Yay, that time again.
That time to really hand out the Turkey Turds of the year and there's no shortage of them. Take a look at the blubbering idiot in the White House. The King Turkey of them all.
With that out of the way, I'm amazed of the dwindling of music, and good music mind you. it's too EZ to tell you of the usual suspects, which is, artists continuing to fuck us over with shitty digipacks, major labels bankrupt for ideas and not producing future rock and rollers continuing to mine the archives for 50th anniversary issues of albums. And basically I'm sure Beatles fans will fork over the big bucks for the Complete White Album Sessions or More Blood More Tracks that captures everything Bob Dylan did for the 1974 Blood On The Track album but Sony Music opted not to reissued the first edition of Blood On The Track before Bob decided to redo five songs up in Minneapolis. The single edition of More Blood, More Tracks was worth the 15 dollars that Co Op Moline had it. But I am not interested in buying overpriced coffee table albums just to play once and file away forever. Come 2019, I might decide to get married and need to do a rummage sale to clear space. Hopefully somebody will talk sense into my special somebody and convince her that being single and free is the way to go. You really don't want to spend the rest of your life 24/7 with a bargain hunting record hoarder.
In terms of theory, new music has been crappy and unremarkable. The guy at Co Op was raving about The Struts and calling them the next big rock band, but from I heard, they're second rate Buckcherry. The Greta Van Fleet album debut got lambasted and raked over the coals by Pitchfork and they might have been right. The band was a lie, they weren't influenced by Aerosmith as Rolling Stone claimed but by Led Zeppelin. They do have the sound down but the inspiration is not there. Anthem Of The Peaceful Army (Lava/Universal) starts out all wrong with Age Of Man and never quite recovers. There are some promising moments but hey, the lead singer is 22, the drummer and bass player are 19 and they'll have better days and albums ahead once they develop their own sound and leave the Zep behind. But then again they could morph into Kingdom Come as well. With that Anthem Of The Peaceful Army gets a gobble gobble gobble
Mark Knopfler. The voice and sound of Dire Straits has continued to slowly devolve into middle of the road laid back muzak and his latest Down The Road Whenever (Virgin/Blue Note) he continues to make songs that are mini stories, alas, the music is boring. He was never King Kickass with the Straits but at least they did have a uptempo to counter the slow and bore. The problem is the length of these songs, 13 totaling 71 minutes, and if you're a bigger fan you're free to try the deluxe digipack edition with 2 more songs that balloon up to 78 minutes. At least he doesn't go full Celtic and left the penny whistle at home. This record is better suited for late night listening as you dose off into sleep. I damn near dozed off going home trying to listen to this in the car stereo.
It's easy to slam to so called country rappers and artists but let's face it folks, old country isn't coming back. It has mutated into watered down southern rock and half baked rap and Kane Brown Experiment (RCA) shows Brown taking over for Florida Georgia Line as the new Hick Hop artist. I really don't know what brings these autotuned doughnut holes to think they're country. The video Weekend is dumb autotuned red neck fun at the Wally World. The rest of the album is that bad. Yes it sucks.
And Five Finger Death Punch, And Justice For None. No wonder people don't listen to new rock anymore.
And The Pistol Annies are back with a new album as well, the most anticipated turned out to be a depressing album Gospel Interstate (RCA). Times have changed, Two divorces, two kids and one the way and sad songs about breakups and cheating boyfriends and husbands. It seems to be more in tuned with Miranda Lambert's last album, which also disappointed me and finding a second cheap copy confirmed my initial feelings that a sad Miranda is less fun than a sassy Miranda being a Crazy Ex Girlfriend. I may take another listen to Gospel Interstate, but I don't think it's the A album that Robert Christgau gave it. Overgraded to say the very least.
So far the Turkey's of the year fall go to sports as well. The 2018 Chicago Cubs and Baltimore Orioles who were tied for most 1 run or less games. One team lost a record 115 games, the other blew the division title and wild card game and had the second best NL record. It didn't help the Cubs signing Yu Darvish and Tyler Chatwood, to which one had a bad shoulder and the other was too busy walking opposing batters. Darvish gets a pass for this season but next season fans will be screaming for his head if he doesn't earn that big contract that he got.
The College Football gobble gobble gobble goes to Iowa who, with a cupcake schedule couldn't beat a decent big ten team and watched Northwestern win the West title in Iowa City, to which fans had to see Pat Fitzgerald, so full of himself, rub the win in the Hawkeyes fans' faces. Iowa did come back to blow out Illinois 63-0 to which the Fighting Illini will show Lovie Smith out the door after this season. We'll see if Iowa can beat Nebraska to savage a season full of promises but once again thanks to Nathan Stanley's dumb fuck play calling and interceptions all Iowa can hope for is a pre Christmas bowl game, but Hawkeye fans have moved on to Basketball to which Iowa beat Oregon and U Conn and won the Big Apple tournament last week. (Iowa outlasted Nebraska 31-28 on a last second FG, but they did their damnest to give Nebraska the game, missing a FG and then opting to take a FG away by fucking up a fourth and goal on the 3 and Nebraska went 97 yards for a TD. Iowa has beaten the Mighty Corn 4 straight times, but I doubt there'll be a fifth).
This just in. Michigan gets Gobble Gobble Gobbled for the 13th time in 14 games as Ohio State lambasted them 62-39, the most points ever scored. And Michigan's defense was number 1. Not anymore. The love affair between Jim Harbaugh and the state of Michigan is now officially over. He has yet to beat them in four games. The hard core will screaming for his head now.
But the big Screw You Gobble Gobble Gobble goes to Best Buy for not selling CDs anymore and Wal Mart and Target continuing to shrink their inventory to plain Greatest Hits and Top five best sellers. In fact, Wally World has now one small aisle of the CD section. If you want the latest Bottlerockets or Rhett Miller, you're better off to go to a CD record store (Zia's Records, Mad City Music X, Moondog Music, Co Op Moline) and get it there instead of Best Buy. In fact, I haven't step foot in Best Buy since they quit selling CDs. I have better luck finding new releases at Books A Million than Target/Wally World. The Vinyl Revival is still going although people are beginning to tire of that and I've noticed more records coming into the used stores and Half Price Books. I think it's a crock of shit to buy a album for 25 or 30 dollars when 30 years ago you could get the same album as a nice price 5.99 special. Don't look for me to pony up big bucks for Record Store Day Specials this Black Friday. I wish I could have kept Devo Are We Not Men but paying 30 bucks for a RSD release, nah, I pass. Nor do I desire Sheryl Crow's Tuesday Night Music Club on LP for 25 dollars. You can find the CD for 2 dollars or less without ease.
So now that we are all thoroughly depressed of the Turkey Turds of the Year, here' hoping that your Thanksgiving will be peaceful and you'll be spared of family feuds. Just put on Alice Restaurant Massacre by Arlo Guthrie and you'll feel better.
Gobble Gobble Gobble.
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