Miss Piggy Lunchbox

“Ricochet” wouldn’t have been on my short list of songs to release as singles from Faith No More’s 1995 album King For A Day…Fool For A Lifetime. It’s like a bad first date: a little too straightforward, revealing just about all it has to give in the first listen. But then, that’s pretty much how I felt about the entire album, which was a follow-up to Angel Dust, the best album ever: good, but that’s it?

The b-sides are two covers. “I Wanna F**k Myself” by G.G. Allin, who eventually probably did figure out a way to do just that. Seriously, if you don’t know who Allin is, take a minute to peruse his Wikipedia entry:

Allin is best remembered for his notorious live performances that typically featured wildly transgressive acts such as Allin defecating and urinating onstage, rolling in feces and often consuming excrement (coprophagia), committing self-injury, performing naked, taunting people to perform fellatio on him and committing violent actions toward the audience—often doing many of these things more or less simultaneously.

My fave part is that they tell us the word for consuming excrement.

Faith No More is crazy faithful in their cover versions, to the point where they sometimes sound better than the originals, as in their version of Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs.” Here they capture Allin’s style with massive amounts of noise, distortion, and intentionally awful recording techniques. It works, though…you wouldn’t want Allin’s literally s**t-stained music to sound pristine…it’d probably hurt worse that way.

Then, in a complete contrast but also the same thing, is the band doing what they do so well, recording a song that fits more comfortably on easy listening radio as if that were their idiom. This time it’s “Spanish Eyes,” probably most famously done by Elvis and Engelbert Humperdinck. This one isn’t quite as eye-poppingly amazing in its uncanny recreation of prior versions as their cover of The Commodores “Easy” (…like Sunday morning) was, but it’s still pretty good.

Rating:

Mixers: nothing
Keepers: everything
Filed Between: The other two singles from King For A Day, “Digging The Grave” and “Evidence”

Beware, this awful CD is wearing a deceptive disguise. I had no idea just how crappy it was when it came up on shuffle the last couple of weeks because there isn’t a second of unpleasantness on it, but listening to it as a whole album reveals that it is the most horribly bland, plain vanilla, and unimaginative long player ever put to record.

Here’s a litmus test for awfulness: Can you imagine anybody ever saying, “My favorite band is _____”? If you find a given artist’s name in that blank mind-boggling, then that artist is truly awful. Such is the case for Naked. Speaking of which, why in God’s name would you name your band something that would virtually ensure the impossibility of finding information about you on the Internet. Thank God, though…these idiots deserve their anonymity…or maybe the rest of the world doesn’t deserve for them to be anything but anonymous.

This album is soooooooooo dull…. (How dull is it?) This album is so dull that, disregarding one outlier at 3:42, all of the remaining tracks fall in the range between 4:01 and 4:32 long. This album is so dull the unlisted “bonus” track is a barely indistinguishable version of a track earlier on the album…I think there’s a bit less chorus on the guit and he sings it slightly quieter, which probably passes for an “acoustic version” to these guys. This album is so dull that green peppers have more taste than the lyrics…consider these from “Headlights”: “And dreaming in diesel will last/On a full tank.” This album is so dull that its overly emotional male vocalization to completely unemotional songs makes the same effect when done by Matchbox 20 seem like an aural orgasm.

I hate this CD with all of my being. I’ve had more engagement with Sesame Street movies in the last few weeks. Surprisingly, “Red” is a legitimately good song (“Mann’s Chinese” is borderline), but it’s not enough to elevate the rest of this tripe beyond my lowest rating.

Rating:

Mixers: none
Keepers: “Mann’s Chinese,” “Red”
Filed Between: The Mysteries Of Life (Keep A Secret) and Pete Nelson (Days Like Horses)

Even though it was past the peak of their popularity and they were starting to lose fans, I was really excited when Anthrax went with John Bush as their new lead singer for 1993’s Sound Of White Noise, partly becuase I liked what I’d heard of Bush’s former band, Armored Saint, but mainly because I thought Sound Of White Noise was the band’s best, most solid album. Two studio releases and six years later came Volume 8 – The Threat Is Real, and now I’m not so sure about that move.

This album isn’t nearly as good as what they were putting out when I was graduating from high school. It’s fairly solid from start to finish, but the band does seem to have gone back to its former bad habit of dropping a few stinkers in here and there. I’m even more disappointed that the best parts just aren’t as strong as White Noise. Bush sings off key an awful lot (“Hog Tied” is an egregious example of this), annoying sounds at the ends of songs abound (the “close up” of somebody eating chips keeps “Harm’s Way,” at least a keeper otherwise, completely off of my DMP), and they even do an Aerosmith-country song with “Toast To The Extras.”

Most of the songs are borderline keepers, falling on both sides of said border, but there are some very strong points. “Crush” and “Catharsis” start the album such that you think you’re going to hear another cohesive, strong artistic statement like you did six years prior, and “Alpha Male,” in contention with “Harm’s Way” for the disc’s best song, is a killer groove in 7/4 time. They even go back to their old school thrash S.O.D. days for “Cupajoe,” which is an awful lot like “Milk” except now they really want coffee instead of “some god damn milk.”

This is a high three lunchboxes, as nearly every song is decent and there are a handful of very strong points. In the end, though, when deciding whether or not it warranted another half-lunchbox, I kept coming back to the too-long nature of the songs and the rest of the album that bored me. And if I still needed a tiebreaker, that stupid eating-chips sound at the end of “Harm’s Way” infuriates me to the point of breaking things, including the extra half-lunchbox I was considering. Why not just nails on a chalkboard, guys?

Rating:

Mixer: “Alpha Male”
Keepers: “Crush,” “Catharsis,” “Born Again Idiot,” “Killing Box,” “Cupajoe”
Filed Between: Anthrax’s Live—The Island Years and Apocalyptica (Inquisition Symphony)

Kids, they grow up so fast. On 2004’s Hot Fuss, The Killers sounded like kids: aggressive emo-ish songs, simple but powerful riffs repeated just long enough to be called a “song.” Two years later, on Sam’s Town, they’re so much more mature with their more laid-back tempi and varied song structures.

For the most part they wear their added experience well, but there are stretches, like the non-keepers and the bridge of “When You Were Young,” where it seem lost, like they need more good ideas, some way to string together them together, or both.

On my first few listens, I thought I heard a Springsteen influence in several places. After visiting Wikipedia and learning that it was in fact influenced by Springsteen I started hearing him everywhere. The guy’s career is all over this album, and I’m happy to hear Born To Run, the best album ever, take the lead on the inspiration front. “When You Were Young” is Lucky Town-era Boss with some glockenspiel and a key build á la “Born To Run” at the end for good measure, “Bones” features “10th Avenue Freeze Out”-horns, and “This River Is Wild” ends as a merging of “Mary Queen Of Arkansas” and “Jungleland,” the best song ever. It’s not just sonically, either, as Springsteenian metaphors and images abound. “Read My Mind” strongly recalls “Thunder Road,” the best song ever: “It’s funny how you just break down/Waitin’ on some sign/I pull up to the front of your driveway/With magic soakin’ my spine.”

This album is far from perfect, and while it’s good to see the band stretching so far so soon to develop their craft, some things would be better left unexplored. Take the weird attempt at making the album cohere with the second track “Enterlude” and the final one “Exitlude.” Silly names aside, “Enterlude” is unnecessary and completely forgettable. “Exitlude,” on the other hand, isn’t necessary, but it could have stood on its own at the end of the disc, recalling The Wall-era Pink Floyd.

So I think I like this better than Hot Fuss. Probably because they took my implied advice two-and-a-half years ago to heart:

Oftentimes these songs end up being one or two minutes too long as repetitive riffs are played over plodding rhythms with little or no development. The problem bands run into when they go for that blissful, ear-grabbing, 10-second hook is that there’s nowhere left to go after that. The immediate adrenaline shot is nice, but it wears off and I want a little more coyness and teasing in the form of tempo, dynamic, and/or harmonic changes.

A better album, for sure, but some wrinkles need to be ironed out yet before the band gets its fourth full lunchbox.

Rating:

Mixers: [Update: “For Reasons Unknown,"] “Read My Mind,” “This River Is Wild”
Keepers: “Sam’s Town,” “When You Were Young,” “Bones,” “Why Do I Keep Counting?,” “Exitlude”
Filed Between: The Killers’ Hot Fuss [Limited Edition] and King Can (Maximum Power Super Loud)

I’ve been skipping those CDs I got from J-mez that are duplicates in my collection, for obvious reason. But if one of them is a duplicate of a cassette I have, well, I’ll give that a truncated treatment.

Honestly, I just don’t feel like doing the full-on review process for a turd like this. This was Mötley Crüe’s fifth album and last before grunge hit. I.e., it was their last album where they were relevant. Their first album was a masterpiece, their second was really good, and the next three were god awful and also their most popular. Dr. Feelgood might be better than Theatre Of Pain, but I think it’s inferior to Girls, Girls, Girls. Gawd, I can’t believe I wrote about Sibelius just two days ago.

So this gets just a quick listen to remind myself that, yes, it sucks, a rating that is an estimate of how many lunchboxes I would give it were I to torture myself with five full listens, and a quick assessment of which songs I’d consider on mixes and want to keep on my DMP.

Estimated Rating:

Mixers: none
Keepers: “Kickstart My Heart”
Filed Between: Dr. Feelgood on cassette and Crüe’s Decade Of Decadence ’81-‘91

Tired of waiting for the impetuous Axl Rose to get his act together and release Chinese Democracy, Guns N’ Roses’ third proper studio album, guitarist Slash, bassist Duff McKagan, and drummer Matt Sorum teamed up with Scott Weilland of Stone Temple Pilots and Dave Kushner to form Velvet Revolver. In 2004 they released their debut album Contraband.

So I’m listening to this on Tuesday and thinking, damn, Chinese Democracy is never gonna come out and, hey, 2008 is almost over and Dr. Pepper said they’d give us all a pop if it was released this year, what’s the latest on that?

And holy s**t, Chinese Democracy is scheduled to be in Best Buy stores on Sunday. This f**king Sunday. And Dr. Pepper is making good on their promise and holy f’ing lord up is down and there’s a new Guns N’ Roses album?

And I’m supposed to review this ancient artifact? Pfft.

I half-expect that the new Guns N’ Roses album will blow big chunks, but nevertheless, this is probably the most anticipated album of all time and holy good god I’m running out to Best Buy on Sunday just to buy it on the day it comes out and it’s not waiting its turn in line because, again, Most. Anticipated. Album. Ever. So, musical history right there, by definition.

What’s most amazing about this being the most anticipated album ever is that their previous release (Use Your Illusion, I’m not counting The Spaghetti Incident) was previously the most anticipated album ever. I remember waiting outside the Title Wave in Columbia Heights at midnight in September, 1991 for those two albums, which had themselves been scrapped in their entirety and completely re-worked a couple of times at least, if we’re to believe reports from the GnR camp. They also were, of course, a huge let down. They were good, it’s just that nothing could match the five-lunchbox awesomeness of 1987’s Appetite For Destruction.

So now we’ve got Chinese Democracy out soon, and I guess everybody else has already heard most of it due to a leak. I’ll still be waiting for the release date and listening to it then because I’ve got enough to keep my ears busy in the meantime…during which I should write this review, huh?

So, yeah…. This hour’s worth of material, apart from the two requisite power ballads (these guys really are still living in the early 90’s), is pretty monochromatic: it’s got a heavy groove with an even heavier distorted guitar layered on top creating the song-obscuring din of noise that mixer Andy Wallace loves so much. I like a few more colors in my rainbow and a touch of bass in my rock.

Still, there are only two truly bad songs (“Big Machine” and “You Got No Right”) and another that’s borderline bad (the hit power ballad, “Fall To Pieces”). The two mixers are really good, but even the verses of “Illegall i Song” are boring in their simple aggressiveness. It gets considered for mixes only for the great chorus which features the most inventive drumming on the album. And after the rest of the album is a pretty even spread of “good” to “meh,” with the band at times sounding a lot like Stone Temple Pilots and at others like Dirt-era Alice In Chains. Fans of Slash will be happy as his characteristically melodic Les Paul playing is, naturally, everywhere. On balance, it’s all a little bit more good than it is bad.

Finally, one more thing about Chinese Democracy. That free Dr. Pepper has to be the best part of this, right? I mean, one of the biggest rock bands of the past twenty years basically got mocked and dared into releasing their third album by a pop company. That’s awesome. So bravo, Dr. Pepper, for using your cavity- and obesity-causing syrup power for good. Even if the album sucks I’ll be able to wash it down with a free 20 oz. beverage, and we got a great piece of media history to go with it.

Rating:

Mixers: “Illegal i Song,” “Spectacle”
Keepers: “Sucker Train Blues,” “Headspace,” “Slither,” “Dirty Little Thing,” “Loving The Alien”
Filed Between: Velocity Girl (¡Simpatico!) and Billy Vera & The Beaters (By Request)

Finland is one of those countries where they put their famous artists on their money. Despite my respect for the ladies and gentlemen gracing our currency, I wish we put our great artists on our money. It’s hard to think of a more famous Finn than Sibelius, and he graces or graced the 100 mark note in Finland.

After listening to this, it’s hard to imagine there could have been any greater Finn ever, so I guess it’s appropriate that I can’t name any others off the top of my head. This double CD has his last four symphonies, one movement (“The Swan Of Tuonela”) from a larger piece based on Finnish mythology that is possibly his most famous work and contains possibly the most famous English horn solo in the canon, and a 20-minute tone poem written about the Finnish forest (Tapiola).

On first listen, Sibelius doesn’t quite fit into the radical mold of much of the 20th Century classical music I’ve been listening to lately. In fact, I think most ears accustomed primarily to popular music wouldn’t think twice about throwing it in with Beethoven and Mozart. Closer listening, however, reveals that, despite the conventional instrumentation and emphasis on tonality and thematic development, there are halting, unsure vacillations in the rhythm and a brooding angst underlying almost every minute of these pieces.

Sibelius, as the reputation of the Finns would suggest, suffered from severe loneliness, depression, and solitude, and naturally it comes through in his music. The third movement of the Fourth Symphony takes forever to do anything; themes are started, left incomplete, and then subside to the same theme emerging a bit differently or stand aside for a new theme altogether. Finally, at the 7:45 mark we get about 50 seconds of sublime beauty, but it falls back down in its bed to mutter away for several more minutes, making hearty attempts here and there but never quite becoming ambulatory. The final movement feels as if it was written by a man about to take his own life. It’s nine-and-a-half minutes of music falling apart, as if it can barely will itself to go on. Here we have a violin ostinato, there the winds pipe up for a brief moment. Things end in a sea of lukewarm entropy, everything having fallen apart.

Symphonies Five and Six are alternately Sibelius’ greatest symphony, depending on which one I’m listening to. The first movement of the Fifth is a masterpiece. At times it is bold, stately, fast, gripping… everything that the Fourth was not, the manic to the Fourth’s depressive. The Sixth is the controlled middle ground, healthy, and reaching for inspiration and guidance from the Overture to Wagner’s Lohengrin, one of my favorite pieces.

If the thought of a Finnish forest, especially during a long, dark winter, frigthens you, I don’t recommend listening to Tapiola, because your pants will be wet with “fear” before it’s over. From catchy but harmonically tricky thematic development at the start to total Wagner/John Williams-Darth Vader moments midway through to howling and screeching in the violins that would put the most abrasive David Lynch moments to shame, this is one of the darkest and greatest dark pieces in the history of music.

I appreciate honoring their artistic heroes, but there’s no way Finland can have a denomination high enough to warrant Sibelius’ image. They should just name their GDP after him.

Rating:

Mixers: none
Keepers: Symphony 4, Movement 1; “The Swan Of Tuonela;” Symphony 5, Movements 1 and 3; Symphony 6; Symphony 7, Movements 1-3; Tapiola
Filed Between: Shudder To Think (50,000 B.C.) and Silverchair (“Tomorrow”)

In the immediate aftermath of the election I took great joy in the circular firing squad the Republicans had convened, and had collected a bunch of damning information on Sarah Palin. I eventually decided to leave it alone, but since I actually got a request, let me compile some of the best post-election stuff I encountered.

The first big shocker was this video, via TPM, of Fox News reporter Carl Cameron telling us Palin didn’t know Africa was a continent, not a country, and that she couldn’t name the three countries in NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Despite my initial schaudenfreude, I eventually decided not to make too much of this. For one, Carl Cameron is the guy who made up the manicure comments about Kerry four years ago. Additionally, I just found it tough to believe that the governor of Alaska didn’t know Africa was a continent. Part of me wants to believe that this despicable woman didn’t know that, but the democratic idealist in me can’t stand to tolerate the thought that voters could elect someone so idiotic. Add in that this is pretty clearly one part of the Republican party trying to sink a person that sunk their chances this year, and it’s hard to know what’s true and what’s not.

Palin’s response to the report was interesting.

Palin, McCain’s running mate in their unsuccessful White House campaign, told CNN the allegation “is not true.” She said the leaks could have come from people who helped her with preparation for her debate against Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden.

[…]

“I think if there are allegations based on questions or comments that I made in debate prep about NAFTA or about the continent versus the country when we talk about Africa there, then those were taken out of context, and that is cruel and mean-spirited, it’s immature, it’s unprofessional, and those guys are jerks,” Palin said.

Most telling to me here is not the “jerks” comment, though that’s pretty amusing, but rather the fact that she claims it’s “not true,” then goes on to pin down the conversation forming the basis of the allegation, distinguishes “the continent versus the country when we talk about Africa there,” and says it was taken out of context. Despite my initial skepticism, that’s pretty damning. First of all, what country?  Second, it’s hard for me to imagine the conversation where this could have been taken out of context and still not portray her in a crazy idiotic light. So I think her response here is suspicious, and probably lends the allegation more credence than it would have if she had just denied it…I mean, I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt just a few paragraphs ago…she should have kept her mouth shut.

Then, from Newsweek, via TPM, comes some interesting news that her spending spree was even more egregious than previously reported.

NEWSWEEK has also learned that Palin’s shopping spree at high-end department stores was more extensive than previously reported. …McCain’s top advisers privately fumed at what they regarded as her outrageous profligacy. One senior aide said that Nicolle Wallace had told Palin to buy three suits for the convention and hire a stylist. But instead, the vice presidential nominee began buying for herself and her family—clothes and accessories from top stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. According to two knowledgeable sources, a vast majority of the clothes were bought by a wealthy donor, who was shocked when he got the bill. Palin also used low-level staffers to buy some of the clothes on their credit cards. The McCain campaign found out last week when the aides sought reimbursement. One aide estimated that she spent “tens of thousands” more than the reported $150,000, and that $20,000 to $40,000 went to buy clothes for her husband. Some articles of clothing have apparently been lost. An angry aide…said the truth will eventually come out when the Republican Party audits its books.

Palin’s response?

She also described accusations that she spent exorbitant amounts of money on clothes for the campaign as “sexist.”

I think these reports, like the Africa thing, are probably half-true, half-hatchet job trying to kill her political career in 2008 and save the Republican party some headaches going forward. Complaining about spending gross amounts of money, which sharply contrasts with that stupid hockey mom image, is not sexist whether it’s true or not (though I’ll be the among the first to say that our media’s coverage of women politicians and their clothes is indeed sexist), and it just shows that she lives in some alternate universe.

Even with all this, and with the seemingly obvious reality that her national political career was dead dead dead, the media just can’t give her up, and she’s coming back to life. The media has a Palin addiction, does not know how to quit her, and will do whatever they can to revive that story for the next four years.

She’s eating it up, too, giving a “press conference” at the Republican Governors’ meeting this week. Via Daily Kos, here’s the video:

Well, if you needed any proof that her inability to talk and think at the same time was the result of her being incompetent and not that of being overly handled by the McCain campaign, I think you’ve got it right there. And we’ve learned one more thing: 2008 = hair up, 2012 = hair down. The new Sarah Palin, ladies and gentlemen, already coiffed for the next campaign.

In the end, though, I still feel bad about putting all of this together. Not because I feel sorry for her, Lord no. You run for office and all of this is fair game. Rather, I’m hesitant because I think her idiocy overshadows her evilness, and I’d much rather have her political career dead due to her abuses of power in office to satisfy personal vendettas than by her inability to talk, think, or do both at the same time.

So let’s never speak of her idiocy again, but wrap up the Palin stuff with this hilarious video, via My Baby via Daily Kos, of Russians singing about seeing Palin from their house.

Finally, in non-Palin post-election news, I went through quite a bit of depression in the four days after the election, figuratively unable to scrape myself off the couch. Just like Red Sox fans finding out their lives were meaningless when not defined by some external, uncontrollable event when their team won their first World Series in 2004, a lot of us Obama supporters found themselves wondering what was next after the election. For me it started even before the polls closed on the West Coast. I knew it would happen, and had prepared myself for it, but it was still a rough period through about that next Saturday. Here’s a funny video from The Onion, via TPM, that sums it up.

I had this amusing post drafted for today wherein some considered inner reflection and spiritual intent guided my actions for the course of the day and then all went to hell as somebody did something stupid, resulting in a misanthropic rant made amusing by its juxtaposition with the aforementioned spiritual soul searching.

But there is a remote chance that the cause and target of my rage would get wind of the post and so I’d rather just let discretion be the better part of valor.  You can write your own post in your head based on the paragraph above, or if you really want to hear the story you can ask me sometime.

I saw Morphine once. It was St. Louis in the fall of 1994 and I was being loaded into the back of an ambulance. Long story.

Anyway, this is the band’s second album and probably their most well-known one. They had a couple of mid-level hits with it in the form of “Cure For Pain” and “Thursday.” The three-piece has an interesting instrumentation: a drummer, a two-string bassist and vocalist, and a saxophonist who hangs out on both the tenor and the bari. It’s a sound that is fresh and instantly recognizable; no other band sounds even close to Morphine.

It’s also the best thing they’ve got going for them. It works about half the time, and for the other half the interesting-ness can’t carry it through the low-key, repetitive songs. When it works, it’s accompanied by a killer emotional melody, like on “I’m Free Now” or “Candy,” and those tracks work great. There’s quite a bit of meh to go around, though, like on “A Head With Wings” or “Mary Won’t You Call My Name?,” two completely forgettable tracks.

Speaking of “Candy,” the best songs given female names are clearly those given “Candy.” You’ve got this one, which is the best track here, “Sex And Candy” by Marcy Playground (which actually might be a band that sounds remotely close to Morphine, now that I think about it), and the best song ever, Springsteen’s “Candy’s Room.”

The band’s not completely a one-trick pony, though. When they go away from the formula, putting the bass way down in the mix and replacing the saxes with a mandolin, you get “In Spite Of Me,” a quiet, whispery, contemplative piece that would have fit on Springsteen’s Nebraska, or at least on that album’s tribute, Badlands.

This kind of at-times-great and too-much-of-one-flavor vibe is what I remember when I added the band’s 1997 release Like Swimming to my collection, but I wasn’t reviewing here then, so I’m not completely sure. Regardless, it’s definitely the opinion of Morphine that’s currently getting solidified in MPL-land.

Rating:

Mixers: “I’m Free Now,” “Candy,” “In Spite Of Me,” “Thursday”
Keepers: “Buena,” “Cure For Pain”
Filed Between: Morning Becomes Eclectic and Morphine’s Like Swimming