3.4.13

On February 4th I listened to Blur The Great Escape, Soundgarden Badmotorfinger, and Atoms For Peace Amok. I originally slotted Blur’s album Modern Life Is Rubbish in for today, but then I remembered this month is a celebration of the 90’s and not about their bullshit sophomore album.

I love me some Blur, but sometimes they can be a little too much. The Great Escape is the perfect example. It's got five hits and then the rest is too much.

Here’s what I like, “Stereotypes,” “Country House,” “Charmless Man,” "Best Days," and “The Universal.” These are campy, rompy, Brit poppy, fun songs that I could listen to over and over again. I’d even say “The Universal” is eloquent. Then you got 10 songs for the super fans, I guess. 

Weird thing. I met Graham Coxon at a music festival in 2005. I met Damon Albarn during a radio interview in 2010. I got my picture taken with both of them, five years apart, and they’re making the same jerkoff face, looking at me like I’m a big fucking dick. Is that what the guys from Blur did in fan pictures? Can anyone confirm this? Do you think they’re being funny or dickheads? I go back and forth.

Look at Brad!

Badmotorfinger is Soundgarden’s coming out party! Their first album Louder Than Love showed the potential, Badmotorfinger realized it. Maybe not as solid as their Seattle counterparts’ sophomore albums, but it solidified the band’s place in the Grunge hierarchy, for sure.

You got the hits, “Rusty Cage,” “Outshined,” and even “Jesus Christ Pose.” And you got “Slaves & Bulldozers” and some songs that just fall a pube short of awesome. Not too shabby.

What do you think music will sound like in 50 years? I can guarantee you it won’t sound like this. Antiseptic computer programmed generic drivel will surely be a part of the 2063 hipster scene, but the same minority of douches will be the only ones into it, or at least they’ll pretend to be into it. Do you realize that 2063 hipsters won’t start being born until the late 2030’s? I hate them already. They're all gonna have Hunger Games beards. Ugh!

Here is how you pretend to like this “style” of “music.” Some asswipe trying extra hard to not give this album a bad review wrote, “as a technical exercise, Amok is hugely impressive ... its sound is rich and deep, full of intriguing shifts and contrasts. But there are times when it feels the painstaking process used to create it may have assumed a greater importance than the business of actually writing songs.”

Yeah, that’s what I look for in a song “intriguing shifts and contrasts,” and a “process used to create” over actual songwriting. "I'm pretending I like this," the writer is saying. "Because it's a super group and how could it be bad?" Morons!

If you’re going to do interpretations of jams from the future, at least take a look at the jam bands of today, and give us a build up to some kind of payoff. An aural treat somewhere along the fucking journey! Atoms For Peace songs go nowhere with nothing to give, unless we're counting shifts and contrasts as something. I’d rather sit in silence all day than listen to this bullshit. Enjoy the silence.

Here’s the thing that really pisses me off. In order to keep their “fans” pacified during live shows, Atoms For Peace have to cover real songs. If you’re going to play a Joy Division song live, then write a fucking song that would make Ian Curtis proud! Seriously? Why cover a much loved classic when all you create is forgetful bumblings no one will care about in a year?

I literally sound like a grumpy old man now! Thanks a lot Atoms For Peace! 

Tomorrow I will listen to The Pixies Bossanova, Buffalo Tom Big Red Letter Day, and Atlas Genius When It Was Now. 

Here's the entire March Playlist!

1.9.13

On January 9^th I listened to Def Leppard Pyromania, Blur Leisure and The Vaccines Come Of Age. Another England day! God bless the Queen!

Today’s playlist brought something rather queer to my attention – the transition we made from tape to CD. Vinyl was definitely doing great back in the 80’s and early 90’s, but forget that medium for this discussion, becaue it doesn't pertain. (I love the word "pertain.")

Pyromania was definitely a cassette album for me and back in the days of cassette, a solid entire album was greatly appreciated over an album that just had two or three good songs. (Stupid thing to say, right? Gimme a minute. Real quickly... back in the day, we still bought shitty albums even if we knew they only had two good songs. If those two songs were really good... fuck it!)

In the days of cassettes there was too much rewinding and fast forwarding. Remember, or imagine (if you’re a little 20 something douche), halting a party or drunken get together for two to five minutes while you fast forwarded an entire side of a tape to find your jam! It sucked! I remember saying things like, "hold on a second, this should be it." Hit play and "fuck! Oh wait, I was going the wrong way, I have to rewind."

When we got to the CD age it was so nice to pop in an album, that you knew only had two great songs, quickly scan to them, hear them and then throw in the next CD. Pyromania was a cassette that didn’t need much tape movement, but sadly Blur’s debut needed some track skipping.

Did you know that Def Leppard’s drummer only has one ball? He didn’t just lose an arm in that car crash. (I’m just fucking with you, a groupie cut off the ball years earlier.)

Pyromania was about as deep as I got into the “hair metal” scene. I guess this pre-dated “hair metal,” but when that shit took hold over the next few years, I was NOT paying attention.

I’m pretty sure I was in eighth grade when this album came out, I owned it on cassette and soon after I chewed it up and spit it out, I started getting into early rap and then my lifelong love of Indie Rock.

I have said this on the radio numerous times and I will defend this statement until my death – “Photograph” is hands down the best Def Leppard song ever recorded! If you disagree, I’ll cut one of your balls off and watch you bleed out. (I’ll figure out something different for any of the ladies that disagree.)

Side one of this album was hit, hit, hit, hit, dud. “Rock Rock!,” “Photograph,” “Stagefright,” Too Late For Love,” and then “Die Hard The Hunter.” Side two was hit, hit, kinda hit, whatever, dud. “Foolin’,” “Rock Of Ages,” “Comin’ Under Fire,” “Action! Not Words,” and “Billy’s Got A Gun.” Not bad for the tape era.

I almost forgot to mention the intro to “Rock Of Ages.” “Gunter glieben glauchen globen,” or whatever to hell it was, was so goofy and transfixing… it made loving this album so easy.

I loved Blur’s debut album, Leisure, when it was released, but I really only dug the two “hits.” And the “hits” were fucking awesome! Leisure was a CD era release for me, so it was so easy to go from track No. 1, “She’s So High,” to track No. 7, “There’s No Other Way,” to get my Blur fix!

I just realized while looking at the Leisure Wikipedia page, I had the UK version of this album. The U.S. track listing was different, and I remember getting mine for free from my college radio station and it didn’t have any artwork. It must have been a U.S. advance before they fucked with the sequence of the album. What a fucking crime!

(Editor's Note - Advance copy. Back in the day before the World Wide Web, record labels would print up "advances" of albums. Usually with no artwork and send them to radio, magazines and tastemakers. NOTHING got my dick hard like getting an album advance weeks or even a month before an anticipated album's release! I have the advace to Radiohead's OK Computer that Capitol Records super glued into a cassette walkman, so nobody would play it on the radio early! Fucking internet ruined all that. Now everybody gets shit when it leaks.)

Leisure is kinda one big song outside the “hits.” But, I will walk away from this listen with a new appreciation for “Fool.”

For the life of me, I can’t figure out what the opening track, “No Hope,” on The Vaccines second album, Come Of Age reminds me of… The Jam? The Strokes first album? I dunno, maybe? But, I love it! It's a new spin on the classic youthful lament of "what will the future hold?" Who cares? Cause I'm obsessed with myself and all my bullshit. Cheers! It makes me wonder what The Clash would have written had they come up in the age of The Kardashians or The Jersey Shore.

This album is a lot of fun, bouncy and energetic. “Teenage Icon,” is something I really appreciate because it references stuff that I know, but just barely. It makes me feel young and God bless a new band that can do that!

There’s a definite early 50’s rock style here mixed with some 80’s modern rock… I guess if Buddy Holly was in the Jesus And Mary Chain, this is what you’d get? I’m asking, cause I have no idea what I’m talking about.

“Bad Mood” is another one I appreciate, cause I’m usually in one. “I Wish I Was A Girl” and the album cover make me wonder if there’s going to be an Against Me Laura Jane Grace thing going on here, but who cares? And the last track “Lonely World” is just pretty and off key enough to be endearing and awful at the same time. I love it.

I gotta go back and listen to The Vaccines first record, What Did You Expect from The Vaccines?, again.

This record also made me make a mental note to put The Jam, The Buzzcocks, and Buddy Holly on next month’s playlist.