Mumford & Sons - Sigh No More

Mumford & Sons - Sigh No More

Published - October 2009

Wikipedia

So, I'm back.

I'll let that sink in here for a minute before we get to the music.

I'm back, and I realized how much this got me through the first couple of months here in Korea, and how much I enjoyed the fits and starts in which I wrote a bunch of these.  Actually, a respected blogger friend of mine (I mean a friend who I respect and writes a blog, not that his blog is widely respected, although it should be, like go read some of it now) asked me when it was going to return, after my enigmatic last post.  So here I am, back at the computer, slamming out words about music again.  I hope you're back too.

Here is the plan.  52 weeks in the year.  52 album projects.  That is the bare minimum I will allow to happen.  One a week is a pretty low number, to be sure.  So if I can get more, I will.  What does this mean for you?  Every seven days, I'll come up with a new one.  These will all be suggestions from other people.  This makes my job easier, because that leaves time open for everything else I want to write just for myself, and allows me to go back and do classics and stuff on my own terms.  So,  I've got my list started, and of course, if you have more suggestions, send them to me.  I'll try to keep everyone updated with what is coming up soon, and what I think I'll be writing about next.  Hopefully, we'll end up with something more like 100 album projects, but of course, that depends on one thing.  Me.  The unreliable as far person.  I'm working on this though.  So, hopefully for the next year, until next Christmas at least, some album will be talked about, at great length, by me.

Speaking of which, let's get to this weeks album.  Sigh No More was suggested to me by two different people.  So, I'd like to thank Mr. Grant Hamming and Ms. Rachel Nusbaum, for the suggestion.

I don't know if I have a lot to say about this album.  This is not for any other reason than it appeals to me on a visceral level, where I really enjoyed every part of it separately, and I loved the whole, but it didn't really make me have a strong opinion about it.  It was consistently good, enjoyable, and made me really fall for the depth of it.

The wikipedia would lead you to believe that this is a "freak folk" album.  I don't understand what that means. This actually just sounds like a modern folk album to me.  If Bob Dylan had been born in the early 80's and had nearly the same life, I think this is what his music would sound like, with a bit different vocals, and more incomprehensible lyrics.

Talking about the lyrics, they are beautiful.  It's an incredibly moving album, you feel the things that they are singing, and the depth of the vocals is very impressive.  The lead singer is frequently backed up by what sounds like a half a dozen singers.  The lyrics are clear, defined, and sound like hooks to me.  This is folk at it's best, where it conjures up a small, dusty, packed room, with the group singing to a group of people, ready to seize the song and sing back to them.  Their music is incredibly close to you.  You feel as if it is surrounding you and permeating you.  It's darkly toned, and soars when it should.

I think that is why I reject the "freak folk" label, it's just too good as genuine folk.  They aren't commenting on it, they aren't satirizing it, and they aren't using it in any way other than as a the formula from which the music comes.  The modernity could be lost if it were recorded on ancient equipment, and if they cut out some of the layering, but to do that would be to lose the thought and what seems to be important to the band.  They seem to be inspired by the ideas of folk, and they took them to the logical next step, a place with soaring vocals and more instruments than just a banjo, guitar and bass.  To make them out to be avant guard is to reject Bob Dylan once he went electric.  It's not against the grain of the music that was being performed, it is to constantly be trying to update, to become a better musician, and express the thoughts that 'are' to that group, at that time is the next step for this particular group.

Now, this is another album that will completely turn people off, because it is niche in the extreme.  If you don't like mountain folky sounding music, you probably won't get enamored of this album.  If you are looking for something uplifting, I'd listen to particular tracks, but overall, you won't be uplifted by this.

However, if you are down, and want to hear moments of brightness against a background of melecholy, or if you want to hear something beautiful, and yes, a little hipsteresque, you should pick this up.  If you wanted to just look at a couple of the songs, to see if you would like it, I'd suggest you listen to Dustbowl Dance, which is just an incredible song.  The album sounds very similar from song to song, which is not a criticism, but more that it paints a portrait of the band in its time.  It sounds like a complete album.

Anyway, let me say thanks again to Rachel and Grant, two incredibly cool people on opposite sides of the world.  I hope that each of you are doing well in your respective positions.  I'd like to hear more from you two about what this album did for you, because I'm still working on it, but I really enjoyed it.

I am the very model of a modern major general,
Matt

Oh hey, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and all that stuff too.

PPS. Next week, Andrew Bird & the Mysterious Production of Eggs - Andrew Bird

Dethklok - Dethalbum II

Dethklok -  Dethalbum II

Published in 2009

Wikipedia

What do you do when your joke band actually starts making some pretty awesome music?  If you're Brendon Small, apparently you just keep on rolling.  I think that metalocolypse is one of the most original and funny shows on tv but if you hate cartoons or something stupid like that, you need to listen to their album. Actually I'd suggest this album for one specific reason.

Comedy albums, as a rule have this tendency to include these things called skits. These are usually cute little asides that acknowledge tha their music is actually a joke and that they are meant to be funny. ( presumably they don't want to get confused with real bands like the guys who wrote 'bush was right'. Look it up. If it were a comedy, it would be the best parody ever. ). However, my favorite comedy albums never have this shit. It's something to add a little flavor, but a great comedy or anything album should be filled to the brim.

The Dethalbum I had these asides and they just didn't add anything to the procedings. They were just too jokey, which is weird for a comedy band. But, the fat has been trimmed, and the reward is awesome.

Metal music is inherently a bit of a joke. Anyone who takes themselves that seriously needs to have he amount of introspection to recognize that they are flawed and vulnerable human beings before they implode themselves. Metallica at the beginning had this then lost it. Dethklok was concieved as the band that exists both inside and outside of that bubble. This is what makes them so interesting to me.

Let it be officIal. Dethklok rules. They play some amazing fucking music. They exist to rock and the music that they make stands up to some of the best albums on here. There are incredible guitar parts. Great drumming. Awesome vocals and just all around proficency. They aim amazingly high and reach those heights well. They play some really melodic death metal and they really do shred.

It's a very simple album in many respects. Sometimes the songs sound similar but you don't even give a shit. You want them to keep going and going, because they are trying to not be just a joke band.  The desire to really invest themselves into the band is what is the most impressive part to me. It could have just been a little joke, but they committed to it and in seeing it through they made something amazing. The lyrics are joking sometimes and the music is as overmetaled metal as you will ever hear, but you wouldn't want it any other way.

Anyway, I'm currently trapped on a metal tube that is burning dead plant matter to throw itself through the air at something like five hundred miles an hour, and the acompaniment could not be more awesome. I have to thank everyone involved in making this album, and want to thank Peter for alerting me to it's presence when it came out.

Croooooooooooow!
Matt

Franz Ferdinand - Franz Ferdinand

Franz Ferdinand - Franz Ferdinand

Published in 2004

Wikipedia

First off, I'm writing this on my iPod so if I say anything that is really crazy or completely doesn't make sense, the iPod decided to go crazy on me and I didn't notice.

Pangloss would have us believe that this is the best of all possible worlds, however, I would have to disagree with him on several points.  One the world has a lot of things that are not the best they could be, and two, in the best of all possible worlds Franz Ferdinand would be much more greatly rewarded for being fucking awesome.  Pangloss would then say, "ah, but because they aren't, poor people like you can actually go see their shows," to which I would eloquently and gracefully rebuke with a casual "shut your goddamned mouth." Also, Kings was cancelled, which not only proved months before the conan shit that NBC didn't know shit, but also proved that if god exists, he's a huge prick who takes the good tv shows away and leaves american fucking idol, although that sinking ship has rats fleeing the shit out of it.  Also, you should be watching Archer.

I was going somewhere with that. I think.

Anyway, to the album. It's jus a solid beautiful peice of work. The band is sharp, the lyrics are incredibly charged with sex and seductive quality, and the songs are tight and interesting. It's so good that I don't have a ton to say about it. This is an album to open your eyes to an interesting band who is trying to just simply make some great music.

This is some sexy music too. It's obvious to me that these guys are fully aware that the purpose of being in a hand is to be awesome and make girls go crazy. Making great music is the most direct path to their other goals, so they slam the music out, with a huge amount of character and style.

It kind of reminds me of Star Wars, and not that prequel crap.  The reason that A New Hope was good was because it opened up this different world where adventures could take place and the world was what drew you in. This album is the best kind of first album, because it makes you want to listen to the next one, just to see what else they can do in this musical space.

The analogy can go further. Tonight: Franz Ferdinand is another great album and is on the list for the future, much like The Empire Strikes Back follows and supercedes it's predecessor. You'll just have to read to see which FF album I think is better.

This is one of my go to albums when I just want to hear some good music. It's not paricularly long, nor particularly ambitious, but it is a pinnicle of it's particular musical space.

Anyway, no one to thank today, so thank you Franz Ferdiand.

Potato, let me finish, salad,
Matt

Coheed and Cambria - Second Stage Turbine Blade

Coheed and Cambria - Second Stage Turbine Blade

Published in 2002

Wikipedia

First off, I want to thank Zach's friend Luke, who probably doesn't even remember suggesting this album or who the fuck I am.  As the first person who I don't know personally to suggest an album, I want to say thank you and hope that you will leave a comment or something.

This was written on my iPod just so you know, so if there are any crazily innappropriate mistakes, that is why.  Well, not the ideas, if those are bad, that is all me.

Coheed and Cambria is a difficult band for me to get into and an even harder one for me to write about.  It is a study in contrasts. They play some awesome rock and roll. They obviously know how to make a catchy song. They really like playing their instruments. And they remind me of the best parts of Rush (and if you hate Rush, you've got a severe mental block against awesomely cheesey rock).

Then there is the other side of them. The side that chooses to do the looney tunes interlude, just like Dream Theater, but actually more out of place than in that album.  They have the 'whispery breathy deep voices talking over our songs is awesome and not stupid' weirdness that just doesn't turn me on at all. And then there is the Cousin Jerry effect.

I feel like a prick for doing this, but I feel like I have to.  This is what I picture in my head. Coheed and Cambria are sitting in the garage that they practice in, between epic d and d sessions and listening to progressive rock. Then momma C&C comes out into the garage and tells them that they need to include their Cousin Jerry in the band, because he is not having fun, and she won't take no for an answer.  Cousin Jerry doesn't have any musical ability per se, but he really really likes screamcore and really really is being forced into the band by mom. So Cousin Jerry becomes the guy who screams in the background, behind the choruses and shit and drives me up the goddamn wall.

Just when I am getting into a song, just when I really am enjoying it, fucking Jerry comes in and pops a blood vessel in his brain by screaming. The fucking song is so good and enjoyable and that prick comes in and ruins it. It sounds like someone is just attempting to piss me off. Through my ear. It sounds how I must imagine syphilis must feel when you are just trying to take a nice long satisfying piss.

I'm listening to it right now, and it just stresses me out. Fucking every other part of the band, I am a hundred percent behind. But that prick makes me wish that I had a time machine so I could go back to the studio and fucking cut his mic and slap him around a bit for inflicting that scream-y shit on me.

The amount of vitriol in this post is probably a little overboard but I really want to enjoy this album. I just want the whole to be more like 33 where they attempted to use harmony instead of just fucking yelling. This is a really good album and the band has a ton of talent. If they could just dump Cousin Jerry, this album would definately be not optional, but that is the price you pay when you make my ears bleed with stupid decisions. And yes, I realize that this is probably someone's favorite part of the band, and that this is just like, my opinion, man, but it really did drive me up the wall that much.

Anyway, thanks again to Luke and I hope he'll suggest more albums that I'll he a complete and utter prick about and spew a bunch more words about.  Once again, I want to say I liked everything else about this album, so if c&c got rot of that guy, give me that album, and I'll sing it's praises.

It's two hundred miles to Chicago, we've got a full tank of gas, half a pack or cigarettes, it's dark out and we're wearing sunglasses,
Matt

The Who - Who's Next

The Who - Who's Next

Published in 1971

Wikipedia

I'm writing this album project from my iPod, so if I mess anything up, that is why.  There are advantages and disadvantages to this approach. I have a four hour trip to Busan, South Korea, and if I can get some of these projects done on the trip, I'll not feel like a complete price of dirt.

However, there is the speed of typing issue, and catching up to these songs can be a bit hard. Especially when you are talking about a band as driving and great as The Who.

Who's Next is a classic for many reasons, and as a person who enjoys albums it's hard to not just gush all over it.  Listening to this album is like listening to your favorite classic rock station, because this is just a plain awesome classic album.

Interestingly, at least to me, it is not a incredibly hard album. I know, this was a simpler time, when a rock album could have things like feelings and ideas without being an emo scream cry whine fest.   What happened? Why did we leave this behind?  This classic has the same classic problem that most classics have, though, which is that it sounds a bit cliched. But, of course,  that is beacause it has been blatently ripped off and stolen from.

It's suprisingly gentle for a rock album. It's not about distruction and death, but it is about singing and finding. It's quiet and reflects some of their later experiments (ugh, nothing sounds as pretentious as saying 'experiments' when talking about music) with epic length stories and songs.  You never feel lostin these longer songs thoug, but whether that is because they stick to the formula well or because the quality of the songwriting leads you through the song.

I cannot tell if The Who are just an enigma or if they are actually what they appear to be.  What I mean is, are they actually as pensive as their songs would lead us to believe, or are they just trying to present themselves that way?  It's actually a question that I have about a lot of these classic albums.  Everyone says that the state of music has gotten simpler and dumber over the past 45? 50? years, and that when they were kids, the music used to mean something, man.  Which sounds like a huge load or bullshit to me, because some of these songs are very pedestrian in content, but would probably be hailed as 'better songwriting' than most of the modern music. I have a theory though.

What I think most influences a musical group is what is permissable in the culture surrounding us.  The role of the art, according to the eminent philosopher Douglas Adams said, is to hold up a mirror to the world and show it itself.  The world was less permissible in certain areas, so the band was reflecting a fundamentally different surface than the one that we see today. My point is not that The Who would be singing Linkin Park songs or something today, but that the classic rock that they perform is another form of nostalgia that we indulge in. We find the mirrors of the past to be smaller and easier to look at then he ones that are reflecting our own time, especially when we can see them as great.

This mirror is one of my favorite classic rock albums. Baba O'Riley and Won't Get Fooled Again are two songs that can bring the house down, no matter where yuu are, and even CSI: Miami cannot ruin that scream for me.  It's a moment of glorious anticipation, feinting and darting, coming up and finally satisfying you.  Much like this album.

Anyway, this is probably a not optional album, but the not optional nature is implied by it's classic nature.  I don't have anyone to thank for this one, so I'll just link you to the Seoul Survivors website www.survivorsrfc.com and tell you how it goes.

We all know Sanchez was a loose cannon,
Matt

Gorillaz - Plastic Beach

Gorillaz - Plastic Beach

Published - 10 minutes ago, 2010

Wikipedia

This one is going to be interesting.  I promise that I'll go fast.  I'm going fast because this is the first time that I've heard the album, and I kind of want to see what I can get out quickly while absorbing the music.  I'll probably come back to the Gorillaz at some point, because I love what they are doing, but this one is going to be all about the new one.

And I am literally listening to it right now.  The opening intro reminded me of the best parts of the Bioshock soundtrack, and we're opened into the "World of the Plastic Beach" by Snoop D O double G, which is always a good way to enter something.  As far as I can tell.  These two serve to show the eclectic styles that are going to be thrown into together.  A good solid intro.  However,

We're onto the next track now, and this motherfucking album is going to be on fucking fire for me.  We open with an orchestral intro, that is slowly developed and changed into the beat for some fucking flow.  Kano and Bashy, I bow down. It is an incredible start to what I hope to be an incredible album.  There is an amazing Middle Eastern style breakdown at the end of the song too.  Wild.

We've reached the next track, and here comes 2D, for the first really recognizable appearance.  This song, Rhinestone Eyes is a laid back dance track, a little down-tempo from Dare, but has a very nice late 70's feel to it.  This is a Gorillaz record.  It's not like anything else that you're going to hear this year.  A damn solid track.

Here we are, onto the big single, as far as I can tell from my perch across the Pacific.  Stylo is the only song on this disc that I have heard before, so I think I can process it better.  One: Go see the video.  I know that you guys love that new OK Go joint, but you should check out Stylo, just to see the new aesthetic that Gorillaz is working with.  Two, it's a weirdly downtempo joint, but I guess that is the style that they go for.  Just think a bit about Feel Good, Inc.  This song, however, is much more focused on the guests than FGI was.  It reminds me what sold them to me in the first place though.  As I said before, it's a completely different vibe than you'll hear on almost anything else.  I cannot name a band that in one album moves over more musical space.  

We're moving on to the next song, featuring the man himself, from FGI, De la Soul.  Another bumping rap track.  Superfast Jellyfish is some kind of crazy fast foodish advertising song.  What the fuck am I listening to?  This is amazing.  It's so different, I don't even know how to describe it.  It's a light poppy song that is also a bumping rap song.  So weird...

Aight next up, a song called Empire Ants.  You can really feel the beach theme coming through on the beginning of this one.  It sounds like one of those slow surf songs with the singing guitar.  Another slow track, a bit, God, do I say it out loud, Beach Boy-ish?  It sounds like that moment when the boardwalk closes in the evening right before a drizzle, when the beach is actually just a beach, and not just covered in ambient noise.  Then the track moves into a nightclub like dance track, which is sung by Little Dragon.  One thing that you need to realize about the Gorillaz is that they bring out great tracks because they work with great people.  I don't know who Little Dragon is, but I'm inclined to pick up their album just due to them working with Gorillaz.  

We're onto another track, one that sounds like a dubstep creation.  This album is full of songs that are just too weird to be described, and that is exactly what I love about the Gorillaz.  It takes so much to pay attention and listen to them that you're fully absorbed.  It might not be your cup of tea, but if you don't find at least one track on each album that you find fascinating, I think that you might not be real.  A lot of electronic distortion is used in this track, but it is not at the expense of music, but to make the music itself.  Very Dust Brothers.  Beautifully complex.

Jesus Christ!  It's Lou Reed!  From Walk on the Wild Side!  What the hell are you doing here Lou Reed?  Not that I am not appreciating it, but seriously, you've completely derailed my ability to write about this awesome song, because it just got like a 40 point bonus for having you on it.  I'm so incredibly psyched that Lou Reed is on a Gorillaz album.  I have nothing more to say about Some Kind of Nature other than if you don't listen to this album...

On Melancholy Hill is a haunting and beautiful track, that just sort of lasts.  It's beautifully simple and progresses wonderfully.  Listen to this album.  It'll do you some good.

Broken is another song that is a little slower, a little more beachy, than the other Gorillaz records.  However, the heartache vocals of 2D and the hurt that he expresses in his voice is pretty incredible.  The performances are quite amazing and wonderful.  This is a great slow walking, thinking album.  

Mos Def is a talented man.  In Sweepstakes he appears to be rapping over the most eclectic group of electronic instruments that will ever get together.  He's being distorted, changed, and burning the track up.  The sound is all encompassing, and slowly morphs into the sound of a big band playing the electronic instruments part.  This is giving me fucking goosebumps.  I write about music and try to give you some insight into my feelings about it and this is just too wild, I just don't know what I can say about it that won't make no sense to you.  This track will never be played in a DJ's set, and yet, it is the most incredibly fucking weird awesome mashed up wild song that I have heard in years.  Also, Mos Def just destroyed this album.  He fucking owned it completely, and that song is now over, and I don't even know where they go from here.

Now, we're onto the title track, Plastic Beach.  Another song that sounds a bit like a downtempo dance track.  However, I am enthralled.  I cannot turn my ears away, because I'm afraid that I am going to miss the next change and miss the next moment where it develops into another album entirely.  The chorus is amazingly beautiful and interesting.  I'm going to be obsessed with this album for a while after this.  

Another beachy track, called To Binge, featuring Little Dragon.  It's very pretty and I've been sitting back and just soaking up the song for the most of it.  So I'll be moving on quickly.  Very beautiful though.

Cloud of Unknowing is a lot like the two wrap up tracks of Demon Days.  If you like the sonic experimentation, and you want them to branch out, these are the kinds of tracks that you live for.  If you just want them to do more poppy stuff, this is going to be the part that might lose you.

Finally, we get to Pirate Jet, which is a bouncing track, somewhat reminiscent to me at least of Sgt. Pepper, where we hear the marching beat, and we've got the wrapping up of the message.  This is obviously an environmental record, but this is going to be a strange one for people to get into for that reason.  The music is just too good to overlook.  And they are playing some amazing tracks on this one too.

I'm going to write a brief conclusion, and save pontificating on the Gorillaz for later.  I want you to pick up this album.  This album is firmly in the Not Optional category.  If I had a category for Instant Classic, because I am reviewing it the day it came out in the US, this one would be all over it.  I'm listening to the bonus tracks at the moment, and I'm already hungry to get right back into the album.  I hope you'll pick it up, not because of my recommendation, but because you want to encourage artists to make new and interesting works, that draw you in and make you sit and consider them.  You so rarely get artist that constantly are expanding and trying new things, that we need to encourage them.  

I know that I have been quiet on the blog front recently, but fear not, more Album Projects are on the way.  I'm having trouble getting them off my iPod at the moment, but I have a bunch cued up on that.  

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed my liveish blog of this one, and go pick up the album.

Listen up, and listen like crazy,

Matt

Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin IV

Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin IV

Published in 1971

Wikipedia

Welcome back to TAP: Classics, where we expand your mind, body, and soul by writing literally hundreds of words about albums that almost everyone has already heard and given consensus that it is awesome and add our two cents to that amazingly large pile of money that has accumulated, stacking upon itself on list after list of best album evars and top rock and roll albums, and whatever else you think of.

I have to say, I'm not actually that excited to talk about Led Zeppelin IV here.  First, about what I am calling it, I know that the album doesn't officially have a name, so I have decided to go with the common convention and just call it Led Zeppelin IV.  But the real reason that I am not that excited to talk about it is because this is one of the grounds that has been tread over and over by people, and it's obvious what the strengths and weaknesses are of this album.  If you hate Stairway to Heaven, you will hate this whole album.  It has a real JRR Tolkien, Lord of the Rings, fantasy vibe to it, and if that is not your cup of tea, then this will not be the cup of tea for you.

However, I promised that I would pump out some words about this album, so I'm going to.  I think that the way in here is the difference between digital media and analog media, and how the switch has made some interesting and strange changes to what we call an album today.

Ever since I was pretty young, there has been an optical data storage and retrieval system.  What this means is that the whole thing is based on a piece of round plastic being spun around at a pretty quick pace with a laser sweeping across it.  The system was created to hold a great deal more information on a bit by bit level than an  analog data storage and retrieval system.  This system traditionally was used in two areas.  One, computer data storage, where a magnetic tape was run forwards and backwards in a programmed sucession to retrieve data, preceded by punched cards that were just a very early optical storage system.  Two, audio storage, which also used magnetic tape for a while, which moved a tape over a magnetic head which read the bits and converted them to audio, which was preceded by a thing called a record.

A record is an interesting thing.  It's a round bit of pressed plastic with a continuous groove running in a spiral from the inside to the outside.  (Anyone older than me is rolling their eyes at this description, anyone younger is rolling their eyes at how stupid this was.)  The groove was pressed to different depths, and was traced over by a needle, which was set vibrating by the grooves, and produced sound on the other end.  This was the technology for a really really really surprisingly long time. Just to be clear, the first time this technology was used, a guy named Thomas Edison shouted his favorite nursery rhyme into it, and played it back.

The record is amazingly better than it's predecessor though.  The predecessor was a thing that took in large amounts of energy, could completely go off the chart, was highly inconvenient to pack up and carry, required free drinks at parties, and cared how you looked at it when it played funny.  These were called live people, and while they are really good for parties, they were somewhat inconvenient at parties, especially when there were limited amounts of drinks.  I'm not saying that a good party can't have a live band, but these considerations must be put into ones mind.

The record had some drawbacks too though.  For it's orders of magnitude better portability, it was somewhat limited by the fact that it could only play the songs that were on it at that time, and couldn't change any of the songs.  It was also pretty weak against water and fire based attacks (seriously, a pokemon joke, oh my god, I want to shoot myself for that one), and, in fact, it wasn't all that portable.  It took a lot of them to have a wide variety of songs, two turntables to keep them going constantly, and we're always getting scratched or fucked up by drunk friends (or so I hear, and am told by movies).

The format is to have a certain length of time on one side, followed by a certain length of time on the other side.  These two grooves are unchanging, and they play the same songs every time, only changing with the wear on the record.  The analog interaction between needle and record slowly wore away the fineness of the grooves over time, and gave the tones an interesting, warm sound that is desirable to many people.

Why am I talking about this in association with Led Zeppelin IV?  Because this is a record on which you can hear the two distinct sides, even today.  The first four songs are one side, and the second four songs are the other side.  They are carefully picked and put together that way, and it makes sense for them to go in that order.  The record has a natural ebb and flow and a very natural division.  I think it speaks to the difference in thought between a record, which is naturally two sided, and a cd, which is a one sided, front to back affair.  If you want to draw something on one side of a piece of paper, it's all there, there is no need to look at the other side, but to make one side flow into the other side takes skill and dedication.  

This is a great album, one that should be listened to.  Stairway must have been an amazing experiment at the time, because it is hard to not joke about it now.  It's a moving interesting record, from Black Dog, all the way through When the Levee Breaks.  It has many blues and rock influences, and is obviously an influence for a lot of bands to come.  But it is mostly, in my mind, a demonstration in the fact that making a record and making a cd are different processes, and have a different goal in a lot of ways.  Maybe the amount of data that is given to the producers of music is not a more is better proposition, but that more is more.  

Anyway, it's something to think about.  I want to thank Led Zeppelin for giving me a context to talk about all of this in, and you for reading it.  Also, I want to put the call out for more albums.  If this project is going to go for five days a week for however long it goes, I need two albums a week from the masses.  I'm covered for the next couple of weeks, but some more suggestions and more variation is always a good thing.

Next time, Gadget, Next time.

Matt

Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca

Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca

Published in 2009

Wikipedia

First off, thanks to Kari for the suggestion of the album.  I'm doing my housekeeping on the blog while I am listening to it, but I can already tell that this is going to be a weird album to write up, which explains your insistence that I do it.  I hope that I live up to your very high expectations.

So, I'm listening to the album right now, as I am writing this, which is the usual way for me to write these things.  I described this to someone I was recently talking to as just playing the music and letting the words that come to me just come out.  I kind of just freestyle these posts, and whatever comes out, I just let go.  If it is over a sentence back, I'm usually just letting it go, and trying to move onto the next thought.  Usually I try to make the sentence my level of editing, because if I keep going over and over the words that I write down, I'll never publish them.  There is another reason though, which is that I am trying to process something that is inside time.

When I think about time inside the concept of music, there are several layers that I think about.  First, the time that it takes just to blankly listen to an album.  For example, today's album is, according to wikipedia, forty-one minutes, eight seconds long.  This is 'real time'.  The meatspace time that is embedded in the drive inside of my iPod to play the music.  Second is song time.  Each song is a boundary inside of that larger album time. There was a conscious decision to break the album down into those segments, and therefore it is an important boundary condition to think about in those cases too.  If there is a song that is too short in my opinion, it's because I thought there was more that they could develop, so I wonder why they cut it off in that time.  If there is a song that was too long, I felt that it was done developing, and just was making me bored.  The third layer is the actual notes, and the actual rests, and the spaces and sounds that make up the album.  The fourth and most important layer of time to me though, is the perception of time while inside the album.

Let me talk about that fourth layer a bit.  Sometimes, you hear an album and you know how long it is.  You know that it will take you that album long to get to work, or to school, or to read a certain amount in a book. It's the concept of being 5 minutes away from something.  It's never precisely 5 minutes away, but everyone knows the distance that '5 minutes away' encompasses.  Sometimes, you hear an album, and you know that it is going to take way more time than the actual time.  You know that your life is going to be encompassed by it, and you will not be able to get anything done in that stretch of time.  Sometimes, an album is far too short, and you wish that you could be inside of it for longer.  But this is only because you perceive the album to be too short.

I'm thinking about this right now, because from song one in this album, I haven't gotten a hold on how I feel about the time on this album.  I can already tell that I am going to listen to this album over and over, and try to understand it more and more.  It's indie rock, but it's not indie rock.  It's classical, but it's not classical.  The voices are spectacular.  I'm not being hyperbolic, they are actually spectacles.  The music takes place in the first three layers of time, but the last one is still unfixed for me.  I'm not sure 'how long' it's going to take me to listen to this album.  With each break in the second layer, I find myself getting a new impression of how this time is going to be broken up.  I find it completely engrossing.

I'm trying to think of how I would describe this album to someone who had never heard it before.  If you are actually listening to the album at the moment, you'll understand how hard it is for you to do this.  At the moment, I'm listening to Useful Chamber, and it just had a beat break in the middle of a orchestral section of a song.  This isn't just experimenting with sounds, but somehow composing the sounds into some wild thing that is inexplicable.  Chimera rock maybe?

Yeah, I like that.  I know that it is actually pretty stupid to box this kind of album into any sort of category, but I think this might be the most apt description for it.  It's not just rock music, but it is some sort of strange hybrid of rock, pop, orchestral jazz, and electronic... and more.  The idea of a chimera is the fusion of several creatures into one cohesive whole, that has all the advantages of the old creatures, with none of the weaknesses.  Bitte Orca is a Chimera Rock album.

It's unfortunate that I can't talk and listen to this album with you right now, oh dear reader, because I feel like I'd be able to talk about it much more than I can write about it.  But we are all trapped to the medium we choose, so I'm going to try to describe it to you.

I can't tell you what my favorite song is, yet, but I can tell you that Useful Chamber is the one that I would use to introduce the album to people.  I really liked the way that the break beat was used, and the reentry into a large choral section with voices clashing was interesting.  The use of vocal harmony in each song is incredible, and the sound of two people singing the same line at the same time is an incredible effect.  The motion in the songs is readily apparent, and the voices are compelling and dynamic.  If you've never heard a Dirty Projectors album, I'd compare it to the Arcade Fire, but even that is a lacking comparison.

This is an album that is going to take up a lot of my Meatspace time, I can already tell.  The fact that I am listening to it for the third time in a row right now, is a pretty good indication of that.  Usually I start writing after the first listen through, and then finish towards the middle or end of the second, maybe beginning of the third, but it's rare.  I've been listening to this three times straight, started writing during the first one, and am trying to finish during the third one, and I couldn't write during the second listen through.

There's that time thing again.  This album is making my time screw up.

Okay, I have a bit of a critical thing to say here, but you should take it with the grain of salt that I am about to give you.  This album is not for everyone.  You need to be able to look outside the edge of your usual tastes, and work hard to try to just let the album wash over you.  If you are trying to understand it, or trying to get everything in one listen, you're going to be disappointed.  It's not an album that you're going to want to be active for, but an album that should be your sole focus and attention for the whole of it's time. Some people will find it really pretentious and trying way too hard to be weird, but I think that if given the chance, most people will see it as a beautiful album of strange songs, as opposed to a weird album of strange songs.  This was an experience, listening to it for the first couple of times.

Anyway, thanks again to Kari, and I hope you're happy that I did it now.  I'm glad I was given a reason to listen to this, and I think that without your influence I would have never gotten around to it.  So, if any of you out there reading have a suggestion that will open my mind, please, please, please give it to me.  Also, please give me some non indie-rock suggestions, because I like those too.


Phil, grappling with the cold reality of death, has no pithy rejoinder,
Matt

Justin Timberlake - FutureSex/LoveSounds

Justin Timberlake - FutureSex/LoveSounds

Published 2006

Wikipedia

I have a confession to make.  I unabashedly love Justin Timberlake.  We're going to get married on top of a mountain and you're not invited.  I think that he is actually a pretty good artist, and he makes pop songs that are not rivaled today by anybody.

Yeah, I'm a bitch.  I know.  I don't like Metallica, but I love Justin Timberlake.  I have no reason for why that is, other than this record.

First off, this was the first full pop record that actually was interesting to me.  As a proud owner of a model 1989 little sister, I've experienced all pop music through her.  I've listened to way more Spice Girls than I care to remember, I remember LFO being huge in her mind, and I remember every variation on the boy band, including 98 Degrees, Backstreet Boys, N*Sync, O-town, and every other boilerplate fucking mass produced mass market pop act from the late 90s and early 00s.  I didn't listen to pop radio, but my sister did, and that was how I kept up with the craziness therein.

It was a time of great eye-rolling when I had my licence and my sister didn't, and we were in the car together. At every commercial break on the other's station, we would punch the preset button for our station, and listen to it till they did the same.  We remarkably agree on a lot of music now, but before, she thought that I listened to rock too much and that it was crap, and I thought she listened to pop too much, and that it was bullshit.  But now, I think we see eye to eye on a lot more stuff, and I hope she reads this.  It's been interesting to hear her perspective on music, coming from what was the same basic background as me, but developing taste differently.

Anyway, this was the first album that actually let me listen to pop music, and allowed me to realize that just because it was usually bullshit music, it can be fun.  These songs are, for the most part, fun and poppy and romantic.  I mean, the whole first half of the album are great dance songs, that anyone can feel the beat to, and you can get down with all of them.  Sexyback, while nowhere near as revolutionary as the radio claimed when it came out, is a really really really solid dance song, that is well outside the R&B core of Mr. Timberlake's earlier work.  His first album Justified, was a good album, punctuated by great songs.  This album is the other way, a great album with one song that just fails to be as good as the rest.

Yes, Justin Timberlake wrote a song about a methhead.  It's interesting that he felt enough to write the song, and it's commendable that he felt enough to write the song, however, I think that it is the albums low point, by about a mile.  It's just difficult to hear this sweet little R&B voice singing about how hard addiction was, and how he had lost his way.  I understand that it was something that was important to him, but I just think it feels so out of place on this album that it's difficult for me not to just skip the song.

But after that down note, let's just talk about the greatness that is the rest of the album.  And it is the rest of the album.  Justin, for the most part, at least tries to play around with the pop song formula.  Instead of being exactly the same song, over and over, with the same breaks and choruses, he tries to vary it up, using distinctly hip-hop beats produced by Timbaland.

Now, this is a producers album more than anything else.  It's not remarkable for the writing, and the performing is rote, but the way that the sounds develop and change, it becomes more and more about the beat and the music that is backing up the frontman.  Justin Timberlake is a multitalented performer, and he can do quite a lot with his voice.  He works really hard on making every song his own, and he seems very comfortable in the role that he is playing in this album.  However, every track is heavily influenced by the production, and Timbaland and Danja deserve a great deal of credit for making this album not sound like some basic pop album.

But fuck it right?  Let's just give credit where credit is due.  This is a dance album.  It has some amazingly complex beats, and if you can think of a better mid song transition than in LoveStoned/I Think That She Knows, I'd love to hear about it.  I'm going to be a fan of Justin Timberlake because of the team that has put this album together, and his ability to actually entertain.  I'm sure that he would never live up to the fun guy that I have in my head, because who could, but I really want him to keep making records like this, where the experiment is the fun.

Anyway, thanks again to me, for suggesting that I write a love letter to Justin Timberlake. Hope that you all enjoy calling me gay in the comments, and I will take it with the proper shame that I should, you hipster douchebag, metalhead, or whatever else I can say.
Just wait till I do David Bowie,
Matt

The Beatles - The Beatles (The White Album), Jay-Z - The Black Album, Dangermouse - The Grey Album

The Beatles - The Beatles

Produced in 1968

Wikipedia 

Jay-Z - The Black Album

Produced in 2003

 Wikipedia 

Danger Mouse - The Grey Album

    Produced in 2004

      Wikipedia 

So, before I get to first off, so zero off, you're right, I'm crazy.  If I were attempting to do this on Thursday night, I'd be a psychotic person, who wants to disappoint you.  However, I have discovered the secret to a blog updating on time is to create a great deal of backlog before you get to something that you actually want to go pretty deep into.  So every Friday or maybe every other Friday, I'm going to write a longer piece.  Sometimes it will be like this one, a breakdown of a couple of albums.  Sometimes it will be something weird like what I wrote about Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix.  Sometimes it'll just be a regular album project that's been extended because I decided to write a bunch of words about a particular album.  This is my own admission that I am a wildcard, and any regular production is as beyond me as making the music that I am writing all these words about.  Unless somebody needs someone to be in their band.  Then I'm going to be the next John Lennon and McCartney at the same time.  Also, if any of the artists listed here are googling themselves and come across my blog, I'm a huge fan, and hope that you enjoy everything I say.  And if you don't, I got you to read my blog, so please, please leave a comment or something, and call me an ass if you think I'm an ass.  I'll take it as the biggest compliment of my life.  Seriously.  

Okay, now that I've explained myself... (and apparently lost all 'journalistic integrity' that would have existed if I was a journalist and I hadn't written something like 400 variations on the word Fuck on this blog already).

First off, as usual, I have to thank someone for the suggestion.  Luckily, this time, I only have to give him one third of the credit, however, he gave me the seed of the idea back, some five months ago, and threatened to go on hunger strike if I didn't write it.  So he's a lot thinner now, is what I'm saying.  So, Brian, I must thank you for giving me this idea, and suggesting The Beatles - The Beatles to me.  You're right, it's awesome.

I'm not exactly sure how to structure this essay.  I want to look at each original album as it's own work, but I actually think that the order in which they influenced me might be a more interesting way to look at it.  Did you know, that for someone who loves music as much as I do, and may well be addicted to it, I had never heard the full The Beatles before I came to college?  Did you know that Jay-Z's Black Album was exactly the first Rap album that I ever bought and listened to?  I had it on CD in my car, and would listen to it a lot.  Did you know that The Grey Album was the first Danger Mouse production that I ever heard, like most people, but influenced me into buying Gnarls Barkley's first CD on the first day it came out?  Did you know that I expected the answer to all of these questions to be why are you asking these questions?

Okay, it's time to get a bit serious.  I need to switch away from Wolfgang Amadeus Pheonix on my itunes.  By the way, I need to mention that that album is not optional.  If you aren't listening to it or one of the three albums I am talking about today, you should be.

I mean, lets go down the list.  We have a classic band, at or near the top of their game, putting out a double record that has been highly influential and is still interesting to this day.  We have the self proclaimed king of rap, with what was going to be his retirement album, trying to go out on top, also at the top of his game.  And we have an upstart young producer, who, due solely to his skill as a producer, used the previous two to make a form of art that may actually define our modern culture. More on that soon.

The Beatles - The Beatles is a classic record, but one that presents very different sides of a band.  It's an incredibly wide array of strange and psychedelic songs intermixed with straight up rock songs with dashes of country, and Revolution 9, which is a punctuation mark on how weird it is.  I can't really think of another band that has done such a strange mix and spread in one album.  Over his whole career, maybe, and I sincerely doubt it, Elvis Costello might be coming close to maybe getting near the spread of this album.  That is how big and all encompassing the album is.  

It's a strange album to listen to, because it is one that shows exactly who is writing which songs, and the strange result of the mixing of the two leads ends up creating some great stuff.  However, it is obviously the record that shows the seams that were developing in the Beatles at the time, and it's actually pretty strange to hear.  If you can't find a song that you love on this album, you aren't a human being with ears.  If you want high quality pop, Back in the USSR is for you.  If you love psychedelic rock, I give you Glass Onion.  If you just love good songs, While My Guitar Gently Weeps is for you.  It covers such a range, it is difficult to even classify it in any certain genera or even if there is cohesion in the album.  It's a difficult record, interestingly, for me to listen to all the way through.  I keep wanting to go to certain tracks, and listen to the ones that I love as opposed to the ones that I just like.  This might be the Album that I like least as a whole album, and more as a collection of songs.

However, the songs are so good, that maybe having the ones that I just like in there helps me.  I just don't really know what to do with some of them.  Revolution 9 is a perpetual problem for me.  It's eight minutes, thirteen seconds long, according to my Ipod.  And it is an interesting experiment. But for some reason, I just have problems with it.  I want to get into it, and come to see it as an interesting and valuable addition to the record, but it's just impenetrable.  I can't seem to find the edge to get into it.  

I guess what I am trying to say is that the White Album is a great album, but somewhat inconsistent as a flowing record or as a whole.  It has peaks and valleys, which is normal on a record, but the experimentation sometimes goes to far for me.  I love the core of this album, and it is of course a genuine classic, but I still have problems with parts of it.  Actually a pretty apt description of my feelings for it, is the same as my feelings about Dream Theater.  This is one of those central puzzles to the Beatles, and as a person who likes to figure out puzzles, I need to be better versed in the base of the Beatles before I can get to wrapping my brain around it.

Moving on to the second album of the day, Jay-Z's Black Album is an incredibly introspective rap record.  Weirdly introspective for a genera that is exemplified by his earlier works, which are about money, guns and women.  Jay-Z is a rapper who is either the smartest guy in the business, or he is the one who is best at faking it.  The man knows how to talk about himself in a way that makes you feel for him, and he can actually do some incredible word smithing.  If you have never seen him lay down a track on video, it's a surprisingly simple progression.  He goes in, he lays down the track, then he's done.  I don't think I've ever seen him with a pen and a pad, he just speaks in these incredibly long, memorized passages, that just come out of his mouth.  It's a gift, as far as I can tell.  

This was a CD that I kept in my car for a very long time.  I don't know why I liked it so much, but looking back, I was in an introspective time in my life.  It was the middle years of high school, I was sort of feeling out the kind of person that I wanted to be, which if it isn't obvious, or you don't know me that well, I'm still in that phase.  It was a time when I really wanted to listen to new things, and try things that I hadn't done before, and I heard about this incredible rap album that came out.  I bought it soon after, and my complicated relationship with rap began.

And I really do mean began.  I had never really listened to a ton of rap, other than, to my eternal shame, on Limp Bizkit albums, but since I'm not 12 and pissed off anymore, most of the time, I moved on from those guys.  I knew that there was a big genera out there that I was missing, except for certian acts that got played on the rock stations, Beastie Boys, I'm looking at you.  And while I love me some Beasties, whenever I heard rap, it was this immature, weirdly lifeless music.  Not to say that it wasn't good in a certain light, I mean, you could dance to it, and you could get some really incredible music out of it, but to do that you had to ignore the inane crazy shit over top of it.  And I think that this feeling is one that is perpetrated by the radio/single way of releasing albums.  Even the singles off the Black Album are pretty club banger tracks, pre-made to fit into a rap block in a club.  They're well produced, broad tracks.

Speaking of which, let's talk about 99 Problems.  1. It was a crossover success.  I heard about the record because of this song.  Once again, it's actually a deep song, that is all about the choices that someone can make in certain situations.  It's surprising because the idea is that it was intelligence that got him out of the situations.  I also think that I am contractually obligated to mention that Rick Ruben is awesome, just for mentioning this song, so Rick Ruben is awesome.  Can I move on?

The Black Album seems to be an attempt to wrap up a career in one album.  It is a consistently good, interesting album, punctuated with some great songs.  It's an album that really allows a great talent to breathe and make something that is both deeply personal and commercially viable.

The last album is the one that I think I'm going to talk about the most, and the reason for grouping these three albums together.  I think that the Grey Album's impact is still being felt out, and that it is going to be seen as one of those albums that punctuated a changing shift in the production of a certain kind of music.

The Grey Album is a concept album.  Jay-Z, in an incredibly interesting move, that had been done before, but not with such a huge album, released a vocal version of his album, and said, do with it what you will.  This was at the same time that a strange new thing became popular, called the mash up.  The Mash up is a mixing of two independent songs to make a new song that reflects the best parts of each of the original songs.  So Jay-Z just gave his album and his implicit blessing to the world to make something new.

This is where Danger Mouse comes in.  I've already told about how I really respect him, and am always impressed by his style and work.  I actually have never heard a song of his that I didn't find intriguing, and there is only one that I've heard that I actually don't like that much.  I think that Lucifer on this album was just too much of the auteur and not enough of the conductor.  It just seemed too easy.  I'm going to keep my commentary short on this album because I want to talk more about the state of music and it's influence on culture with regard to this album.  I will say right now, that I think this is a great album, worth listening to, and other than my one track that I don't like that much, it's really an incredibly cool way of using both of the source materials.  You will listen to both of the original albums differently after this album, because some of the hooks get incorporated so well that you cannot seperate them out.  When a beat comes out of one of the songs on the white album, you hear it, you hear the phrase, and Jay's voice sometimes.  It's a pretty incredible feat.

There is a great deal of analysis about what songs were used to create the beats, and there has been a ton of press about how it is a new experiment.  What I really want to to talk about is the way that this album reflects the culture that we have at the moment.  Our generation, whatever the hell that means, is being referred to as the 'look at me' generation by the news media more and more, and while I don't agree that we are in any way more attention seeking than any other generation, I think that the ability to produce things that everyone can look at in many ways has changed the way that we think about property and ownership.

The system used to be something like this.  You are a musical artist.  You play small shows, get your name out there, then are approached by a manager, who books shows for you.  Then you get an album contract, and a big advance from the record label, for that record.  Then you become an indentured servant to the record company, working off the debt of the advance for the rest of your natural born life, unless you get lucky, in which case you can do whatever you like.  The pyramid is that there are a lot of bands just playing gigs, less who are label artists, and then less who are successful, non indentured servants.

But now, the system is shaking.  It's becoming easier and easier to get a quality recording in your own studio, make your album available digitally, build a fan base through that, release the album without a label, or do some other version.  There hasn't been a purely successful digital artist without any sort of label support, as far as I can tell, but there are hints of these projects that are privately funded without the intervention of a label.  The business model that was once so strong is starting to fail, because of the shift of power to a lower level.

I'm not sure how it is all going to shake out, but the Grey Album is the first album that came out digitally that was almost just a resume.  Danger Mouse is an artist more than he is a producer, and he has always stated that what he wants to do is create art more than creating a product.  He continues to be at the forefront of musical experimenting, whether he is playing the Odd Couple completely backwards, or replacing Paris Hilton's albums with a mix of her saying inane shit to a beat.  He is now in the business, and is much more of an insider than he was, but I still watch his moves because you never know what is going to come out of it.

Culturally, we're in an interesting place where everyone has publishing rights, as long as you have access to a computer and some money.  In the First World, that means that fame is one viral video away, and that you can become famous for doing nearly everything.  Whether this opens up new opportunity for talented people or makes the whole idea of being famous a larger and less interesting group, is sort of up to you.  I'm interested to see if the freedom of information is actually good for us or bad for us, because I have a feeling that is going to be the big question for the next decade or so.

Anyway, I want to thank Brian again.  I hope that I did the albums justice, even though I know that I didn't.  If you want to discuss it more with me, talk to me in the comments, and if you think I am totally wrong about all none or any of this, I really want to hear it.  I'm not sure if I've reached a conclusion on this, but I'm very interested in others opinions.

If you can read this, you don't need glasses,

Matt

The B-52s - The B-52's

The B-52s - The B-52's

Published 1979

Wikipedia

I love my mom.

I could end this whole post right here, and she'd know exactly what I was going to say in the next parts, but I won't.  I won't because I love you, other people than my mom.

If you know my mom, you know exactly how awesome she is.  And I expect the comments to be all about how awesome my mom is.  If you don't know my mom, you should get to know me better, so maybe - MAYBE - I'll introduce you.

The reason I bring up how much I love my mom and how awesome my mom is because this is one of our favorite albums to listen to together.  So, this post is going out to my mom.  I'm half a world away, but I'm still fucking psyched to hear 'There is a moon in the sky, it's called the moon" and know that if you were hearing it at the same time, you'd be going crazy.  You didn't pick this album, but you gave birth to me, and that has to count for all of my good actions.  So this one is for you Berla, and thank you for getting me into the B-52s.  Oh, and KC and the Sunshine Band is going on the list too.

I think you can already tell that I love this album, but it wasn't until recently that I figured out why I love this album.  From an early age, I was conditioned to like things that were Ironic, and slightly sarcastic, but loved the things that they were mocking.  This was conditioned into me by my favorite, and second best TV show ever, Mystery Science Theater 3000, my family's sense of humor (which is Irony bathed in Sarcasm, wrapped in a incredible amount of rage burrito) and the B-52s.  I think that one of the greatest compliments that I can give to the B-52s is that you have heard every song on this album before, and you have never heard anything like it ever in your life before.  It's every 1960's Scifi/Beach Themed/Monster Movie/Party song given a completely new treatment.  From the first song's intro you should be entranced in this fucking crazy world that they live in.

Mystery Science Theater really is the perfect vehicle for talking about this album.  One of the reasons that I never got into Cheap Seats, or even Rifftrax as much as I got into MST3K is because there was something sweet and innocent about the mocking that they did on MST3K.  I don't mean that it wasn't biting, and interesting, and very smart, but it was obvious that they had such a great appreciation for terrible, bad movies, that they subjected themselves to multiple watchings, and they loved the idea of just inviting you into their world with them for two hours.  I swear, nothing on that show was done out of any sort of actual outrage, but because they loved the idea of those movies so much.  The B-52s do the same thing with the music.  It's surf rock/scifi goodness.  The lyrics are crazy and out there.  The music is repetitive and fun.  It's music that you just want to get up and dance to.  They put so much time in lovingly crafting these tributes to these weird musical forms that only existed for a second, and just fucking nail them every time.

"Why don't you dance with me? I'm not no limburger!"  If that doesn't make you giggle a bit, you need to loosen up a bit.  I really want to tell you that you shouldn't even be reading this if you haven't experienced the album for yourself.  The vocals are off the charts good.  Across the board, they are constantly making interesting weird sounds, making up words, playing around.  It's a brilliant, awesome album.  The music is simple, but if you've ever seen Horror at Party Beach, a personal favorite, you know how simple the music they are giving tribute to.

I've been doing a lot of listing of classics on here in the past few days.  I already listed the classics for this album when I posted the wikipedia.  Every single track is driving and just totally different.  You need to hear this album, putting it squarely in the non optional category.  "Rock Lobster" the greatest 60's horror movie never made, "Hot Lava" the best song to ever have "knock you in the head, kick you in the head" as a lyric in a love song, "Planet  Claire".  Even their cover of "Downtown", in my opinion, should be known as the definitive version, just because they do it in the most broken down, weird way possible.

I don't really know what else to say.  If you don't love this album, you have a serious neurological disorder.  It's so fucking campy and weird and great, that it's hard for me to even think that there might be someone who doesn't like it out there.  But hey, some people don't like fun, and will preside over fun's funeral.  

Anyway, to wrap this up.  I love you and miss you Berla, and I hope you put this album on and enjoy it.  And when I get back to the states, we'll listen to it while we're driving somewhere, and scream about the moon in the sky, not being no limberger, a dogfish chased by a catfish, 6060-842, and the rest of these crazy lyrics.

Pink Floyd - The Dark Side of the Moon

Pink Floyd - The Dark Side of the Moon

Published in 1973

Wikipedia

I know, I know.  It's so easy.  It's one of those albums everybody likes.  It's that album that everyone says will 'change the way that you hear music'.  It's like shooting fish in a barrel.  Even people who don't like music that much will enjoy Dark Side.  My mom listened to it in High School.  You're taking the easy way out, Matt.

I hate to say it, but the voices in my head up there are all right.  This is in no way an edgy or relatively unknown pick.  In fact, you could say that it is one of the most common albums to ever grace a best of list.  I know some people think that it is over-rated, and some think that those people 'just don't get the music, man.'  I will say this, in defense of the over-rated crowd, this isn't the second coming of Jesus Christ in album form, however, in the defense of the people who 'get the music' I can't think of many albums that are better.  From an objective standpoint.  I mean, personal albums, the ones that mean something to me, those are untouchable.  But in terms of interesting, facinating music, that is a joy and pleasure to listen to, it's going to be my goal of finding those in my brand new feature!

This is the first entry in what I'm going to call Classic Wednesdays.  When I first put out the call for Albums, I requested that it would be someone's favorite album.  This was a good system, and I liked it.  It meant that I got to listen to a bunch of newerish music, and could really get inside some of my good friends picks.  I like that method, however, it meant that I was listening to a bunch of incredibly new works all at once.  Which makes it very hard to not be comparing one to another.  It also means that I am investing somewhere between 2-3 hours on a single piece and then 2-3 hours on a totally new one.  I was able to pump out 7-8 entries in a couple of days, because I knew some of the albums enough to actually just sit down and listen to it.  I'm going to try to intersperse albums that I know well, or that everyone knows well, or regular classics that I should know well, so that I can increase the time between having to listen to new, pay attention carefully music, and great, excellent, but I've heard it before music.  If you have any suggestions for Classics that you want to see me talk about, please suggest some in the comments.

So, The Dark Side of the Moon.  As a classic album, I've known for a long time that this is one of those albums that really changed the face of music.  It's one of the albums that everyone has heard, and everyone has really liked.  So I'm not really going to talk about the way I feel about the album, however, I will talk about the way that I came to be a part of the group that enjoys the album.  I took a kind of strange road to liking the album, and I think that is actually the more interesting story.

My whole life, I've been an alternative rock kid.  I don't really know why.  I think it has something to do with my dad being in a rock band, and the fact that we listened to a ton of rock and roll in the car.  I never really got into pop music, because I was, at the age of five, proclaiming that Rock the Casbah was the greatest song of all time, because it had laser noises, and the Clash would be my favorite band forever.  I believe I told that to my Kindergarden Teacher.  So it's suprising to find out that I didn't ever actually listen to the whole of this album until my Junior year.  Of college.

What can I say?  I mean, I'd heard Time and Money, of course.  I'd liked everything I've heard.  I'd listened to bits and pieces of Dub Side of the Moon, a future album project candidate.  I knew everything about the album that one could without actually listening to it.  I just figured that I had actually heard all of it, and that I just wasn't that interested in it.  Until my junior year, I just never really thought about it.  I downloaded it, and I'd listen to parts, but it never really caught fire for me.

So, cut to junior year, interior, 73 MD ave, my room, recently renovated by having Clint Richardson's head put through a wall, wrestling on an air mattress that was damaged beyond repair by the incident,  I was bored, hanging out, smoking hookah in the room, and on a whim, I turned on the album.  No, the hookah had no pot in it.  No, there was nothing else going on really.  I just sat there, at my computer, smoking slowly, and listening to the album.  I wasn't overwhelmed, or overcome with a great deal of emotion by it.  I just felt, for the first time with that particular album, "Ah-ha."  I finally got it.  I finally had sat down and listened to it, and it actually had gotten through to me.  When the album finished, I just started it over again, and sat, listened and thought.

This is not an experience that you can have with just any album.  I have had a bunch of experiences with albums that I downright disliked on the first listening that grew and grew as I listened to them more and more. I've had albums that I immediately thought were the greatest, and only get better with age.  I've had albums that were so linked with a moment in time that I can't even hear them without the connection of the events that I heard the song in.  This was the musical equivalent of a good friendship.  You just end up finding that thing or that person that you connect with, without needing to work for it, or try to find it.  It just makes sense at that moment, and you know that no matter what, that person or thing will always be there for you, without regard for the distance between or the shit that happens.

After that moment, of course, I became the idiot who listens to it over and over, trying to find something deeper or more exciting or more interesting, and of course, had to tell people how amazing it was.  I wish that I hadn't done that actually.  I think that the album should be discovered the way that I discovered it, as a personal thing that you can just find on your own.  I can understand why I did it, and why people talk it up after they hear it for the first time, but this isn't something that you have to be forced to listen to, it's something that speaks to you as you go along, without the need for forcing it.

Anyway, I should thank a couple of people for this post, even though it was an unsuggested album.  First off, I need to thank Peter for starting his blog, which you can find here.  I considered it a shot across the bow, and I think that without his inspiration, this blog would have died an uninspiring death.  Second, Sam Porter should get a shout out, for being one of the people who talked with me a lot about Dark Side, and made my fandom somewhat acceptable.  And Micah Beck is the other side of that coin, who would just listen, smoke, and play Civ IV in my room with me.

Oh, we all know Sanchez was a Loose Cannon!
Matt