Miss Piggy Lunchbox

I’ve just about got this down to a science now. I knew I was going to detest this album and that the distress of spending any more time than I had to with it would take years off of my life, so I held on to a great album preceding it until I knew I would have enough clearance in my schedule to get through this one quickly. In the spirit of just pushing ahead, I’m not going to go into too many details about why this CD is as awful as it is. I will give you just two things to hate on.

First, every single song here starts off with some simplistic guitar riff that cuts through the rest of the instruments, lasts 2.5 to 3.5 bars, pauses for the remainder of the four-bar stanzas, and is repeated either four or eight times before the vocal track comes in. There’s no composition, it’s just annoying-riff/pause/repeat. Every. Single. Song. I’m not sure how nobody noticed this, because it bugged me for the only two Soup Dragons songs I’d heard before I got this CD (one of which was “Divine Thing” which is the song you probably know from this disc and has some redeeming qualities).

The second hate-worthy feature is the inanity of the lyrics. I’ll provide a couple of examples.

The first example is from “Getting Down.” “Every way you move/And everything you choose/Has a special flair/That’s apparent by your hair.” I don’t know…I guess he really wanted to rhyme flair. Then there’s “Dream-On (Solid Gone),” which goes “As your lips reach mine/It just feels like heaven.” “Just”? Needed another syllable and couldn’t come up with anything better?

Okay, I can’t leave it there, because there’s also the most insipid rock lyric ever, from “Everything”. “You elevate in a special way/You turn the night into day.” Wow…night into day…I’m breathless…where did you come up with that?

Oh, and I have to share The Soup Dragons’ artist page on VH1. The “featured album” is this album’s follow-up…from 1994. And the latest “News” is that singer Sean Dickson is turning 31…in 1998. Put that in the you-know-a-band-is-dead-when column.

Rating:

Mixers: none
Keepers: “Divine Thing,” “Everything”
Filed Between: Soundgarden (Down On The Upside) and South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut soundtrack

A Tale Of Three Reviews

The first review lived in my head. It was based on a few listens to this CD and a conversation with My Baby. It told of how, yeah, Sinatra’s fine, but come on, folks…he didn’t even write these songs, Dean Martin’s voice was better, and all these songs really do is evoke a mood, like you should be watching some When Harry Met Sally knock-off romantic comedy, especially the in-love montage where the guy trips and falls in Central Park or they’re window shopping at Christmas and they’re so so ridiculously happy, and you know they are because Sinatra is playing over their silent antics. The real reason Sinatra is Sinatra, the review said, is not the music as much as it is the rock star persona. He had wealth, women, and both legitimate and illegitimate power, setting the archetype for the late 20th-century rock star before we even knew what rock and roll would be. The songs were the dredges of big band music, sucking all the life out of the already quick-to-be-shlocky genre and pandering to the lowest common denominator with cavity-causing string riffs. “And what’s with these liner notes?” the review concluded. “Why is this egghead drowning me in superlatives, trying to convince me that Sinatra had some kind of artistic rigor and aesthetic supremacy my ears tell me is missing?”

The second review was published almost three years ago. It starts a lot like the first review, complete with the Dean Martin comparison and attribution of Sinatra’s stardom to his aura instead of his singing. The review then went on to talk about how some of the songs on that album were pretty good…or at least that many of them had good parts.

Which brings us to the third review…this review. It starts with the first review, then merges into the second review. It doesn’t back away from anything in the first two reviews, it’s just that I’ve already said everything in those two reviews. Except, really? These are the 20 best songs you could get from eight years in the prime of this icon’s career? Gee, overrated much? But anyway, beyond the infectious melody and the Lawrence-Welk-with-good-looks schmaltz, what’s left to discuss?

Well, let’s talk songwriters. Specifically, let’s talk about the Jimmy Van Heusen/Sammy Cahn songwriting team. How in the world are these guys responsible for the two worst songs on this disc as well as two of its three best? “Love And Marriage” plods with its obvious nods to the overzealous, righteous censors and arbiters of Hollywood values of the day as well as its just plain phrasal plodding. “High Hopes” suffers from the saccharine treatment as well…I think the song is a carcinogen. Its only redeeming quality is that it’s not “Love And Marriage.” Meanwhile, “(Love Is) The Tender Trap” survives its pro-marriage cornball lyrics with a grooving sax line that seems to imply you don’t have to give up the single life when you get married (wink wink) and the catchy-as-hell “Come Fly With Me” is only not a mixer because its lyrics are just too cute.

That’s it…that’s all I’ve got that’s new. Maybe in three years I’ll go through the same struggle with Sinatra. Or maybe by then I’ll have some more insight into the multiple personality mystery that is Jimmy VanHeusen. Either way, it’s probably safe for me to now say that, while I still think he’s drastically overrated, I like Sinatra, though this album (the 50’s) helps his case a lot, just by being far superior to the last Sinatra CD I reviewed (the 60’s and 70’s).

Rating:

Mixers: “(Love Is) The Tender Trap,” “Witchcraft”
Keepers: “I’ve Got The World On A String,” “Learning’ The Blues,” “You Make Me Feel So Young,” “The Lady Is A Tramp,” “Come Fly With Me”
Filed Between: The Simpsons – Songs In The Key Of Springfield and the Singles soundtrack

I hated nearly every minute of this, but I’m glad it came along in J-mez’ collection. I got Red Hot Chili Peppers’ preceding release, Blood Sugar Sex Magik when it came out because they had the right formula for me in high school. They were a wild, hard rock band with a funky edge. I had only heard “Give It Away” and “Higher Ground” at that point, being lukewarm on the former and pretty excited about the latter. But after hating BSSM and their headlining performance at Lollapalooza that year (which I walked out on), I gave up on them. Still, their stubborn insistence on releasing critically acclaimed albums always made me wonder if I missed anything. Thankfully, this collection of their singles prior to BSSM has laid those doubts to rest.

These guys are pretty good about laying down some good guitar riffs over a cool beat, but after that it’s just silliness, with lead singer Anthony Kiedis, whose sole artistic talent is wearing funny hats and making funny faces (worst. heroin addict. ever.), doing his best to annoy the hell out of you. I can’t believe that clown has convinced himself that Mike Patton ripped him off.

Four of these tracks are covers: “Higher Ground” (Stevie Wonder), “Fire” (Jimi Hendrix), “If You Want Me To Stay” (Sly & The Family Stone), and “Hollywood” (The Meters). Two of those get kept, which means that one-third of the keepers from this 18-track fingernails-on-chalkboard fest weren’t written by these guys. “Catholic School Girls Rule” is a romp with fun lyrics that doesn’t last long enough to annoy me. “Behind The Sun” slows things down and has more of a pot-on-the-beach vibe instead of the adrenaline-and-speed-in-the-gutter vibe of the rest of the album (most notably “Get Up And Jump”…holy crap, take a pill, guys). “Knock Me Down” and “Under The Bridge,” the real surprise keeper, both drive me nuts at times but start with great guit riffs that I can’t bring myself to delete…yet.

Continuing down the track of descending quality, songs that nearly got kept have the same good and bad qualities as those last two keepers, but just have longer bad parts. “Show Me Your Soul” and “Taste The Pain” fall into this category.

After that it’s just a bunch of stupid. The bottom of the barrel is filled by “Fight Like a Brave,” “True Men Don’t Kill Coyotes,” “Jungle Man,” and “The Brothers Cup.” They instantly put me in a bad mood, and “Me & My Friends” is just slightly better than those four.

I started off this review by saying I’m glad I got this because now I know I hate Red Hot Chili Peppers. But it literally makes me nauseous, so that’s just masochistic. I didn’t like the band, but I had to listen to 67 more minutes of their catalog to determine that for sure. What the hell is wrong with me?

So the band is stupid and I’m stupid, too. Speaking of stupid, is this rap metal? Rap rock? Rapcore? It’s so easy to get them confused.

And speaking even more about stupid, I’m going to leave you with a lyric from “Johnny Kick A Hole In The Sky”:

I was born in a land
I don’t think you understand

I can’t dispute either of those statements. Thanks, Anthony.

Rating:

Mixers: none
Keepers: “Higher Ground,” “Behind The Sun,” “Knock Me Down,” “Under The Bridge,” “If You Want Me To Stay,” “Catholic School Girls Rule”
Filed Between: Blood Sugar Sex Magik and Redd Kross (a peek into Show World promotional sampler cassette)

Rage Against The Machine…the rare combo of critical acclaim, indie cred, and fratboy love. The latter of those always confused me…like fratboys are always so concerned about the oppression of Native Americans…. Honestly, it’s hard for me to listen to this without imaging it blaring from a frat house, me standing in front of some meathead with a Natty Light while he recites lyrics about how euro-centric our schools’ curricula are.

A good chunk of this blog is me listening more closely to music I quickly wrote off in the 90’s and confirming that, yep, it still sucks. I hated this album when it was released in 1992, and I was fully prepared to go that route after some tracks popped up on shuffle over the past week or so. However, while I’m still not fully embracing it, I’ve developed a much more nuanced opinion of it.

What’s most unclear is why I didn’t like this when I was 18. It was right up my alley: drop-D tuning, heavy riffs, and agonized, tortured, hyperbolic lyrics about the evil of conformity, raised fists, and resisting the system. In fact, it’s so up my alley that that I’ve spent a significant percentage of my life having people ask me, “You like Rage Against The Machine, don’t you?” only to have to respond in the negative.

If I had to guess, I’d say the biggest reason I didn’t like them was a now embarrassing aversion to anything rap at the time. And beyond that, everybody in the music industry over the age of 25 insisted that this was a “rap metal” group, a tag that still sends shivers up my spine (and still exists both on the band’s Wikipedia page as well as a Wikipedia page all its own). Talk about a genre that’s not one, even despite the concerted efforts of Anthrax and Public Enemy in the late 80’s and early 90’s and the producers of the Demon Knight soundtrack. I mean, have you ever heard of a rap metal station? Seen the rap metal section of a record store? Met a single person who says rap metal is his or her favorite genre? Heck, have you ever heard somebody who’s not a music critic or faux music savant use the phrase at all? Just try to say it without sneering while you do so.

See, and people always ask me what kind of music I like, and when I give some vague answer about liking “good” music and hating genres, I get looked at silly, but this ridiculous notion that “rap metal” is some style of music that can be carved out from the rest of music and has a following and practitioners…it’s just ridiculous.

Speaking of ridiculous, read Wikipedia’s description of rap metal:

Rap metal is a subgenre of rap rock fusing vocal and sometimes instrumental elements of hip hop with heavy metal. Rap metal is often confused with rap rock and rapcore. These styles became the basis for nu metal.

Confused with rap rock and rapcore? What kind of idiot would do that? Jesus F’ing Christ.

Anyway, now I’m pissed, so let me just say this about my nuanced opinion. I still find vocalist Zack De La Rocha’s lyrics and style naïve, shallow, and hyperbolic (he’s always screaming some vague tortured lyric, like “All of which are American dreams” way too many times). As such, I can’t imagine anything here working its way onto a mix. But I cannot deny that guitarist Tom Morello plays some amazingly enjoyable riffs that make this one of the best guitar albums I’ve ever heard. And I can’t deny that “Killing In The Name Of “ is one of the premiere songs in the canon, even if it did take me 17 years to realize it. Four lunchboxes may be a titch too high, but it’s contingent on focusing on the good aspects.

Rating:

Mixers: none
Keepers: “Bombtrack,” “Killing In The Name,” “Bullet In The Head,” “Know Your Enemy,” “Wake Up”
Filed Between: Radiohead (In Rainbows) and Ramones (Ramones)

This is the closest I’ve ever heard Nine Inch Nails come to metal. It’s also the best release of theirs in my collection with the possible exception of their debut Pretty Hate Machine. Despite ridiculous titles like “Help Me I Am In Hell” and “Happiness In Slavery,” Trent Reznor funnels most of his histrionic melodrama into the music…and it sounds great.

Most notably, there isn’t a single terrible song on here. “Pinion” and “Help Me I Am In Hell” are pretty dull, but at least I don’t cringe when I hear them. Even “Gave Up,” the other non-keeper, has its moments.

No, this is Reznor at his best. The sounds he creates, both for his instruments and as effects on his voice, are far beyond anything he did before or in the years following this. He’s elevated his sound invention reputation beyond its already stellar standing here…this is his MVP season. He didn’t just improve his strengths, though…he also reduced the negative effects of his main weakeness: there’s very little self-pity, either from the point of view of a character or for Reznor himself.

With its incredibly harsh textures, relentless distortion, and heavy beats, this is the most “difficult” Nine Inch Nails listen I’ve heard. It’s also the best.

Rating:

Mixer: “Physical (You’re So)”
Non-keepers: “Pinion,” “Help Me I Am In Hell,” “Gave Up”
Filed Between: Nine Inch Nails’ “Head Like A Hole” and The Downward Spiral

Ugh, just kill me. This wretched collection has sucked my soul out of me. There’s hardly anything to live for anymore. I’ve lost all faith in humanity, my belief in the power of music, and everything is going dark. There’s no hope for me, I’m poisoned. Save yourself and stay as far away from this reheated album from 1971 that was forgotten for good reason as you can.

This has 1971-aesthetic stamped all over it the way crap like Bush and Creed have their time woven into every aspect of their sound. You can hear how it fit in with the prevailing sounds of the time, but also that it didn’t have much besides fairly slick production values behind it.

Apparently the title track of this album was a bit of a hit in the Chicago area, and it does have a cool piano part, but that’s it. The rest is just an amalgamation of the worst cheese of Three Dog Night and Billy Joel. “Last One Of The Night People” has a “Piano Man” narrative, rhythm, and instrumentation, but the lyrics and the melody are atrocious. “For Eddy” is another spin-off of “Piano Man,” this one following the bartender who “can’t wait to get out of this place” except he has one hand and plays piano, too or something, I don’t know, it’s too boring to pay attention to. The best part of the disc, besides the piano in “Lake Shore Drive,” is the intro to “Snow Queen,” which sounds a lot like that of The Replacements’ “Skyway,” but it goes absolutely nowhere from there…at least nowhere worth going to.

And that’s what this album really is: complete and total Dullsville, USA. One of my notes sums it up best in removing the adverb from the entry for Earth in The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy: “Harmless.” Not harmless in the benign, medical sense of the term, rather it’s harmless in that it just lacks any element of interestingness at all. This is Naked redux.

Rating:

Mixers: none
Keeper: “Lake Shore Drive”
Filed Between: Alice In Chains (MTV Unplugged) and All (Percolater [sic])

Barber was an American composer who lived from 1910 to 1981. He’s most famous for his “Adagio for Strings,” which you may not know by name but you probably know by sound. It’s one of those nearly ubiquitous classical pieces that, in recent times, has appeared in the movies Platoon, The Elephant Man, and Amélie. It is the sound of violins crying. I swear the piece itself weeps, as it nearly imperceptibly builds for over six minutes until it climaxes in a howl of anguish, leaving the silence that follows to scream and roar in your ears and images of tragedy to flash before your eyes.

The Adagio has always been one of my favorite piece and is the reason I bought this CD. But it’s less than nine minutes long, so the rest of the CD served as an introduction to more of Barber’s works for me. If you read any encyclopedia-length bio of Barber, you’re bound to read some form of two words: lyrical and bold. And with good reason: his bold statements are lousy with beautiful lyricism, so it really is a fitting cocktail-party level of knowledge to have about him.

Barber had more abilities than just that, though. “Overture To The ‘School For Scandal’,” inspired by a play by Richard Sheridan, is full of life and energy and spends a good portion of its early minutes bubbling and percolating that energy into you. “Music For A Scene From Shelley,” inspired by “Prometheus Unbound,” features a Wagnerian simmering of strings reminiscent of the shimmering Rhinemaidens scene in Das Rheingold. His first symphony revels in the dissonance and 12-tone harmonic textures from the Second Viennese School. On the downside, he can get off course at times and lose me, as he does here in the non-keepers. For the most part, though, this is a great listen.

Rating:

Mixers: none
Non-keeper: “Second Essay For Orchestra,” Symphony 1, Movement 1
Filed Between: Bang Tango (Dancin’ On Coals) and Barenaked Ladies (Maybe You Should Drive)

I remember when Kurt Cobain finally started to come terms with fame and decided he would use it to introduce the greater public to bands he was a fan of. I was ecstatic, but then he started introducing us to bands that sounded nothing like Nirvana, and I couldn’t really wrap my 17-year-old head around that. But, yeah, Nirvana was kind of special. If there were more bandsthat good, I’d already have known about them. Duh.

Cobain frequently described Scottish duo-cum-quartet The Vaselines as one of his favorites (it’s really the only reason anybody today has heard of them), and superficially it’s hard to hear what he liked about this nearly-twee, but raw pop band. But then you’re like, “catchy hooks I can’t get out of my head…cryptic but obviously personal lyrics obscured by intentional distortion and occasional out-of-tune vocal harmonization and off-key warbling…uh, yeah, these guys are exactly like Nirvana.” Double duh.

While it’s easy to see why Cobain liked them, I’m not quite sure I see exactly what all the fuss has been over these guys for the last fifteen years. There’s a lot to like here, but love? I don’t know. The emperor has clothes…I just don’t think they’re as fantastic as everybody says.

Of course, Cobain was mostly thrilled with The Vaselines as songwriters, not necessarily as performers (they had already broken up by the time Nevermind came out and their first ever US performance will be this coming weekend). Cobain was able to find the diamonds in the rough and improve on them in Nirvana’s versions of “Molly’s Lips” and “Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam.”

Sometimes these guys nailed it, though. “Son Of A Gun” is the best song ever, and is also the perfect pop song. Nirvana brought it to the world’s attention, but Combain knew to leave well enough alone. The versions are virtually identical.

This album, 19 songs that cover the entire recorded output of the band, also brings us a new kind of mix CD candidate. Their cover of Divine’s “You Think You’re A Man” has such a great synth line and kicking drum beat that I’ve decided that even songs that go on too long and/or aren’t joltingly awesome from start to finish can be on a mix if they have parts that are so awesome that they absolutely must be shared.

Rating:

Mixers: “Son Of A Gun,” “You Think You’re A Man,” “Sex Sux (Amen),” “Oliver Twisted,” “Dum-Dum”
Non-keepers: “Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam,” “Bitch,” “No Hope,” “The Day I Was A Horse,” “Dying For It (The Blues)”
Filed Between: Värttinä (Oi Dai) and Velocity Girl (¡Simpatico!)

Boy, and you thought Indigo Girls got the shaft. James is getting reviewed while I’m depriving myself of coffee to get my body to a more natural state in preparation for our ‘round-the-world flight to Norway (seriously, there just aren’t that many places further from Norway than North America’s West Coast). I’m so morose lately, with this miserable spring-cum-summer and with even worse weather predicted for Norway, that James’ morose reflections on life, love, and death aren’t going to get high praise from me, especially in my decaffeinated state. [We did have miserable weather, but a wonderful time in Norway, and it's presently 87 degrees and sunny in Seattle - Ed.]

Though, I’m not sure there is any amount of drugs that can make this album appealing, because it’s just not that good. The record has its moments, but more often than not this is just a bunch of uncatchy melodies over predictably bland harmonic changes. This would have fit well on mid-eighties radio, as it sounds a lot like Midnight Oil and U2 from that time. I swear there was a big hit from this album because I remember seeing this cover art everywhere, but nothing sounds familiar and Wikipedia isn’t very helpful.

My biggest complaint is that there are seven people in this band and the sound is so thin. They’ve got a trumpeter, for crying out loud, and he just flits around the songs adding little flurries of trumpet-like sound and never adds a cutting, punchy trumpet riff, which is what trumpets are for. It’s like the mix took all the meat out of the sound, and with a voice as reedy as Tim Booth’s, you need some meat.

Or maybe James is a band for vegans. James fans kind of remind me of vegans, ‘cuz it’s like you take a listen to James, or a bite of vegan substitute for anything tasty, and then you think, “Oh, that’s not very good,” and then James fans tell you it’s actually really good, like vegans tell you it really does taste like turkey, or whatever, but it’s not good and it doesn’t taste anything like turkey, but they don’t know any better because they haven’t had turkey in seven-and-a-half years.

So don’t listen to James except for the keepers and mixers, which ends up being more than half of this album. But still…instead, eat more turkey.

Rating:

Mixers: “Protect Me,” “Seven”
Non-keepers: “Born Of Frustration,” “Mother,” “Live A Love Of Life,” “Next Lover”
Filed Between: Michael Jackson (Thriller) and Jamiroquai (Emergency On Planet Earth)

The thing you really need to know about this album is that that one song (“No Rain”) is one of the better ones on here, as damning of a statement as that is. About half of these 13 tracks are execrable and the other half are tolerable with a few slots reserved for generally good tracks. This disc has two good stretches: tracks 5-8 and tracks 12-13. “Soak The Sin” and “Dear Ol’ Dad” are clearly the best things this record has going for it.

I wish it didn’t have to be like this. I really had held out higher hopes (not expectations) that this would actually be a good CD. I distinctly remember complaining about “No Rain” at some point in college and having some friend ask me rhetorically, “But have you heard the rest of that album?” implying that it was really good. It’s not.

Blind Melon sounds like everything else did from 1990 to 1991 and by the time this came out in late 1992, it was already played out. It’s got that southern-fried, shukka-shukka groove feel that plays well in Iowa and the heavy bass that helps it play well in southern California as well. There’s the requisite campfire strumming song (“Change”), a few extended instrumental “jams” that you can tell they extend even further in concert to get the faithful riled up (“Deserted”, “Time”), and almost every song has a bridge that veers off into a C section (most bridges are C sections compared to the verse’s A ad the chorus’ B) at a slower pace so that they can get played on alternative radio.

It all adds up to mediocre. Or, on a good day, average. And like I said, I wanted it to be more than that, because Blind Melon holds a really unique spot in rock history. They came out of LA with tons of buzz, in large part due to the band’s friendship with Headbanger’s Ball host Riki Rachtman and lead singer Shannon Hoon’s friendship with Axl Rose, performance on Guns N’ Roses single “Don’t Cry,” and appearance in video of same. Then they had their “that one song” which was a totally lame-o song about being happy and it sold big but it wiped out almost all of their buzz and cred. Except that out of the four million people who bought this album, there were several who insisted they were a good band given short shrift because of that one song. And so I hoped that that minority fanbase was right. And it makes my disappointment in the crap on this record even more bitter that I had high hopes for it.

I get particularly venomous about it when I pay attention to the lyrics. I strongly recommend against this, as they rapidly veer from self-pitying to self-aggrandizing and it is tiring and aggravating. The frequent celebrations of being high and stoned and of escaping the life he pities so much are just plain frustrating to listen to in the aftermath of Hoon’s abortive battles with substance abuse and death by cocaine overdose. Additionally, there’s only so much singing about the sun and dancing and being free and dreaming and living life for the moment and spreading your wings I can stand before I really start hating hippies. I’m not a hippie hater, per se, and even identify with a lot of hippie motivations, but I can feel the urge to start kicking some hippie ass when I listen to the kind of s**t music and lyrics they can produce.

Despite the handful of keepers below, my life is no better for having listened to this, and it might be distinctly worse for having done so. It’s beyond me how this band had so much early buzz around them, much less how they had a record deal. Obviously the record-buying public has proven me wrong on this one, but I can only hypothesize that having power friends like Rose and Racthman is the main reason we all had “No Rain” thrust upon us 15 years ago. I’m also guessing that a big part of those friendships and buzz comes from being able to party really hard. It always gets translated into a band being “a great live act” in the press, but it really just means they can get wild and crazy into the wee hours night after night.

Rating:

Mixers: “Soak The Sin”
Keepers: “Dear Ol’ Dad,” “Time”
Filed Between: Blackeyed Susan (Electric Rattlebone, quite possibly the worst CD I own) and The Blue Four (promo sampler…they played our wedding)