From the "in the Armageddon-esque event that I have children..." file

Prompted by this article.

"It’s time to take away our children’s TVs, iPhones, iPads and all the other shit they shouldn’t have and force them to listen to music prior to 1999."

Never mind for a moment the fact that I'm 25 and don't own a smartphone - that's a lifestyle choice on my part that I've never regretted. My kids aren't getting a cell phone until they're in high school, and they're not getting a tablet or a smartphone from me, period.

And they're never getting an iTunes gift card, although that has more to do with the fact that after I moved all my music onto a new computer, the three songs* I bought off iTunes randomly crap out halfway through them. F*cking DRM.

No, kids, when it comes to music, you're getting the entire Beatles catalogue (minus Let It Be),** the entire Zeppelin catalogue,*** everything AC/DC did between and including Let There Be Rock and Back in Black, Thin Lizzy from Fighting to Renegade, Pink Floyd from Meddle to The Wall, and, oh hell yes, Iron Maiden from The Number of the Beast through Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, and Brave New World to boot.

You are welcome.

*"Big Gun" by AC/DC, "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" by the Charlie Daniels Band, and "When You're Evil" by Voltaire.  Yes, really.

**And I'll attach a note to The White Album that says "you can only do something this mindlessly self-indulgent when you've already given the world 'A Day in the Life'"

***Because as weak as the rest of Presence is, "Achilles Last Stand" is f*cking epic.

And the word that Blogger can't recognize today: catalogue. Not making this up.

Because I like to do things like this.

Whenever somebody mentions the song "Phantom of the Opera," I always pretend they're talking about the relatively obscure Iron Maiden song. When they say "the Andrew Lloyd Webber" song, I say, "Oh, you mean 'Echoes' by Pink Floyd?"

By the way, the Iron Maiden song is freaking awesome.

Various Songs for Various Occasions

thiContinuing yesterday's theme...

Easter: "The Holy War," by Thin Lizzy. Yes, despite the fact that it's essentially the template for every Iron Maiden chord progression ever, it's all about Christ's temptation in the desert.

Christmas: "Thank God it's Christmas," Queen.

For the start of summer vacation (through high school): "Jailbreak" by AC/DC. Because you're free!

For the start of summer vacation (college, graduate school): "The Boys are Back in Town," Thin Lizzy. Because you and your high school buddies are back in town, duh.

Right before finals week: "For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)" by AC/DC. If you think you stand a fighting chance in Hell. Otherwise, go out in style with "Highway to Hell." And if you ace an exam you thought you'd fail, "Back in Black."

Graduation: "We Are the Champions," Queen.

The day after your first date: "I've Just Seen a Face," by the Beatles. This one's fairly obscure, I'll admit (I know, I know, a Beatles song that's obscure is some sort of oxymoron), but "she's just the girl for me, and I want all the world to see we've met" pretty much sums up what any guy is thinking after a (successful) first date.

At other people's funerals: "Wish You Were Here," Pink Floyd. Heck, that entire album.

Your first day at a full-time job that you expect to turn into a career: "Dogs," Pink Floyd. "And after a while, you can work on points for style, like the club tie and the firm handshake, a sudden look in the eye and an easy smile." Yeah, you end up "another sad old man, all alone and dying of cancer," but who doesn't?

At your wedding: "Something," the Beatles, and a whole host of others (see the previous post).

During your midlife crisis: "Time," Pink Floyd. "The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older, shorter of breath and one day closer to death." I just realized that the second verse has absolutely no rhyming scheme whatsoever. (No, not even breath/death, because if that were the case, "around" would have to rhyme with "again" earlier in the verse.)

At your funeral: "High Hopes," Pink Floyd. "Hells Bells" for irony.

You Gotta Be Crazy...

I swear, every time I listen to Pink Floyd's "Dogs" I can't help but feel that it's a near-perfect summation of life. Not exactly uplifting or encouraging, but there you have it. Best line: "And it's too late to lose the weight you used to need to throw around."

Then again, these guys kind of cornered the market on catchy-yet-depressing songs about life. While the Beatles were singing about love, the Rolling Stones were singing about sex, Led Zeppelin were singing about rock and roll, and AC/DC were singing about sex and rock & roll (overachievers), Pink Floyd were churning out songs like "Time" and albums like "The Wall."

Which, of course, makes them awesome.

IG2EUS: Pink Floyd

The Irreverent Guide to Everything Under the Sun has this to say on the subject of Pink Floyd:

Pink Floyd were an English rock band, best known for composing the title track to the famous musical, The Phantom of the Opera, and the sountrack to the famous motion picture, The Wizard of Oz.

The band was fromed in 1966-ish by a displaced and delusional Time Lord named Syd Barrett. Preoccupied with the "drugs" part of "sex, drugs and rock & roll," he soon left the band to pursue this venture full-time. Before he left, they recorded one album Sgt. Piper at the Gates of the Lonely Hearts Club (1967). Following his departure, the band wrote several clueless albums, including A Saucer Full of Secretions (1968), which covered sex; Blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh (1969) and The One With a Cow on the Cover (1970), which covered drugs; and Metal (1971), which covered rock and roll. Metal contained a cover of the Doctor Who theme and ended with a song called "Echoes" which took up five of the album's six sides. The band were asked if they would consider letting Stanely Kubrick use the song in his film 2001: Are We There Yet? for a considerable amount of money, but declined in favor of letting Andrew Lloyd Webber have it for free to use in a musical about a man in a mask who haunts a theater.

Tempted by the offer of scoring a movie, the band settled down in 1972-3 to record the soundtrack to The Wizard of Oz. This was possible because Syd Barrett, being a Time Lord, had access to a time machine. Once the soundtrack was finished, they wrote their next album, Wish You Were Here (1975), about him.

Now totally out of ideas, they began writing concept albums such as A Day at the Zoo, I Never Got Over My Father's Death, and Margaret Thatcher is Evil. By this point, the band was in the totalitarian grip of its lead singer, lead bassist, lead writer, manager, and only roadie, Roger Waters. He left the band after this because he couldn't stand working with people who had no ideas, and went on to have a solo career where he surrounded himself with peopel who had no ideas.

The rest of the band, which consisted of drummer Nick Mason, keyboardist Rick Wright, and guitar god David Gilmour, soldiered on for two more albums before finally calling it a day in 1994.

There has yet to be a Rock Band or Guitar Hero game about this band, probably because all of the songs are in the same tempo: slow. As far as lyrical themes go, the band has covered everything ranging from drug-induced depression and isolation to loss-induced depression and isolation to feud-induced depression and isolation.

They are one of the five biggest selling bands of all time. The soundtrack to The Wizard of Oz is one of only a handful of albums to outsell Led Zeppelin IV.

What Should Have Been Their Last Album

You know the zombie band. They've been making albums for 20 years and haven't been good for ten. There was one album that they should have stopped with, but for some reason they didn't. Frankly every band every falls into this category, and to prove it, I'll start with...

The Beatles - Abbey Road (1969)

What we'll miss: "Let It Be," "Get Back."

Okay this is a no-brainer. The Beatles started working on Let It Be, abandoned it, made Abbey Road, and then came back to Let It Be. They should have just, er, let it be.


Metallica - Master of Puppets (1986)

What we'll miss: "One," "Enter Sandman," that live album with the orchestra.

If Metallica's studio output was limited to their first three albums, they'd be legends today. Hell, if they'd all died in that bus crash, their place in the music pantheon would be assured, because we all know dead artists are better. (Just so we're clear on this, I don't wish anyone dead.) Instead, they slogged on, sold out, and helped saturate the 90s with crappy music. Puppets is the logical exit point for this band. They'd been progressing steadily for their first three albums, and they hit their high water-mark here.


Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here (1975)

What we'll miss: "Comfortably Numb*," "Hey You," maybe "High Hopes."

This is probably the most contentious one on the list, because The Wall is so very famous. Unfortunately, the best part about The Wall was the live act, because without it, the album is just a 2-hour whinge. Wish You Were Here is a tribute to their former bandmate and better days in general, starting off with a lyrical nod to "Remember a Day" and concluding with a musical nod to "See Emily Play," two of their early songs. What better way to ride out? *We'd actually still have "Comfortably Numb," it would just be a David Gilmour solo song with different lyrics.


AC/DC - Back in Black (1980)

What we'd miss - "For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)," "Thunderstruck."

Somewhere, surely, there's an alternate universe where this band decided to honor Bon Scott's memory by finishing the album they'd just started writing when he died, and then called it a day. This is the second-biggest-selling album of all time! You're never going to top that.


Iron Maiden - Seventh Son of a Seventh Son (1988)

What we'd miss - "Fear of the Dark."

See, they'd re-form in 2000 for Brave New World et seq. But Maiden without Adrian Smith isn't very good, and Maiden without Bruce is IMINO - Iron Maiden In Name Only.


Led Zeppelin - Physical Graffiti (1975)

What we'd miss: "Achilles Last Stand," "Nobody's Fault but Mine," "Fool in the Rain."

Do I even have to explain this one?

Quotes from the rest of Inside Out

We have one very specific advantage over the majority of touring bands. The total inability of us to moonwalk, duckwalk, set fire to our hair or play guitars with our teeth means that the audience to not need a constant video monitor to show what we are doing on stage.

[When voting on which songs would appear on the final album, The Division Bell, Richard Wright voted his material 10 points and everyone else's zero], and it took David and me a while to work out why this new album was rapidly becoming a Rick Wright magnum opus. The voting system was placed under review, as we came up with various systems of electoral colleges and second preference votes that would hace graced any mayoral contest.

[When picking the list for the compilation album Echoes] we had to deal with the fact that Roger, like Rick before him, would only vote for his own tracks. God bless democracy.

At dinner one night, we agreed with Douglas [Adams] that if he came up with a name for the album that we liked, we would make a payment to the charity of his choice. He cogitated for a while and suggested The Division Bell. The real irritation was that it was a phrase contained within the existing lyrics: we really should have read them more carefully.

[On Live at Pompeii:] We later learnt that a lot of the paperwork relating to the film had been lost in a fire, proof, as I have learnt over the years, that offices of those handling such matters are prone to levels of self-immolation, flooding and invasion by locusts that even Old Testament prophets would have found unbelievable.

Brian [Humphries, Animals producer] never totally realised that among a band noted for their left-of-centre sensibilities, it was wiser to keep his own somewhat more right-wing views to himself, especially when Roger was in earshot.

While Brian was on a break, Roger and I had assumed engineering duties, and successfully erased David's recently completed guitar solo. This was a perfect moment for me to recognise Roger's seniority.

We were all aware of the arrival of punk - even anyone who didn't listen to the music could not have failed to notice the Sex Pistols' explosion into the media spotlight. Just in in case we had missed this, locked in our Britannia Row bunker, Johnny Rotten kindly sported a particularly fetching 'I hate Pink Floyd' T-shirt.

Although we could sympathise with [punk's sentiments towards the record industry's concentration on "dinosaur" legacy acts over new talent], we were, however, on the wrong side of the divide, as far as the punk generation were concerned. 'Of course, you don't want the world populated only with dinosaurs,' I said at the time, 'but it's a terribly good thing to keep some of them alive.'

[Nick got asked to produce a punk album by the Damned.] We finished the album, and mixed it in the time Pink Floyd would have taken to set up the microphones.

Great quotes from the first 70 pages of Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd by Nick Mason

"Although he had studiously ignored my existence up until that moment, Roger [Waters] had finally recognized in me a kindred musical sprity trapped within a budding architect's body. The star-crossed paths of Virgo and Aquarius had dictated our destiny, and were compelling Roger to seek a way to unite our minds in a great creative adventure.
No, no, no. I'm trying to keep the invention to a minimum. The only reason Roger had bothered to approach me was that he wanted to borrow my car."

"The fact that none of us [Mason's first band, the Hotrods] knew how to play was only a minor setback, since we didn't have any instruments."

"Although we [the Hotrods again] had access to some amps, these were so shameful that when we posed for a group photo, we felt obliged to mock up a Vox cabinent using a cardboard box and a biro."

"In a period when everyone was being cool in a very adolescent, self-conscious way, Syd [Barrett] was unfashionably outgoing; my enduring memory of our first encounter is the fact that he bothered to come up and introduce himself to me."

"The wallflowers, who had been left out of all the fun in the Sixties, got their own back during the 1980s by gaining control of the country and vandalizing the health service, education, libraries and any other cultural institutions they could get their hands on."

"Acquiring a van represented by far the biggest capital outlay - yet had none of the glamor of spending a student grant on a new guitar or bass drum."

That's what I'm talking about!

This is excellent. I wholeheartedly approve. A rock album is a work of art, especially in Pink Floyd's case, and I certainly wouldn't want to listen to just one piece of the whole (this, I think, is why parts of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" I-V and VI-IX are stuck together like that).

"We made an album. We didn't make singles, we didn't make ten singles, we made a good album."
-Angus Young, on Highway to Hell

He's got a point. An album is a musical work created and recorded in a band in one place and one time and one mindset (with one producer, etc). Splitting it up denigrates the work.

The 100 Greatest Albums of All Time

In my bored adventures of Desperately Staving Off Boredom in a Non-Homework Related Way, I stumbled across a list Time Magazine compiled 4 years ago of the... well, read the title.

And it's wrong. It's so hilariously wrong it's not even funny despite the use of the word "hilarious" just 5 words before the word "funny." Which means of course that I get to use this as a springboard for a massive, epic, and entirely too self-referential rant.

First off, this is wrong. No, I'm not saying Master of Puppets shouldn't be on there, but look at the first sentence. "Their next album would be the glossy, gazillion-selling breakthrough..." would have to read "Their next album would be a tragically undermixed, bass-less retread of everything one of their rivals did, and the next album after that would be a glossy, gazillion-selling sellout..." in order to be accurate.

Also Pink Floyd isn't on it. I'm sorry, but any list of great albums that does not contain a Pink Floyd album is simply wrong. What, did you have a quota? A set number of albums that had to go to rap "music" or crappy pop bands? I know music taste is subjective, but you put some criminally overhyped and undersold albums on there and couldn't find room for a legitimate masterpiece like The Dark Side of the Moon, which only stayed on the charts for a measly 14 years? I know rock critics must by definition have a love affair with the Beatles and Bob Dylan, and must genuflect at the altar of "Stairway to Heaven," but come on.

It's people like you that cause hype backlash against artists like the Beatles and Dylan. By overhyping them at the expense of undeniably better albums, you're not winning any friends among the classic rock snobs... and by putting stupid cookie-cutter pop albums on the list and overlooking albums like Dark Side, you're still alienating the classic rock snobs. What, not a single member of your staff was born in the late 50s? I don't understand how your interpretation of music history could go "Everything the Beatles did was holy and awesome, and then after they broke up there was a musical black hole broken up only by sporadic blips on the radar like 'Stairway to Heaven' before the Sex Pistols destroyed the concept of production quality, Michael Jackson destroyed the concept of musical sanity, and Slayer destroyed the concept of 'heavy enough.' Oh, and then Nirvana destroyed the concept of good music except they didn't." Well, of course it doesn't. You've somehow deluded yourselves into thinking that Nevermind is more important than Dark Side, but I maintain that the only reason anyone actually remembers that album today is a) because self-indulgent trendsetters like you have a skewed music taste and b) because Cobain's dead.

So you're not doing him any favors by promoting his album of whining over a legitimate masterpiece (The Wall was whining too, but at least it yielded a truly epic guitar solo). I don't care because I don't like him. I do like the Beatles, which makes your overhyping of them annoying, because you're not doing them any favors. Revolver, Rubber Soul, Sgt. Pepper, White Album, and Abbey Road? What, did each editor get to pick their favorite Beatles album? Under what definition except "legacy act" is the album that gave us "Wild Honey Pie" a better album than the one that gave us "Highway to Hell?"

Full disclosure: Highway to Hell is not on the list and that's as it should be, because the title track is really the only thing anyone remembers off that album. Nevertheless, I would be willing to bet you money that "Highway to Hell" gets more radio play each day (and is known by more guitarists) than all the songs off The White Album combined. Perhaps a better question would be why five Beatles albums made the list but only one Zeppelin album did.

Perhaps what the next "journalist" who wants to "compile" a list of the "greatest" albums of all time should limit himself to no more than one album per artist. After all, one of the most interesting things I found about that list was that The Black Album wasn't on it. That's as it should be. Metallica were perfectly represented by the far superior Master of Puppets. AC/DC got Back in Black, which does them a perfect service.

In fact, I would like to see a list of great albums, again only one per band, that deliberately excludes the stuff you always hear on the radio. Metallica would be represented by Ride the Lightning, Led Zeppelin by Presence (I cannot be the only person who absolutely loves that album), Pink Floyd by Wish You Were Here, Iron Maiden by Powerslave, and AC/DC by If You Want Blood. Some may say it's a live album and therefore cheating. I say it's still infinitely better than anything made in my lifetime.

Also, shame on you, the reader, for not noticing that in the second paragraph I said "It's so hilariously wrong" and then said I used the word "hilarious." Well done.

IG2EUS: Concept Albums

The Irreverent Guide to Everything Under the Sun has this to say on the subject of concept albums:

Concept albums are albums that are centered around a single unifying concept, be it sex, drugs, or rock and roll. The term is a unification of two words: "Concept," meaning that the songs have a common theme, and "album," meaning a collection of songs recorded by one band in one place and at one time.

The concept of concept albums has been around since the 1950s but the crossover to rock music was first attempted in 1967 by Paul McCartney of the Beatles. The attempt was, frankly, less than sucessful, but that's not to say that Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is not a freaking good album. It is. It is in fact one of the biggest-selling albums of all time, and though rock fans can be morons at time, the collective idiocy required to buy more than 30 million copies of a less-than-stellar recording would be too great for any civilization to actually survive this long. The fact of the matter is, however, that there are more songs on Back in Black that have to do with the death of Bon Scott than there are on Sgt. Pepper that have to do with the Lonely Hearts Club Band.

The other common example of the quintessential concept album is Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon, an example that is equally flawed for opposite reasons. There are in fact two concepts on this album. Side one deals with life, while side two deals with isolation and madness. Where The Dark Side of the Moon falls apart is on the "album" side of the equation, and it is therefore unique among non-rock-opera concept albums for having extended instrumental passages that are not parts of actual songs.

Pink Floyd built on this, er, concept, though, and in 1975 they unleashed Wish You Were Here, which is not only a perfect example of a concept album, but arguably also a perfect example of Pink Floyd at their finest (if you can sit through the 8-and-a-half-minute instrumental passage before the first word is sung). The album might as well have been called The Rise and Fall of Roger Keith "Syd" Barrett, because that is precisely what it is about. Unlike The Dark Side of the Moon, there is only one unifying theme instead of two, and all of the different "tracks" on it are actual songs instead of a mix of songs and separate instrumental passages. They did it again in 1977 with Animals before creating one of the quintessential rock operas, The Wall.

A rock opera is a concept album that leans far too heavily on the "concept" side of the equation. These albums tell a story through their songs, at least in theory. In actual practice, the listener tends to get a small number of awesome songs, while the plot is actually described in 1-minute breaks between the songs. Every rock opera ever is guilty of this. Also every rock opera of any importance involves a rebirth of fascism.

Rant #67043

You may have noticed that the average age of the things that I talk about on this blog is approximately twenty-one, and no that's not a number I picked out entirely at random, that number happens to represent the number of years I've been forced to endure existence on a planet that seems to lack any sort of quality control, and without giving the game away, I blame the internet primarily for this. But as for the number representing the true average age of things I talk about (not counting curent politics), I'm probably off by the same amount as the President whenever he talks about the number of jobs he "created or saved."

You see, there's more crap out there now than there ever was before, and by crap I mean both "stuff" and "stuff of bad quality." This blog, which will turn one year old at the end of the month, is one such piece of crap. Nobody reads it, nobody replies to any of the posts, and nobody points out that every one of my opinions are horribly biased against either the Democrat Party or just about anything younger than I am that's not Nu Who or part of the collective output of Joss Whedon or Quentin Tarantino. And frankly they don't get a free pass either because they've all had clunkers too. Oh, and if the Democrats ever want a kind word on this blog they can all go take Econ 101 and then run a small business for a few years. And frankly most Republicans should do that too. They're not in power at the moment so slagging them seems kind of pointless.

I love AC/DC, a fact that every day gets harder and harder to reconcile with my insistance on originality and quality; the Thunder from Down Under have made the same album sixteen times now (note: number does not include box sets like Bonfire or Backtracks, compilations like '74 Jailbreak, or live albums), and only about half of them are worth owning. Nevertheless, there's something to be said for a band that's never written a heartfelt ballad or a song about how the world sucks and how the singer wants to die. And there's comfort to be had in this consistency; you know you're about to listen to 40 minutes of 3-chord rock songs about the fun of sex and the greatness of rock and roll whenever you stick something with "AC/DC" printed on it in your CD player.

By comparison, music today is god-awful. This PC insistence on tolerating everyone else's artistic expression means that no matter how ear-splittingly terrible you are, you'll find at least a hundred idiots who "like" your "music" and thus give you a sense of self-importance, and speaking as one egoist to the most self-centered generation in modern history, it's not all about you. These hundred idiots will be idiotic because their music libraries are full of "free" stuff they stole. The average quality of the songs in those libraries will be comparable to the average Nirvana song, and because they don't know any better they won't realize that that's an insult. So, let me be clear in a way our President never will be: if you down-tune past either E-flat or Drop-D, if you complain about how mommy doesn't love you, if your solo doesn't last longer than one bar (I really don't care if you only know one scale, you can make something decent out of that), if you can't actually sing, if you can't write lyrics without using the words "oh" or "yeah" or "hey" to fill out the rhythm, or if you have to rely on sampling other songs to get any recognition at all, then please get out of the road if you want to grow old.

"But," says Dylan, the completely fictional reader of this blog who I in no way named after the first rockstar with no discernable performing talent (guy could write songs, I'll give him that with pleasure no matter how wrong the phrase "I'll give him that with pleasure" sounds), "if you're for originality, why won't you let us experiment at all? For example, isn't a song in baritone tuning an example of at least some deviation from the norm?"

Ah, I say, Dylan, old boy, in your haste to call me a stupid hypocrite (I am suddenly reminded of the hilarity of rock "stars" who are so obviously in it for the money and sex railing against "the rich"), you forgot to read my words more carefully. I require both originality and quality from my entertainment. Hence, I will not accept a song written in a tuning that makes it easier to bend notes or sing along.

"Then defend your admiration of AC/DC, since by your own admission they repeat themselves on every album and only half of them are worth owning," says Dylan, ignorant of the fact that I can barely hear him because I'm listening to Jimi Hendrix sing about a joker and a thief.

I believe I already have, I say, but in case you'd like me to elaborate: AC/DC were a refreshing gasp of fresh air when they pillaged England in 75 and 76 and America in 77. Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd were both getting overblown and punk was defiling all that was sacred about rock music. AC/DC did exactly what punk was supposed to do, strip rock back down to its essentials. I've got nothing against Zeppelin or Floyd, they're also two of my favorite bands and they both did a lot more experimentation than AC/DC did, but neither really did a lot for straight-up hard rock. (Blah blah "Black Dog" blah blah "Rock and Roll." Blah blah "Achilles Last Stand," which was probably the first song with thrash metal elements in it but don't quote me on that. Other than those three songs, the Zep were more blues-rock than hard rock.)

"But isn't straight-up hard rock itself fairly unoriginal?" Dylan asked, and by this point I realized that my imagination had conjured up a troll, and if there's one thing I hate more than every Cobain wannabe and rapper, it's a troll who thinks my opinion actually means anything. And for that, I especially blame the internet.