(April 2019) I have completed episode 210 of my “opus project.” This edition: fIREHOSE. I finished Minutemen, so I naturally started fIREHOSE next as it featured its two surviving members. This is what I should have been listening to in the 1980s instead of whatever I was listening to. Early fIREHOSE is much better than later fIREHOSE. Mike Watt is an incredible bass player.
Favorite album: If’n
Favorite song: Honey, Please
Compared to expectations: ↓
(March 2019) I have completed episode 205 of my “opus project.” This edition: GREEN DAY. Based on their radio play, I had dismissed them as safe-space punk for the masses. But with this review, I was selling them far short. The rhythm section is *chef’s kiss* and the guitars are hooky and loud. Early on, the over-production was unsuited to the genre, but as they grew the songwriting caught up and broadened into power pop and guitar rock. Billy Joe’s affected vocals, once irritating and dominating, got better integrated. Green Day is a model for how a band matures and adds dynamism without letting go of their foundational tone.
Favorite album: Insomniac
Favorite song: American Idiot
Favorite power ballad: Redundant
Favorite rock opera: 21st Century Breakdown (better than American Idiot)
Special sauce: Tré Cool
Compared to expectations: ⇑
(February 2019) I have completed episode 203 of my “opus project.” This edition: WEEZER. I just listened to 12 Weezer albums and the only songs I remember are Buddy Holly and the Sweater Song. The fun of their debut album – the right sound with the right attitude at the right moment – serves to accentuate the banality of the following releases, with the most sterile lyrics I’ve heard since I did Foreigner.
Favorite album: Weezer (the Blue Album)
Favorite song: Undone — The Sweater Song
Compared to expectations: ↓
(February 2019) I have completed episode 202 of my “opus project.” This edition: LOVE. The distinctive style of this late 60s band is hard to label — “thespian hippy” is my best attempt. After their masterpiece, Forever Changes, their sound became more conventional for the era. Also noted (for the time) for the racial diversity of their lineup.
Favorite album: Forever Changes
Favorite song: Seven and Seven Is
Compared to expectations: same
(January 2019) I have completed episode 200 of my “opus project.” This edition: THE MAMAS AND THE PAPAS. Groovy, hippy, warm rays of sunshine to bring a smile to your face. And, oh, those harmonies! Their run was brief, but their role in popularizing folk rock was huge.
Favorite album: If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears
Favorite song: Got a Feelin’
Special sauce: Mama Cass
Compared to expectations: same
(January 2019) I have completed episode 198 of my “opus project.” This edition: GANG OF FOUR. The first two albums are great post-punk material. But then they adopt 80s synths and I lose interest, and my interest finds no reason to return on the several unremarkable albums after that.
Favorite album: Entertainment!
Favorite song: Ether
Compared to expectations: ↓
(January 2019) I have completed episode 197 of my “opus project.” This edition: THE BEAU BRUMMELS. Before there was the San Francisco Sound, there was The Beau Brummels. This relatively unknown Bay Area outfit not only earned the distinction as perhaps the first American band to mimic the music of the British Invasion, they also introduced folk rock before the Byrds popularized it.
Favorite album: Triangle
Favorite song: Laugh Laugh
Compared to expectations: same
(December 2018) I have completed episode 193 of my “opus project.” This edition: THE MONKEES. Laugh if you must, but they put out some enduringly good music. While the Pre-Fab Four’s famous songs were written by others, their best albums came once they gained more creative control, earning a place among the pantheon of essential acts of the late ’60s golden age. The first two reunion albums are trash, but their 2016 album is quite good* and, for a Christmas album, so is 2018’s Christmas Party.
Favorite album: The Birds, The Bees & the Monkees
Favorite song: Pleasant Valley Sunday
Favorite song written by a Monkee: While I Cry
Best reunion album: Good Times! (2016)
Special sauce Mike Nesmith
Compared to expectations: same
* good, in large part because it was produced by Adam Schlesinger, with tracks from Fountains of Wayne bandmates Brian Young and Jody Porter
(November 2018) I have completed episode 190 of my “opus project.” This edition: FRANZ FERDINAND. The angular rock of their first album spent a lot of time in my CD player in the mid-aughts. Stuff after that, where they trended toward this neo-disco thing, not so much.
Favourite album: Frank Ferdinand
Favourite song: Take Me Out
Best song that’s also a spot-on homage to a Kinks song: Eleanor Put Your Boots On
Compared to expectations: same
(November 2018) I have completed episode 189 of my “opus project.” This edition: ELVIS COSTELLO. I’ve always enjoyed his popular songs, but I never collected his albums. Arguably the most gifted living songwriter not named McCartney, Dylan or Simon, he is also incredibly prolific (a new release every 16 months over four decades) and diverse (rock, lounge, jazz, country, classical). He best work is in rock, and I find his crooner/lounge pop recordings to be almost unlistenable: ill-suited to his voice and soured by his tendency to melodic wandering.
Favourite album: Armed Forces
Favourite song: Veronica
Compared to expectations: ↓
Worst album: Kojak Variety
Favourite late-period album: Momofuku
Best collaboration: Wise Up Ghost (with The Roots)
Opus Project 