Zappa/Beefheart/Mothers - Bongo Fury

Man, I have some strange, strange stuff on my record shelves.  I don't know where or when I got this.  In fact, I have several Zappa albums and I really only remember how three of them came into my possession. This one, with Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention and Captain Beefheart just doesn't seem like the kind of thing I'd expect me to have.  Yet here it is.  In terrific shape, even.  As I listen to this, I'm not sure I've ever played it before.  I doubt that, because I think I've played every record I own, because I think it's stupid to just hoard the damned things.  Records are for listening to, and I don't feel the need to save every record from the garbage pile, nor do I buy records I just think I should have.  I should have records that make me happy, and I shouldn't have records just because someone else thinks they're important.  So I'm kind of surprised this oddball thing is on my shelf.

It starts off with a live track with Captain Beefheart called Debra Kadabra.  I'm not exactly sure what the good Captain is on about, but he's on to something.  He's ranting over some kind of weird beats and guitar blasts. I can't imagine anyone ever walking around trying to hum these songs.  I mean, every time it gets a little melody or rhythm going, they completely change things up or Captain Beefheart howls about some new thing.  But then Frank starts riffing a little and we get into Carolina Hard-Core Ecstasy, which is sort of what I expect from Frank.  It's got some odd time signatures in parts, but lyrically it's about a groupie.  FZ has done some of those songs better, and some worse.

The album is mostly live and part studio, and I kind of like how they just decided that that's the way it was going to be.  Why does a record have to be one or the other, or even live on one side and studio on the other?  It still works out to be a pretty weird, but pretty listenable blast of weirdness.  It came out in 1975, when I was 13.  I wonder what I'd have thought of this back then?  I know 13 year old me would have absolutely loved Advance Romance, because right now much older me is really getting into it.  I have no idea what the vocals are on about, but Frank tears some ass on his guitar, which is always a good thing.  It's a really long song and it's real weird, but the line, half an hour later she had frenched his fry is gong to have me chuckling to myself all night long.  I'm enjoying it.  Especially the stupid shit about cupcakes and muffins.  I'm assuming that we've morphed into Muffin Man, which has some more blistering guitars on it.  I think I'm all in on this one.

Mine had a promo sticker on it, but it fell off.  It didn't leave a mark, but I'll keep it in the record bag. There's a corner bump, but otherwise the cover is pretty nice.  The record sounds terrific.  It's flat, dead quiet and ya gotta love those old DiscReet labels.  I really wonder where I got this from.  I wonder if it was a gift, or one of those times where I bought a bunch of records and thought I had listened to everything, but I missed some (I've missed some great bands for years because I did that - more on that some other time).  I'm glad I dug this one out!

801 - Live

When I was a teenager I used to go to downtown Cleveland once in awhile for a special record shopping trip.  I bought what I thought were the weirdest and hardest to find titles back then after a ride on the RTA Rapid Transit (the rest of the world calls them trains) and then a few blocks of wandering around.  I always went by myself because I'm pretty insufferable to go record shopping with.  Depending on the size of the store, I may decide I need to flip through every single record to make sure I don't miss the one record I've been looking for for ten years.  Plus, I'll talk to the store employees, other customers and generally be hours later than I said I would.  Hey, it's as good as (or better) than going to the bar so far as I'm concerned, and I like the bar a lot!

So I think I was about fifteen when I got this.  I went down to one of the downtown stores and flipped through everything and I think this was just in the import section, which back them may or may not be sorted in any way, depending on the size of the section.  I don't remember this being in a huge import section, but I remember it being a nice, diverse section of the store.  I looked at the cover and I just loved the grainy shot of the headstock of the bass guitar and pretty much nothing else.  I knew that Phil Manzanera was the guitar player for Roxy Music, and especially when I was a kid that meant total Guitar Hero to be in a really cool band that was big in England but mostly unknown in the US.  Except here in Cleveland because WMMS championed Roxy Music before most other markets in the US.  So I figured I'd take a chance on this, because I knew that Eno was also involved in Roxy, but at the time I don't think I much appreciated what he brought to the table.  Anyway, the back cover had pictures of the guys playing and they looked like what I thought a jazz band would look like if they weren't all really old.  I always wanted to like jazz some day, so I thought this might be some kind of gateway record into that world for me.

So I rode home with it and read what little text there was on the cover over and over and just couldn't wait to hear my new record.  I didn't have The Beatles' Revolver album so I didn't know if Tomorrow Never Knows was some weird outtake song or what, but I couldn't wait to hear it.  I had heard Baby's on Fire a few times on the radio, and I wondered how that would come across live.  I figured I'd either flip my wig over this, or I'd hate it, and I figured the big money import price was an exciting gamble.

When I got home I listened to it, and the beginning of the first side is something that I just always hear in my head these days.  It's just really quiet and I'm sure the band is kind of just getting situated to start, but the opening of Lagrima has these two little notes on the keyboard that almost sound accidental, but they also remind me of a train whistle kind of far off in the middle of the night.  I love that sound.  We lived near enough to railroad tracks that we could hang out by them, but just far enough from the intersections that the horns didn't wake you up or anything.  I loved hearing them late at night when I was a kid, and I still love the rare times I actually hear a train in the distance these days, though trains hardly ever blow their horns anymore.

Lagrima segues into Tomorrow Never Knows, and the songs become a little more structured.  Trust me, they're all kind of weird, especially with Eno singing.  For awhile I thought maybe he left Roxy because he wanted to sing more, but I think that's just a leap of my teenage imagination.  He's pretty cool because he sort of talk-sings like Lou Reed did but he actually sings a little more.  The more this record played, the more I knew it was going to be one of my favorites forever.

The odd thing is, this really still is one of my favorite records.  It's one of the reasons I still buy records because I like the cover.  It's adventurous, it's musically tight as can be, and while it isn't a jazz album in any sense of the word, it's definitely not just some more of the same old choogle that I love so much.  I love the weird lyrics to Miss Shapiro.  I used to love playing their cover of You Really Got Me for my friends, especially after Devo's first album came out with its killer cover of Satisfaction.  I mean, this was what I thought sophisticated Rock Music was all about.  I thought I was unbelievably cool for having found it.

Then years later, when I found the CD (and gave my import vinyl record away), I took my purchase up to the cash register and the clerk says, "Wow!  I didn't know this came out on CD.  I love this album, it's a total classic."  I'm thinking, "Bullshit.  I'm the only person in the world that's ever heard this!"  So I enjoyed that for years and then the internet comes along and apparently this is a slightly above ground semi classic record. Huh.  Who'd a known?  It's a truly great record that I think I'll never get tired of.

So you're saying, "Hey, Rick.  You said you trade this away and have it on CD now, but I see a record up there at the top of the post!"  Well, I was in Ithaca last week for a day and I found a neato record store called Angry Mom that I can highly recommend to you.  I think this was seven bucks.  The cover looks a little loved, but it still had the original sleeve and it plays pretty damned nicely.  It's got someone else's clicks now and then, but I think they can become mine.  The record is nice and flat and the guy that rung me up said I'd like it, especially if I never heard it.  I told him I've owned a copy since like 1977, and he called me an "early adopter."  I asked if it was popular and he said he doesn't keep them in stock that long when he gets one, but they're kinda few and far between.  I liked the store a lot and bought several great things there. I hope I can go back some day.

Saxon - Strong Arm of the Law

Once upon a time, a long time ago, I used to be in my early twenties and I had a job that paid very little, and a wife and a kid.  It was the early 80's and I had always enjoyed the Punk Rock that I've mentioned here in previous posts, but I always had a fondness for hard, fast heavy rock that had nothing to do with Punks. Maybe it's growing up in the Midwest.  I dunno.  It's just that I've always liked the hard and heavy, but I kind of have my limits.  It's so easy to just laugh off heavy metal, especially the metal of the 80's, but there was some pretty kick ass stuff back then, and when my record spending allowance was incredibly meager, I managed to buy a few metal albums that I'll stand behind to this very day.  I have some that are less great than others, but then again, there's no accounting for taste, and I think if you've seen much of this blog you'd agree that hyperlinking the term there's no accounting for taste and using this blog as the link would get your point across quite effectively.

Anyway, back when I had to work all three shits in a week and often stood next to the same one or two people for twelve hours a day, we'd sit and talk about music and movies mostly, and we'd get pretty in depth and go on and on all day.  Metal wasn't a joke then.  I don't think the genre has aged well (have you seen That Metal Show?), and I think it's a young man's game (again, have you seen That Metal Show?  I think there are usually three females in the audience), and I think older men just look funny with their thinning, super long hair and weird, apocalyptic, demon-y and generally laughable lyrical subjects just come across more as kind of sad than kind of fun.  Maybe it's just me, but c'mon, when you're fifty I just don't believe you'd rather stir up some demonic trouble more than you'd rather just go home and have a beer and hang out with your wife.

Man, metal is tough for me to stay on track with!  So I was saying, way back in the 80's in Cleveland, we were one of the cities to get Z-Rock. It only lasted maybe a year, in like the mid 80's, but it was enough that in that period of time, Cleveland was pretty into metal, and so was I.  I was a lousy metalhead, though.  Just like I was a lousy Punk.  I never dressed right, and I never cared.  Some of the true powerhouse metal bands I essentially ignored, like Slayer or Venom.  I really liked this album by Saxon, though.

I still think there's a lot of good on this record.  It's not so much like a metal statement or anything, it's kind of like the direction I'd have expected a band like UFO to go.  It's harder and faster usually, but it's also just a really catchy album.  I still have no idea how old a sixth form student is in school, but I'm assuming like a high school senior, and Sixth Form Girls is a song about young girls in the proud tradition of The Standells' Dirty Water.  Sure it's ten times faster, but the girls still want to go out and party.  I like it.  It kind of reminds me of a less salacious Motorhead song.  I mean, there's not just a mindless, chunky riff with some screaming on these songs, like a lot of 80's metal wound up being.  Heavy Metal Thunder is another fast and furious one.  It's about getting ROCKED.  It's essentially an updated version of any song about Rock N' Roll and that's always cool by me.

Dumb as metal bands can often be, I thought Saxon did a decent job with a song about JFK's assassination on Dallas 1 PM.  It could have been really stupid and totally missed the point, but I think the music playing behind the broadcast we've all heard (at least if you're my age or older) is cool, and helps make a decent artistic statement.  Saxon may have looked like a dumb metal band, but they weren't.  They were a solid hard rock band, at least for a little while.  I had wished I knew the title track when I was in high school, because it was just the kind of song that everyone partying in a car would have been able to get behind, ya know?

My record is in great shape.  I think it only saw play on my old B&O turntable and my current Rega.  It's not an amazing audiophile recording, but it sounds good loud and the record is quiet and flat.  The cover is black and shiny, but when I look it up online it's usually white.  That's probably the import or the CD version. I'd bet you can get this really cheap, and even if you don't like heavy metal, I bet you'd end up liking this record.

King Tuff - Was Dead

There are times when I look at my records and I think they're all ancient and I feel like one of those guys that says there's been no good music recorded after whatever date, which always seems to coincide with when they got finished with school.  I think that's stupid, especially because half the time those people don't know anything about any music that came out before The Beatles.  So generally the only good music came out over maybe twenty years, and that's just stupid.  I'm not some major musical historian, and I'm not some kid that just from having friends hears all the latest stuff.  I don't know anything about whatever the Top 40 or Bro Country charts are doing, but I'm not that young anymore and now I spend my time looking for things that make me happy.  I don't care if it's a record from 1976 or 2014, but no matter what, I'm still gonna do what I've done as long as I can remember.  I'm gonna read reviews, I'm gonna talk to people and I'm gonna go to the record store and buy things because I like the covers.  I'm not going to keep buying the same records over and over, looking for some elusive pressing with more Pace, Rhythm and Timing or Bass Slam. I think that's just obnoxious, and I think that's really something more for people interested in their equipment more than the music (which is okay, it's just not for me).

All that certainly doesn't mean I don't like it when someone asks me what I'm listening to.  My wife does it now and then, but she usually says, "What are we listening to?" with some kind of a sneer or outright distaste.  Every now and then someone (including her) will actually come in from the other room and say, "What are you listening to?" and sit down and listen with me.  That makes me feel good.  Not because it really matters to me if other people really like what I like, but when it's a band that's actually out there working today, and the person listening is only 30 or so, then I think it's cool to turn them on to something that may be a scene they can actually be a part of (cuz face it, I'm not part of any scene unless that's the sitting in my house listening to records by myself scene).

So just the other day I was listening to King Tuff - Was Dead while my oldest son and one of his friends were here.  I was feeling like and old fart and wanted to listen to something I haven't heard since Jr. High, and I decided on King Tuff.  I bought this just because I liked the cover and the name of the band.  It turns out it's a reissue of a really limited 2008 record by a guy named Kyle Thomas.  I'm not sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't play everything on the record.  So what does that usually mean?  It usually means lets have fun and blast some guitars the way kids have done it since before The Beatles.  King Tuff is all guitars and garagey goodness.  There's guitar solo's galore, and absolutely nothing to bring you down on this record.  I think I was hoping it would bring the sun out, and looking out the window right now, while Ruthie Ruthie is blasting its killer riff, I think the sun is trying to come out, anyway.

I like this record because it's the kind of record that it's really hard to pick standout songs.  The whole album is fun from front to back.  It's pretty much pedal to the metal for the most part, but Stone Fox is a slower song, but it's still drenched in great electric guitars, and there's none of the boring acoustic instrumentation some bands on indie labels seem to use as their stock in trade, and it doesn't drown itself in distortion like some newer bands seem wont to do these days.  I mean, who cares how catchy your pop hooks are if I can't make them out through the distortion you're purposely putting in to the recording?  I'm okay with lo fi, and King Tuff is never going to be considered as a reference kind of recording, but it sounds good.  it sounds good and the music is fun.

Mine's still pretty new, so it kind of obviously looks and plays like a perfectly new record.  The Burger Records reissue is nice, thick vinyl and it comes with a pretty cool poster of Kyle sitting out in the woods. It's a nice package and it's a great record.  The kind of record that's so great the kid's friend came up, asked what it was and sat and listened to the whole record with me.  What else can you ask a record to do?

Brownsville Station - Motor City Connection

Well Crabby mentioned some Brownsville Station stuff in the comment section to Brownsville Station's Yeah! album and I'll tell ya what - I just don't need much prompting to get started listening to anything Cub Koda was connected to.  Because plain and simple, Cub loved Rock N' Roll the same way I do, and he knew why some music was great and why some music just sucks.  You don't need a refined or critical ear for Rock N' Roll, but you do need to know why some stuff, even though it's nothing new, is now and always will be 100 times better than something like say, whoever this year's "Rocker" is on American Idol.  Yeah, maybe Brownsville Station spent too much time in Boogieland, but even their worst is better than every one of those guys on that show combined.  Maybe it's the Detroit Rock N' Roll Swagger?  I don't really know. But I'll say this, whatever it is Brownsville Station had, it's the thing that craftsmanship and attitude only make better.

Because I'll admit it, there's no-one in this band with Rock Super Powers.  No one plays 100 miles an hour, no one writes lyrics that have so many meanings you could write a book about them and no one will make you cry with their beautiful voice.  You will however, have your face rocked off on their killer instrumental cover of Crazy Legs.  It's just bitchin' guitars and a killer harp rocking your ass for three minutes or so.  It's the kind of thing J Geils Band did, but Brownsville Station is just stopping in for a quickie in that genre, and they pretty much show everyone how it's done.  It sounds effortless, but I'm sure it has a lot of thought behind it.

I knew a guy that used to play a lot of Brownsville Station albums (I seem to remember it was either them or a host of Progressive Rockers - kinda weird).  He had this album, and I always remembered Crazy Legs, the fantastic opener Automatic Heartbreak and the truly epic They Call Me Rock N' Roll.  You might be thinking, "only three memorable songs?" but that's not exactly right.  Combination Boogie and Self Abuse are the kinds of things you could count on on a Brownsville Station album.   It's not filler. It might not be brilliant, but you can always put on a Brownsville Station album and you can listen to the whole thing and it's all good.  There's never anything shitty on their records.  Anyway, this guy lived in his own house, over by the airport and he was all by himself with no one near.  He had some kind of old speakers that looked like end tables, and they were huge.  I think he had a shelf full of Pioneer or Marantz stuff and we'd blast the hell out of that thing.  The whole house was probably less than 600 square feet, but when I was 16 I thought it was beyond cool.  He paid like 125 bucks a month for it, which was ridiculously cheap, even then.  I loved going over there.

I bought this at a used record store, I think.  Not really all that long ago.  Maybe just a year or two.  I know it was still sealed, and I couldn't believe it!  I remember the kid asking me if I was going to keep it sealed for an investment, and I just said, "No, I'll probably open this as soon as I get home and play it right away."  He seemed to think I was making a mistake, but I don't buy records to look at.  I buy them to listen to.  And I've listened to every record I have.  I don't get buying them just "because."  I have some records I don't like, but I eventually take them to the record store and get rid of them.  But records I've never played?  That's just stupid.  So anyway, since I got this still sealed, it's like a brand new record from 1975.  It sounds like a brand new record and it looks like one, too!

Blitzen Trapper - Furr

Did you ever just start getting records by a band and then after you have a few get around to reading critical reviews of those records?  That's kind of how it was when I got into Blitzen Trapper.  I would look at their records and wonder what the hell they were about.  You pretty much can't tell by the covers or the titles. They could be anything from a heavy metal band to a folk rock duo.  So I didn't buy anything for awhile, and then one day I was flipping through records and I think I had enough for a few records, so I took a chance on this album, Furr.  I think I promptly took it home and loved a few of the other records I bought and really didn't even listen to Blitzen Trapper.  Then one day I was talking to a customer and he was asking me what new bands I was liking, and I was asking the same of him.  I think I had been really digging Deer Tick, and this guy said he had seen a little of them on the internet and they kind of reminded him of Blitzen Trapper. Sort of.  Deer Tick was newer and didn't have as many records out, but this guys said I should check out Furr.

Well, I got home and looked and that was the Blitzen Trapper album I had bought and kind of neglected.  I remembered thinking, "Hmmm...this is pretty good" while I listened to it, but it ended up getting filed away before I really got into it.  That happens sometimes.  I had a Replacements CD while the band was still a functioning outfit and I just really never got around to listening to it until they broke up (D'oh!).  So I decided I'd go home and give Furr another shot.  It didn't come with a download card, so it didn't have the luxury of popping up now and then in my mp3 player, so it was kind of like listening to a record I sort of knew.  It ended up like being a trip to the record store with just like fifteen bucks on me, where I just buy one album and then really spend some time listening to it.

Which is what I should have done the first time, because it turns out I really like Furr, and I really like Blitzen Trapper a lot.  They're one of those bands that critics say are too derivative sometimes, but I really don't care if God & Suicide sounds kind of like a New Pornographers song, because it's a really great song.  I don't care if some critic thinks they sound like they're emulating a more modern Bob Dylan sound because I don't hear it, and I wouldn't care if I did.  I just like the way Eric Earley sings and I like how the musicians seem to be able to use hip hop beats when they want, but they can mix in a banjo here and there or remind me of an epic old 10cc song sometimes.  So sure, you can hear their influences, but they do such a nice job of mixing them all together that it comes out sounding like Blitzen Trapper to me.

It kicks off with Sleepy Time in the Western World, which is the kind of quirky song with great vocal harmonies that 10cc used to come up with once in awhile.  It's just not the same, though.  It just sounds more like 2008 than 1978, and that's good, isn't it?  The title track is like one of those old acoustic songs that made a nice break in an album, but for an entire career?  Not for me, anyway.  I like those kinds of songs in small doses, and that's what Blitzen Trapper does with this little story about being raised by wolves.  Yeah, it's weird but it's really cool.

So Blitzen Trapper is one of those bands that I think is really great, and to the people my age that haven't heard any good new music since 1982 or whatever arbitrary date they've chosen, I'm glad I'll be listening to this album for decades to come.  I'd be really bummed out if I had missed out on a song like Black River Killer.  These guys are just a fun band to listen to, and when people have been over I've put them on when no one was paying attention and had more than one person ask who they were because they liked it.  That's not the whole reason we all listen to music, but it's really nice when someone else actually notices that you don't just listen to music because no one else has ever heard it.  I hate hearing that, because it's not the point at all.  I don't listen to music because no one's ever heard it, or because everyone's heard it.  I listen to what I like, and I really like Blitzen Trapper.

So my record is probably four years old or so, but I bought it brand new and it's only seen a pretty decent turntable so it's in great shape.  Sub Pop made it nice and flat, and the fact that I'm not a sixteen year old with fifty records and nothing but time to kill seems to have helped insure that my record is in excellent condition.  I think I'd like this one in the car, so I really should rip it to an mp3 some time.

Toadies - Rubberneck

OK, number one, I'm too old for Toadies.  In 1994 I was 32 and these guys were a big deal to the teenagers that were a little too young for Nirvana.  Hell, I had a job making magazines and worked third shift back then.  Plus a shitload of overtime because I had two kids, one just about the right age for Toadies music.  By just about I mean that I bought the CD Rubberneck and he listened to it a lot.  One thing I remember about 1994 is that I was really mostly listening to The Stones in my house, but FM radio hadn't quite gone to pure shit yet, and they played Toadies on popular radio (Possum Kingdom) and they also played them on college radio (Mr. Love, I Burn, Tyler).  So they were one of the rare bands that could maintain a semblance of cool while hitting the charts pretty hard.

Now the only song most people know by Toadies is Possum Kingdom, which I've heard called a million different things, like Make Up Your Mind or Behind the Boathouse.  I even argued with a guy at work all night once about it being called Possum Kingdom (I was a certifiably old dude on third shift, so no way could I know new music) when he swore it was called My Dark Secret.  Actually I kind of think that would have been a better title, but I had to go bring in the CD to get him to shut up.  I remember that kind of was a pain in the ass, because it meant I had to remember to bring it in to work to show him as I certainly didn't have a CD player in my car.  I think I had my '62 Comet back then, which meant I had a plastic plate where a radio could go.  Wanted to hear music in there?  Then you sang or listened to me sing!  I do remember the kid I was arguing with most of the night didn't bother to come back after I remembered to bring in the CD so I could show him what a D-Bag he was for questioning my awesome Rock N Roll trivia ability.  Oh well, we probably just argued music all night without the kid anyway.  I loved that about that job - we talked about music pretty much exclusively, and it was pretty mindless so we could talk a lot.

What I like about Toadies is that they're an aggressive band.  Todd Lewis' vocals fit the music perfectly.  He's got a lot of power and he has a good screaming talent.  Some singers just sound like Fay Wray when they need to scream (see almost every metal band after Judas Priest became popular), especially on the Hard Rock side of things.  I know a lot of people seemed to think Toadies were a Grunge band, but they usually played too fast for that scene, if you ask me.  I know Possum Kingdom was kind of reminiscent of The Pixies, but Toadies didn't live in that Loud-Soft-Loud realm all that often.  Usually they were just Loud.  Mr. Love is lyrically really basic, but damn, the guitars and killer drums and bass (along with Todd's excellent screaming ability) just always hit home for me.  I bet I've played this song twice in a row as much as almost any other song I have.

Maybe 1994 was nearly the end times for college radio to play songs on commercially successful albums.  I can remember going out to lunch at 3:30 AM and hearing Possum Kingdom on WMMS, which was probably followed by some ass sucking sounds from Collective Soul or 90's balladeering Aerosmith.  So we'd change the station to one of the low numbers and hear I Come From the Water or the really twisted and fucked up Tyler.  Boy that was one of those songs I used to hope the kids wouldn't ask about, because it's a sick tale of rape wrapped up in some really catchy and well done music.  I always tried to look at it like a bad horror movie.  I liked that the line between popular and underground was still so close back then, though.  I think it gave people more to have in common.

Well, Rubberneck just got reissued for its 20th Anniversary, and this is the first US vinyl release.  There is a European release on MOV, but I've heard it's kind of a grey market deal.  I'd get the US version anyway, because it's about fifteen dollars less and it's not exactly an audiophile release anyway.  It's a mostly midrange affair with nothing much happening in the higher frequencies.  What I was most impressed with is that the record is dead quiet (a lot of 180 gram records aren't these days) and I really love the stereo separation on it.  You get heavy guitar riffing out of the right channel and screaming and wailing out of the left.  It sounds like you're in the room with the band, and it's really hard to not keep turning it up.  So obviously since it's such a new reissue my record is in perfect shape.  It comes with a download card, made of plastic which is good for the bonus tracks that aren't on the record.  At first I was gonna be bummed about that, but I think everyone that wants this probably has a CD from around 1994 they ripped to mp3 a long time ago.  So all in all, I think it's a great package of a record most people my age really never heard.  Which is fine with me, because I still love it.