This is something something I wrote last year (December of '07) in response to the (then) latest downloadable content for Rock Band for the X-Box 360. It ended up being featured on antimusic.com shortly after. I wish I could take credit for the awesome title, but that honor belongs to the site's moderator.
Here's a link to the slightly edited published article: http://www.antimusic.com/news/07/dec/03And_Justice_for_Newsted.shtml
If for no other reason, it's worth checking out the published version for the awesome (and very serious) comment and the bottom of the page.
Anyways, enjoy.
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I haven't written anything in a long time, mainly due to apathy. Apathy is a bummer, which isn't exactly true because apathy is apathy. A bummer is something else entirely.
It's been mostly a quest for inspiration, and tonight I think that thirst was briefly satiated.
So, tonight I was playing Rock Band after having downloaded some extra content for the game on Xbox live. I downloaded a David Bowie pack (which included "Moonage Daydream" and covers of "Heroes" and "Queen Bitch"), a Runaways cover ("Cherry Bomb"), a T. Rex cover ("Bang a Gong"), and a Metallica pack ("Blackened", "And Justice For All", and "Ride the Lightning"). I wanted to try the Metallica songs right away, to see if they'd be hard to play. I'm still living on the 3rd floor of the Rice's home for another couple weeks, so playing the Rock Band drums so late was out of the question.
I switched over to "Blackened" and I noticed that you could play bass on it. A quick note on why this is noticeable: When "...And Justice For All" was released in 1988, it seemed to have been packaged with almost no low end, which mostly means that the bass guitar track was rendered inaudible. This was done for a bunch of reasons, mainly because of the band's lack of confidence due to the then recent loss of their bass player Cliff Burton. The new bassist Jason Newsted had a long bubbling annoyance regarding the erasing of his bass tracks. What happened? Why no bass? You could even almost hear it on two "Justice"-era b-sides, "Breadfan" and especially "The Prince", both of which boasted rough mixes and no real mastering job to speak for.
The resulting album, while being the 2nd greatest album in the Metallica corpus, had the lingering feeling of a joint workshop between Tascam Portastudios and Crate amps (Note to non-music nerds, that means it sounds really tinny and flat and maybe even sounding a bit bad to some with regards to the recording quality). This never ruined my love for the album. I got into it far before I ever noticed that there were good recordings and bad recordings, which might account for (along with my perpetual and unreasonable love for Metallica bootlegs throughout my junior high and high school years) my love for really trashy sounding recordings.
But a mystery remained: whatever happened to those bass tracks? You could hear the bass in live recordings of the "Justice" songs, no doubt at all. But I always wondered what happened to the mysteriously absent low end. Jason Newsted is a good metal bassist, but my curiousity was also tempered by the fact that hearing the bass could change the dynamic of the album.
Yet tonight, the veil was cast aside and I beheld these two "Justice" songs...with bass. I still don't get it. Rock Band evidently has access to the master tapes...otherwise, how else would Harmonix (the company that developed the game) be able to separate the tracks enough so that if you make a mistake on your "instrument" that it plays back as silence with the rest of the track still playing? Futhermore, did they bring the bass track back up or could they have had someone re-record the tracks?
By this point, most readers might have jumped ship and I can't say that I blame them. I can't expect anyone to get as excited about this as me. But still, the whole thing is at least kind of fascinating. For the kind of guy who in high school, though currently having no jean jacket to boast of, would gladly have carefully etched the cover of "Kill 'Em All" on the back of one with a black sharpie (though would have probably gotten in the same amount of trouble for wearing a T-Shirt of the album cover when I was in high school), this is of utmost importance. I now have an idea of what these songs sound like with bass guitar. The result? I kind of like it. I'll always prefer the same copy of the album that I've been listening to for over a decade, but thanks to Rock Band, I can kind of feel like Jason Newsted did when he first heard the playbacks of his performance, not knowing that a legion of subsequent fans with too much time on their hands would someday deconstruct the "...And Justice For All" experience in light of a videogame.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Monday, June 9, 2008
Oliver Stone's "The Doors"
When dealing with corporate music stores, it's good to recognize the big poppa of all corporate music stores: Walmart. I never realized the power of Walmart until I got to graduate school and moved to a town where a 24-hour Super Walmart was the high point for youth culture on a Friday night. Walmart fared better than the bowling alley, which as far as I could tell was the only other place opened at 11pm that wasn't a supermarket (of course meaning a supermarket that wasn't also a Walmart). It's easy to hate Walmart when it's just an idea, something that is destroying small businesses and eroding the foundations of middle America. I also think that it's funny that Walmart gets such flack in my area when pretty much any other business is a chain of some sort.
...including my beloved Corporate Music Store©.
Walmart, as must people know, has a 5 dollar DVD bin and that bin always seems to have Oliver Stone's "The Doors" which is essentially a meditation of the life of Jim Morrison. It's also probably the funniest movie I've ever seen.
When I was in the 9th grade, I was obsessed with the movie. I saw it the summer before 9th grade while visiting some family friends with my parents. The family's son was the coolest person I knew, which pretty much meant that he did everything I could never see myself doing in the 9th grade: drink, smoke, do drugs, drive, go out all the time, sleep with girls, and know people in bands. Moreover, he was only 1 year older than me. While I never really ended up doing anything seedy in my life, he represented everything I could've been within one year's time, even if I wouldn't really be. We also both listened to thrash metal, particularly Metallica. While my yearbook quote was "following an instinct not a trend/go against the grain until the end" (Damage, Inc.), he embodied that a whole lot more than I did. My life was more Nothing Else Matter than Damage, Inc.
The summer before I entered my freshman year, this guy was particularly into the Doors. I came over and he and his friends were watching Oliver Stone's "The Doors". He had a huge room (which seemed more like an awesome apartment than a room) and it was full of (who at the time I thought were) more really cool people. Oliver Stone's "The Doors" was on in the background and while all the cool people were doing whatever cool people do, I watched the life story of someone who was seemingly cooler than all of them: Jim Morrison.
Now, I hope you're seeing where I'm going with all of this and you're catching a sense of the self-deprecation in this little bit of writing. Jim Morrison is NOT awesome. Jim Morrison kinda sucked. He wrote really crappy poetry and sang on more crappy songs than good. It's easy to talk about how awesome the Doors are when you're only listening to the 2-disc "Best of..." or if you're Perry Farrell or Door's keyboardist Ran Manzarek. But the idea of the band The Doors is probably stronger than the reality of The Doors.
I bought the movie soon after at another Corporate Music Store© location which was located in the deadest mall in America (which I'm pleased to say is even deader than ever, though I did attend an advance screening for the new Incredible Hulk movie there tonight). I also picked up the soundtrack to the motion picture at, coincidentally, a Walmart that is located in the same plaza as my current Corporate Music Store© location. It was 1995 and I missed the Doors resurgence by a good 4 years, but it was all new to me. The soundtrack, in all honesty, was pretty awesome. It played on the Jim Morrison mystique flawlessly and you really get the sense that some mythical god walked this earth for a brief period in the mid-to-late 60's, an image that's just plain silly because at the end of the day (or the end of his day, really), he was a dopey guy in his mid-20's. I'm currently the same age Jim Morrison was when he died (he died at 27) but I feel generally more comfortable where I'm at. I don't think I've missed out, even in comparison to Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone's "The Doors".
The soundtrack was also my first introduction to the Velvet Underground and I remember being really surprised when I found out what they really looked like because the band I pictured looked more like the Screaming Trees (I can't even explain why) than a bunch of sloppy mods with a supermodel.
The movie itself is unintentionally hilarious. I later learned that almost anyone involved with Jim Morrison was appalled by the movie. His mistress, Patricia Keneally (who, thanks to Google, I just found out 2 seconds ago is now a science fiction writer) hated how she was depicted, which is odd because she's portrayed (as far as the movie's concerned) pretty positively, being a voluptious pagan who initiates Jim Morrison into some faux-godhood by drinking each other's blood and dancing to the introduction of Carmina Burana. Doors drummer John Densmore also ripped into the movie, though he has a cameo as an engineer. Others probably would've been offended at their portrayal if they weren't already dead. Andy Warhol is portrayed as hitting on Jim Morrison while giving him a gold phone and the stoic Nico gets a little rawdy with some Love in an Elevator.
I've pretty much disavowed the movie from my life, with the occasional relapse whenever it's featured on VH1 Classic. But recently, I was thinking about it and something kinda bothersome hit me: Val Kilmer is a better Jim Morrison than Jim Morrison.
The real Jim Morrison was a little pudgy and awkward. Val Kilmer had better delivery, better stage presence, looked better, and kinda sounded better than the real Jim Morrison, ALL while still being Val Kilmer. Regardless of the film's artistic value (very little) or historical value (even less), I think that the shot of Val Kilmer as the dead Jim Morrison, laying perfectly still in a bathtub is probably one of the most iconic images in rock cinema. This is no way what Jim Morrison looked like when he died. I saw a picture of Jim Morrison in an old Rolling Stone that was taken just days before he died, and it looked like someone ate Jim Morrison and wore his skin. Even in death, Jim Morrison is trumped by Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison.
Which brings me to a last point with bio-pics. I can't help but picture the band in the movie more easily than the real deal. Maybe that's why there are movies like Eddie and the Cruisers. It's easier to mess with a made-up legend than a real one. In the case of the Doors, the other Doors were portrayed by Frank Whaley (as Robbie Krieger), Kevin Dillon (as John Densmore) and Kyle Maclaughlin (as Ray Manzarek). Frank Whaley also played a fake Lee Harvey Oswald in Oliver Stone's equally overblown "J.F.K." and Kyle Maclaughlin was in David Lynch's Blue Velvet. In real life, the other Doors look like a bunch of skeezy and/or ratty old guys. I almost need to picture the fake band more. I've put off seeing Anton Corbijn's "Control" because I don't want a definitive film verson of Ian Curtis and Joy Division when I've already been messed up by the fake versions in "24 Hour Party People". This also means that there are now 2 sets of fake Joy Divisions, which is as odd and arbitrary as having 2 fake versons of Steve Prefontaine, who was himself the subject of 2 films about his life.
As a result, I would not be able to pick out the real Steve Prefontaine in a police line-up, and I guess that's okay.
...including my beloved Corporate Music Store©.
Walmart, as must people know, has a 5 dollar DVD bin and that bin always seems to have Oliver Stone's "The Doors" which is essentially a meditation of the life of Jim Morrison. It's also probably the funniest movie I've ever seen.
When I was in the 9th grade, I was obsessed with the movie. I saw it the summer before 9th grade while visiting some family friends with my parents. The family's son was the coolest person I knew, which pretty much meant that he did everything I could never see myself doing in the 9th grade: drink, smoke, do drugs, drive, go out all the time, sleep with girls, and know people in bands. Moreover, he was only 1 year older than me. While I never really ended up doing anything seedy in my life, he represented everything I could've been within one year's time, even if I wouldn't really be. We also both listened to thrash metal, particularly Metallica. While my yearbook quote was "following an instinct not a trend/go against the grain until the end" (Damage, Inc.), he embodied that a whole lot more than I did. My life was more Nothing Else Matter than Damage, Inc.
The summer before I entered my freshman year, this guy was particularly into the Doors. I came over and he and his friends were watching Oliver Stone's "The Doors". He had a huge room (which seemed more like an awesome apartment than a room) and it was full of (who at the time I thought were) more really cool people. Oliver Stone's "The Doors" was on in the background and while all the cool people were doing whatever cool people do, I watched the life story of someone who was seemingly cooler than all of them: Jim Morrison.
Now, I hope you're seeing where I'm going with all of this and you're catching a sense of the self-deprecation in this little bit of writing. Jim Morrison is NOT awesome. Jim Morrison kinda sucked. He wrote really crappy poetry and sang on more crappy songs than good. It's easy to talk about how awesome the Doors are when you're only listening to the 2-disc "Best of..." or if you're Perry Farrell or Door's keyboardist Ran Manzarek. But the idea of the band The Doors is probably stronger than the reality of The Doors.
I bought the movie soon after at another Corporate Music Store© location which was located in the deadest mall in America (which I'm pleased to say is even deader than ever, though I did attend an advance screening for the new Incredible Hulk movie there tonight). I also picked up the soundtrack to the motion picture at, coincidentally, a Walmart that is located in the same plaza as my current Corporate Music Store© location. It was 1995 and I missed the Doors resurgence by a good 4 years, but it was all new to me. The soundtrack, in all honesty, was pretty awesome. It played on the Jim Morrison mystique flawlessly and you really get the sense that some mythical god walked this earth for a brief period in the mid-to-late 60's, an image that's just plain silly because at the end of the day (or the end of his day, really), he was a dopey guy in his mid-20's. I'm currently the same age Jim Morrison was when he died (he died at 27) but I feel generally more comfortable where I'm at. I don't think I've missed out, even in comparison to Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone's "The Doors".
The soundtrack was also my first introduction to the Velvet Underground and I remember being really surprised when I found out what they really looked like because the band I pictured looked more like the Screaming Trees (I can't even explain why) than a bunch of sloppy mods with a supermodel.
The movie itself is unintentionally hilarious. I later learned that almost anyone involved with Jim Morrison was appalled by the movie. His mistress, Patricia Keneally (who, thanks to Google, I just found out 2 seconds ago is now a science fiction writer) hated how she was depicted, which is odd because she's portrayed (as far as the movie's concerned) pretty positively, being a voluptious pagan who initiates Jim Morrison into some faux-godhood by drinking each other's blood and dancing to the introduction of Carmina Burana. Doors drummer John Densmore also ripped into the movie, though he has a cameo as an engineer. Others probably would've been offended at their portrayal if they weren't already dead. Andy Warhol is portrayed as hitting on Jim Morrison while giving him a gold phone and the stoic Nico gets a little rawdy with some Love in an Elevator.
I've pretty much disavowed the movie from my life, with the occasional relapse whenever it's featured on VH1 Classic. But recently, I was thinking about it and something kinda bothersome hit me: Val Kilmer is a better Jim Morrison than Jim Morrison.
The real Jim Morrison was a little pudgy and awkward. Val Kilmer had better delivery, better stage presence, looked better, and kinda sounded better than the real Jim Morrison, ALL while still being Val Kilmer. Regardless of the film's artistic value (very little) or historical value (even less), I think that the shot of Val Kilmer as the dead Jim Morrison, laying perfectly still in a bathtub is probably one of the most iconic images in rock cinema. This is no way what Jim Morrison looked like when he died. I saw a picture of Jim Morrison in an old Rolling Stone that was taken just days before he died, and it looked like someone ate Jim Morrison and wore his skin. Even in death, Jim Morrison is trumped by Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison.
Which brings me to a last point with bio-pics. I can't help but picture the band in the movie more easily than the real deal. Maybe that's why there are movies like Eddie and the Cruisers. It's easier to mess with a made-up legend than a real one. In the case of the Doors, the other Doors were portrayed by Frank Whaley (as Robbie Krieger), Kevin Dillon (as John Densmore) and Kyle Maclaughlin (as Ray Manzarek). Frank Whaley also played a fake Lee Harvey Oswald in Oliver Stone's equally overblown "J.F.K." and Kyle Maclaughlin was in David Lynch's Blue Velvet. In real life, the other Doors look like a bunch of skeezy and/or ratty old guys. I almost need to picture the fake band more. I've put off seeing Anton Corbijn's "Control" because I don't want a definitive film verson of Ian Curtis and Joy Division when I've already been messed up by the fake versions in "24 Hour Party People". This also means that there are now 2 sets of fake Joy Divisions, which is as odd and arbitrary as having 2 fake versons of Steve Prefontaine, who was himself the subject of 2 films about his life.
As a result, I would not be able to pick out the real Steve Prefontaine in a police line-up, and I guess that's okay.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Project: Re-alphabetizing the CD's: A-C
If you visit Corporate Music Store© this week, you may find me working on one of my favorite pet projects: re-alphabetizing the music section. Our store has listening stations and customers often feel free to pick up a stack of CD's and bring them to one of the dozen (or so) listening stations scattered in the music section, descriminating by neither genre or proximity from original location. As a result, CD's are all over the place.
I enjoy finding these albums and putting them back because it returns me to my first favorite pastime when I was still a new-hire, that pastime being looking at the back of CD's and movies. I would always take at least twice as long to put shipment out because I wanted to read the backs of every album and every film. While this made me the least desirable part-timer to work with on a stressful night, it also made me fairly knowledgeable on everything sold in the store.
If you were to look at the layout of a decently representative Pop/Rock section, you would notice certain patterns emerge and certain idiosyncrasies that would challenge long-held beliefs on the nature of rock music.
For example:
-The traditional scope of the entire content of a Pop/Rock section (A-Z) cannot also be rightly described as ranging from "Abba to ZZ Top". Aaliyah would actually take top billing.
-It gets very boring looking at an entire section from beginning to end, but looking randomly gives you no real direction. I've been to Amoeba Music in San Francisco (which is easily the largest and most varied music store that I've ever been to) two times and the first time I got vertigo and almost threw up. I ended up with a handful of lackluster albums because I had no plan. It's more helpful to partition the section into 3 or 4 (or 5) sections and decide beforehand which to tackle first. You could, perhaps, divide the store from A-D, F-K, M-R, S (more on this soon), and T-Z. This makes the experience much more manageable, especially in larger store.
-Neil Young has far more albums than most give him credit for.
-So do the Rolling Stones,
-and Lou Reed.
-R.E.M. has far too many albums and I feel guilty for liking the songs that I like.
-"S" is by far the most popular first-letter for a band name. If you were in the 5th grade and wanted to make a unique and original bar-graph or pie-chart, make one based on the number of occurences of letters in the first place of band names. Go into a music store and you'll easily see that my findings are true.
-it's easy to get annoyed when flipping through the "Jackson" section.
-It feels cosmically incorrect for there to be a "Patti Smith" and a "Patty Smyth".
However, it was by going through the B's that I found a new pattern. The B's seem to have a higher degree of blues-y and earth-y bands.
Here's a sample list:
-The Black Crowes
-Blues Traveller
-Black Oak Arkansas
-Black Mountain
-Blackmore Knights
-Blind Melon
-Blind Faith
-Blue Oyster Cult (which is kind of unfair because I consider them more "spectral", but I guess that's a quality that some of the surrounding bands share)
-Jackson Browne
-Lindsey Buckingham
-Buffalo Springfield
-Jimmy Buffett
-The Byrds
It'd be hard to find a precise theme to tie thee bands all together, but if I were to try, I'd say "albums you'd find in a wood-panelled basement" or "lazy Bonnaroo playlist, volume 1b" or "music playing in a head shop". However, all of these acts either flourished in the late-60's-to-70's or wished they were still living in the late-60's-to-70's. Moreover, these bands aren't obscure acts. They are all fairly representative of their sub-section of music. I found the whole thing to be kinda weird.
My preliminary guess as to why so many of these groups are found in the "B's" predominantly have to do with the "B" sound. With regards to pronunciation, the "buh" sound is part of the labial (as opposed to the velar or dental) class, meaning that it reqires the lips to be pronounced. Furthermore, it is a voiced labial, and requires voice for pronunciation. The resulting sound is both defined and soft. It's also the first letter of the name for root movement that spawned all of these bands, namely the blues, even if it's of a folky variety. That "at home" feeling of the blues leaked into each of these bands, with all of them making a career out of the general approachability of their music.
A couple of other quick notes from alphabetizing the A-C sections:
-Who do Apocalyptica think they are? This Cello Quartet launched their career as a novelty group that exclusively covered Metallica songs. Their second album had more Metallica songs, with some Sepultura and Faith No More mixed in. Now they're a "legit" group with a drummer and tattoos. I will even go as far to say that they are the reason that there are 1,001 cheap orchestral/string quarted/piano tributes on the market today. They opened the floodgates in the modern era.
-I never knew we had an Argent CD in the store, but we do.
-Ashes Divide is project from another band I never cared about: A Perfect Circle. The only reason I know they exist is because a Def Jam rep from Manhattan calls every week and he kept trying to check the "buzz" on it. They guy is a nice guy but I'm sure his job often sucks. How often do people get suckered into the business side of the music industry because of free promo CD's and the promise of occasionally getting meet-and-greet passes for second and third tier rock bands? The music industry sucks.
-We have absolutely no used Allman Brothers Band albums.
-I have only recently just realized that the reformed (and John Fogerty-less) "CCR" called themselves Creedence Clearwater REVISITED, a play on the original Creedence Clearwater REVIVAL, even though this has stared me in the face for a lot of years.
-Man, it must suck to be Creed and to be remembered as being Creed.
-I think the Arcade Fire is pretty overrated but get away with it by having two dozen members in their band. No matter how lazy or lackluster a song, it'll always sound better with two dozen people playing it.
-I was forced to listen to the first All-American Rejects CD for about 2 months, totally against my will. In a Stockholm Syndrome-esque twist, I now kinda like it.
-Bjork is awesome, even though deep down I'm probably convincing myself that all of her music is awesome. Except her new album. That was pretty bad.
I enjoy finding these albums and putting them back because it returns me to my first favorite pastime when I was still a new-hire, that pastime being looking at the back of CD's and movies. I would always take at least twice as long to put shipment out because I wanted to read the backs of every album and every film. While this made me the least desirable part-timer to work with on a stressful night, it also made me fairly knowledgeable on everything sold in the store.
If you were to look at the layout of a decently representative Pop/Rock section, you would notice certain patterns emerge and certain idiosyncrasies that would challenge long-held beliefs on the nature of rock music.
For example:
-The traditional scope of the entire content of a Pop/Rock section (A-Z) cannot also be rightly described as ranging from "Abba to ZZ Top". Aaliyah would actually take top billing.
-It gets very boring looking at an entire section from beginning to end, but looking randomly gives you no real direction. I've been to Amoeba Music in San Francisco (which is easily the largest and most varied music store that I've ever been to) two times and the first time I got vertigo and almost threw up. I ended up with a handful of lackluster albums because I had no plan. It's more helpful to partition the section into 3 or 4 (or 5) sections and decide beforehand which to tackle first. You could, perhaps, divide the store from A-D, F-K, M-R, S (more on this soon), and T-Z. This makes the experience much more manageable, especially in larger store.
-Neil Young has far more albums than most give him credit for.
-So do the Rolling Stones,
-and Lou Reed.
-R.E.M. has far too many albums and I feel guilty for liking the songs that I like.
-"S" is by far the most popular first-letter for a band name. If you were in the 5th grade and wanted to make a unique and original bar-graph or pie-chart, make one based on the number of occurences of letters in the first place of band names. Go into a music store and you'll easily see that my findings are true.
-it's easy to get annoyed when flipping through the "Jackson" section.
-It feels cosmically incorrect for there to be a "Patti Smith" and a "Patty Smyth".
However, it was by going through the B's that I found a new pattern. The B's seem to have a higher degree of blues-y and earth-y bands.
Here's a sample list:
-The Black Crowes
-Blues Traveller
-Black Oak Arkansas
-Black Mountain
-Blackmore Knights
-Blind Melon
-Blind Faith
-Blue Oyster Cult (which is kind of unfair because I consider them more "spectral", but I guess that's a quality that some of the surrounding bands share)
-Jackson Browne
-Lindsey Buckingham
-Buffalo Springfield
-Jimmy Buffett
-The Byrds
It'd be hard to find a precise theme to tie thee bands all together, but if I were to try, I'd say "albums you'd find in a wood-panelled basement" or "lazy Bonnaroo playlist, volume 1b" or "music playing in a head shop". However, all of these acts either flourished in the late-60's-to-70's or wished they were still living in the late-60's-to-70's. Moreover, these bands aren't obscure acts. They are all fairly representative of their sub-section of music. I found the whole thing to be kinda weird.
My preliminary guess as to why so many of these groups are found in the "B's" predominantly have to do with the "B" sound. With regards to pronunciation, the "buh" sound is part of the labial (as opposed to the velar or dental) class, meaning that it reqires the lips to be pronounced. Furthermore, it is a voiced labial, and requires voice for pronunciation. The resulting sound is both defined and soft. It's also the first letter of the name for root movement that spawned all of these bands, namely the blues, even if it's of a folky variety. That "at home" feeling of the blues leaked into each of these bands, with all of them making a career out of the general approachability of their music.
A couple of other quick notes from alphabetizing the A-C sections:
-Who do Apocalyptica think they are? This Cello Quartet launched their career as a novelty group that exclusively covered Metallica songs. Their second album had more Metallica songs, with some Sepultura and Faith No More mixed in. Now they're a "legit" group with a drummer and tattoos. I will even go as far to say that they are the reason that there are 1,001 cheap orchestral/string quarted/piano tributes on the market today. They opened the floodgates in the modern era.
-I never knew we had an Argent CD in the store, but we do.
-Ashes Divide is project from another band I never cared about: A Perfect Circle. The only reason I know they exist is because a Def Jam rep from Manhattan calls every week and he kept trying to check the "buzz" on it. They guy is a nice guy but I'm sure his job often sucks. How often do people get suckered into the business side of the music industry because of free promo CD's and the promise of occasionally getting meet-and-greet passes for second and third tier rock bands? The music industry sucks.
-We have absolutely no used Allman Brothers Band albums.
-I have only recently just realized that the reformed (and John Fogerty-less) "CCR" called themselves Creedence Clearwater REVISITED, a play on the original Creedence Clearwater REVIVAL, even though this has stared me in the face for a lot of years.
-Man, it must suck to be Creed and to be remembered as being Creed.
-I think the Arcade Fire is pretty overrated but get away with it by having two dozen members in their band. No matter how lazy or lackluster a song, it'll always sound better with two dozen people playing it.
-I was forced to listen to the first All-American Rejects CD for about 2 months, totally against my will. In a Stockholm Syndrome-esque twist, I now kinda like it.
-Bjork is awesome, even though deep down I'm probably convincing myself that all of her music is awesome. Except her new album. That was pretty bad.
Yanni's "Winter" and unnamed Gladys Knight CD
This is a reconstruction of a scenario that happened between a customer and myself. Please excuse its fragmentary nature:
"Hi, did you find everything alright?"
-Yes [hands me Yanni and Gladys Knight CD's]
"Well, just so you know, we have a discount card where you can save 10% on all your purchases and 20% on your first purchase"
-[no response]
"That'll be $21.60"
-[looks at $5 dollar bill] They keep changing the color of my money.
"Haha, yeah, they do that."
-The people at work are [garble garble]...high tech. Problem is I'm a little bit higher than them.
[Nerviously]"Oh yeah?"
-[Silence]
"Here ya go." [hands bag of CD's to customer along with change]
-Top Gun!
"Hi, did you find everything alright?"
-Yes [hands me Yanni and Gladys Knight CD's]
"Well, just so you know, we have a discount card where you can save 10% on all your purchases and 20% on your first purchase"
-[no response]
"That'll be $21.60"
-[looks at $5 dollar bill] They keep changing the color of my money.
"Haha, yeah, they do that."
-The people at work are [garble garble]...high tech. Problem is I'm a little bit higher than them.
[Nerviously]"Oh yeah?"
-[Silence]
"Here ya go." [hands bag of CD's to customer along with change]
-Top Gun!
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Life of Agony's River Runs Red pt. 1
Today, I rang out a copy of Life of Agony's "River Runs Red" for a co-worker. If you're reading this and you're asking yourself a) who is Life of Agony or b) is this about the first plague that Moses delivered to Pharaoh, than the following might be hard to follow.
Life of Agony was (and I think still is, probably due in no small part to sentimentality) a band from the early/mid-90's who hailed from Brooklyn, New York. They also made an album that I'm willing to bet that I've sold more of than either Metallica's Black Album or Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon", regardless of what Soundscan sells. Two things are a constant in the music business, at least as far as sales go: 1) semi-alienated guys in their early teens will discover Led Zeppelin and all of a sudden "get it", prompting them to buy Zep's first, second, fourth, and fifth albums (leaving the third and sixth albums for when they really get it and Presence and In Through The Out Door for when they really, really get it and/or they're bored) and 2) there will ALWAYS be people in the Albany, NY area who will want "River Runs Red".
When, then, is "River Runs Red"? In short, it was a really depressing hardcore-ish album. At its root, it seemed to appeal to people who were into New York Hardcore but I remember one of my neighbors being really into it two. He asked me to dub a tape copy for him for his car when I was a freshman in high school and he was a senior. He would drive me and his brother to school every morning, which was cool because him and his brother (who was my age) were the two coolest people I knew in my new school and I was overweight and into metal. We listened to it every other morning which would seem unremarkable if you didn't take into account that the other tape we listed to when we weren't listening to River Runs Red was Tim McGraw's "Not A Moment Too Soon". "This Time" and "Indian Outlaw" will always sound like 7am before school started. We would also have time for about half a song because it took about a minute-a-half to drive to school in the morning.
"River Runs Red" is the definition of palatable hardcore and if people were really honest with themselves, they'd recognize that it sounds like Godsmack with cleaner vocals. I hate Godsmack but strangely, I still like River Runs Red. It's the Never, Neverland of albums because it represents never growing up. It's probably more like a bad comic book convention because it also represents never growing up in the worst possible ways. The album deals with suicide and not conforming, even though what you could be conforming to is always ill-defined. I'll never really get what that brand of non-conformism really means. Rage Against the Machine (another band I hate) had a song called Killing in the Name where the last portion of the song was Zach de la Rocha repeatedly shouting "F*** you I won't do whatcha tell me!". I never really got he's being told to do but whatever it is, he probably won't do it. Ill-defined non-conformism is a mystery to me because "they" are always out to keep you down and "they" are "them".
One of my top 10 favorite rock moments in history (somewhere ahead of Faith No More on Saturday Night Live but definitely not ahead of the day Black Sabbath released "Sabotage") was when I was at a frat bar in Albany watching a cover band and they played Killing in the Name. They had one of their friends, a skinny guy in his 20's wearing a baseball hat and looking very serious, come up and sing the song. Besides the skinny kid in his 20's wearing a baseball hat emulating the hip-hop "stylings" of Zach de la Rocha to T, something which in itself was hilarious and heartbreaking all at once, the craziest part of the performance was the audience reaction. They all knew the song. This crowd was not a somber metal crowd or even a bunch of aged Gen-Xers. They were ostensibly frat and sorority types. They were all probably in college or college-educated. In other words: they had nothing to rail against. They had no idea who the "cha" in the "whatcha tell me" was and what they were telling them. Moreover, they were way more into singing along to this song than most audiences are when they're watching real bands. I wonder what the impromptu singer felt like after he preached the Gospel of Rage. I would hate to think that he felt like he "did his part" and somehow people "got it".
I keep thinking that I wish I had a Diet Pepsi. I think I was thirsty.
Life of Agony was (and I think still is, probably due in no small part to sentimentality) a band from the early/mid-90's who hailed from Brooklyn, New York. They also made an album that I'm willing to bet that I've sold more of than either Metallica's Black Album or Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon", regardless of what Soundscan sells. Two things are a constant in the music business, at least as far as sales go: 1) semi-alienated guys in their early teens will discover Led Zeppelin and all of a sudden "get it", prompting them to buy Zep's first, second, fourth, and fifth albums (leaving the third and sixth albums for when they really get it and Presence and In Through The Out Door for when they really, really get it and/or they're bored) and 2) there will ALWAYS be people in the Albany, NY area who will want "River Runs Red".
When, then, is "River Runs Red"? In short, it was a really depressing hardcore-ish album. At its root, it seemed to appeal to people who were into New York Hardcore but I remember one of my neighbors being really into it two. He asked me to dub a tape copy for him for his car when I was a freshman in high school and he was a senior. He would drive me and his brother to school every morning, which was cool because him and his brother (who was my age) were the two coolest people I knew in my new school and I was overweight and into metal. We listened to it every other morning which would seem unremarkable if you didn't take into account that the other tape we listed to when we weren't listening to River Runs Red was Tim McGraw's "Not A Moment Too Soon". "This Time" and "Indian Outlaw" will always sound like 7am before school started. We would also have time for about half a song because it took about a minute-a-half to drive to school in the morning.
"River Runs Red" is the definition of palatable hardcore and if people were really honest with themselves, they'd recognize that it sounds like Godsmack with cleaner vocals. I hate Godsmack but strangely, I still like River Runs Red. It's the Never, Neverland of albums because it represents never growing up. It's probably more like a bad comic book convention because it also represents never growing up in the worst possible ways. The album deals with suicide and not conforming, even though what you could be conforming to is always ill-defined. I'll never really get what that brand of non-conformism really means. Rage Against the Machine (another band I hate) had a song called Killing in the Name where the last portion of the song was Zach de la Rocha repeatedly shouting "F*** you I won't do whatcha tell me!". I never really got he's being told to do but whatever it is, he probably won't do it. Ill-defined non-conformism is a mystery to me because "they" are always out to keep you down and "they" are "them".
One of my top 10 favorite rock moments in history (somewhere ahead of Faith No More on Saturday Night Live but definitely not ahead of the day Black Sabbath released "Sabotage") was when I was at a frat bar in Albany watching a cover band and they played Killing in the Name. They had one of their friends, a skinny guy in his 20's wearing a baseball hat and looking very serious, come up and sing the song. Besides the skinny kid in his 20's wearing a baseball hat emulating the hip-hop "stylings" of Zach de la Rocha to T, something which in itself was hilarious and heartbreaking all at once, the craziest part of the performance was the audience reaction. They all knew the song. This crowd was not a somber metal crowd or even a bunch of aged Gen-Xers. They were ostensibly frat and sorority types. They were all probably in college or college-educated. In other words: they had nothing to rail against. They had no idea who the "cha" in the "whatcha tell me" was and what they were telling them. Moreover, they were way more into singing along to this song than most audiences are when they're watching real bands. I wonder what the impromptu singer felt like after he preached the Gospel of Rage. I would hate to think that he felt like he "did his part" and somehow people "got it".
I keep thinking that I wish I had a Diet Pepsi. I think I was thirsty.
Why this site?
For some reason, I've always loved the Corporate Music Store©. This is mostly because a) I'm very sentimental, b) because I didn't have a license until I was 18 years old, and c) because Corporate Music Store© was all I had. The first reason is totally irrational. Wouldn't it make sense to move on and adopt a better way to get music? Aren't there other stores, and moreover, isn't everything for free on the internet?
Like I said, I'm totally irrational when it comes to sentimentality. There are a lot of reasons why I'd be attached to the 78X78 square feet of space that I've come to know as my beloved Corporate Music Store©, and one of them would be because I bought some of my favorite albums there and starting from Junior High leading all the way up to my senior year of high school, this one Corporate Music Store was the closest thing to having Disneyland in a 5 mile radius from my house, and that includes the Disneyland knock-off amusement park that is probably a mile from my house. The music store that I bought "Master of Puppets" and "Number of the Beast" is no longer in existence. The same holds true for the music store that I bought my copy of Faith No More's "Video Croissant" home video. However, the epicenter of almost all my most pivotal album purchases was at Corporate Music Store©. I'll always be sentimental for the place that I bought all 8 of the Ozzy-era Black Sabbath albums and the store I bought Alice In Chains' "Jar of Flies" EP. To me, it stands for something.
Again, this is totally irrational because it's a building and moreover, it's a building that just so happens to reside someplace really close to where I grew up and somehow managed to still make enough money to not close down. At the end, that's probably its most substantiated claim to fame: it hasn't gone out of business...yet. It's not cool, it's not pretty, it's hardly conveniently located (within a kind-of strip-mall), and it's certainly not cheap. It's just there. It's not remembered for being the place that I lost not one but TWO jobs because of (the first because I talked about working there so much that I didn't properly attend to my bagel-sandwich making duties and the second because I showed up to work at the music store the same day I blew off work at Office Max), or the place Justin Timberlake's mom came to in order to buy singles when N*Sync was in town. It's the kind of place that few are loyal to and hardly anyone will remember after its doors close.
Except me, because I'm way too sentimental.
Like I said, I'm totally irrational when it comes to sentimentality. There are a lot of reasons why I'd be attached to the 78X78 square feet of space that I've come to know as my beloved Corporate Music Store©, and one of them would be because I bought some of my favorite albums there and starting from Junior High leading all the way up to my senior year of high school, this one Corporate Music Store was the closest thing to having Disneyland in a 5 mile radius from my house, and that includes the Disneyland knock-off amusement park that is probably a mile from my house. The music store that I bought "Master of Puppets" and "Number of the Beast" is no longer in existence. The same holds true for the music store that I bought my copy of Faith No More's "Video Croissant" home video. However, the epicenter of almost all my most pivotal album purchases was at Corporate Music Store©. I'll always be sentimental for the place that I bought all 8 of the Ozzy-era Black Sabbath albums and the store I bought Alice In Chains' "Jar of Flies" EP. To me, it stands for something.
Again, this is totally irrational because it's a building and moreover, it's a building that just so happens to reside someplace really close to where I grew up and somehow managed to still make enough money to not close down. At the end, that's probably its most substantiated claim to fame: it hasn't gone out of business...yet. It's not cool, it's not pretty, it's hardly conveniently located (within a kind-of strip-mall), and it's certainly not cheap. It's just there. It's not remembered for being the place that I lost not one but TWO jobs because of (the first because I talked about working there so much that I didn't properly attend to my bagel-sandwich making duties and the second because I showed up to work at the music store the same day I blew off work at Office Max), or the place Justin Timberlake's mom came to in order to buy singles when N*Sync was in town. It's the kind of place that few are loyal to and hardly anyone will remember after its doors close.
Except me, because I'm way too sentimental.
Who am I?
My name is Tom and I've worked for Corporate Music Store(s)© for nearly 10 years, mostly as a part-time "sales associate" (which is all together the kindest and most sterile description of a "clerk" ever created), but in the last couple years I've served primarily as an assistant manager. I recently returned to Corporate Music Store© after an absence. Due to the break, the normally indiscernible slow boil of undesirable change is now apparent.
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