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

Metallica - Ride The Lightning

Metallica - Ride the Lightning

Published 1984

Wikipedia

First off, of course, let me thank Tommy Clark for her suggestion of this album.  I'll be rolling around to some of your other suggestions when I can, and keep you up to date when I do.

Metallica should be my favorite band.  They should be, but they aren't.  It's actually been one of those weird questions that haunts the back of my mind when I think about music, why I actually find Metallica pretty pedestrian and mediocre.  I like the album, I like the songs, I like the sound, I just never really got into them as a band.  This is one of those albums that a lot of people feel passionately about, especially two of my best friends, so it's weird that I don't like it as an album.

Let me be clear, if I were about to go do something awesome, I'd want to listen to Metallica.  They have a way with being fucking awesome, and play some awesome songs.  They're like the Scorpions, but not a joke (and I fucking love Rock You Like a Hurricane).  They have obviously influenced a ton of bands that I love.

Remember when I said, just down below this post, how mature My Aim is True sounded?  Take that, and reverse it.  This sounds like someone trying to be incredibly edgy, but not really fully pulling it off.  It's not that I can't get into it, and I will admit to banging my head a bit, and enjoying the shit out of parts, but sometimes, it sounds like it is the metal madlibs.  Nouns are always fire, dead or brain.  Verbs are always gonna, want, and will or burn, eat and murder.

And yet, I feel like a shit for even bringing that up.  It's fucking Metallica!  Who the fuck listens to the lyrics?  They are designed to be shouted so that Kirk Hammett's fingers don't explode into flames on stage!  In this respect, I will say, this album kicks ass.  The solos are awesome, the bass is fucking kicking, the drums are as good as Lars Ulrich gets.  Everything is designed to be as loud as hell, and ready to burst your eardrums.  I mean, when I was twelve or thirteen, I saw fucking Papa Roach at a concert, and I will never say that fucking Last Resort was any sort of good song, but that concert rocked because the band made it rock.

Which actually might bring me to my main problem with this album.  I don't want to hear Metallica on speakers, sitting at my computer.  Driving really fast?  Maybe.  Setting shit on fire?  Definitely.  Live?  Fuck. Yes.  This might be the quintessential live band for me, and I feel like I may have missed my opportunity to see them at their thrash metal-ly best.  Actually, I know I have, because I was born two years after this album came out, and as far as I can tell from their singles, they peaked when I was two and have been sliding down ever since.   I mean, right now, I'm listening to For Whom The Bell Tolls, and I can see the fucking stadium that I want to be at to see this show.  It's RFK stadium, the field is covered in people, the stage is huge, and they are playing this song.  Like twice as fast though, and they are fucking psyched to be playing music still.  They haven't gotten to the point where they feel entitled to anything, but they are just there to make some fucking great music.

Maybe that is the reason I can't get into them.  I just can't think about it in terms of never actually getting to see that band.  I guess if there is one thing that Ride the Lightning has taught me, it's that I need to make sure to go out and see the bands that I want to see ASAP, or they'll put out Death Magnetic, and no one wants that.  (I kid Metallica.  I never listened to Death Magnetic.  And neither did anyone else, apparently.)

I mean, this is a solid album.  "Ride the Lighting", "For Whom the Bell Tolls", and "Fade to Black" are fucking classics, and I don't give a shit who you talk to, anyone who says differently is lying through their teeth.  It's just not my cup of tea.  What I'm saying is, this is an optional album to me.  If you love Metallica, you already have it.  If you love Slayer, you already have it.  If you hate Metallica, nothing will turn you onto them.  And I'll be right between you guys, wondering which ones of you are the clowns, and which ones are the jokers.  Yeah, that was a Steeler's Wheel joke, you heard it here first.

Anyway, thanks again to Tommy, and I hope to be screamed at by my friends who love Metallica.
Smile and you are happy,
Matt

Elvis Costello - My Aim Is True

Elvis Costello - My Aim Is True

Published 1977

Wikipedia

First off, thanks to Jake Crabbs, who actually didn't request this album, but is the person I most identify this album with. 

Jake Crabbs and I are somewhat contentious people.  We will both argue for hours on end about some of the stupidest, weirdest stuff that you have ever seen.  I can remember us arguing with others a great deal, because when we're both on the same side, it's like a tour de force of bullshit and facts coming together like a hurricane of nonsensical crazytude.  Which is why, late one night, when we were discussing music at that magical address, 73 MD Ave, we argued at someone for an hour or two that Elvis Costello is the greatest singer songwriter in history.  

The weird thing is, I think we both actually believe it.  I know I do.  Elvis Costello is excellent.  It's almost too easy to like the guy.  He loves country, blues, rock and roll, and was once known as the "angry young man."  He has a sense of humor about himself.  He appeared as himself in Stephen Colbert's Christmas special.  His first stage name was Napolean Dynamite, which might actually be the best joke in that movie, by far.  (Actually, I think I could make the case that that was the only joke in the movie, and the rest of the movie was just lines repeated in funny voices without any connection to a plot or structure, and that that movie was terrible and should not be seen by human beings, but I digress.)  He's just your normal average Declan Patrick MacManus.  

Now I know, I need to defend my position that he is the best singer songwriter.  So let's listen to a little My Aim is True.  First off, Welcome to the Working Week.  The shortest song on the album, it actually shows a bunch of different sides.  It starts off slow, gets rolling, and ends before you can get used to it.  There are bands that like to noodle around and try to figure some new stuff out while they are playing.  This is not one of those bands.  These songs are tight, whittled from chunks of pure awesome.  The songs are poppy and quick.  I dare you not to be entranced by them, tapping your toes and being psyched to be listening to them.

As we move into the next song, Miracle Man, I want to talk about Mr. Costello's voice.  The man can sing, but the thing that I like most about his voice, is that you know exactly who the hell he is when he sings the first note.  If you're listening along, every time he starts the chorus, listen to that word 'Why'.  He puts feeling, and a little bit of a wail into it. The man can sing a song.  He's just got this talent for making you really hear his voice.  It's a little difficult to describe how he sounds.

On the other side of the coin, considering the songwriter side, this record is just a collection of hits. Seriously.  The track list is just a list of classic rock songs.  I personally have the Rycodisk re-release, so there are a bunch of demos, and a couple "bonus tracks" that are on every CD version that I have found.  But just on the original cut of the record are "Blame it on Cain", "Allison", "Miracle Man", "(The Angels Want to Wear My) Red Shoes", "Mystery Dance" and "Waiting for the End of the World".  Oh and then on the bonus tracks, you have "Watching the Detectives", "Radio Sweetheart", "Stranger in the House" and "Imagination (Is a Powerful Deceiver)".  These are essential, in my mind, for any person who likes music.  The whole album, front to back, is original, interesting, and engrossing.  And Mr. Costello wrote every one of the tracks.

This is the start of one of the craziest careers in the music business, but it is an incredibly mature record.  It doesn't sound like stuff that was just fluffed off to start up the first album of a new artist, but a well composed, put together bunch of songs.  The number of potential singles alone on this album is staggering.  If released today, this would be a crossover hit.  He'd be at the top of the list of the country and rock and pop charts.  As he should be. Because he's Elvis fucking Costello.

The other thing that is great about this version of the record is that you can actually hear some of the Demo versions of the songs, and some other songs that weren't included on the record.  It's a real pleasure to hear some of the proto-songs that he puts on the track.  Hearing his voice in one ear, and the guitar in the other, it's a really stripped down experience.  This collection is worth the price of admission alone, leaving the classic album that you get too.

So to wrap up, this is an essential album, a classic that everyone should hear.  It's something that will appeal to a lot of people, and so I would insist that you spread the gospel, and get other people to listen to it.  

Now, let's do a little housecleaning.  I know that I have been pretty inconsistent with updating, so I'm going to attempt to correct that.  I have scheduled out the next couple of weeks of album projects.  They're a little heavy on my own picks, because I've found that it takes a lot more to write about an album that I have never heard before, but I'm attempting to keep two to three picks from other people per week.  I think I'm being a little ambitious with my schedule, but if I can get a little backlog going, it'll be really easy to keep to.  What does this mean for you?  1. I'll be plaguing you with more link spam on facebook,  2.  That (hopefully) you'll get 4-5 entries a week, and 3.  I'm going to need a lot more suggestions for albums.  

Thanks again Jake for being crazy with me.

I'm going to walk right up to heaven, dodging lightning rods,

Matt