Tag Archives: Rock

Gomez – We Haven’t Turned Around 12″ (1999) Vinyl Download!

 

This is the album that made me think I wanted to visit the UK. Well, not this actual 12″, but the LP that this 12 was derived from. I bought this 12″ a few years after I bought the original in high school. Sue me…joke’s on you, I’m broke.

For a split second it seems like a good idea, vising the Cream Isle. After all, Britannia rules the waves! Wait, can they really do that? Is their science so far ahead of ours? We can’t even clean oil, albeit millions upon trillions of gallons of oil, from our waves. Yet somehow they are able to force the foaming sea to bring millions of Britons breakfast in bed each and every morning. 

Rule, Britannia!

There really aren’t any perks to visiting England. It’s not like you can hang out for a week on one of their fabulous beaches. You can’t visit their quaint little alpine lodges. You can’t witness the splendor of untainted fauna roaming virgin countrysides. You can’t do none of that because none of that exists! 

And do you know why? It’s because the United Kingdom is just a bigger version of New Jersey. There are a lot of weird-looking white people living there with no other place to go. So, in protest of their shitty luck, they’ve been forming unholy missionary positions for the past millenium and producing terribly ugly babies. And those babies have been killing off any wildlife, African Swallows included, they could get within their single-barrel shotgun sights. England, Wales and Scotland aren’t the shallow end of the gene pool…they are the trash compactor. 

Instead of white trash they have "chavs".

But somehow this little island of misfit boy toys never fails to produce a steady stream of musical savants. And you know what, it kind of gives me the creeps. It’s not like these guys are being fostered in a culturally rich environment. The Beatles were from Liverpool, for Christ’s sake. 

With less than 900,000 “Liverpudlians” within the greater city limits, Liverpool is less populous than Cincinnati. The only thing that ever came out of Cincinnati was 27th President of the United States William Howard Taft. He was a president so terrible that Teddy Roosevelt came out of political retirement to form a new political party in an attempt to knock Taft, Roosevelt’s former Vice President, out of office. 

Nice pants, asshole.

So how, oh how, is it that this land mass crawling with cheeky monkeys keeps birthing killer bands? After listening to the song “Gomez In A Bucket (A Seaside Town Made Of Ice Cream, Slowly Melting)” I think I’ve found an answer both simple and mysterious. That, of course, is the little known existence of an unbelievably potent strain of Indian hash called “Symphalamajamjam”. 

Everyone thinks that Gandhi was the reason India gained independence from the British. Non-violence my ass. No, it was because all of the Maharajas running the Indian drug trade got together and said enough was enough; those British bastards had hampered their sweet cheeba trade for long enough. So, in a bid to rid their dominion of the buzzkill wankers, the head Maharaja met secretly with GeorgeVI to let him in on a little secret. 

This guy loved the doobage.

Boss Maharaja sais, “Look Georgey Boy, I don’t like you and you don’t like me,” he says. “You been floppin’ your stinky pikey feet all over my sweet subcontinental turf for too long. I want you gone and gone quick but I’m gonna make it real sweet for you, see?” 

Boss Maharaja leaned in real close to George VI. It looked as if he would kiss George on the brow, but he resisted. 

“This here Symphalamajamjam is gonna make all your people real good at the gee-tar. One toke and they will be just as good as the Beatles, maybe better.” 

“Why in the bloody hell would I want my subjects acting like insects, blub blub blub,” said a moistening Charles. 

“That’s not important, my man, that’s not important,” said Boss Maharaja. “What is important is that you take this little brick of sticky wicky home along with these seeds. Every street and alley in London will be like a god damn Gilbert and Sullivan convention. You dig?” 

“No, but your turban is very convincing.” 

And that’s how Gomez came to produce this 12″ in 1999.

Click here to download We Haven’t Turned Around and all the fixins’.

Tracklist

A1   We Haven’t Turned Around 6:30  
A2   Flight 3:30  
A3   Rosemary 4:51  
B1   We Haven’t Turned Around (X-Ray Version) 3:16  
B2   Gomez In A Bucket (A Seaside Town Made Of Ice Cream, Slowly Melting) 10:02  
B3   Emergency Surgery 2:18

 

 

  

 

The Band – The Best Of (1976) Vinyl Download

Does anyone else envision hobos doing all sorts of hobo things when they listen to this album? I mean this is a great album but I just imagine…

A hobo blowing his nose into a used diaper.

A hobo promising to pay a cobbler with three questionable cans of sardines.

A hobo inexplicably sweeping a lonely stretch of train track.

A hobo drowning his sorrows in a bottle of gin because of his messy divorce from a mongrel dog named Scraps.

A hobo sneezing one of those really gross snot bubbles, complete with just a hint of blood.

A hobo who takes credit for unsuccessfully aborting César Chávez.

A hobo wearing suspenders…funny ones.

A hobo using coal dust to polish his shoes in anticipation of the Frogtown Ball.

A hobo with unquenchable dry mouth, brought on by worry that Halfpint Jim discovered he peed in the local swimming hole again.

A hobo who continually waxes nostalgic about his time as rig foreman for Standard Oil…but everyone knows he’s full of shit.

A hobo with a set of disturbingly pearly whites.

A hobo who toured as roadie for Bob Dylan until he mistakingly asked what foreign tongue Dylan used.

A hobo with a life-threatening urinary tract infection.

A hobo with soft hands and deliciously hot breath.

A hobo who stole The Golden Spike and sold it for 10 tickets to a 5 cent peep show.

A hobo midget with a Kings Island Gold Pass.

A hobo with a heart of fool’s gold.

Download The Best of The Band at 320 kbps

Butthole Surfers – Hairway to Steven (1988) VINYL DOWNLOAD

Keeping up with the trend of strange albums I present Hairway to Steven. This album sat in the unplayed pile for more than 5 years until today. Its memory just evoked visions of teeth gnashing with hacked up smoker’s phlegm smooshed into long, oily hair. I just couldn’t handle the flashbacks of 1 West.

However, the listen today made me once again realize that tastes can change for the better because this album is fantastic. It’s best used to neutralize the awful yelping of your neighbor’s dog. Once this bad boy began spinning amidst the open windows and supple Kentucky spring breeze the mutt dog (cute but far too boisterous) adjacent to my house stopped his usual abused dog soapbox spiel and took listen to the horribly brilliant sounds of the Butthole. I can only imagine what strange ultrasonic transmissions he received.

The following album notes were handwritten on the album sleeve when I got it. They’re from some long-lost disc jockey affiliated with either WYCC (Google brings up a Chicago PBS station…I highly doubt this disc spent a tenure at the dignified digs of Public Broadcasting) or WMSR in Oxford, OH. I thought his or her insight into the disc were the real icing on the butt cake. If anyone knows what the abbreviations mean before each track description please enlighten the audience.

Unfortunately (depending on how you look at it), no song titles have been supplied. Instead there are kinda rude drawings for each tune. We’ll just think of them as song #1, #2, etc.

SIDE ONE:

Song #1: MT/MAJOR SHIFT, SOUNDS LIKE  A NEW SONG/VERY QUICK FADE

Kinda typical surfers, lots of drums & wigged-out guitars w/ occasional mutated voice. Barnyard noises are included in the second, more sedate half of the song.

Song #2: MUT/COLD

considerably more “normal” dark psychedelia

Song #3: MT/Fade

“I saw an x-ray of a girl passing gas.”

and why not?

Side 2

Song #4 (live): MT/FADE on clapping

about smoking, love & hate

Song #5: MUT/FLN

Song #6: MUT/FLN

rockabilly about Julio Iglesia (I think)

Song #7: MT/FLN

like song #1

Song #8: MUT/COLD

like song #1 and #7 only shorter and faster

The Butthole surfers are from Texas and are very weird. See them live if you can.

 

Click here to download Hairway To Steven at 320 kbps from vinyl

Meat Loaf – Bat Out Of Hell (1977) Vinyl Download

*download below*

I was always under the assumption that Michael Lee Aday, better known as Meat Loaf the man, was behind the music and lyrics for this album. Wrong. These songs were all composed by a guy named Jim Steinman. His name is displayed prominently at the top of newer releases of Bat Out Of Hell so there’s no confusion as to who is the true maestro. Never heard of Jim Steinman? Well, you may notice some of the other hits he’s written and produced:

Yes, he wrote “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” one of the greatest jukebox masterpieces of all-time. You can’t go wrong putting this on late at night, preferably after 1 a.m. when everyone is good and sauced. Once the climax kicks in you’ll be locked arm-in-arm with people you just met, screaming “I need you now tonight…I FUCKIN’ NEED YOU MORE THAN EVER!” It brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it.

Ok, so still a decent song. I mean, if you were a 15-year-old, heartbroken girl in 1983 this was a decent song. Maybe Jim Steinman is really a teenage girl controlling a mechanized adult male android. I don’t have enough proof, yet, so let’s see if we can find a concrete answer in some of his other work.

Oh God…..Jim Steinman is the Anti-Christ. Very clever, Jim–making us fall in love with your “Meat Loaf”. Then, when we least expected it, BAM! You unleashed your Hell Banshee upon us.

Son of a bitch, now I can’t turn off this song. It has me in its wicked grasp….I’ll never escape Celine’s brain-stabbing vocals. DAMN YOU JIM STEINMAN!!!

Click here to download Bat Out Of Hell at 320 kbps

Andrew W.K. – I Get Wet (2002) vinyl

*download below*

Click here to download I Get Wet vinyl rip

Ok, so I might have spoken too quickly about classical music being the only way to get your pump on.  Andrew W.K.’s first album I Get Wet is the most unapologetic pie-in-the-face of guitar, drums, and synth ever pressed on vinyl.  The song titles are hokey…hell, three of the song titles have the word PARTY in them.  The lyrics are also hokey, his white shirt and white pants are hokey.  Any song could be mistaken for the next.  Yes, it has everything working toward a trip to the corners of Migraine and Geg Reflex Avenue.

But luckily it works because of one simple principle:  AWK might be the coolest dude on the face of the earth.  Not in the typical cool dude, Mick Jagger in his prime sense.  Nor is it the cool of a badass nonstop party dude that can’t be hampered by a brick-to-the-face bloody nose.  No, by literal definition he might be considered a pretty nerdy dude.  He learned the keyboard and guitar by hours spent in the basement because he didn’t have any friends to ride bikes with.

AWK is a cool dude because he’s just so damn get-up-and-go positive.  Usually super sunshine smiley people are just plain annoying.  Ya just wanna put them in a potato sack and smack em around with a pipe.  But somehow AWK avoids this with some sort of musty magic woven in his crusty white tees.  It’s something you have to experience in one of his shows.  They seem like they’re some sort of joke the entire time but it’s a side-splitter your favorite uncle tells and no matter how much you hear the stinker at Thanksgiving  it never gets old.

Since this album AWK has gone on to tame the entirety of Japan, tour as a motiviational speaker, and even has his own show on Cartoon Network called Destroy Build Destroy where his young contestants, well, Destroy stuff, Rebuild it, and Destroy it again.  Consider it all a miracle since there was a 99.9% chance that he was going to fade into obscurity after this album.

In 2002 everyone groaned about the death of rock music upon I Get Wet’s release.  “He’s watering down the proud tradition of our holy genre!” they said.  Music critics repeatedly punched themselves in the nards with each and every AWK high kick.  Austin, Texas was burnt to the ground by an angry AWK-hunting lynch mob.

It was all in vain.  Andrew just keeps on chuggin away with more and more ridiculously triumphant music and monster side projects.  God Bless you AWK.

Jeff Beck – Wired (1976) vinyl

*download below*

I don’t play guitar.  I don’t know the technial aspects of what makes a guitarist great.  However, what I can recognize is when a dude is, how you say, shredding.  And man can Jeff Beck shred.  If anyone checked out my Masayoshi Takanaka post you should definitely check out Wired.  I’m pretty sure Beck is Takanaka’s American half brother.

An undated photograph of Jeff Back at one of his infamous afterparties.

An undated photograph of Jeff Back at one of his infamous afterparties.

8)

Download Jeff Beck – Wired Here

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Tracklist

1. Led Boots

2. Come Dancing

3. Goodbye Pork Pie Hats

4. Head For Backstage Pass

5. Blue Wind

6. Sophie

7. Play With Me

8. Love Is Green

Also, check out Masayoshi Takanaka – Rainbow Goblins Story (Live at Bukokan) from my earlier post here.

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U2 – The Unforgettable Fire (1984) vinyl

*download below*

Quite contrary to the title this is U2′s most forgotten early work, despite having some of the band’s best songs.  The Unforgettable Fire marked the first time U2 worked with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois as producers.  With these two maestros on board the album took a more ethereal direction than their previous album War. The Edge’s Guitar and Bono’s vocals that seem to roll, float and dive with the wind across the winding Irish countryside.  This sound was further explored in their follow up album The Joshua Tree, which will be forever associated with my memories of growing up surrounded by the vastness of the arid Utah mountains.  Check this out along with their other early works and I guarantee that you will not be disappointed.  Unless you’re deaf.

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Download U2 – The Unforgettable Fire here

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Jimmy Page – Death Wish 2 Soundtrack (1982) vinyl

*download below*

This is yet another album that I picked up because of the cover.  I hadn’t seen the movie but Charles Bronson just chilling there with his gat resting on a popup map of the city made me all tingly.  I’ve since seen all of the movies and marveled at just how many shady folks were willing to step into the path of Master Marksman Bronson.  I’m pretty sure the body count for the complete Death Wish saga must easily total over 2 million. It also cracked me up how flamboyant the villains in these movies are–I totally expected them to bust into high art choreography at any point during the seemingly infinite gun fights.

Here’s a fab electrocution slaying from Death Wish 2

Anyway, this is a legitimately badass soundtrack scored by Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin fame.  I highly recommend it if you’re a fan of any mind altering drugs; especially sparkly gold spray paint.  It will give you that static zing you’ve been craving.

Here sucka!

Masayoshi Takanaka – Rainbow Goblins Story: Live at Budokan (1981) vinyl MP3s REMASTERED

Feel the Goblins.

Feel the Goblins.

***The MP3s are now a totally new rip. I did a better job cleaning the record up both physically and digitally this time around. I think you’ll be pleased with the bombastic Japanese sound. Thanks for listening and enjoy.***

Here’s another album where you can totally judge the content by its cover.  First, let’s examine the title: Rainbow Goblins Story.  I’m not entirely sure what a Rainbow Goblin is or how I might be lucky enough to encounter one but by the throws of ecstasy that Mr. Takanaka is displaying I would surely like to make their acquaintance.  So I’m just going to imagine that Rainbow Goblins are magical creatures that explode from your temporal lobe after ingesting magical mushrooms which,  at the time this recording was made, were completely legal in Japan.

However if shrooms were to account Rainbow Goblins Story I would expect to hear a lot more giggling in between tracks on this album.  This is far from the case.  The audience at Budokan might be the most polite group of spectators to ever enjoy a rockin Japanese symphonic trip into the world’s most delicious technicolor daydream.  There’s no whistling, no cheering, no “OH MY GOD MASAYOSHI, THIS PLAYFUL GOBLIN IS CHEWING ON MY COLLARBONE…MAKE IT STOP!” anywhere. 

I think I heard “Takanaka!” yelled once by a single raucous gentleman throughout the entire recording and I can only assume that he was forced to perform seppuku in the Budukan’s lost and found by an elite security force that was on hand for just such an occasion.

Budokan Arena

Budokan Arena

And while the whole silence thing seems sort of strange I’m certainly thankful for it.  This album, in true Japanese fashion, is all about precision.  Now that doesn’t mean that this is a dainty stroll through Goblin Country with a soundtrack of gentle electric strumming.  No, Masayoshi Takanaka shreds hard.  Really fucking hard.  And with the kind of technical prowess I only thought possible on a synthesizer; you could set your Seiko to Takanaka’s ax.  I couldn’t discern one note that should be confused as being off key.  It’s a constant barrage of super precise, super fast super badass rocking accompanied by a full crew of strings, synth, and all sorts of percussion.  My only gripe is that there wasn’t a Nintendo release based on this album.  It would have made a most triumphant 8-bit score.

Here’s the album:

Side 1

Click to download Side 1

1. Prologue

2. Once Upon a Song

3. Seven Goblins

4. The Sunset Valley

5. The Moon Rose

6. Soon

Click to download Side 2

1. Thunderstorm

2. Rising Arch

3. Plumed Bird

4. You can Never Come to This Place

This just made me pee my pants:

JBL Sessions Loudspeaker Test Record (1973) vinyl

JBL Sessions

JBL Sessions

*download below*

I decided to finally sit down and listen to the JBL Sessions album that I bought on eBay a few weeks ago.  I’ve a fair amount of sound effects and super-duper-stereophonic-bam-wow-oh-man-look-at that-what-is-that-sound-spewing-like-blood-from-the-speakers records but they are always pretty hokey and turn out to be more hype than actual high fidelity. However, this JBL album has turned out to a bit more serious, if a tad corny and antiseptic, but it’s proved to be a good buy so far.  Actually both of those aspects add a touch of credibility.  If anyone has read any articles from any “hi-fi” stereo equipment magazines from, well, any time you’d find them pretty self righteous, almost to the extent of piety.  But anyway, I digress.

First, I’d like to share a list of the equipment that I’m using to check this out.  There really wouldn’t be any point to reviewing the album if I was playing it through this:

This is the sound the pony makes.

This is a sound the pony makes.

The speakers that I’m using are a pair of JBL 4311B Control Monitors I picked up two years ago from a guy in the West Side that had posted them on Craigslist.

I’ve been through a lot of speakers at an alarming pace, from Sansui to Polks to Pioneers, to EPIs to Bang and Olufsons and a little bit in between.  Every other speaker gave the music it’s own coloring or, even worse, just made the music sound lumpy and required gobs of equalization to iron them out.  These 4311B’s just seemed to give me the music I’d been searching for; sound reproduction precisely how the sound engineer intended. You can find information on them here: http://www.jblpro.com/pub/obsolete/4311b.pdf

JBL 4311B Control Monitor

JBL 4311B Control Monitor

For my amp I’m using my monstrous yet entirely precious Luxman L-100 which, according to the creepy foot fetishist from the now closed local amp repair shop, was owned by many African American NFL players in the 70′s.  You can check out info on it from one of my favorite websites, the Vintage Knob, at this address: http://www.thevintageknob.org/LUXMAN/L100/L100.html#

ZAP ZAP ZAP

Luxman L-100 Integrated Amplifier

Finally, to spin the damn thing I’m using my recently acquired Technics SL-10.  It’s been a huge upgrade from my Technics SL-212, which is somewhat similar to the 1200 in certain aspects.  The SL-10 is a linear tracking turntable, which means that it doesn’t have a conventional tonearm.  The cartridge travels on a track situated over the record and travels in a straight line from the outer ring inward as opposed to an arcing pattern followed by a conventional cantilever tonearm.  Also, it can be played vertically which is pretty neat.  More detail can be found at: http://www.thevintageknob.org/TECHNICS/SL10/SL10.html

and

http://img33.imageshack.us/img33/2135/technicssl10.jpg

Technics SL-10

Technics SL-10

Anyway, now that’s out of the way we can get back to the record.  I think one of the excerpts from the narrator’s monologues best sums upthis entire album.

The function of high fidelity loudspeaker (sic) is to reproduce recorded music.  A good loudspeaker will reproduce music with clarity, detail, separation and definition…qualities that can’t be reduced to a set of tabulated numbers on a piece of paper.  That’s why some of our friends got together with us at Capital Records to make an album you could use as a standard of reference.

We’ll take each section of this record apart and let you hear each instrument individually; then we’ll put them  back together again so you can make a valid comparison between louspeakers.

As you will hear on Sides 3 and 4, the sound of a record depends greatly on the monitor loudspeakers used in the studio.  Most of today’s records are monitored on JBL loudspeakers just as this one was.  List to this music on our speakers to see how we intended it to sound–then listen on any other speakers.

After making your  comparisons , we think you’ll prefer ours for the same resons that most of the major studios in the world prefer them–clarity and definition.  However, if you find that another is more to your l iking, we’d like to think of it this way: We’d like to think of it this way: We’ve profvided a basis for comparison, you’ve made the choice that pleased you m ost and we’ve contributed to your pleasure.”

It’s a big advertisement for JBL but it fits like a warm glove.  The narrator makes several references to the JBL Dealer that the previous owner of this album must have visited to get this copy for review.  This, however, is the only advertisement that I would never turn off.  It’s just too fab.

I accidentally played side two first but I’m glad I did because it started off with a series of tone tests that are designed to check the limitations of both your loudspeakers and your ears.  The narrator explains that because of methods of analog recording, remember this is 1973, many tones will sound different, much different from how they are originally recorded if not played through true high fidelity loudspeakers.

He also explained that the majority of frequencies reproduced by conventional recording instruments–the guitar, bass guitar, drums, piano, etc.-do not, for the most part, delve deeper than 50hz.  Now with any speaker or amplifier that you see online on eBay or audio forums you’ll notice often that the tonal ranges are listed along with many of the specs.  A typical higher quality amp will play from 20 hertz to 20,000 hertz without any significant change in volume while a quality speaker will claim to play roughly in the same range.  It was also fun to sit down through the high frequency test which revealed the acoustic ceiling of myself and the three others that I auditioned this album with.  (My limit was 18,000 hertz through the speakers but 20,000 hertz through my enclosed Sony Studio headphones.  I’m going to chalk that up to the continual white noise generated by the intersection of McMillan and Vine outside my window.)

Mainly, this album professes that any company can throw all sorts of numbers and jargon at you that, unless you are a trained mechanical or sound engineer, isn’t worth a hill of beans.  What really matters is how things reach your ears.

To give you a real world test of your speakers JBL takes the time to show you different instruments and describe how they should sound in your listening room.  I’d like to go into detail on how each 12-string guitar and 9-foot harpsichord should tickle your ears but the narrator of the album does a much better job with his exquisite technical jargon.

Disc 1 is mainly a dissection of instruments and tonality that comes together in a sweet buffet of high fidelity recordings.  The songs at the the tail end of side one are surprisingly good; not just in sound reproduction but even more so in the musicality.  They’re just bitchin tracks.

Side 1

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?nwzm1m1mtyi

Side 2

http://www.mediafire.com/?mntl5motljm

Disc 2 delves deeper into explaining the actual recording process as opposed to the reproduction process.  It goes into length about the actual recording session and 16-track recording.  It’s pretty neat listening to the discourse between the sound engineers and the musicians from a session over 30 years ago.

Side 3 (sounds a bit worn)

http://www.mediafire.com/?yiyqrlemtn5

Side 4

http://www.mediafire.com/?eno2jvyw2zi

I hope you enjoy.

On a side note, it appears that JBL’s marketing campaign has decided to take corny to the next level. I feel like this is something they would have played on the tv screens perched above the roller coaster lines at Kings Island when it was owned by Paramount.