Music Meridian

The Residents have a new project that they're planning to unveil in April. It's called River Of Crime. Apparently it's going to be an online podcast that harkens back to old tyme crime-drama radio shows!! Definately going to keep this on my radar as it should be very cool.

Looking forward to April!

in college i was still trying to develop my taste in music, and it was only in fits and starts that i came to appreciate really good stuff. this is why i bought the 'datapanik in the year zero' box set, but didn't really listen to it until nearly five years later. this is also why i bought 'physical graffiti', decided it was boring, and sold it off. at least, i'm pretty sure that's what happened. i swear i owned it briefly, but then i didn't. i know i had 'coda' then sold it, but my memory of 'physical graffiti' is fuzzy.

i had 'coda' my sophomore year of college, so i assume i had 'physical graffiti' then too. i can't be sure why i got rid of it, but my recollection is that i was buying madonna and meat beat manifesto at the time, and probably loads of other stuff through bmg. i got 'erotica' because i was a desperately horny college kid, and 'subliminal sandwich' because i'd decided to branch out into this electronica thing that people said was cool. i probably had the chemical brothers by then, but i didn't know anything about mbm at the time. i also got depeche mode's 'violator' so clearly i was on an 80's and 90's kick, something led zeppelin really didn't fit. i don't know that i was into punk yet, but clearly this bloated rock ran counter to what was exciting me at the time. i just wasn't in the right headspace to appreciate led zeppelin. in fact, other than the beatles and hendrix, i don't think i liked much of anything before the 80's, and most of what i had was nirvana and pearl jam. clearly i had some growth to do.

hearing it now, six months after i bought it for the second time, i am in a much better place to appreciate the music. i also have a much better appreciation for led zeppelin in general, and the band's importance in rock history. i have a much better feel for how led zeppelin laid the groundwork for the bands i like, especially the seattle grunge of the early 90's. at the time, in the 90's, i couldn't fit zeppelin into my pantheon of pink floyd, r.e.m., nine inch nails, bjork, and tori amos (i wasn't even into bowie yet--i had then sold off 'lodger' in that time period as well). the links are obvious now, but at the time i didn't get it. at the time i was also buying music to annoy (not piss off, which is a different effect entirely) my neighbors, so my motives weren't necessarily in line with good taste.

let's face it, though. 'physical graffiti' is a bloated, pompous, self-indulgent album mixing pounding riffs with either nonsensical lyrics or preposterous metaphors for love/sex. led zeppelin is the basis for all the hard rock and metal to come up in the 70's and 80's, all those songs of demons and dragons and whatever other fantasy rock crap bands churned out. they helped pave the way (along with black sabbath) for both iron maiden and yes, and their legacy is somewhat disgusting in that respect. this album in particular, a double album of overblown monsters and empty ballads, is laughable in both scope and content. it's silly and pretentious, as only hugely popular british arena rock could be. this album is disgusting.

or it would be if it weren't led zeppelin. these songs, in any other band's hands, would be atrocious, and the album would be sickeningly overwrought. at the same time, no other band could write these songs, making this possibly the quintessential led zeppelin album. everything that makes people love and hate them is here, and it's here in spades. so why isn't this album reviled by rock fans and critics alike? put simply, led zeppelin is the greatest rock band that ever played. that's the only explanation for why these songs work, and work together, and work over two discs, and work 30 years later. the key, what makes this band so impossibly great, is their ability to write primal riffs and pounding drumlines that sound simple but in reality are quite complex. the interplay between the instruments is perfect, never yes-style ornate and rarely punk basic. the timing of the parts and the way each band member drops accents into them is genuinely impressive.

in short, 'physical graffiti' is one of the best rock albums ever.

I recently was informed that awesome guitarist/musicologist Skip Heller is going to start travelling the united states visiting "presidential libraries and monumental music sites as we drive west".

He's going to be blogging everyday at his livejournal page as well as posting home movies of the trip.

I'm definately going to be following this. It should be a fascinating trip and Skip is an entertaining writer.

I highly suggest more adventurous readers to pick up the DataClast Vs. The Earwigs CD at Cruical Blast. Dataclast is amazing stuff...a combination of wild grindcore and IDM. Plus, it's on sale! It's been what I've been enjoying at work lately and is highly recommended if you likee crazy music.

From the writeup on the site:
"Synapse-shredding splatter electronics!! Hyperspeed eGrind glitch violence vs. crushing cosmic electronic chaos! New Jersey duo DATACLAST forge an explosive amalgamation of hyperkinetic breaks and blastbeats organically fused to spastic glitch electronica and bestial vocals with their 29 tracks, bringing post-human grind screaming into the 21st Century. DISCORDANCE AXIS hand picked these guys to open their final show, if that tells you anything. For a point of reference, imagine the surgical grindcore of prime CARCASS brutally molested by KID 606, MERZBOW, and AUTECHRE.
And shadowy Northwest decibel merchants EARWIGS follow up a decade long career of twisted electronic noise abstraction with 6 tracks of new material that tanges from evocative shards of crystalline debris to Mecha-inspired blastquakes of apocalyptic throb."

Oh yeah! That's what I'm talking about!

According to a Yahoo! News Report burned CDs will last up to about 5 years since they gradually deteteriorate.

Is this really the case? I have lots of CD-Rs, some of them relatively old and I haven't had a single one fail to play when I put it in the player....In fact the other day at work I played a mix CD I labeled "Phil's Phirst Mix CD" that I presumably made when I first got a CD burner...I made it in 1998. That was 7 years ago....plays fine.

Anyone having problems? Anyone know if this is some sort of hoax or scam?

Another "new" Zappa CD is available for pre-order. It's called Imaginary Diseases. It looks like it's a live CD from the petite-wazoo band...but I might be wrong. If it is that puts it as around '73-74! A good era.

The Joe's Xmasage CD arrived the mail last week, and it's so-so. The music tracks are excellent, but much of the disc is just Zappa and his bandmembers talking. More music, less chitchat please...