Showing posts with label Los Lobos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Los Lobos. Show all posts

Saturday, February 1, 2020

2019: Who Doesn't Like Leftovers?

I don’t know about you but we (well, I) just stopped eating the Christmas leftovers a week or so ago. It may cause me to grow a third ear but that'll just help me keep up with all this music.

The following are all the records I accumulated during 2019 that I hadn’t yet mentioned - usually, because I had very little to say about them, or they took a while to sink in. 

Months or years from now I’ll put some of them on and have a blast, but for now, most of them fall into the pleasant/fun-but-not-quite-exhilarating category. In other words, life on a pretty good day.

Let’s go in ascending order of excellent-ness.

This is a pretty good record, but a huge letdown from 2010’s W H O K I L L. This one is similarly weird and almost as inventive, and if I'd gotten it first it would sound just fine.
B+



Mr.s Jaybee looks at me weird when I get records like this. No dear, I’m not creeping on the young women. Besides, said young women are usually one third my age, and Ms. Jepsen is merely one half.
Re the actual music, I am in awe of its almost pathological catchiness. Between I really really really really really like you and give me love, give me love, give me love, give me love, give me love, give me love, give me love there’s really no doubting where she stands on um, interpersonal questions. I almost want the young lady to take a rest midway through the album (which she does at cut 5). But then again, like I said she’s much younger than me.
B+




Recognize that name? You should. He’s worked with Randy Newman, Little Feat, Brian Wilson, JoAnna Newsome, Harry Nilsson and a huge list of others. This is his very first album
It’s oddly Americana-ish for a psychedelic time and too weird for immediate enjoyment. I suspect it’s a grower but mostly for those odd occasions when you’re feeling completely alienated from the modern world. And who could blame you?
 B+

These guys just impress the hell out of me. There’s a real fuck you attitude to this one. I mean, how many good records do they have to make to have you sit up and notice??

The guitar really stings on this one. They’re way past La Bamba, artiness and white acceptance.  Here the just rock.
B+




 

Angry punk music, great dynamics, and a singer with a big deep voice. It’s closer to mid-tempo rather than the breakneck speed punk is more famous for. The main advantage of this is you can tell exactly what they’re mad about.
B+

Same old LCDSS but unlike The Sound of Silver, this one is very consistent. It doesn’t have anything undeniably great like "All My Friends" but I like the consistency of this one.
B+

This is less cerebral than TV on the Radio. More impassioned, too. The vocals are simply overpowering. This is a weird mix of gospel, hard rock/punk and a few other things I can't name. It’s not an easy listen. By the time it’s over you feel like you’ve worked out. But every time I put it on I rank it higher and higher.
B+
REM: Unplugged Completely (1995) Bootleg
I’d been looking for something like this for quite some time. They had their MTV set before I had cable and so I only heard bits of it here and there. 
This pulls all of that set together with some other acoustic performances right around their commercial peak.
As one who loves Out of Time, this one brings similar joys.
There are a few versions of this, that encompass their entire career. This one’s from 1991 or so and sticks to that early middle period that may consider the band’s peak.
A-




Who (in my demographic) would know what to expect from this critically hailed record by a fiery and sometimes problematic young lady. So what’s here?
A great voice. Excellent tunes. And no dumb crowd-pleaser songs. (Well, ok, I guess “Sex With Me” counts.) But I actively enjoy each of these songs. And they are songs, not just tracks with a voice over it.
This young lady may have some questionable choices in her life but she has made none of them here.
A-
 

This one falls right smack in the middle of my current comfort zone: catchy pop from female-led bands.
This one is more methodically catchy, which I guess has its shortcomings. But while she might also really really really etc like you, she has a little more to say about it than just that.
A-


And so now that I've gotten all that off my chest I look back on the last year and find that my focus on catching up on the decade has caused me to ignore records actually released in 2019 altogether.



Jesus H. Christ, I've got work to do.



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Sunday, October 10, 2010

Jaybeephrenia: A Rock Opera

Subtitled "or, How to Not Buy CDs", sub-subtitled "the tragedy resulting from the conflict between one man's inner music lover and his even further-inner, inner cheapskate".

Or something like that.



Prelude/Intro/Medley/Overture:

Let me set the scene for you. It’s eighty degrees out. It’s sunny and there’s a slight breeze. In other words, it’s a beautiful late summer’s day - the kind of day that makes you feel happy to be alive.

So where was I? Playing basketball in the park? Fishing? Family picnic? Not quite.


Exposition:

I was out for a leisurely walk, fantasizing about punching slow-walking tourists in the back of the head, when I happened upon my favorite record store. A complete coincidence, I swear. But there I was, and well, it just wouldn’t have been right for me to not go in. They owners might think I was mad at them.

Even I knew that it would be crazy to spend my usual average two hours in there on such a nice day, so I negotiated a settlement with myself, limiting him to the bargain rack. And in this store it’s a pretty good one – it’s got CDs for $5.99, so although young downloaders may scoff, old geezer habits die hard, and I find it’s always worth a “quick” look. And of course, I wasn’t expecting to find anything…


Complication:

Alas, there’s the Grateful Dead’s first album. I was very pleased with "Anthem of the Sun" – their second album – which I finally got around to earlier this year. By now, I’d gotten pretty much all the worthwhile studio albums, except this one, so I thought that maybe this was the time. First I had to check if the Dead filled up the CD version of the original forty minute album with there usual additional 30 minutes of extras, like they had done with the other reissues? Why, yes! Put that one in the basket!

Then I see Los Lobos’s “Colossal Head”, one of their lesser known but still highly regarded records. I loved their first, admired their third, and liked their offshoot Latin Playboys. That settles it. Two.

Then there was “Safe as Milk” the first album by Captain Beefheart (and his Magic Band, of course). It’s been about thirty years since I got anything from the Captain, and over forty since this record came out. And it takes about that long to recover, so it was about time for another plunge. I'm sure it's what I’d call a summer record - light, melodic and cheerful, something that's enjoyable to offset the oppressive heat, or to complement today’s gorgeous weather. And so what if all the other records I've gotten by him are heavy, jarring and really, really strange? I'm sure this one's fine. After all, no one was doing anything weird in the sixties, right? That makes three!

And what’s this? Jeff Buckley’s “Grace” – one of those records that I keep hearing great things about, but I just don’t believe them yet. But at $5.99, maybe it's time. Four!


Crisis:

But four is a bit much for what was supposed to be a quick drop in. I should really put something back.

But then I look up and see the sign that says “2 for $10” and think, oh my. Or a variation thereof. Now, getting four is practically my duty. Otherwise I will have wasted the time of the security guard who checked my bag. It would all have been for nothing.

But my conscience says do the drill  anyway. So I begin my world famous winnowing process.


Climax:

Now all four CDs pass manage to get through the official rules without too much damage. But there turn out to be a number of rules I didn’t even know I had (a good thing – otherwise I’d have even more CDs and probably at least one less kid) and they kick in about now.

And the first thing I notice is that Jeff Buckley does a version of Leonard Cohen's “Hallelujah" - a song that I love. But it’s just so damned intense that I'm now doubtful. I’d been feeling kind of down at the time, probably because of my 53rd birthday, that I realize that I’m just not up for it. Later, Jeff, when I’ve rested. Three.

Then I think, do I really need another Los Lobos album? I know it will be good, but how good? Enough to take up that precious and dwindling space on my CD shelf? Space that should be reserved for a world masterpiece like Handel's Messiah, or the Ramones third album? For now, I have to say no. Two.

Then there’s the Dead. It breaks my rule number three and there’s an unofficial semi-rule that says if you bought something by a band this year already, if you buy another, you’ll be sorry. It’s not really borne out by the facts – the music is usually just as good, but if you’re me, you’ll feel bad anyway. (But if you’re like me, you feel bad about the whole Garden of Eden thing.) So back you go, Dead. See you in 2011. One

And then there’s Captain Beefheart. Well, if I'm not quite up for Jeff Buckley, I'm nowhere near ready for the Captain. So it goes back in the rack, and then there were none.

That's right. I put 'em all back. AND WALKED OUT OF THE STORE! Aren’t you proud of me?


Denoument/Epilogue/Coda, or Other Fancy Term for Later:

In a completely unrelated incident, I got two CDs for my birthday.

And, well, there were those two I ordered from the record club the week before.

Hey, I practically had to!  My son Mikey wanted one, and, well, they were on sale and that would have been a missed opportunity, and …


To be Continued….For the Rest of My Freaking Life
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