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.
