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”)

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.

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

It’s been 17 years since Type O Negative burst into our consciousness with Slow, Deep And Hard’s opening track, “Unsuccessfully Coping With The Natural Beauty Of Infidelity,” featuring the call-and-response “I know you’re f**king someone else/He knows you’re f**king someone else.” It’s kind of hard to believe it’s been that long, considering that they continue to pound out the exact same flavor of the gothic-doom-sludge-metal genre they basically invented in 1991. That was a compliment all the way through their fifth album, 1999’s World Coming Down (I skipped their sixth album in 2003), but it’s not anymore.

More impressive than their longevity and consistency, was the knowledge that with Type O you not only knew what you were going to get, but it was going to be heavy, catchy, funny, dark, and damned good, all at the same time. It’s damned near impossible to write from the same basic template for a decade and keep it interesting, but Type O did it for the 90’s. Unfortunatley, given that back catalog, there’s not a lot to recommend 2007’s Dead Again, as a full half of the album’s ten tracks will fall off of my DMP after posting this review.

The best stuff is actually when they get away from the proto-typical Type O style here. They’ve always incorporated tons of different styles in their music; it just happens to be the most compelling stuff on this album. The faster, thrash-influenced tracks like “Tripping A Blind Man” and “Some Stupid Tomorrow” increase your heart rate by several bpm, and the groove-y, bluesy tracks like “An Ode To Locksmiths” will loosen up your hips. The highlight, with a kickin’ backbeat and a wry take on the afterlife of dead-too-young rock stars is “Halloween In Heaven.”

Taken by themselves, the keepers and mixer here make a damned good 25 minutes. Unfortunately, their propensity for epic-ness, usually done so well, does them in in the remaining 52(!) minutes. The 14-and-a-half minute “These Three Things” is nearly an ode to Melvins for the first three minutes, with sustained, ringing guitar chords held together by spooky, echo-y drums, but it plods and drags and condemns (cheekily or sincerely, I can’t tell) practitioners of abortion to hell before bizarrely talking about how the “alien” Zion “shuns the son.” There are stretches that have me turning up the volume, but the band was not at all able to make every minute of this album as gripping as their past work. The good-stretches-but-too-long category applies to most of the non-keepers from Dead Again, including “September Sun,” notable for beginning almost identically to Mötley Crüe’s Home Sweet Home.

The production values are stellar, as always. When the band swings its heavy hammer down after a slow section, it’s an assault that I can’t believe I didn’t think of in my review of ISIS. “Tripping A Blind Man” adds beeps and bloops that sound like my phone is ringing but also integrate perfectly with the song. So the band is not completely relying on the same template, but they do so enough, and poorly enough, that you’re better off with their output from ten years ago.

Rating:

Mixers: “Halloween In Heaven”
Keepers: “Dead Again,” “Tripping A Blind Man,” “Some Stupid Tomorrow,” “An Ode To Locksmiths”
Filed Between: Type O’s “Everything Dies” single and U2 (October)

Here we have three piano pieces, two concertos (which are backed by an orchestra) and one solo piece, from the first third of the 20th century by two of that century’s most respected composers. Each piece has lengthy, incredibly technically demanding sections, and so Argerich is the real star here.

Prokofiev is quickly becoming one of my favorite composers. I loved Alexander Nevsky last spring and, as with that piece, I find his Third Piano Concerto (1921) to be the perfect blend of Romantic and 20th Century music. It has enough of the 19th century to be easily understood and emotionally gripping while including enough 20th century experimentation to be interesting and exciting.

Since Ravel was a French “impressionist” composer, I’ve always just assumed he was Debussy, Part Deux. I may eventually determine that to be the case, but his compositions here distinguish him from his countryman in my mind. The Piano Concerto in G, from 1932, could have been written by Gershwin, with its seamless blending of classical and jazz idioms. One recurring theme is, in fact, a direct quote from Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Blue from eight years prior, if im not mistaken. Horns wail out themes plaintively only to be swept away by the orchestra and piano. It’s so obvious when you hear it, but so few composers have done it. It is an absolute triumph and, in the present, an almost sad statement of what was missed from the general lack of combination of these schools of music.

Ravel’s other piece here, Gaspard de la Nuit, a setting for a poem by Aloysius Bertrand, is more like Debussy in that each movement paints an impression of some noun: water fairy, gallows, and goblin. There is less harmonic lushness and, as a result, an ultimately unsatisfying aspect to this piece. “Ondine,” the first movement, sounds like riplling reflections of water, but never seems to go far below the surface. I think its most unsoundly blemish, though, is in Argerich’s muddled interpretation: often times the melody seems to get lost in the blur of glissandi and rapid runs on the page.

Conductor Claudio Abbado is to blame for this as well in the piano concerti. I often find his tempi to be far too fast. The third movement of the Prokofiev is marked “Allegro ma non troppo” (quickly, but not too quickly). Abbado’s tempo is, however, definitely “troppo.”

Those flaws are not enough to take away from the technical brilliance displayed by Argerich, nor the compositional beauty of these pieces. On both of those counts, this is an excellent disc.

Rating:

Mixers: none
Non-keepers: Piano Concerto in G Major, Movement Three; Gaspard De La Nuit, “Scarbo”
Filed Between: Prince (Musicology) and Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky/Scythian Suite (perf. Linda Finnie, Scottish National Orchestra, cond. Neeme Järvi)

A 61-year-old former employee of the University of Washington died Thursday after dousing himself with gasoline and setting it afire in a crowded central plaza on the UW campus known as Red Square.

I was coming back from lunch and headed to class, Red Square lying directly between the two.  As I approached, I noticed that it was a lot more crowded than usual and that people were standing around the edges looking at something…they weren’t bunched up talking to each other.

I counted three police cars, an ambulance, and an SUV from the fire department in the plaza itself, as well as two fire trucks proper outside, too big to drive in.  I walked steadily through, but looked over at the ambulance where there was police tape, a pile of clothes, and risking smoke.

As I neared the other side of the exit police started clearing the plaza, so I just kept going the way I was since it was the closest exit

The first thing I thought of was self-immolation, but then I told myself that was just too crazy, and when I got to class and people were buzzing about it I certainly wasn’t going to speculate along those lines.

Props to the students who were nearby and risked their own safety to try to save this man.

Students and onlookers reacted quickly to try to help the man and put out the flames before police and paramedics arrived just after 1 p.m.

…

“I was right there as he fell to the ground,” said Tom Yang, a 21-year-old international studies undergrad at the UW. Yang, who served in the Air Force and was trained in emergency medical assistance, was among those who initially tried to put out the flames using their clothing and a few water bottles.

In addition to using their clothes and water bottles, Yang said, two people also retrieved fire extinguishers from nearby buildings. After finally putting out the flames on the victim, he said, they tried to extinguish the smoldering gas can the man had used to douse himself.

I highly recommend reading this recounting of the situation by the Buddhist student who slipped and fell in the puddle of gas trying to stop the man, then prayed over him as he lay dying.  Here’s just a bit of it:

After I got away, I took off my gasoline-soaked clothes and sat in shock for some fraction of a minute. [...] The flames were almost out within seconds. I saw his blackened body and heard him asking for help, in so much pain. I prostrated myself and began to pray loudly so that he could hear me and know that people understood what he was doing. At that point a young man, I believe it was the young military man you interviewed in your article, and several others told me that I had to stop because it was scaring people to see me half-naked, chanting.

May he rest in peace, but in case you’re curious, here is some background info on the last few months of this troubled man’s life.

Now I can’t get “Jungle Vacuum” sung to the tune of “Jungle Boogie” out of my head.  You’re welcome.

God I am spent.