Category: Episodes

533. NCT 127

~ ernopepper ~ Leave a comment

(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

~ ernopepper ~ Leave a comment

(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

~ ernopepper ~ Leave a comment

(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.

529. Taylor Swift

~ ernopepper ~ Leave a comment

(October 2023) Episode 529 of the “opus project” is TAYLOR SWIFT. I’m not saying I did an episode on T.S. to prove to my daughter that I can listen to more than just obscure late-60s psychedelic rock bands. But I’m not not saying that too. Whether it’s the early cotton-candy country pop or the later autotuned-to-hell hyper-productions, this is not music I enjoy. However, I did tolerate the two stripped-down, decapitalized albums from 2020, folklore and evermore. The best thing is that she writes her own songs, which separates her from most other mega-stars.

Favorite album: folklore

Favorite song (bouncy): Shake It Off

Favorite song (dark): Vigilante Shit

Best moment: When I heard the lyric “Or does she mouth, ‘Fuck you forever’?” from mad woman on folklore as “Or does she mouth-fuck you forever?”

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: 274 million Instagram and 100 million Spotify followers can’t be wrong, right?

528. Buzzov•en

~ ernopepper ~ Leave a comment

(October 2023) Episode 528 is BUZZOV•EN, one of the bands from the American South (they’re from North Carolina) that created the sludge metal genre in the 1990s. It combines super-low guitar riffs as in doom and stoner metal with punk-style vocals featuring vicious and violent lyrics (so I’m told, I can’t understand them), along with irreverent dialogue clips appended to the songs. Apparently their live shows were chaotic and violent. I like it but it’s not for everyone.

Favorite album: Sore

Favorite song: Mainline

Compared to expectations: ↑

Recommendation: Try them out if you like the loud low grind, although it can be uneven and the rage can make it unsettling.

527. Blue Öyster Cult

~ ernopepper ~ Leave a comment

(October 2023) Episode 527 is BLUE ÖYSTER CULT. I was not into BÖC back in the day other than hearing their songs on FM radio. About a dozen years ago I tried out a couple albums but couldn’t understand their raison d’être and set them aside. But after seeing Blue Öyster Cult listed as an influence for several hard rock and heavy metal groups I’ve covered, I reviewed them for this project. I still don’t get it. Their music doesn’t easily fit in any category but also never develops its own identity. I suppose lacking an identity can be its own identity. I gave them my best shot but as a result I was bored.

Favorite album: Secret Treaties

Favorite song: Godzilla

Compared to expectations: ↓

Recommendation: Pass, but I’m open to arguments from fans in case I’m missing something.

526. The Youngbloods

~ ernopepper ~ Leave a comment

Episode 526 is THE YOUNGBLOODS. You’ll recognize them from the hippie anthem “Get Together.” They are labeled a folk-rock band, staying on the lighter side of the counterculture-era musical spectrum, akin to the Lovin’ Spoonful, the Association and country-ish Byrds. They recorded five albums from 1967-1972. The music is fine, but to me it never coalesces into a musical identity.

Favorite album: The Youngbloods

Favorite song: Get Together

Compared to expectations: ↓

Recommendation: It’s OK to take a pass.

525. Cactus

~ ernopepper ~ Leave a comment

(September 2023) Episode 525 is CACTUS, a blues-and boogie-rock band from the early 70s that began as a deferred collaboration with Jeff Beck and comprised members of Vanilla Fudge and the Amboy Dukes. While boogie-rock bores me quickly, I took an interest in Cactus because their sound is heavy, accentuated by the singer’s gravelly vocals. But this is not ground-breaking material. They regrouped in later decades for three albums of forgettable bar band music.

Favorite album: Cactus

Favorite song: Let Me Swim

Compared to expectations: ↓

Recommendation: For those exploring deep cuts only.

524. Poison Idea

~ ernopepper ~ Leave a comment

(September 2023) Episode 524 is POISON IDEA. I am not a punk connoisseur, but to me this is solid punk content. Birthed in Portland, OR, in the early 1980s, their first two EPs (Pick Your King, Record Collectors Are Pretentious Assholes) deliver concise hardcore fury, and the following two LPs deliver in that space between punk and metal. Amidst personnel changes they continued recording through the 1990s and after. Their last two albums (2006 and 2015) are some of the best stay-true-to-form that I have heard an aging punk band recreate.

Favorite album: War All the Time

Favorite song: Feel the Darkness

Compared to expectations: ↑

Recommendation: I recommend if you’re punk-curious, but if you’re into it you already know them.