1) Shared a lot of this with Lawr privately already, inspiring this post.
2) Peter’s derisive (found that on thesaurus.com) comments about Fu Manchu have inspired a Fu-fest for me.
3) Ran some errands on a beautiful Friday late afternoon/evening yesterday and was cranking King Of The Road loud. (In my 2009 Nissan Cube.)
4) For a rock ‘n’ roll site (well, supposedly anyway), the term “riff” is not used nearly enough.
5) Beach Boys be damned.
Was driving home from the Jersey Shore yesterday afternoon. No baseball games on mlb. No CDs in the car. Had to resort to Jango, the Pandora-thing I use, when forced. (Hadn’t signed in for months.)
I use Jango because it seems at least a little bit better than Pandora.
I hate all of these because:
1) I much, much, much prefer the comfortable continuity of an entire CD. Like I’ve mentioned before, where I come from, singles were for babies and albums were for grown-ups. I rarely want to be labeled a grown-up, but in this case I’ll take it.
2) The catalog of an artist consists of about two albums and five songs. Neither the Jango nor Pandora catalog contains Dudes or Ass Cobra on my “Turbonegro Radio.” That’s like having a baseball catalog without Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb.
3) Their suggestions suck. They don’t get what I like.
4) They give me suggestions at the expense of the artists I include to be played. Sometimes they’ll give me two songs by a suggestion band before playing even one from what I told them to play. Can’t there be a “just play what I told you because your suggestions suck” setting?
5) Their independent bands are godawful. I haven’t been in any great independent bands, but I can assure you that every independent band I’ve been in has been better than every independent band I’ve heard on these music services.
But I did get one good suggestion song yesterday, not that I hadn’t heard it before. The Swedish Hives are friends with the Swedish Hellacopters and you can see why. And they have a “tick tock” drummer too.
(The most assinine derogatory term I’ve heard in ages. Drummers are supposed to keep time, by the way. Sometimes they even use devices called “met-ro-nomes” to help them keep time even better. But Keith Moon is “innovative” – constantly pitter-patting all over the drums, sapping the power from music that could really use a power boost. For heaven’s sake, his own guitarist wished for a real drummer. Perhaps guitarists should loosen all their strings and just wank away. That would be “innovative.” It would also “suck.”)
Let’s steer this ship back to rock ‘n’ roll with The Hives:
It must have been Remnants movie night last night. Even though this kind of thing is not my normal cup of tea in flicks, I was persuaded by some new friends to see the new “Godzilla” Friday night. It wasn’t bad, actually. Not to spoil it for you, but history definitely showed us again how nature points out the folly of man.
So you get the Fu version. While the BOC version is happy and kinda poppy, Fu Manchu’s (a distant second all-time at covers to the mighty Hellas) is sluggish and menacing, like Godzilla damn well should be.
I’m drawn to a sweet singing lead guitar over slow crunchy chords like a fly to shit. I guess that pretty much sums up the Black Sabbath formula.
Oh, and the crazy bass solo during the break part.
Enough Sorrow.
Been thinking about this song a lot lately. Generic hardcore at its finest.
1) Don’t know why this hasn’t been chosen for Saturday Song Of The Week yet.
2) Me and my buds used to sing this a lot way back when.
3) This goes out especially to Lawr.
I really don’t talk about The Hydromatics nearly enough on this blog. Listened them on the way to church this morning, which often requires a Hydromatics-like CD so I can manage to arrive only 10 minutes late instead of worse since I live 35 minutes away from the church.
Mighty Hellacopter guitarist/vocalist Nicke Andersson drums in this band and keeps his mouth shut for the most part, which is how Peter would have it. Love the way the verse vocal grinds against the instrumental part, which just keeps chugging along on its own.
Parts Unknown is one of those albums that everyone should know, but no one does. I have a bunch of those.
I’ve decided the Beatles were definitely best off breaking up when they did, lest they did themselves further damage.
What would the Beatles be today? My best guess is that McCartney would’ve found a way to secure all the rights and the other three would’ve quit long ago (Lennon first).
Current Beatles lineup:
Paul McCartney – Bass, vocals
Adam Levine – Guitar, vocals
Slash – Guitar
Phil Collins – Drums, vocals
Give me your best guess at the Beatles in 2014.
No prize, because I’m guessing there will be two more entries max.
Mentioned a post or two ago that my friend got a big box of CDs at a yard sale and I got second dibs. Three of the CDs I got were later Beatles – Past Masters Volume Two, Sgt. Pepper’s and Abbey Road.
Somehow I’ve sheltered myself from the late Beatles all my life, except for the radio stuff, which covers a lot of it. But on my long drive to and from seeing my kids a couple weekends ago, I listened to these albums.
My blasphemous quick take on the late Beatles:
Lennon: Doing all kinds of envelope-pushing stuff. Some works, some doesn’t.
McCartney: Writing either meaningless pop ditties or overly maudlin tales of woe. No wonder Lennon was pulling his hair out trying to exist with this guy at this point.
Harrison – Diddling on the sitar every third song. In between, some quite cool stuff.
Ringo – Belting out sincere-sounding pop ditties in his wonderful so-different-from-the-others voice which truly sound good to me amidst the rest of this.
Then I heard “I Want You (She’s So Heavy).” I may have heard this somewhere along the line before, but not often.
It’s awful. And I’m both ignorant and confused. Is this Lennon’s answer to Zeppelin? Both Abbey and the first Zep arrived in 1969, but, even if Abbey was first, that doesn’t mean Lennon didn’t already have the buzz on Zep. Maybe my thought is preposterous and stupid.
Anyway, the Beatles aren’t equipped for heavy. The guitars aren’t heavy. The drums aren’t heavy (and I love Ringo in his element). The song is boring and NEVER WANTS TO END.
Perhaps I’ll follow this up by why I think Sgt. Pepper’s is not only not the best album ever, it isn’t even a real good Beatles album.
Perhaps I’ll push the seven readers we have on this blog to persuade Mike Salfino to come back for a few “Nothing Will Ever Beat The Beatles” articles (which, from what I’ve heard, had as much readership as anything around here ever).
Thank you and good night.
Not sure how I managed to never see this until now, but it came up in the youtube fly eye after the Slade concluded.
Young(er – he was already up there when he hit the big-time) Mr. Glitter looks like the spawn of Brian Johnson from AC/DC and Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs.
This is about as fun as creepy gets.
I found the best live Led Zep album ever.
A friend of mine bought a huge box full of CDs for $30 at a yard sale and he let me pick through them after he took first dibs. I picked a bunch of later Beatles that I didn’t have (more on that later) a couple early Metallicas (maybe more on that later) and Jimmy Page and the Black Crowes – Live At The Greek.
Good God, the Page album kicks some serious ass. And you know why? Rhythm guitar. Go ahead, try and find me better live Zeppelin. Why the Zeps never bothered to just hire some schmuck to hammer out chords I’ll never know. Big mistake in my book.
Chris Robinson isn’t quite Robert Plant, but he’s damn close. And he’s certainly better than the current croaking Lawr version of Plant. The drummer? Hey, Bonham’s my favorite drummer of all, but I guess this teaches me that it was more his innovative style than difficult technique because I don’t miss anything here. This bass player can’t match JPJ on the Lemon Song solo, but it’s not that big a deal.
This has depth and crunch and balls like nothing Zep ever released live.
If someone were to find some buried old Led Zeppelin live tape and it sounded like this, the entire rock world would shit its pants. I swear to God.
Being the lemming I am, for all these years I’ve referred to Marc Bolan’s voice as “Larry the Lamb” because I’d read it elsewhere. This morning I realized I didn’t really know who Larry the Lamb was.
Mystery solved. He was a cartoon character in a Davey and Goliath/Gumby-like childrens show.
Take a look. It’s actually pretty funny for as long as you can stand it. Stick around for at least a minute and a half for this exchange:
Larry: I thought you were a fairy.
Cop: A fairy? Me? Do I look like a fairy?
Larry: I don’t know. I’ve never seen one. Baaah.
Cop: Then be careful what you say, my lad.
