Top Ten Of The Week-Lulu Owes You Nothing

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/nov/01/pete-townshend-john-peel-lecture

Pete Townsend's John Peel Lecture. It's a bit wordy though.

So it's November.  Hard to figure where the time went.  Some thoughts before the usual.

Haven't heard the Lou Reed Lulu album with Metallica which fans of the latter would like Lou's head on a platter. To which I say Metallica owes you nothing and neither does Lou Reed.  You pretty much have to accept them on their own terms or not at all.  Basically you can't go back to Master Of Puppets or in Lou's case Rock And Roll Animal.  I am probably in the minority on this but I do like Load and to some extent the black album.  Lou on the other hand can be too prickly for the casual fan to care about.  But even on his most accessible albums he has been known to throw a curve (Like A Possum, his 19 minute tribute to Metal Machine Music on the 2000 Ecstasy album, Metal Machine Music itself) but then again Lou Reed doesn't conform to anybody. 

Gotta email from Dennis Lancaster saying 9 months after open heart surgery that he celebrated by riding his bike around ASU in Tempe and hiked to the top of Hayden Butte (the mountain with an A on the top of it). Ain't modern medicine wonderful?

Los Compandes Mexican Restaurant:  I usually eat there once a week but I haven't seen Hayley up there anymore.  I think she quit one time and they begged her to come back but now I think she's gone again.  She was mentioning that she was going to move to Colorado soon after graduating from Kirkwood Community College, maybe she did finally leave.  Anyway, we'll miss ya.

Silly Love Songs is fucking annoying.  Especially when your at the buffet and the POS Cumulus Station KDAT plays the 9 Minute version.  I think it's 6 minutes but it feels like going on for  nine minutes or 90 minutes.  I didn't much care for it when it came out in 1976.

Strange how Best Buy didn't have the Smile Sessions 2 CD set from the Beach Boys but they did have the big box of Complete Smile Sessions for 140 dollars.  I think I'm more inclined to hear the single CD version of that album but in the end may just say the hell with it and stick with the 2004 Brian Wilson Nonesuch Smile album instead.  Wish EMI USA would quit fucking around and just give us the single version of Smile Sessions instead of the 2 CD deluxe edition.  If you want the single CD you'll have to get it as an import.

There might be another Madison trip before the snows hit.  Question is when.

Top Ten Of The Week:

1.  The Monster Mash-Bobby "Boris" Pickett 1962   Charted three times in the history of rock music although I know it placed at number 1 in 1973 on the KCRG Super 30.  Sure it's schlock but everytime I hear this tune it does put a smile on my face.  Pretty much went around the workplace last night singing like ole Boris Pickett in that bad Karoff imitation.  Used to be you can get a autograph copy of said song but after April of 2007 you couldn't.  Pickett died on April 25, 2007 but wouldn't it be spooky if it was actually autographed?  Boooooooooooooooooo.  http://www.themonstermash.com/mmdex.html

2.  I Predict-Sparks 1982  These guys were erratic as hell and predate Queen in terms of sheer weirdness.  I had vivid memories of them bouncing around the stage on American Bandstand as they did No More Mr Nice Guys a track of their first album but they have been around for years with stop offs on various labels (Bearsville, Island, Columbia, Elektra, Curb) before beginning what may have been their most successful time at Atlantic.  I had the album Angst In My Pants (bought it as a 1.66 cutout at Target) but didn't like it much outside of this song and the followup Eaten By The Monster Of Love.  They do have one thing in common with Queen and that they had Mack as producer.   In the long run, Queen made more consistent albums.  http://www.mtv.com/videos/sparks/58851/i-predict.jhtml

3.  I'm Gonna Change The World-The Animals 1965   I know in the time of putting up top tens that I tend to forgot to add a lot of the music that I grew up with in the 60s.  It's hard trying to compile 7 decades of rock and roll and trying to get each and every decade.  In fact, I think the majority are around 1980 or 1990.  Not that it was supposed to be that way, it's just that happened that way.  Back in the 60s, The Animals were my favorite band, more so than the Beatles but band implosions robbed The Animals of what they could have been.  Eric Burdon wrote this and this was the B side to It's My Life, another song of purpose.

4.  Same Old You-Miranda Lambert 2011  She's been a busy girl lately.  Just two months ago she released her side band project The Pistol Annie's Hell On Heels, which finally came out on CD and then today issued her new album Four The Record which might be her slightest album to date but that's a good thing and it's still a good album that you should buy.  For a country record there's not a single fiddle about and the songs are bit more alt country than actual.  But this little number she's here to remind you that she can do a mean old honky tonk as well.  Hubby Blake Shelton does sing backing vocals though out the album.

5.  Just Like Strange Rain-Elton John 1969  My good friend Tad points out that radio overplays his hits (Bennie And The Jets, Crocodile Rock, Philadelphia Freedom) to the point that I just fastforwarded them on the CDs that I do have and tend to go more toward the obscure and less played.  I have heard his covers album (16 Legendary Covers from 1969-1970 on Akarma although another version was on a different label). And those covers although they were covers, he was beginning to incorporate them or the style on his first album.  Before he did signed up with Uni, he made some failed 45s for Congress but I think this song was only availble on Phillips as a import.  As EJ got famous, DJM reissued some of his forgotten singles on a 8 track only comp called Lady Samantha, which did see CD release in the 90s.  Polydor issued them as Rare Masters and then later Island/Rocket reissued the EJ albums with B side bonus cuts.  Just Like Strange Rain found a new home on the Empty Sky reissue.  I still enjoy Lady Samantha as is.

6.  Landed-Ben Folds 2005  This version does Elton John well although Ben will be the first to tell you that it isn't a Elton John song.  Strings sound like Paul Buckmaster arranged them although it doesn't say it in the liner notes.  Ben owes more to Joe Jackson than Elton I think but opinions will vary.

7..  Dirty Bird-Brant Bjork 2010  As much as I was a fan of the first Radio Moscow album, the last one and the new one exercises so much hippy dippy that I dismissed both of them of overdoing it.  Not that Parker Griggs is bad, he's actually very good at recreating that 60's dirty blues psychedelia that recalls Blue Cheer being fronted by Frank Marino.  Brant Bjork on the other hand has more of a mellower vibe that owes more to Robin Trower or Mountain.  Originally the drummer for Kyuss, Brant left to join up Desert stoners Fu Manchu and then started a solo career that only the hardcore Kyuss or Fu Manchu fan would know about.  Even I never know about this till I found his latest album Gods & Goodesses in the dollar bins at Half Priced Books.  Since it came out in April of 2010 it won't make my ten best of the year but I have been playing this more often than most of the new stuff.  Since the release of this album, Bjork has gone back playing drums for Kyuss Lives which is Kyuss without guitar extraordinare Josh Homme who's not giving up his other job, being leader of Queens Of The Stone Age.  The guys in Kyuss Lives wish someday Homme will return then they can be Kyuss all over again.  Never say never, after all The Stone Roses did reform......

8.  Sad But True-Metallica 1991   Metallica owes you nothing folks.  Think I told you that already.

9.  I Am The World-The Elms 2006  Former Christian Rockers make a play into the rock and roll world but ended up signing with Universal South and marketed them as a country band or something to that effect, make one album them and then retreated back to the minors for one more album and then calling it a day.

10.  How Do I End This-The Rascals UK 2008  Not to be confused with The Rascals of People Gotta Be Free but rather a minor UK band that made one album for Deltasonic.  Miles Kane played in a band that featured Arctic Monkeys Alex Turner (The Last Shadow Puppets) to which I never heard anything from.  This is one of those bargain bin cds that captured my fancy and was 2 bucks (The HP Books 2 dollar bins seem to have some oddities that attract me).  Kind of a Franz Ferdinand/Oasis/Julian Cope vibe to it.


Lou Reed & Metallica-Lulu (WB)

Give Uncle Lou credit for taking a bold step on this daring and ambitious but failed experiment of metal machine music and Metallica joining on in the fun and it's worth a listen before trading it in or move it down the line.  This is Lou's album more than Metallica which the average Metallica fan will not comprehend.  But for the average Lou Reed fan even sitting though the whole 2 CD 89 minute excursion can be overwhelming.  When Reed goes over 15 minutes on anything he tends to tries people's patience. And even though Frustration does rock hard, it takes a good 2 and half minutes before Lou decides to bring the boys in.  And the boys do go home in the middle of Junior Dad to which the last 8 minutes or so relies on cello masquerating as feedback, starts up, fades off and starts up again.  Which seems to be the pattern of most songs on this album.  While Lou sings in a persona of an aging and abused woman looking through back her life it seems to be  clash of ideas,especially when Lou is shouting lines though a Metallica speed metal tune.  It does give an impression of a grumpy old man trying to do speed metal but then again Lou Reed like Metallica doesn't owe you a thing or a reprise of Transformer or them doing Masters Of Puppets.  Yep, Lulu is a bit more melodic than Metal Machine Music, that 4 sided anti major label FU Reed gave to his label.   Lulu, is not as bad as the Metallica fan would like you to think it is, you have to credit Metallica for at least thinking outside of the heavy metal box.  The problem is that songs overwhelm you and dismisses you if you don't or can't get into the songs.  Hell Lou's been fucking with the world since Metal Machine Music (remember the 18 and half minute Like A Possum that I still can't listen to off Ecstasy) and fine if you don't like it and FU if you do.  But even with the ending of Junior Dad,  it makes me wonder if the long cello notes makes me wonder if Lou and company did intend this to be a one listen and done effort.  I listened to it, now it's on the next album.

Grade C+
Picks:  Brandenburg Gate, Frustration.

Counterpoint:  http://seanoandjefe.blogspot.com/2011/11/for-my-600th-post-short-hal-assed.html