Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Scored some sweet records:

on CD:

Yann Tiersen & Shannon Wright - s/t: Yann Tiersen did the music for "Amelie", and Shannon Wright is just awesome. It's spooky and ambient but still rocks out in spots.

The Mooney Suzuki - Electric Sweat: Garage rock isn't usually my bag, but I've been listening to the Sonics1 a lot lately, and this CD was $4.00, so I figgered what the hell? Sure enough, it's pretty rockin'. From what I understand, the band teamed up with the folks behind Avril Lavigne's sonic drek, The Matrix, for their next record. Hrmph.

on cassette tape:

Quincy Jones - The Dude2: It's soooo 1981. James Inghram raps. Abe Laboriel channels Larry Graham. A Dave Koz clone rips out some gross alto sax solos. You can practically hear the lleyo being snorted off the mixing board. I like it.

3 Mustaphas 3 - Heart Of Uncle: I've been aware of these guys since about 1989 when I read a review of one of their records in Spin and it sounded really cool. I'm sad that I never actually procured a record until now. They take a kitchen sink approach, throwing in Middle Eastern, Baltic, and Carribbean bits together with vocals in French, Italian, and Hindi, and it comes out sounding pretty sweet.

Orleans - Waking And Dreaming2: You may recall that this album, which contained the 70s AM Gold hit "Still The One", also had one of the absolute worst album covers of all time*. Last night, Chris and I were listening to it, trying to imagine the band in the studio making this record, and not being able to figure how they could take what they were doing seriously. Dude sounds just like Peter Cetera. The music sounds like post-good Chicago. You can hear the cocaine on this album even more clearly than on The Dude. Definitely worth the $0.50 I paid for it.


(* PS: I will pay good American dollars for a copy of Devastatin' Dave's Zip Zap Rap.3)

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1 A little over three years after I wrote this, I got to open for the Sonics at their first Seattle show in 35 years. Guess it's good that I listened to all that garage rock.
2 I now also have both of these albums on vinyl. The warm, sweet, non-flutter-and-wow-y analog sound hasn't made the music suck any less.
3 This still holds true. Devastatin' Dave is my hero.

(Originally posted 07/20/2005)

Some critically acclaimed and wildly popular bands...

...that I pretty much never, ever feel the urge to listen to, in no particular order:

Built To Spill: I enjoyed their first album (Ultimate Alternative Waivers). I don't hate hearing them. But I am not engaged by them, even a little bit. I saw them live years ago, and my favorite part of their set was their cover of fucking "Freebird". 

Beck: I think I like what Beck does conceptually, but his music always sounded too slick to me  even though it was presented as this anything-goes thing. I still want to check out Sea Change so I can hear dude try his hand at doing Gainsbourg. Also, Scientology is retarded. (I was heartbroken to find out that Isaac Hayes was one of them.)

The Flaming Lips: Maybe this group has suffered from overexposure. I don't need to hear The Soft Bulletin ever again, because for a about two years, I couldn't spend more than an hour or so in a bar without it coming on. (An exaggeration, duh, but you know.) Regardless, "Race For the Prize" is still the jam. Since I originally wrote this post, I heard them do a tune from their newest record on some late night talk show, and it sounded pretty cool. That said, that was a month or so ago, and I haven't rushed out to pick up the new LP. Or download the track, for that matter.

REM: I liked these dudes as a kid, circa Green. By the time Monster came out, I could barely stand to listen to them. They became a Big Music Making Machine, just like U2, and I didn't really care about anything they had to say. Remind me to tell you my weird meeting with Michael Stipe story sometime.

Nirvana: I still like to listen to Bleach every once in a while. Nevermind Nevermind. Again, this band suffered from crazy overexposure. In the 90s, when the grunge thing was happening, I liked Nirvana a lot, but I was way more into Alice In Chains and Soundgarden. Ultramega OK still totally fucking rules! Remind me to tell you my weird meeting with Krist Novoselic story sometime.

X: I've never been able to pin down quite what it is about this band I don't care for. My first thought is that it's the vocals, but then I think maybe it's because the songs sound indistinguishable from each other to me. I saw them at SXSW a few years ago, and while their performance was good, it did nothing to make me want to listen to them more.

Johnny Cash & Willie Nelson: I totally appreciate the cultural import of both of these guys. But man, I'd be totally ok not hearing either of their songs ever again. 


I don't hate any of the acts I've listed. None of them make me feel physically ill or agitated upon hearing them (see: Celine Dion, Nickelback, Creed). I just never go, "Hey! I really want to hear Live at San Quentin!" or "Man, isn't Odelay a rad record? Let's listen to it again!" There are records that I do that with.

(Originally posted 06/14/07, revised 12/29/09)

I am the laziest blogger on the planet. In an attempt to kick-start this shit, I'm going to populate this here blog with content that I've written in other forums/blogs/whatever, and then hopefully start adding newer content.

Sagittarians are notorious for getting excited about an idea, starting it, and then getting bored with it and moving on to something else. Some people call this ADD. I call it cosmic, maaaaaan.