#everyrecordiown

[bubblesandgutz]

Every Record I Own - Day 827: Shellac 1000 Hurts

This is a long and tough one, so I'll spare your timeline and force you to make the jump.

On February 21, 2001, one of my husband's closest friends was murdered by a man named Michael Gargiulo. She was stabbed 47 times.

Not surprisingly, my husband does not share my appreciation for slasher movies. I still feel like an asshole for dragging him to a midnight screening of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre on my birthday years ago. I was an idiot for not realizing that someone who lost a loved one in a brutal act of violence wouldn't find a film recreating that kind of violence entertaining.

"I don't enjoy the sound of people begging for their lives," he told me after the movie. I can't blame him. Even music with "tortured" vocals tends to get an immediate "can we listen to something else?" from him.

Transgressive art is a weird thing. People will always be drawn towards art that's shocking, forbidden, or taboo, but I also assume most people have a line they don't want crossed. I love Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but I hate Cannibal Holocaust. As far as music goes, I have a much easier time ignoring the cartoonish violence of death metal than I have sitting though music laden with brazen sexism or homophobia in the lyrical department.

Content aside, art gets even trickier when the artist's life comes under scrutiny. Again, I assume most people have a line they won't cross. You might not have an issue listening to Michael Jackson, but you would probably have a major issue listening to an artist who assaulted a member of your family. Or maybe you do have an issue listening to Michael Jackson. Maybe you also have an issue listening to an artist because of their political alignments. And maybe you have an issue with an artist simply because of something they've said in the past. There's no shortage of music out there, so why give your attention and money to assholes? On the other hand, artists are human beings, which means they've inevitably hurt someone in the course of their lifetime, so if we blacklist every artist who's ever done something hurtful, we're eliminating art from our lives. Everyone has a line, but I think any rational individual understands that the line will vary from person to person.

I've been thinking about transgressive art a lot since the passing of Steve Albini. The public overwhelming seems to mourn his loss, but I've seen a few people weigh in online with some valid criticisms: he was in a band called Rapeman; he said some sketchy things about child pornography in a zine back in the '80s; some of his lyrics reflected racist elements of society without taking a clear stance against them. Albini addressed these incidents later in life, acknowledging that though he was not advocating for the kind of behavior he was portraying in his art, the ambiguity that made his songs feel dangerous could also be construed as promoting or celebrating the subject matter.

By the time Albini got around to forming Shellac, he seemed to have shed the dodgiest parts of his confrontational persona. That said, I know a few people who take issue with Shellac's most popular song: 1000 Hurts album opener "Prayer to God." True to the title, the song is a literal prayer to God asking for the Almighty to kill the singer's cheating lover and her partner. It's essentially a murder ballad without the actual murder. Or maybe it's more in line with The Beatles and Elvis singing "I'd rather see you dead, little girl, than to be with another man," except in Albini's case the majority of his ire is aimed at the male lover. It's a visceral song, and while it might feel cathartic for someone who's been betrayed by their romantic partner, it might feel too harrowing for someone who's actually dealt with a potentially dangerous jilted ex.

I played "Prayer to God" for my husband once. He wasn't a fan. To be fair, I don't think Albini's brand of minimalist tone-scrutinizing math rock was ever gonna be his cup of tea, but the lyrics certainly weren't going to help. Consequently, I reserve 1000 Hurts for times when I have the house to myself.

And ultimately, I would hope that his reaction to Shellac would be the kind of response we'd see in people who take issue with Albini. Simply put, it wasn't my husband's cup of tea, but he didn't try to convince me that I shouldn't enjoy it. Yes, Albini dealt with some ugly and uncomfortable themes, and by his own admission he took some of it too far. But his music was both a reflection and a reaction to the things he saw around him. Just as the slasher films of the '80s were a reaction to the era's conservative bent and puritanical attempts at censorship, so were Albini's songs (particularly with Big Black) a rebuttal of that decade's benign soft-rock FM radio staples, PMRC campaigns, and right-wing fundamentalist attempts to whitewash the media.

Much like those slasher films, Big Black has aged with an unexpected patina. Yes, there is something still "dangerous" about it, but that danger seems less rooted in pushing back at "the establishment" and more like it's picking at the wounds of the most vulnerable and injured parts of our society. Given even a minimal amount of context, I'd think the average person could appreciate its attempts to say "no, this world isn't perfect and we're not going to pretend that it is," even if those attempts are admittedly a little ambiguous and sloppy at times. But that kind of context doesn't arrive as a disclaimer on the album packaging, so its reasonable to understand how someone could find Big Black's unflinching first-person villain profiles to be a little problematic.

Consequently, I completely understand why someone would take issue with Big Black's "Jordan Minnesota" or Shellac's "Prayer to God." On the other hand, I want art to be uncomfortable sometimes, even if that unease is unintentional. There's no shortage of art out there that aimed to be progressive but aged to show the inherent biases of its time. Just consider the contingent of people wanting to change the racist language in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I'd argue that sometimes the shortcomings, biases, and outdated perspectives in an artist's work are as much a statement on the times as the actual subject matter.

Everyone has a line. And for a lot of folks, Albini probably crossed it a few times in the course of his career. For me, listening to Big Black or Rapeman or Shellac is like watching Texas Chainsaw Massacre---I don't need Steve Albini to explain his lyrics anymore than I need Tobe Hopper to explain that we shouldn't cut people up with chainsaws and turn them into human barbecue. But Albini also dealt with minor horrors that impacted a far greater percentage of the population, and that's something he had to reconcile and acknowledge later in life. For me, his charity work, fierce advocacy for marginalized people, and willingness to stand up to bullies in public forums offset any of his early artistic missteps, but I also understand that making art about human suffering is always going to elicit pain from people who have endured those particular trials.

Everyone has a line.

[madalinaeb]

Happy Birthday to the man that helps me occupy my brain 😍 Happy Birthday , Brian ! @bubblegutz ❤️ w/ @russiancircles @sumacbandofficial #books “#EveryRecordIOwn “ (at Richmond Upon Thames, Surrey, United Kingdom) https://www.instagram.com/p/Bz_AkLzFA0k/?igshid=1t8b9m4y5pgq4

[bubblesandgutz]

Every Record I Own - Day 839: Judas Priest Stained Class

The AOTY-list season serves as a reminder that I haven't checked out nearly as much new music in 2024 as I have in years past.

I feel a little guilty about it. Being a musician, I'm a big believer in staying connected to current artists and their work. At the same time, it's impossible to keep up with the constant stream of new music, and I can't help but feel that one of the ways we're failing artists in this current age is by only giving their work a single cursory listen.

It's fleeting fandom. There were no shortage of great albums that came out this year that I streamed once online and thought "this is really good... I need to listen to this more" and then promptly forgot about. Buying vinyl has always been my way of making sure I dedicate time to REALLY listening to an album, but with as much as I've toured these last two years, I've had to scale my purchases back because I'm simply not home enough to listen to my collection and I'm already slacking on investigating records I bought in 2023.

So I didn't buy many albums that came out in 2024. But that doesn't mean I wasn't listening to a lot of music. In particular, I listened to A LOT of early Judas Priest.

My Judas Priest fandom is a relatively new thing. I've sat on a copy of Screaming For Vengeance for ages, but it wasn't the right entry point for me. But starting sometime around late 2022, I started falling for Sin After Sin. This was the combo I was lacking in my life: good riffs, '70s production, a dash of prog-rock ambition, some sinister undertones, and big choruses. Rob Halford's vocals had always been a bit of a dealbreaker for me as I'm not much of an operatic metal guy, but reading his memoir opened my mind and ears to his approach.

Stained Class is Judas Priest's fourth album, released in 1978. Much like their other '70s albums, there is still an obvious debt to Sabbath and Zeppelin (check out the "Whole Lotta Love" riff in "Saints in Hell"), but Halford out-sings both Ozzy and Plant. Maybe it's because Halford was still a closeted gay man and trying to fly under the radar, but he never seemed to have the larger-than-life persona of Ozzy and Plant. Instead, he put all his effort into treating the voice like a third guitar, helping steer the musical direction of the band while hitting the growling lows of a power chord and the squealing highs of a pinch harmonic.

While I still put Sin After Sin at the top of my Judas Priest list, Stained Class isn't far behind. While never quite hitting the same heights as tracks like "Sinner," "Raw Deal," and "Dissident Aggressor," Stained Class also doesn't lose its momentum with ballads (barring the possible exception of "Beyond the Realms of Death," which is such an obvious influence on Metallica's "Fade to Black" that I think we can safely disqualify it from the ballad designation despite it's delicate verses and slow build). It's a solid record from start to finish, best played at a high volume, but also completely satisfying on a phone speaker while you're barbecuing in your backyard.

Whether it's the amphetamine-fueled hard rock of "Exciter," the sleazy strut of "White Heat, Red Hot," the galloping angst of the title track, the anthemic power of "Invader," or the sinister '70s Sabbath riffage of "Saints in Hell," Stained Class is entertaining from start to finish, and reveals more nuances and embellishments with every listen.

I can't even say how many times I listened to Stained Class in 2024, but it's yet to grow stale or boring. If anything, my appreciation for it has only grown with every spin. And while I could've arguably held back on it and carved out more time for new artists with new albums, I like to think that finding a 46-year-old subversive rock album and latching onto it with an obsession bodes well for any freaks and weirdos that put out records in 2024 hoping their music has a shelf-life beyond this December.

[bubblesandgutz]

Every Record I Own - Day 836: Minutemen What Makes a Man Start Fires?

I'm chronologically bouncing all over the place when it comes to writing about Minutmen. Buzz or Howl was where I found my entry point. The Punch Line was where the band started. Double Nickels is their definitive release. But now I'm bouncing back to their second LP, 1983's What Makes a Man Start Fires?

Though Double Nickels cemented Minutemen's place in the American punk / indie canon. I imagine the band would still wield a significant influence on the modern musical underground based on their 1983 output. What Makes a Man Start Fires? and the subsequent Buzz or Howl Under the Influence of Heat EP both capture a band that evolved from the jittery outsider song vignettes of their early years into the tightly wound, musically adventurous, emotionally-varied material of their peak years.

Over the course of 18 songs in 26 minutes, Minutemen whip out their own distinct and enigmatic version of punk irreverence ("Bob Dylan Wrote Propaganda Songs"), slacker stoner indie rock ("Fake Contest," "Life as a Rehearsal"), mathy funk ("Beacon Sighted Through Fog"), proto-post hardcore ("East Wind/Faith," "Plight"), melodic anthems ("99," "The Anchor," "Sell or Be Sold"), and a slew of uncatagorizable weirdo song bursts ("Split Red," "Polarity"). Whether you're focusing on George Hurley's unorthodox octopus-armed drum patterns, Mike Watt's full-fretboard bass lines, or D. Boon's grease-fingered riffs and esoteric stream-of-consciousness lyrical commentary, there's always something interesting happening in the songs. No moment is wasted and no part is dragged out for a measure too long.

In some ways, What Makes a Man might be Minutemen's best album. It has the frantic energy of their early years while leaning into some of the more exploratory and developed songwriting of their later years. And at 26 minutes, it's considerably easier to digest than their double album opus. Of course, a big part of Double Nickels' beauty is its ambition and scope, but if you're really just trying to make initial sense of Minutemen's sound and method, this LP might be the best place to start.

[bubblesandgutz]

Every Record I Own - Day 824: Shellac At Action Park

I'm still wrapping my head around the news that Steve Albini is no longer with us.

I first heard Big Black on a mixtape my friend made me back in 1992. The song was "Jordan Minnesota." It was mean and ferocious and sounded like nothing else I'd heard before. I went out and bought the Hammer Party CD that compiled their earliest EPs soon after. It was a tough listen, but as was so often the case in those pre-internet / teenage years of the early '90s, if you plunked down your allowance money on a CD of "difficult" music, you didn't give up on it after a cursory listen. I stuck with it until those "difficult" songs eventually became anthems of teenage alienation.

There was another interesting angle to the Hammer Party CD: there were extensive liner notes that outlined the band's operating strategy. They were a DIY band uninterested in the music business. They were principled. They were nerdy, unassuming looking people. But the music they made was scarier than any metal band.

Big Black songs were almost always written from the villain's perspective. They were unvarnished narratives about unsavory characters. "Jordan Minnesota" was about a child molester. "Seth" is about a racist. "Columbian Necktie" is about a drug cartel hitman.

Terms like "incel" and "edgelord" didn't exist back then. But there was definitely a streak of impotent male rage and deliberate controversy in Big Black's music. In recent years, Steve Albini made a point of acknowledging those attributes in his music and apologizing for his role in elevating a culture of targeted mean-spiritedness. I think it was a noble gesture on his part, though I thought it was always fairly obvious that Big Black wasn't glorifying the behavior of the characters in their songs. It was about making art that acknowledged the awful side of humanity. Rather than sweeping the ugliness under the rug, Big Black dragged the creeps into the spotlight and shouted "look at these fucking assholes."

If Big Black defined high school, Shellac helped define my college years. The lyrical subject matter was less antagonistic, but the music seemed colder. It was sparse. Austere. Deliberately scaled back to the point of seeming mechanical. The bombast of Big Black was replaced by the tension of Shellac. At this point, you knew what Albini was capable of, but now he was the poker player who was keeping a straight face and playing his cards cautiously.

By the time At Action Park came out, Albini was a person of note outside of his bands. I remember reading his article in Maximum Rock N Roll on major labels and how the promise of riches really just meant other people in the music industry taking a slice of the artist's budget and eliminating any chance of future royalties. His engineering credentials were already legendary, and his recording philosophy played a major role in shaping my own attitude towards making records.

Russian Circles have recorded at Albini's studio half a dozen times at this point. And while we've never worked with Albini at the board, he was often lingering around the building, working on sessions in the other studio or puttering around working on things. He was exactly like you'd expect him to be. Smart. Opinionated. Quick with a sharp reply.

He was by no means infallible. His assessment of Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville back in 1993 was pretty gross. He's made a point of vocalizing his regret over naming a band Rapeman. But considering that he's been a firebrand for over 40 years, I'd say Albini did a fairly good job of ruffling feathers while sticking up for the downtrodden. He was a man of artistic ideals and principles who managed to stick to his guns while shaping the industry around him. He was an artist who was able to develop and evolve his sound over the course of several decades while also retaining the initial vision and spark in his work. He was impervious to fads yet somehow always relevant.

RIP Steve. You were one of a kind.

[bubblesandgutz]

Every Record I Own - Day 837: Minutemen Project Mersh

Minutemen followed up their expansive and adventurous 2xLP “art album” Double Nickels on the Dime with a record of diametric aims. Project Mersh is a 22-minute EP that explores the question of “what would a Minutemen pop record sound like?”

Much like the sardonic “#1 Hit Song” off Double Nickels, the Project Mersh EP flaunts its flagrant accessibility in its title. “Mersh” was the band’s slang for “commercial,” and as the album art jokingly suggests, the EP provides an approximation of a commercialized version of the San Pedro trio. But Minutemen’s idea of “commercial” in the pre-grunge / alternative-explosion era of 1985 is still fairly entrenched in the underground rock sound. Punk artists like Hüsker Dü and The Replacements were making records that same year that were arguably even more accessible than Project Mersh and they were doing it without preempting their new material with self-deprecating titles.

Sure, “The Cheerleaders” has a more subdued vibe than their earlier material, but it’s still a pretty pointed anti-war track. “King of the Hill” demonstrates that D. Boon could actually belt out a strong vocal melody, but beyond that there isn’t much about the song that makes it more “mersh” than what audiences hear on Double Nickels. And yeah, there’s a Steppenwolf cover thrown in there too, but there was a Steely Dan cover on their previous album, so…

Ultimately, Project Mersh sold about half as many copies as Double Nickels, so the hit song strategy they joked about didn’t go as planned. But you know what? I LOVE Project Mersh. What it lacks in the unorthodox charm of their previous records they make up for by writing catchy, hummable, endearing and enduring tunes.

[bubblesandgutz]

Every Record I Own - Day 835: Minutemen Double Nickels on the Dime

If I were to lose my entire record collection in a fire, the first albums I would replace would be Miles Davis' In A Silent Way, Rolling Stones' Exile on Main St, Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks, and Minutemen's Double Nickels on the Dime. Of all those albums, Double Nickels has been in my life the longest.

It wasn't the first Minutemen album I owned (that would be the Post Mersh Vol 1 compilation) nor would it be the first Minutemen album that I really fell in love with (that would be Buzz or Howl Under the Influence of Heat), but it's the album that best encapsulates and captures all that I love about Minutemen.

With 45 songs at a runtime of over 80 minutes, it's a very dense album. As the San Pedro trio was fond of explaining, this was their "art album," which presumably means they were straying even further from the punk formula of their SoCal peers. Bassist Mike Watt ditched the pick and started playing with his fingers, nudging the band into funkier territories. Guitarist D. Boon revealed an aptitude with his instrument only hinted at on previous recordings and established his place as one of the greatest players in the punk scene. Drummer George Hurley slowed the tempos and leaned into the groove. There is very little on Double Nickels that sounds traditionally punk, unless you look back to the guitar dexterity of Television's Marquee Moon or the stabby rhythms of Gang of Four's Entertainment! To further confuse things, there were covers of Creedence Clearwater Revival, Van Halen, and Steely Dan on the album, and they blended in seamlessly with the original material.

It was a lot to process as a 15-year-old punk back in 1992. Minutemen had been big with my peer group in Hawaii, but I'd moved to Washington over the summer, and none of the punks or skaters I knew on the mainland gave two shits about the band. The "cool" factor for the band had disappeared in the move. But there was still something fascinating about Double Nickels, even if the music felt a bit unapproachable.

There was almost a kind of separate culture that surrounded Minutemen. Their vernacular was strange... a combination of SoCal surfer-speak, trucker slang, working class drawl, and literary sophistication. Their lyrics were both topical and cryptic. The incorporation of Raymond Pettibon illustrations in their album art added another layer of tension, mystery, and irreverence. They had a blue-collar aesthetic with a political bent and an art-minded approach. There simply wasn't another band that looked, sounded, or exuded the same aura as Minutemen.

There were Easter eggs hidden all over the album. Watt had just read Ulysses and seemed intent on mirroring the book's layers of meaning and sly humor (there's even a song called "June 16th" in homage to Bloomsday). The album title was a poke at Sammy Hagar's "I Can't Drive 55," with "double nickels" referring to the 55 mph speed limit and "the dime" referring to Highway 10, which leads into their hometown of San Pedro. The album cover, an homage to Kraftwerk's original Autobahn album art, captures Watt in his car with the speedometer at a steady 55 while the highway sign for the 10 is seen through the windshield. The sequencing of the album was an homage to Pink Floyd's Ummagumma with each member getting a side of the record to curate at their will and with all the remaining songs allocated to side D.

The music was a riddle in and of itself. Songs like "#1 Hit Song" and "Political Song for Michael Jackson to Sing" seemed to reinforce the album title's criticism of pop music's banality while basking in contradictions, such as the puzzling decision for Boon to drop a blazing guitar solo in the latter after singing "if we heard mortar shells, we'd cuss more in our songs and cut down on guitar solos." There's the intensely autobiographical "History Lesson pt 2" but also the self-referencing diss track "One Reporter's Opinion." The ominous and odd-timed "God Bows to Math" segues into the country two-step of "Corona." Hurley prioritized the clatter-and-scat of "You Need the Glory" as the opening to his side of the 2xLP over the power anthem of "Themselves."

And there were the lyrics to parse out. What's a punk kid supposed to make of lines like "me naked with textbook poems / spout fountain against the Nazis / a weird kind of sex symbol?" Or "the world was wrong and I was forced to march in line / but it felt like handcuffs / machines disregard my pronouns?" One moment it's "no hope / see, that's what gives me guts / big fucking shit / right now, man," but then it's "let the products sell themselves / fuck advertising / commercial psychology / psychological methods to sell should be destroyed."

I eventually made a commitment in November '92 to listen to Double Nickels in its entirety every day of the month. It was partially an endurance test. Could I do it? But it was also an attempt at deciphering what I was hearing. Surely this must all make sense somehow. And here I am 34 years later, still intrigued, mystified, and engaged by the album. I still hear something new every time I listen to it. There are still more in-jokes, references, and nuggets of wisdom to glean from it. It's a work of art that requires patience and attention, but it's also just a straight-up piece of celebratory joy and working class angst.

There's an entire world embedded in Double Nickels. It has its own language. It's own philosophy. It's own musical logic. It's own humor. It's own cultural reference-points. And it continues to be a world I want to visit on the regular.

[bubblesandgutz]

Every Record I Own - Day 834: Minutemen The Punch Line

Minutemen are one of my favorite bands of all time. But it didn't start out that way.

The San Pedro trio were active from 1980 to 1985. Consisting of best friends D. Boon and Mike Watt on guitar and bass (respectively) and joined by George Hurley on drums, Minutemen churned out hundreds of songs in their half-decade lifespan. Though they were very much a part of the American punk scene (and the first band after Black Flag to have records out on the seminal SST label), their sound was much stranger and more complex than their peers. The "punk" label certainly applied to their politics, their DIY spirit, and their short, jarring, adrenalized songs. But the three chord fury, sloganeering, and speed-centric template that typified early '80s punk was noticeably absent.

Somehow, Minutemen had developed a bit of a following in my hometown of Kailua, Hawaii in the early '90s. All the skaters and punk kids at my high school were into them. Granted, this maybe meant eight people total were fans, but those eight people were all in agreement that Minutemen were A BIG DEAL. So I did what every freshmen looking to fit in with the cool upperclassmen did... I listened to their music. I got the Project: Mersh Vol. 1 compilation that combined the first two Minutemen albums---The Punch Line and What Makes a Man Start Fires---and dove into their music over a Christmas break vacation to visit my grandparents in Colorado.

It was a lot of driving, and Project: Mersh Vol. 1 was one of the only CDs I had with me on the trip. Had I heard the music prior, I would've undoubtedly left the CD at home and picked something a little more in line with my then-current notion of punk---something like Minor Threat or Bad Religion. But I was stuck with Minutemen and I had to learn to make sense of it.

The songs on The Punch Line are short. Only two of its eighteen tracks are longer than a minute. There isn't much in terms of conventional song structures. No big catchy choruses. None of the meaty hooks of hardcore. The guitar-playing is jangly and sparse instead of thick and aggressive. The vocals seem more spoken than sung or shouted. There were moments that seemed a bit more in line with my idea of punk---the uptempo "Games" and "No Parade," for instance---but those moments were fleeting, and they almost inevitably segued into some strange, seemingly disjointed bass and drum jam with some vaguely political monologue on top. I didn't get it.

But I stuck with it, initially out of a lack of other musical options and later out of a mixture of curiosity and tribalism. After all, the cool kids liked it, so there must be something to latch onto there, right? And while that might sound like an embarrassing admission, it really shaped my relationship to music.

Pop music is crafted to be instantly appealing, but it also tends to be very shallow. It's music designed to appeal to as many people as possible, and in order to do that, it has to resonate with people who aren't particularly adventurous. I often think of music as another language, and pop music is essentially the communication-equivalent of a platitude. It's obvious and its meaning has been washed out from over-saturation. But something like Minutemen? It was far less obvious. You had to sit with it. It was more like a private conversation with a fascinating stranger. Maybe at first you had no idea what they were even trying to say, but the more you listened, the more you wanted to hear.

I'm not even embarrassed to admit that I stuck with Minutemen because the cool kids liked them. There were artists they loved that I never bonded with. But Minutemen contained some particular mystery and magic that kept me coming back. I've owned The Punch Line for nearly 32 years, and every time I listen to it, I feel a bit more connected to it. Hell, it's hard to even hear the dissonant skronk I initially gleaned from this album. This, as far as I'm concerned, is the what punk sounds like.

[bubblesandgutz]

Every Record I Own - Day 833: Minutemen Buzz or Howl Under the Influence of Heat

My friend Tom gave me Minutemen's Post Mersh Vol. 2 on cassette for my 15th birthday back in 1992. Along with our friend Frank, Tom and I played in a punk band in the small beach town of Kailua, Oahu. None of us really knew how to play our instruments, but that was okay. Someone at my high school had told me "if you want to learn to play bass, listen to Mike Watt." So I'd begun scoping out Watt's bands: fIREHOSE, Minutemen, and Dos. Coincidentally, Minutemen had no idea how to play when they started either. They famously didn't even know about tuning their guitars when they started out and thought you just tuned them to a tension that felt good on the fingers.

Some of Minutemen's early works were a bit impenetrable for me at that age, but Project Mersh Vol. 2, which combined the Buzz or Howl EP with the Project Mersh EP, clicked right away. It certainly helped that Project Mersh was deliberately written to be accessible ("mersh" being slang for "commercial"), but I was more drawn to agitated songwriting on Buzz or Howl. The atonal truncated skronk-punk that typified their early records like Paranoid Time and The Punch Line was still on display on songs like "Dream Told By Moto." And there were the strange improvised jams like "Dreams Are Free, Motherfucker" and "The Toe Jam." But these forays into disjointed funk and free jazz were offset by certified rockers like "Self-Referenced," "Cut," and "I Felt Like a Gringo."

My favorite track, however, was "Little Man With a Gun In His Hand." I have a distinct memory of listening to that song on my walkman while biking across town after finishing my shift at my summer job. The sun was low in the sky and I was cruising down a long hill on an unpopulated stretch of road between my work and my house when the instrumental break with D. Boon's descending guitar line came on. It was one of those moments where the music inadvertently served as the perfect soundtrack. I'd been pedaling my bike like mad, driven by the adrenaline of the song's punk energy, and I'd hit the downhill section where I could just cruise right at the calm breakdown before the final crescendo.

That August my family moved to Washington State, and I'd listen to "Little Man With a Gun In His Hand" frequently over the course of my first year there. It was an antidote to the dark gray Northwest winter. Every time I listened to it, I was transported back to a warm Hawaiian summer evening, biking across town with my headphones on.

So much of my listening habits now are a matter of trying to find a good balance between familiar music that transports me to a moment in my past and discovering new music to bond with new memories moving forward. For me, a big part of record collecting is about having a physical object that ties you to a time and place. And while I certainly need to be better about letting things go, there are records like Buzz or Howl that have such a rich and vibrant memory associated with them that I could never bear to part with it.

[bubblesandgutz]

Every Record I Own - Day 832: Stars of the Lid And Their Refinement of the Decline

When ambient duo Stars of the Lid released their two-hour triple LP And Their Refinement of the Decline back in 2007, we were in the weird era between iPods and iPhones. It was also the era of Last.fm---the website that tracked and displayed your digital listening habits. Stars of the Lid were my top played artist by a wide margin, mainly because I was listening to this album on tour night after night on my iPod headphones to drown out the sound of snoring bandmates.

And Their Refinement of the Decline was the perfect sleepy time music back then. The Texas duo of Brian McBride and Adam Wiltzie contorted the sound of their electric guitars into hazy orchestral swells to a point where it was nearly impossible to figure out where one ethereal guitar line began and the other ended. It was an undulating mass of feather-light electric drones supplemented by strings, French horn, trumpet, and flugelhorn. It was equal parts narcotic and narcoleptic.

It was sublime stuff, especially if you were slightly inebriated and dozing off to sleep. But as with all music, you can burn yourself out on it if you play it too much. Eventually I started listening to other Stars of the Lid albums when I'd go to bed. Or I'd listen to other ambient and drone albums. At some point, the album fell out of constant rotation in my life.

But I just got home from a five-week European tour last night, and I'd revisited And Their Refinement quite a few times over the course of that trip.

Touring is different now than it was 17 years ago. I'm no longer putting music on my headphones as an escape from the close quarters of years past. I'm not sharing a bed with a bandmate. Most nights, I'm not even sharing a room. And I'm not going to sleep with multiple beers in my bloodstream.

Early tours were an adventure. You didn't know what to expect from one night to the next. There was a certain baseline level of adrenaline and anxiety that was ever-present as you'd go from town to town on a shoestring budget, hoping the van didn't break down somewhere along the way, hoping folks would come to the shows, hoping they'd buy enough merch to put gas in the tank. There was no privacy, no backstages, no moments of calm. You were either with your bandmates or in public. You'd drink or smoke weed to take the edge off the constant socializing. You'd go to bed with your head buzzing, trying to will yourself to sleep while your brain was still processing all the events of the day.

Things are different now. We know most of the promoters and clubs. There's a comfortable backstage on most nights. I spend less time out in the crowd, mostly because people want to talk or take pictures together and the pandemic made me leery of interacting with throngs of strangers in confined spaces. We have ticket pre-sales so we generally know how many people will be at any given show before the date arrives. It's less of an adventure and more of a routine, which may seem a bit sad to the young'uns out there who romanticize the chaos and excitement of life on the road, but at age 47 the only way to make this sustainable is to stay healthy, grounded, and well-rested.

I played Stars of the Lid on this tour not to induce sleep in a cramped hotel room, but to bring a sense of calm to the occasional stresses of the road. Have to drive an hour after a hectic show to get a start on the next day's drive? Throw on Stars of the Lid. Gotta drown out the hordes of school kids running around on the ferry between France and England after dealing with customs and immigration? Stars of the Lid is perfect for that.

And you know what? It's been nice to revisit this album in a lucid state, to hear the subtleties in this deceptively nuanced music. The surface level admiration of the woozy serenity of the album has been replaced by a deeper appreciation for its interwoven layers and textural depth. It was once an inverse of touring life's agitation, a remedy to the dissonance of the road. Now it's a moment of reflection in a calmer world---a way to further strip away the noise and bustle of the public and replace it with a study in the benefits of deep listening.

[bubblesandgutz]

Every Record I Own - Day 812: Willie Nelson Stardust

My father-in-law passed away on February 23rd after a long battle with Parkinson’s and various other ailments. Over the last six years, my husband and I made frequent trips down to central Oregon to check in on my in-laws and help out around the house. During some visits, it seemed possible that his dad would be around for another decade or more. And on other visits, we wondered if he would be around more than a few months. Things took a rough turn around Thanksgiving of last year and his health declined considerably. My husband spent most of January in Oregon while I’ve spent 2024 fulfilling tour obligations with three different bands and making trips down to visit them during any available downtime.

My father-in-law was a great guy. He grew up in the Bay Area and was around for all the excitement of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. He was buddies with Pigpen from the Grateful Dead and attempted to go to the Altamont Free Concert but was stuck in the traffic jam when news traveled down the road about all the chaos and violence incited by the Hells Angels. He loved ZZ Top and Creedence Clearwater Revival and Tina Turner. But more than anything, he loved Willie Nelson.

Stardust, in particular, got a lot of spins around their house when I’d come to visit. In some ways, it’s odd that this was their Willie album of choice. After all, the ten songs on Stardust are all covers of old pop standards. Columbia Records was even hesitant to release it considering that Willie was riding strong on his outlaw country reputation at the time. But the album became a huge hit—a quintuple platinum album and a favorite among both fans and critics.

I won’t lie, I prefer Willie’s own songs, but the slow, sparse, and relaxed vibe of Stardust grew on me. I also appreciated how he chose songs with less conventional melodies (“Blue Skies,” “All of Me,” etc) and how his minimalist slow-hand style seemed perfectly suited to those compositions. The stretches of empty space, the chord changes that feel a little counterintuitive at first but then settle nicely into the larger song, the playful but rough-hewn quality to the vocals—it all has a hazy, late night, intoxicating vibe. I don’t even remember when I picked up my personal copy but it’s been a part of my collection for at least two decades.

Over the years, I heard less and less music at my in-law’s house. Television became the more constant companion, perhaps because the sound of people talking filled the conversational void stemming from the reclusive nature of my father-in-law’s disease. But when they began doing hospice at home back in January, they switched back to music. In his last days, we kept the stereo on throughout the day, switching between various CDs from their collection. I was occasionally tasked with picking out music, and I grappled with finding something that was familiar and comforting without running the risk of forever being tainted by the circumstances. Stardust was a family favorite but I never put it on for fear that it would render it off-limits once his father passed.

The hospice nurse called us on a Tuesday in February to say my father-in-law was near the end. He wasn’t eating or drinking and his breathing was labored. My husband and I drove all night hoping to make it to central Oregon in time to say goodbye. He was nearly unresponsive by that point, though he would squeeze your hand if you talked to him. Despite his condition, he managed to to hang in there for another week-and-a-half. In that time, I had to return to Seattle for rehearsals, then had to fly out to the East Coast for a weekend of shows, then flew back to Oregon, then had to fly back to Seattle to check in on a friend that was mentally struggling after being involved in a motor vehicle fatality involving an inebriated man that had been running across a busy highway.

The call came in the afternoon. My father-in-law passed peacefully. My husband and his mother had been listening to Stardust at the time, and he took his last breath during “September Song.”

The struggle was over. It had been a long decline and by the end it was hard to recognize the warm, witty, and vibrant man I first met nearly 26 years ago in the withered and incapacitated person we’d been tending to for the last few months. I was grateful to know my father-in-law for so many years, to have a stockpile of memories of him before things got so difficult. And in the weeks since he’s passed I’ve listened to Stardust a few times. The wistful nature of the album has an added element of sadness, but the memories of listening to it in happy moments outweigh its more recent association. If anything, “September Song” feels like an even more bittersweet reminder to savor the moment and hold your loved one’s close, because seasons change and all things must pass.

Oh, it's a long long while

From May to December

But the days grow short

When you reach September

When the autumn weather

Turns leaves to flame

One hasn't got time

For the waiting game

Oh, the days dwindle down

To a precious few

September, November

And these few precious days

I'll spend with you

These precious days

I'll spend with you

[bubblesandgutz]

Every Record I Own - Day 830: Dead Moon In The Graveyard

I've been on tour for what feels like the majority of 2024. And while I love playing shows, I find that my appetite for new music tends to wane when I'm on the road for too long. Something similar happened around 2018 after touring the US six times and Europe five times in the span of two years. I feel like part of being a musician is staying curious about music from the past and engaged with the music of the present, but sometimes you just get worn out and wanna reach for old favorites.

So I pulled out In The Graveyard today. I'll admit, my love for Dead Moon has really only blossomed in the last half decade, but they've been in my orbit since I was a teenager after a local music newspaper had them on the cover with the tag line "Is Dead Moon The Last True DIY Band?" After all, not only did they release their own records, they also recorded them, designed the covers, AND cut the vinyl lathes.

But Dead Moon were also a bit mysterious to me as a teenager. They didn't play many (if any) all ages shows in the area despite being a Northwest band. They seemed to belong to an older generation. They had long hair and a Jack Daniels bottle with melted candle wax adhered to their kick drum and that skull moon logo---it all made me assume they were some old school proto-metal band. But they also seemed to belong to the garage rock world at a time when MRR was leaning into old fashioned rock n' roll and weeding out all the more interesting and boundary-pushing stuff in the punk world. Again, I assumed it wasn't for me.

But I grew up and my horizons expanded. I don't remember when I first consciously heard Dead Moon, though I remember catching one of their final shows in Portland back in 2006 and being sorta surprised by how scrappy and primitive they came across. It was like they were some long lost collaboration between Creedence Clearwater Revival and The Stooges. Even then, it felt like I'd missed the boat. This was a band, I assumed, whose charm resided in hearing them at the right time and place.

And then sometime around 2020 I actually sat down with In The Graveyard and had this weird realization that I knew all these songs. I'd been hearing them for years. The bartenders at the Cha Cha Lounge would play it all the time. The record store clerks at Fallout Records or Singles Going Steady would play it in the shop while I was browsing their bins. It would be on the PA between bands at local shows. I may not have been listening to Dead Moon for the past quarter century, but I'd been hearing them regularly throughout that time.

So now Dead Moon has this magic where it's both pleasantly familiar but also strangely new to me. It sounds like being in my 20s and 30s in Seattle, but I haven't exhausted myself on it like so many of the records I had on rotation in my life back then.

[bubblesandgutz]

Every Record I Own - Day 831: Metallica Ride the Lightning

A classmate of mine loaned me his cassette of Ride the Lightning during art class in junior high sometime around '89 or '90. I'd seen the video for "One" and liked it, but beyond that I only really knew about Metallica because the skaters and metal kids wore those classic Pushead design shirts all the time. The Black Album wouldn't come out for another year or two, so Metallica still felt more rooted in the underground than the mainstream. It was music for outsiders.

I felt like an outsider too. And that's probably why Ride the Lightning connected with me. I liked the hardcore fury of "Fight Fire With Fire." I thought the suicide subject matter of "Fade to Black" was both dangerous and oddly comforting. Even the more dense and complex tracks on the album had an undeniable strength and palpable narrative arc to them. I wan't a metalhead, mainly because it was the heyday of hair metal and I found Mötley Crüe and their ilk to be campy and bloated, but Metallica appealed to my punk tastes. The anger and desperation felt authentic.

The Black Album came out as I was really going down the rabbit hole of punk music, and its studio sheen and cultural ubiquity didn't appeal to my fickle adolescent tastes. Metallica wasn't cool anymore as far as I was concerned. Two years after its release I would meet a guitarist named Dave in my high school trigonometry class who wanted to start a band. I mentioned I played bass and wanted to try out. The band would become Botch. We'd spend the next nine years playing shows, putting out records, and going on tour together. Dave loved Metallica, particularly And Justice For All, and suddenly Metallica was back in my life.

And they haven't left. Mike from Russian Circles picked up the guitar in large part because of Metallica. Same with Aaron from SUMAC. And while Ride the Lightning has always been the bronze medal winner for those guys, coming in behind Justice or Master of Puppets, Ride the Lightning was my entry point and my favorite album by the band. Because it will always sound like that cassette played on a shitty Walkman loaned to me by the kid with the dirt-stache wearing a Merciful Fate shirt.

I got to see Metallica last night. Dave hit me up because one of Botch's old roadies (and the guy who put out our second 7") manages one of the opening bands on Metallica's current tour and was able to get us a couple of free tickets and backstage passes. I'll be honest, I was ready to be a bit disappointed. Metallica moved on from the ambitious thrash metal opuses of the '80s a long time ago. This was no longer the band heralded by the misfits of my youth. But it's a free concert and a chance to catch up with an old road buddy.

But ya know what... they were great. They played FOUR Ride the Lightning songs ("Fight Fire With Fire," "For Whom The Bell Tolls," "Ride The Lightning," and "The Call of Ktulu") and they played with enthusiasm. And it felt just rough enough around the edges to activate the same pleasure centers in my brain that lit up when I heard that cassette tape 30+ years ago.

[bubblesandgutz]

Every Record I Own - Day 828: Blasphemy Fallen Angel of Doom

Hey everyone. It's been awhile.

I haven't been home much in 2024 and consequently haven't spent much time with my records. I have a couple of stacks of "recent arrivals" that are actually a few years old at this point, among them the debut album by British Columbia black metal pioneers Blasphemy, Fallen Angel of Doom.

Released in 1990, Fallen Angel of Doom set the template for bestial black metal while also helping influence the bourgeoning second wave of European black metal. Much like their Norwegian peers, Blasphemy's recordings were pretty gnarly, and their private lives were rife with criminal activity. And also like the Norwegians, you're more likely to see their shirts than hear their music in the public sphere.

I'll be honest, I haven't connected with Fallen Angel of Doom, mostly because the recording is fairly impenetrable. Of course, black metal bands have always leaned into raw recordings, but Fallen Angel of Doom is particularly tough because the vocals are so. damn. loud. in the mix. Sometimes that can work (see: Beherit's Drawing Down the Moon or Darkthrone's Panzerfaust), but I struggle with it here. Then again, it took me ages to come around to a lot of the second wave black metal stuff, so I'm willing to be patient.

Given the ugliness and messiness of the Blasphemy LP, I'm a little startled by how often I see Blasphemy shirts at metal shows, particularly in comparison to a lot of far more popular artists. Consequently, I think about Blasphemy a lot in the context of modern politics. Just because you see a political candidate's sign all over town doesn't mean everyone is voting for them. Having a fervent and outspoken fanbase of a candidate or a cause can create the illusion of popularity.

I also think of Blasphemy a lot as a forty-something fan of underground metal. I remember as a young'un feeling like you HAD to like these "quintessential" cult bands. And if you didn't, then you HAD to be outspoken about why you didn't like them. One of the perks of getting older is simply not caring what other folks think about your allegiance to some mythical canon of niche music. I like the idea of Blasphemy more than I like the actual music of Blasphemy, and I have no qualms about being open and honest about it.

And finally, I think about Blasphemy a lot because my record collection is rapidly growing to a point where I really need to weed records out, and I only have so much room for LPs that might grow on me later. I probably spend too much time internally debating whether to scope out new music, listen to an old favorite, listen to a current interest, or try to garner an appreciation for an older record every time I turn on my stereo. Somehow, there's always a little voice in the back of my head that says "you could always give that Blasphemy LP another chance."

So for now, Fallen Angel of Doom stays in the collection.

[bubblesandgutz]

Every Record I Own - Day 829: Merzbow / Man Is The Bastard Noise Voice Pie

I got a bunch of new followers over the weekend on account of a couple of my backyard selfies... which is very flattering. Thanks y'all, and welcome.

So it seems like a good time to offer up a quick re-introduction and statement of purpose.

Hi, I'm Brian. I'm a 47-year-old musician. I play in a few different bands/projects. I'm a gay man who's married to my partner of 25+ years. I mostly use this blog to write about my record collection. I used to be a music writer but got bummed out on music criticism and burned out on the hustle of being a freelancer. But I still like talking about records and promoting stuff that l like. So here we are. And yes, occasionally I'll throw a thirst trap into the mix.

I have been on tour most of 2024 so I've been largely absent here. But since I'm actually home at the moment, let's quickly talk about this split LP between Japanese noise artist Merzbow and Californian powerviolence-turned-noise unit Man Is The Bastard / Bastard Noise (here conveniently billed as Man Is The Bastard Noise). My roommates got me this LP as a birthday present back in 1996. Admittedly, I was more into the powerviolence roots of Man Is The Bastard than the caustic white noise assault on either side of this LP, but this record was also a nice little introduction to the world of noise.

For me, this kind of visceral and tactile tone exploration is generally more exciting in the live setting than on record. Wrangling electric chaos into something resembling expressionistic art just translates better when you watch it happen in real time. Though the adrenaline rush of this kind of music isn't quite as powerful on record, there's still something exhilarating about these kinds of records when they're done well.

While Voice Pie initially got spins at home when I wanted something on the stereo but didn't want the distraction of actual songs, I eventually found that it was actually a really good record to listen to while hungover. For whatever reason, music that is intensely rhythmic or repetitive makes me feel extra ill when I'm headachy and nauseous. But walls of static and square wave buzzes? That's somehow soothing.

Maybe not the best record to scope out if you're just here for speedo pics. But hey, ya never know...

[bubblesandgutz]

Every Record I Own - Day 814: Nomeansno You Kill Me

Nomeansno's debut album was a tightly coiled amalgam of art punk and jazz fusion, but it didn't wield the power of their later records. Between 1982's Mama and their 1985 EP You Kill Me, the band would expand beyond the sibling rhythm section of Rob and John Wright to include guitarist / vocalist Andy Kerr. The addition of guitar added the layer of grit and distortion that had been missing from earlier Nomeansno records, and the band fully embraced that newfound abrasion with an EP that demonstrated their full sonic menace while also establishing their stylistic and aesthetic stamp.

The EP opens with "Body Bag," a long-form, tension-baiting, quiet-loud-quiet rocker that harkens back to the bass-and-drum interplay of Mama, but adds jagged spikes of guitar in the chorus, giving the song an amplified sense of resolve and potency. From there the band launches into "Stop It," arguably the band's first foray into a sonic territory that could be deemed "hardcore." Set against a rock shuffle, the band sneers and spits its way through a Black Flag-style rage anthem. It's here that we get the first taste of Rob Wright's burgeoning distorted bass tone. With the gain knob cranked for maximum crunch, you can hear Rob dig into the strings to the point where they growl with aggression.

Side 2 opens with "Some Bodies," a song that harnesses the band's newfound vitriol with their signature off-kilter rhythmic configurations. There weren't a lot of punk bands playing with polyrhythms back in the 1985, but for Nomeansno it almost seemed second nature. There's even a riff in the song that is eerily similar to the main riff in Botch's "Vietmam."

This EP and a few of the other Nomeansno records in my collection were given to me by a college friend the year after I graduated. He was a year or two younger than me, and he had a radio show at our campus station KUPS (90.1 FM, if you happen to find yourself in the North End of Tacoma). I was a Nomeansno fan only so far as I owned the Jello Biafra collab album and a cassette copy of The Day Everything Became Nothing / Small Parts Isolated And Destroyed, but I was excited by the gift. This means I wouldn't have heard You Kill Me (or Sex Mad or Wrong, but we'll get to those at a later date) until at least 2001. But there are more than a few little musical moments across those records that parallel parts of my own songs. There's the aforementioned "Vietmam" riff, which we would have written right around the time this EP came into my collection. But there's the "womb / tomb" rhyme in "Body Bag" that I'd also used in Botch's "I Wanna Be A Sex Symbol On My Own Terms" at least two years prior. There's another inadvertent parallel to a Botch song on Sex Mad's "Self Pity," but we'll discuss that later. And a bunch of Nomeansno-isms would later appear in These Arms Are Snakes material, like the descending chromatic guitar solo in "Body Bag" being deliberately swiped for the pitch-shifted bass solo in These Arms Are Snakes' "Mescaline Eyes" (sorry, Andy).

I won't lie, Nomeansno's aesthetics sometimes leave a lot to be desired. I don't love the cartoony album cover. But Nomeansno rubbed off on me in other ways. There are moments across their records that seem a little silly, especially given their musically and lyrically heavy moments. But that irreverent and sardonic twist contained its own kind of malice---taking something child-like or frivolous and setting against something dire and dripping with existential dread somehow gave Nomeansno an added layer of human dimension. They could be theatrical, but they weren't cosplaying as total misanthropes. The humor almost made the serious material even heavier. The band also had a fascination with human sexuality and confronting sexual mores (see: the band's name, "Some Bodies," "Body Bag," etc.) that would continue to pop up in their music. And you could see the parallels in Botch's often absurd and/or salacious song titles (see again: "I Wanna Be A Sex Symbol On My Own Terms," "Frequency Ass Bandit," "Saint Matthew Returns To The Womb").

I wouldn't have cited Nomeansno as a primary influence back in 2001, but I already appeared to be walking a parallel path, and I would deliberately tread into their territories in the following years.