Music Notes 3.11

Horns

Well, winter fooled me again. A few sunny days and I go and throw out all my warm clothes. “It’ll never be cold again!” I exclaimed, drunk from the warmth--and beer. Short story shorter, the guy living in my alley is a lot warmer these cold nights. Why all this talk of weather in a music column? As I’ve mentioned earlier, my music selection relies heavily on the climate. Freezing equals black metal and hotballs means stoner rock / doom. Within that range there is a little more leeway in regards to my choices, with hard rock / thrash scaling towards the warmer weather and progressive / melodic death towards the colder temperatures. That said, the transitional seasons are kind of a hodgepodge of stylings. Before we look at my selections for the month, I’d like to tell you more about my music collection.



I have a lot of music, most of it bought or borrowed/ripped from friends, and a good deal of it torrented. I understand the illegality of downloading music, but it is my firm belief that I spend more money on music because of downloading than if I didn’t. With my music tastes being somewhat eclectic, it’s hard to find record stores that carry the albums I’m interested in and 30 second clips just isn’t enough to determine whether something is buy worthy or not. On top of that, a big part of me feels that buying music should yield tangible results, i.e. I can hold a physical copy of the music, complete with the artwork and (sometimes) lyrics. That said, when I download an album, it’s like I’m testing it out--like a rental or lease (and according to the record companies, purchasing mp3s is leasing). If I enjoy the music enough, I become a faithful fan of that band and purchase future releases, concert tickets, (not so much anymore) T-shirts, and in cases where I absolutely love an album, I’ll buy it on vinyl. If I don’t like it, I don’t listen to it and I didn’t have to waste money to see if I liked it. In both cases, I wasn’t going to buy either of the songs, but in the first scenario, I’ve spent a good deal of money on the band.

Sniper 3

There’s all that, plus you know, fuck the music industry. (Possible first ‘F’ bomb on the Extreme of Consciousness should tell you how strongly I feel here.) How does a CD cost fifteen bucks? Let’s compare it to DVDs. To put a CD together, you need: a band, a manager, a producer, a manufacturer and a distributor. For a DVD (let’s talk direct to DVD, like Sniper 3) you need: Tom Berenger, the remaining cast of the movie, the writer, the director, the best boy, the composer, the costume designer, the set designer, Sam Jackson, key grip, the rest of the crew, a producer, a manufacturer and a distributor. In my mind, there’s a shitballs lot more man hours that go into getting a movie onto the shelves than music. To compare prices, Sniper 3 probably costs like 4 bucks (actually $6.96) at WalMart, while any CD let’s say AC/DC’s newest effort Black Ice costs $11.88. Now I can’t be sure, but I’d say that there are more people looking to buy the newest AC/DC release than the newest Sniper flick. It seems pretty conclusive to me that CD’s are ridiculously overpriced. If they were a reasonable cost and those corporate fat cats weren’t taking so much of a cut, then I guarantee more people would buy more music. As it stands, poop. Rant over.

Back on task: my music collection. I used to have around 12,500 songs on my computer, now it is just below 11,000. I deleted a whole lot of stuff that I just wasn’t listening to. It was, and still is, rather daunting when deciding what album to put on. I decided that a big portion of my troubles could be ameliorated through proper categorizing of my library. This is where the ‘genre’ tag comes into play. Whenever music is ripped or downloaded to iTunes, a genre is listed along with the other pertinent information. More often than not, this categorization is complete shite on their part. So I decided to spend 8 hours one weekend categorizing my music, while at the same time adding album artwork for every single song and making it easier to sync a broad selection of music on my iPod quickly and efficiently. I broke my music down into the following categories: alt rock / grunge, alt metal, arena rock, black metal, classic rock, comedy, death metal, doom metal, funk, jazz, melodic death metal, metalcore, new wave, nu metal, post rock / metal, power metal, progressive rock, progressive metal, punk, soul / R&B, rock, stoner rock / metal, soundtrack, traditional heavy metal, viking metal, and yacht rock. This is generally how I break down my music, though, as you can imagine, not everything falls nicely into these categories so I had to make some judgement calls. Also, the ‘classic rock’ genre isn’t really a genre as it is a huge repository for all rock and roll that predates my birth and is basically a collection of things you will (and won’t) hear on your local classic rock station.

I’ve named 25 different genres, which is definitely not enough to classify all of the subgenres of metal and rock, but I did my best to keep it (relatively) simple. Because how the hell do you classify Meshuggah? And I want to put Mastodon in multiple categories.

Here’s a breakdown of my music by genre (with examples of a few of my faves for each):
Alt rock / grunge (Soundgarden, Faith No More, Pixies)
Alt metal (Katatonia, Amorphis, Green Carnation, Mastodon {tough call here})
Arena rock (Boston, Bon Jovi, Journey)
Black metal (Agalloch, Enslaved, Emporer)
Classic rock (Van Halen, ZZ Top, Pink Floyd)
Death Metal (Prelude to Ruin, Death, Entombed)
Doom Metal (Ahab, Solitude Aeternus, Candlemass)
Funk (Parliament, Funkadelic)
Jazz (Miles Davis, Mahavishnu Orchestra)
Melodic death metal (In Flames, Insomnium, Dark Tranquility)
Metalcore (Killswitch Engage, Protest the Hero, Shadows Fall)
New wave (Oingo Boingo, Talking Heads)
Nu metal (Nothingface, Mushroomhead, 40 Grit)
Post rock / metal (Pelican, Jesu, The Ocean)
Power Metal (Blind Guardian, Edguy, Kamelot)
Progressive rock (Porcupine Tree, Ayreon, Tool)
Progressive metal (Opeth, Orphaned Land, Meshuggah)
Punk (Black Flag, Descendants, Turbonegro)
Soul / R&B (James Brown, Al Green, Stevie Wonder)
Rock (Queens of the Stone Age, Foo Fighters, Hellacopters)
Stoner rock / metal (Clutch, High on Fire, Baroness)
Traditional heavy metal (Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Iced Earth)
Viking metal (Amon Amarth, Ensiferum, Tyr)
Yacht Rock (Loggins, Hall and Oates, anything smooth)

I was compiling data to examine my listening habits as they relate to play count by genre, but I lost some steam in trying to figure out some functions in excel. Perhaps next month I’ll have some cool charts and graphics to look at. My selections for the month:

Anthrax - Among the Living
Anthrax has always been the littlest of the Big Four, comprised of Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer and Anthrax. Each of these bands has that one album that everyone still talks about. The legendary album. A masterpiece of thrash--A Thrashterpiece. Among the Living is without a doubt a Thashterpiece. It stands shoulder to shoulder with Master of Puppets, Rust in Peace and Reign in Blood as one of the best thrash albums of all time and, at least for me, it surpasses them. But then again, I’ve always been partial to Anthrax. Still, no self-respecting metal head can deny this album. “Caught in a Mosh” may not be the fastest or the heaviest song, but damned if there’s not something about it that just makes you want to bang your head and mosh. Every song here is a classic, but more than that, this album promotes literacy. The title track and “Skeletons in the Closet”, two songs with lyrics inspired by Stephen King stories, piqued my interest in reading The Stand and the excellent novella Apt Pupil. Not just that, but “I am the Law” made me search out some old school Judge Dredd comics. Listening to this album just puts me in a good spot. I think I’ll need to acquire this on vinyl one day.

Fen - The Malediction Fields
Whereas listening to Agalloch conjures up imagery of walking to a deserted cabin in the woods through melting snow, listening to Fen is like being on a boat on the most beautiful lake right after winter but still before spring when the trees are just beginning to show signs of life, only to find that you can not bring your boat to shore because a pack of wolves is watching you from the trees, waiting to get you. This album, like Agalloch, is a soundtrack of the juxtaposition between the beauty of nature and the sheer viciousness of it. I just got turned onto this band a few months back, but I feel by next winter, they could be among my faves. A few more snow days and I’ll find out.

Demons and Wizards - Touched by the Crimson King
Usually when things have as much potential as this album does they tend to suck. Something about the whole not equaling the sum of its parts. What we’ve got here with Demons and Wizards’ second offering is one part Blind Guardian and one part Iced Earth mixed in with generous heaps of literary inspired lyrics and a dash of “Immigrant Song.” On paper, this album looks wonderful. On aether, it sounds even better. Inspiration for the songs were taken from the Dark Tower series, Lord of the Rings and The Wizard of Oz, among others. But I think my favorite track goes to “Down Where I Am,” a very moving song about a father’s emotions upon having a child with Down’s syndrome. Their cover of Led Zepplin’s “Immigrant Song” does the classic justice and is a nice little treat on an altogether stunning album.

In Flames - Colony
In Flames was one of the first bands that helped me crossover from my crappy nu-metal listening preferences to my metalhead days. They’ve remained one of my favorites despite their recent disappointments. In Flames is a band that adheres very well to the Metallica analogy. Both bands’ first four albums are legendary with their fifth showing signs of the impending fall, but still rocking hard nonetheless. Following that analogy, Colony matches up with ...And Justice for All, which I think is fairly fitting. This album shows a band who are at the top of their game and know how to make a monstrous metal record.


Entombed - Morning Star
This album rips. Definitely one of my top death metal albums of all time, though I’ve always considered Entombed to be more of a death n’ roll act than anything. For some reason or another I hadn’t heard this album in a long time, probably because I’m stupid. But as soon as I put it on, the crushing tunes washed over me and put me in a good place. This album is like that crusty old metal shirt turned grey from so many washes--it just fits perfectly. I also love the darkly hilarious lyrics on some of the songs, namely “When It Hits Home.” I won’t tell you which lines are my favorite, you’ll just have to guess for yourself.



Vinyl selection of the month:

Elton John - Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy

Hands down my favorite Elton John album. Every song on here is a winner, and most of them are ones that hardly, if at all, get any radio play. Stand out tracks include “Gotta get a meal ticket” and “Tower of Babel” (which has one of my favorite lyrics of all time with “It’s party time for the guys in the tower of Babel, Sodom meet Gomorrah, Cain meet Abel.”) I love everything about this album, especially the artwork. So much so that one day I will be Captain Fantastic for Halloween.

That’s all for this month. Come back next time, where I’ll likely debut a new format for this column. Any suggestions are always welcome and I am more than willing to point any interested parties towards bands I think they might enjoy.