Did I listen to the wrong Sunny Day Real Estate album? Is
there a good one? Should I not have started at the beginning?
I really have no memory of this band until 1998’s How It
Feels To Be Something On. I may have heard of them, but I certainly didn't listen to them until then. The whole Emo thing was starting to take off and at
the time I was 27 and thankfully years past the cut-off age for falling into
that trap. Plus, my Indie Rock ears were old enough to filter through most of
that waste-of-time genre. I do like some of it and I'll admit to it.
And now for something completely different…
Dear Emo fan,
You wanna know why I think you’re a pussy? Because you’re
mommy sent you on play dates and you probably were put on a leash in public. You
were destined to become a crap loving twerp.
Me? I grew up in the fucking wild!
The 70’s, baby! Learning to swim without waterwings! Ten kids in the back of a
pickup truck barreling down the thruway! Being sent to the store to buy
cigarettes! Shoplifting everything! Watching porn on HBO after midnight on a
Friday night! Being handed a box of explosives and a pack of matches on the 4th of July. All before I was in kindergarten and usually with an inebriated
adult around muttering “you kids, be careful.”
Here is an absolutely true story. When I was ten-years-old, I
was watching TV on a Sunday night with my dad. He was working his way through a
case of Schmidt’s. That was his beer, probably still is, and he also smoked
Kool Ultra Lights. I know, right? I don’t know why I feel compelled to say
this, but he isn’t black. How did I manage to become a completely different
kind of loser than him? Beats me.
So, we’re watching TV and A Clockwork Orange comes on cable.
The old man doesn't say a word, because he probably forgot I was in the room.
When we get to the scene where Billy Boy and his droogs are about to perform a
little of the old in-out in-out on a frantically distraught and completely
naked woman, my dad looks around, sees me and asks, “ isn't it past your
bedtime?” It was hours after my bedtime. “C’mon! Ten more minutes,” I cried.
“Well,” he said. “Go brush your teeth,” in an attempt to get me out of the room
until the woman’s boobs and hairy bush were no longer on television. I watched
from the hallway until Alex and his droogs showed up and started kicking some
ass!
When I returned from “brushing my teeth,” the old man was
sound asleep. I finished his beer, lit one of his smokes and nestled down on
the floor to watch the droogs play hogs of the road, on their way for a bit of
the old ultra-violence.
Do you want to know what the really fucked up part of this
whole experience was? I was ten, so I’d seen a tit or two in Playboy and on
cable. I might have seen some 70’s action movies that were kind of violent, but
I had never seen anything like this in my life. Constant raping and
fighting and I watched it all with no real sense of shock. If I had been with a
couple of other kids, maybe we would have gotten all riled up, like a pack of
kids do. Alone in the dark, after my bedtime, on a Sunday night, in 1981, I
watched A Clockwork Orange as I would have watched The Tonight Show. Completely
euphoric that I was up after 11 on a school night.
I often wonder if that
experience helped shape me in any way. Duh!
I’m assuming when you were 10 or 11 you heard Fall Out Boy
on the radio and thought you were cool. Pffffffussy!
All my love,
Brad Maybe
I don’t wanna say that all of Diary reminded me of a toddler
sucking his thumb after a hissy fit, because there are soundal elements (I’m
making soundal a word.) that reminded me of artists I like; Hayden and Tugboat
Annie. Both, even more obscure then Sunny Day Real Estate. Hayden for the deep drawn
out whining and Tugboat Annie for some of the more Rock moments.
If you ever thought Dave Grohl was being a jerk to William
Goldsmith about his drumming, which led to his departure from the Foo Fighters,
just listen to this album. His playing is too distracting. In retrospect, I
think Dave at least gave Goldsmith the opportunity to play better and he just couldn't do it.
I’m working on amassing a playlist of songs taken from all
the albums that I've listened to this year. I might take five or six songs from
a great album. I at least want to come away with one song from the albums that
I don’t outright hate. I’m going to put “47” from Diary on that playlist. The
rest of it can go pout in the corner.
I just realized I’m writing about A Clockwork Orange and the
fact that William Goldsmith from Sunny Day Real Estate was in the Foo Fighters
like everybody should know all about that stuff… and I guess they all fucking
should!
I can listen to old Butthole Surfers and Ween records all
day long and be highly entertained. I listen to stuff like this and I’m usually
highly irritated. It’s all weird in its own way, but your Mercury Revs and
Flaming Lipses of the world take themselves way too fucking seriously. Calm
down Art Rock dicks! You’re not researching the cure for cancer. You’re helping
to enhance people’s drug trips! Woopdee –fucking–doo! So does a Cheech &
Chong movie.
Having said that, I actually like Yerself Is Steam. It’s got
its weird moments. It’s got its rock moments. It’s got its touching little
moments. Then it ends with “Car Wash Hair,” which for some reason I absolutely adore.
I saw Mercury Rev play a 700 person room in the late nineties. Most of the show
was way too fucking loud and unbearably boring, but somewhere in the set they
played “Car Wash Hair,” and everyone in the rooms’ pants exploded. There was shit,
piss, cum and vaginal juices all over the floor and it was really beautiful.
The Terror finds The Flaming Lips entering into a new
dimension of their musical journey. This album creates a sprawling landscape of waves,
colliding and spinning in a self-loathsome downward spiral of depression. Nothing
can stop the boundless creativity that these true musicians possess. Another crowning achievement for the band that can find new an interesting ways to shovel bullshit into their fans' mouths.
Past accomplishments have made The Flaming Lips completely
bulletproof to criticism.
The average dipshit probably barely remembers “She
Don’t Use Jelly,” and/or has politely clapped during one of The Flaming Lips' gimmicky
festival performances as they wait for Coldplay to come on in four hours.
But,
the people that really love this band believe everything they do is brilliance on top
of brilliance with a side of extra hidden brilliance that can be only heard by
them and it’s that hidden brilliance that keeps the band’s cred fully intact.
This record was lauded over by pretty much every media
outlet and blog out there.
They all say the same things. Each gush-fest begins with a
near dismissal of the band’s previous releases of real music, by cleverly
saying they were too easy to like. Then the spin kicks in with a lot of
high praise for any single element of a “song” the writer could zero in on, followed
by a lot of dazzling bullshit. Each review reads like an old school record shop
dick looking down on a customer for not getting it. Reading all the asswipes' high praise for this album is actually better than the album.
If you got nothing better to do, pull up any five reviews
for The Terror and cue it up. Hit play, start reading and get ready for the
second coming of Jesus Christ… or not.
The Flaming Lips peaked over a decade ago with The Soft
Bulletin and Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots. Those two records were so
fucking good the world has issued the band a free pass with no expiration date.
So don’t expect too many people to write anything bad about any of their shit
records anytime soon.
Someone over at the Huffington Post actually wrote a bad
review of The Terror. Unfortunately, it was written by a junior high school newspaper entertainment reporter. The trolls came out in force! My favorite entry from the comment section said, “Time
to listen more attentively. No pop candy this time. Nor is this record for the
attention span-challenged. It's fearless and powerful.” That is the mentality with this record. If you don't like it, it's YOUR fault and fans of this record can put dashes between any two words they-want!
Moreover, Mr. Commenter is attempting to create a caste system within The Flaming Lips' fanbase. I like "pop candy," but I fucking hate bullshit. Am I “attention span-challenged?” I obviously spent
a shitload of time listening to this record, researching it, and writing
about it. Am I “fearless and powerful” too? Are fans of this album better than
the fans that don’t like this album? If that commenter is using the word
fearless correctly than I don’t know what it means.
This is clearly a record that was not just thrown together.
I believe the end result is the vision and hard work of everyone that
contributed. This album is what it was designed to be. It creates an outer
space spooky vibe with a hint of dentist drill annoyance and it’s apparently
about being alone, being depressed, or some shit like that.
Are you familiar with a guy named Bear McCreary? He is the
guy that wrote the theme for The Walking Dead. It’s fucking brilliant. It couldn't sound more like a zombie apocalypse.
McCreary also scored 70 episodes of the recent Battlestar
Galactica series. If you’re a fan of that show than you’ll agree McCreary
absolutely nailed the mood of a dwindling number of human survivors, in outer space,
on the run from robots, while on a nearly hopeless mission to find a new home
planet. The Terror doesn't hold a candle to that hunk of work.
I think that comparing it to a soundtrack is fair, because
that’s all The Terror sounds like. A soundtrack to a movie that doesn't exist. Who
listens to soundtracks? When was the last time you were driving around with
your friends and one of them said, “Throw on the music that was playing when
they discovered Earth was completely contaminated and everyone on Galactica
wanted to commit suicide?”
Oh, and a big fuck off to Wayne Coin (sic) for recently dismissing
my beloved Stone Roses. Please don’t ever release your versions of their songs.
Thank you.
I HAVE SPOKEN!
End Transmission.
 |
| Hello God? It's Me Wayne. You know I'm full Of Shit, Right? |
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