Archive for the ‘Record reviews’ Category

One does not simply walk into Mordor: Guest editorial from Run-DMStevomir

Posted: January 18, 2015 in Miscellaneous, music, Record reviews
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To end the old year and start the new one, Éowyn and I re-watched The Lord of the Rings. (We did plenty of non-Middle-earth activities, too, so Shut. Up.) In watching all three movies I developed a theory about Sauron. This theory goes as follows and begins now.

Here’s the situation: Sauron must conquer his powerful neighbor, Gondor, if he’s ever going to achieve his world-domination goals. To ensure his success, he orders his stooge, Saruman, to march against Rohan, Gondor’s most likely ally. Saruman has a whole new army to play with. The Riders of Rohan haven’t been doing much riding lately, though they still have perfect hair. The upcoming battle looks like a mismatch, but in the ninth inning Rohan calls in some timely relief help and Saruman’s army falls apart like the Red Sox over the Labor Day weekend.

At this point, Sauron knows all of the following:

  1. Gandalf is back.
  2. Aragorn has doubled his supply of girlfriends.
  3. The Elves said they were leaving, but they didn’t say when.
  4. Saruman is useless. He’s like the ex-husband who keeps reminding you why he’s your ex-husband.
  5. By now, Sauron’s ravens should have reported that the eagles and the butterflies have turned against him, which means that Audubon is against him, too.
  6. Sauron’s shock troops, the Nazgûl, have failed at every task they’ve been given. They were totally fooled by four pillows masquerading as Hobbits, a trick I pulled on my parents when I was 7.
  7. The Nazgûl can’t even kill a pillow on the first try.
  8. Sauron’s advanced surveillance technology cannot locate one Hobbit and one Ring, even though both are heading straight at him.

I think most of us, in Sauron’s place, would reconsider this situation and turn to Plan B. Sauron sticks with Plan A. This is how you get to be the CEO of Mordor. He moves forward with his hostile takeover of Gondor, and nevermind the threat from Rohan, Gandalf, Aragorn, Audubon, etc.

(Naturally, Sauron assigns his go-to guys to the Gondor project. Good call. The Nazgûl team leader tries to impress the blonde shield maiden with the news that he’s invincible. She immediately slices him into fettuccine. The Nazgûl were geniuses with women. His co-workers control the skies and yet somehow miss the approach of the fluorescent-green Army of the Dead until it storms ashore and slaughters everybody. If the Nazgûl worked for Chase Bank, they’d all get bonuses. Oh wait, the Nazgûl do work for Chase Bank.)

Finally: When Frodo and Samwise stagger to the top of Mount Doom, what do they find? The cave that leads to the lava swimming pool is not guarded by a locked door or armed guards or a Nazgûl who’s been placed on administrative leave. Even an idiot blogger could waltz right in and kerplunk toss the Ring into the fire.

And so my theory, which I invite you to vote on. Sauron is either:

  • Blinded by hubris, or
  • Blindingly stupid.

I’ll eventually reread the books to gain a more nuanced view of Sauron’s foreign-policy blunders. Until then, remember that Hobbits eat a lot, but they’ll still roll you for a nickel and stick you for the extra dime.

Random Pick of the Day
Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin IV (1971)
Led Zep IV is today’s Pick because Robert, Jimmy, John, and John may have been the first rock stars who had read Lord of the Rings. Ringwraiths and Mordor pepper their songs, though I don’t know if that helped them get girls.

Led Zeppelin doesn’t get any heavier than Led Zep IV. Led Zeps I and II are wilder and stupider, but IV has “Stairway to Heaven” so IV wins. I’ve been listening to “Stairway” since I was in high school (that’s right, halflings, I was born into a world that knew not of this song), and yet every time I hear the guitar accelerate, my pulse does, too. When the drums enter at 4:18 I start playing along, even when I’m driving, unless there’s a shield maiden riding beside me.

Random Pan of the Day
Led Zeppelin, just about everything
It’s fashionable for today’s rock critics to praise Led Zeppelin as innovators and condemn the critics of the 1970s, who hated Led Zep, as double dumb asses.

Bullshit. The critics of the ’70s got it right: This band did not make music for adults. You don’t need them once you’re old enough to vote, though they may be an evolutionary stage in adolescence (they were in mine).

Random Thought for My Fellow Nerds
Éowyn declaring “I am no man!” before skewering the misogynist Witch-king of Angmar is the high point of the movies and the books.

So say we all.

You’ve done it again. You’ve wasted another perfectly good year with Run-DMSteve.

Posted: December 30, 2014 in Miscellaneous, music, Record reviews
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It’s almost 2015. I have one resolution: I will DOMINATE this year. Before I stride forth and conquer, happy new year to all of you. Yes, even you. I am indebted to you who read this blog or regret that you read this blog. For those about to rock, I salute you.

Here at the Bureau we are working 24/7 (and on weekends) to bring you even more musical snobbery. This is just a sample of what you can expect to find at this address in Year 5:

  • The complete index to Year 4
  • What I did on my Christmas vacation
  • 2014: The year in books
  • The return of ’70s Week. Pain train’s comin’, baby!
  • Also ’80s Week, as soon as I find my T-shirt with the alligator on*
  • Welcome back to ’90s Week (I didn’t understand the ’90s during the ’90s, but maybe I can still catch up)
  • Valuable cooking tips – collect ’em, trade ’em, spread ’em around!
  • Another round of Ask Run-DMSteve (please submit your questions so I can humiliate you)
  • More mystery packages from my Dad

And: I will finish my novel!

* “Gonna sell me Bob Marley records/gonna get me some Jackson Browne.”

Enjoy yourselves on New Year’s Eve. I leave you with a message from a wet sidewalk in my neighborhood:

Alive

Random Pick of the Day
Chuck Berry, St. Louis to Liverpool (1964)
I thought Chuck Berry was “Johnny B. Goode” and “Roll Over Beethoven” and a slew of other songs with the same guitar riff. I also thought he descended into an endless greatest-hits tour after the British invaded. As if!

In 1964, St. Louis to Liverpool was swamped by 15 albums from The Beatles, The Dave Clark Five, The Rolling Stones, and The Animals. Listening to it 50 years later for the first time, what I hear is a strong response from the USofA. St. Louis to Liverpool has only one of the well-known Berry classics (“No Particular Place to Go”). What it does have is some unexpected blues (“Things I Used to Do”), a great rendition of “Merry Christmas Baby,” and lots of fun rock ’n’ roll. Hail hail Chuck Berry.

Random Pan of the Day
Nicki Minaj, Beam Me Up Scotty (2014)
The first track is a love song to her Range Rover. You can stop listening right there. Ms. Minaj’s talents are confined to her figure; she looks like she escaped from an anime lab. The only thing I like about this speed bump in the path of musical progress is that on her last album she worked with a rapper named Lunchmoney Lewis.

 

Is there a letter in your bag for me?

Posted: December 14, 2014 in Miscellaneous, music, Record reviews, Writing
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In this season of thankfulness, I want to sincerely thank everyone who has ever written me a letter. I love the mail. I love playing in the mail. I was lucky to have had two superlative, longtime pen pals, but alas, they are no more. They have ceased to be. They have kicked the bucket, shuffled off this mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible. In a word, they’ve changed their address. (Yes, I know that’s four words. I’m a big tipper.)

I don’t remember how I got involved with mail. Like most boys my age, I sent my allowance money to shady companies that advertised incredible promises in the back pages of Batman and Justice League of America. For example, there was a dramatic half-page ad for a “Civil War battle set” that would enable me to re-create the entire Virginia campaign from the moment Grant took command of the Army of the Potomac…and all for a couple of dollars!

Imagine my surprise when the mailman did not drive up with a truck and a crane to deliver my Civil War battle set but instead handed me a box in which you could’ve packed cough drops. The blue and gray soldiers were translucent fingernails of plastic that barely existed in three dimensions. Even their artillery was flat as a pancake. I didn’t repeat this mistake later on when I saw the dramatic ad in some other comic for the Battle of Midway battle set.

But when did I start writing letters? Who was my first letter-writing chum? I don’t know. I do know that back in the 1960s, in fourth or fifth grade, we all had at least one class in how to write “The Friendly Letter.”

Dear [name],

How are you? I am fine. [The rest of this paragraph was about what we were doing in school and how much we liked our teacher.]

[The second paragraph was about our wholesome home life. A pet featured prominently, or if you didn’t have a pet you could make do with a younger sibling.]

[Complimentary close: Take care, Your friend, Sincerely, Write back, etc. If you were a girl-type person you drew a heart for the dot over the i.]

Stevie

I grew up (somehow) and found people to correspond with. I added different types of letters to my repertoire; in addition to the Friendly Letter, there was the College Admission Letter, the Cover Letter, the Query Letter, the I’ve Read Too Much Thomas Wolfe or Too Many French Existentialists Letter, the I’ve Owed You a Letter for Six Months Letter, the Begging for a Job Letter, and the Begging for Sex Letter.

Some of these letters are not effective and should be discontinued.

Well, I am still a lucky guy, and not just for having known Judy and Jack or two of my other veterans, Pauline and Tilda. I guess the Lords of Kobol heard my prayers, because in the absence of old friends, new ones have stepped in and sent me mail. I was happily surprised when I made a list because there are more of you than I thought: Accused of Lurking, Mr. Seaside, Starry-Eyed Stamper, K to the T, and Mark It K8, among others. Special D is not above cutting the side out of a beer carton and making me a postcard. (K to the T, Accused of Lurking, and Mr. Seaside have all pulled off this trick with beer coasters.)

Another of my correspondents is Johnny Five. J5 deploys his skills primarily to mock me, but it’s mail and I’ll take it.

Johnny5

Thank you, everyone who has ever written me a letter, dashed off a postcard, or selected an insulting greeting card. Thanks to all of you for going to the trouble of finding a stamp because you knew I’d enjoy your barely legible scribbling. Thanks to you vacationers who thought of me in far-away places and bought a postcard and remembered to send it a week after you got home. Thanks to those of you who created your own postcards. And thanks for the beer coasters. Note to self: One is an accident, two is a coincidence, but three is a collection. I’d better make a checklist.

Today’s Randoms: The Land Down Under Edition

Thumbs-up
Courtney Barnett, The Double EP: A Sea of Split Peas (2013)
Ms. Barnett is a poet who sings/talks you through her songs as if you were walking with her through the low-key chaos of her life or helping her into the ambulance following an asthma attack in the garden. She’s a female Lou Reed or a non-crazy Courtney Love. The Smithereens would’ve been a great backing band for her, but I like the lo-fi rockers she’s recruited. (Her bass player is Bones Sloane!)

“Avant Gardener” is fabulous. “David” sounds like Bowie’s “The Jean Genie,” though Bowie’s song is closer in its imagery to Reed’s “Take a Walk on the Wild Side” while Barnett’s song includes the line “Come on Davey, let’s go plant a tree/You bring the spade, I’ll bring the seeds.” On “Anonymous Club,” Barnett evokes Neil Young in his quieter moments. She does the same for Liz Phair on “Scotty Says” and “Are You Looking After Yourself.” Some duds here – the last two tracks are a drag – but overall, I’m really digging her music.

Guilty pleasure
When I first read the name INXS, I pronounced it “Inks.” I was busted in public for it, too. Same deal with R.E.M., which I pronounced “Rem.” But I can’t compete with a former co-worker who thought the name of the melancholic English New Wave band that recorded “Personal Jesus” and “Strangelove” was “Pesh DeMode.” (This mangling fits with a line from another Depeche Mode song, “Behind the Wheel”: “I hand myself/over on a plate.”)

INXS doesn’t have a single album I’d spend money on, but I love “The One Thing” (Shabooh Shoobah), “Original Sin” (The Swing), “New Sensation” (Kick), and “Suicide Blonde” (X). I won’t even buy the U.S. edition of their greatest hits because these four songs come with 12 I don’t want. (The Australian and U.K. editions include even more crap.) But I do love those four songs.

Shabooh Shoobah is a stupid name for an album, a movie, a car, a dog, or a mathematical theorem, but it would superbly suit a political party.

No no no no no!!!

Angel City

Angel City, Night Attack (1982)
Angel City is an Australian band that made the mistake of forming about the same time as AC/DC but without any of AC/DC’s skills. And AC/DC is not overflowing with skills.

They were The Angels in Australia and Angel City in the rest of the world. I found a few of their songs online, including the intriguingly named “Dogs Are Talking.” Turns out those dogs got nothing to say. The best part of Night Attack is the cover. Their cover model looks exactly like a gentleman I worked with in the early 1990s. Bruce never shot lasers out of his eyes, but perhaps he did that outside the office when I couldn’t see him. I’ll write him a letter.

 

Run-DMSteve explains it all for you

Posted: November 23, 2014 in music, Record reviews
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In June I set out to review every album Prince ever made. I embarked on this project because I realized that, for me, Prince was embalmed in the ’80s – the guy I heard at clubs and parties. He was that sexy M.F. who could rock, croon, talk to God, talk for God, write weird erotic scenarios, and take goofy chances. I wanted a better idea of who he really was. There had to be more to the man than “Purple Rain” playing to a gang of us nerds in a hotel ballroom at a science fiction convention.

It’s easy to follow, album by album, a band that existed for fewer than 20 years – I’ve done that with The Jesus and Mary Chain, The Pixies, The Clash, Creedence, and several others. It’s much harder to do with an artist who’s been playing and recording for 30 years or more. They change too much. They travel down side roads while you stick to the interstate. Or you change too much. It’s been a long time since I was punchin’ a clock and listening wide-eyed to Born to Run.

It’s also hard to follow an artist with a lengthy career because every artist, no matter how talented, eventually skids into the Bad Spot. That’s the rough patch where your Muse runs off with someone younger and prettier and you’re left to grit it out on craftsmanship alone.

In the 1970s, Neil Young dissected his soul on several awe-inspiring albums. Two that’ll slay you: On the Beach (1974) and Tonight’s the Night (1975). When the ’80s dawned, Neil took a long time getting out of bed. For example, Trans (1982), which might as well have been called Tron, and Everybody’s Rockin’ (1983), his fake Fabulous Fifties record. Neil didn’t make a good record until Freedom (1989), which you’ll recall for the stunning “Rockin’ in the Free World.”

Bruce Springsteen did pretty well in the 1980s, at least until Tunnel of Love (1987). Then things went downhill. Or, in Springsteen terms, the mill closed, the state cops shut down all that street racing, and the D.A. couldn’t get no relief. After two subpar efforts, Human Touch and Lucky Town (both 1992), he recorded nothing of consequence until his reaction to 9/11, The Rising (2002), after which he reinvented himself as the Dark Knight of the 21st century.

I need a weatherman to explain to me what Bob Dylan was trying to do on Self Portrait (1970) and Dylan (1973).

David Bowie’s career after Scary Monsters (1980) is not the least bit scary.

Sadly, Michael Jackson’s career after Bad (1987) is not worth talking about.

Back to Prince. I made it through the first 14 albums. I rediscovered his ’70s disco discs. I relived my youth with Dirty Mind, 1999, and Purple Rain. I was struck as if by lightning by Sign O’ the Times.

By the time we got to the 1990s, the road Prince and I were driving developed some serious twists, the safety rails disappeared, and the paving got thinner. Loyal Reader Slave to the Garden warned me that in the ’90s, Prince, in his apocalyptic struggle with Warner Bros., dumped albums on the market that should’ve been dumped in the dump. We were approaching the Bad Spot.

The next one on my list, Come (1994), is what we critics like to call awful. I’d rather listen to a flock of trumpeter swans barking like dogs as they circle for a landing.

Prince’s 1987 bootleg, The Black Album, officially appeared in 1994. It’s not as good as black albums by Spinal Tap (1984), Metallica (1991), and Jay-Z (2003), though it’s probably better than the Marilyn Manson Black Album bootleg, if I could bring myself to listen to that one.

Looking at the rest of the ’90s, I see that Prince was either attacking the Warner Bros. Death Star or playing stuff that belongs in a galaxy far, far away. Well, what did I expect? How long can Prince go on being that sexy M.F.? (I can still pull it off, but only from a distance.) Artists have to change or they might as well be locked in a trophy cabinet. I’m convinced that Prince will emerge from this depressing era into some new and wonderful form, but I’m not going to follow every bread crumb until I catch up with him.

(There are two albums I definitely want to hear: The Girl 6 soundtrack, which is supposed to be a throwback to the ’80s, and the three-record Emancipation, both from 1996.)

What I’ve learned
Here’s what I can tell you about me: It’s hard to grow past the music that filled me with joy when I was young. Some of those artists are still recording, but they no longer speak to me. Or perhaps I can no longer hear them.

Here’s what I can tell you about Prince: Overall, no performer in the history of popular music is as talented as Prince. Some people sing better or write better or dance better, some people see deeper into the human or the national psyche. Some people are more economical (Prince does not know when to end a song).

But no one can do everything that this gentleman does at such a consistently high level. No male performer is as insistently sexy without also being sickeningly misogynistic. Carlos Santana, Paul McCartney, Elvis Costello, Bowie, Young, and Dylan are as prolific, but even those guys never released three discs of original material on the same day.

There’s much more to Prince than “Purple Rain.” I just don’t need it.

[Editor’s note: It’s at least twice as difficult for a female singer/songwriter to survive in a decades-long career as it is for a male. It’s much easier to find male counterparts to Prince, so I stuck with the men.]

I started out liking Prince, but after listening to the first 14 albums I really like Prince. I want to keep liking Prince. So I’ll stop here. Thanks as always for reading along.

A couple of days ago I spent an afternoon listening to Pink Floyd and Justin Timberlake. I got nothing out of that. This afternoon I’m listening to Chuck Berry. Until next time, enjoy this insane video from the Neil Young of the Everybody’s Rockin’ era.

 

The blogger formerly known as Run-DMSteve

Posted: November 16, 2014 in music, Record reviews
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When my brother and I were little, we tried to rename ourselves. Two of our choices were “Moose” and “Tex.”

We got Moose from Moose Skowron, who played first base for the Yankees. I remember him as a slow-footed blunderbuss, but I just checked his stats and for a guy named Moose he sure hit a lot of triples.

We got Tex from our Grandpa Sam, who worked with cattle in the Old Country and should’ve moved Out West when he came to this country in 1912. Imagine how my life would’ve turned out if I’d grown up in the Texas Panhandle instead of some dinky town you don’t stop in on your way to Cape Cod: Instead of writing this stupid blog, I’d be happy as a clam, governing the Lone Star State and repressing the rights of women and minorities.

How happy are clams? How can you tell?

Moose and Tex didn’t stick, nor any of the other names we tried, and in our family we remained Ronny and Stevie. My various attempts at rebranding in adulthood didn’t work, either. I’m like the teenage baseball player in Philip Roth’s The Great American Novel who kept bugging his adult teammates to give him a nickname. They finally gave him one: Nickname.

Here’s how the 1% do it
Prince ran into trouble in 1993 when he changed his name to a symbol without giving anyone a clue as to how to speak this symbol.

Prince symbol
Symbol courtesy of Loyal Reader Accused of Lurking.

Naturally, everyone immediately gave the symbol a nickname. (I can’t have a nickname, but a symbol can have a nickname?) The one you see most is “The Artist Formerly Known as Prince.” That’s right, Prince, we were still saying your name. Prince was also called The Purple One and The Artist Never Known As Tall. I don’t want anything like those attached to me.

So why did Prince Rogers Nelson change his name? What does the symbol mean? What did his family call him? How about his lovers? And why should you devote precious synaptic energy to exploring these questions?

Why did he change his name? His war with Warner Bros. His evolution as an artist. Because he could.

What does the symbol mean? It’s a combination of the symbols for male and female. It’s officially referred to as “The Love Symbol.” It looks like something you’d tie at the end of your line to catch some trout.

What did his family call him? Moose or Tex.

His lovers? “Sexy M.F.” (see below).

I think he was just fucking with us. All he really wanted was to play a Love Symbol-shaped guitar.

Prince guitar

Now comes the winter of our disco tent
Prince and Warner Bros. fought furiously in the 1990s and eventually divorced. (They’ve since remarried.) Here is what seems to have been the flashpoint for both sides, the next album on our list, the one with the symbol slapped on the cover.

Love Symbol  Album
1992
Right off the bat, on an album with an unpronounceable name, we get a track called “My Name Is Prince.” Don’t look at me, I just work here. Prince shares his origin story: “In the beginning God made the sea/But on the seventh day he made me.” Lest you think he’s conceited (OK, he is conceited), he continues with “My name is Prince, I don’t want to be king/’Cause I’ve seen the top and it’s just a dream.” This confused song also asks whether the Lord is happy with us and states that Prince isn’t happy with Jim Crow. And, of course, he’s not planning to leave until he has sex with your daughter.

“My Name Is Prince” could fill any dance floor, and “Sexy M.F.” is the song James Brown always wanted to record. Unfortunately, even with the awesome strengths of The New Power Generation behind him, the Love Symbol Album takes a dive after the first two tracks. We get ordinary songs, generic reggae, lethargic love ballads, one song that reminded me of Billy Joel (“The Morning Papers”), another that reminded me of Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love” (“The Continental”), one that set a new pomposity standard (“And God Created a Woman”), and Kirstie Alley answering a phone and having one-sided conversations. What? I don’t know.

I disliked “3 Chains O’ Gold,” another ballad with nothing in the tank. I mention it only for the enchanted flute you’d expect to hear in a treetop in Rivendell or in a TV commercial starring Snuggles the fabric softener bear.

But then comes “I Wanna Melt with U” and all I have to say is wow. In fact, double wow. This is one of the best disco songs of the ’70s. Except for the swearing, this whole album feels like the ’70s.

Love Symbol staggers into the end zone with “The Sacrifice of Victor.” Sometimes you catch a whiff of 1999 or Purple Rain and you cry from nostalgia. This is a song about a black man striving against all the crap that life throws at him:

Lord I might get tired,
But I, I’ve got 2 keep on
Walkin’ down this road
Keep on walkin’ down this road
When I reach my destination
My name will be victor.

True, Prince was writing not about his struggle against a white-dominated society but his struggle with his record company, but even so, he’s speaking from his heart. And, being Prince, he opens the album named for his symbol with “My name is Prince” and ends it with “My name will be victor.”

This exasperating record was written as an opera.

Thus ends the Prince Project!
Prince gave the Love Symbol its freedom in 2000 and I’m doing the same for me right now. I’ll tell you what happened and what I learned in our next, very exciting episode.

Today’s Randoms: Favorite baseball nicknames
The Human Rain Delay: Mike Hargrove
Eye Chart: Doug Gwosdz
Death to Flying Things: Three players since the 1870s, including a current Seattle Mariner.

The late great Dave Niehaus, Mariner announcer extraordinaire, had most excellent verbal skills, except for nicknaming. He dubbed pitcher Glenn Abbott, who was 6’6” and from Arkansas, “The Tall Arkansan.” He gave third baseman Dave Edler, who was a redhead from Yakima, the moniker “The Redhead from Yakima.”

Dave Edler later became the redhead mayor of Yakima.

Glenn Abbott is one of only three men in baseball history to have three sets of doubled consonants in their names. The other two are Rennie Stennett and Dennis Bennett. The weird thing is how close they all were in time. Bennett retired in 1968; Stennett played his first game in 1971 and Abbott in 1973. They have nothing else in common, besides playing baseball and being carbon-based life forms.

 

 

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