Funeral to Finish

  As pure an expression of rock music as you can find, this debut album by a former bar and backyard party band from Pasadena sold 10 million records and set the stage for bands like Guns N Roses and their considerably less talented brethren. The really remarkable thing about this album (on this relisten years and years later) is how Eddie Van Halen's guitar is just as much a frontman as David Lee Roth.  In fact, I remember when a friend breathlessly introduced me to this album at, I don't know, 12, 13 years old, he said "You gotta hear this" and played fucking "Eruption," which is essentially a minute and a half long guitar solo.  It's not even really a song!  My interest in lengthy guitar solos being about the same then as it is now, I politely listened but then "Eruption" is immediately followed by "You Really Got Me," (which, at the time, I did not know was a cover) and I was like WHOA HOLD ON because THAT I understood.  I mean, i

  Oh my god this album kicks so much fucking ass.  Like yesterday's entry, it came from the early 90's, I owned it on CD, and it immediately takes me back to a very certain time and place, or places I guess, those places being San Francisco and Santa Cruz in the mid 90's.   This album coming right after Weezer yesterday sets up such a fascinating contrast.  This album came out within 10 months of Weezer , and they share some indie-rock similarities, but the songs on Weezer  are fairly uniform - nasally voice singing pop melodies over crunchy guitar - and the songs on this album are wildly creative and all over the place.  There is just so much musical imagination here. Let's start with the big single, "Cannonball."  It starts with Kim Deal saying "check check" into a harmonica mic, distorting her voice, before the band kicks in.  There's that guitar riff that's instantly familiar to anyone who was anywhere near an episode of "120 Minutes

  I owned this album on CD.  At the time, it just seemed to me like a brilliant pop-punk album and I liked a lot of the songs and didn't think about it too much.  I also loved Pinkerton , Weezer's much-maligned but far more interesting second album. Look at the cover of this album!  If you guessed this was going to be a nerd-rock adventure, you were so right.  Now that I listen to it again with 20-something years of separation, it's a lot darker than I used to think.  And there's a gimmick I didn't pick up on - are we making fun of the popular kids and their dumb music, or are we trying to become them?  From "In the Garage": I've got a Dungeon Master's Guide, I've got a 12-sided die I've got Kitty Pryde, and Nightcrawler too Waiting there for me, yes I do, I do I've got posters on the wall, my favorite rock group KISS I've got Ace Frehley, I've got Peter Criss Waiting there for me, yes I do, I do In the garage, I feel safe No on

  You cannot kill disco, you can only make it stronger and angrier.  On this album, EDM superstars Daft Punk turned their icy gaze to one of the most unfairly maligned genres in music.  The result is a fantastic sounding album, but I don't know if the songs entirely work for me.   The first thing you notice is that the music sounds live - like I was listening and I thought "this can't be a drum machine, it sounds too real" - and turns out DP brought in studio musicians to record a lot of it.  There's a lot of vocoder, of course, although blessedly 70's songwriting icon Paul Williams gets to sing "Touch," which he co-wrote, in his own voice.  Guess who else shows up?  Our Strokes buddy Julian Casablancas, singing unrecognizably altered vocals on "Instant Crush."  It occurs to me that the Strokes could rockify that song and it would be better than a lot of the Strokes' later catalogue. Of course you are aware of "Get Lucky," wh

  Before we get into the guts of this record, please allow me a Burrito Justice-style historical diversion.  The acoustic portions of this album at the beginning ("My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)," "Thrasher," and "Ride My Llama") were recorded in San Francisco at a long-gone theater called the Boarding House, that was located at 960 Bush Street. After a fire, the theater was torn down in 1980 and replaced by the featureless condos you've passed a million times on your way downtown (Bush to the Bay, Pine to the Pacific, y'know). Enough historical diversion.  Neil Young again!  We are getting about one Neil Young record a week now.  I knew Neil Young was important but really I did not anticipate him being the most featured artist in the bottom 205 records at all. I had this album on cassette in the late 80's/early 90's and I wore that thing out .  This was definitely one of my most listened to albums during that time.  As I've mentione

  An absolute monster of an album that contained a few hit singles, one of which was turned into maybe the best music video of all time, easily the best music video up to that time.  Of course, I'm talking about "Mercy Street."  No I'm not, you doofus, I'm talking about "Sledgehammer." Pretty fucking catchy for the guy who got kicked out of Genesis for being too weird, huh?  OK, it wasn't exactly like that, to be fair.  He left, citing a desire to spend more time with family blah blah blah but then he started to go off into some avant-garde musical/film experiments.  He also put out a string of semi-successful solo albums, but nothing like this one. So let me say this is not really my shit and it took me a few listens but there is a lot of interesting stuff going on here.  You all know "Sledgehammer" and "Big Time," two obviously soul-influenced songs, both of which are immediately catchy and bouncy and it's no surprise they b

  The mid-80's Ford Mustang of albums, this redoubtable classic is beloved by middle-aged white guys, the people who stock jukeboxes, and anyone who has a Tasmanian devil tattoo.  Every account of the making of this album includes the irresistible nugget that MCA initially rejected it because they didn't hear a single.  Brother, this album is all motherfucking singles.  If you don't know every word to "Free Fallin'" or "I Won't Back Down" then you were probably in suspended animation since the 90's. These are undoubtedly great songs.  But let me swoop in here with kind of a downer: they're not particularly interesting songs.  They're all verse-chorus-bridge/solo etc., and they all sound like they were written on an acoustic, which they were.  This is not to say there aren't some great moments!  When he hits that E minor in the prechorus of "Yer So Bad," and sings "But nottttttt meeeeeee baaaaaaaaby" it is a ge