird to think how I got from this to the VU in five years (Bowie!).
The Beastie science is totally present, but the knowledge in much of it is the lizard beer brain of it's time. Still, the samples and beats slam, and hint at the riches to follow.
Bust it.
4
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Mon Feb 19 2024
Pet Sounds
The Beach Boys
Not much too say about this that hasn't been said already, but I'll try:
1. This album has a world you get lost in, like a film for your mind
2.That world is a teenage twilight zone, an uncynical ponderance of the child, the adult, and the desire to save the child from the adult. It pushes deep buttons that are memories free of nostalgia of flickers of time of the age when you know your folks are full of shit, and you will never be full of shit.
3. Angelic Choirs abound. So beautiful, they should paint the lyrical narratives on the ceilings cathedrals and the like.
4."The Sloop John B" is when you score beer.
Just fabulous.
5
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Tue Feb 20 2024
With The Beatles
Beatles
Any Beatles is practically oxygen at this point, but while I enjoyed to now retrospective power-pop sound, alot of it was remarkably forgettable. "All My Loving" is a stone classic, and I like "I Wanna Be Your Man" a lot, the rest just sort of just became "Beatles sound". Certainly, not indicative of the riches to come.
3
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Wed Feb 21 2024
25
Adele
Good contemporary torch songs. Recommended soundtrack for self-care. Does require a mood tho...
4
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Thu Feb 22 2024
Blue Lines
Massive Attack
I recognize the artistry in this album, but I am very ambivalent.
3
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Fri Feb 23 2024
In A Silent Way
Miles Davis
The beginning of Davis's "sellout" period, marked by a powerful reimagination of not only jazz, but the very nature of music and art. Davis, it turns out, played the wah treated horn that collapsed genre walls. The gatekeepers would howl, and succeed, to forcing jazz into the heritage industry ghetto.
Davis just kept playing. We are richer for it
5
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Sat Feb 24 2024
Unknown Pleasures
Joy Division
It's hard to overstate the importance of this record, its influence on subsequent artists, and Ian Curtis as cultural totem. Heavily indebted to obvious (The Idiot, Lust for Life) and less obvious (The VU), it makes these materials into its own thing. Inspired by, but never derivative of, Joy Division are because they are.
4
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Sun Feb 25 2024
Bringing It All Back Home
Bob Dylan
The birth of the "wild mercury sound". The birth of the wild, mercury lyrics. Dylan splits this genius between "sell-out" and "proper" sides, both dumping folk genre exercises in favor of continental poetics, and whether tasteful acoustic, or ramshackle rama-lama, it is an awe-inspiring listen, as relevant now as it was epoch inaugurating then. You don't need a time traveling weather man to know the wind blows from this disc. Possibly his best
5
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Mon Feb 26 2024
The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway
Genesis
*sigh*
I'm bored at approximately the same place as the last time.
I should like this; I've tried to like this, but there's something so earnestly self-serious that is leaving me underwhelmed. It's hermetically sealed for the already fans, and I can't get in.
I'm sure it's important, just not to me. I like Hawkwind.
3
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Tue Feb 27 2024
From Elvis In Memphis
Elvis Presley
Context: Having just confronted my own ambivalent torpor that was The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, and previously declared my own bias toward Rockabilly Elvis, there is true magic in Elvis with a big band, and this collection punctuates this point sublimely. Utterly soulful. Human. Problematic as he is culturally, this is as stone cold awesome as Elvis the artist would ever produce.
5
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Wed Feb 28 2024
C'est Chic
CHIC
I once read Nile Rogers and Bernard Edwards conceived of Chic as being suave and sophisticated, taking inspiration from Roxy Music. It is certainly elegant funk, and the influence is hard to overstate. I really dug it.
4
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Thu Feb 29 2024
In The Wee Small Hours
Frank Sinatra
This collection of last call ballads is an achingly beautiful triptych through the depressing realization that, once you finish that last drink, you can only go to a dark and empty house, alone, because she left your maudlin ass. Those that know, know.
4
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Fri Mar 01 2024
Another Music In A Different Kitchen
Buzzcocks
Despite Dick's (played by Todd Louiso)'s High Fidelity assertion that Green Day were directly influenced by Stiff Little Fingers, the fact is that the Buzzcocks are the INVENTORS of Pop Punk: short, melodic, catchy songs about love, alienation, and masturbation. The Buzzcocks's American children took this template, dolloped a spoon full of Cheap Trick, and blam! Squillion dollar success, which in Green Day's case, is richly deserved.
This debut largely scraps the weird angularity that Howard Devoto brought to the group while still acknowledging his influence: the "Boredom" quote that opens "Fast Cars", the off-kilter rhythms of "Moving Away from the Pulsebeat". The album is chock full of infectious earworms; more importantly, it is just a fucking blast. Only edgelords and gatekeepers will deny its power.
4
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Sat Mar 02 2024
Ready To Die
The Notorious B.I.G.
I was ready to hate this. Here's why:
1. The Omnipresence of Bad Boy Acts in the 90s, the glossy videos, and general, undefined loathing of Diddy--ho ho go hee hee hee.
2. The Westside is the best side.
Years later, when the media created East vs. West Rap War had a body count and the pernicious, historical gangsterism of the Music Business has been laid bare, and listening with ears removed from those days and it's static, I dug this record quite a lot. Great beats, good instruments, and thoroughly inventive lyrics delivered with confidence and grace in human/not capitalist concerns. People love the ostentation; I love people coming true.
4
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Sun Mar 03 2024
Myths Of The Near Future
Klaxons
Sight unseen and unheard, the band name and the title were pretty cool, so I was curious what I would find...
I found occasionally mondo distorted basslines anchoring pop songs that are good on paper, but just...don't...get there. Props to Jamie Reynolds, and his style, but it can't carry blah. "Gravity's Rainbow" is one place when "good on paper" transcends, and Reynolds's fuzz, achieve something pretty great. Other than that, and what could be a Beck mid-nineties fuzz-metal freakout "Four Horsemen of 2012" is my favorite, the rest is, yeah, blah.
2
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Mon Mar 04 2024
New Gold Dream (81/82/83/84)
Simple Minds
Fun, dubby basslines. Bright, cracking drumming. Angular, reverb drenched, noisy guitars. Songs about Chelsea Girls and Murder. Jim Kerr's compelling vocals. Yes, Life in a Day is an excellent record. Check it out. . .
Except that's not the album I was dealt. I did supplemental research and listening to attempt to get a handle on the one I was dealt. One thing I read is that producer Peter Walsh was tasked with capturing the sound of the band live. If this is how Simple Minds sounds live, it may be the lamest thing I have heard. Was Walsh responsible for turning Derek Forbes onto Stanley Clarke, and recording Forbes slapping in the most generic fashion imaginable? Did Walsh purposefully murder the drums into a mush of cardboard thuds? Can we blame Walsh for the whole band sound sliding into the the kind of AOR 1980s dribble that made worldwide moms think they, too, were "kinda punk". Post-Punk beginning into Air Supply bullshit? People that like this probably voted for Reagan or Thatcher. Get those acid washed Sassoons on. Chop up those baby laxative lines. Get an angular haircut. Find some shoulder pads. Put this on, and let the nothing happen.
Recommended for Incels and Conservatives. If I could give this a black hole as a review, I would.
1
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Tue Mar 05 2024
Zombie
Fela Kuti
5
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Wed Mar 06 2024
Dummy
Portishead
Bob Christgau described this album as "Sade for Androids", as though the electric sheep dreams of Androids don't require a trip-hop masterpiece of alienation and misery. Humans need this, too, for the cold and rainy days, for weed, for booze, for pills, and for the sheer existential performance of pensively staring out of window, smoking cigarettes, and expressing utter ennui. This is the album for these sour times.
5
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Thu Mar 07 2024
Younger Than Yesterday
The Byrds
Disclaimer: For most of my life, I was content to, at best, merely annoyed by The Byrds. "Turn Turn Turn" was supposedly a deep song; it always seemed to play everywhere and somebody would opine about the Summer of Love, and for the next interval, you were forced into rose-tinted news footage of hippies and peace signs, knowing that you'd had missed something, but unsure what and wondering why Reagan was the president and why the bloviator had, more often than not, totally sold the fuck out. Also, David Crosby always bugged me as a pompous ass.
I did really love "Eight Miles High" because, well, it's druggy as shit, and even when I was a kid, I was drawn to that sort of music.
Much later, I found my way to Sweethearts of the Rodeo, and that changed things for me.
So, I circle back, and found myself really enjoying it. Probably because of the drug influence clearly evident in the lyrics, music and production. It has aliens talking. It's provocative, decidedly not "Turn Turn Turn". "So You Want to be Rock n Roll Star" invents Big Star inventing REM and late stage Replacements. "My Back Pages" does Dylan justice, which most covers do not. "Everybody's Been Burned" world weary lyrical delivery and an arpeggiated guitar (the intro would be home on Ride the Lightning) evoke a languid resignation, a kind of Existential "fuck it". "C.T.A" makes me want to dance. I dig it a lot. And Crosby died a pompous tool.
4
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Fri Mar 08 2024
Born To Be With You
Dion
I came to understand Dion as more than "Runaround Sue" via, of all goddamned things, Mott the Hoople, and 1971's Brain Capers, an album I hold in the highest of esteem. They covered "Your Own Backyard", and I was really knocked out by the soulful humanity of the lyrics. So I was intrigued when this came up, and by the end of this Leonard Cohen-ish, collection, I can say I am a fan.
4
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Sat Mar 09 2024
Songs Of Leonard Cohen
Leonard Cohen
Simply stunning. There are no other words.
5
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Sun Mar 10 2024
In Utero
Nirvana
As one of those who remember when Kurt Cobain walked with earthly feet (and witnessed the band fucking destroy Dayton's Hara Arena), the resonance of this now swan song is the old soul resignation of its poetry and the fury of the sound. If your songbook contains a line like "Give me Leonard Cohen afterworld/So I can sigb eternally" you have transcended space and time, the apotheosis artist to something new. Too bad, we would learn it would be the same old. And we are impoverished now. Not for the want of the Star, nor a Legend, nor a Generational Spokesperson (what we call those we draft to destroy) but some one poignantly telling us about the world.
5
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Mon Mar 11 2024
Shake Your Money Maker
The Black Crowes
The Black Crowes's (not the Robinsons Ego wank we see now) strength has always been its unabashed throwbackness, reasoning that since the Faces were no more, we still need the Faces. We did, and we do, and this buttrock antidote did so admirably, though the next record fully flowered into something wonderful.
3
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Tue Mar 12 2024
Amnesiac
Radiohead
In 2021, Radiohead did what I had (and many others had--I created an MP3 disc that had all the things, so I could listen front to back) and released Kid A Mnesia, which encompassed both albums and assorted extras. This is relevant only insofar that, for me, it is damn near impossible to think of either as individual albums, but rather part of a larger artistic statement. But here I am.
And feeling a bit wistful. I remember thinking that both of these albums were capital "A" "Alternative", in A&R parlance, a synthesis of all that was cool and cutting edge in the 90s thrown in a blender with Berlin-Era Bowie. And I also remember wondering if this was as much weirdness as the mainstream would allow.
Shortly after, "Garage Rock" happened, with its raw stylings, consciously primal blues stomp-pastiche and notably, beats that should've generated tons of scratch for Hunt Sales if sampling rules applied to live performance. Concurrently, Radiohead-esque groups, diluting the above weirdness into Air Supply quality schmaltz for suburban moms who used to be edgy, continued apace, coat-tail riding it all the way to the Super Bowl.
This is not artifact of place and time; it remains compelling, beautiful, terrifying, dystopic, more of a warning or prophecy. It promises nothing, and delivers everything. We find ourselves its world, confused, disheartened, the binary of simulacra and simulation smashed, the sign and the signifier, scrambled. The truth of no truth, and the human resignation that we must move forward.
4
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Wed Mar 13 2024
At Budokan
Cheap Trick
Energy top to bottom. It's amazing this band is not more worshipped in the US. Just Awesome Ramalama. People that don't dig this are lying or dead inside
5
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Thu Mar 14 2024
The Genius Of Ray Charles
Ray Charles
5
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Fri Mar 15 2024
Merriweather Post Pavilion
Animal Collective
If Amnesiac era Radiohead formed a supergroup with Stereolab, got SFA for harmonies, and decided to make Smile. Compelling stuff demanding continued reflection.
4
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Sat Mar 16 2024
Cheap Thrills
Big Brother & The Holding Company
The most overrated American singer of all time.
1
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Sun Mar 17 2024
Vulgar Display Of Power
Pantera
Trigger Warning: Heavy Metal Heresy
The first time I heard this album, I was totally bored. Aside from a truly epic riff (Walk), the rest sounds like wannabe Prong and Helmet, with a wannabe Henry Rollins spitting weak "Come at me, Bro" meathead platitudes. "This Love" was and is the incel anthem.
This, simply, sucks.
2
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Mon Mar 18 2024
The Seldom Seen Kid
Elbow
2
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Tue Mar 19 2024
Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire)
The Kinks
Fantastic, inventive quintessentially working class meditation on what it meant to be "British" in the 20th Century. Poignant, snarky, topical and weirdly ahistorical demonstration of the brothers' genius
5
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Tue Apr 02 2024
Parallel Lines
Blondie
It's easy, after decades of semi-constant Classic Rock play, club play, hanging with gay friends play, college radio play of "Heart of Glass" or "One Way or Another", to forget there is a whole album of good stuff here, indebted to garage rock and girl groups, very much a downtown NYC band rather than the product of AOR "New Wave" marketing and all that shit. So check out "Pretty Baby" and "Fade Away and Radiate" are a potent 1-2 punch. "Hanging on the Telephone" is a helluva opener. And within the context of such solid tunes, the single/classics become even more emphatic, dare I say, even more classic.
A fun record, back to front.
4
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Wed Apr 03 2024
Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle
Bill Callahan
If Nick Drake and Bill Callahan would be that baby. And Ayers would deny paternity to this mawkishness.
*snore*.
1
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Thu Apr 04 2024
Out Of The Blue
Electric Light Orchestra
The Move, a sadly little known band in the states (look em' up and be amazed) birthed two bands in the 70's featuring two mercurial members: Jeff Lynne, he who became the fifth Beatle (or the fourth, after the murder of John) and a Wilbury, who brought us classic rock AOR standards with ELO, along with Move drummer Bev Bevan, and Roy Wood, who left after the first ELO album to pursue his own idiosyncrasies with Wizzard, a tragically cult-band in the US.
It's fair to say that ELO had creative and critical juice throughout the 1970s until 1986, when ELO's AOR Imperial Phase ended, and produced a great many classic tunes ("Strange Magic" being my personal favorite) with their patented Beatles-esque songs and harmonies, powered by rock band + orchestra flourishes, where Wizzard produced one record Wizzard's Brew and a handle full of singles (notably, the holiday chestnut "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday"), after which he busied himself with solo-albums, the Wizzo Band, and sundry performances. By all appearances, a one-hit wonder.
But appearances be damned: Check out the sole Wizzard album; it is one of the most "what the fuck is happening" albums of the 70s, in every conceivable way. Don't sleep on that shit.
(If it seems like I'd rather be reviewing Wizzard Brew, I would—but no disrespect to Lynne, Bevan et al.)
The four sides of Out of the Blue show the full flower of what ELO could do, with rockers, weird orchestral pieces, all solid writing, all produced as though beamed through space. If we communicate with aliens like in "Close Encounters" through music, I imagine the aliens would like this quite a lot.
Standout Tracks (all, really. It's a front to back proposition). Take the ride...
And maybe wonder if Roy should've stuck around.
4
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Fri Apr 05 2024
Like A Prayer
Madonna
With a squillion-selling pop culture totem like Madonna, it's easy to keep to the hits and only the hits. Albums, and their deep cut riches, fade into obscurity. Though boasting all-time classics "Like a Prayer", "Express Yourself" and "Cherish", the real gold is literally
everything else. No filler. And Prince!
5
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Sat Apr 06 2024
A Rush Of Blood To The Head
Coldplay
...that moment when your Mom declared she likes "Alternative".
1
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Sun Apr 07 2024
It's Blitz!
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
5
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Mon Apr 08 2024
Slippery When Wet
Bon Jovi
Full Disclosure 1: In middle school, I wore the t shirt. This was 1987.
Full Disclosure 2: I, like millions of kids, loved those rock guitars.
Full Disclosure 3: Even then, I only listened to three of the songs on this album. I felt the rest were, a term that was new to me in 1987, "filler".
Full Disclosure 4: I have always found Bruce Fairbairn's production to suck the life out of any musical statement. Christ, the man got paid for that horn sound. The guitar sound is powerless overdrive. The vocals sound enthusiastic without actually being enthusiastic. The drum and bass sounds are best described as the "impression of bass and drums". Wrap it up, pack it out and ship it Platinum. Fairbairn has created the "impression of rock" without any actual rocking.
RIP Bruce Fairbairn. Fuck that guy.
Full Disclosure 5: I love dumb rock. I really do. Slade is one of my faves. I'm self-loathing KISS fan (see Ron Nevison's impression of Fairbairn on Crazy Nights)…
Secondly, I haven't listened to any of this, either ironically or not, since about 1988, maybe early 1989, and despite the baggage, I wanted to give this a fair shake; I still love early Ratt, Look What the Cat Dragged In gives me the feels, so I wasn't coming with the critical punk-snark. I really wasn't. So Here We Go:
Bon Jovi "Slippery When Wet", Polygram, 1987
Cover: The original art, featuring the kind of swimsuit cheesecake you would have found in full poster glory at the local Spencers, was deemed too "racy". If that shit was racy to you, then you'll probably love this record.
Side One:
1. "Let It Rock": A keyboard intro, hinting at something in the Deep Purple/Rainbow epic tradition gives way to something to Cop show hard rock about good times while accidentally hinting at a world view like "Watching the Wheels" in the most boorish way possible.
2. "You Give Love a Bad Name": One of the classics that I might have conceded its classic status around 5000 listens ago but like someone who drank themselves sober, I can only finding it grating in sound and lifeless in execution. There is no doubt these guys can play and Jon can sing and write. Listening to this instant cliché, you never can tell.
3. "Livin' on a Prayer": More impression of Hard Rock, with a hard luck narrative knicked from Springsteen and a shouty chorus that has all the catchiness wrung out of it by Fairbairn.
4. "Social Disease" : Wikipedia said Aerosmith wanted this. And why not? It has the signature shitty horn sound that makes post Rehab Aerosmith suggestive of Rock, but without actual Rocking.
5. "Wanted Dead or Alive": Can't say too much here. All the fruit lined up. Stay Gold, Pony Boy.
Side Two
1. "Raise Your Hands": Just the suggestion of Rock.
2. "Without Love": [14 year old C.V] "I wouldn't wish this turd on Taylor Dane".
3. "I'd Die for You": Layer Cake Schmaltz clinically tested to create singing and dancing in really stupid people.
4. "Never Say Goodbye": The kind of prom song that wants you to be nostalgic for your now, rose tinting sepia impressions that become precious memories for later. If this describes you, you peaked Senior Year.
5. "Wild in the Streets": More suggestions of Rock.
So the "Suggestion of Rock", or "The Impression of Rock" certainly nods to Derrida, but I don't feel like exploring that implication any further, lest I parlay my sobriety into mega church attendance and Trump support. No, no more semiotics here.
At no time did I have feel anything with this music. I entertained myself by writing criticism. That's really all this was--an exigence to write about something from my past, to see if it evoked anything.
Revised art was of a wet , apparently unused trash bag. Sums up my feelings really well. Suggests, but ultimately empty.
2
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Tue Apr 09 2024
Fleet Foxes
Fleet Foxes
Oh goody! Somebody bought the "Oh Brother!" soundtrack, and became super-earnest.
1
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Wed Apr 10 2024
Truth And Soul
Fishbone
After the Bon Jovi near popcorn fart that was the hermetically sealed, clinically concocted Slippery When Wet (excuse the Air-Disaster lingo), I was pleased cleanse my ears and psyche with the ever killer, always on point and one of the most grossly un-known bands in the last forty years: FISHBONE. How the fuck RHCP are filling stadiums and student keg parties with—and in complete agreement that Flea, Frusciante and Smith are maybe the most over-capable threesome in AOR; however, weighed against Douche King Kiedis – at best medium talent tunes truly boggles the imagination (a point the former would likely concede while Kiedis is trolling for his special gum and jailbait to sell it to him).
Fishbone were and are the sound of the incredible imaginations of young black men from South Central L.A. throwing thirty years of outsider music, American and Jamaican, into a cauldron and adding a whole heap of "fuck I can't", produced some of the most exciting collisions in music. Sure, Ska and Reggae already had a relationship with Punk, but not with Funk. And why not throw some Blackmore on sherm soloing in the pot, as contrast. Why not? If you have the tenacity and the verve, these mutants become possible. Like Jane's Addiction, Fishbone were who they were, are who they are: Occasionally self-defeating or self-destructing, but always human, always telling you a truth, not they truth. Unfortunately, unlike Jane's Addiction, Fishbone failed to become an Industry of Cool, which means we get Perry Farrell gibbering pontifications instead of the beautiful, graceful poet-warrior Angelo Moore, reminding us that alive and when weirdoes make music, amazing things happen.
Fishbone is the exact opposite of Bon Jovi.
ECCE HOMO.
4
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Thu Apr 11 2024
3 Feet High and Rising
De La Soul
Hip-Hop was the first truly Post-Modern Popular Music; it deconstructed what we understood, since Elvis (and before, really) what music WAS: Beats and Words. This upset people, particularly "Rock" People.
What's more, it took existing recordings, and created sound collages. Sure, musicians had been quoting other artists forever. Modernism had established the rationale for quoting, elevating it to veneration of tradition. And Rock, the arty, self-conscious, child of Rock N Roll, is thoroughly Modernist, as was (and kinda still is) the critical apparatus that sought to describe it. There are rules, you know, and Hip-Hop didn't play that. While Modernists love ahistorical, transcendent meaning to their art, the Rock Modernists love the tradition and firm contexts with their hermetically sealed rock songs, and hip-hop ignored tradition, firm contexts, in their collages, grabbing from James Brown, Queen, Blondie, even each other, with gusto. Melody, schmelody, we got something to say.
The tool of these collages, samples, we essentially free in the early days. You could borrow from anyone, without fear. And while there is certainly a conversation that could be had about the ethics of things, the money-go-round already decided that the owners of the master recordings, if they can't stop it, wanted a piece of it.
Before Moloch boomed his heavy judgment on the industry, what emerged from HipHop was nothing short of astonishing, particularly with two master-classes in sampling as art: The Beastie Boy's Paul's Boutique, and Tribe Called Quest's Three Feet High and Rising. Neither of these albums could be made today, or would have a Marvel Blockbuster Budget if they were made. Gleefully sampling Classic Rock Gods, throwing these venerated musical utterances into a gumbo with film dialogue, news snippets, recorded skits, and the then ubiquitous James Brown samples, and you had something brand new.
In Tribe's case, the ubiquitous samples were not James Brown so much as the kaleidescopic various releases of George Clinton and the Parliament-Funkadelic collective, providing a certain grooviness to the tracks, and really becoming not only the defining sound of the Native Tongue commune, but the next five years of Hip-Hop. Digital Underground came on the heels with Sex Packets, thick with Clinton-P-Funk Aquaboogie, and after, Dr. Dre built The Chronic on that rock.
The influence of this album on popular music is incalculable, contrasting powerfully with the auto-tuned tales of bitches and money, "Dear God" hack confessionals, and minimalist, DJ free " beats", or the big money, legend in their own minds of Drake and the self-serious, self-parodic, Ye, with its freedom and abundant joy. These gents did not have time to beef; they were simply making some of the most vital music of this, or any era. They did not bite, they did not hack, they simply, for a while, were incapable of doing wrong. It is, perhaps, the judgment of Moloch, and his licensing demons, that kept this from streaming platforms and perhaps, allowed this gem to get overshadowed by the bullshit that passes for hip hop now. I loathe nostalgia, but I will gladly time machine my ass back to the Daisy Age.
5
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Fri Apr 12 2024
Arrival
ABBA
The Beatles and the Beach Boys elevated album production beyond coherent-ish song cycle to immersive happening, each creating their own universes of natural laws, logic, mythology; later on, it would be Bowie, Pink Floyd and Queen pushing the form to epic, cinematic spaces.
Where the Beatles had Dance Hall, and the Beach Boys had Americana, the new kids smashed and grabbed for the 1970s—garage rock, Glam, Space Rock, Psychedelia as well as folk, blues, rock n roll, anything else they could get their hands on, creating classic albums that were both timely and timeless, anticipating the next thing while rooted in their thing. Bowie would be the only member of this class to truly turn and face the strange.
And then there's ABBA, nobody's first choice as an album artist, aside from a Greatest Hits Album. And that would be where you fucked up, because ABBA were album artists, when everything was working, the finest of the 70s. All of the above had serious students in ABBA, who crafted Girl-Group-Inspired Glam soaked what's the Swedish word for Schlager with a strange penchant for Spain and Mexico—the unexpected ingredient from a smiling, affable bunch who looked to be straight from a Lebensborn farm, and it is this weird white otherness that sharpens what, by all appearances, is pure karaoke fodder.
You'd be fucked up again if you left this there. One of the best of the whole decade.
5
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Sat Apr 13 2024
Pretenders
Pretenders
Chrissy Hynde is from Ohio. I am from Ohio. Opposite sides of the state, but still, there is something "Ohio" I recognize and adore. She digs the VU. She was a UK Punk 77 interloper (after all, the form was invented in our collective neck of the rust belt), and she is an overall bad bitch. Yet, aside from the chestnuts we all know, this album doesn't do all that much for me. Could be the chimey, early-Police, guitar sound, but...actually, I think, I really hate the production. No grime.
3
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Sun Apr 14 2024
Haut de gamme / Koweït, rive gauche
Koffi Olomide
I am conflicted: while I am always interested in how different peoples and cultures approach thought and expressive, I have made it a point to remember my Said, and interrogate my likes and dislikes for artists outside European/North American scenes. The difference, the novelty, is fine. Does it make me feel human, connected, in the world, or am I a tourist in these differing expression, reveling in some noxious notions of the exotic. Is there a tote bag? Do these Chakas communicate my love of "World Music"? Am I Paul Simon or Peter Gabriel in their colonial 80s period? Did I vote for Al Gore?
What I can say about this album is the Olomide's voice is truly remarkable. Ambrosia in all registers. I really dig hearing the music of sung Congolese French; my other experiences of sung French are of the smoky, phlegmy, world-weary alcoholics of the Piaf, Brel and Gainsbourg type, who don't do breezy sunshine well cuz, well, death.
What mars this album is the apparently world contemporaneous hermetically plinky piano sound, and the general production, suck the human spirit out of it in favor of nods to safe 80s-90s R&B tropes. When Olomide keeps it organic, it is stunning.
If you like "SlowJam" sonics, you'll like this. If you regularly listen to NPR, you'll like this (and everybody around you at the wine tasting will have to because you are worldly or something). If you listen to this, hear the good things and want more, work backwards to get connected.
3
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Sun Apr 28 2024
Nixon
Lambchop
There's word I've always loved: ersatz--an inferior substitute.
When Bon Jovi achieved the appearance of rocking, without an actual rocking, what they achieved was ersatz rock. Calculated, drained of humanity, reminding us that we can return to our torpor if only a manufactured need is met. Bon Jovi himself said they rushed in when Van Halen broke up. Van Halen, a lot of things, but not ersatz with the classic line-up and that six album run. I'll die on this hill...
Anyway, whatever Lambchop's intentions with Nixon, it is undermined with the ersatzness of the approach. Aiming for the sublimity of Pet Sounds and any number of classic Bacharach sides, avoiding the druggy wooze of Love's Forever Changes, it feels twee by two and a half. When Air released Moon Safari, with its vintage electronica and chamber pop arrangements, it showed how the styles of the past can find a relevant and vital home in the present--an actual progression for the form. This ain't that.
If you like the form so much, you'll settle for the cheese food version, then have at it. I'll stick to aged cheese, and wait for the next innovation.
2
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Mon Apr 29 2024
The Cars
The Cars
Like the Pretenders, this VU inspired group, boasting a Modern Lover and a bass player who was never photographed with Queen's Roger Taylor, proving they are the same person (Red Pill: Roy Thomas Baker, who produced the first five Queen albums, is in charge of the excellent sonics here, so fuck you).
But Queen this ain't. This is "New Wave". You can tell because they got their wardrobe from the same hip catalog. "Thin ties. Snazzy Suit jackets" (always room for Jello in some shit I'm writing).
I really shouldn't lump them together, or type the words "New Wave" with an underlying contempt for the mass consumption it emblemizes; my knowledge of both is limited to 80s FM radio, and with The Cars, that was a lot. And the videos. And the Super Models. And the Wayfarers.
So taking this front to back, its solid, competent. No sign of Mutt Lange (the mulleted jagwagon who glopped up the MTV iteration of the band). It boasts one all time classic in "My Best Friend's Girl", one associated with Phoebe Cates coming hither (and a generation of horny teenagers coming yon), and a bunch of rock radio hits. I have never met a Cars obsessive-not a slam, they must exist-but they must exist. This shit gets constant play on FM Rock Radio.
Anyway, its cool, I guess.
3
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Tue Apr 30 2024
Is This It
The Strokes
The Strokes were maybe the drunkest band I have ever seen live. Still totally brought it.
I love this album. Great sound, real rama lama attitude, good songs and downtown lyrics.
I'd give this a 5 star for "New York City Cops" alone.
5
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Wed May 01 2024
Rust In Peace
Megadeth
It's easy to forget that MegaDave used to be legit harrowing, and his riffage was like the dentist drill: Babe Levy, strapped down, drill whirring like some ancient galactic death, the sound of a collapsing star. Total.
Slayer sounds like Hell. Anthrax sounds like Gotham. Metallica sounds like the history of metal. Megadeth sounds like the Hegemony picking the bones of the capitalism eating itself. Gamma World, if you're nerd of a certain age.
Returning to this reminds me that I am a nerd of a certain age, and as such, I always liked Anthrax the best (at least in this critical grouping) and after that, Megadeth because of the punk influenced riffage and intensity. The songs were about politics and sci-fi, and if you played RPGs and listened to Metal in St. Reagan's America, these things gave soundtrack to the dread which twisted your guts into the repetition of accepted forms and modes, cuz, Gay Commies or something. It reminds me that every Good Friday for thirty five years you've made a conscious decision to blast "Good Mourning/Black Friday" where ever the ashen domes congregate.
It reminds me that MegaDave was always douchebag who used to make killer albums. The first four albums (even the maligned So Far...) are fucking classics, each a peculiar sonic attack (thanks Mssr. Calvert) orbiting or stratospherically within a nuclear wasteland. Peace Sells always seemed to me to be like the jets over the wasted U.N, sad and lethal reminders of how it went so horribly wrong. This one, with its spot on representation of the White male hegemony, witness the cosmic power of Vic Rattlehead, presiding over a frozen alien, feels and seems space battle. The drill could be the whirring hard drives randomizing death, controlling plasma weapons, charting more places in the galaxy that need white guys who run shit. This is cold horror, folks You are insignificant in the void.
Thinking about it, the unexpectedly expansive sci-fi metal of AX7's The Stage borrowed a few of the guitar sounds, a few of the themes, and made an album that was, frankly, too smart for the "Hail to the King" lot.
Rust is galactic horror. Total. It makes no sense to me to even think of it in terms of individual tracks. The changes in tempo, "Black Alert" riffs suddenly appear, and start blasting, these are usual for this era of the band; the innovation is it is 41 minutes of being a harrowing total. Strap in .
4
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Thu May 02 2024
Hard Again
Muddy Waters
I was absolutely prepared for worst: Somehow, when Muddy's pale kids-all who made squillions appropriating his sound-played with him, it sucked.
Here, with, with an integrated band featuring Johnny Winters, they managed raw and lively. Thank Johnny Winter for understanding the strength is in it's humanity. Polish the blues and you end up with solo Eric Clapton-a museum piece, a heritage industry. Clapton should cut an album with the Marsalis brothers, and drain the blood out of blues and jazz, making both safe for the Lexus crowd. Maybe a Starbucks exclusive release. NPR would jizz.
Naw. The stomping, hollering, amp humming, distorted harp mic announcing the macho strut of "Mannish Boy" heralds the goods to follow. You can smell the stank, and, kids, that's what you want in any music.
5
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Sat May 04 2024
Lady Soul
Aretha Franklin
Sometimes, there is no insight, no process, no coming to terms when presented with such infinite gifts. You just let it happen.
That said, hearing the actual wood and humanity in the recording was a respite. A piano that breathes as the woman breathes reminds me of my own human self.
Fucking stone classic.
5