SOUNDTRACK: COHEED & CAMBRIA-Good Apollo I’m Burning Star IV, Vol. 1: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness (2005).
For reasons I’m unclear about, I had the completely wrong perception of what this band would be like. I had read a few things and heard from a few people some differing stories. I decided to check them out based on this input, and I decided, against my anal retentivity, to get Part IV of their five part collection. (This is because it was really cheap on Amazon).
So, given this, I don’t know what C&C sounds like on the first records, and maybe they sounded more like what I assumed they would sound like. And, frankly, given the images that the album comes with, 
one would tend to think that deep dark heavy metal is contained within. In fact, I was pretty sure that I was in for a heavier sort of Dream Theater. The imagery of this collection is very dark/scary/spooky, and I was told many times that the band was quite prog-rockish, often sounding like Rush. Oh, and the singer sounds like a woman.
Imagine my surprise then to play the CD and (ignoring the opening string intro which doesn’t signify anything anymore) hear a whole bunch of relatively short, really pretty, uncomplicated songs. There are a number of tracks on this that could be huge hits. As I listened some more, I realized what I thought the band sounded like…they sounded like Queensryche. In fact, they sound like any number of 80s metal bands. It was really weird and unsettling to have my expectations totally blown.
The first 11 songs are, for the most part, short, uncomplicated songs. They have beautiful melodies, and yet often have very disturbingly violent lyrics. (In what practically sounds like a lullaby–“I’ll do anything for you; kill anyone for you.”) There’s an awful lot of killing and threatening and the like going on here. And, yes, the singer can sound like a woman. Evidently this killing and violence is rampant through the sequence of discs, and there is some kind of “story” that explains it. But I didn’t really read closely enough to decipher it.
It’s not until track 12 the indicatively titled: “Willing Well I: Fuel for the Feeding End” that the prog stuff kicks in. Now we have some seven minute songs, we have some complex riffing going on and an occasional time change. There’s also call backs to earlier sections of the album. This was certainly more of what I was expecting, although, indeed, it’s still not THAT heavy. Some of the tracks so resemble Rush’s proggy heyday. Most unusual for me was that the long meandering guitar solo on the very last song “The Willing Well IV: The Final Cut” sounded like it could have fit perfectly as the long, meandering guitar solo in Pink Floyd’s “Shine on You Crazy Diamond.” Go ahead, listen for it, I’ll give you fifteen minutes.
The first time I listened to this disc, I really didn’t like it because it wasn’t anything like what I expected. On my second and third listens I started to enjoy it a lot more. I started to really groove to the songs. I also subsequently read a description of the album on allmusic to see if I was crazy, and indeed, I was not. They say that the band is very emo in an 80’s metal sort of way. And, I totally agree. They mentioned Queensryche as well (although they say Operation Mindcrime and I say Rage for Order) and as soon as I saw the “emo” tag, I thought about My Chemical Romance as a recent soundalike band.
As for the content of the epic, I have no idea what’s going on. I haven’t been able to read the lyric sheet yet (as I listen in the car) and I know I am coming way in the middle of this whole thing, so I know that I’m missing boatloads of information. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it enough to seek out some other parts just to see what the whole thing is about.
It’s nice when an unexpected surprise turns pleasant.
[DIGRESSION: BACKSTORY:] When I was 12 my sainted Aunt Lil and I used to travel from our little ‘burb of Hawthorne, all the way to the Willowbrook mall in Wayne by bus. A transfer in Paterson was required, and retrospectively, I am amazed that this little old lady traveled all that way, and made an exchange in a fairly “bad” neighborhood all the time. Once in a while I would go with her and we’d make a day of it. My “reward” for going was that I’d get a record or two. (more…)
SOUNDTRACK: MONSTER MAGNET-4 Way Diablo (2007).
My friend Matt and I saw Monster Magnet open for Aerosmith in Scranton, Pa many many moons ago. We had never heard of them, but were really impressed by their set. I especially enjoyed the song he introduced as “I Know Life’s a Bummer, Baby, But That’s Got Precious Little to Do with Me.” (Fact is, I was sold by the title alone). This song would of course be “Bummer” from the Powertrip album. That album became the soundtrack of our summer.
SOUNDTRACK: SUPER FURRY ANIMALS-Hey Venus! (2007).
I’ve been a fan of Super Furry Animals for years. Their early stuff is really wacky and psychedelic Britpop (even if they are from Wales). They sang songs about hamsters and they drove around on tanks, and their B-Sides collection was package like a big rubber, well, rubber, with a reservoir tip and all!. And yet even with Gruff Rhys’ peculiar accent, the songs were catchy as all get out, and they rocked pretty hard.
SOUNDTRACK: BARENAKED LADIES-Born on a Pirate Ship (1996) & Rock Spectacle (1996).
SOUNDTRACK: TOM PETTY AND THE HEARTBREAKERS-Anthology: Through the Years (2000).
To me, Tom Petty suffers more than anyone else from egregious overexposure. I’m not sure if it’s just me who feels that way, but in my experience, “Free Fallin'” was utterly inescapable for what seemed like an eternity. And, geez, his mug was all over MTV when that album came out. It got so bad that I simply decided I was done with him.
SOUNDTRACK: NIRVANA-Sliver: The Best of the Box (2005).
So, my $1.50 copy of this came in today and I listened to the three unavailable tracks. The first was a track called “Spank Thru,” which was totally new to me. The other two were demos of: “Sappy” (also known as “Verse Chorus Verse” on the NoAlternative compilation) and “Come as You Are” from Nevermind.
SOUNDTRACK: MOTHERHEAD BUG-Zambodia (1993).
Motherhead Bug is the creation of David Ouimet. David was my boss at Tower Records way back when. He has been in some other influential NYC bands like Swans and Cop Shoot Cop, and he’s worked with Foetus as well. He has since moved on to bigger and better things, including doing wonderfully creepy illustrations for YA books (like Cat in Glass and Double-Dare to Be Scared).
SOUNDTRACK: FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS-The Distant Future EP (2007).
SOUNDTRACK: NIRVANA: With the Lights Out (2004).
It probably sounds like an urban myth to say that Nirvana was a catalyst for new music way back then. But I can recall when “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was first on the radio, and I was living in a region of the country (hey Office fans, it was Scranton, PA) that was devoid of anything interesting on the radio; it was like a flash of light: there is interesting music out there, somewhere. So, yup, Nirvana was a great moment for me.
SOUNDTRACK: Big Bad Love [Soundtrack] (2002).
Somehow, I came upon a free copy of this CD. I hadn’t really listened to it at all, save for the Tom Waits songs (which turned up on Orphans anyhow). But I listened to it the other day and it’s a really good collection of unorthodox/noisy blues. I’m not a huge fan of the blues, but I can get into short bursts of it. The R.L. Burnside songs are lots of fun, as is the Junior Kimbrough piece. And, there’s a great piece by T-Model Ford called “She Asked Me So I Told Her” which seems to consist entirely of the lyrics, “So she asked me, so I told her, why I’m here” over a very raucous blues riff. There’s also some nice instrumentals by Tom Verlaine & Kronos Quartet.
I Just Read About That... 