Posts Tagged 90s

GWAR | Scumdogs of the Universe

Posted by Jim in RECORDS. on 2014.04.30

Scumdogs on CDThisssssssszzzzzzzzsssssssssszzzssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss is not the only or last GWAR album that I have purchased, but it’s the only one I currently own. I sold the others a while ago, and haven’t kept up with the new ones for at least a decade. Can’t say I regret it all that that much, but there are a couple things I do regret—1: repairing my keyboard at the beginning of the draft and just leaving it in there like people would think it was funny or something. There’s nothing funny about that. But what can you do, there’s no going back, man. 2: Looking up the wiki for the album after I had most of the thing written in my head. This might not seem like a big deal, but I’ve wasted precious mental real estate assembling my hard-won observations over the years, when all has been previously laid out in the plainest of prose. Depressing.

And why did it take me so long to notice the Al Jourgensen and Paul Barker of Ministry co-produced? (They are actually credited with their real names if you read all the fine print, unlike any member of the band.) But who is this mysterious “Ron Goudie”? Hoho, Wikipedia, you can tell everyone what they already know but remove what we don’t. I’ve got the info of Ron Goudie alright, that you think you can hide! Turns out he is a guy. Some kind of musician. Well.

Wait, there’s probably something I can say about this besides trivia. It’s good, right? In my opinion? Yeah, it’s the best. There’s some good songs on the other albums but this is the only real classic full album. Look, I compared Gwar to Mastodon and maybe it averages out, like Gwar is 80% live experience 20% album and Mastodon is the reverse, but it’s kinda the same thing. BUT. IS. IT. ?. Oh, I see what’s going on here. You’re trying to get me to admit that Gwar’s songs are not that good and it’s basically a joke band. Mastodon is not a joke band. What kind of asshole would even suggest that.

I will not admit it. I do not think it’s true. The good songs on this album are as good as anybody’s. They are completely credible Metal songs. At least the one’s Brockie sings. He was a real guy, man. And non-Metal people will praise the band at a distance, like, “they play live in those rubber suits every night, that’s dedication, gotta give those guys credit”…because the problem for some people is the authenticity vs. a regular clothes-wearing, non-pretending-to-be-space-aliens band like Mastodon.

And let’s talk about the artwork for a second. Wiki’s got nothing to say about that. In addition to everything else, there was also a Gwar comicbook that they sold at their shows. I was always too broke and covered in fake bodily fluids to get a copy. The integration of that art to the inside of the album was reason alone to hold onto it. I love the super-deformed versions on the characters and the bios. (“Balsac the Jaws of Death: Has a beartrap for a face, but why?”)

But there are the songs. Yes. I love the songs. There are the obvious joke songs: NWA take-off The Salaminizer, what I’m going to call a “spoken-word piece” Slaughterama, and show-stopper, Sexecutioner. These tracks may not hold up in the harsh glare of adulthood. They may have been the only tracks you have heard. And probably Sick of You. That was like, a single.

So they do these dumb(?) singalongs and these joke songs. Why do I take them seriously?

Take a song with fairly typical Metal lyrics like The Years Without Light. If they made a whole album of songs like this it would be better than most Anthrax albums, admit it. 95% of Thrash albums are attitude and stringing riffs together, most bands don’t always try make each song so individual and able to stand on its own. Thr broken gallop beat, the vocal cadence, it’s great.

Then you’ve got the songs like Maggots, King Queen, and Horror of Yig, my personal favorites, incorporating theatrical flourishes and sound effects that take you into the world of their unique live experience, but never leaving the musical world of Metal. Except for the bagpipes, which Korn stole. I don’t get the reason for either, but I like the instrument. Is there some kind of gay connotation? There’s a lot of gay references on the album that I don’t get why they’re there. (The printed lyrics are annotated by a member of “The Morality Squad” with things like “shocking!”) Maybe the live show originally had Oderus cross-dressing? If so they dropped that by the time I saw them in…’97, w/ the Misfits. And Mephiskapheles. And Earth Crisis?!? That was a thing that happened.

Then you’ve got (not in this order) Vlad the Impaler, Love Surgery and Death Pod, all solid standards. Black and Huge has the most obvious Ministry-like touches, with porn movie samples, not so obviously dropped in there, but woven into the texture, or perhaps layered, like a delicious industrial metal lasagna. Possibly the least defensible lyrics, because they don’t really make enough sense to be offensive. I’m not going to try to explain someone else’s in-joke. This one and album closer Cool Place to Park, a total vocal departure sung in high screams by Beefcake, always puzzled me as far fitting into the concept of the album. It all ends with the sound of sinking underwater. Maybe I need to read more Lovecraft.

Buy it on Amazon?
Donate to the Dave Brockie Foundation or buy a t-shirt in an unresonable size b/c you waited too long

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Top 10 Rock Albums of the Late 90s

Posted by Jim in ｌｉｓｔ十 on 2014.04.16

There is a narrative of the 90s now that after the death of Kurt Cobain, Rock fans’ only options were to either jump ship and get into Hip-hop and Dance music, accept whatever watered-down garbage-grunge, or sink into premature old-man nostalgia. This happened for many, and in my 2013 year-end post I felt the need to attack late 90s rock while making back-handed compliments towards Tricky. This might have been funny if you know I was in a rock band at the time and find self-deprecation amusing. But I’ve been thinking about it. I liked the idea of rewriting that period with me totally not even caring about Rock at that point because it makes the band’s complete failure seem like not a big deal. However, me care(d) a lot.

The big (non-fatal) disapointments of the late 90s were by the big alt-rock bands. Faith No More, Smashing Pumpkins, Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, Helmet, all took a nose dive. Even Sonic Youth starting phoning it in. There was still Radiohead, I guess. I like Radiohead. (Sorry?) But there’s no reason to tell you OK Computer is a good one. It’s great. But it’s not making my list. Neither is Stereolab, one of my favorite bands at that time, but there’s no reason to reach even slightly into hyphenated compoundword quasi-genres or even any band with a keyboard player or DJ. There were still great rock bands, they just didn’t become household names. And yet, it was—and is—still possible to enjoy. Imagine listening to music your parents have never, and will never hear, or even hear of. This happened, to me.

(Also, I listened to all that other stuff at the same time. And there was some Metal but I feel like that's another list. Almost everyone I knew listned to all of that. I'm just saying, I accept that people born during or after the late 90s could be reading this, and: you did not invent that. That's all I'm saying. But hopefully we can still be friends because if not I am doomed.)


  1. Jon Spencer Blues Explosion | Now I Got Worry


    Some people don’t “get” JSBX. But some people’s favorite Nirvana album is Unplugged. I don’t get those people. The medium is the goddamn message and the medium is Rock. The Beat. The Guitar. The…Other Guitar. That’s pretty much it. Except that’s not really “it”. It’s the energy of the performance. I think an amp blows up in one of the songs. The followup to this was the more subdued and soulful Acme which is alright in my book, and technically more “late 90s” since it was ’98 and this one was early ’97 but was recorded in ’96 so it’s kinda on the borderline of being mid-90s, and I think there’s a distiction to be made in the general mood or trend of rock that is perhaps exemplified with those two albums, BUTT, when anyone says Rock died with Cobain this is the first thing I think of, played the hell out of this thing. Parts of it still give me the feeling of not caring if the world is about to end or whatever. Maybe I’m dumb.


  2. Sleater-Kinney | The Hot Rock


    I couldn’t possibly take a list like this seriously that did not include stone cold ’97 classic Dig Me Out. Yet, I didn’t have that record myself until post-2000. Many probably equate this release with Spencer’s Acme (The two groups also share the minimal drums&guitars setup.); there’s a few high-energy numbers, but the focus is on songwriting and those quaint pre-millennial themes like “questioning”, “introspection”, “ethics”, all those things that immediately became obsolete. Really it’s mostly about relationships like most of their stuff, but does it really matter what it’s about when the music is this great? The most original stance most bands took in the 90s was ripping off a different decade than everyone else, but there’s nothing retro about this stuff: mostly clean, linear, interlocking drum, guitar and vocal melodies in the style of no one before or since.


  3. Shonen Knife | Happy Hour


    Altho it starts off with an unecessary (but fun) psudo-rap number (a throwback to an earlier one, on 712, I’m guessing Tom Tom Club-inspired), this is mostly straight up pop-punk, the only such album that makes this list. I liked a lot of those bands like The Queers and Mr. T Experience but I feel the albums had a similar drop-off as the big Alternative bands. One reason this holds up over the intentionally funny or clever stuff can be found in the insanely hyper Ska of Cookie Day, charmingly years after anyone gave a shit about Ska with zero irony, and unlike some other of their songs, unambiguously literal: finishing off one of the simplest, happiest songs ever made with a truck driver’s key change, there is no implied wink, no hint of, “can you believe this?” You simply don’t. (And I can't belive it's not on youtube. I do believe this song begins with the offering a cookie to a dog, which I have never questioned until now. Get it.)


  4. Shellac | Terraform


    People seem to skip over this record when they talk about Shellac, maybe it’s just my experience. I think it’s just the name and artwork are kinda generic for the 90s. The songwriting is consistant, they have no hits and sound exactly the same on every record. They are beholden to no trend. But they happened to record and release a record in this time period so here they are. Starts with a long slow-burner you might skip but I don’t.


  5. Guitar Wolf | Planet of the Wolves


    I don’t even need to comment on this except that I didn’t think about the order of this list too much. If you don’t have this your situation is fucked and/or you don’t like Rock’n’Roll.


  6. Sebadoh | The Sebadoh


    There were very few rock records in the 90s you could have sex to cause everyone was on heroin or aggro or ironic or straightedge or some combination of those. You can only listen to the first side of Little Earthquakes so many times. (That doesn’t sound like an undersell, does it?) All Uncle Loobie is about is pot and lovin’. And maybe some speed. And co-dependency. Emotional turmoil. Which is all very sexy, with the right person. Until it isn’t. But then it is again, until it isn’t again. But then it really, really is, better than it’s ever been…until it really, really isn’t. But a record can always start over, which is why we love records. This record stands out as being somewhat “produced”, which somehow did not bother me at the time, and it still doesn’t, unlike other things which have bothered me quite a bit. On most days, I would prefer Bakesale or Harmacy, but haven’t had sex to either, so it’s hard to make a side-by-side comparison.


  7. Cramps | Big Beat from Badsville


    On a really good day the band I was in was mostly like the Cramps, if the Cramps were boring, depressed weirdos who couldn’t be bothered to come up with a gimmick. (We mostly had bad days.) I had to look this one up to make sure it was really a late 90s record. Feels like these songs have always existed. Actually better than their early 90s records if you ask me.


  8. Cake Like | Goodbye, So What


    I really had a thing for this band. Partly because I had a crush on Kerri Kenney from The State, and partly because I had not heard Dig Me Out. But I think they were good, all the albums. This one they get into harmonies. Maybe it’s hard to make them out to be “important” as a band that you need to listen to, but I guess this album in particular was a big deal (to me, I got it in the cutout bin). The emotion of this album is closure. It was something I wished I felt more than felt directly. Like listening to happy music when you want to kill yourself. You know. Right? Uh. They come up with some pretty original stuff musically if you haven’t listened to a whole lot of post-hardcore and indie pop stuff yet but I bet you have. The worst tho is if 90s bands comes up in some casual conversation and I mention this band and I get, “Oh, I love Cake!” Because, FUCCCKKKK YOOOUUUUU.


  9. Modest Mouse | Lonesome Crowded West


    Not my favorite album by them and no special memories attached, but it has some pretty killer songs. I guess I didn’t get into them until this record came out but I listened to the earliest stuff more, where it sounds like it’s barely hanging together. Hard to believe they eventually went more Pop. Good production does Issac Brock no favors, I mean, Lou Barlow actually has a nice voice. But the way he bends strings was crazy. Of course his hand is fucked up now. That was part of the appeal at the time, listening to it like, “He’s gonna totally fuck up his hand! That’s awesome!” We were sick fucks.


  10. Blonde Redhead | In an Expression of the Inexpressible


    To be honest, after I eliminated all of the records that were definitely in my heavy rotation at the time but that I felt could not really count, I had trouble coming up with a tenth record. So we have this. A great record, a Rock record (BR are now decidedly much more post-rock), a record I didn’t own until relatively recently, but which was played a lot on college radio. (In my memory, much earlier, like early-90s, but it turns out not.) There’s some pretty hard tunes on here but ironically, the song that got the most airplay was actually the least rocking. (Even a flute on that track, ye gods.) The vocal is so alien, and the way it’s produced, I guess it reminded me of went I first heard indie music on the radio, like Slint and Rapeman, it just overturns and upsets your expectations of what music could sound like or be about, but still be made by a rock band.

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V/A | Something From Nothing: The Art of Rap

Posted by Jim in RECORDS. on 2014.02.05

Art of the Art of Rap In the 60s and 70s, Lou Reed was legit down with the streets. But by the 80s he was punning about the dangers of strange candy. (Which makes him perhaps an innovator of proto-Modern J-pop. But focus.) Crack had just hit the streets. Social programs were being cut. Thousands were dying of AIDS. Lou had lost touch.

Luckily non-white people were also rapping.

Hold on. This is only about what it is. That’s the beauty of Ice-T’s documentary:

It’s also beautifully photographed. And it’s even better than this trailer if that’s not selling you. I don’t think it sold that many people went it came out but it’s there forever so you should check it out. I haven’t been into Hip-hop much in the last few years but I’ll always respect it as an artform. This even makes me take some people seriously I didn’t before, like Kanye. No Jay-Z in this thing, but they got Kanye. Even his best lines used to seem like throwaway jokes to me, but he can pull off a convincing acapella (if not freestyle). And it was funny hearing different stories contradict each other, I always like to hear KRS-One’s version of things.

I should probably get the DVD. I just watched it on Netflix and got the soundtrack. You can enjoy the soundtrack itself as a good mixtape album with some exclusive freestyles, but I wouldn’t recommend it as an intro to or overview of Rap like I would recommend the movie. I feel like the movie is really made for people who do not take Rap or Hip-hop culture seriously, but there’s so many movies about “Hip-hop culture” that really gloss over the Rap part. The doc proves it’s point pretty thoroughly but this soundtrack is a little random. There’s no chronology at all and of course they are limited by rights issues and I assume it’s Ice-T personal taste here, but it doesn’t include all of the freestyles in the movie, I would say the best ones are left out. (Wiki has a complete list of all the songs.)

My personal favorite inclusions are It Takes Two which was so huge when I was a kid but people forget that one outside of the East Coast I think and it doesn’t sound like anything else so it doesn’t fit into most history retellings. And P.S.K. by Schoolly D. Ice-T’s early stuff ripped off Schoolly pretty hard I thought, but he stayed underground so most people don’t even know that. That was cool of him to include.

buy it on Amazon or the site has more links

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