ABBA>The Beatles

I went to the gym today I heard "Knowing Me Knowing You" on the radio there. It occurred to me that ABBA is much more prevalent today than what had previously been the king of pop. No, Michael, I'm not talking about you, I'm talking about the Beatles. They have always been held up as the pinnacle of pop success and yet, how often do you hear them nowadays? There has recently been a broadway musical and movie made around their music, and I'm willing to be that more 17 year olds would recognize "Dancing Queen" than "Yesterday. I was a bit surprised to think of this, but I don't know why. ABBA really was amazing. It was about as pure a pop sound as has ever been made. I think their music will have legs for the next 20 years. I wonder what's going to happen to the beatles...

More ad weirdness

What is it with ad agencies and their music selections? Major League Baseball is apparently playing catch up with the NFL when it comes to worst song to grab a line from and represent their product. While the NFL likened their game to the apocalypse (although a nice one as only Morissey can), MLB has chosen to give us the warm fuzzies of being executed. I have seen the ad on the MLB channel and they have just enough time to use "...and touch the green, green grass of home." A nice enough line on it's own, but of course there is a context. The song's narrator is singing about being buried back home after being executed. The only version I have ever heard was by Johnny Cash, Im sure there are others.

Green, Green Grass Of Home - Johnny Cash

As unfortunate as that choice may be, it doesn't really compete with this next one as far as sheer uncomfortableness goes. Sir Mix A-Lot's "I Like Big Butts" is of course a classic. On it's own, it is a rather forthright ode to his favorite attribute on a woman. Burger King has tied this classic in with a spongebob square pants promotion. I don't know if it's the women dancing with square butts that is so disturbing, or the use of a very adult theme tied in with a kids character, but the result is unwatchable. BK isn't doing anything to make me want to come to their restaurant.

Modern rock

One of my favorite games to play when I'm listening to music is to imagine what Janis Joplin, Pete Townsend, or even Mick Jagger circa 1967 would think of the music I was listening to. Inevitably, any rock that I listen to would probably be recognizable to those folks back then. There is the same 4/4 time, blues based progressions, electric guitars, choruses, verses, etc. In some ways, it's kind of sad how little has changed. Even songs like Franz Ferdinand's "Jacqueline" could be figured out. They would be amused at the use of surf guitar and really heavy bass lines, but they could "get" it.

Jacqueline - Franz Ferdinand

I think the first band to come along that really changed the basic structure of rock music was the Pixies. Instead of adopting a verse, chorus, verse structure with orderly chord changes, the Pixies adapted a style that could best be described as soft/loud. The guitar was mostly used for texture, and there were no choruses. It was still most definitely rock music, but the stuff on Surfer Rosa and before were truly a break from the past. The folks from '67 would be lost, they would have some serious difficulty making any sense out of it at all.

How about something more recent? I submit this song by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. "10x10" could best be described as epic, especially when Karen O goes into her "10x10, 3x3..." while the guitar is stuttering and soaring above her about two thirds of the way through the song. This is more apparent in the studio version, but this live version is it's own kind of awesome. See it here.


I do think that my folks from the past could eventually get their heads around this, but I'm willing to be that the first time they heard this would involve quite a bit of mouth hanging open-ness. Some of that would no doubt be Karen O's demonstration of what could only be her fellatio ability or her fondness of ball gags. I gotta say that my favorite rock these days is more like the pixies and less like reworked blues songs. Luckily, the internet is a wonderful way to get a hold of this stuff. I'll try to post more as I find the time...

In Bouncing Souls we trust

I love the Bouncing Souls. They are one of the few groups I have come across that is both ernest and not annoying. They also have an amazing habit of concisely saying why I like listening to music in their music.

The first song of theirs that I learned to love was "Cracked." I was in Yemen at the time and having a bit of a rough time.

Cracked - Bouncing Souls

They managed to capture how I felt in 1:57, amazing...

I think that from now on, whenever someone asks me why I listen to the music I do, I will just point them to "Sing Along Forever."



I can't think of a better summation than "Life is pain, give it to me straight, touch my heart, I'll sing along forever..." It isn't often that a rock band can make an anthem and not sound ridiculous. The Bouncing Souls touched my heart and I'll sing along forever.

Some reposts

I'm migrating some of my earlier writing for my website to this blog just to consolidate things a little. These will be longer than most, but it will be easier for people to find them. Enjoy!

In defense of Black Sabbath

 By today’s standards, Black Sabbath’s music is fairly tame. It’s easy to forget that they came to this country in 1969. Think about it, during the “summer of love” they were singing songs like “Black Sabbath,” “NIB”, and “Wicked World.” Not only were the songs in a minor key, they were dark and heavy. They sang about Satan and evil things. This last attribute would give them problems throughout their career in the USA. I’ve always thought that they have gotten a bad rap in that department, and I’m going to try to explain what I have gotten out of their music.
          It’s funny how little of their music gets played on the radio. About all you’ll ever hear is “Paranoid” and “Iron Man.” Black Sabbath is right up there with the Velvet Underground and James Brown in the hugely influential but never played category. Heavy metal was born the day “Black Sabbath” was released. Some will say that Led Zeppelin was the birth of heavy metal, but in 1969 they were more Yarbirds than the rock and roll juggernaut that they’d become later on. No, a whole new genre of rock was born with the first song on that album. The song “Black Sabbath” (yes on the album “Black Sabbath” by the group Black Sabbath) was both a tale of some unfortunate being thrown into Hell and a cautionary tale about what was to come. Not the standard musical fare in 1969! They actually mention Satan by name on two different songs on the album, “Black Sabbath” and “NIB”.
          If you read up on what was being said about them back then, you’ll see many people decrying “Devil Worship” and warning that the youth could get sucked into evil things by listening to the music. It was pretty obvious that they were put off by songs about evil and Satan. An understandable reaction, the trouble is that there is a big difference between singing about him and glorifying him. The song “NIB” is a perfect example. For those of you that have not heard the song, you really must. And make sure that you hear the original, not the lame remake with Primus. The song just drips with power, darkness, and (in my mind) epitomizes the Black Sabbath sound. You gotta play this as loud as you can to get the full effect. Power rock is as much about the physical feel of the sound waves hitting you as the actual music is. The basic chords of the song are as memorable as “In A Gadda Da Vidda” or even “Sunshine of Your Love.” Tony Iommi has a distinctive guitar sound that was originally caused by him having to use prosthetic fingertips. He had to loosen the strings slightly and this gave that incredible dark sound. Here are the lyrics to “NIB”:

Oh yeah!
Some people say my love cannot be true
Please believe me, my love, and I’ll show you
I will give you those things you thought unreal
The sun, the moon, the stars all bear my seal
Oh yeah!
Follow me now and you will not regret
Leaving the life you led before we met
You are the first to have this love of mine
Forever with me ’till the end of time

Your love for me has just got to be real
Before you know the way I’m going to feel
I’m going to feel
I’m going to feel

Oh yeah!
Now I have you with me, under my power
Our love grows stronger now with every hour
Look into my eyes, you will see who I am
My name is lucifer, please take my hand

Oh yeah!
Follow me now and you will not regret
Leaving the life you led before we met
You are the first to have this love of mine
Forever with me ’till the end of time

Your love for me has just got to be real
Before you know the way I’m going to feel
I’m going to feel
I’m going to feel

Oh yeah!
Now I have you with me, under my power
Our love grows stronger now with every hour
Look into my eyes, you will see who I am
My name is lucifer, please take my hand

See, isn’t Satan a great guy? No, not really, the song portrays him as a lying, attractive being that will drag you down with him if you believe his lies. It doesn’t take a genius to figure this out. Black Sabbath (at least during the Ozzy years) never portrayed Satan as anything but something to be feared. He is powerful, scary, and dangerous. For a rock song, this is pretty adventurous stuff. Certainly it has more meat to it than the superficial “evil” songs of late. Think about “Enter Sandman” by Mettalica. The gist is that the sandman is bad and scary. Ummm, not exactly plumbing the depths...
          Black Sabbath was the first to explore the darker aspects of rock and roll in 1969. There was a definite change in the air over the next few years, culminating in the defeat of Hubert Humphrey to Richard Nixon and the concert at Altimont. While the Stones and Led Zeppelin paced public perception, Black Sabbath was way ahead of them. They felt the shift years earlier and started a new way of looking at the world through rock and roll. If you haven’t yet, you should at the very least check out their first album. It’s an original.

N.I.B. - Black Sabbath

Around the World and Da Funk by Daft Punk

   I'll say it right up front. I think that the video to "Around the World" by Daft Punk is about as perfect a music video as can be made. Some might scoff and say that that's not saying much while others would laugh and say there isn't anything to it, so how can it be perfect? It takes some explaining, but in a nutshell, I think that the video was made in such a way that it explains the music. For those of you familiar with the song, that might come as a surprise since there doesn't seem to be much to the music other than bass, synth lines, and "Around the World" spoken again and again. If you've only ever heard the song in your car or on a boombox, it might seem that there isn't any other description necessary... You really do need to see the video.
     So yes, the song really is only a bass line, some higher synth parts, some clapping sounds, and a robotic voice saying "Around the World" 144 times. It is what as known as "Dance" music, or at least what the dance scene liked back in 1997. The video is a very simple affair, a single stage with an elevated center pedestal, a ring going around this pedestal, and the space in between them. The outer circle is raised in the back so that we can see people over the people on the center pedestal. The outer ring has a series of steps leading to the highest point in the back. The video consists of 5 quartets of dancers doing a choreographed number to the song, that's it. Well, no, that's not exactly it, there's a bit more to it than that.
        Each of the four quartets of dancers has a different costume. A set of "spacemen", a set of women in one piece bathing suits and caps, a set of women dressed as mummies, a set of dancers dressed in skeleton costumes, and one set of dancers with a fake extended torso and small head. Not coincidentally, there are 5 instrumental "voices" in the song and each set of dancers corresponds with a specific part of the music. The first third of the song is used to introduce and set up each voice/dancers part, the second third there are interactions between the voices, and the third part settles into a sort of universal groove. From time to time, the camera dollies back so that we are looking through a window, watching the dancers. At the beginning of the last part, we cut to a top view as the dancers all walk in a circular pattern and we see the unmistakable resemblance to a record spinning around. We then cut back to the frontal view and as the song comes to a close, we come back out until we are looking through the window again as the lights fade out. Some people have argued that it is supposed to remind you of looking into a jukebox while a record plays (talk about anachronisms!).
        There are those that say that this type of music isn't really music at all. They say that electronic dance music is mechanical, repetitive, and soulless. Despite all of these things, millions of people dance to the stuff, what can they possibly see in the stuff? Ah, that's the thing, they don't "see" anything at all, they feel it. In my mind, that's the wonderful thing about this video, it allows you to "see" the music and its structure. The result is hypnotizing. It reminds me of the dadaist film, "Ballet Mecanique" in it's feel and overall impression. I remember when my brother and I stumbled across it back when it first came out. We were amazed and looked back at each other and asked "What was that?" when it was over. If you've ever had trouble "getting" electronic music, I really encourage you to check out the video. It's refreshing to see something so low tech and simple have such a visual and musical impact.

        The video to "Da Funk" is a bit of a misnomer. This is a short film with the song acting as a score. It is a rather odd film involving a man with a dog's head and a broken leg moving into a new neighborhood and meeting a woman he grew up with. He has some sort of attraction to a boombox with a stuck volume control. It causes several problems for him, including losing the girl that just invited him back to her place. The boombox is playing "Da Funk" (what else could it be?) rather loudly. It's an interesting film. I get the feeling that the main, dog headed, character is trapped in the film, he has no choice but to walk around with this stupid boombox when he would much rather be without it. But without it, he has no reason to exist, there would be no "video".

     Since I'm not much of a dancer, I doubt I'd really enjoy owning any of Daft Punk's albums, but I am very impressed with what kind of videos they are capable of making. It's great to see people taking chances on things that people may not understand.

Helena and Ghost of you videos

I wrote this back in 2005 and I am now migrating most of my music thoughts to this blog.

These are fairly recent videos from MCR's 2004 album "Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge". "Helena" in particular was a fan favorite on M2 and the various countdowns that they have on music video channels. These songs are a great example of what a video can do for a song. On their own, I'm not very impressed with MCR, the songs seem to be a little too concerned with "rocking" and sound to me like they are trying too hard (which is always a cardinal sin in my book). The videos work well as short musicals, the songs themselves are little more than an excuse to dress up and take on characters roles. Good thing for the band that they do this very well. It's almost the reverse of David Bowie. I think his albums are (for the most part) great but the theatrics leave me cold. I would much rather listen to Bowie than watch him, and I'd much rather watch MCR than only listen. The bad news is that I am willing to bet that a lot of the success of the videos is due in no small part to good direction, camera work, and editing, all of which would be missing from a live performance. I would be amazed if Gerard Way could pull off the mannerisms and over the top delivery of the songs live like he does in the videos. Both "Helena" and "The Ghost of You" are very dramatic and emotional, so this style doesn't seem out of place but I really hope that his love songs don't have the same type of delivery...

UPDATE: Before I went overseas I saw the last part of a MCR concert on MTV. My original thoughts seem to hold true, they sounded dreadful in concert. Maybe it was just an "off" night for them, but I doubt that they would have put it out there if it really was a bad show. Oh well...


        "The Ghost of You" is a classic narrative video where the members of the band become characters in the story. The video is set during WWII and all of the action seems to take place in three areas. An NSO dance (in which the band is playing), a bar (after the dance?), and on what looks like Normandy beach during D Day. The bassist plays a soldier that is near and dear to the Sgt. (G. Way) and a girl on the dance floor. He is later killed in action during the invasion while the Sgt. has to be restrained from going to get him. The battle footage is pretty good, looks like it was right out of "Saving Private Ryan", right down to similar looking actors for some of the other characters. If I didn't know better, I would almost think that the director of the video intended it to be seen as another part of that film... Way's over the top vocals actually fit pretty well with the battle scenes, the chorus of "Never coming home, never coming home," is pretty intense, but for me the most emotional intensity comes during a quiet part of the song. As the soldiers and the women part ways at the dance, the bassist looks back at his date while the vocal is:

"If I fall
If I fall (down)

At the end of the world
Or the last thing I see
You are
Never coming home
Never coming home

Never coming home
Never coming home

And all the things that you never ever told me
And all the smiles that are ever gonna haunt me

Never coming home
Never coming home "

The volume pumps back up after the "If I fall (down)" part and it's right into the battle. The appeal of this video lies in the very high production values and decent acting of the band. It really is a short film with a dominating soundtrack...

My Chemical Romance - New Music - More Music Videos

        "Helena" is just as slick a production as "The Ghost..." but is a different type of video. It's a subgenre of the regular performance video. Usually, performance videos are used to sell a band and little else. This video certainly does that, but it appears that they are using it to try to reinforce whatever it is that they are trying to get across. The whole thing revolves around a funeral and almost the entire video was shot in a Catholic church with what we assume is Helena in a coffin front and center. The band is playing at the funeral and Gerard Way (the lead singer) is both the lead man of the band and impresario for the funeral. He spends equal time fronting the band and behind the pulpit in front of the congregation, singing all the while. In addition to the band, there are dancers up by the coffin. When Way and the rest of the congregation close their eyes to pray, Helena awakens and dances. She falls back into the coffin just as they open their eyes. It's always creepy when a corpse open its eyes, but they added a little touch that amplifies the effect. Not only does she awaken with a start, inhaling as if she'd held her breath the whole time, but she opens her mouth just slightly and shows some teeth. It's reminiscent of how skull's teeth appear, and just for a split second we are reminded of death and life all at the same time. The dancer is some football coach's daughter, I can imagine that those images of his daughter are the things nightmares are made of. Seeing your daughter as a dancing corpse, unseen and unheard, is bad enough, but seeing her breath taken away as quickly as it came and then dropping into a coffin would cure me of sleep forever. After helena is back where she is supposed to be, the band carries out their duties as pall bearers in the rain out to the hearse. The video ends with them closing the door of the hearse and Way looking into the window for a moment before walking away.
     OK, pretty standard stuff for a music video, but this one is done quite a bit better than most. There are several things that I like quite a bit. The dancers are surprisingly effective, even if they don't make very much sense when using logic. We instinctively revert to the sense of reality that we use when watching musicals. The choreography is very well done, all of them seem to do something different, but they are definitely coordinated for overall effect. There are two instances in particular that stand out to me. During one part of the eulogy(?), they cut form a frontal view of the pulpit to a top view overlooking the coffin. The dancers are on the floor and on the cuts to the top view, they change into various grief induced positions. The other thing that caught my eye is small but it really captured my attention. As the pallbearers are walking out of the church, the dancers form columns on either side. They put up their umbrellas and point their fingers into the distance with a slight elevation and then almost immediately put them back down. Inexplicably, this means a lot to me. I have no idea why.
     For me, the most interesting thing about the video is how it deals with religion. Most bands are quite ready to spit at and mock organized religion whenever it can, but it seems as though this one does not. The video is quite obviously in a church, but there are no crosses, no religious symbols of any kind are seen. There are no religious professionals attending the service, it is a self serve church apparently. Gerard Way is both the lead singer and the leader of the service. At a certain point behind the pulpit, he raises his arms and the entire congregation stands up and sings/prays with him:

"What's the worst that I could say?
Things are better if I stay
So long and goodnight
So long and goodnight"

        Ambiguity at critical moments has always been one of my favorite techniques for making people think. On the one hand, it is quite unlike any prayer you'd expect in a situation like that. On the other hand a heartfelt sentiment at a time like that is beautiful in its own way. Some might read this as being deliberately provocative but I don't see it that way at all. I have been to many church services where I would have given anything to hear the priest/minister say "What's the worst that I could say?" It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if members of the band consider themselves sympathizers of religion. In both of these videos, it is seen as a cathartic and communal thing, even if it is ill defined. On board the boat approaching Normandy beach in "The Ghost...", one man is seen kissing a cross around his neck and another crosses himself. During "Helena" one person crosses themselves at the coffin and the bassist comes in swinging an incense burner. All of those actions point towards either Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy (but they cross themselves the Catholic way). I'll go out on a limb and say that there are probably some Catholic sympathizers in the band...
     It is amazing to see video productions that probably cost as much or more than the album they are used to promote. My Chemical Romance has certainly benefitted from the high productions values of these things and it adds to their story telling. I'll admit to not listening to anything else of theirs yet, but I'll probably check them out before too long.

Frank Black and the Pixies

This is actually one of the more popular pages on my website. Thought I'd put it here as well so that more people find my music blog. I originally wrote this in 2004 I believe and Frank has been active since then. Maybe I'll do a follow up post one of these days...





  I remember the first time I ever heard the Pixies. My friend John Bowie and I had arranged a sort of lend lease deal. This was early on in my sophomore year at Ithaca college. At the time, I was still ensconced in Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and the Doors. John had grown up listening to indy rock and was amazed at such things like a live Beach Boys album. I offered to “educate” him, and he made the same offer to me. Trouble was that I didn’t know any of the bands in his collection. Fugazi, The Ramones, X, BDP, and many others. Seeing my confusion, he picked out a few things for me. Along with “Candy Apple Red” by Huskur du and “Fear of a black planet” by Public Enemy, he lent me “Surfer Rosa” by the Pixies.

     I couldn’t make heads or tails out of it. Disjointed stopping and starting, no choruses, no solos to speak of, and lots of noise and screaming. Keep in mind that this was 1991 and I had come from a mostly rural area in Virginia. In my mind, AC/DC was pretty out there and Pink Floyd was the ultimate in musical artistic expression. “Surfer Rosa” was, in comparison, incomprehensible.

     So we gave each other our cds back, neither all that impressed with the other’s taste in music. I kept listening to my stuff until “Nevermind” by Nirvana came out. I don’t have to tell you what kind of impact that had on music, it had a dramatic one on me. It was a new version of the Sex Pistols, making all that had come before them pointless. Nirvana was the band that completely shifted my approach to rock and roll.

     When asked what he thought of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, Kurt Cobain said that it sounded like a pretty good Pixies rip off. It’s no surprise that I gave the Pixies another listen. “Surfer Rosa” eventually grew on me, becoming my favorite Pixies album. I’ll go a step further and say that it’s one of the best albums I’ve ever heard. Yes, I’d put it up there with “Pet Sounds”, “Help”, Trinity Sessions” and others. At their best, the songs on "Surfer Rosa" have a kind of Bauhaus (and no, I'm not referring to the band) Zen feeling to them. It is wild and disjointed but very tight, there doesn't seem to be a random note on the whole thing. I find most of the rest of the Pixies output to be interesting, but not something that is rewarding to listen to repeatedly. This may sound like sacrilege to the hordes that swear that “Dolittle” was their best album, but I actually think that it was their worst.

     How important were the Pixies? 8 years after they broke up, most of the bands on the radio were trying to sound like them. They were so far ahead of the curve that their album sales didn’t take off until several years after they had broken up.

     When they broke up, Kim Deal’s band The Breeders was the first with a hit on the radio. I distinctly remember telling someone that I was glad that Kim got the talent in the divorce. In hindsight, I may have been blinded by my obsession of female bass players. Kim Deal, Kim Gordon, Tina Weymouth, and a local one in Ithaca named Darelynn were on my brain. Darelynn was an adorable, petite woman that cranked out the nastiest bass grooves in a dance band called Flashlight (presumably named after the Parliament song). In any event, I was eagerly awaiting the release of anything by Kim Deal, and when “Last Splash” came out, I bought it. “Last Splash” can best be described as smart, if not smart alecy. There are some catchy tunes on there, made palatable by the noise experiments done by the Pixies previously. The album hasn’t aged well however. It sounds like something that was cooked up for the “alternative” market but didn’t have the structure or the song writing that the Pixies were able to consistently put on their albums.

     Frank Black’s first big release after the Pixies was a bit of a disappointment. It became clear that he was the architect behind the sound of the Pixies and he also was the songwriter. The album had a few high points. “Los Angeles” is a real rocker and is a great example of what was possible in the mid 90’s in the rock and roll world. “Hang on to your Ego” really intrigued me. It was a cover of the Beach Boys song “There Must be an Answer” but he substituted “Hang Onto Your Ego” into the chorus instead of the original “There Must be an Answer”. I wondered about that for years until I found out that Hold Onto Your Ego was the original version and Brian Wilson changed the chorus at the last minute for the release of “Pet Sounds”. That was pretty cool in my book....

     The general feel of Frank Black's eponymously titled first album was one of tying too hard. You could almost imagine the producer asking for more of “That Pixies sound”. I, and many others saw a great future for Kim and her band and little from Frank Black.

     As it turned out, both have faded into obscurity, neither coming close to radio play or even a major label. Frank Black has kept recording though, and I have just recently stumbled onto these more recent works. I downloaded a handful of them and loaded them into my cd changer to see what they were like. I have listened to these albums more over the last month and change than I have of the Breeder’s last album in the 8 or so ears it has been out.

     The new albums can be divided into two groups. The first group contains the albums that are just Frank Black. That includes the album “Frank Black” and “Frank Black Francis”. The other group are by Frank Black and the Catholics.

     My original thoughts about “Frank Black” still hold, not very satisfying but clever. “Frank Black Francis” is really only of interest to die hard Pixies fans. The first half of the album is demo versions of various Pixies’ songs. It’s an exercise in musical archeology to hear these songs done in such a raw and sparse way. If I understand things correctly, he recorded these the day before he was going into the studio for what became “Come on Pilgrim”. It’s interesting to hear him talking about “The bass player’s part” and not mentioning Kim by name. Makes you wonder how tight they were. The second half of the album consists of rerecording of various Pixies songs. They are, without exception, dreadful. Everything that made the Pixies versions interesting was stripped out and was replaced with a lethargic, rather lame version. Frank Black says that he was afraid that only supplying demos of older songs wasn’t enough of a reason to buy the album, it turns out that the new versions are a good reason not to buy the album.

     Frank’s new band, the Catholics, have a very different feel. Some of that is due to the way they are recorded. “Pistolero”, “Black Letter Days”, and “ Frank Black and the Catholics” were all recorded live to two track. In other words, what was recorded was a live performance straight to stereo. Normally, a band will go into a studio and lay down various tracks one a time and then have them combined during mixing. This gives you quite a bit more control over the finial product,. Recording live to stereo is a hassle because you have to nail the performance, you can’t really go back and rerecord just the drums, or an off key vocal. In addition, you can’t tweak the sound or dynamics after the fact, you have to do the mixing of the instruments and vocals right when they are being recorded.

     Making albums like this is a bit of a throwback, but in a good way I think. The immediacy and honesty of the songs remind me a lot of the old time rockers like Buddy Holly, Bill Haley, Jerry Lee Lewis, etc. Don’t get me wrong, the style of the music is completely different from these guys, but the “feel” is similar. There is the occasional missed note in the vocals, and some of the guitar solos are a bit loose but this just adds character to the recordings. These little blips certainly don't detract from the over all feel.
     “Black Letter Days”, aside from the macabre first and last song, is a great album. Frank really flexes his storytelling muscles and is the most conventional of all of his albums. It really reminds me of Matthew Sweet's "Girlfriend" album, lot's of decent songs and the occasional stand out. If you’ve never listened to any of this stuff before, I’d highly recommend this album. If you’re a Pixies freak, you’ll like “Pistolero”. It is different from his Pixies days, but there is definitely an echo of his past in these songs. On both albums, expect tight, energetic performances. Frank, it’s great to have you back!

Technorati Tags:
pixies, frank black, kim deal, breeders

Saddest... thing... ever...

I caught a documentary on VH1 about metal. It was done pretty well and it filled in some gaps I had about the development of it. I'm not a metal fn really, but I'm curious about all types of music, where they come from, their influences, etc. Anyway, they were talking about metal's resurgence in Britan in the early 80's and they interviewed some people at a local club that played metal.

Keep in mind that there was no band there, just a DJ, and he played metal exclusively. And of course it was all guys.... Then they showed what some of the guys were doing to kick up the metal experience (without a band) up a notch. They started bringing in cardboard guitars to add to the air guitar experience. Seeing these guys rocking out on cardboard guitars in a club filled with other guys is just... sad. You can see what I'm talking about in this video at around the 2:56 mark and at the end. The rest of it is amazing as well...



This reminds me a bit of the current craze with "guitar hero" and "rockband" games. Guys spent a lot of time perfecting their air guitar performance on the cardboard guitars and God only knows how much time is spent on those games. Why not pick up an actual guitar? The guy in the video admits that it would take him 5 years or so to become competent. Yeah, that's some time, but then you could actually play music instead of waiting for someone to make it for you. The thing that seems to escape most people's notice is that even if you never get all that good at it, your appreciation of music will increase incredibly. Learning an instrument really is the best way to learn about music in general.

So put down the cardboard boys! Chicks dig actual guitarists, not fake ones...