Albums revisited part 2: the ones I forget to remember

We’ll call this one Albums I Forgot I Loved.

I’ve been driving my daughter’s car for the past two weeks; mine needs work and she’s in Florida, so I did what any broke person would do – I put off the repairs on my car while driving hers around.  I like her car, despite the PC3LOV3 license plate and the various hippie bumper stickers that make it look like I’m either a reject from the 60s or a naive teenager who thinks life’s woes can be cured with smiles and hugs.  Also, the car is lacking both an iPod adapter and cassette player that would make my own iPod adapter work. Rather than listen to what passes for rock and roll radio around these parts (I mean, this is New York, could we get more of a choice here? Ok, that’s another article), I decided to do something I very rarely do: listen to whole albums. CDs, rather.

Sometimes I get stuck on particular songs and neglect the albums from which they came. Sometimes I’ll hear a song on the radio and think “Hey, don’t I have that album? Didn’t I used to love it?” but I’ll still go on just listening to that one song on my iPod instead of the whole CD.  Not having access to my iPod in the car this week has forced me to revisit some of those albums and remember why I bought them in the first place. Which all gave me the impetus to get to Part 2 of Albums Revisited.

Fear – The Record

It’s funny how so many people dismiss Fear as a bunch of noise. They probably never really listened to the music. Beneath the sometimes odd (“Beef Bologna”), sometimes angry (“Let’s Have a War”) and sometimes funny (“New York’s Alright”) lyrics there were some driving rhythms, air-guitar worthy licks from Lee Ving and damn good music.

It’s a testament to the music that you really don’t care what the band is singing about. Sure, the lyrics can be a bit offensive and you might not agree with a single word they are saying, but there’s something so powerfully raw about the music, something that makes you want to shout “Let’s have a war!” even though you really don’t want to.

This is music that was made to piss people off. Not in a social commentary kind of way, but in a “I want to make you hate me” kind of way. Fear, living up to its name, certainly made people hate them, but they also separated the wheat from the chafe among my friends who claimed to love punk rock. You either embraced Fear, or you went on to become one of those people who later on would say “Punk rock died in 1979.”

Mr T. Experience – Revenge is Sweet and So Are You

When I was young I had dreams of being a songwriter. We had a fake little band called Pond Scum and me and my sister and a couple of friends would write these amazing lyrics and and think about how much money we would make if we actually had a real band. That is, if any of us could play musical instruments. Then the fake band broke up when we had an argument about our fake direction. They wanted heavy handed songs about death and destruction. I wanted pop music cleverness. I wanted ironic poetry. I wanted to write songs that could make people smile at my turn of phrase, grin at my witty use of rhyme schemes, chuckle at my wry humor, yet, when the song was over, think well, that kind of hit me in the gut. But no one can do that, right?

Yes, someone can. Obviously, it’s not me. (save the whales/save the whales/send your money in the mail/ is NOT clever). But there’s Dr. Frank of The Mr. T. Experience, and this album, for me, is the pinnacle of his songwriting. It’s the album my 15 year old self wishes she wrote.

Revenge is Sweet is at once so sad (“I Don’t Need You Now”) and so happy (“She’s Coming Over Tonight”) that you don’t exactly know what you feel when you hear the songs, all you know is that you do laugh or grin (“Swiss Army Girlfriend”) and you realize afterward that you were actually laughing or grinning (“Lawnmower of Love”) at yourself and the angst and tremor (“When I Lost You”) with which you pursued love (“Our Love Will Last Forever and Ever”).

It’s hard describe this album as a whole. It combines all the great things about pop music with all the perfect things about punk. It’s like doing the Lindy in a mosh pit. Everyone is going to look at you like you’re nuts, but eventually they’ll join in the fun.

The Toadies – Rubberneck

I bought this album because of  I Come From the Water, after I heard it on some college radio station. Todd Lewis’s unique voice and the heavy bass line grabbed me.  Soon after, every rock station was playing Possum Kingdom endlessly. I spent a lot of time trying to get people to listen to the rest of the album.  Mexican Hairless. I Burn. Quitter. This was quality stuff, but everyone was stuck on singing “Do you wanna die?” over and over again. Great song, but the star of this album for me, the song that made me push repeat, the song that is on almost every mix tape/CD I made for the last 14 years, is Tyler.

Tyler is dark, it’s feral and it’s almost loathsome. From the guitar’s  siren sound in the opening notes and the first verse that eases in  like a love song to the brutal ending, Tyler is a song of obsession and derangement played out with some killer hooks. Lewis’s vocals are tinged with desperation and urgency that culminate in his angst-laden “She pulls the covers tighter, I press against the door,” and it all leaves you with a sick kind of feeling in your stomach, but you can’t help reaching back and hitting play again.

That song alone makes Rubberneck worth listening to; that the rest of the album measures up to its pinnacle is a testament to a really good band and album worth going a few exits further than you have to just to enjoy every song.

Creedence Clearwater Revival – Bayou Country

In the late 60s/early 70s, my cousin was in a band. Well, every teenage boy in the early 70’s was in a band. I used to linger around his garage on Saturday mornings to listen to his band play. I liked their sound, I liked the music they were playing. It wasn’t until later I realized that “Born on the Bayou” wasn’t this awesome song that my cousin wrote (as he told me), but belonged to the same guys who sang “Proud Mary”, a song my mother was pretty fond of. So I borrowed her album, listened to it and immediately realized just how crappy my cousin’s band was.

I have a thing about getting stuck on first tracks. I listened to “Born on the Bayou” about forty times. I got lost in it. Something about Fogerty’s voice made me picture him as this straggly haired guy with holes in his jeans and some kind of scary knowledge in his eyes. The fuzziness of the sound, the low guitar that was sludgy and bluesy; there was such a depth to this song that was missing from my cousin’s simple cover version.

For a while, I really believed all of CCR were from New Orleans. I was quite surprised later on to hear they were from California.

The rest of the album was great, especially the slow burn of “Graveyard Train” and the drawl of “Penthouse Pauper.” It made a CCR fan of out of me for years to come. I don’t know what happened in the ensuing years that made me forget the awesomeness of this band, but I’m glad to rediscover this album and, in a way, rediscover the band.

Billy Joel – Turnstiles

Liking Billy Joel was almost a prerequisite in high school. Our school, after all, was in the town Joel grew up in. We hung out at the village green made famous on a latter album. We were living in Billy Joel’s world.

Truth is, I liked Joel. Later, after The Stranger came out and songs like” Only the Good Die Young” became overplayed anthems for Catholic school girls and after Brenda and Eddie become symbols of Long Island, I lost whatever taste I had for his music. Or maybe his music just outgrew me. But no matter how far I strayed from Joel, no matter how much I make fun of him now or how much disdain I have for the overreaching pop of Glass Houses or the emptiness of The Bridge or the pretentiousness of River of Dreams, I always come back to this album to remember why I really loved his music once upon a time.

Turnstiles is what being a singer songwriter is all about it. It’s not about some melodramatic guy with a guitar or piano singing self conscious songs about love and loss. It’s about making poetry out of life. It’s about a guy with a flair for words and a talent for making music putting those things together to create something that grasps your heart and makes joy within your soul, even when the words are melancholy. The joy comes in the completeness of the words and music together, in a connection that seems almost spiritual in its beauty.

“Summer, Highland Falls” is the essence of all that; it’s Whitman poetry with modern musings set to a pretty tune. The rest of the album is just as good. “Miami: 2017″, “James”, “Angry Young Man” and even “New York State of Mind”, played out as it is, still makes me smile and remember all the reasons I love living here even when I hate it. “I Loved These Days” will still make me do an impromptu karaoke when it comes on.

I forgot until now how much I adore this album and how much I adored Billy Joel once upon a time. It makes me forget how “Scenes From an Italian Restaurant” cause me to cringe, in a way only someone who spent a lot of time at the village green in Hicksville, Long Island can know.

Eagles of Death Metal – Death by Sexy

Death by Sexy a decadent, sleazy, campy, hip-shaking good time. It’s like a Friday night in a small town bar, where the women are wearing tight jeans and loose morals and pitchers of beer are half price. The guys have mullets and wear denim jackets with the sleeves cut off and have regrettable tattoos. There’s a wild time ahead and there will be dancing on the tables, beer bottles will be broken, pool cues will be used as weapons, hearts will be broken, there will be fogged up car windows in the parking lot.

There’s so much going on in this album, despite the fact that there’s not much going on. Musically, it’s simple, 70’s garage rock. Lyrically, it’s sexual innuendos, humor and total camp. Together, those things make one hell of a party album. This is the “Napoleon Dynamite” of records; it’s not supposed to be ironic, it’s not supposed to have a lot of meaning, you’re just supposed to enjoy it for what it is, without straining your brain to figure out if there’s a statement being made.There’s no statement here except get up and dance. If the music makes you vaguely uncomfortable, you’re putting too much thought into it.

Death by Sexy is not something people are going to put on an “essential albums to own” list, but it’s definitely on the “essential albums to party to”  or “essential albums to listen to while trying to stay happy while sitting in traffic” list.

Queens of the Stone Age – Rated R

I go through phases with QOTSA albums; lately I’ve been so fixated on Songs for the Deaf that I let this one go unlistened to for far too long. There are very few albums that can do for me what Rated R does. Listening from start to finish (and why don’t I do this more often?), it takes me to places that mind altering substances used to. It’s strange, it’s trippy, it’s a meandering ride through a funhouse tunnel, filled with twists and turns and sights and sounds that make you wish the ride would never end. Everything is unexpected; one minute you’re traveling at the speed of light and then suddenly you’re slowing down, you get a chance to collect your thoughts and breath before the ride whips up to speed again. There’s everything on this ride – highs and lows, love and pain, hallucinations and a mean reality.

There’s so much going on here that the album left my head spinning the first time I listened to it. The musical influences are so myriad – punk, metal, jazz, pop, psychedelic – that you have to completely open your mind in order to listen to and appreciate everything within. “Better Living Through Chemistry” is trippy fuzziness. “Auto Pilot” is melodic and soothing. “Tension Head” and “Quick and to the Pointless” are metal influenced punk. There are very few bands who could take so many sounds, put them on one album and make it all sound seamless. Queens of the Stone Age are masters at that. They can go from a singable pop number like “Lost Art of Keeping a Secret” to the strange funk of “Leg of Lamb” and it all just flows together like it was meant to be.

Rated R is a long, strange trip. While QOTSA are so often referred to as Stoner Rock, the beautiful thing about them and this album in particular is that you don’t need to be high to enjoy it; the music IS the drug.

Marilyn Manson – Portrait of an American Family

Once you get past all the goth affectations and serial killer chic and the “let’s be shocking for the sake of being shocking” posturing, Marilyn Manson offers some quality entertainment. Sure, all that make up and fire and brimstone devil worship kitsch is entertainment in and of itself, but there’s music in there somewhere. Alas, the kiddies loved the make up and loved the posturing and certainly loved the shock effect of telling their mothers that Marilyn Manson was their anti-christ and they were bowing at his altar. Me, I was already in my 30s when this album came out and my pentagram drawing days were long gone. I wasn’t old enough to think Manson was some kind of freak show who must be stopped (and I hope I’ll never be that kind of old), but I was old enough to know marketing gimmicks when I saw them. He’s a smart man, that Mr. Manson. He also makes some pretty damn good music.

Portrait hooked me right away with the off kilter creepiness of “Prelude” and then suckered me in with “Cake and Sodomy”. Seriously, how could you not love a song that starts out “I am the god of fuck”? Maybe I was thirtysomething, but I guess there was – and always will be – this part of me that is all fourteen year old kid who still loves a good combination of anger, offensiveness and heavy metal. Once you embrace that part of yourself, all it takes is a listen to Lunchbox to make you wish you were out on that playground again, back when those kids were chasing you down and god damn if it wouldn’t have felt good to walk right up to them and say “Next motherfucker’s gonna get my metal!” That’s raw power right there. You don’t need goofy stage names and scary costumes to make that any better than it already is, but that’s just me. Retroactive anger and playground revenge fantasies work well enough on their own in my mind, especially when they’re packaged with killer riffs. When you can rock and shock at the same time, I’ll be quite more forgiving of the schlock.

Portrait is not quite as polished as its followup, Antichrist Superstar, but I think that’s what I love most about it; it’s all jagged edges that scrape across that place where you store your fourteen year old self and sometimes it’s good to rip that place open and let it breathe.

Nomeansno – Why Do They Call Me Mr. Happy?

This band is the best musical thing to ever come out of Canada. They are the best band you have never listened to (unless you’ve listened to them).

There’s so much going on with this album. There’s heavy doses of funky jazz and funky doses of heavy metal. There’s weird timing changes, jagged rhythms and lyrics that seemed to have been penned by someone who has traveled through Dante’s circles of hell while on acid.

I’m not going to lie; this is some weird shit. It’s an acquired taste. This is not an album to listen to casually in the car or while doing some other work. Maybe later on, after you’ve studied it and buried yourself in it and picked up every single nuance within. But your first couple of listens? Devote yourself to it. Just you and this album. In the dark. With headphones. Turn off the rest of your life and submerge yourself in the music and words. You need to become one with this. And here’s the thing about this album: you either get it or you don’t. There’s no in between. Either your mind completely rejects it or your soul clings to every note.

If you don’t have the time nor inclination to listen to the whole album, just listen to one song: “The River”.  Rob Wright’s voice – think Danzig without the theatrics – layered over pounding, relentless drums and a driving rhythm packs enough emotion as is, but when you listen to the lyrics – really, really listen – every note seems stronger, every word amplified, every beat louder. This song reaches inside you and pulls out everything in your heart and soul. Love, anger, sadness, desperation, beauty, fear, it’s all there.  Like the entire album, the song is tragically beautiful.

Taking Back Sunday – Tell All Your Friends

I could sit here and defend myself for loving this album, maybe tell you about their deep lyrics, or just worm my way out of this one with the excuse that it’s my daughter’s album and I figured since I’m driving her car, I might as well bring out one of the albums she introduced me to.. Truth is, I like it. I have emo in my soul, what can I tell you. It’s from all those years spent listening to Depeche Mode and wearing black. That stuff never leaves you. There’s always a “woe is me” tear waiting to be shed. Always a poem in your past that never leaves, like words scrawled in the margin of a math notebook “my heart has been turned black as a night without the moon. you have torn my soul from body and i shall never feel anything again. i cry tears that are black as tar. woe. woe is me. woe, i say. i hate you and i want you to die.” Wait, is that I want you to die or me? I get so confused. Maybe I was goth, not emo.

I still have four more days to drive the Peace Mobile before we go to Florida this weekend to help the daughter escape from her internship at Disney World. I have to remember to take my CDs out and put the one she was listening to back in the CD player. Which was a bizarre mix of reggae and house music. Is there even a word for that genre? Maybe I should leave the MTX CD in there and hope for the best when she listens to it.  Maybe some day she’ll write a column about how her mother turned her on to some great music.