Miss Piggy Lunchbox

I can’t even remember if we were lovers
Or if I just wanted to
But I held her in my arms, I held her in my arms
I held her in my arms
But it wasn’t you
- “I Held Her In My Arms”

I’m not really sure what to make of Violent Femmes, which is partly due to not being sure what to make of this album, which is partly due to not being sure what this album is intended to be.  Add It Up (1981-1993) seems like it’s supposed to be a chronological greatest hits album covering the band’s first five albums, and it kind of is, but there are also a slew of odds and ends added in, like unreleased demos, live tracks, and an answering machine message.  Add that kind of diversity to an already diverse set of genres (they handle everything from country to free jazz, including a performance with John Zorn), and you’ve got a scattershot record.

Of course there are the hits.  There’s obviously “Blister In The Sun” from their 1983 self-titled debut, along with “Gone Daddy Gone” (with what’s likely to be the best xylophone solo in all of rock) and live versions of “Kiss Off” (with performances constructed to sound sloppy but that actually exhibit expert musicianship) and “Add It Up” from that disc that brashly exploded onto college radio.

That album was, and continues to be, the high water mark of the band’s career, though their remaining years weren’t a total loss.  1986’s The Blind Leading The Naked contained the Best Song Ever, “I Held Her In My Arms,” whose music perfectly matches it’s lyrics of unrequited longing by sustaining a long, held note on keys while the rest of the band reaches up to a higher register for the emotional chorus.  A b-side from the same year, “Dance, Motherfucker, Dance!” is another highlight, consisting of little more than the two words in its title and the exultant affirmation of the titular exclamation mark.

But those moments of fabulousness are ruined by so much unlistenable material.  I never knew the Femmes did “American Music” (“Do you like American music?”), but I also never noticed just how whiny it was.  A quick count comes up with no fewer than nine (of 23) songs that are abrasive in all the wrong ways, veering from Jonathan Richman-esque faux-naiveté to “America Is”,” a, frankly, quite disgusting, reactionary, and unpatriotic criticism of the United States that makes even me cringe and wonder where the band might be happier (honestly, what country doesn’t have hypocrites?).

So it’s not a total waste, but due to the haphazard flow of the album and the wide variance in quality, this gives a very hazy view of the 13 years covered by this disc.  But I have a feeling that is exactly what the band, seemingly a bit scattershot themselves, was going for.

Rating:

Best Song Ever: “I Held Her In My Arms”
Mixers: “Gone Daddy Gone,” “Dance, Motherfucker, Dance!”
Keepers: “Blister In The Sun,” “Gimme The Car,” “Country Death Song,” “36-24-36,” “I Hate The TV,” “Out The Window,” “Kiss Off (Live),” “Add It Up (Live)”
Filed Between: Vincent & Mr. Green (Vincent & Mr. Green) and Voivod (War And Pain)

I think The Boy is gay.  What else could explain him voguing at such a young age.

Intelligent Dance Music, or IDM for short, may be the most pretentious musical genre name ever.  The Wikipedia entry on it, however, describes it in a way that perfectly encapsulates the varied music of IDM practitioner Otto Von Schirach:  “Stylistically, IDM tends to rely upon individualistic experimentation rather than on a particular set of musical characteristics.”

According to Von Schirach’s bio on Ipecac’s website, this album originated as a mix of 38 songs he sent to Ipecac co-founder Mike Patton, who then hand-selected the tracks that make up Maxipad Detention.  Patton’s influence is here, with an emphasis on fuzzy, distorted sounds patched together in musical ways, stuttery vocal samples, and, well, let’s just say that if I had had that original mix and been asked to guess which 18 Patton would have picked, I guarantee I would have known “Submarine Mammal Milk,” which features the incredibly unsettling mix of pornographic loops over babies crying, dogs barking, and cows mooing, would have made the cut.

While this has elements of Patton influence, this is also quite distinct from a Patton project.  Von Schirach tends to keep things moving along a bit more than Patton, there’s less dwelling in deep, meditative non-grooves, and, once your ears get used to the sounds and sound combinations, things almost seem kind of song-like.

In fact, I have the perfect “composer” to compare this music to, but it will mean nothing to any of you and simultaneously seem pretentious.  From time to time I’ll get a bug up my ass that I’m going to start composing again, taking full advantage of synthesizers, sound libraries, and loop technology, because what I hear in my head can’t really be notated, at least not the way it comes to me, and it certainly can’t be played on my piano.  This album contains several songs that sound like the music in my head when I get on one of these kicks.  When I first heard “Rumbling Cork Screw,” I was sure I’d heard it before, but I couldn’t place the artist.  It took me a few minutes to realize that the style therein was first heard by me in my head.

No single track is exemplary of the entire album, especially given its compilation process, but “Alligator Waltz” is the best track and so receives the exemplar treatment.  It begins with a heavy riff that is pretty quickly contrasted by a high-range, melodic, pasted track of female vocal samples, which will eventually become the track’s chorus, for lack of a better word.  The vocals will anchor you when you get disoriented by the rapidly changing rhythms and sound combinations of car horns and muted jackhammers and dentist drills.  It’s a fantastic seduction of the brain, always keeping you on the edge by getting you just comfortable with a riff before taking you in a new direction that’s even better; it’s what Fantomas’ Suspended Animation could have been if they hadn’t just screwed the whole thing up so badly.

The biggest drawback of the album is that it was put together not necessarily as an album but as a collection of styles that Von Schirach could execute on.  As such, there’s no arc here. Furthermore, while some of the tracks are exercises that make for intellectually stimulating material but not necessarily entertaining listening, and while everything is well-executed, there are a few tracks whose aims are flat-out ill-conceived.  As a collection, though, it’s great, from the long-burp vocals of “Frog Gingivitis” to the ominous intro to “Tea Bagging The Dead,” the best-named song of all time, to the Ummagumma trip of “The Seventh Juggler” to the sci-fi soundtrack of “Translator Kuthumi,” there’s something here for everyone.  Well, maybe not everyone, but it sure does provide a lot of descriptive phrases I couldn’t end the review without getting in.

Rating:

Mixers: “Alligator Waltz,” “Frog Gingivitis”
Non-keepers: “Toma Liquido De Ballena,” “Maxipad Vegetation,” “Three Billion Electron Volts,” “Submarine Mammal Milk,” “Translator Kuthumi,” “Swollen Whale Abdomen”
Filed Between: Voivod (Negatron) and Wagner (Der Fliegende Hollander cond. Ferenc Fricsay, orch. RIAS Symphony Orchestra)

The neighbors have had some trouble with break-ins lately, so they put up this gate.  It hasn’t helped much.

I lost my innocence today
When I learned how to write this
- “Celebrate You”

It may be crazy to say about an album that only went gold and made very little impact outside of the hit song “Seether,” but this may be the album that wraps up 1994 better than any other.  Take the drop tunings of Seattle, the catchy chug of The Breeders, the breathy, sweet vocals of Juliana Hatfield and the disturbing lyrics of L7, throw in some Billy Corgan Chicago fuzz, put the Best Song ever (“Seether”) on top, and you’ve got this album.  There really may not be an album more representative of 1994’s zeitgeist than this.

What I take away from it more than anything else is how great the guitar solos are, which is surprising given how little emphasis the production puts on them, burying them down in the mix with the rhythm section.  Of course, it’s never really been cool for indie bands to be good at their instruments, but Nina Gordon and/or Louise Post can really play in a way that supports the songs and fall just short enough of virtuosic to maintain indie cred.  In “Forsythia” for example, the solo starts off with a simple scale that evolves into a headstrong argument with the harmony, a pattern carried even further into an all out screaming match in “25.”

One of the downsides of the band being so good at rawk is that the slow songs, even though well-executed, end up being an exercise in impatience.  “Fly” is gorgeous, but it’s really just something that makes me wait for “Number One Blind” and “Victrola.”  “Sleeping Where I Want” is good enough to have a place somewhere, just not on this album and certainly not at the end where it leaves an aftertaste of ennui not reflective of the enjoyment of the rest of the album.

1994 may have seen the cancellation of the World Series, but thankfully Veruca Salt’s reminded me of how good it sounded with its 50-minute summary, American Thighs.

Rating:

Best Song Ever: “Seether”
Mixers: “All Hail Me,” “Victrola”
Non-keepers: “Sleeping Where I Want”
Filed Between: Verdi (Otello) and Vincent & Mr. Green (Vincent & Mr. Green)

What is the meaning of this?
What are you trying to do?
- “The Stars Look Down”

A review criticizing this album might first focus on the fact that all of the songs are too long.  Even when they’re well-written, like the classic Rush goodness at the beginning of “Ceiling Unlimited” or the hard rocking of “Earthshine,” all of the material tends to have been prsesented by about the 60% mark, leaving the last 40% to drone on into boredom.  This is a band that used to write songs that filled an entire LP side and were fantastic from start to finish.  A review could take that line of criticism, but the too long songs are only the album’s, like, fourth biggest problem.

I could critique this album on lead singer Geddy Lee’s inability to write a vocal melody with any kind of hook in it.  But that would only be about half true, since many of the melodies on the verses of these songs are pretty good.  And it’s really only the third biggest problem with this CD.

A better critique would be that of Neil Peart’s lyrics, which, while refreshing devoidly of the Ayn Rand nonsense permeating them in the 70’s and 80’s, are execrable.  They’re half-thoughts, cliches clumsily pasted together like a young child’s art work.  At one point I was going to collect their awfulness for you, but I would probably get sued for copyright infringement since I would basically be posting the lyric sheet.  So let me just leave you with the two prototypes of nauseating pablum here.  First there’s the I’m-deep-by-calling-things-opposites half-hearted poetry of “Secret Touch” (“The way out is the way in”), and then you have the cliche that even fifth-graders know is overdone, as in “Nocturne” (“A voice in the wilderness.”)  But, again, the lyrics are really only the second biggest problem of this album.

What really makes this disc so bad that it even makes the band’s prior studio release, Test For Echo, seem like a glorious achievement, is its sound quality.  This album sounds so bad, Wikipedia has a section on it.

The production of Vapor Trails has been criticized due to the album’s “loud” sound quality. Albums such as this have been mastered so loud that additional digital distortion is generated during the production of the CD. The trend, known as the Loudness war, has become very common on modern rock CDs.

…Rush has admitted that there was digital distortion during recording, which also contributed to the damage. Remastering the album would not correct the damage from digital distortion that was introduced during recording, but it could correct the other, more destructive damage that is the result of overly-compressing the audio during mastering.

[Guitarist Alex] Lifeson…stated: “It was a contest, and it was mastered too high, and it crackles, and it spits, and it just crushes everything. All the dynamics get lost, especially anything that had an acoustic guitar in it.”

Yep, that’s exactly what it sounds like.  There is no nuance due to the near-total compression into mud, and there is also clipping distortion due to that.  You can tell where there were intended to be color changes as they switch from verse to bridge or chorus, but you can’t actually hear that color change, making the album a 67-minute exercise in failure.

This really is unconscionable.  We knew how to make good sounding CDs in the 1980’s.  In 2002 there was no excuse for a product sounding this bad, much less from an already rich, successful band with a history of high quality production.  So they made a mistake, but why couldn’t they re-record or re-mix the record?  I wouldn’t want to put my name on something this awful.  Why wouldn’t a mega band like Rush pull out all the stops not to leave this black stain on their legacy?

A lesser band wouldn’t be allowed to release something that sounded this bad because they wouldn’t have hooked in the loyal fan base yet.  There’s no excuse for this kind of blatant cost-cutting money grab, and everybody involved with the making of this CD should be ashamed.  It overshadows the lack of melodies, the too-long songs, and the awful lyrics combined.  “Freeze” gets kept because it’s the best song and has a cool 5/4 meter (though it still sounds awful).  It’s trash like this  morality problem masquerading it as a CD , making it not just qualitatively bad but essentially bad, for which I reserve the rarest and lowest of my ratings.  Congratulations, Rush, you have just made it even harder to earn the rare single lunchbox.

Rating:

Mixers: None
Keeper: “Freeze – Part IV Of ‘Fear’”
Filed Between: Rush’s The Spirit Of Radio and Rusted Root (When I Woke)

He’s like a comic book private eye with his cigarette jauntily hanging out of his mouth.

So one more of the most anti-gay politicians ever, a co-founder of the Family Research Council (now merged with Dobson’s Focus on the Family) and a leader in the movement, for lack of a better word, trying to convert gay people to heterosexuality, was found coming back from a European vacation with a male prostitute he found on rentboy.com.  Yawn, right?  I mean, who woulda guessed.

What makes this story that much better than all the rest, though, is his picture.

Remind anybody else of this Brain Candy sketch?

Part of me does feel bad for these fools for the amount of self-hatred they must suffer.  I wish they could all experience this moment:

There have been worse transgressions by police, to be sure, but since this is baseball news, it’s kind of in my strike zone.  Pun intended.

As thousands of baseball fans watched in shock, a police officer used his stun gun on [a 17-year-old] high school student after he jumped onto the field and ran around in circles in the outfield during the match between the Philadelphia Phillies and St Louis.

Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey examined video of the arrest and felt the officer acted within department guidelines, which allow officers to use Tasers to arrest fleeing suspects, according to a police spokesman.

…

From the preliminary look at it, it appears that the officer was within the policy,” said Lt Vanore, adding that he did not know what may have transpired before the video started. “He was attempting to make an arrest and the male was attempting to flee.”

Attempting to flee?  Good god, where is he going to go?  The cop gets shown up by a boy doing a stupid, foolish thing (again, dog bites man), and so decides to use a weapon known to cause death in front of several thousand spectators and at least a dozen television cameras.  If nothing else the cop needs to be fired for being an idiot.

Watch the video and judge for yourself whether the taser was warranted. (Hint: it wasn’t.)

RIP, Ernie.  It’s a cliched phrase, but it sincerely applies to you: one of the game’s true treasures. What a voice.