Top 25 Albums #18

It was way back in April when I last blogged about one of my favorite albums, so I am long overdue.

Here's #18:


Yes, it's Pink Floyd's The Wall.

From the grandiose opening of "In the Flesh?" and the first vocal snarl:

"So ya'
thought ya'
might like to
go to the show?

To feel the warm thrill of confusion,
that space cadet glow...."

and the droning plane crashing into the next track of "The Thin Ice".

There's really nothing like this record. Call it grandiose. Call it overwrought. Call it what you want. But I listen to this and feel like I'm 15 again.

I say 15 despite the fact that the album came out when I was 12. However, I was belatedly celebrating the last throes of the disco insurgency, and then a two and a half year consumption by Beatlemania. In 1982, the film version of The Wall was released, and I saw it later, I'm guessing in the Spring of 1983, perhaps even 1984. I mean, like, it was rated R, and all that.



I'm sure I was seduced by "Another Brick in the Wall, Part II" and the chorus of schoolchildren chanting "We don't need no education...". Who could not be a teenager and resist the battle cry "HEY! TEACHERS!! Leave those kids alone!!!"?

Of course I was not a product of the British educational system. And I surely didn't get the entire movie when I first plunked down $3.00 at the Physical Science Auditorium up at UH-Manoa to see the film vision of a mammoth double-disc sonic extravaganza.

So I am writing this with a lot of hindsight.

In August 1983, I was in Israel, on a six-week tour called The Leadership Training Course, and our last night in Haifa, we were dragged to a concert. Of course we grumbled. It was an Israeli band performing a free concert in one of the parks, dedicated to all the eighteen-year-olds entering the military. And as one would imagine, they totally rocked. So much so that I blew some scarce shekels on their cassette. The band was called Benzene and all their songs were in Hebrew. It was catchy pop-rock and the crowd loved it. However, the defining moment arrived at the end of the show when they performed a spot-on cover of "Another Brick in the Wall, Part II." I remember telling one of my friends later that it might as well have been Pink Floyd playing, it sounded that good.

Therefore, the memory of that event prompts me to conclude that I had a greater than basic familiarity with The Wall by August 1983. Perhaps I had the album by then, but surely I would have repeatedly heard the song and others from the album on Honolulu's sole rock station, 98 Rock.

Where was I? Oh yeah, 1983 was a pivotal year for me. A turning point for so many reasons, with not enough time or blogspots to explain it all. So, let's just say that's when I first heard the album, first saw the movie, first realized that an LP could transcend so many complicated emotions and moods.

Aside from its success as a "concept" album, there are some remarkably great individual tracks speckled across all four sides of the record (as they said in the old days). "Comfortably Numb" - #314 on "Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time," and often cited as having one of the greatest guitar solos of all time, "Hey You" was the B-side. Although not as commercial, "Young Lust," "Goodbye Blue Sky," "Run Like Hell" and "Mother," are all memorable standout tracks as well.

Read Kurt Loder's review of The Wall for Rolling Stone here.

Listen: "Hey You" (Live) (mp3)

Listen: "Comfortably Numb" (Live) (mp3)

Well, I realized that this is not as complete as it could be. Oh well. If you don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding! How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?!

Fiends Links Re-activated

Last May, I linked some songs from the long out-of-print Fiends albums We've Come for Your Beer and Gynecology.

The links went away in November '06 when EZ Archive deleted them. Great news, though, they've been re-activated with my new web host, so head on over to the past here and listen again!

Never mind, here's the original post in its entirety:

RE-POST: TOP 25 ALBUMS, #25

This is the first installment of my favorite 25 albums of all time. Like my top 20 books list, no artist can be represented more than once. Also, keep in mind, I am making no claim that these albums are the best, just that they are my favorite. They had, in some way or another, a distinct impact on me and I consider them to be essential recordings.

In these posts, I will be hosting mp3 files, so readers of BillyBlog can listen to essential tracks from each album. These tracks will be available for a short time only, and if you like what you hear, you are encouraged to buy the artist's music. Links will be provided to facilitate that option.

So without further ado, here is the first in the series:

A long time ago, in a galaxy far away.....

Or, in Honolulu in the early 1980's...

there was a fine establishment, a specialty store called The Cavern, named after the nightclub the Beatles cut their teeth in, in Liverpool.

The Cavern was...a heavy metal store. Specializing exclusively in heavy metal records, pins, t-shirts, and other hard rock paraphernalia. It was owned by Norm Dale, father of one of my best friends, Chris, who now fronts, along with his brother Mark on bass, the band Rurik.

But this isn't about the Cavern, per se, or Chris, or Rurik, it's about the Fiends.

Needless to say, I spent many hours of my adolescence hanging out with headbangers and metalheads at the Cavern. Norm also managed a metal band called "Hawaii," whose guitarist Marty Friedman, joined Dave Mustaine's band Megadeth in the mid Nineties. Dio guitarist Vivian Campbell once came in before a gig, and there was a vast array of young teens who hung there and listened to the latest releases on the Cavern's stereo.

Sometimes we acted quite silly (even sillier in retrospect) and one of the more memorable rituals was the playing of an album called We've Come For Your Beer by Fiends.


For, my dear readers, that album started off with a blistering powerhouse track that begins with laughter and the sound of a flushing toilet, and then an incredible bass riff. And then the lyrics: "Yeeeeee-ha! This is a song about a riot, about a riot, about a riot, about a riot in the men's room!" The remainder of the song is the repetition of "Riot in the Men's Room!" with screaming guitars. The song ends after 1 minute and 19 seconds with the sound of breaking glass.

This is what entertained us teens back in 1984.

The fact of the matter is that the other 11 songs on the album were also quite good. With songs entitled "Sexual Explosion #19," "Die Bob Die," "John Belushi," "You Make Me Sick," and "No More Drugs," it had to be good. The record became a part of my collection, as did Fiends' follow-up LP, Gynecology released in 1986.

Both LP's are out of print and unavailable. Alas, in the late '80s and early '90s, I'm not sure when, I parted with these precious albums. I reclaimed Gynecology several years ago off of eBay, but We've Come For Your Beer took a little longer. I finally nabbed one off of eBay last Fall.

I then gave the LP's to a co-worker who took his time and gave me digital copies earlier this year. I was a very happy camper.

Sadly, I learned that, in a very weird twist, Sean Gwin, the bassist, died October 13, 2005, just 23 days after Scott Morrow, the lead singer and lead guitarist, passed away from complications of a bone infection.

Do not be confused with the band "The Fiends" 1998 album Gravedigger. It's not the same band.

Anyway: listen and enjoy! Fiends' We've Come for Your Beer is my #25 album, but I'm piggybacking Gynecology onto it.

Fiends - We've Come For Your Beer - Riot in the Men's Room.m4a

Fiends - We've Come For Your Beer - Nitro Party.m4a

Fiends - We've Come For Your Beer - Sexual Explosion #19.m4a

Fiends - We've Come For Your Beer - John Belushi.m4a

Fiends - Gynecology- This Week Sucked.m4a

Fiends - Gynecology- Hold Me While I'm Naked.m4a

All MP3s provided on this site are hosted via official sites or with the artist/label's permission. On the extremely rare occasion when this isn't the case, the track will only be available for a very limited time. If you are the owner of a sound file and would like it removed, please email me directly. If you like what you hear, PLEASE follow the links provided to buy the records and support the music.

Top 25 Albums #19

It's been a while since I talked about a specific album in my top 25 countdown, so here we are with #19:


I'm imagining I didn't "discover" Black Sabbath until at least ten years after it was released in 1971, when I was just 3 years old.

I must have heard the music on the radio before I ever sat down and listened to the record, on cassette, most likely. "War Pigs," "Paranoid," and "Iron Man," all on side 1, arguably the heaviest side of music ever released, traipsed around FM radio, and continue to do so.

"Paranoid," the title track, has come to represent frontman Ozzy Osbourne's persona.


The famous beginning lyrics:

Finished with my woman 'cause
she couldn't help me with my mind
people think I'm insane
because I am frowning all the time

speak to a sense of alienation and frustration that saturates the Osbourne oeuvre, which teenage angst totally feeds from.

And "War Pigs" is the ultimate anti-war anthem, with a dark, menacing side.



Astonishingly, it seems perfectly normal that the first rhyming couplet of the song,
"Generals gathered in their masses/just like witches at black masses" matches the same word "masses," but with two distinctly dark, sinister meanings.

I was always smitten by "Iron Man". And that opening, heavy riff that has been mocked and mimicked to the point of cultural significance. Just go up to anyone and say "Duh-duh-DA-NA-NAH! Da-na-na-na-na-na-NAH-nah-nuh" and they generally know you're trying to imitate the unique throbbing of Tony Iommi's heavy riffs. The song "Iron Man" was voted number 1 on the TV music channel VH1's 40 Greatest Metal Songs.

Whereas most may say that three songs make this album, the other songs on the record "Planet Caravan," "Rat Salad," "Electric Funeral," "Hand of Doom" and "Fairies Wear Boots." Of these other "lesser," yet still-influential tunes, "Fairies Wear Boots" is my favorite of the bunch. It's interesting to see the song's origins now (see hyperlink above).

Here are some extras. Video of "Electric Funeral":



And check out this footage from British tv in 1970, performing "Paranoid":



And I'll leave you with "Fairies Wear Boots":

Top 25 Albums #20

This post is about my favorite album from the band Queen, but it is not A Night at the Opera, which is considered by many to be their crowning achievement. Instead, I have selected A Day at the Races, the follow-up record that was released the following year, in 1976.


I can't tell you exactly when I heard this record, but it was very early in my music-appreciating career.

I do know that I had very little in my collection when I was given the cassette. If memory serves me right, the tape was a gift from John Lukehart, who was my "Big Brother," courtesy of Big Brothers of Hawai'i.

I became involved with the organization as I was being raised by a single mother in Honolulu, and I only had a consistent daily positive male role model over summers, when I stayed with my father on the Mainland. I don't know what prompted John to give me the tape, and I doubt he would remember. Perhaps I had been caught up in the whole "Bohemian Rhapsody" madness of the mid-seventies. The song hit #9 on the U.S. charts, so I must have heard it.

I do remember though, being entranced by the cover art of the cassette, and studying it thoroughly. As a frame of reference, I was nine when this album was released. It is definitely my first-owned rock album, so I rank it as an influential landmark in my early musical education.

Here's what I think is interesting about this choice, at least for me. There were only two bona fide "hits" on this record. Both singles, "Somebody to Love" and "Tie Your Mother Down", led off each side of the record.















The two songs are classics in and of themselves. I think I was more apt to go for "Tie Your Mother Down," than the love song, because I took it literally and as a nine-to-ten year old boy being raised by a mother, I remember thinking that it was pretty funny.

Of course, I didn't register the lyrics:

Your momma says you don't
And your daddy says you won't
And I'm boilin' up inside
Ain't no way I'm gonna lose out this time

Tie your mother down
Tie your mother down
Lock your daddy out of doors
I don't need him nosing around
Tie your mother down
Tie your mother down
Give me all your love tonight

That was track one, and I was hooked. That opening guitar riff from Brian May was imprinted on my psyche and when I think of Queen, "Tie Your Mother Down" is the first song that comes to mind.

Of the ten tracks on the album, two others drew me in. Both on side 2, "White Man" and "Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy" were standout tracks for me. That is, when I look at the track list, those two jump out at me as ones I remember liking as a kid. "White Man" was a hard-rocking song that bemoaned the fate of Native Americans at the hands of the settlers. "Good Old -Fashioned Lover Boy" is a rollicking song that I just thought was lots of fun.

Listen: "Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy" (mp3) via polaroid > un blog alla radio

The final track on the record is "Teo Torriate (Let Us Cling Together)" and was released as a single in Japan, as a tribute to the band's Japanese following.


There is no disputing that Queen was an influential band for so many people. This album could have been replaced by any other record of the band's had I heard it first. It's safe to say that, as a band, Queen was/is in a league of their own. This record is not Queen's best, but it is my favorite, out of sheer sentimentality.

Watch:

"Somebody to Love":



Performing "You Take My Breath Away," prior to the band recording the song:



"Tie Your Mother Down," the surviving members of Queen at the Freddie Mercury Tribute concert for AIDS Awareness, April 20, 1992, with Joe Elliott (Def Leppard's lead singer) and Slash on the guitar solo:



Queen performing "White Man" live in Houston, in 1977. The video quality is fair, but the audio is amazing:

Top 25 Albums #21

In my slowly-dragged out ongoing series of favorite 25 albums of all time (see the sidebar for #25-22), this next one may raise a few eyebrows.

It falls under the classification of Country music, although the artist in question blends the country genre with folk and rock. Her name is Lucinda Williams and the album, considered to be a masterpiece, is Car Wheels on a Gravel Road.


Rolling Stone's review of the 1988 album is here. The review garnered a high 4 stars out of 5, and when a deluxe version appeared earlier this year, this reviewer upgraded it to 5 stars. That puts it in the same neighborhood as, well, the greatest albums of all time.

I'm not sure how I discovered this record, but I think it was via a famous/infamous 2000 profile of the singer in The New Yorker by Bill Buford.

What I like about this record is that it is not stereotypically country. Nothing against fans of country and western music. It's just not my cup o' tea. Lyrically and musically, this just seems more complicated than what I normally hear in country songs.

And Lucinda Williams has a dark, syrupy voice that sounds like she is singing casually for no one but herself, and it works for me. The songs on Car Wheels... never get old for me and I hear something new in them every time I listen.

The blog Leaky Sparrow recently talked about the remastered disc and linked 3 tunes:

Lucinda Williams - Lake Charles .mp3
Lucinda Williams - Greenville .mp3
Lucinda Williams - Can't Let Go .mp3

One of my favorite tracks on the album is called "Drunken Angel". It's got some great harmonica and phenomenal lyrics:

Sun came up it was another day
And the sun went down you were blown away
Why'd you let go of your guitar
Why'd you ever let it go that far
Drunken Angel
Could've held on to that long smooth neck
Let your hand remember every fret
Fingers touching each shiny string
But you let go of everything
Drunken Angel
Drunken Angel
You're on the other side
Drunken Angel
You're on the other side
Followers would cling to you
Hang around just to meet you
Some threw roses at your feet
And watch you pass out on the street
Drunken Angel
Feed you and pay off all your debts
Kiss your brow taste your sweat
Write about your soul your guts
Criticize you and wish you luck
Drunken Angel
...
Some kind of savior singing the blues
A derelict in your duct tape shoes
Your orphan clothes and your long dark hair
Looking like you didn't care

Drunken Angel
Blood spilled out from the hole in your heart
Over the strings of your guitar
The worn down places in the wood
That once made you feel so good
...
Sun came up it was another day
And the sun went down you were blown away
Why'd you let go of your guitar
Why'd you ever let it go that far
Drunken Angel Drunken Angel

Listen to this great song here (Drunken Angel.mp3), courtesy of in house with jeremy petersen, who has further discussion of the album's reissue.

And lastly, visit Aquarium Drunkard, one of the best music blogs around, for their discussion, and three more tracks, including the title track and a couple of the added bonus tracks from the reissue.

MP3: Lucinda Williams :: Car Wheels On A Gravel Road
MP3: Lucinda Williams :: Changed The Locks (live)
MP3: Lucinda Williams :: Out of Touch (alt version)

Thanks to those blogs for hosting such great music. Please visit and support them by reading them too. For more info, go visit Lucinda on her website here. For an extra bonus, go here and listen to her father, Miller Williams, reading his inaugural poem, "Of History and Hope" at the second Clinton inauguration in 1997.

Top 25 Albums #22

In my sporadic, but ongoing series of favorite albums of all time, I bring you my #22 album, the eponymous one-record phenomenon from a band called Temple of the Dog.


People may not be familiar with the band name, but they have surely heard the most-played song on the album, "Hunger Strike," which catches radio air from time to time.

Temple of the Dog is a supergroup by today's standards, but when the album was recorded, they were not. In fact, everyone on the record was relatively unknown outside of the state of Washington.

A personal digression: in the early Summer of 1992, I had reached the acme of my career in television production, I had attained the role of Production Coordinator on a show called "Arresting Behavior". Three episodes aired. It was a funny show, but television audiences need laugh tracks to tell them when something's funny (generally speaking) and we weren't that type of show. My short gig of glory as a Coordinator ended and I was back to Assistant jobs. It was the beginning of the end.

Anyway, the office receptionist, who I remember as Karen, was part-receptionist, part-secretary to the executive producer, Larry Levin. She was cool, although she scared me a bit in her intensity and rough edge. She had a boombox behind her desk which she listened to regularly. She liked good music.

One day, she asked me, "Do you like Temple of the Dog?" I questioned back "Temple of the What?"

"Dog," she replied. I was, as usual, clueless.

"Well," she resumed, condescendingly, "You like Pearl Jam?" "Sure," I answered. Their debut album, Ten, was released less than a year earlier, and you couldn't throw a rock without hitting a radio playing "Jeremy," or at the very least, hitting someone who would be naming their first boychild "Jeremy."

Karen continued, "And you like Soundgarden?" "Sure," I said. I think I was lying to appear cool. Badmotorfinger had dropped shortly after Ten, and I'm sure I'd heard "Outshined" on the radio, maybe. But in 1991-1992, Pearl Jam's star burned much, much brighter.

"Well, then, you'll love this..." She went on to explain the CD that was Temple of the Dog, which actually appeared five months before Pearl Jam's debut and Soundgarden's third.

And no explanation of Temple of the Dog is adequate without mentioning the band Mother Love Bone. When the lead singer of Mother Love Bone, Andrew Wood, died from a heroin overdose in 1990, band members and friends joined together to make a tribute album of sorts. Now let's throw some names in the mix.

Temple of the Dog was the brainchild of Wood's roommate, Chris Cornell. Yes, the Chris Cornell who fronted Soundgarden and currently, Audioslave. Mother Love Bone members Stone Gossard (guitar) and Jeff Amendt (bass) joined Matt Cameron (drums) from Soundgarden and Mike McCready (Mookie Blaylock, the band that became Pearl Jam). So what we had was Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, for all intents and purposes, making a record together. Oh, and a guy named Eddie Vedder was in town to audition for Mookie Blaylock, and sang some background vocals on a couple tracks, including the record's most commercially successful song, "Hunger Strike".


Not a bad mix of folks. Gossard and Amendt joined McCready to found the early incarnation of Pearl Jam. Cameron joined PJ after Soundgarden disbanded in 1998.

But anyone can tell you a lineup of talent doesn't necessarily mean an auditory homerun (see the 2006 Yankees). Yet, Karen played me the tape. I had my own copy within a week. Phenomenal, and the music still pulses strong today, there really isn't anything similar to it. Cornell gave it his Cornwellian vocal punch, and the music is powerfully pummeling, from the opening bars of "Say Hello 2 Heaven" into the eleven+ minutes of "Reach Down," and then into "Hunger Strike" and the opening lines:

I don't mind stealing bread
from the mouths of decadence
but I can't feed on the powerless
when my cup's already overfilled...

A review by David Fricke in Rolling Stone sums it up nicely:

For "Hunger Strike" and "Reach Down" alone, Temple of the Dog deserves immortality; those songs are proof that the angst that defined Seattle rock in the 1990s was not cheap sentiment, at least in the beginning. And you can't help but love the irony of an album, made in great sadness, kick-starting the last great pop mutiny of the twentieth century.

Take a listen:

"Reach Down" performed by Pearl Jam with Chris Cornell, live (mp3) via my favorite I Am Fuel, You Are Friends

"Hunger Strike" (mp3) via Distance Has the Way


"All Night Thing" and "Call Me a Dog" (html links), Chris Cornell live acoustic, via Sweet Oblivion

"Wooden Jesus" and "All Night Thing" (streaming audio), via Y la Musica?

And some YouTube treats:

First, what's listed as the band's first-ever live performance, at the Off-Ramp Cafe in Seattle, basic grainy club video of a live, "Say Hello 2 Heaven":




Next: Cornell performing "Hunger Strike" with Pearl Jam in 2003 at a benefit in Santa Barbara:



And the music video for the same song:

Top 25 Albums #25

This is the first installment of my favorite 25 albums of all time. Like my top 20 books list, no artist can be represented more than once. Also, keep in mind, I am making no claim that these albums are the best, just that they are my favorite. They had, in some way or another, a distinct impact on me and I consider them to be essential recordings.

In these posts, I will be hosting mp3 files, so readers of BillyBlog can listen to essential tracks from each album. These tracks will be available for a short time only, and if you like what you hear, you are encouraged to buy the artist's music. Links will be provided to facilitate that option.

So without further ado, here is the first in the series:

A long time ago, in a galaxy far away.....

Or, in Honolulu in the early 1980's...

there was a fine establishment, a specialty store called The Cavern, named after the nightclub the Beatles cut their teeth in, in Liverpool.

The Cavern was...a heavy metal store. Specializing exclusively in heavy metal records, pins, t-shirts, and other hard rock paraphernalia. It was owned by Norm Dale, father of one of my best friends, Chris, who now fronts, along with his brother Mark on bass, the band Rurik.

But this isn't about the Cavern, per se, or Chris, or Rurik, it's about the Fiends.

Needless to say, I spent many hours of my adolescence hanging out with headbangers and metalheads at the Cavern. Norm also managed a metal band called "Hawaii," whose guitarist Marty Friedman, joined Dave Mustaine's band Megadeth in the mid Nineties. Dio guitarist Vivian Campbell once came in before a gig, and there was a vast array of young teens who hung there and listened to the latest releases on the Cavern's stereo.

Sometimes we acted quite silly (even sillier in retrospect) and one of the more memorable rituals was the playing of an album called We've Come For Your Beer by Fiends.


For, my dear readers, that album started off with a blistering powerhouse track that begins with laughter and the sound of a flushing toilet, and then an incredible bass riff. And then the lyrics: "Yeeeeee-ha! This is a song about a riot, about a riot, about a riot, about a riot in the men's room!" The remainder of the song is the repetition of "Riot in the Men's Room!" with screaming guitars. The song ends after 1 minute and 19 seconds with the sound of breaking glass.

This is what entertained us teens back in 1984.

The fact of the matter is that the other 11 songs on the album were also quite good. With songs entitled "Sexual Explosion #19," "Die Bob Die," "John Belushi," "You Make Me Sick," and "No More Drugs," it had to be good. The record became a part of my collection, as did Fiends' follow-up LP, Gynecology released in 1986.

Both LP's are out of print and unavailable. Alas, in the late '80s and early '90s, I'm not sure when, I parted with these precious albums. I reclaimed Gynecology several years ago off of eBay, but We've Come For Your Beer took a little longer. I finally nabbed one off of eBay last Fall.

I then gave the LP's to a co-worker who took his time and gave me digital copies earlier this year. I was a very happy camper.

Sadly, I learned that, in a very weird twist, Sean Gwin, the bassist, died October 13, 2005, just 23 days after Scott Morrow, the lead singer and lead guitarist, passed away from complications of a bone infection.

Do not be confused with the band "The Fiends" 1998 album Gravedigger. It's not the same band.

Anyway: listen and enjoy! Fiends' We've Come for Your Beer is my #25 album, but I'm piggybacking Gynecology onto it.

Fiends - We've Come For Your Beer - Riot in the Men's Room.m4a

Fiends - We've Come For Your Beer - Nitro Party.m4a

Fiends - We've Come For Your Beer - Sexual Explosion #19.m4a

Fiends - We've Come For Your Beer - John Belushi.m4a

Fiends - Gynecology- This Week Sucked.m4a

Fiends - Gynecology- Hold Me While I'm Naked.m4a

All MP3s provided on this site are hosted via official sites or with the artist/label's permission. On the extremely rare occasion when this isn't the case, the track will only be available for a very limited time. If you are the owner of a sound file and would like it removed, please email me directly. If you like what you hear, PLEASE follow the links provided to buy the records and support the music.