Macca Moment

I do not love the Beatles as completely and unconditionally as I should, and I lay the blame squarely at the feet of Paul McCartney. Yes, I have plenty of Beatles albums, and even a decent collection of live and unreleased material, so it’s not like I despise them, far from it. Rather, I’ve gained a grudging love for them over the years as the guys who did it first and, arguably, best as fully in evidence on the brilliant, energetic With the Beatles/Meet the Beatles!, despite the cognitive dissonance that still disrupts my affection at times due to Paul’s ridiculous crap since the disbandment.

Exhibit A: Since the holidays are upon us now, I might as well be seasonal and bring up this ridiculous turd first, “Wonderful Christmas Time”.



Why, Paul? We already had a great Beatles Christmas song! Lennon had already taken care of that. Were you just trying to one up him? Well, thanks for ruining a few minutes of my holiday season every year when I have to hear this stinker!

Exhibit B: Maybe it was Linda’s fault. Since we are now a marriage removed from her undeniably sad, untimely passing, I guess that it’s safe to deliver criticism without sounding like an asshole: she had no business being on stage with you. She has forever ruined “Hey Jude” for anyone who cared. Bad call, man.

Exhibit C: “Say, Say, Say”, “The Girl Is Mine”, and “Ebony and Ivory”. The Jacko duets are awful enough, and “Ebony and Ivory” may have ruined Stevie Wonder for me, if In Square Circle hadn’t nearly completely destroyed my respect for him later. I’m just glad that you could never managed to line up studio time with Kiki Dee.

Exhibit D: Still trying to be “The Cute One”, aren’t we? That’s always grossed me out.

Rock stars, please guard your legacies better than this. You may think that you should not have to worry about it, that you can have your wife in the band, even if she doesn’t have musical ability, because it will make things easier at home, that you can appear with Hanson or Puffy just because you think it’s fun, that you can appear on Oprah, because it may help you sell tens of thousands more albums, even though you really don’t need the money, but it can and will be used against you in the court of youth. Your old fans may forgive you, since they’re already hooked, but, if you don’t maintain your integrity, then the kids will smell bullshit and turn on you, endangering that unimpeachable immortality that you’ve been striving for since you first strapped on a Hofner.

A long time ago, a friend of mine pointed out that you always hear music differently once you know that an artist is deceased, that it colors the experience to some degree, no matter how absorbed you may become in the music. I have always found this to be true to some degree, but Paul’s cheesiness continues to overwhelm my Beatles experience, even in the wake of Lennon and George’s deaths. I envy those who are able to overlook it. click here to
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Open Letter to will.i.am

Dear will.i.am,

I saw recently where you had a beef with record buyers because your solo debut, Songs About Girls, registered “only” 20,000 albums sold in Sound Scan in the first week of its release, and that, since you founded the Black Eyed Peas and introduced the world to Fergie, you figured that you deserved to sell a comparable number of albums to what one of their releases would.

Dude, get real. What did Black Eyed Peas sell before you fired that other gal for Fergie? I’m sure that it was well short of 20,000 a week! And when I say “get real,” I don’t just mean it that logical sense, I also mean it in the musical sense. With all of the great emcees and producers out there, do you, really, really think that you measure up well enough to “deserve” better album sales than 20,000 in a week on your solo debut?

I was listening to L.L. Cool J’s classic Radio last week, and nothing that you have put out can compare to what happens on that 22-year-old album recorded by a teenager! You don’t have the passion, chops, taste, or coolness in evidence to touch a work like that.

There’s only one weak track on that album, “I Want You”, and that’s fine, because it’s the last one on there, and L.L. has already sold everyone on his greatness by then; your albums are full of filler crap like that with only a few hits. On Radio, he’s the type of guy who lays it all out there with no gussied up production and just kills, and you’re the type of guy with no qualms about just trying to sell as many albums as possible by dancing like a pussy on Best Buy commercials and shit.

Yeah, that’s fine, if that’s where your coming from, since L.L. obviously later went all sitcom star and shit, whoring himself out as much as you do these days, but the critical distinction is that you don’t have an album like Radio in your past in order to have earned sufficient respect from enough music fans to where you would give them a reason to check out anything from you without Fergie (or an equally huge star) on the cover.

Man, I would be stoked to sell 20,000 albums in a week! Do you think that Radio sold 20,000 in its first week?

Enjoy it while it lasts,

LenBarker click here to
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Not Just Cashing In Before He Checked Out

From the time of its release, Johnny Cash’s American Recordings has been hailed by many as a brilliant collaboration between Cash and Rubin and now stands as Cash’s most legendary “studio” album, as evidenced by it being Cash’s lone studio album to place on the Rolling Stone list driving this blog. Disappointingly, this album falls a bit short of being worthy of such recognition in particular and greatness in general.

I love Johnny Cash as much as most other American music fans, particularly the two prison albums and other live material from throughout his career that I have heard. His studio work with Sun was good, too, but is somewhat stale in terms of performance and dynamics when compared to his live work; the live versions of many of the tunes found on the prison albums easily surpass the earlier Sun studio renditions. American Recordings suffers from some of the same problems: much like his Sun work, it feels like Cash is holding back here, and the material is not all superb.

There are some strong aspects of this album that have earned justifiable praise, and I definitely agree with those who praise Rick Rubin for his work on the album. In particular, Cash’s acoustic guitar on the album sounds amazing, and could provide a huge service to many aspiring musicians by showing them what an acoustic guitar is supposed to sound like.

I have grown so weary of hearing people try to play acoustic guitars over PA systems and have it sound so thin and lifeless that it makes me want to go get a Strat for the person to play instead. There was a reason why the electric guitar was invented: in order to compensate for the difficulty in capturing and reproducing the sound of an acoustic guitar in a live setting. This difficulty has remained a significant hurdle for decades now, so many people seem to have grown accustomed to that thin sound, and some artists, particularly Dave Matthews, have done a pretty good job of embracing and making it work for them.

This has also had the unfortunate side effect of leaving plenty of strummers with the impression that it can work for them, too, leading to far too many dreary sounding players, who would solidly benefit from the judicious use of electric guitars, which are so much easier to mix properly in a live setting. However, if those strummers on their Takamines and Ovations* still find themselves unable to overcome their misguided acoustic fetish, then they should give serious thought to how much better and lifelike the acoustic guitar on this album sounds than their inane plinking. Yes, I get that it is hard to overcome feedback issues in a live setting, but if feedback leaves a guitarist compromising their tone to the degree that they are unable to approach the tone found on this popular and widely available album, then I urge them to consider rolling with an electric instead.

Rubin does a fine job of capturing Cash’s voice, too. Wow, does it sound cool when he hits those low notes on Nick Lowe’s “The Beast in Me”, which is one of several inspired selections for covers that Rubin chose here. With choices like that and Cash’s unbelievable talent, Rubin and Cash came pretty close to making a great album here, and, honestly, upon my first listen, I was starting to think that the album was going to blow me away. I had seen the video for “Delia’s Gone” numerous times on MTV when the album was originally released, so I already knew that it was a really good tune, and it gets the album off to a strong start. The next tune “Let the Train Blow the Whistle” is fine as well, and the third song, “The Beast in Me”, as I have already mentioned, works great due to Cash’s standout vocal performance. Then, unfortunately, the album hits a roadblock: Cash seems uninterested throughout much of his own “Drive On”, leading to about as long and boring of a sub-2:30 song from a brilliant artist as I could imagine, and the problems continue on the next groaner, “Why Me Lord?”, too. From there, despite several strong covers and a couple of decent originals, the album never really recovers the momentum that it has lost.

Yes, American Recordings is a pretty good album that helped restore Cash’s career to deserved prominence. Yet, since it is not an album that I ever bothered to listen to until driven to do so because of my participation in this blog based on the Rolling Stone list, I can’t help but judge it within that context, and I have to say that it seems to have earned its spot on the list more for historical and/or sentimental reasons than its artistic merits. Now, historical merit is a critical component of the greatness of many albums on the Rolling Stone list, so, while I can understand why Rolling Stone rated this album so high, it isn’t great enough overall for me to agree with that decision.

*While both of those companies make some excellent instruments, I list them here solely because I often see them in the hands of the worst offenders. I do not mean to knock those brands for the popularity that they have earned by making good instruments that people enjoy playing; it’s not their fault that people don’t bother to dial them in properly. click here to
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Young, Dumb, and Full of Red Hot Chili Peppers

The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Blood Sugar Sex Magik reminds me of U2’s Joshua Tree, not just in how these albums brought these already popular bands into the forefront of pop-cultural awareness, but also in how these albums let me down and proved to be the last albums that I would ever buy from either band.

Although I have found it nearly impossible to appreciate the post-superstardom work of either group, when I consider how enormously successful their careers have been since then, I realize that I probably should not hold it against either of them. Apparently, what really worked for them and most of their fans is precisely what doesn’t work for me.

So what went wrong?

For me and U2, it’s cut-and-dried: I don’t like the songs on The Joshua Tree; they don’t move or impress me, plus the production, despite the involvement of the genius Eno and the talented Lanois, makes everything sound washed out and dreary--just a few too many repeats and a touch too much reverb on the Edge throughout the album, I’m afraid. On the other hand, I share a more complicated relationship with Blood Sugar Sex Magik. There are some great songs on this album, and Rick Rubin’s production shines, really bringing out the best in every member of the band.

So what’s there not to like? Well, the major problem with Blood Sugar Sex Magik lies in the fact that it is just too damn long with too much filler. Pare it down to the essentials, and then you’d have one hell of an album:

Ditch the drab, mid-tempo “Funky Monks”. “Mellowship Slinky in B Major” is neither funky or punky enough to work for RHCP and just comes off as a lame attempt at hip hop, so we don’t need it on this “great” album. “The Righteous & The Wicked” is just Chili Peppers by numbers, and this band needs energy above all to be convincing, so this is a prime example of the chaff dragging this album down. Say “goodbye” to “The Greeting Song”, a weak riff on the same silliness that works so well on “Give it Away” but not here. Lose the pointless and terrible cover of “They’re Red Hot”, ‘cause when your cover can’t match the fun sexiness of an ancient, scratchy blues recording and “fun sexiness” is pretty much your whole game, you’ve obviously made a bad decision.

This leaves us with:

1. The Power of Equality. 2. If You Have to Ask. 3. Breaking the Girl. 4. Suck My Kiss 5. I Could Have Lied. 6. Give It Away. 7. Blood Sugar Sex Magic. 8. Under the Bridge. 9. Naked in the Rain. 10. Apache Rose Peacock. 11. My Lovely Man. 12. Sir Psycho Sexy.

That’s twelve strong songs culminating in the sickness of “Sir Psycho Sexy”! I never could wrap my head around Blood Sugar Sex Magik enough to really love it, but that looks like an album that would have blown my mind. Put the rest on an EP with “Soul to Squeeze”, and that would have sold millions, too. click here to
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Dan Henley & Pat Nebatar

I can relate to JB’s post on Don Henley’s End of the Innocence and how his pop culture point of reference to Walden has shifted from that album to Eric Cartman and South Park. I have long been unable to think of Don Henley without recalling a Beavis and Butthead episode in which they watched one of his videos, referring to him as “Dan” Henley throughout and discussing his legal problems due to molestation charges* and how those troubles had led to the break up of his marriage to Pat “Nebatar”. And I don’t feel bad about that, because that’s about how much respect I have for Dan.

The first and only time that I have ever heard this album was at summer camp, somewhere between ’89 and ’92. Some of my fellow counselors introduced me to some great bands over the years, but other guys listened to some real crap in the shack where we used to hang out. As you may have guessed, I would place this album in that latter category. In fact, it may have been the single worst album that anybody dared to play on that shared jam box for all four of those summers. It somehow manages to stand out in my mind as being even worse than M.C. Hammer’s Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em or Aerosmith’s Pump, both of which were both played ad nauseam. I remember being astonished when my fellow counselor played End of the Innocence, because I was unable to find any redeeming qualities. It was simultaneously too stale to be exciting, too predictable and stupid to be intriguing, and too trite to be moving.

In the process of reviewing albums for this blog, I have tried to re-listen to all of them in order to refresh my memory and perspective, but I cannot bring myself to listen to this POS again. This fact, that I cannot summon the strength to listen to this thing again after not having heard it for between 15 and 18 years, has me hoping that this is the worst album on Rolling Stone’s list.

I’m rethinking that statement about how much respect I have for Dan, because it makes it sound like I consider him to be on the same level as Beavis and Butthead and South Park, when I actually hold those cartoons in substantially higher esteem than I do him.

* See jahidi hoya’s response to Ancient Scientist’s review for elaboration; I had never gotten the reference but found it funny anyway, so it was great to learn the story behind it. click here to
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Fudged Tunnel of Love

I respect Bruce Springsteen. When I was a kid, I liked Born in the U.S.A. and the nine-minute long video to “Rosalita” that MTV used to play, and I dig much of his classic material to this day. I have no probem with anybody talking about how classic Born to Run, Nebraska, and The River are.

Unfortunately, listening to an album like Tunnel of Love makes me want to take three shots of Ragged Glory washed down with a gulp of Reign in Blood. Alright, so that’s never a bad thing, to want to listen to those latter two albums repeatedly, but what I’m getting at here is that Tunnel of Love is far too dainty and glossy for a dude who always works to project that “earnest blue collar frumpery” (as Ancient Scientist so aptly put it in another post here). Track by track, here are my complaints:

• “Ain’t Got You” doesn’t work. The arrangement and production are far too vanilla to pull off the intended rootsy effect, and this album is in trouble already.

• “Tougher Than the Rest”, huh? Then stop with this wussy shit and get back to some rock.

• Okay, “All That Heaven Will Allow” is even worse. “I can’t be late I’ve got a date with all that heaven will allow.” What the hell does that even mean? See, I don’t usually listen to lyrics in rock songs. I just assume that they suck, and I’m okay with that, if there are other redeeming qualities. When I like a song, and the lyrics turn out to be pretty good, too, then that makes for something special. But, damn, Boss, there’s nothing to save a track like this in instrumental or melodic terms, so you draw me to the lyrics, and I recoil in horror.

• He’s sure belting it out on “Spare Parts”, and with the full E St. Band, this may have worked, but it sounds ridiculous in this context.

• Okay, finally, the fifth track, “Cautious Man” is a good tune that really works with Bruce’s vocals and the acoustic accompaniment, so far the only tune saving this album from becoming a total suckfest. If we can’t have the E St. Band, then this is what I want out of Bruce Springsteen!

• But Bruce fails to sustain the artistic momentum on the stultifying “Walk Like a Man” (which has me dozing off at my keyboard while I’m trying to write this review!).

• The title track isn’t a bad tune, but the cheesy keyboards are far too prominent in the mix. They make Bruce’s Fender Esquire seem like nothing but a prop in the video, which is a shame, because the man can wail, and a little more guitar in the mix, beyond that ridiculously choked and dated-sounding Alex-Lifeson-esque lead, probably could have helped this one.

• Oh no! Listen to those hideous keyboard chirps at the end of “Two Faces”!

• “Brilliant Disguise” is a decent tune, but that obnoxious percussion track almost sinks it.

• A David Sanborn solo would be right at home on “One Step Up”, so I’m glad for Clarence that he didn’t suffer the indignity of being asked to contribute here.

• “When You’re Alone”. Cute there, Yogi Berra. . .way too fucking cute to work for Bruce!

• “Valentine’s Day” is alright, but it’s too late to salvage the album by this time.

There is no way that this should be on a Top 500 greatest-all-time albums list. Instead, Tunnel of Love belongs on the shitpile with other misfires by rock greats who succumbed to ‘80s production issues on some of their worst albums: Go to Heaven by the Dead; Landing on Water and Life by Neil Young; Dylan’s Shot of Love and Knocked out Loaded; Mistrial by Lou Reed; everything Paul McCartney touched; Starship’s Knee Deep in the Hoopla; the Stones’ Dirty Work. Why Rolling Stone doesn’t let this stinker rot away with the rest of ‘em is beyond me. click here to
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It's Not Muthaf7ckin' Ziggy!

David Bowie's legendary The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars is about as bad of an album as it possibly could be.

Seriously.

But I love it anyway.

Here's what I mean: given the superb material and the excellent musicians involved, I don't think that this album could be much worse than it is. When I consider the great songs here unto themselves, it amazes me that this album fails to completely blow me away, leading me to ponder a few questions:

Is it overproduced?

Possibly. Only "Five Years" and "Ziggy Stardust" strike me as particularly strong renditions that really do the material justice. On the other hand, "Hang On to Yourself", the raucous badass opener in D.A. Pennebaker's film of the band's final concert, limps onto the middle of side 2 and barely registers. "Moonage Daydream", "Starman", and "Suffragette City" are all as castrated as Wendy Carlos (whose work from the Clockwork Orange soundtrack can actually be heard playing before Ziggy and the Spiders take the stage in the film!): Mick Ronson's playing is not punchy and present enough in this mix, with too much space given to keys, mellotron/strings, and backing vocals instead. Don't get me wrong, these recordings are definitely enjoyable, and it's not as if one has to listen hard to hear the obviously great songs, which remain evident, it's just that they could have been appreciably better.

I'm not just speaking theoretically here, either: both the Pennebaker film, despite a flawed, inconsistent mix, and the 2000ish archival release Bowie at the Beeb offer glimpses of how much more powerful these tunes could be in the hands of these same musicians in less heavily produced contexts. I do not mean to say that the production flourishes were all bad, either, but they seem to wash out much of the feel and impact.

Was too much time and effort spent on promotion and not enough on the album?

Particularly revealing to me on the recent Rock Milestones DVD, which offers a historical and critical overview of the album featuring interviews with bassist Trevor Bolder, drummer Mick "Woody" Woodmansey, and horror Angie Bowie, is how much emphasis was placed on building Bowie up into a rock star at this time by his handlers, to the evident chagrin of these folks (who were all quickly discarded by Bowie once that stardom was attained).

For example, the US tour consisted of the band playing a show somewhere, then partying for a couple of weeks in order to build up a high profile as extravagant, wild rock stars, although the record company had to subsidize it, since Bowie himself was not wealthy yet. While such theatricality is an undeniably critical, integral element of the whole Ziggy Stardust phenomenon, one has to wonder whether the music itself ended up being neglected in the whole process.

Bowie even neglected to finish writing a story about Ziggy in these songs. If this album can actually be viewed as a concept album at all, then that concept is, at best, half-baked, which is not a big problem in and of itself, since it would have worked out fine had the end result been that Bowie employing the concept as a basis for inspiration, since I would never demand adherence to a concept as a qualification for the creation of a rock album. Instead, the song order apparently follows the intact but skeletal remains of the plotline derived from the original concept, when it probably would have made for a better album if he had departed from those plot-related aspects of the concept altogether in order to attain a better flow, limiting the influence of the concept to a mere thematic nature.

Despite some evidence of overproduction weakening the impact of Ronson's playing in particular, it seems like some of these issues may have been resolved, had there a been a more concerted effort to work out the issues with the mix and song order, rather than making it a priority merely to get a product out there for Bowie to promote. I am definitely not sure on this point, but given what we know about Bowie's activities during this period, I have to wonder where the priorities lay.

Did Bowie step on Ronson's arrangements?

This supposition consists mostly of my reading between the lines, but some of the comments made by the interviewees on the Rock Milestones DVD led me to wonder whether Bowie and Ronson's joint production efforts didn't also lead to some compromises that weakened the album. While Bowie undoubtedly was the ring leader here, Ronson held responsibility for arranging much of the studio instrumentation. Bowie frequently insisted on providing his own touches, for which, despite his lack of technical studio expertise at the time, he deservedly acquired a reputation as having an extraordinary ability to select seemingly randomly instruments that would help beef up a tune. Contrasted with Ronson's more technically adept background in evidence on his arrangements, there was plenty of potential for friction there.

Someone on the Milestones DVD (I believe that it was bassist Trevor Bolder) notes how much he would have liked to have seen Mick Ronson given a shot at a whole project, which seems like an odd comment on its face, since Ronson produced multiple albums over the course of his career, so I take this to mean that what he meant to say, in a roundabout way, was that it was a shame that Ronson could had not been given full rein over this project. Yeah, that wasn't going to happen, since, again, this was Bowie's deal, but it leads me to believe that the commenter felt that Ronson's arrangements had been damaged by Bowie.

What about the vast legacy of this album?

Huge and undeniable. . .but even that could have been greater had either of the two films related to this project worked out better!

Unfortunately, the film quality of the Pennebaker film puts a lot of folks off, and, despite a scorching performance, the inconsistent mix is far from ideal. That said, it is great to have any filmed documentation of that tour, but it's a shame that the film remains so underappreciated, mostly due to technical issues.

Then we have The Man Who Fell to Earth, which, although it is an adaptation of a novel, is a solid film that's pretty much about a character that's extraordinarily similar to Ziggy Stardust, who happens to be played by David Bowie. Sounds great, huh? Well, it falls short of greatness, mainly due to one, glaring problem: no Bowie music! At all. Instead, reportedly due to contractual issues, there's a thoroughly unremarkable soundtrack provided by John Phillips (they just had to find a guy who had even bigger drug problems than Bowie's!) that seems like a placeholder for what should have been the tunes from The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, which is a real shame when one considers how much more vital the movie could have been with those tunes. Another squandered opportunity!

But you love it anyway?

Oh, yeah, the issues aren't that serious, and I'm definitely overstating and overanalyzing them here. If someone digs Bowie, then they'll love this. However, given the material and musicians, it easily should be a top 20 all-time album, but it's not. It should be Bowie's finest album, but it's not. click here to
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The Heavy Sh!t

Maggot Brain oozes forth its greatness from all orifices. The title track guitar solo alone works on an impressive number of levels: eulogy for Hendrix; Eddie Hazel's signature track; the cries of our dying mother earth; and, certainly, the mourning over a dead mother followed by a suprise reunion that Hazel imagined to spur his playing on this work.

First, some trippy delay effects bring in George Clinton's spooky spoken word intro, and we know something huge is coming. Next we have Bernie come in with those four moving chords, and I love the snare with the delay effects. When Eddie does come in, his wah is cocked to a perfect point for his first few riffs, before he starts to work it up and down as some tasteful studio doubling, reverb, and delay sweetens it all up. He proceeds to go off for a while, his guitar singing to us about his dead mother with gut wrenching impact for several minutes until, his last tears squeezing out, he sees her coming towards him, and is reunited with her. Sounds to me like he is simultaneously overjoyed to see her and furious that he has been put through all of this, an octave fuzz giving us the higher octave along side his fretted ntoes to show what these two different-pitched souls are enduring together. Clinton speaks again, exhorting us: "Come on, maggot brain; go, maggot brain", before we hear the last few licks trailing off. Not for everyone, but, as a Hendrix-worshipping guitar player, it's irresitably moving to me.


Afterwards, "Can You Get to That" brings some bouncy relief, but then "Hit It And Quit It" has to come and kick our butts again, this time with a sick Hazel riff. Play this one loud to fully appreciate how badass it is when the whole band kicks in. If you don't dig it, then get a new stereo.

"You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks" reprises the "Can You Get to That" riff, and with meat like "Hit and Quit It" in between those two slices, it makes for one damn great sandwich in the middle of this tasty meal called Maggot Brain (so appetizing!).

"Super Stupid" rocks like all hell, and "Back in Our Minds" stands perilously close to sucking with its loud percussion instrument. I can't remember what that thing is called, but I have played in a couple of bands with percussionists who had 'em, and they never found a good use for them, except to annoy their bandmates in between songs at rehearsals. Clinton manages to make it work, though: listening to the way the high pitched, modulating thing is rolling over the rest of the tune packs plenty of entertainment for this brief tune.

The full band jam of "Wars of Armageddon" is a perfect end for an album that started off with the sparse "Maggot Brain" making the whole thing feel almost like a concept album that had been building up to this point, but, really, this track, while pretty good, does not have nearly the impact of "Maggot Brain", so it's almost fitting when they just blow the whole thing up. . .but that snippet of the band launching back into it at the end lets us know that not even "Armageddon" can stop this funk. Excellent final touch on this classic!

So, yeah, I'm sold on the greatness of this album and its place in history. It's great to see Bernie Worrell and George Clinton still out there doing it, and I particularly love how Worrell has been embraced by the jamband community, whether with his own band the Woo Warriors or jamming with Gov't Mule or Les Claypool, since there seems to be more people trying to play funk within that scene than anywhere else these days, and I know that they all appreciate the presence of the master. I sure as hell have loved seeing him at some festivals where my band has played, and I will always regret being too ill to stick around to see my band's keyboardist jam with him on stage one night. If Maggot Brain is a state of mind, as Clinton claims, then one day I hope to tap into it just long enough to unleash one great guitar solo; until then, I'll keep on practicing for that day, whenever it may arrive. click here to
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Double Nickels for the Zen Arcade

I like Double Nickels on the Dime. Heard it for the first time last week, and it's still growing on me as I'm listening to it again while writing this post. I definitely admire the hell out of what those three dudes pulled off on it, and it sucks that D. wasn't around much longer afterwards. Mike Watt's playing is amazing here, too, as is drummer George Hurley's. I probably would have gotten really into this band, if I had heard them when I was younger, say, around the age of 13, the age that I was when I heard Husker Du's Zen Arcade for the first time.

The story goes that hearing about Zen Arcade inspired the Minutemen, who were labelmates of Husker Du, to expand a single album that they had been planning on releasing into the 40+ track behemoth that became Double Nickels on the Dime, and I am glad that it did, because I am really digging this album now that I'm finally checking it out. However, I am not so glad that Zen Arcade was left off of the Rolling Stone list that inspired this blog. Sure, they voted Husker Du's New Day Rising onto the list, and it's a pretty good album, just not as great as the neglected Zen Arcade.

I had grown up enjoying poseur band like Kiss and Twisted Sister, but seeing and hearing Motley Crue's video for "Smoking in the Boys Room" drove me away from all of it. Thanks to that lameass cover, I went from "Metal rules!" to "Metal sucks!" in a short span of time. Then, a few years later, one sunny summer afternoon in 1988, after I had embraced '60s and '70s "classic rock" and almost completely abandoned '80s music, a then-four-year-old Zen Arcade came into my life and showed me that there was still some great hard rock being released well into the '80s. I popped a dubbed cassette of the album into my cheap walkman in my tent at camp and had my mind blown. In addition to being floored by their diversity, I was shocked by the evident honesty and passion, which the cold dance pop and pop metal dominating the airwaves at the time sorely lacked. "Something I Learned Today", "Broken Home, Broken Heart", "Never Talking to You Again", "Dreams Reoccurring", "I'll Never Forget You", "Turn on the News", "Reoccurring Dream"; yeah, Mould and his band sure as hell did it for me.

After hearing Zen Arcade, I was more receptive to the idea that post-Zep hard rock bands didn't have to suck, which sounds ridiculous, but, listen man, the suckiness of the Crue, Bon Jovi, Poison, and their ilk had scarred me bad. It took something as great as Zen Arcade to knock some sense into me, so I can't help but be disappointed that it didn't make the list along with its sister album.

And, yes, I'm cool with Double Nickels on the Dime being on the list. It features that same diversity, passion, and honesty that won me over on Zen Arcade, and, had I heard Double Nickels on the Dime that summer afternoon instead, it probably would have left a similar impression on me. I'm just grateful that somebody lent me one of 'em, at least.

Unfortunately, around that time, somebody also played an S.O.D.: Stormtroopers of Death album for me, which I didn't understand was a gag and despised. Due to the brevity of their tunes, I labored under the misconception that they had been the Minutemen for a long time afterwards and, as a result, never checked out the real deal. Oh well, better late than never! click here to
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Kicking Screaming Raving Drooling

One of my college roommates used to make fun of another roommate for buying Radiohead's first album, Pablo Honey, on the strength of the single "Creep". The dismissive derider thought that Radiohead was clearly a one hit wonder on the tail end of the grunge phenomenon and would never be heard from again. Although I liked "Creep" well enough, I never bothered to listen to the album nor did I muster a counterargument. For all that I could tell, he was right.

A little while later, I heard a different acquaintance's copy of their second album, The Bends, and was shocked by how good it was, but I was too proud to go out and buy my own copy of it, because I didn't respect this dude's taste in music enough to allow myself to be so directly influenced by him! So I continued to resist becoming a Radiohead fan until I heard the undeniably great "Karma Police" and "Paranoid Android" and just had to finally purchase this wonderful CD. I still remember where and when I made that purchase and recall that day whenever I pass by the store, a big box next to an interstate where I pulled over on a whim, on road trips.

In short, OK Computer is absolutely deserving of its reputation as the Dark Side of the Moon of the '90s.


More specifically, we get a great intro a la "Speak To Me"/"Breathe"/"On the Run" in "Airbag" that establishes some themes while not blowing us away, but building up the anticipation with chord progressions and arrangements bringing unresolved tension. Then on to the main feast: on Dark Side we got the soaring, epic "Time", and here we get something arguably even better: "Paranoid Android" is one of the greatest prog rock tracks ever produced (whether Radiohead actually likes prog or not!). I love the loose feel of the acoustic guitars throughout the early part of the song and Colin Greenwood's playful groove on the bass, and, as usual, Thom sings the hell out of this one (And the lyrics! "Kicking, screaming, Gucci little piggie!" Hell, yes.), but this all still just build up for the guitar riffage/carnage to follow; Jonny Greenwood's Lovetone Meatball effect on the guitar solo absolutely kills.

With gut-punches from "Time" and "Paranoid Android" coming so soon after the album's introductions, do both of these albums peak too early? A case could be made for that, but they both attain great heights later, too, and function beautifully as cohesive listening experiences, so I tend to think that the albums probably flowed best with these tracks in their respective places. And flow is a key similarity here, in that both albums are better than the sum of their parts by virtue of the fact that they are both such superb bodies of work in their coherence and listenability on the whole (even when they're bringing on some serious depression!).

After the respective epics, the albums continue to flow in the same directins for now as we get a bit of a break in the action on both albums and mellow out a bit with "The Breathe Reprise" at the end of "Time" and "The Great Gig in the Sky" on Dark Side and "Subterranean Homesick Alien", "Exit Music (For a Film)", and "Let Down" on OK Computer. It is interesting how both "Great Gig" and "Exit Music" develop, dazzle, and dissolve in similar fashion, both moving the listener in similar fashion due to the expert song-craft employed by these two amazing bands.

Next we get the albums' "big hits" in "Money" and "Karma Police". Beyond that distinction, there's really not much of an honest comparison to be made between these tracks, but we continue to see how similarly the albums flow anyway. And there's still plenty left to enjoy on both of these albums, as we get moving slow songs about forms of isolation in "No Surprises" and "Us and Them".

The albums close in distinctly different fashions, much of this owing to the fact that Dark Side of the Moon is a concept album with musical themes that are reintroduced, rehashed, and resolved, whereas OK Computer continues to explore new musical directions. This aspect of the comparison also feeds into the whole "Dark Side of the Moon of the '90s" bit in that concept albums, while they are still being made, will probably forever be associated with the 1970s, the decade in which Dark Side of the Moon was released. If OK Computer had been a concept album, then the comparison probably would not have worked as well in terms of either its identity as a strong product of its times or of the widespread acceptance that it attained, which are absolutely essential for this comparison.

It is notable that OK Computer was obtained and enjoyed by such a wide swathe of rock fandom, even as represented by my own group of friends, who have fairly divergent musical tastes, because that is the kind of popularity that made Dark Side of the Moon the cultural touchstone of its day, too. Just about everybody of certain ages who was into rock music at the time of these releases knows these albums and can be expected to be conversant on the topic, even if they don't like them. I once dated an older woman who was convinced that I was someone else who was posting online, merely because the other guy and I shared a mutual love of both Radiohead and Neil Young; she failed to understand how thoroughly unremarkable that is. Name any major rock act plus Pink Floyd or Radiohead, and fans who share a love for both of them are going to be common.

Some may view it as a disservice to compare the albums in such direct fashion, especially since, despite the numerous comparisons, there is zero evidence that Radiohead was consciously aping or performing any sort of homage to Pink Floyd with this album, so let me be perfectly clear that I only intend to present this comparison on the basis of commonalities that both of these great albums happen to share and which have resulted in a frequently made observation that proves true under scrutiny. Radiohead definitely was not seeking to rehash any sort of '70s prog; Jonny Greenwood reportedly does not even like Dark Side of the Moon. Relatively speaking, Radiohead, who had started off sounded like a mishmash of U2 in a grunge direction with greater chops in evidence than either of those institutions, was bringing something just as new and excellent (if not even greater) to the table as Pink Floyd had within the natural progression and context of their own musical abilities and influences.

So now that we have that comparison out of the way, so what? An album doesn't attain greatness in a vacuum, so it's worth examining how it changed the musical landscape, especially in the case of this particular album. The album's title represents an obvious concession to technology, but this is still in large part a guitar album, especially in comparison to the direction taken by the band later on Kid A and Amnesiac. Still, much was made of that title at the time, and techno, although it never really caught on in the States like the media claimed that it would, seemed poised to dominate with the guitar reportedly on the verge of extinction. Although that didn't happen, there definitely was a rash of successful Radiohead clones popping up like Doves, Travis, and Coldplay, so, in that respect, the album has continued to influence the charts, even though it never helped to usher in any sort of techno-age at all.

However, although guitar driven rock directly influenced by Radiohead remains with us, we may never see the likes of an album like OK Computer and its widespread acceptance throughout rock fandom and influence on fellow musicians again. With the popularity of music downloading having hurt physical rock album sales, it is evident that the dynamics of music sales have shifted appreciably, and more rock fans are taking the opportunity to less expensively explore their own preferred niches, making it far less likely that rock fans will come together over and fully absorb an album in such a fashion ever again.

A few years after its release, some all-time-greatest-album lists placed OK Computer squarely at the top, and, although that has grown rarer, I still would not have a problem with it. click here to
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