Funeral to Finish

  Ok I guess.  I mean, if you like Tom Waits I'm sure you like this album.  It's got him doing what he does, that sort of croaky lounge singer meets jazz cabaret thing.  Of course it's all about the downtrodden and miserable: Well, he took a hundred dollars off a Slaughterhouse Joe Bought a brand new Michigan twenty gauge He got all liquored up on that roadhouse corn Blew a hole in the hood of a yellow Corvette A hole in the hood of a yellow Corvette He bought a second hand Nova from a Cuban Chinese And dyed his hair in the bathroom of a Texaco With a pawnshop radio quarter past four He left Waukegan at the slammin' of the door Left Waukegan at the slammin' of the door Jesus, Tom Waits, don't you know any happy people?  How about a "Ballad of the Ice Cream Man" or something a little lighter?  This album is actually kind of a slog.  It feels longer than it actually is and it even sounds grey and dirty.   Oh and there's also "Downtown Train,&quo

  A while back I was talking to my friend Jason about third rail bands.  We were talking in Gold Cane because he was a bartender at Gold Cane so that's where you were likely to find him.  The crowds at Gold Cane can ebb and flow, leaving adequate time to talk to a bartender. [Remember Zagat Guides?  They used to publish restaurant, and later, bar guides for San Francisco and a bunch of other cities.  The blurbs for each place were taken from comments sent in by readers.  In a way, it was like a well-edited Yelp that existed in the real world.  It seems to now be restricted only to an online presence in Miami .  Anyway, I am proud to reveal that one of the comments about the Gold Cane in Zagat - "where every night is parolee night" - was submitted by none other than me.  I bet I still have that copy of 2007-2008 San Francisco Nightlife around here somewhere.  Ah yes, here it is:] [I want to emphasize that I never found the staff "obnoxious" in any way whatsoever!

  Influence is a funny thing.  We say stuff all the time like "oh, this band definitely influenced this other band" or "for their new record, Band X was clearly influenced by the sounds of Bolivian folk music," but it's not often that a major influence spreads its way through a huge segment of modern music and is completely forgotten.  Ladies and gentlemen, Radio City by Big Star.  Not only did it directly influence some of the most important bands in the history of American music, like R.E.M. and Cheap Trick, along with lesser-known but still great bands like the Replacements and the Posies and Teenage Fanclub, it more or less (along with Big Star's other albums) created the genre of power pop, a genre that remains close to my heart to this day. Big Star was a miserably-selling and little-known band in their prime.  This album sold about 20,000 copies when it came out, which sounds bad today but was absolutely abysmal when the only way to hear a song you w

  There is no build-up here.  You drop the needle and BLAMMO you get hit with the title track, a delightful, head-bobbing funk/rock melange with a super hooky chorus.  In fact, everything about it is hooky.  Those drums are insane!  "Initially, all I had was a hook," George Clinton said, “'One nation under a groove, gettin’ down just for the funk of it.' In the studio, once we got a rhythm together, I pretty much ad-libbed the rest. I wanted the silky feel of the Dionne Warwick records with Burt Bacharach – a smooth groove, but funky."  That's pretty much what it sounds like. The next song, "Groovallegiance," is pretty much just a long jam, and you know how I feel about long jams. There's also an inspired, long (all the songs on this album are loooooooong) track called "Who Says a Funk Band Can't Play Rock."  It also has a long jam but it's so insanely hooky and the jam is such an integral part of the song that it doesn't b

  Get ready to clown me mercilessly, because I kinda liked this album!  This is where most people stop reading, but I have promised to be honest in my posts and I will now live up to that, for good or ill.   So I'm not sure what I was expecting.  I hadn't really heard much My Chemical Romance before.  I sort of had this mental image of them as a Hot Topic mall band that angsty teens loved.  Maybe they are that, I don't know, but this record is like if Queen decided to go in a pop-punk direction or a prog band listened to a lot of Green Day.  Some of the songs are just OK, some are not very good, and some are instantly catchy and earwormy.  Like "This Is How I Disappear": See what I mean?  I would have rocked out to that so hard when I was 13.  The title track is also good in that bombastic Queen way, with a piano intro and overwrought singing and the whole nine. I am given to understand that this is a concept album about death, which seems just about right for a b

  Sometimes with these albums I feel like I'm really just not getting it, you know?  I mean, people who sound like they know what they're talking about said this album was " a watershed moment for the modern R&B genre ," and I'm sure that's true!  But it just did nothing for me.  Vandross certainly has a great voice, and the production is super-slick (if very, very dated) and everything's all right there but it just never clicked for me. I didn't love this album, or even really like it, but there were a few elements I admired: the bass playing throughout is punchy and propulsive; I like the staccato rhythm guitar on "Sugar and Spice;" and the title track has a nice groove.  Part of my problem, think, (as I alluded to) is that this album sounds incredibly dated now.  The production is very 80's, with the 80's elements you expect, and it's disco-adjacent, which is not my fave.  I don't know, maybe if I was more into R&B

  Here's my two-word review of this album: Fuck and Yes .  Undoubtedly one of the foundational stones of funk, this concept album continues to reverberate today.  Plus, it's just fucking fun as hell.  If your head isn't bobbing halfway through the first song, "P. Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up)," you might be a dead shell of a husk of what was once a person. These songs are so deeply woven not just into African-American culture, but American culture writ large, that if you haven't listened to this in a while, or at all, you'll be surprised by how much you recognize.  I'll bet you've heard that first song, and the second, "Mothership Connection (Star Child)," is probably instantly recognizable, if for no other reason than Dr. Dre sampled it heavily for "Let It Ride" off The Chronic .  And then you get to "Give Up the Funk," Parliament's first gold single.  It will still remain in your head for the rest of the day, so