Friday Music Day

FMD: New music vs Nostalgia

34 Comments

So while sitting at home barely working remotely and just whiling away my time til I shake la grippe, I've been scanning some music publications' "Best of 2014" lists. (Scheduling note: have yours prepared for the WGOM on Friday January 2, 2015.) In the middle of that, I've been sidetracked by Stereogum's "20th anniversary" series (...of albums that came out when I was in high school). Essays about Green Day and Beck and Soundgarden and Pearl Jam and Nine Inch Nails and the Offspring. It's weird, man. What am I doing? Why am I letting this give me insomnia after I've been aching to go to bed all day? Is there an essay for Alice In Chains' Dirt? Yes! (The Singles Soundtrack, too!) Ministry's Psalm 69? No. And Filth Pig sure doesn't deserve one. But Oh man, there are essays for Tool and Judgement Night and Sepultura and Björk and...

Wait! I should print these...

34 thoughts on “FMD: New music vs Nostalgia”

  1. * Daylight Fading - Counting Crows - Recovering the Satellites
    * Pared Back to the Minimal - The Caretaker - An Empty Bliss Beyond This World
    * Fix - Static-X - Wisconsin Death Trip
    * Breakfast at J&M - Bang on a Can All-Stars - Big Beautiful Dark and Scary
    * Territorial Pissings - Nirvana - Live at Reading
    * Broken Eyes - Two Gallants - The Bloom and the Blight
    * Far Away - Supergrass - (self-titled)
    * Deep Politics - Grails - Deep Politics
    * Over - Raudive - Chamber Music
    * Big Man with a Gun - Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral

    1. Big Man with a Gun - Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral
      Huh, I just read an essay about this album yesterday...

  2. I'll be singing this in a duet with our choir director tonight at the dessert concert:
    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-I2KeRtvJ-A
    although I grew up with Glen Campbell's version,

    I love harmonizing on songs, but I'm singing lead on this one, and I'm not comfortable in front of large groups, so this will be a good exercise for me. #FingersCrossed

  3. 1. Meet Frankenstein -- Redd Kross -- Researching the Blues
    2. Radio -- Teenage Fanclub -- Thirteen
    3. White Shell Road -- Golden Smog -- Weird Tales
    4. Good Advices -- R.E.M. -- Fables Of The Reconstruction
    5. Redemption Song -- Bob Marley & The Wailers -- Legend
    6. Hit -- Guided By Voices -- Alien Lanes
    7. The Bone Church -- Guided By Voices -- Cool Planet
    8. Fault Line -- Black Rebel Motorcycle Club -- Howl
    9. Whiskey Bottle (live) -- Uncle Tupelo -- No Depression
    10. Corduroy -- The Wedding Present -- Seamonsters

    B1. What A Day -- The Ike Reilly Assassination -- Junkie Faithful
    B2. Smallpox Champion -- Fugazi -- In On The Kill Taker

    Notes
    2. Thirteen is a great album that was unfairly panned when it came out.
    6. 23 seconds
    7. Motivational Jumpsuit is getting more love in 2014 best of lists, but I thought Cool Planet was pretty decent.

  4. No birds today, it's so much easier just to work off my music playlist when at home.

    1. Arvo Pärt “Magnificat” Da Pacem
    2. Oneohtrix Point Never “Replica” Replica
    3. Meat Puppets “Strings On Your Heart” Monsters
    4. Lydia Loveless “Always Lose” The Only Man
    5. Julianna Barwick “Labyrinthine” Nepenthe
    6. Black Dice “Buddy”* Repo
    7. Grimes “Genesis” Visions
    8. Blondes “Pleasure (Robert Miles Remix)” Blondes
    9. Nine Inch Nails “The Downward Spiral” The Downward Spiral*
    T. Autechre “Teartear” Amber

    *Notes:
    6. I don't recognize this song title. Which is weird because I probably recognize all of the other Black Dice song titles.
    9. Huh, I just read an essay about this album yesterday...

    1. Re: 6. 34 seconds, Bits of shouting and stuff, sounds like clips from westerns maybe, like parts of the intro to Ministry's "TV II" or something else I can't put my finger on.

  5. Solid list today.

    01. Overkill - "F.U.C.T.", From the Underground and Below
    02. Conorach - "Migrator", Through the Ages
    03. Kreator - "Storming with Menace", Terrible Certainty
    04. Arch Enemy - "Lament of a Mortal Soul", Wages of Sin
    05. Solitude Aeturnus - "The 8th Day: Mourning", Through the Darkest Hour
    06. Carcass - "Embodiment", Buried Dreams
    07. Brainstorm - "Rising", Soul Temptation
    08. Candlemass - "Into the Unfathomed Tower", Tales of Creation
    09. Decapitated - "Eternity Too Short", Nihility
    10. Dream Theater - "The Mirror", Awake


  6. My video pick of the week is forgotten power-pop titans Blue Ash. From the repository.

    Hailing from Ohio just like the Raspberries, Blue Ash are the great forgotten power pop band of the early '70s. Actually, "forgotten" may be too strong a word, for any power pop fan worth their salt knows of Blue Ash even if they've never to score either of their two LPs, whether in their original pressing or traded on cassette or CD-R. They were known as one of the key early power pop bands, standing alongside the Raspberries and Badfinger in how they drew equally from the Beatles and the Who. If anything, Blue Ash leaned on that Who influence harder than the Raspberries, rocking a vigor rarely heard in power pop and also opening themselves up to the lyrical vistas of Bob Dylan by covering the rarity "Dusty Old Fairgrounds," a move rarely made by power poppers. All this indicates that Blue Ash were a rock band first and foremost, placing the sheer rush of sound over hooks, something that a lot of their progeny never did. That's what gives their debut No More No Less -- finally reissued by Collectors Choice in 2008, a full 35 years after its release -- such a punch: they are one of the few groups that truly put some power in their pop. This much is evident by the raucous album-opener "Abracadabra (Have You Seen Her)," a song with all the melodic rush of "Go All the Way" but leaner and meaner.

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=So_JQ5FPRac

      1. But it works on so many levels!
        It's colored like a Christmas sweater.
        It's designed like a Cosby sweater.
        It's actually an aTCQ sweater.

        If it was $75-$68 dollars less, I might actually order one.

            1. I hated "Cosby" sweaters long before the man was accused of being a serial sex offender. I'll stick with my black turtlenecks, thanks.

  8. Oh yeah, if you follow me on teh Twitter I was at Dooomtree Blowout last night with The Boy. It was a blast. Everyone should go sometime.

    Also Bobby Bare Jr at Turf Club January 8th. Don't know what he's like performing, but he's recorded some decent stuff. Did a lot of opening for GBV these past couple of years so he's got that going for him as well.

    1. ...I was at Dooomtree Blowout last night [...] Everyone should go sometime.

      Heh. This is the last one of those that they're throwing, isn't it? I thought they were done after this year.

      I did go three straight years with a friend of mine. Those blowouts had a great energy to them. I don't remember which one it was, but one of them was the first concert that a couple of them played instate in several months, and the level of excitement they had to be performing in front of a home crowd was palpable.

      I was hoping to get to this one, but it just wasn't going to happen.

    2. I saw BBJr at the Cedar five years ago, at the Bloodshot Beer-B-Q.
      He was alternatingly great and sloppy mess. And not a tragic, alcoholic mess. More an unfocused, "I should get my shit together", "Crap, I drank too much before my set and now I'm just sloppy", way.
      Not infuriating, just when you're playing to a room of mostly people sticking around to see the Bottle Rockets and Waco Brothers, he could have made more new fans and sold more records. Lots of dead time between songs trying to get things squared away with the band. I got a weird vibe from him. Maybe it was a bad day (not that it showed when he was actually singing). I've watched several live videos on Youtube and they're pretty scattershot. Still, I was curious to hear more of his music following that show and downloaded all the free stuff from Bloodshot (and had bought a compilation which had his cover of Jane's Addiction's "Ocean Sized").

      I've bought most of his albums, (some new), but I haven't gone to another show. None of the albums really feels great to me from start to finish, but I haven't listened that closely to figure out why.
      The guy wrote "Flat-Chested Girl From Maynardville" (seriously, it's great, see below), and "Let's Rock'n'Roll" and "Visit Me in Music City" and "You Blew Me Off"*. Great, great songs, balancing self-depricating humor with genuine emotion. Maybe the problem is when he goes too far to one side or the other. I could probably burn you more than an 80-minute CD's worth of great stuff he's done that would make you wonder how he's never gotten bigger** and another with the stuff that I always skip over.

      httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uViEa4qsTiI
      (I have no idea why that visual)

      I'll probably see him in concert some time again.

      * SelectShow
      ** SelectShow
      *** SelectShow
      1. Better response to ** SelectShow

      2. The new album is pretty decent but more rock than previous albums. I love 2004's From the End of your Leash. Should be considered an alt-country classic. It has a song that is probably good advice regarding BB Jr: Don't Follow Me (I'm Lost).

        Definitely some of the other stuff is hit and miss.

        1. I believe that song title is also the title of the documentary film about him.
          Yeah, that's probably his best album, but it doesn't have any of his 10 or so best songs (as ranked by AMR).

  9. Another 70's act that largely flew under the radar (but thrilled a teenaged 6) getting some love on Deadspin. I think one of the reasons the whole Seattle grunge thing left me so underwhelmed was that bands like UFO did that whole sound about a hundred times better two decades earlier.

    "UFO came around at an important time in my life," says Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready, an admitted fanatic who moonlights in a UFO cover band, Flight to Mars. (Hell, the guy used to trade Michael Schenker photos with fellow Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard.) "I was 12 years old, and rock 'n' roll was this giant, exciting mystery to me. I had just started playing guitar, so Schenker was a beacon of light, and I aspired to be like him."


    1. I should note that I had tickets to this show when I was a junior in HS, but a dust up with my parents

      'Spoiler' SelectShow

      kept me from attending. My mates that went informed me that I missed a helluva show. Note that opening act, cheaptoy. (And look at those ticket prices.)

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