Letterman Circa 1985

Letterman fucked the help and I could really give a shit. There are moments of old Letterman every now and then, but it hasn't been the same since the old NBC show. I know, call it nostalgic, but it's true. There were moments watching Letterman at 11:30 CST where I questioned how his show could even be on the air.
It was awesome.
Take this clip from '85, when Dave forgoes having a show in front of studio audience and instead decides to have the show taped in his office. And what do you do when Teri Garr stops by? You try to get her to take a shower.
What do you do when Terri Gibbs stops by?
You make believe its still in front of a studio audience
Three of you probably got that reference.
I remember watching this the night it aired and it's ingrained in my TV cortex.

Jesus Lizard Announce New Year's Eve Show

So hey, what was going to be a chance to see the very last Jesus Lizard show has now turned into a chance to see the penultimate performance.
I’m a little pissed about it.
You see, I knew both Thanksgiving weekend performances would sell out.
And they rightly did.
And then they announced a New Year’s Eve show, the real final show.
That’s going to sell out too.
I’m having second thoughts inviting my wife along. I don’t think she’s fully appreciative of what is about to occur this month.
Regardless of the last show or second to last one, it’s going to be awesome.

Lou Reed - Sally Can't Dance

Lou Reed publicly voiced his displeasure of Sally Can’t Dance, but then again, Lou Reed is an asshole, so it’s best to taper his comments with a dose of reality. As a matter of fact, Lou Reed as an asshole is found throughout Sally Can’t Dance so maybe his criticism of it was part of the Lou Circa ’74 character.
His criticism of the album is one of the reasons I love it: the production. It’s slick, polished, and everything glistens. That’s not to suggest there aren’t some dirty moments throughout the album’s brief 8 song cycle, there’s a lot of it, actually, both figuratively and musically. But every instrument is distinguishable and there are moments where Lou’s voice-a relatively limited and weak instrument-is processed with studio gimmicks that it sounds awesome.
“Kill Your Sons,” a song about Lou’s electroshock therapy treatments as a teen, remains as one of his fiercest songs ever.
“NY Stars” finds Reed dismissing his hometown imitators with a deadpanned “Help the New York stars.” That same, intentional deadpan is used throughout Sally Can’t Dance (the “Alimony” bit in “Ennui,” the “then war broke out…a he had to go” line in “Billy”) and it never tires.
Upbeat Lou even stops by for a laugh or two, with mixed results. The descriptive title track that details where Sally “used to ball folk singers” (a line that I like to use on my wife when we visit her hometown on the holidays. You know, we’ll pass a grain elevator and I’ll ask her if “that’s where you used to ball folk singers?”).
It falls flat on the downright awful “Animal Language,” a song so embarrassing that I’ll let it play through and dramatically sing the lyrics like a Vegas crooner. You really haven’t lived until you’ve heard me belt out “they took the dude’s sweat and shot it up between the two” like Robert Goulet.
Sally Can’t Dance became Lou’s highest charting album, leading him to exclaim that if he relinquished total control on his albums to someone else that he would surely find himself with a number 1 record. Given the artist’s cantankerous nature, noncommercial subject matters and penchant for subversive behavior, it seems highly unlikely that this could really happen. But Sally Can’t Dance at least promotes how Lou should have entertained the idea of letting someone man the controls behind the boards a little more frequently.

Sonic Youth - The Eternal

There was a time when I would buy Sonic Youth albums without even hearing a note. For me, they were a band that deserved this kind of positive reinforcement, an epitome of how bands with major label should act, progress, and influence.
A pair of albums-A Thousand Leaves and NYC Ghosts & Flowers- abruptly ended that blind adulation. It seemed that one of my favorite bands had simply run their course and run out of ideas in the process. They had become pretentious and boring, oblivious to the fact that rock music should contain a bit of humor, or at least a wink towards it. Sonic Youth appeared to have grown up, no longer deserving their ageless band name.
Around this time I purchased Murray Street only out of Trade Center guilt and I skipped Sonic Nurse altogether.
I got a chance to see them in Ohio during the Rather Ripped tour-twenty years after I’d first seen them in a small club in Iowa supporting Sister tour-and was pleasantly surprised. Lee assaulted his guitar, Thurston dry humped his amp stack, and Kim jumped around like she was honestly overtaken by the amplified onslaught. And Steve Shelly? As usual, he was his awesome dependable self, keeping all of the chaos neatly contained in measured rhythms.
The album they were promoting-Rather Ripped-was a high energy affair, complete with efficient song structures and what appeared to be an attempt to win back fans that had fallen by the wayside, like me.
Sonic Youth’s latest, The Eternal, is curiously being promoted as the band’s first independent release in years (like that accounts for anything in this day and age and, to be honest, I never really considered Matador to be an “indie” label to begin with) when it should be promoted as their best work since Washing Machine.
They’re continuing with Ripped’s fast-tempo tendencies and they’re expertly tiptoeing between streamlined guitar rock and their groundbreaking experimentation. It’s an album that manages to straddle a variety of different elements from their past while sounding amazingly fresh. An impressive feat for a band that’s approaching their thirtieth anniversary.
The obvious attraction is the guitar interplay between Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo. They’ve proven to be ample warriors within the alterna-tuning freakouts and have even poked around some areas that could be fodder for jam-band fans. But The Eternal finds the pair consolidating their interplay into short, sweet bursts. Their performances are deceiving-one has to listen closely for their complexity-but when they do go off on extended tangents (“Anti-Orgasm” the wonderful “Antenna” and the closer “Massage The History”) it makes the impact that much stronger. The two are so good that they even make a mundane Kim Gordon track, “Malibu Gas Station,” into a track that you don’t dare skip.
Because many of the complexities are brief, efficient and expertly positioned, you can expect The Eternal to grow a bit after a few listens. Trust me, this review looked a bit different after the first spin. But now after double-digit listens, it’s now apparent that I’m enjoying a new Sonic Youth album more than I have in years. More importantly, The Eternal has me looking forward to the next few Sonic Youth albums before they’ve even been contemplated.
Seems like old times.

This review originally appeared in Glorious Noise.

Naked Lunch Turns 50

Happy birthday, Naked Lunch.

Ace Frehley - Anomaly

My cousin quipped that the reason I didn’t get Anomaly as a promo was because it sucked and the record company was afraid that people would find out about it sooner. Judging by the song titles and ridiculous cover art, the signs were pointing to the possibility that he was indeed correct.
There is a song on the album called “Space Bear.”
How good can the album be with a song called “Space Bear.”
There’s also a song called “I Come From Outer Space” which features a chorus of “I thought I told you I came from outer space” repeated over a fairly innocuous guitar riff.
Sure enough, a few hours after I heard the song, I began telling people-or merely talking to myself-“I thought I told you I came from outer space.” I’d do it with different inflections, just to make it sound different.
Ace has his way with a hook.
The issue isn’t if Anomaly bad-it really isn’t-the issue is that it took Ace twenty years to record a new solo album, and this is the best he could come up with?
Christ, Ace has run ragged in Kiss, releasing a couple of albums a year, and was then forced to whip out a solo album in no time. And what came of it? The best of the four Kiss solo albums and the most popular.
We’ve given Ace twenty years to return and what does he bring to the table? Another song about the perils of drinking. Wasn’t there another song twenty years ago about the perils of drinking? Did Ace fall off the wagon, or is his recovery from alcoholism the most lengthy in recorded history?
“Foxy And Free” is a decent opener, with its neat Hendrix references and metal Ace dishing out some aggro riffs, it’s heavier than what one would expect from a 57-year-old man. Or is it 60? Who the hell knows? The point is, Ace is old now and is still releasing hard rock damage of someone half his age.
There are some fine moments, there are more silly ones, and there is a couple where you think, “If these two Ace songs were tacked on to the new Kiss album and the replacement band’s songs removed, you’d have a really good Kiss album.
Instead, you have one barely good Kiss album a slightly average-yet surprisingly consistent and heavy-Ace Frehley solo album.
But you’d still hold it against him for taking so long to come up with something this uneventful.
After all, the fucker came from outer space.

Kiss - Sonic Boom

Against all odds, against any rational thought, Kiss founders Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley have put together a scab band, pissed off nearly every remaining Kiss Army member by their unquenchable desire of money and managed to release the best album in almost three decades.
Why should you trust me? Because I hate Kiss. I’m on a mission to review every Kiss album in their bloated catalog in the hopes of finding some logical explanation as to why they are so revered and-without spoiling too much of my quest-I am having a tough time of it.
I went into this Wal-Mart only album fully expecting to hate it only to walk away with my jaw opened at how decent it was.
There was the embarrassment of the reunion album about eleven years ago and then the unexplainable decision to take the image that former founding members Ace Frehley and Peter Criss created and allow a pair of Johnny-come-lately members don the outfits and act as if nothing ever happened. The decision was so moronic that even local television stations made fun of them live an on camera.
Kiss was never a band of much respect, but now they were a bona fide joke. So excuse me for really…REALLY…wanting Sonic Boom to suck so much shit that I could come up with a few hundred words to bash them.
But something’s happening here. Aside from all of the hype concerning the cover art (the same dude that inked Rock And Roll Over did Sonic Boom) and Paul’s endless yapping that the new album was a return to their classic 70’s sound, even Vegas odds makers had the new album as another late-career embarrassment.
Maybe Paul-the obvious motivator on this one-was getting tired of the jokes at his disposal. Maybe they noticed AC/DC’s own late career marketing deal and decent album and decide that they were actually going to put some effort into this one. Or maybe they can finally taste the opportunity of getting into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and want to go in with a good album under their belt.
You can already hear Gene’s smug and ungrateful speech right now, but even that asshole knows that there would be at least a couple less eye-rolling audience members if his band could walk in with their heads high off a new album instead of one that was released in 1979.
Of course, nobody but the faithful are going to give a shit about this one as nobody but the Kiss Army wants to hear anything new by these guys. Hell, even Gene thinks records are a waste of time, as they don’t pocket him with nearly the cash that he feels he’s entitled to.
As a result, his songs on Sonic Boom continue down the embarrassing road of getting’ pussy and I’m pretty such I’ve heard his double-entendres here some place before.
Paul’s material is top notch and it sounds like he actually gives a shit about this project. His song’s are catchy, anthemic, and contain some good riffs. Admittedly, some of the riffs sound suspiciously similar to older ones, but after such shit like Psycho Circus, Hot In The Shade, and The Elder, this ain’t a bad thing.
One thing that is a bad thing is letting new(er) Kiss Members Tommy Thayer and Eric Singer have their own tunes, giving the false pretense that they are somehow part of the band. They are hired guns-we all know it-so don’t insult our intelligence and dash their hopes that they’re somehow part of the organization by letting them have a couple of spots on your “comeback” album. Besides, they suck and are even shittier than Gene’s songs.
But I will give Thayer for laying down some decent solos (I’m sure the main riff’s are Paul’s) and suggesting that he may indeed be the best Kiss guitarist since Ace.
There’s absolutely nothing new to Sonic Boom, but that seems to be the point. It’s just a little raunchier than their material has been since Love Gun. It begs the question: What took you guys so long? Had they released Sonic Boom immediately after Love Gun who knows, we may have already been introducing this greedy fucks into the Hall already. Instead, we’re questioning why it’s come so late in the game and trying to figure out their ulterior motives.

Heaven & Hell - The Devil You Know

One of my biggest fears in writing this review is the perception that I am the site’s lone Ronnie James Dio and that role puts me in a category of irrelevance. Kind of like the irrelevance that Dio himself faced about ten years ago when he was playing the shtick in clubs and secondary markets. Only the faithful showed up then and I would probably count myself as one of those vocal naysayers, laughing at every one of those few hundred patrons coming to get a glimpse at this tiny old man.
Tenacious D may have resurrected Dio to a pop culture joke, but it was a re-examination of his work with Black Sabbath in the early 80’s that resurrected him to a credible and influential voice in metal.
The reunion shows were supposed to be a swan song, a final glimpse at a band that was on its own deathbed at the time of conception. But there were reports during the tour that the band-now named Heaven & Hell thanks to the endless meddling of Sharon Osbourne-was preparing to record a new album together, the second reunion of this line-up.
Initially, I found myself as a naysayer, rolling my eyes at the notion of a disc of new material, envisioning a slow death of decreasing popularity and smaller venues. The fellas seemed intention on exiting the metal arena in embarrassing fashion, too old to know when it’s time to put away the gargoyles and call it a day.
The Devil You Know should be the sad remnants of that union, the document that tells us that the moment ended decades ago and, while reminiscing among the old farts is fine, the idea that they can translate it into credible new material is silly.
Well Holy Diver, the joke is squarely on me as Heaven & Hell deliver their heaviest recordings closer to the age of seventy than they did at twenty-one. It’s an effort that provides them with a reason to exist-albeit under a new name-and it should provide an inspiring reference point to anyone considering what the shelf life of a metal band should be.
Dio, who’s voice is still impressive at his advanced age, has moved from an egotistical bellower to one that has transitioned his talents into an ominous howl. The end of days is written all over this record, and Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler work each riff like it will be their last with Vinny Appice plodding along at a snails pace. Seriously: the album is more than half over before the band kicks it into second gear with “Eating The Cannibals.” All of this dirge and slow motion head banging begins to sound the same by the end of the album, and repeated listening had me reaching for the remote so that I could program only the best songs on the album.
One of those is “Bible Black.” It begins as a forlorn acoustic number until the ninety-second mark. At which time the band unleashes into a menacing refute of Christianity. “Let me go!/I’ve seen religion, but the light has left me blind!” Dio roars while Iommi delivers another worthy riff underneath the sacrilege.
While not as noteworthy as Heaven & Hell or The Mob Rules, the fourth installment of this Sabbath line-up is most surprising for its consistency. Not even I imagined that these four old-timers would have been album to create an album that matches the releases that are already available, particularly since it’s been over fifteen years since the last installment. It also annihilates practically everything that Sabbath’s more notorious frontman has released during that time. Which begs the question: shouldn’t Sharon be doing more to make sure her husband is contributing to his own legacy than worrying about what his former bandmates are doing? Because, judging from The Devil You Know, Heaven & Hell are doing more to retain Sabbath’s lofty stature than he is.

This review originally appeared in Glorious Noise.