What's that? Music's too loud. NP

[ellaguru]

Mostly I am irritated because his lyrics seem to be there just to sabotage the song's potential popularity. It's like he's not really trying to be funny, he's just trying to make sure that the radio-listening audience don't like him, as though popularity were a crime against art or something.

I mean, when Robyn Hitchcock screws a great pop ditty out of radio play by writing lyrics about eggs hatching under my skin, I think that's because he's a weird guy. But when Zappa screws a great pop ditty out of radio play by writing about how it hurts when he pees, I think that's because he is afraid that my mom would like the song otherwise, and God forbid that somebody's mom might like it. That's what I find irritating.

And it's not really that irritating. I just sometimes want to shake him and ask "why, Frank? Why? You coulda bin a contendah!"

[ellaguru]

Yeah, I mean partly that's what I'm getting at (responding to Andrew). His lyrics sound like they are only there to alienate the people who "don't care enough about the music to get past them", like they're a wall set up to protect his music from the masses.

And mostly his lyrics suggest a pretty low opinion of those masses.

However, he was also a pretty frickin' amazing composer.

[Andrew_TSKS]

oh man, that was a lot of what the article was saying! the whole idea of it was that he put stupid lyrics to his songs on purpose to try to alienate everyone who he thought of as too stupid to "get" what he was trying to do, which apparently was most people. and then he'd do all those jazzy instrumental albums and etc. and the guy who wrote the article was saying that he basically did that to try and make everyone, even and perhaps especially his fans, feel stupid for not being able to follow him up whatever stylistic blind alley he felt like dabbling in at the moment. and the writer said that he was dabbling, never producing anything that could really compete with the best of whatever genre he was experimenting in, that he wasn't serious about the experimentation, just about making himself feel like he was better than the general music-listening public.

basically the point of the article was that frank zappa's entire musical career was based around his own fervent belief that he was smarter, more open-minded, and had better taste than everyone else in the entire world. or something like that. like i said, i think i'm probably making a hash of it. the guy who wrote it had obviously studied zappa's career in detail, and i've never been interested enough to do so.

[Babar]

i get what you're saying, he without a doubt thought of himself as the smartest guy in the world. Sleeping in a Jar has awesome lyrics.

[Maaik]

Zappa's Apostrophe album was one of like six albums I heard constantly as a kid going on long car trips with my dad.  I thought "Yellow Snow" was funny because he was talking about eating pee, but I do agree that it's a pretty dumb tactic to use as an aloof defense mechanism. 

I've never pursued an interest in the rest of his catalog--his stuff and the similarly opaque, difficult-for-its-own-sake Captain Beefheart never grabbed me as anything worth pursuing.  Frankly, I don't give a shit how well you play your instrument if all you're doing is jerking off and trying to make me feel stupid for not "getting it."

[Andrew_TSKS]

i like the early beefheart stuff, but i've never been able to get anything from "trout mask replica" on either. so you're not alone there.

i've given up on trying to get zappa, though. i may still make an effort in future with beefheart.

[Babar]

Beefheart is fucking aces. love the guy. i think trout mask replica is brilliant, i'm sure ellaguru would agree with me. the debut safe as milk and his last three albums are also really good, haven't heard the rest but so far he hasn't let me down. people always say when trying to get into captain beefheart don't go for trout mask first, well that's what i did and i loved it. safe is milk is probably more accessible, but when your talking about beefheart, accessible isn't really the right word anyway. i would also like to add that i really dig zappa's guitar playing. man, that second-to-last song on joe's garage, it's killer.

[ellaguru]

Those last three Beefheart albums - Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller), Doc at the Radar Station and Ice Cream For Crow are all really really great. And pretty listenable, too. I mean, Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller) is totally on my short list.

The incomprehensible morass that is Trout Mask Replica turns a lot of people off the guy, which is really too bad, because his 1979-1982 output is so spectacular, and most people never bother to get that far.

[Babar]

wait, so Ella Guru isn't your favorite Beefheart song?

[ellaguru]

Hey, I like Trout Mask Replica just fine. But it is a crazy album and I can totally understand somebody hating it. In any case, "Ella Guru" is a far better song to get one's handle from than, say, "Harry Irene". Although "The Human Totem Pole" kinda has a ring to it.

[Babar]

ok, it's not like Babar is my favorite cartoon character

[jebreject]

Aesop Rock's remix of "Lovecraft in Brooklyn" by the Mountain Goats

followed by:



Melvins - Ozma/Gluey Porch Treatments

[citrus]

Aesop Rock's remix of "Lovecraft in Brooklyn" by the Mountain Goats

whuuuuuuuuuuuut

[Andrew_TSKS]

oh shit, i was NOT expecting the aesop verse at the end! nice!

[DanielBurns11]

oh shit, i was NOT expecting the aesop verse at the end! nice!

Me neither! I hope these tMG/Aesop collaborations do not end anytime soon.

[Killdozersnakeboy]

Hubble Bubble - Come With Us
One of those bands whose name has been floating around for years but I've never heard. I think this was released around '79 - '80. Pretty great stuff. Mixture of 70's glam, power pop and punk which pretty much sums up most stuff I'm digging at the moment.

[Killdozersnakeboy]

Clockcleaner - Divine Hammer
http://www.sendspace.com/file/9t56xm

[alistarr*]

i have two frank zappa albums and i like them both. one is hot rats which has no words but for the one song sung by the beefheart dude and the other is freak out. it has lyrics but i didn't think they were particularly much sillier than some of like bob dylan or the beatles' lyrics. maybe i am just cooler than you guys though.

i'm listening to immortal all day in homage to GI's rant about tourists in the "(m)et al" thread. i'll probably get bored at some point though, and i just saw jeb's picture of ozma up there which is doing its best to disctract me.

[difficult]

NP: Tomokawa, Shibuya Apia Document (live stuff 1993-5)

I just sorted out a very cheap CD player, since (a) the actual speakers I now have serve partially to remind me how bad MP3s coming from a laptop w a lousy sound card sound next to my records and (b) the poor wee laptop has so many issues with doing anything, I've kinda decided to not use it as a CD player as well.
So I went on a train trip out to the suburbs to collect a $20 cd player I got on trademe (NZ-only equiv of Ebay - Ebay didnt work here because trademe does so well), which was fun, and came home and hooked it up, it sounds nice so I'm playing CDs to hear how they sound... but its 3 in the morning, and I'm trying to play relatively quiet music... and Tomokawa just isn't quiet or settling at all, and the dynamics of the CD are pretty wide... So I keep worrying about the volume, but it sounds so nice too...
And playing things is keeping me cheerfully awake too, and even encouraging me to post silly things on last plane -  I never post this much in one night!

[difficult]

James Brown; Let a Man come in and Do the Popcorn
... which is by far the best title for a "special" dance song. From the excellent Land of a Thousand Dances Soul & Funk Edition... Which means I'm now onto Eddie Bo, Hook and Sling, which's also ridiculously cool.

Goes well with morning coffee.

[Andrew_TSKS]

so hey, i'm really liking the new torche album. i posted about it on my blog, so i won't go into too much detail here, but i really think they have finally made the whole subtracting-stonerness/adding-melody thing work, finally. i was really impressed with the way some of the songs more remind me of super-heavy indie/emo stuff than anything stoner/metal at all. i realize this may be the exact thing that puts some fans off of their new stuff, but i for one am really excited about what they might do next.

here's a song from which to check out their new direction:

Torche - Across The Shields

[DanielBurns11]

Giving me goosebumps pumping through my new computer speaker system. One of the greatest EP's of all-time. 'Wolves' is so insanely good, probably one of the best 5-10 song in the history of music.

EDIT: Sorry GI. Jesu - Silver. I just assumed everyone on the board was a superfan, literally.

[Good Intentions]

People, please, give me album titles. I for one am not omnikvlt, so I don't know every record you might listen to by sight alone.

[Good Intentions]

Darkthrone - Transilvanian Hunger

Ever since Andrew mentioned how he hates the drumming because it's the same beat throughout the album, I've paid special attention to it, and you know what, the drumming is excellent. Dude isn't Hellhammer or Frost, of course, but he does the job very well, and this is the best drumming on any Darkthrone album I've heard. It is broadly the same beat used over the whole album, but throughout there are these small variations throughout that really bring it alive, like the different use of the high-hat at the end of "Graven Takeheimens Saler" or the occasional off-beat in "Transilvanian Hunger". Since the album consists of a series of songs, each built around a single driving riff supplemented by small, careful changes like an evil genius fine-tuning the steering of a missile as it inevitably brings nuclear winter to an entire world, this type of drumming is perfect for the album.

[davy]

that's just the type of post i needed to provide a little push towards listening to this album with fresh ears.