Yeah, I really liked the David Ware, the Miho Hazama, the OK:KO, and the Cochemea. Haven't spent enough time with the Joe Martin yet, but I do like him.
It really grew for me. I disliked every track as they emerged, as singles, but when I heard the whole album they all suddenly snapped into place. It really is a fantastic album-as-album.
I've been listening to them since 1989. As good as the early albums are, I'm kinda burned out on them, and I feel like the newer stuff doesn't get the appreciation it deserves.
1. Hesitation Marks
2. The Slip
3. The Fragile
4. The Downward Spiral
5. Broken
6. Pretty Hate Machine
7. Not the Actual Events
8. Bad Witch
9. Add Violence
10. With Teeth
11. Ghosts
12. Year Zero
I saw NIN at Madison Square Garden on (what I believe was) the second leg of the Fragile tour. A Perfect Circle opened (pre-Mer de Noms) and Marilyn Manson came out to sing "Starfuckers, Inc." with the band. It was fantastic.
Try Live Around The World too. It's compiled from a bunch of different shows from different years, but it proves that Davis's live bands were strong as hell in those final years.
It's a fucking brilliant album. I ignore lyrics about 95% of the time; with her, I pay attention, and am constantly amazed. The music is fantastic, too; the harp and French horn(!) on the title track absolutely kill me. And it's a goddamn master class on how to record vocals.
Went to see JD Allen's new trio in a tiny Brooklyn bar last night. His new drummer, Nic Cacioppo, is wild to watch live: he remains almost expressionless while playing, just staring off into the distance, but sometimes he opens his mouth and sticks his tongue out seemingly for no reason. But his playing is *intense*; he took a long solo on a tiny kit that reminded me of Billy Cobham.
I'm not sure whose combination of vocal style and general persona I hate more, Neil Sedaka or Frankie Valli. It's really too close to call, because they're both The Fucking Worst.
Yeah, the credits on Discogs are eye-watering. If this album *didn't* go multi-platinum, if it had tanked like the two or three before it, it might have sunk his career for good.
This was a really good piece. I listen to a shit-ton of 70s rock, all the way down to super-boneheaded stuff like Cactus and Mountain, but have never heard Frampton Comes Alive! Might need to remedy that this afternoon.
I'm basically obsessed with Santana's early 70s jazz-fusion period, so getting to ask him about that stuff was one of the main reasons I requested this interview. But the new record is really, really good.
I've been in a 70s fusion space myself lately (Jean-Luc Ponty has been getting a lot of headphone time this past week).
Corea's got a new Spanish-tinged album coming out soon; I haven't checked it out yet, but it'll be written up here for sure.
I was seriously sitting there with my jaw hanging open by halfway through the set. The way Riley and Badrena were going at it, I was thinking, some of these old people in the audience are gonna stroke out before this is over.
Ooh! Ooh! A new Tool album! Spoiler: It's gonna sound just like the last one...with a strong chance that 13 years later, their conspiracy-theory/Bill Hicks-superfan BS will have curdled into full-on Joe Rogan-ism. Get excited!
When I studied audio engineering about 15 years ago, the professor asked each of us in class what we thought was a really well engineered album that we'd like to emulate, and my choice was Grand Funk's self-titled "red album." Listen to it - it's just three guys in a room, but every instrument is perfectly balanced with its own space in the mix, and it all comes together and sounds fantastic. Grand Funk were dumb as shit ("People, Let's Stop The War" is one of the dumbest songs EVER), but they were also glorious.
I wanted to like Shellac. I really did. I *LOVED* Big Black in high school (when they were more or less new). I liked Rapeman, too. But Shellac, from their first singles on, have just done nothing for me.
Brutus is so much better than Shellac it's not even funny. Shellac is the musical equivalent of a surly shrug; Brutus is fists gripping your lapels and screaming hot breath in your face. This album is amazing.
I'm old. I first heard Mötley Crüe in 1983. Every album has two or three good songs. But this is an ugly, stupid story that didn't need to be told - and certainly didn't need to be told this ineptly. It took them over a decade to get this thing made, and it looks like they shot it in two weeks on a budget of $5000 max.
My shoulda-been-bigger hair metal nominee is Junkyard, a band that featured Brian Baker (Minor Threat, Bad Religion) on guitar. Their first two albums are actually decent blues-rock with extra hairspray.
I saw GB with Sick Of It All and Judge at City Gardens in Trenton, NJ the week I graduated high school, in June of 1990. It was one of the best shows I've ever been to.
Diamond hired Ronnie Tutt, the drummer from Elvis's TCB band (who were amazing), a couple of years after Elvis's death and used him live all the way through 2018.
Aerosmith were seriously great ...until they got clean. Every album from the debut through Night In The Ruts fucking smokes, and I'll even stand up for half of Rock In A Hard Place, but literally everything they've done since getting back together in 1984/85 has been runny dogshit.
>>“Come Together” is a better song than “You Can’t Catch Me”
The hell it is. I will accept - even aver - that Elvis's cover of "Promised Land" is better than Chuck Berry's original. But this song is a cup of cold piss compared to "You Can't Catch Me."
This is an amazing list, and I love the logic behind it. The only record I've heard is Agrimonia - which rules - and I'm definitely gonna check out some of the others. (Not the Immortal, though. No Abbath, no Immortal. This is a hill I will happily die on.)
I've seen that photo of McNeely for years, but didn't know much about him myself until his passing - honestly, when I heard that he died this month, I was shocked, because the guy in that photo should have died in like 1959, from a heroin overdose or from drinking shots of whiskey with mothballs in them the way Hank Williams used to.
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