about a Pitchfork article describing a few days on tour with Charlie XCX

She was learning the choreography, but I get the impression she was learning the songs, too:

It’s kind of nice to go straight into rehearsing a record, because sometimes there’s that thing of releasing an album and then you’re like, ‘What do I do now?’” she says, sitting on a bench outside the entrance to the studio. “The day after it came out, I flew here and just locked in. It’s like, momentum—you’re actually kind of feeding more into the album and bringing a different part of it to life immediately. It doesn’t just ... linger."

And then this:

This album, she says, has “tied a lot of things together for me, and shown how different parts of different records can work in tandem.” She’s playing “Pink Diamond,” the aggressive opening track of 2020’s How I’m Feeling Now, on this tour; its chaotic, messy performance is one of the show’s highlights. “I think there are a lot of parallels with this album and How I’m Feeling Now, and that link has made me think about the links through all of my songs, and ... ” she drifts off. “It’s just like, a constant mining of the self, really, isn’t it?” (“Sorry, I’m really talking in abstracts because I’m so fucking exhausted,” she says at one point. “I can’t get like, a real sentence out.”)

Note: https://pitchfork.com/story/the-life-of-the-party-a-week-on-tour-with-charli-xcx/

 

about friends sending links to shitty music

Good aggressive music has some passion. The drummers are supposed to have a swing, barely perceptible variations of volume and pace. They aren't metronomes. Varying guitar strums, an improvised accent here or there, a quick adjustment as the music moves the musicians. The music has to move the people, not the other way around. Parents worry about their children, some bleach in children’s hair, some court dates replacing violin lessons.

a goodbye to romance

  

 

 

Related:

• about Ozzy Dying
• about “Into the Void: From Birth to Black Sabbath—And Beyond” by Geezer Butler
  
• something about "Perdurabo: The Life of Aleister Crowley" by Richard Kaczynski
• a draft of my all-time favorite albums list—a list that constantly changes but includes constants
• the lyrics to Ozzy Osbourne's "Tonight" 

about Ozzy dying

I am a huge Ozzy Osbourne fan.

 

I attended a Catholic school and wore a uniform through eighth grade. So I remember how bold I felt wearing a “Diary of a Madman” t-shirt to public school in junior high. The front was the album cover, which I was okay with, but the back featured a closeup of Ozzy bearing vampire teeth and wearing a cape—a silly picture, I knew, and I worried the other kids wouldn’t appreciate the spirit of 1982 Ozzy.

 

I also hung an Ozzy poster in my bedroom—Ozzy in a tough-guy pose, a baseball bat resting on his shoulder. I didn’t like the poster, but it was the only one at the store. Ozzy was not a tough guy, and being tough wasn’t part of his music, his message, or him.

 

His wife and manager Sharon, who really is tough, astutely marketed him as the Prince of Darkness, capitalizing on the Sabbath fame. But when I think of Ozzy, I think of a guy who was resilient and wild and free. He loved performing live. He seemed so happy on stage. That was real joy. Fans could see that was all he wanted to do.

 

Life offstage must have been a bore, and drugs and alcohol helped him cope while feeding whatever predispositional craving lurking within.

 

Ozzy was real. He voice was true, his delivery, true—a crazy train, a silly guy who went on stage and sang. The guy on stage in Paris, 1970, was the guy in the late 1980s and on into the 2000s. His confidence grew during those Sabbath years, and he brought loads of enthusiasm and appreciation to his solo career. Watch him live, clapping, cheering on the band, the music, and the crowd, throwing the fans all the love he had in him.

He was the Prince of Darkness, but the world is darker without him.

notes on relitigating the p(odc)ast

The Smashing Pumpkins hit mainstream success during the early 1990s grunge/alternative rock era. The rock band Bush came soon after.

Breakout bands and artists, especially when they offer something fresh, are soon followed by similar-sounding bands and artists. Bush, one could say, came in the slipstream of The Smashing Pumpkins and the first wave of grunge and alternative rock.

Billy Corgan of the The Smashing Pumpkins recently interviewed his counterpart, Gavin Rossdale of Bush, on Corgan's podcast.

 

I enjoyed the 90s look-back.

Corgan tried hard to sound admiring, tried to make a point of his respect for Rossdale. I thought he tried too hard.

During the interview, Rossdale said he wished the widely admired recording engineer and producer Steve Albini would have given him more direction on the songs while recording the second Bush album, "Razorblade Suitcase," instead of just engineering the sound.

I also learned that people think Bush's debut sounds like Nirvana's "Nevermind" and that the follow-up sounds like Nirvana's follow-up, "In Utero," which Albini also worked on before the label and Kurt Cobain pushed him out. This clearly led to insinuations at the time that Bush was aping the hot bands.

Throughout the interview, Rossdale seemed thoughtful and very normal. A family guy. And as they compared their lives as parents, Corgan admitted being selfish and disconnected.

Note:

- Breakout bands and artists being followed by similar-sounding bands and artists is the music and entertainment business. Look at all the country-themed albums coming out. Ridiculous.

- Rossdale still has Cobain's haircut. Bush was seen as sort of a mashup of Nirvana and Pumpkins.

- My memory is grunge predates "alternative rock" as a genre label.

 

a review of Aerosmith's debut

Be a blues-rock band first, and get that right

 
Aerosmith peaked commercially from the late 1980s through the 90s. "Get a Grip," released March 1993, is the band's best-selling album. Joe Perry’s thresher of a guitar and Steven Tyler's highly animated vocals mix with huge pop hits like "Cryin'" and "Crazy." It was Aerosmith's eleventh studio album.

My favorite Aerosmith record, the 1973 self-titled debut, sounds nothing like it.

The music's punch comes not from showmanship—Tyler's yawps and Perry's lavish guitar—but from the sound of good bluesmen vibing.

Compared to other early 70s hard rock bands, the album's dusty production—especially the low gain on Joe Perry's guitar—softens the blow a bit. In his memoir, Perry says, "… because I lacked the studio chops to prescribe a remedy, I kept quiet. It pained me, though, that my guitar was not cutting through."

But compared to Aerosmith's later work, the album sounds raw, and I like it.

Maybe what I like most is Tyler's straight-ahead vocals. They shine more for his timing than his affectations.

I grew up with classic rock radio and heard Aerosmith's hits and how the band's sound changed over the decades. You have the raw, early classics like "Dream On," "Sweet Emotion," and "Walk This Way." Then comes bigger production on hits like "Dude (Looks Like a Lady)," "Angel," "Rag Doll," "Love in an Elevator," and "Janie's Got a Gun." And, finally, the full-on pop hits like "Amazing," "Livin' on the Edge," "Cryin'," and "Crazy."

I always liked the early songs best, so to get past the hits, I went back and listened to Aerosmith's first four albums. The debut is easily my favorite.

Here's "Make It," the first song on the first album.

 

a draft of my all-time favorite albums list—a list that constantly changes but includes constants

Top-Tier All-Time Favorite 10 Albums"

"The Wall" by Pink Floyd

"The Dark Side of the Moon" by Pink Floyd

"Reign in Blood" by Slayer

"Aja" by Steely Dan
"For Emma, Forever Ago" by Bon Iver
"Jane Doe" by Converge

"Calculating Infinity" by The Dillinger Escape Plan
"Metamodern Sounds in Country Music" by Sturgill Simpson
"Pet Sounds" by The Beach Boys
"Badmotorfinger" by Soundgarden

Second-Tier All-Time Favorite 10 Albums
"Sadness Will Prevail" by Today is the Day
"A Sailor's Guide to Earth" by Sturgill Simpson
"Appetite for Destruction" by Guns n’ Roses
"Grip It! On That Other Level" by Geto Boys
"Picture This" by Do or Die
"Blizzard of Ozz" by Ozzy Osbourne
"Malady" by Malady
"Seasons in the Abyss" by Slayer
"The Satellite Years" by Hopesfall

"The City of Caterpillar" by The City of Caterpillar

Honorable Mention
"Roots" by Sepultura
"Weezer" by Weezer
"Dirt" by Alice In Chains
"Above" by Mad Season
"The Bends" by Radiohead

 

 

Note: With endless caveats and prefaces about how I appreciate and care about the important bands, like the Beatles and Black Sabbath.

 

about a guy like Ernest Tubb

He wears bright orange and a slick smile. His big, blue eyes closed all the doors in the building. You look out the window and see the sky making faces like feeling the rain coming.

 

regrets about sound quality in 2024

Getting great picture quality is easy and affordable in 2024, but how does one get great audio?

 

Audio—music, especially—should always sound live, as if the musicians are playing right there in front of you on good equipment. But most TVs and computers have tinny little built-in speakers that face backwards. And people stream music now—shitty, compressed audio through Spotify or whatever.

 

People used to have big stereos in their homes, 12-inch woofers paired with clear tweeters. Now we have sound bars, which are okay, but still limited in comparison.

Note: CDs were good. Tapes sucked because of the hiss. People fetishize vinyl now, but I the audio quality is worse than CDs.