Category: Episodes

539. Meat Puppets

~ ernopepper ~ 1 Comment

(December 2023) Episode 539 is MEAT PUPPETS. In a slightly alternate universe, I would have been into the Meat Puppets from the beginning. But maybe because I didn’t hang around the college radio station enough, I never experienced that entry point that many of my peers did (same goes for me with lots of SST and other bands that followed a similar career arc, like Flaming Lips and Butthole Surfers). Coming at this retroactively, I’m not sure how to approach them. Is it through their first punk offering, their odd prog-guitar/slacker-vocal thing from the late 80s, their Nirvana-aided 15 minutes of MTV fame, their later conventional rock and country rock? Don’t get me wrong, there is lots of good music in here. And I appreciate that they evolved and didn’t rely on retreads.  But I can’t figure out what makes their music special enough to make me want to return to it. Maybe my hipper peers can inform me.

Favorite album: Meat Puppets II (1984)

Favorite song: Lake of Fire

Best mid-period album: Too High To Die (1994)

Best late-period album: Lillipop (2011)

Compared to expectations: ↓

Recommendation: Kinda depends on your preference, given their style evolution (see above). But I’d recommend the first two raw-sounding albums.

538. The Stranglers

~ ernopepper ~ 2 Comments

(December 2023) Episode 538 is THE STRANGLERS. I have this odd fascination with the late 1970s UK musical moment, when vocalists chose to assert rather than deemphasize their British accents; Johnny Rotten’s God Save the Queen being a prime example. The Stranglers were among the burst of groups that emerged from the punk or punk-adjacent scene featuring angular and bass-driven beats and think accents: Wire, The Jam, Buzzcocks, The Clash, Gang of Four, the Damned, etc. Lovely stuff. The Stranglers’ first three albums are classics of this style, but they also stood apart, neither political nor in-your-face. Their sound evolved over the years, not chasing fads but also not plowing new ground. They’ve stayed active until the present, and while the recordings are successively less interesting, they’re not bad. “Golden Brown” is both their most popular and most unusual song with its neo-baroque pop sound.

Favourite album: No More Heroes

Favourite song: (Get A) Grip (On Yourself)

Compared to expectations: ↑

Recommendation: Listen to the first three albums.

537. Elton John

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(December 2023) Episode 537 is ELTON JOHN. In third grade, the quiz on the playground was “Elton or Elvis.” I answered Elton, of course, because I wasn’t a loser. This anecdote tells how absolutely huge he was in the mid-1970s, to be put on par with the King. I like Elton John, but never collected his albums or sought out his music; it was always on the radio. His popular songs remain enjoyable classics. But there’s a reason it took 537 episodes for me to get to this megastar. I anticipated I would be bored by most everything after Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. And so I was. It seems sacrilegious to say this, but much of his stuff is crap. I’m not drawn to piano troubadour acts, so it’s not a surprise my favorite song of his is guitar-led. Even so, Sir Elton’s music, showmanship and longevity well earn him the title of Elder Statesman of Popular Music.

Note on favorite album choice: Elton’s first recordings in 1968 were psychedelic/baroque pop songs in fashion in the wake of Sgt. Peppers, which explains the copy-cat album title, Regimental Sgt. Zippo. Producers felt this wasn’t the right sound for him and they were shelved in favor of the piano songman approach of his first issued album, Empty Sky, and onward. This early collection wasn’t released until 2021. I list it as my favorite because I happen to love that particular kind of late 60s music. But that album is not representative of the rest of his work and far from his best album.

Favourite album: Regimental Sgt. Zippo

Best album: Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

Favourite song: Saturday’s Alright for Fighting

Favourite ballad: Love Song

Worst album (among many) Duets

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: It suffice to have a greatest hits album of his big hits from the early 1970s.

536. John Williams

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(December 2023) Episode 536 is JOHN WILLIAMS. I am extremely confident in saying that more people have heard the music of John Williams than any other composer since music was invented. Think about it. He wrote the scores to some of the most popular movies of all time, with global reach (Star Wars trilogies, Indiana Jones films, E.T. Jaws, some Jurassic Parks and Harry Potters). Plus, he wrote the themes to NBC’s Nightly News, The Today Show, Meet the Press and Sunday Night Football, heard by millions of Americans every week. Add to that the themes for Olympics and major civic events. Williams got his start playing jazz piano and made some recordings before getting into the theme music business on TV and then later movies. In addition to conducting the Boston Pops, he penned several of his own orchestral pieces that are quite good and more musically ambitious than his scores for general audiences. This was a very long episode: he has 366 soundtrack albums to his name, not to mention all the rest. His amazing prolificacy remains strong after seven decades, composing the score to the recent Indiana Jones film at age 90.

Favorite movie score: Star Wars: A New Hope

Favorite movie theme: Jurassic Park

Favorite concert theme: Olympic Fanfare and Theme

Favorite orchestral piece: Duo Concertante for Violin and Viola

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: You already know the movie themes, so I recommend the orchestral works, especially the Duo Concertante, Violin Concerto No. 2 and Three Pieces for Solo Cello.

535. Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich

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(December 2023) Episode 535 of the “opus project” is DAVE DEE, DOZY, BEAKY, MICK & TICH, the biggest mouthful of a band name I’ve reviewed since King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard (episode 255). They emerged within the British Invasion of the mid-1960s, although they didn’t make a mark in the USA much beyond an obscure reference in a Quentin Taratino film (extra credit if you can name the film). Their sound is on the lighter pop side of the Invasion-era sound (closer to Herman’s Hermits than the Rolling Stones) but it features some nice hooks. Like so many contemporaries, they kept with the fad by recording an obligatory psychedelic-ish album (Fresh Ear), which is my favorite of their recordings but not representative of their sound.

Favourite album: Fresh Ear (as D,B,M&T)

Favourite song: She Was A Raver

Favorite song (of their usual sound): Hold Tight

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: Not really necessary unless you like deep tracks of the British Invasion

534. Acid Bath

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(November 2023) Episode 534 is ACID BATH. Continuing my tour of sludge metal bands from the southern USA, we come to Acid Bath from Houma, Louisiana. They were active in the 1990s and didn’t record much before breaking up due to the death of a band member. But what they did is quite good, and it led to a kind of cult following. It’s an unusual (refreshing?) mix of styles for the genre, primarily the low, slow sludge/doom sound, but also speed metal screamers, acoustic heavy mellow, and grooves resembling hard grunge contemporaries Alice in Chains and Soundgarden.

Favorite album: When the Kite String Pops

Favorite song: Dr. Seuss Is Dead

Compared to expectations: ↑

Recommendation: If you’re not repelled by heavy metal, give them a listen; the variety makes it more accessible than similarly labeled bands.

533. NCT 127

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(November 2023) Episode 533 is NCT 127. A month ago I listened to Taylor Swift to show my daughter that my musical curiosity was broad enough to include her favorite artist. The problem is I have two daughters. To avoid familial strife, I realized I had better do the other daughter’s favorite artist. NCT 127 is a K-pop group. It is a boy band. K-pop (out of South Korea) spans music, style, and culture and has a huge worldwide following. The acts are tied to corporations, and everything is hyper-marketed and choreographed (the dance moves, the appearances, the images). As my daughter has told me, NCT 127 is a subunit of a larger group, NCT. As for the music, it is about as far from music I enjoy as music can be. But I appreciate that my daughter is deeply into this fan culture. (I have my own fan culture: see my Star Trek page.)

Favorite album: none

Favorite song: none (but if you want to know what they sound like, here is their top-played song on Spotify, Fact Check)

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: My daughter really likes it.

532. Phil Ochs

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(November 2023) Episode 532 is PHIL OCHS, the best folk musician of the 1960s you’ve probably never heard of. He got his start and made his initial recordings with protest songs in the mode of Seeger and Guthrie – direct, unambiguous, political. Songs like “I Ain’t Marching Any More,” “Here’s to the State of Mississippi” and “Draft Dodger Rag” brought him attention and scorn. In later recordings, Ochs widened his style into folk rock and even some country before personal demons ended his career and then his life. Fair or not, he is unavoidably compared to Dylan. Ochs sang with more clarity and a better voice, but by comparison he lacks Dylan’s poetic abstractions and lyrical magic.

Favorite album: Live at Newport

Favorite song: Remember Me

Compared to expectations: ↑

Recommendation: The protest songs do come off as period pieces, but sadly many seem relevant today (see: Remember Me). He is worth checking out for his melodicism.

531. Frank Sinatra

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(November 2023) Episode 531 is FRANK SINATRA. There’s little I could say about the Chairman of the Board that hasn’t been said by Bruno Kirby in Spinal Tap. If there were a Mt. Rushmore of American Voices, he’d be on it. Sinatra’s music generally falls in two categories: crooning ballads with syrupy strings and swingin’ tunes with boppin’ horns. I enjoy neither. In fact, slogging my way through his big discography, at times I hated it. Undeniably, though, Sinatra’s music evokes an era and a style, and that’s worth something. But it’s not for me. He also gets demerits in my book for not writing his music.

Favorite album: Come Fly With Me

Favorite song: Brazil

Favorite sing-along song: Strangers in the Night

Worst album of covers: Some Nice Things I’ve Missed

Worst cover song (among many): Mrs. Robinson

Worst album art: Only the Lonely

Compared to expectations: ↓

Recommendation: I can’t see why you would listen to this other than as a soundtrack for a Mad Men costume party.

530. Butthole Surfers

~ ernopepper ~ 1 Comment

(October 2023) Episode 530 is the BUTTHOLE SURFERS. Based on long-ago exposure to their first EP, I thought they were a punk band. That was true in that moment, but over their career they were a lot else, and that else is hard to characterize. It’s a mishmash of rock, noise, metal, psychedelic, experimentalism, tape collages. The attitude was irreverent and inflammatory, designed to shock and offend. I had no idea until now that the 90s alt-rock hit “Pepper” was by the same dudes who gave us “The Shah Sleeps in Lee Harvey’s Grave.” Butthole Surfers is a group that earns its cult following. I love bizarre stuff but on first listen I’m not sure it’s my kind of bizarre. Ask me after a few more listens, I may change my mind.

Favorite album: Locust Abortion Technician

Favorite EP: Butthole Surfers

Favorite song: P.S.Y.

Favorite freak-out covers: Hurdy Gurdy Man and American Woman

Compared to expectations: ↓

Recommendation: Per above, I’ll need more to pass judgment. but I got enough to say that they deserve their cult following.