black lips - we did not know the forest spirit made the flowers grow

I can't remember anything from my first listens to Black Lips and We Did Not Know The Forest Spirit Made The Flowers Grow. I was already well-aware of the Black Lips, and was in fact worshiping Let It Bloom on an almost daily basis, but these albums...they were something different altogether. I may as well have been listening to static, with the occasional snare hit or bellowing drunken yell to remind me that there were real people behind it. It was a sludgy wall of nothingness. Awesome nothingness, but still nothingness.

After the initial few empty listens, I all but abandoned the Lips' early material, focusing on Let It Bloom, Good Bad Not Evil, and what the hell--even 200 Million Thousand. I loved it all, except for those early monstrosities. They just seemed out of place compared to the rest of them, part of a strange period where the band just got trashed and beat the shit out of their guitars without trying to actually write songs. It was too much.

Revisiting these albums after all those years, it's incredible how different my reaction is. These albums sound fucking pristine compared to some of the stuff I listen to now. The songwriting throughout both records is surprisingly solid, if deliriously sloppy. What sounded at first like a bunch of guys punching their guitars with their amps turned up to 11 now sounds like excellent Back From The Grave copycat work, played a hell of a lot louder by people nearly too drunk to hold guitars, let alone play them.

It's still raw as hell, no question, and it would be interesting to hear this material with the fuzz turned down a couple notches, but it's far from overwhelming. If anything, it's just downright fun. There's no menace here. It's loud and messy and a bit deranged at times, but these guys are just doing what they wanna do, living life close to the edge, losing their footing every now and getting real goddamn close to falling off that edge, but still staying on somehow. Which is a pretty great description of what it's like seeing these guys live.

They may have gotten a song on (500) Days Of Summer and hired Mark Ronson to produce their last album, but their heart and soul is still with that early, trashy sound. Even "Bad Kids" gets the same boozy, chaotic treatment when they're onstage (if they still play that song on tour anymore). They continue to get more and more professional in the studio, but onstage it's still business as usual--get fucked up, kick out the jams, make some kids move around a bit, insert rock cliche here, then wake up and do it again the next day.

Most bands that try to name their own genres end up failing spectacularly, but I can't think of a better phrase to describe the Black Lips than "flower punk," and Forest Spirit is flower punk as fuck. This album benefits monumentally from a vinyl replay (clear blue, first pressing, 500 copies, swag), and it often sounds like the pops and hiss were mixed right in there from the very beginning. It's a shame that it gets ignored for the later material, along with Black Lips, but at the same time, this just isn't gonna appeal to everyone. Which kinda sucks. The world needs more shitty music. Always has, always will. And people who listen to shitty music are the best kind of people in the world.

bob dylan - another side of bob dylan

Bob. Bobby Dylan. What am I gonna do with you.

I bought the myths from day one. Newport changed the world, etc. It's the kinda thing you're supposed to outgrow at some point. Right? I always thought so.

I'll never forget seeing you live. In the flesh, in person, the real deal, and so forth. Only you were terrible. Really, really terrible. Strings of mumbled lines, until I finally was able to make out the word "it ain't me babe" and finally realized what I was listening to. My hopes were low to begin with, but man. I wasn't ready for that.

It's funny to think about, really. Out of all the 60s rock stars, out of all the gods among men that could've ended up touring into their 70s, it's still hard to believe that Dylan was the one to take on that sad role. He still churns out okay albums that are hailed as masterpieces. He's even on a Never Ending Tour. You couldn't have made this stuff up.

That's all a sad reality I don't like to think about. I don't like to think that I've seen Bob Dylan live. It's more like I saw a walking talking museum exhibit on Bob Dylan. The albums and the concerts I have from forty years ago sound more real and true than what I saw that day with my very own eyes.

It's easy to dismiss in theory. But listening to him for the millionth time, it's still impossible not to get caught up.

the death of megaupload

"I'm fine with it but there were certain albums that were out of print and mega upload was the only way to get them :("

- @TheBlackLips (Cole Alexander)

---

For reasons I don't completely understand, MegaUpload's demise is making waves across virtually every media outlet on the planet.

Yes, they were a big-name force among file-hosting sites, but they weren't that great of one, and there are literally hundreds of sites ready to take its place. And with the way MegaUpload designed their database, it was only a matter of time before they were shut down: DMCA requests sent to the site resulted in links to the files being disabled, but the files themselves were not removed from their servers. No DMCA liability coverage + Files hosted on stateside servers = The FBI knocking on your door. No surprises there.

File-hosting sites like MegaUpload are demonized quite frequently, and not without good reason. They're profiting largely from the illegal practice of hosting copyrighted materials, whether or not they want to admit it. All the DMCA takedowns they process can't cover up that truth. But people rarely mention the fact that Mediafire, Rapidshare, and the other file-sharing giants are effectively creating an online music archive of incomparable proportions, made open and free to the public.

Arguments supporting SOPA/PIPA (RIP) have been riddled with misconceptions, most notably the idea that downloads = lost sales. Record companies like to believe that if it weren't for free downloads, the masses would willingly scoop up those same releases in CD form for $20. Which is ridiculous. But even beyond that, it's assumed that the albums people are downloading are available to buy legally at all.

When I started making an honest effort to buy music again, I was stunned by how much of it was out of print and incredibly rare. I had always assumed there was a legal alternative to getting my music that I was ignoring--probably a result of rampant RIAA scare tactics. But in truth, if I want a copy of Cosmos From Diode Ladder Filter by Space Machine, Masonna's analog space-synth side project, I need to shell out a minimum of $40, and not a dime would go to the artist, or even the record company. Yet somehow downloading that album from Mediafire would be immoral.

I have a hard time believing that Masonna only wants the 500 people who bought his 500-copy limited edition album to hear it. The copies are already sold, you can't make anymore money from the products--if you're not going to release mp3's for sale, how can you object to fans seeking out your art by illegal means?

If the RIAA had their way, this piece of art would be lost to anyone who hadn't snatched up a copy from the original limited release or was willing to get gouged by a reseller. And that's just a sad, awful prospect.

There are examples of this across the Internet, in every conceivable genre, and in every conceivable art form. Countless works that would have been lost to but a select few, yet have been made available to anyone capable of a simple Google search. Record company shortcomings, publishing red-tape issues, a simply lack of funds--all problems that traditionally have kept amazing music in the dark, all circumvented en masse in a global effort to share rare music with the world.

This is not to say all file-hosting is admirable, however. Far from it. The vast majority of hosted music is likely in print. If you're downloading new music instead of paying $9.99 for the mp3's, you're in the wrong. You can argue that the music is overpriced, or the quality isn't perfect, or whatever--chances are, I agree with you. But that doesn't make taking the art without compensating the artist right.

The question I would pose is this: Is it still "piracy" if the only people potentially losing money are Ebay sellers? If legal means have been exhausted to all practical limits, is the illegal method all that immoral? Am I a bad person for downloading Cosmos From Diode Ladder Filter instead of paying a random person in Japan $40 for a physical copy? Because I don't feel like one.

All piracy is not equal. There's a difference between downloading the new Lady Gaga album and downloading a Mountain Goats tape from 1992 that was only pressed 200 times. Admittedly, it's a hazy difference, and I wouldn't expect to win over any RIAA lawyers with this argument, but to any fan of music, it should be crystal clear.

At some point, in the age of downloading, excessively rare music simply becomes part of the public Internet domain, whether the artist or the record company likes it or not. (In many cases, neither the artist nor the record company even exists anymore to protest it.) There are plenty of ways to combat this--reissuing albums, buying back publishing rights, etc.--but if left out of print for decades at a time, rare albums will almost always materialize online and make their way to file-hosting sites.

If sites like MegaUpload are taken offline one-by-one for copyright violations, these rare albums will be taken offline as well--perhaps permanently. These sites serve an archival purpose that goes well beyond RIAA complaints and (supposed) lost revenue. Cole Alexander saw this, even as he joked that his record sales were already rising after the takedown.

Sites like MegaUpload play a unique and powerful role on the web, and in popular culture as a whole. You can easily make the argument that the increasing number of diverse, genre-defying bands that have emerged in the last decade have benefited from the spread of free music online. Musicians can take-in incredible varieties of music with the click of a mouse, where in the past they would have been limited to major-label releases or the content of the local record store. You can find any kind of music online, and as a result, artists are creating wildly eclectic musical concoctions that would have been nearly impossible to piece together just fifteen years ago. You can't ignore the role that sites like MegaUpload have played in this evolution.

There is no danger of file-hosting sites being removed altogether; as long as they remain profitable there will always be another site ready to step up, despite the risks. And if the SOPA blackouts taught us anything, it's that the Internet isn't giving up it's basic freedoms with out a fight. But the RIAA and the MPAA will continue their War on File-sharing until it is eliminated, just as the War on Drugs and the War on Terror succeeded before it. And just as we need to educate the masses that pot won't kill you and terrorism exists for a reason, we need to promote the idea that piracy is not as cut-and-dry an issue as the record companies want us to believe.

The MegaUpload's of the Internet are not inherently evil, and are in fact brilliant tools working (inadvertently) to preserve worlds of music in ways more efficient than anyone or anything else online. They should be utilized and fine-tuned, not destroyed.

Support the music you can, but don't let the fringes fade into oblivion either. Like all things, all the music industry needs is a little balance. And that starts from the ground up, with us.

wolfmother - wolfmother

It's funny how much you can be affected by a single subversive opinion.

You think you're set in your ways, convinced something is right and true, then bam--someone comes along and destroys it with one opposing thought.

In my experience, that's always the sign of an opinion that wasn't too well thought-out to begin with, so I almost always welcome those moments, especially when it comes to music.

For years, I thought I was set on my opinion of Wolfmother. They were okay. They were clearly just rehashing old Sabbath riffs and ripping off Zeppelin's style, but hey, they were pretty good at it. "Colossal" and "Woman" were good songs, their first album was enjoyable, end of story.

Then I was linked to a certain experimental singer's YouTube rant against them, and all that changed.

Just to be clear, I'm no Mike Patton fan. He's talented, I like what he did with Dillinger Escape Plan, but I've found everything else I've heard to be...exhausting. Not my cup of tea, but he's admittedly earned his army of followers in his own special way.

The video is simple enough. Patton is being interviewed at Lollapalooza while Wolfmother is playing in the background, and he suddenly breaks off into a tangent about how much they suck.

This simplicity is what I found most compelling about the whole incident. This wasn't an orchestrated diss or a traded blow in yet another meaningless rock 'n' roll feud (though it's been argued that Myles from Wolfmother started it with his comment in another interview--I don't buy it). Patton heard them playing and reacted instantly, not even bothering to elaborate on his hatred beyond a "You suck," believing that anyone with ears would agree with him. It was an outright dismissal, something that's grown increasingly rare among musicians in the Internet era, especially outside of hip-hop. Artists are rarely blunt about each others' work--which explains why this particular event went viral so quickly.

Watching it made me realize that I had never reexamined my old high school impressions of Wolfmother's first album. So I gave it another listen. And, as it turns out, Wolfmother sucks.

Not only do they ripoff Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, you can add Blue Cheer, Cream, Yes, and a whole lot of other bands to that list with them. They steal from blues rock and early prog just as much as they do heavy metal. "Colossal" and "Woman" still have great riffs, but the rest of the album is increasingly underwhelming. It's a mediocre rehash of a lot of great music, but it's the kind of great music that just gets old after a while.

Everybody loves classic rock when they're 16, but all that guitar hero worship and those bombastic claims of "[insert early to mid-70s bad] IS THE GREATEST BAND EVER" just can't be sustained. When you're in high school, that shit is still fresh, and you wonder why EVERYONE isn't making "good music" anymore, like Wolfmother still is. Then you grow up and realize all those bands were just brutally stealing from authentic blues artists to begin with, and most of them are total assholes.

So really, Wolfmother is just a bad version of dated, stolen art. And I somehow have Mike Patton to thank for me coming to that conclusion.

my top 50 albums

I'll admit it, I'm feeling lazy tonight. Lazy and tired and completely uninspired. So I'm phoning this shit in.

I'm slowly realizing that this blog really isn't very indicative of the music I really love. I write about plenty of albums I like a whole lot, but when it comes to the stuff that really moves me...I can't write about any of it for shit.

So straight from Last.fm, here's my top 50 most-listened to albums. Enjoy...

1. My Bloody Valentine - Loveless

2. Black Lips - Let It Bloom

3. The Magnetic Fields - 69 Love Songs, Pt. 1

4. Guided By Voices - Bee Thousand

5. Big Black - Songs About Fucking

6. Vivian Girls - Vivian Girls

7. Black Lips - Good Bad Not Evil

8. The Replacements - Let It Be

9. The Replacements - Tim

10. Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago

11. Andrew Jackson Jihad - People Who Eat People Are the Luckiest People in the World

12. Rapeman - Two Nuns and a Pack Mule

13. Pavement - Slanted & Enchanted

14. Beheaded - WhatFunLifeWas

15. Minutemen - Double Nickels on the Dime

16. OutKast - Stankonia

17. Paul Baribeau - Paul Baribeau

18. Sun Kil Moon - Ghosts of the Great Highway

19. Guided By Voices - Vampire on Titus

20. Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

21. The Mountain Goats - Ghana

22. Lifter Puller - Half Dead and Dynamite

23. The Mountain Goats - Live: 1998/02/06 - Cow Haus, Tallahassee FL

24. The National - Alligator

25. Cap'n Jazz - Analphabetapolothology

26. Oblivians - Popular Favorites

27. Black Lips - 200 Million Thousand

28. Madvillain - Madvillainy

29. The Smiths - Hatful of Hallow

30. Gang of Four - Entertainment!

31. At the Drive-In - Relationship of Command

32. The Mountain Goats - Devil in the Shortwave

33. Cat Power - Myra Lee

34. Bear vs. Shark - Right Now, You're in the Best of Hands

35. Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band - Trout Mask Replica

36. Pixies - Surfer Rosa

37. Sparklehorse - Good Morning Spider

38. The Weakerthans - Fallow

39. Sufjan Stevens - Come On Feel the Illinoise

40. The Dodos - Visiter

41. LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver

42. Captain Chaos - The Fool

43. My Bloody Valentine - Isn't Anything

44. The Smiths - The Smiths

45. The Gories - I Know You Fine, But How You Doin'

46. The Mountain Goats - All Hail West Texas

47. American Football - American Football

48. The Smiths - Louder Than Bombs

49. The Mountain Goats - Tallahassee

50. The Weakerthans - Reconstruction Site

black moth super rainbow - dandelion gum

Dandelion Gum is one of those albums I will always associate with college. That psychedelic haze of analog synths was always a perfect counterpart to my sleepless days and nights, coming together to create an almost daily sensation that was nothing less than a high. Good times.

Unlike many of my college albums, this one has stuck with me, and really continued to grow in stature over the last few years. The simplicity of the hooks and the colorful texture of the sounds, elements that caught my attention upon the first few listens, gradually gave way to an appreciation of the depth of the songs and the remarkably engrossing atmospheres the band creates almost at will. Every song is it's own spaced-out analog wonderland, and it speaks to Black Moth's talents as a band that their druggy synth style never seems to get old.

I picked up the deluxe reissue of this album last week, complete with a gorgeous picture disc and 14 bonus tracks. I immediately threw the record on my turntable and took in the album for the umpteenth time, and it was just as great as it had always been. I expected the vinyl sound to influence the music more, but the difference was barely noticeable. (As it is has been 99% of the time for me. Don't let the analog purists fool you. Except for Two Nuns and a Pack Mule. That sounds incredible on record.)

The bonus tracks are slightly above-average for a reissue. Far too many records get repackaged these days with a handful of live versions of album tracks, adding virtually nothing to the original album at all. While the collection isn't particularly revelatory, it's definitely worth the money, and you can definitely make the case that it adds to the original album.

The biggest disappointment is how many of these tracks were already previously available: 3 from Drippers, 5 from The House of Apples and Eyeballs, and 1 from Bonus Drippers. Granted, the former are two recordings that aren't exactly easy to tracks down in physical form, but in the age of the Internet, no real BMSR fan doesn't already have these releases. On top of that, another 2 tracks are simply alternate versions of album tracks, and I fully admit that the remaining 4 tracks already could be out there outside the realm of my music library. These guys aren't exactly shy on releasing their demos and rarities.

The remaining tunes are cool and all, but still a let down. The one good thing that can be said is when you take it all in as a whole, it actually works pretty well. And when you consider that the band calls them "extra flavor" tracks, you have to wonder if that wasn't their intention all along. In which case...I feel like an ass for complaining about it.

being robert christgau, vol. 2

More mini reviews from work. And in proper second-volume fashion, it's a pretty significant step-down from the first one.

999 - The Biggest Prize in Sport

I don't know who decided THIS was punk, but they were wrong. Really fucking wrong. New wave through-and-through, cold, flaccid, sterile. Not a wrong note on the whole goddamn album! There's nothing dangerous about perfection. Call it what it is: guitar pop with a little distortion. And there's nothing wrong with that. Just stop passing this shit off as edgy.

The Sex Pistols - Never Mind the Bollocks

Not nearly as scary 40 years later, but Rotten's venom is still surprisingly potent, even now that the novelty behind the nihilism has faded. "God Save the Queen" and "Anarchy" are still killer singles, despite all odds. The rest of the songs are catchy enough, and Rotten steals every single one of them. You almost believe the act, though the mountain of evidence that these rude boys were really just teddy bears is hard to ignore. Bollocks has somehow gone from the end of civilized society to a cool little party album. Maybe Malcolm achieved something real after all.

The Walkmen - Everybody Who Pretended to Like Me Is Gone

Oh Walkmen. I wish I could quit you. I wish I could explain the passionate love I have for you. But I can't. You oozestyle and substance and just a complete and total aura of cool even though you really don't. Minimal in the best way possible, only hitting the notes you need to hit, winning my heart all the way. Fuck. I never could write about the bands I love. I give up.

Sonic Youth - Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star

A strange album within the SY canon. One of their more experimental albums ("Starfield Road"), yet the whole thing is recorded crystal clear, major-label to the core. Not quite at the avant stage they would hit a few years later, this is largely just great noisy rock music. Immensely enjoyable throughout. Arguably up there with Daydream and Sister.

deftones - white pony

The webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal put it best: "Pop music peaked at the exact moment when I was most emotionally vulnerable to trite love songs."

Every decade or so a new legion of rock writers emerges to compose heartfelt defenses of their favorite teenage albums, in an effort to justify their love for music that is fueled solely on nostalgia and almost certainly wasn't as good as they thought it was, all because of that very idea.

We don't want to believe that we listened to shit music in our younger years. It was just more simple then. More pure. Reflections of the beauty and innocence of youth, such that the old-fart record review Nazis just couldn't get it. It was different and unique, just like we were when we were 16. Right?

And then there's White Pony. A nü-metal album through and through, but somehow the kind of nü-metal album it's okay for guys my age to still like. You could see a copy in your buddy's record collection, laugh at it ironically, but still really wanna throw it on because "Korea" and "Passenger" still get you pumped up and angry like you were 14 again.

It's just arty enough to be critically relevant, but really it's just loud, angsty music that somehow sticks with you years after the angst has given way to the crushing realization that life is pretty much shit 75-80% of the time and yelling rock 'n' roll lyrics at the top of your lungs doesn't change that in the slightest bit. But it harkens back to a time when you still thought it could.

And that's what this music journalism shit is all about, right? Trying to convince people that rock music can change the world? Or at least fucking change something?

Maybe we're just trying to convince ourselves that we weren't naïve and stupid for putting as much passion into loving these albums as we did. Maybe we want to convince ourselves that somehow we were right. The world didn't win after all, because those albums didn't suck like you told me they did, they were fucking amazing and they still are and that hazy blur of made-up feelings and misguided energies that turned out to be high school wasn't a total waste after all, it gave me this, and you can't take it away from me because I just rewrote the rules and you're fucking wrong now, not me.

I think that makes lazily defending an overrated nü-metal album worth it. I can only imagine this is the same way Tommy James & the Shondells clawed their way out of the gutter of late-60s sappy guitar pop, so maybe twenty years from now we'll get to hear "Back to School" in some idealistic movie about pre-9/11 youth in America, somewhere in the midst of a montage full of bleached hair, saggy Jnco jeans, and a world that wasn't fueled by hate. That'll be sweet.