1001 Albums part 3

Before resuming my 1001 albums series, I’d like to add a few rules to all my subsequent posts. I said earlier that I pick albums by a random generator. I will still do that, but if the random generator points me to an album by an artist who also has an earlier uncommented-on album in the list, then I’d listen to and write about the earlier album (e.g. if it points to The Beatles “Revolver”, then I’d have to start with “With the Beatles…”). It’s just so much easier to talk about musicians’ discography in chronological order. Musicians excepted from this rule are Radiohead, Pavement, and Steely Dan, since I’ve already written about their later albums.

Furthermore, because life just likes to throw all kinds of burden to me, I wouldn’t be able to write about 4 or 5 albums weekly, so I’ll just write any number of selections at my own pace.

8. The Mama’s and the Papa’s - If You Can Believe Your Eyes & Ears

Are you kidding me?! Ugh. Sounds like some of The Beatles’ earlier songs, except kitschier. Music for barbershops. Next!

9. Radiohead – The Bends

Music for college dorms.

But in all seriousness this is one of the better Radiohead albums. The Bends is the one in which their songs are most easily remembered without sounding dumbed-down. It’s not as experimental as OK Computer, but see, I don’t consider that as a bad thing especially after being bombarded by three Radiohead albums this entire month. For whatever cockeyed logic, the random generator I’m using always leads me to Radiohead albums, and I may have grown weary of them right now. I’m still miffed by the boring Amnesiac (the previous one I heard), but yeah, The Bends is pretty good.

10. The Clash – The Clash

Now this is more like it. The Clash album that I heard was the UK edition; the US edition replaced some of the UK’s songs, and then altered the order of those retained. I haven’t read 1001 albums… write-up on The Clash, so I’ve yet to verify if this is the album it referred to. Changes will be made if I find out that it isn’t.

With all those pointless info out of the way, I have to say that this album rocks quite hard. The songs epitomize the punk: standing up to the system that treats people as insignificant nobodies. Joe Strummer, who sounds like a guy singing after shouting at a megaphone the whole day, may have a raspy voice of a very limited range, but it fits the riotous spirit of the album perfectly. It gets somewhat repetitive towards the end, though, so here’s hoping London Calling does better than this.

Random Insults

New age music is like spa minus the massage and the happy ending.

So there’s this guy from Yahoo! Answers who said Jonas Brothers is the Led Zeppelin of this generation. My only say on the issue is that to be scared of what’s happening to this generations’ taste in music, you don’t even have to play Jonas Brothers’ songs backwards.

Women get more leeway to be stuck up than us, men, do. If we keep talking about ourselves, we’re called “poor listeners and full of ourselves”; if they keep talking about themselves, they’re called “vain and confident”. What I’m trying to say is, Kobe is full of himself, while Lebron is vain and confident.

(Wearisome of Michael Jackson tributes) …bandwagon-mourners.

(Reacting to the news that a new TMNT reboot movie is on the works and it’ll be another origin tale of the characters involved) Yep, we don’t have enough origin movies. One day when the world has spent all its natural resources, analysts will say, “you know, we could’ve averted our crisis had we made more origin movies.”

Radiohead is “the greatest living band” because they’ve put everyone else to sleep.

One girl I know thinks she’s a beauty queen. That’s almost true, since she’s a beauty equine.

Gibberish

Oh God, I just picked myself off the floor from laughing at the funniest pseudo-English singing since “Ken Lee”. The hilarious part of all these is that unlike “Ken Lee”, heard here are professional musicians doing renditions of English songs. In this case, it’s a Japanese rock band Triceratops singing Stevie Wonder’s popular tunes.

Wait, I have to explain. I don’t usually waste my time in youtube rummaging for videos of Japanese struggling to speak English, and today was not an exception either. Initially, I was looking for Stevie Wonder’s concert videos, but youtube had more videos of people covering his songs than those of himself singing them.

The fruitless search led me to Triceratops’ rendition of “You Are the Sunshine of My Life”:

So that was still tame in comparison to “Ken Lee”. Besides the “unorthodox” introduction where the vocalist exclaimed that he’s singing something by Stevie Wonder from the album “Tokingu Book”, and besides the funny “I’ll find myself drowing in my own tears” line, the words matched the lyrics from the original, despite the weird pronunciation. But then they went on ahead and performed “Superstition” and “Overjoyed” live, and, well, you just got to hear them.

Oh and before I post those videos, I’ll copy-paste the lyrics for referential purposes.

Superstition

Very superstitious, writings on the wall,
Very superstitious, ladders bout to fall,
Thirteen month old baby, broke the lookin glass
Seven years of bad luck, the good things in your past.

When you believe in things that you dont understand,
Then you suffer,
Superstition aint the way

Very superstitious, wash your face and hands,
Rid me of the problem, do all that you can,
Keep me in a daydream, keep me goin strong,
You dont wanna save me, sad is my song.

When you believe in things that you dont understand,
Then you suffer,
Superstition aint the way, yeh, yeh.

Very superstitious, nothin more to say,
Very superstitious, the devils on his way,
Thirteen month old baby, broke the lookin glass,
Seven years of bad luck, good things in your past

When you believe in things that you dont understand,
Then you suffer,
Superstition aint the way, no, no, no

Notable mistakes: “Very superstition”, “When you believe in things that you don’t wanna stand”, “Thirteen may old baby”, “Seven years of Hoe Baaay…”

It becomes even worse with Overjoyed.

Overjoyed

Over time, Ive building my castle of love
Just for two, though you never knew you were my reason
Ive gone much too far for you now to say
That Ive got to throw my castle away

Over dreams, I have picked out a perfect come true
Though you never knew it was of you Ive been dreaming
The sandman has come from too far away
For you to say come back some other day

And though you dont believe that they do
They do come true
For did my dreams
Come true when I looked at you
And maybe too, if you would believe
You too might be
Overjoyed, over loved, over me

Over hearts, I have painfully turned every stone
Just to find, I had found what Ive searched to discover
Ive come much too far for me now to find
The love that Ive sought can never be mine

And though you dont believe that they do
They do come true
For did my dreams
Come true when I looked at you
And maybe too, if you would believe
You too might be
Overjoyed, over loved, over me

And though the odds say improbable
What do they know
For in romance
All true love needs is a chance
And maybe with a chance you will find
You too like i
Overjoyed, over loved, over you, over you

Notable mistakes: You don’t want to get me started, do you?! “oBARjoyed, I have built in by jassle of love”, “and though you didn’t live in my streets”, “I’ve come much too far before not to have find I got too strong to stone out of race”, “And maybe too, if you rise to speak!”

1001 Albums Part 2

(read part 1 here)

So three weeks has passed since I last written an update here. Weird things have happened: Jacko died, Fawcett died, a lot of people in Xinjiang died, and the weather in the Philippines is horrible. I had an hour or two added to my usual travel time due to flooding. And I still can’t stand Transformers 2. Wait, the last part wasn’t weird at all.

Anyway, I don’t want to risk reneging on another blog series that I once said I would constantly be doing, so today I’m going to continue my multi-part 1001 Albums post. Let’s begin.

5. Alice in Chains – Dirt

Grunge bands were the rage back in the 90s. They would fade to make way for emo, screamo, and nu-metal, all drawing inspirations from the angst of grunge bands, if amplifying the whininess by 100 degrees. While not particularly my genre of choice, I often end up inadvertently liking the songs played by grunge bands. Alice in Chains is no exception, and its lead vocalist Layne Staley greatly contributes to my enjoyment with Dirt.

But here’s a warning that I realize should be obvious from seeing the cover: there is not a single joyous moment here. Every song is consistently bleak, and a lot of them convey that whoever wrote the lyrics is struggling with drug addiction in the most fatalist manner imaginable. The first verse in the track Sickman says “What the hell am I?/ Thousand eyes, a fly/ Lucky then I’d be/ In one day deceased.” It was, of course, written by Layne Staley, who would overdose in heroin and die in year 2002, 10 years after Dirt’s release.

So yeah, I am very much in the same company with those who liked this album, but I will not advocate heroin-shooting.

6. Pavement – Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain

Anyone who thinks that indie rock usually consists of the lo-fi recording, the witty (and sometimes twee) lyrics, and the high-pitched male vocalist, wouldn’t be very far off the mark in describing Pavement’s style of music. If there’s anything distinct with them, though, it’s that the singings are brief to the point that they feel more like interludes to the instrumentals and solos, instead of the other way around. Not an album to miss for those who are into indie rock music, and even those not into it may find something to like here.

7. Radiohead – Amnesiac

In the first entry of my 1001 albums series I randomly picked a Radiohead album, and while I don’t exactly claim to be their fan, I got to admit that my admiration for them grew after listening to OK Computer. With it I also found that their signature “multi-layer” sound is something that listeners more accustomed to melodic hooks may find disconcerting.

Amnesiac, then, will be even more challenging for those listeners, but honestly I think Radiohead has gone too far here. Taking more liberties with electronica, Amnesiac (and, from what I read, predecessor Kid A) is the bands’ another departure from their established sound. Some people say Amnesiac is more “computerized”, which, while true, is merely a way to put it. I would say that Amnesiac is tuneless to the point of pointlessness.

Look, I have contempt for computer trickery being done in musicians’ voices. Thom Yorke can sing, so I don’t understand why he feels the need to make himself sound like he’s behind megaphones a lot of the time (and he may have even Autotune’d. I’m not sure). The music is still overly morose and filled with lyrics as vague as they are pretentious, making the whole ordeal resemble reading academic papers, which, while illuminating, will only make you wish that the authors of these stuff aren’t taking themselves so seriously. Like maybe Thom Yorke should watch Transformers and write a sing about Patriotic Androids.