Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Crabb Bits: Music Collecting, RSD, Neil Young Review, etc.

Personal To Bob Lefsetz

It's not for me to say whatever you think that the CD or the album format is dead.  You basically made up your mind anyway judging by the last blog you put down.  As a dedicated reading I tend to agree with some of your blogs but not this one.

Maybe the album is history in your book, in your world but in my world it isn't.  I haven't given up on the album and for the past 30 plus years I continue to review them as best as I can.  The digipak will be the death of it all if I continue to get cardboard cuts trying to open the fucking thing or having the damn CD fall out of the digipak on the floor and getting scratched up by shitty workmanship.  Not everybody has high speed net Bob.  Dialup doesn't allow me to download those singles you talk about, and the last couple artists you recommended to us really sucked.  So basically I take your advice with a grain of salt and an eye in the used cd section at HP Books or Secondspin.com.  If you like singles so much bring back the fucking 45 then.

Record Store Day is something that the record stores around here get to share with us record and cd collectors.  It's not sanctioned by the major labels, the label don't give two shits for us anyway.  Neither do narrow minded ex record A and R men either.  In the forthcoming future, the net will start charging us for use of their site and products.  At some point, I won't be around in the future to celebrate the fruits of the internet and net radio.  It's all irrelevant anyway to the music collector who wants the physical product and not have to rely on downloading and losing everything when your computer crashes.  The Telecom act of 1996 killed everything off anyway, and gave us centralized radio and crap ass pop tarts and shitty rappers.  Live in the future and celebrate it if you must Mr Lefsetz but for us, as long as they make albums that we can hold in our hand, I'll still look forward to New Release Tuesday at the reminding music stores we have around here.  If this is the future you're triumphing, then I'll be happy to piss off and live in the past and be forgotten, just like the hundreds of people who still go to HP Books and look for CDs.  Not everybody spends their fucking waking hours downloading music off the net.

But don't piss on us music collectors who go to the local record store on Record Store Day and want to celebrate of being in a music store that's still open.  The music collector pretty much thinks you're obsolete with your on the sidelines bashing cds and records.  And you can piss off on that.

I live for the album fucker.

Neil Young-Fork In The Road (Reprise)

Neil's infoalbum of his car creation with 10 songs that mostly are rock and roll and for the road and is Neil's most consistent album of this decade although he kinda threw it together.  I think it works better than his Living With War album of three years ago which could have been better.  His high whine is a bit hard to take on lead off When World's Collide, but Johnny Magic does recall the hard rock of Re Act Or or Mirror Ball.  Heard a lotta fans complain that the songs were subpar but I think they were pissed off of the fact that Neil has delayed his long awaited Archives (to June 3 supposedly, but don't be surprised if it gets knocked back).  It won't make people forget Rust Never Sleeps or even Chrome Dreams 2, but take it for what's it worth and listen to it while you're out on a drive.  But you may want to make yourself a copy for here's yet another album in a shitty digipak that is docked two notches simply of the fact that I couldn't get the mutherfucking thing out of the package while driving and getting a paper cut in the process.

Grade B
Hits-Johnny Magic, Light A Candle, Fuel Line

April 9, 1994 A Letter To The Seattle PI on Kurt Corbain

Dear Editor:

It’s one thing to be the victim of an unintentionally stupid act, as were Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix. Or the victim of a deranged wacko, as was John Lennon. Or the victim of a bona fide accident, like Ritchie Valens, Otis Redding, Harry Chapin or Stevie Ray Vaughn.

It’s quite another thing to feel so depressed and devalued as a human being that you choose to die by your own hand.

Not long ago I attended a memorial for Robert E. Lee Hardwick, a popular Seattle radio personality, who one day parked his car on a lonely mountain road, wrote a note, and shot himself. Hardwick was a much loved, successful, creative genius, on the airwaves and off. Nobody could understand why he would take himself out. Cobain’s action was perhaps more predictable, but no less tragic. Twenty-seven-year-old people should not be killing themselves.

Much will be written and said by so-called experts as to why Cobain did what he did. Radio stations and MTV will play Nirvana til it comes out your pores. But nothing will bring him back. Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. You can’t change your mind later.

To those of you whose lives were guided by Cobain’s creativity, I extend my sincerest sympathies. As Tina Turner once put it so well, we didn't need another hero. Not this way.

Take care of yourselves and your friends. Don’t ever forget how much you love and need each other.