Lots of hardcore coming across my desk here at the MoFo. I suppose I should be happy I’m getting the heavy shit I complain about never receiving, rather than the pop-punk with screams they call hardcore nowadays.
Yeah… well… Kill Your Idols’ new release isn’t really all that spectacular, either. It’s the other side of the coin from the samey-sounding screamo acts. Of course, it has a great Pist cover (“Still Pist”). Plus, the last track, “Looking Back,” grabbed me by the ears and finally made me pay some real attention to From Companionship to Competition. “Still Pist” is pretty true to the original, and “Looking Back” has the sort of hardcore hook I haven’t experienced since Kid Dynamite broke up.
Those two songs, however, were the last two tracks. The preceeding thirteen weren’t enough to drag my attention away from whatever I was doing the times I listened to the disc. And that’s a damn shame, too. Seriously- when I listen to cds for review, I play them at work, while I’m making dinner, while I’m reading, in my headphones… I give every album a nice, well-rounded test.
With Kill Your Idols, they couldn’t grab me until the very end. Unfortunately, by that point, it was too little, too late.
CD Review: 7 Seconds – “Take It Back, Take It On, Take It Over”
by Jester on @ 7:39 am
Ah, 7 Seconds. You know- they’ve been around for 25 years. Yep… 25 years. That’s the same age as me. They started at roughly the same time as I did. No lie. And you want to know another little bit of information about me and 7 Seconds?
Every album since The Crew has bored me to death.
This one is no exception. It’s not that the album sucks, it’s just that Kevin Seconds and Steve Youth seem to have a formula that worked so well for them back in ’84 that they just can’t seem to let it go. Which is a shame, because their live album, Scream Real Loud is a fantastic piece of work that shows that even though a punk band’s been together for 20 years plus, they can still rock out with the youngest of them.
However, just because you can rock like you did when you were 20 doesn’t necessarily mean you have to follow the same exact song structure you did when you were 20. If the band could branch out a little… just a little, they’d have something would would maintain my attention past the duration of the disc.
Take It Back, Take It On, Take It Over isn’t a bad album, it just isn’t anything 7 Seconds hasn’t done over and over again. They do it well, it just doesn’t grab me the same way it did the first time.
There is a house in New Orleans
by Jester on January 4, 2005 @ 4:12 pm
Back from my work-imposed abstinence from writing here. The holidays are over, my new computer is networked, and we’re gonna start off with…
150 Covers of “House of the Rising Son”.
Why the hell not? It’ll keep you monkeys occupied while I figure out what I’m gonna do for the next few weeks. I know I promised an mp3 a day, Monday through Friday starting the beginning of the year, but I didn’t get this machine set up online until this afternoon, so you all will just have to wait until I get this backlog of cd reviews (don’t worry, it’s only three) banged out.
Look for the official start of the mp3 blog next Monday. I’m trying to figure out a schedule… like, punk rock Mondays, country/folk/bluegrass Tuesdays, etc. Comment and let me know if you geniuses have any suggestions.
Dirty south and New York junkies
by Jester on December 14, 2004 @ 7:15 pm
When I die, please play the Jim Carroll song, “People Who Died.” But only the version by the Drive By Truckers. That shit will get some drunken motherfuckers breaking up the funeral home, that’s for certain.
Peachtree schnapps and an evening in front of the computer while my fiancee’s at the movies, folks… and that was the best I could do. Enjoy the song.
What’s ahead
by Jester on December 7, 2004 @ 1:09 pm
So, I have a plan for the upcoming year. Beginning January 1, 2005, there will be a small change here. While the music page here at the MoFo will continue to carry all the inane banter you have come to love, loath, despise, and tolerate for the free music linkage, it’s gonna have a little something extra.
Allow me to rephrase- a lot extra.
Basically, starting that day, the music page will be updated daily, Monday through Friday. Each post will have [insert drumroll here] an mp3. That’s right, kiddies, we’re gonna have ourselves an mp3 blog, thanks to to the new hosting deal I got for my website (CHEAP PLUG) from GoDaddy (CHEAP PLUG v.2.0). This means if you like the music I write about, you will be happy. If you hate the music I post about, you will hate me even more, because there will be free music daily, and you won’t want to download a single bit of it.
Of course, if there are any bands you feel deserve attention, e-mail me at skajester [at] yahoo dot com. I’ll see what I can do.
Lollipop Lust Kill reforming
by Jester on @ 12:58 pm
Goth/industrial/metal band Lollipop Lust Kill broke up earlier this year, but the remaining members announced earlier this week thatnew songs are being worked on and rough versions are due out by the end of the year.
Frontman Evvy posted the following regarding the details:
Here’s the deal… Pill and I have been writing, and we plan on releasing a new LLK album. We are starting the whole LLK concept over from scratch.. Just the two of us writing what we want, without any other opinions clouding our artistic vision.
And so far things are working out very well. We will be producing/recording the album ourselves (as we did with ‘She Was Told’), so it will definately be raw… But it will be new LLK.
Ignore the High Fidelity reference
by Jester on December 3, 2004 @ 7:23 pm
So, it’s the time of year when every music writer in the country and abroad begins writing about their top albums of the past year. They also attempt to seem like they don’t really care about the list, or that the list was written without having heard a couple albums to which they were really looking forward.
I am no better.
Um, but I’m gonna be nice and not actually put the list here. If you’re so inclined, you can go over to Static Magazine‘s online page and read my top five albums of the year, as well as the top five records you should be ashamed to have bought. If you want to read it, you can. If not, you’re not going to be annoyed by seeing it here.
However, I do have to say that Neko Case‘s latest record, The Tigers Have Spoken is absolutely fantastic, and had I heard it before I wrote that list, it would have easily made the fucker. Goddamn… really, go buy it. Right now. Seriously, you’ll thank me. Go listen to a few songs over at the ANTI- site and see if I’m lying. You can look at sexy pictures of the lovely Ms. Case while you’re there, too.
There’s only one Godfather, and his name’s James Brown
by Jester on November 29, 2004 @ 12:12 pm
Last night, due to the Simpsons being pre-empted by a showing of Ice Age, I chose to watch myself some VH1. Despite the fact that I was really enjoying the re-run of the top 100 one-hit-one-wonders when along came an ad for their Big In ’04 special.
Now, this particular ad forcused on nominee Green Day. I have no problem with Green Day. I bought Dookie way back when and played it until the cassette wore out. My quibbles are not with them. My quibbles lay within VH1’s copy writing department. In the little ad, Green Day are referred to as “the godfathers of punk-pop.” Um, pardon?
Sure, Green Day broke the gates down for bands like Blink-182, Good Charlotte, and countless others. They were the first punk-pop, pop-punk, whatever, to break into the mainstream. I’m not gonna dispute that fact. Godfathers, though? C’mon, please… if we’re gonna talk “godfathers”, we have two contenders for the title.
Number one would be the Buzzcocks. Arguably, they were the first ones to make really poppy, catchy songs with a punk feel. Listen to “Orgasm Addict” or “I Don’t Mind” to get an idea of what I’m talking about. Our second contender, and a more likely candidate, would be the Descendents. I’ve talked about these prototypical SoCal punkers before. Their style of pop-punk is what every act from Green Day to Simple Plan to New Found Glory to those guys playing in the basement next door owe their sound to. Seriously… “Suburban Home” and “I Don’t Wanna Grow Up” sound just as fresh today as they did when they came out.
If any bands are going to be declared godfathers of the pop-punk movement in music, it should be either of these folks. Not a band that has liberally borrowed from both.
Best in ages
by Jester on November 24, 2004 @ 7:50 pm
My list of the top albums of 2004 will be forthcoming in the next few weeks, but I am trying to get as many people to buy the Crimea‘s newest release, Lottery Winners On Acid. The album is a five-song EP, and while it runs about 11 bucks at the local Best Buy, it will be money well spent.
The EP is this glorious mix of the Flaming Lips and the Kinks, and will make you smile like a retard when you hear the title track. Go, buy the damn thing right now. Or, go take a listen to a few tracks over at Double Dragon Music and hear what I’m talking about. As a matter of fact, I’m gonna go listen to that fucker again. Once a day for two weeks, kids. It’s that good.
Milking fame for all it’s worth
by Jester on November 19, 2004 @ 3:45 pm
While on my home from work this afternoon, I heard two bands within ten minutes of each other that got me to thinking. I am talking of the New Amsterdams and A Perfect Circle. The two bands, despite the fact that they were being played on the same station, couldn’t have been more dissimilar… or could they?
The reason I ask this question is because while the New Amsterdams are a piano pop band, and A Perfect Circle is a gloomy kinda-metal band, they are both side projects. The New Amsterdams are the side project of Matt Pryor from the Get Up Kids and A Perfect Circle is Maynard from Tool‘s. But the fact that they’re both side projects is not the point I’m going for.
See, both side projects are from the frontmen to other bands. This leads to a dilemma- recognizability. The lead singer of a band has a distinctive voice. You hear his or her voice, and you’re immediately going to think that it’s a performance by their “main” band. It takes a special sort of side project to really make the side project seem worthwhile. If the side band’s musical stylings are remarkably similar to the main band’s, there’s going to be the inevitable critical backlash that the side project (Y) sounds sounds like leftovers from the main band (X).
Such is the X vs. Y dilemma that occurs with Pryor and Maynard. To the average music fan (and even to me, who listens to dozens of new cds each month), the differences between Pryor’s X and Y and Maynard’s X and Y are not readily apparent. To me, both bands from both performers sound pretty much the same. It takes some thorough listening to detect what end up being pretty subtle (and minor) differences.
In the case of the New Amsterdams vs. the Get Up Kids, the differences were much more readily apparent on the first New Amsterdams’ record, Never You Mind. That release was primarily Pryor and a guitar, in a very Dashboard Confessional sort of way. After that, the records became nearly indistinguishable from Get Up Kids albums, and the Get Up Kids’ On A Wire was so acoustic, it may as well have been a New Amsterdams record.
With A Perfect Circle and Tool, it’s pretty much clear-cut, at least to me. A Perfect Circle sounds like Tool, but with the chugging guitars replaced by more melodic guitar lines. It essentially sounds like all the slow parts to Tool’s songs. And I’d like to think that the guys in Tool would never have allowed the recently released cover songs atrocity Emotive, in which Maynard and company suck all the life and joy out of songs by artists such as John Lennon, Black Flag, and others. That is neither here nor there, however.
The thing is, side projects can work. Phil Anselmo from Pantera formed Superjoint Ritual, which was also a metal band. However, Superjoint has made a couple albums that sounded nothing like the sludgy, Lynyrd Skynyrd by way of Black Sabbath sound of Pantera. As a matter of fact, Superjoint sounds like the fastest, loudest, evilest speed metal I’ve heard in years. There’s no confusing one for the other. Sadly, that’s one of the few exceptions.