Miss Piggy Lunchbox

Here’s a picture of what I woke up to on Thursday morning.

With at least four inches on my car, that’s 12 never-snows this season. The first never-snow of the season was fewer than 11 weeks ago, meaning that, even with counting that crazy week before Christmas as just one never-snow, it’s never-snowed, on average, more than once a week this season.

I thought Obama was gonna fix this crap.

Independent observations from Beckers, My Baby, and yours truly concur that this one hardly phased Seattlites.  They got out of their houses, into their cars, and drove to work as if it were a normal faltering day.  Maybe they’re just thrilled to still have a job so it’s not worth the risk anymore of sharing the illusion that a never-snow here is cause for a day off of work.

In contradiction to this seeming acceptance of never-snow, though, My Baby had an encounter at work with a recent transplant from the Bay Area who expressed his surprise that he had to trudge through what he called “snow” in his new hometown.  Fair enough, guy, Seattle doesn’t have a reputation as a snowy town, and you’ve only been here four weeks.  Here’s the kicker, though: He told My Baby that he had been told it only snows once every 10 years here.  (It’s not the snow, it’s the never-snow….)  And since he’s only been here four weeks, this was told to him by people who not only have experienced the never-snow of all three falterings that I’ve lived here but were brutalized by that week before Christmas that caused the papers to fly into a Seattle-style “outrage” (”Please consider having a snow plan in place, if you don’t mind”) and about which we were holding public hearings just a few weeks ago.  Once every 10 years?  Try 10 days…or even more frequently this year.

The Seaddlusion is more deep-seated than we ever could have imagined.

General Patton Vs. The X-ecutioners, a project between Mike Patton and The X-ecutioners, a group of three turntablists, is kind of a cross between the two Mike Patton releases on Ipecac that would follow it. As a predominantly hip-hip album, it serves as a bit of a forerunner to 2006’s Peeping Tom, though this isn’t nearly as accessible and the cohesion I raved about in that album’s review isn’t present here. Still, you can hear Patton experimenting with some of the things he would employ expertly the following year.

Unfortunately, early 2005 seemed to be a time when Patton had run out of ideas as well as the ability to concentrate for more than one minute, as this disc bears a lot in common with the Fantômas album that would be released six weeks later, Suspended Animation. Back then I wrote:

The fragments are too short and the intermittent samples are too long. Just when a groove starts to take hold, they cut it short in disorienting fashion. The album doesn’t flow and I don’t feel compelled to keep listening for what’s around the corner.

I could hardly describe this album better. It has its moments, great ones in fact, but those moments seem to be randomly scattered throughout bland, repetitive melodies, a constant shifting from one riff or noise to another, and the same vocal tricks by Patton that were brilliantly original from 1995 to 1999 but are just treading water now. “Chuck-a-loo, chuck-a-loo,” Patton percussively sings, and I drift back to the Clinton administration, when he was breaking new ground with how the voice was used as an instrument. Then, to really drive home that parts of this disc were just mailed in, we get the “This…is a journey…into sound” sample. I mean, really? Really? This sample was on just about every hip-hop album in the 90’s and you…I mean…what the…what on Earth made you think this was some effective way of demonstrating your sonic prowess in 2005? I don’t know, maybe if you were in a coma in the 90’s and wanted to hear Patton’s take on hip-hop, then maybe this would be a great listen.

As it is, it’s merely a good listen, as some of the great moments bring it up just high enough to clear that bar. “Battle Hymn Of The Technics Republic” is a Star Wars laser gunfight on Planet Hip-Hop and manages to out-do all but the first two movies on its own. About midway through, “¡Kamikaze! 0500 Hrs. (‘Take A Piece Of Me’)” is probably the highlight of the album, with its hard-hitting beats and big, encompassing sound…if the whole album could have been that good…well, if wishes was fishes, I guess. Instead it just makes me that much more appreciative that Patton came out of his 2005 funk to make Peeping Tom, which I think I’m going to go listen to now.

Rating:

Mixers: “¡Vaqueros Y Indios! (Joint Special Operations Task Force),” “Battle Hymn Of The Technics Republic,” “¡Fire In The Hole! 0400 Hrs. (Joint Special Operations Task Force),” “¡Kamikaze! 0500 Hrs. (‘Take A Piece Of Me’)”
Non-keepers: “Improvised Explosive Device 0300 Hrs.,” “Precision Guided Needle-Dropping And Larynx Munitions (PGNDLM),” “Convulsive Antidote For Nerve Agent Autoinjector (CANAA),” “Surprise Swing Insurgency/Tabla And Tongue Twist Counterattack/(‘Dragon Seeks Path’),” “Eastside Multichannel Tactical Scratch Communications (EMTSC),” “Warcry/Infrared R’n’B Hallucination/Jungle Operations Exfiltration System,” “L.O.L.—¡Loser On Line! (Hate The Player, Hate The Game)”
Filed Between: Gene (“Sleep Well Tonight”) and Gershwin (Complete Piano Works (perf. Dag Achatz))

It’s a shame that this album contains “One Of Us,” and not just because that song blows. Almost as big a crime as inflicting that unrelenting tripe on our 1995 ears is it obscuring what is an excellent album as well as Joan Osborne’s true style. I was reminded of that style myself when I heard this disc open with “St. Teresa,” which I seem to remember as the first single off the album, with “One Of Us” being the second.

The other 55 minutes here, for the most part, decidedly part ways with that atrocity (notably the only song credited solely to guitarist Eric Bazilian). Light up a cigarette on a hot, steamy night (note: offer not available in Seattle), kick back with a cold beer, and let the slow, bluesy rhythms, Osborne’s sultry voice and Bazilian’s perfectly accentuating guitar playing bring your heartbeat and temperature down.

There is some diversity, like the party track “Right Hand Man” with its great sax and piano parts, the tight little groove of “Ladder,” and “Let’s Just Get Naked,” which is appropriate about 10 months into a recession and six beers into the night and is a candidate for mix CDs primarily because of its lyrics. Still, for the most part, just sit back and soak up the deeply penetrating soulfulness of Osborne.

Sadly, in the end this album will be remembered for one thing (aside from its atrocious cover art that makes Radiohead’s look like Van Gogh) and that is “One Of Us.” My Baby came into my office the other day when it was playing and said, “Is this Alanis?” I think that just about sums up the merits of that song.

Rating:

Mixers: “St. Teresa,” “Let’s Just Get Naked,” “Crazy Baby”
Non-keepers: “One Of Us,” “Help Me”
Filed Between: Beth Orton (Comfort Of Strangers) and Ozzy Osbourne (No More Tears – Collector’s Edition cassette single)

I have learned something about myself in the past month or so: I cannot simultaneously care about my classes and getting an internship.

When I went back to school, I was totally into my courses and went out of my way, even if work was bearing down on me, to go to talks and symposia, read journals, and just basically try to absorb everything going on in the field.  It was great and I was pretty good at it, and of course those two aren’t unrelated.

And now that work is drying up, clients are demanding rate cuts, and it’s time to get an internship anyway, I’m completely consumed by creating a resume, making contacts at companies, and all that other miserable job search stuff that requires facing uncertainty with the utmost confidence.  And I don’t give a rip about my classes.

I still put in my time in lecture, the readings, and the assignments, but I turn stuff in and don’t care what the grade is because, as the voice in my head keeps pointing out, “getting a job is the goal.”  I guess, Mr. Voice, but it is certainly less interesting, provides less flexibility (you can’t jump around from one thing to another depending on what interests you), and is less intellectually rewarding to look for a job, and when it takes away from something you were really enjoying, that’s kind of sad.

I thought that when I went through this at the end of undergrad that that’s just who I was at that time.  Turns out that, no, I just have limited space for high priority items in my life, and school and job search do not seem to be able to coexist at the top of my priorities list.

Vincent & Mr. Green is like a Nick Cave scene in a Wim Wenders movie. The music is overwhelming you and though you can’t quite discern a melody through the viscous bass, rhythm, and insanely-closely-mic’d vocals, you know that one’s there, but it’s an amorphous, mutating blob you can’t quite discern, coming into focus briefly, only to slip back into the ether. Somewhere somebody in a beret laughs and somebody else with a pencil-thin mustache pensively puffs away at a long cigarette. All is either black-and-white or monochromatic and draped in themes of death, betrayal, revenge, and disappointment, but also a zen-like acceptance. It’s disturbing, but compelling, and if you just surrender to it…just droop your eyelids and bob your head along, or at least nearly so, with the beat, you will reach a higher plane of consciousness and appreciate the sounds surrounding you.

And before you know it there’s a DJ right in front of you laying down beats that aren’t really slamming but seem like they are in comparison to where your now-surrendered head is at, and there she is, as clear as can be, Jade Vincent, the seductive, sultry, elusive chanteuse, you will be haphazardly pursuing for the next sixty minutes in this altered reality laid down by Mr. Green. And thank god, because he makes it all sound so good, so delicious, so palpable. You are now his movie, his creation. He controls all of your senses and finally you are able to surrender to everything, and just in time because Part I ends with Vincent telling of a phone call from Mom about Dad’s recent death, and you descend even further down the rabbit hole into the sonic mindfuck muck of Part II, never to be seen again, like the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey through the prism of a 1930’s French cabaret.

Rating:

Mixers: “Preface,” “Like You,” “Dance,” “Daddy,” “Dance (Part II)”
Non-keepers: “Burn,” “The Green Room,” “Will,” “Transylvania X,” “Once”
Filed Between: Verdi (Otello) and Voivod (War And Pain)

Unlike most greatest hits albums, this one doesn’t seem to suffer from a lack of cohesion. Sure, it jumps all over the place, from the folk balladry of “Love Is Like A Butterfly” through the crossover pop hits of “Islands In The Stream” and “9 To 5” to the near-funk of “Jolene” and “Two Doors Down,” but I pretty much just think of Dolly Parton as a hits factory, anyway, instead of as somebody who put together 45-minute opuses of albums, so it’s not as jarring. Like most greatest hits albums, though, this does completely crater into awfulness at the end. The ridiculous constraint Legacy Recordings put on themselves by naming the series of greatest hits albums by dozens of stars 16 Biggest Hits is surely going to be the problem in some cases, but Parton must have better hits they could have mined instead of the putrid 90’s tracks “Rockin’ Years” and “Romeo.”

Still, this collection, for pretty much the first 12 tracks, is awesome stacked upon awesome. She’s become a caricature of herself, of course, but back in the day Parton was dropping killer songs non-stop. Okay, she was a caricature of herself even by the time she came into my consciousness in the early 80’s, but still, she had the chops to back it up. And she wrote most of these tunes, which was a complete surprise to me, as she always seemed like more of an “entertainer” than “singer/songwriter” to me. The woman’s the real deal.

“Jolene” and “Two Doors Down” are amazing and the fact that they’re head and shoulders above most everything else here probably pushes some songs that would be mixers on lesser albums down to keeper status. But “9 To 5” is the Best Song Ever. Oh, you think you know it, I can hear the chorus playing in your head right now, but let me tell you that what is playing in your head is nowhere near what the song sounds like. Just go listen to it and tell me I’m wrong. As the bass pumps with heat that only funk and disco bands were hitting it with in 1980 and the typewriter clicks and dings as a percussive instrument, your head will start to bob. As Parton sings “Tumble out of bed, and I stumble to the kitchen/Pour myself a cup of ambition,” you will involuntarily audibly agree because, oh, you know it, Dolly. By the time her “blood starts pumping” and “out on the street the traffic starts jumping,” you will think that going to work in an office in 1980 as a woman was the best thing of all time because never has the glass ceiling sounded so f**king good.

What may be the most amazing thing about this song is the way it song takes aim at sexism in the workplace without ever explicitly calling it out. At first it just seems to be a song about how working eight hour days in a comfortable office is a drag, and I’m purely speculating that since a big portion of Parton’s audience in 1980 were housewives, the idea of grueling days punching a clock might have seemed like a drag. At the same time, though, a lot of her audience was doing backbreaking physical labor and must have wondered what could have been so bad about office work.

So given that, and the content of the accompanying film, this must have been about unequal treatment of women in the workplace, which seems way ahead of its time, or maybe I just wasn’t aware of discussion of such issues when I was five. But back to the amazing part…she seems to do this without ever mentioning women, unequal treatment, sexism, feminism, etc., again a seeming nod to where the mindset of her audience was at. She does mention men a lot but it’s always “boss man” or “rich man,” a convenient twist that also makes the song accessible, on its surface, to men who feel like they’re getting the shaft at work.

Finally, it’s pretty much impossible to hear “I Will Always Love You” without hearing Whitney Houston’s overblown, garish version, so thanks for ruining this song for everybody, Whitney. You’re not talented enough to carry Parton’s panties.

Rating:

Best Song Ever: “9 to 5”
Mixers: “Jolene,” “Two Doors Down”
Non-keepers: “Single Women,” “Love Is Like A Butterfly,” “Rockin’ Years,” “Romeo”

The only real question about this disc is how far the last 9 tracks, recorded in a studio in 1988, a year before Nine Inch Nail’s debut album, Pretty Hate Machine, was released, can pull up the rating of this two-disc set, which begins with 19 tracks from a live show in late 1994. Despite the fact that, on their own, those nine tracks are probably worth four lunchboxes, they only pull up the 1.5 lunchboxes contributed by the show to two full lunchboxes. That may not seem fair, but the horrible sound quality, breaking equipment, off-key singing, and audience berating of the live show dominates the overall feel of this bootleg collection.

The less said about that concert’s recording here, the better, but it’s worth mentioning that, sound quality issues aside, I think the songs from The Downward Spiral work much better in a live context performed by a full band than they do when performed by only Reznor and an army of machines. The organic performances almost seem to justify Reznor’s histrionic misanthropy , self-loathing, and angst, while the “solo” recordings merely caricaturize and minimize it.

As I said, the real value of this collection is in the demos Reznor recorded as he was preparing Pretty Hate Machine. A couple of the tracks (“The Only Time” and “Down In It”) sound lousy, as demos tend to do, and serve merely as historical document to his creative process. Most of the rest is pretty awesome, though.

“Ringfinger,” “Sanctified,” and “Kinda I Want To” all warrant being kept by being quite different from the versions that eventually ended up on Pretty Hate Machine, and most often for the better. I prefer the timbres he’s experimenting with here, like cheesy 80’s synth sounds and porno bass lines (they work, trust me). The flat-out joyful sounds also show up on some other tracks that never saw the light of day under official release: “Maybe Just Once” and “Purest Feeling.” Despite most of them suffering from a bit of Reznor’s repetitiveness, all of these tracks are phenomenal and I can’t imagine what would justify him not releasing them to his fans. It’s okay to smile and enjoy life, Trent. You can be calculatedly angry 80% of the time and still make your millions.

Rating:

Mixers: “Maybe Just Once”
Keepers: “Piggy,” “Sanctified,” “Kinda I Want To,” Purest Feeling,” “Ringfinger”
Filed Between: The Downward Spiral and Nirvana (Bleach)

Who sent me the Mars Volta CD from San Diego?

Thanks.

UPDATE: No, seriously, guys, who sent me this?  So weird….

Just some quickly dashed off thoughts I’ll pass off as a review….

The band got off to a slow start. Despite starting with the breathlessly told tale of those first stolen moments of youthful lust, “Gasoline,” it seemed like maybe it had just been nappy time for the band a few minutes earlier, or maybe it was too much to expect energy right away on Sunday night after presumably wild Friday and Saturday nights.

The band eventually found their groove and my only real complaint after that was the sound, where the bass dominated to the point of distraction. It wasn’t helped by the fact that the vocals were pretty low in the mix and the guitarist just flat out didn’t play important parts of the songs. Audrye Sessions, the prior band, sounded great from the balcony, but it did not carry through to ATE’s set, which we watched from the floor.

One more similarity between ATE and Vampire Weekend, between whom I drew parallels in my review of The Airborne Toxic Event: both bands are carried performance-wise by their drummers. Both bands write great songs, but in both instances the best technical performer, far and away, is their drummer, and they’re both amazing.

Along with “Gasoline,” the band also hit “Wishing Well,” “Happiness Is Overrated,” “Does This Mean You’re Moving On?,” “Something New,” “Innocence,” and what they framed, musically, as their big epic (and I can’t disagree), “Sometime Around Midnite.” I think they played “This Is Nowhere,” but I can’t remember for sure. They also played two or three songs not on the album, one of which was introduced as never having been played before in Seattle and being about a neighborhood in L.A. called Echo Park.

The most memorable part of the night was the encore, where they played “Missy” and invited everybody up on stage. Exhibit A that I’m old: I was sure somebody was going to get hurt as the stage became completely full and the dancing was making the ground underneath my feet shake. It was so crowded that the singer’s guitar (the only one for that song) became disconnected for the first third or so of the song, he barely had room to play it even when it was connected, and he finally told people to stop coming up on stage. Exhibit B that I’m old: I remarked that for this generation, it’s like something isn’t happening unless their phone is involved. I don’t think there was a soul up there just surrendering to the moment…every single person was involving their phone somehow, whether to Twitter that they were on the stage with ATE or take pictures of themselves right next to the singer or of the crowd from the stage. What a trip.

Dear Bruce,

Oh boy. Believe me, this hurts me more than it hurts you. After all, you’ve got your millions of dollars and your sycophantic fans and journalists who think you have the Midas touch. I’m sure it’s all very fulfilling.

But between us, Bruce, between you and me, the magic just isn’t there anymore. I’m sorry, Bruce, but I’m leaving you.

I tried to put this off as long as I could, but you and I have both known it was coming for a long time. Things started going downhill at The Rising, and for a long time I thought that our problems had only been going on for the last seven years. I thought you would turn it around again, like you did after 1992’s unfortunate Human Touch, but shit, Bruce, once I really sat down and thought about it, that turnaround, as far as contemporary material was concerned, was basically just The Ghost Of Tom Joad. That’s one great studio album in the last 20 years. You had me fooled during that turnaround by showering me with greatest hits albums, box sets of old, unreleased stuff, and fantastic live performances, but the other day I realized I’ve been living a lie for over two decades now. I even largely overlooked a mediocre CD of Pete Seeger covers. Christ, Bruce, how do you screw up Pete Seeger?

I’m sorry, I don’t mean to attack you. I’m just trying to point out that the signs have been there for a long time…we just have to wake up and see them. I’m finally admitting to myself how empty it is for me. Only you can do the same for you.

Believe me, this is just as sudden for me as it is for you. Like I said, I really did think a turnaround was right around the corner. But when I was in the record store picking this album off the shelf, I originally had the version with the DVD in it in my hand (you know me and my rules, right?). Anyway…the thought of watching you narcissistically discuss this album for 40 minutes made me sick…literally nauseous. I put it down and saved myself the extra five bucks and 40 minutes. That’s when I knew that this was your last chance. If this album wasn’t great, or even just unequivocally good (say, Lucky Town or Tunnel Of Love good), then I would move on, no matter how hard it was.

And then you go and name the album Working On A Dream. Come on…did you let the neighbor kids name it? See, this is the problem, man. You’ve been over this ground again and again and again. It’s all trite garbage you used to leave on the cutting room floor. Your unreleased throwaways, as the masterful Tracks demonstrates, used to be better than this, but now you’re making it the centerpiece of your Super Bowl halftime show. The lyrics, which were the only extravagantly good thing about Devils & Dust, are now just leftover, generic, hard-luck blue-collar imagery about “love shining down” that even Mellencamp wouldn’t touch, and the tunes are plain-Jane forgettable.

No, you’re right, you’re right…. You did tone down that snarly, hick vocalization thing that drove me so nuts on Devils And Dust and, less so, on Magic like I asked you to. You’re a sweet guy (remember that time you couldn’t make it to my birthday but you sent a card with J-mez?…that was awesome), and I believe you’re trying your best, but…jeez, this album makes those last few sound pretty damned good.

I don’t know. Maybe the money and the fame changed you. You kept it going longer than any mortal should have been able to, but now when you sing about outlaws, your weary hands swinging a hammer down, and what love can do…there’s nothing true in it anymore…you have no connection to those lives you sing about other than some saccharine caricature in your head. The spark is gone, Bruce. No amount of glossy liner notes can hide the fact that you’re compensating. Not even an entire choir of gospel singers in front of the world’s largest television audience can mask this inadequacy.

We’ll always have 1973 – 1987. Nothing can take that away from us, and know I’ll always treasure those moments. I’ll still be rooting for you to find that magic again, but the days of me buying your album shortly after its release are over. I’ll be there listening to the old stuff, loving the old Bruce. I still love that Boss…I just don’t know what happened to him. I feel like he still might be there…like I caught a glimpse of him when reading the excerpt from Danny Federici’s eulogy. If you see him, send him my love. If you don’t, I beg you to ride off nobly into the sunset like so many of your characters.

Sincerely,

KEN

P.S. It’s not even about Brendan anymore. It’s just you, Bruce. It’s just you.

Rating:

Mixers: “Good Eye,” “The Wrestler”
Keepers: “My Lucky Day,” “Life Itself,” “Surprise, Surprise,” “The Last Carnival”
Filed Between: Magic and Stanley, Son of Theodore: Yet Another Alternative Music Sampler