Saturday, September 27, 2014

The Piper at the Gates of Dawn by Pink Floyd (1967, EMI Columbia)




WHY I NEVER GOT AROUND TO LISTENING TO THIS ARTIST/ALBUM
  • Many people I know have often indulged in hallucinogenics and/or barbiturates. I have not. It isn't really my thing. Not that I didn't experiment in mood alteration as a youth – the late 1980s are pretty much a blur – but I was more of a beer, whiskey and hashish kind of guy. It is significant to point out that the consumption of psychedelics and sedative pills is the preferable prescription for maximum enjoyment of Pink Floyd's music, at least they are from my point of view. This could explain why I never was much of a fan (in high school, I would often referred to them as Dink Floyd); I never understood the trip the music was trying to take me on.
  • That being said, I am very well acquainted with the 1970s-era Pink Floyd. Dark Side of the Moon (1973), Wish You Were Here (1975) and The Wall (1979) are standard fare for FM radio, basement keggers and outdoor bush parties anywhere from Mississauga to Malabon. I also seem to remember a summer evening in Montreal circa 1991 with Jennifer Brodawka, Claudia Valenzuela, my brother Andrew and me vegging out to side two of Meddle on a rooftop in Mile End. Animals (1977) is part of arguably the best comedic moments in television: the WKRP in Cincinnati episode “Turkey's Away”. Click here to watch the clip. So, whether I like it or not, David Gilmour, Roger Waters, Nick Mason and Richard Wright have been influential in my musical development.
  • All the while, I always knew there was this sevant-like songwriter and guitarist named Syd Barrett in the band during their formative years in the late 1960s. But this was a period of Pink Floyd I never explored. As I mentioned in a previous entry regarding the 1960s-era Kinks records, the quirkiness of the psychedelic era was never something I dug.

WHAT I KNEW ABOUT THE ALBUM BEFORE THIS PROJECT
  • This record has been lauded as one of the best psychedelic albums ever written and recorded.
  • The opening track, "Astronomy Domine", was covered by Montreal metal band Viodvod on the their album Nothingface (1989). I couldn't get into that version either.
  • I remember seeing Jim Bravo and the Beethoven Frieze playing tracks from this album at a gig in the mid-1990s.
  • I always got the impression from guys like Gaven Dianda that the mystical Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd was lengthy and prolific. It turns out this is the only full-length album Barrett recorded with the band. Famously, Barrett left Pink Floyd in 1968 due to mental illness exacerbated by drug use.
AFTER A WEEK OF DIGESTING THIS ALBUM
  • For most of The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, I could not get the mocumentary This Is Spinal Tap (1984) out of my head. It seems most of the cliches that Spinal Tap – a fictional band that parodies the self- indulgent artistry of British hard rock musicians – depict in the movie came from Pink Floyd, and it was difficult for me to take the lyrics seriously. The subject matter of astronomy (Neptune, Titan/Stars can frighten); drug-induced delusions (Lazing in the foggy dew/Sitting on a unicorn/No fair, you can't hear me. But I can you); and fantasy worlds (A gnome named Grimble Grumble.../He wore a scarlet tunic) are satirized in the film.
  • The musicianship is top-notch, with some catchy riffs and melodies. The main riff from "Lucifer Sam" and middle section of  "Matilda Mother" could be in a James Bond film. Conversely, while melodically engaging, “Flaming”, “The Scarecrow." and “Chapter 24” end before they can take you anywhere.
  • Sonically, one of my issues was producer Norman Smith's generous use of the effect of panning the sound from one side to another, done to almost nauseating levels on "Interstellar Overdrive". But again, this was probably done to induce those listeners who had taken pharmaceuticals into some sort of trip. As usual, I just don't get it.
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Sunday, September 7, 2014

Teenage Dream by Katy Perry (2010, Capitol)




WHY I NEVER GOT AROUND TO LISTENING TO THIS ARTIST/ALBUM
  • I love pop songs. And what I mean by that is that I really like the pop song format. This really shouldn't be confused with the term pop music. I view pop music as a collective noun, made up of whatever music is popular for masses at any given time. This can usually be classified as disposable and lacking of any real legacy, other than the sentimental shlep when someone utters the phrase “Do you remember this song?” A good pop song, however, stands the test of time. No matter the artist, the songwriter, the instrumentation, the accompanying video clip or the amount of radio airplay, a good pop song can win over the hype machine any day.
  • And speaking of pop and hype, I have been noticing a lot of buzz around Katy Perry lately, with her new record and tour in full swing. She has never been on my musical radar – which doesn't mean I had no idea who she was. If you know me, it is no secret that have a proclivity towards curvy brunettes with dark, brooding eyes. But that wasn't enough to get me to listen to her music. I remember a few years back that she was briefly married to comedian Russell Brand, which brought up her cred, as far as I was concerned, but again, I still had no interest in getting into her material.
  • When her latest tour brought her through Toronto for a couple of dates a short while ago, there were a handful or so people that I know who unabashedly got tickets to her shows. That's when I figured there might be something to explore. I spent a week with her 2010 monster hit album Teenage Dream.
WHAT I KNEW ABOUT THE ALBUM BEFORE THIS PROJECT
  • That track that had Snoop on it (“California Gurls”) was all over the place a few years ago. And that “Firework” song – because they play it at Toronto Blue Jay games all the time. Otherwise, not so much.
AFTER A WEEK OF DIGESTING THIS ALBUM
  • As stated above, I didn't think I knew much from this record, but I quickly realized that wasn't the case at all. Many tracks on this album are ubiquitous; on TV shows and advertisements, at the baseball stadium and the hockey arena, and in video games. Apparently, I've been listening to Katy Perry for the past four years without knowing it.
  • The songs are anthemic in scope – exemplified by "Firework" and the title track. I think it has a lot to do with Perry singing at the top of her register on the choruses of those tunes. At times, Perry verges on shouting, which is perhaps the reason why a song like "Not Like in the Movies" is a nice reprieve from the rest of the album.
  • Katy Perry's lyrical content is anything but subtle, i.e. "I wanna see your peacock." The double entendres - hell, the single entendres show up in every other line. She seems to try a bit too hard to show how far she can push the lyrical envelope. The feminist in me applauds Perry's uncompromising expressions of overt sexuality. As an uncle of a five-and-a-half year-old niece who sings Katy Perry songs she hears on the Just Dance video game, I am a bit more cautious.
  • Make no mistake, there is a reason why Teenage Dream set the benchmark for an album having the most number one singles (seven) on Billboard's Dance/Club Play Songs chart: this shit is catchy as hell. I still find myself humming “Hummingbird Heartbeat” and "Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)" weeks after listening to it. But after seven days with the talented Ms. Perry, I felt I owed to myself to a subsequent week of listening to Billie Holiday, just to even things out a little bit.

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Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Closer by Joy Division (1980, Factory)



Joy Division is the single entity responsible for the existence of this blog. About a couple of years ago, I was having a beer with Shawn Chirrey at Thirsty And Miserable in Toronto's Kensington Market and we were discussing how I thought I was the only person who didn't understand the allure of Joy Division. The bartender must have been eavesdropping on our conversation, because seconds later Shawn tells me that the music that she had put on the bar stereo was Joy Division. I shrugged my shoulders. I might have even yawned. Sometime later, I found myself in a very animated discussion – while ice skating with Trisha Levoie – regarding my indifference towards the band. Trish immediately thought I was crazy and told me to give the band a shot. That's when I figured I ought to start listening to records that I had never listen to at all. Surely, all these people who have decent tastes in music can't be entirely wrong. Hence this project. As My Album Project returns from a lengthy hiatus, I thought it fitting to spend some time with Joy Division's Closer.

WHY I NEVER GOT AROUND TO LISTENING TO THIS ARTIST/ALBUM
  • In 1986, I was in ninth grade and started hearing different kinds of music from the "freak" kids I found myself gravitating towards – those students who didn't really belong to any particular social clique, while never really being alienated by any specific group either – and one of the bands I often heard and liked was New Order. Being a rock and roll kid, New Order's electronic dance styles were completely opposite to anything I was into up until then. As far as I knew, New Order were a band of synths, sequencers and drum machines.
  • Sometime around 1988, my parents' friends the Pabalan family from Cleveland, Ohio came up to Toronto a few times to visit. Tim was the eldest (and only boy) of the three Pabalan kids, and was around the same the age as my twin brother Andrew and me, so we pretty much spent the time hanging out. We smoked cigarettes, bought obscene t-shirts and traded mixed tapes. I remember giving Tim a tape with The Cult's Electric album on one side and Redd Kross' Neurotica on the other. In exchange, Tim gave us a mixed tape with a few tracks from a bunch of bands some we didn't know such as The Lemonheads, The Mighty Lemon Drops, and The Pixies (!). The tape also contained a few songs by New Order. But when I put the tape on to listen to New Order's “The Love Vigilante”, I was expecting to hear dance beats, but instead, heard traditional rock instrumentation (including harmonica). And the shit was good. Around this time, I did a bit of research and found out that the members of New Order were previously in a band called Joy Division, with a singer who killed himself. I was very interested to hear what New Order with live instruments sounded like.
  • Like pretty much everyone else who weren't Joy Division fans, the first song I heard from them was their 1980 single “Love Will Tear Us Apart”. Upon first hearing it, I thought it had a catchy chorus, but Ian Curtis' voice made me want to stick my head in an oven. This and this alone immediately turned me off Joy Division and I have yet to recover.

WHAT I KNEW ABOUT THE ALBUM BEFORE THIS PROJECT
  • According to my personal music resource Dwayne Slack, much of the band's music that many Joy Division fans like is, in fact, not from Closer – or even from the band's debut release Unknown Pleasures – but from other sources such as single releases (i.e the aforementioned “Love Will Tear us Apart”), compilations, and re-mix records, such as Still (1981), The Peel Sessions EPs (1986-87) and Substance (1988). So bottom line: If Dwayne is correct and Joy Division fans didn't know too much about this album, then certainly I didn't know shit-all about this record before this project. 

AFTER A WEEK OF DIGESTING THIS ALBUM

  • I rather enjoyed the instrumentation on Closer. Stephen Morris' jack-hammer drumming style along with Peter Hook's driving bass and Bernard Sumner's airy, yet chunky guitar is prototypically post-punk: repetitive funk rhythms, pizzicato attack on the guitars, and vocals awash in reverb. But speaking of the vocals, as I feared, it was very difficult to get rid of my preconceived notions regarding Ian Curtis' vocal performance. As much as I wanted to rid any biases I had against his voice, I just feel dynamic tracks like “Atrocity Exhibition”, “Passover”, “Colony"(my personal favourite on the record!), and “Twenty Four Hours” would have been better served with another vocal style. Of course that would not make them Joy Division songs, but that's how I feel. However, I thought Curtis' voice quite appropriate for the brooding “Heart and Soul” and “The Eternal.”
  • I make light of the fact that Ian Curtis' vocal style depresses me and makes me want to do harm to myself, but mental illness and depression are nothing to jest about. Curtis was a troubled young man and this was reflected in his art. And many people found solace in his work. I appreciate that. But it still not enough for me to want to listen to his voice on a regular basis.


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Monday, January 13, 2014

Eternally Yours by The Saints (1978 EMI/Harvest)



This album was recommended for this project by Neill Cunningham, who has been previously mentioned here. If you have any record suggestions for My Album Project, contact me at mediahobo@gmail.com



 WHY I NEVER GOT AROUND TO LISTENING TO THIS ARTIST/ALBUM
  • The tail-end of 2001 was a transition time for me. I was almost 30 and not very satisfied with my career in advertising; the aftermath of 9/11 had me determined not to rest on my laurels and made me want to go out and see more of the world. On the suggestion of Matthew Wiseman and Michelle Barnett, two Aussies I met in Toronto who were soon heading back home, I decided to get a Holiday work visa for Australia. With my buddy Jamie Gilbert already travelling down under, I figured it would be a good time for me to go. After landing in Sydney in January 2002, Jamie and I quickly moved to Melbourne, where I found a music scene that very much resembled Toronto's (albeit, on a much smaller scale). But unlike Toronto, where I knew people in bands, in Melbourne I was meeting DJs, like house DJ and fellow Filipino-Canadian Steve Javier. (For those of you who were Toronto in the late 1990s, Steve was one of the cats behind the MILK parties). While I did take in the occasional local indie rock band like Rocket Science and Jet (yup, that Jet), I pretty much spent most of my time in Australia listening to house and electronic music. I even attended a few raves, which, if you knew me and my tastes at the time, was rather unusual. Only later in my trip did I decide to research the history of Australian rock music, and in particular Australian punk rock. I eventually found a compilation CD set called Do the Pop! - The Australian Garage Rock Sound (1976-1987) with tracks from legendary bands like Radio Birdman, The Hard Ons, Hoodoo Gurus, The Hitmen, and The Saints. Due to all the travelling I was doing at the time, I either lost or sold the comp before I had any chance to really absorb the bands and songs, so The Saints pretty much fell off my radar.
WHAT I KNEW ABOUT THE ALBUM BEFORE THIS PROJECT

  • I'm pretty sure it was Stephen Winkley who told me that The Saints were one of the first punk bands to come out of Australia in the mid 1970s. What I didn't know was the significance they had internationally. I recently read that Bob Geldof apparently said that "rock music in the seventies was changed by three bands—the Sex Pistols, the Ramones and the Saints."  That's pretty bad ass.
  • Neill Cunningham has told me that Eternally Yours is  a "massively under-appreciated masterpiece."
AFTER A WEEK OF DIGESTING THIS ALBUM
  • Listening to Eternally Yours in a 2014 vacuum, I would not have guessed it was recorded in 1978. All at once, it seemed to be ahead of its time, of it's time, and passed it's time (although, come to think of it, don't most good recordings fulfill this criteria?) Along with the sleazy punk ditties like "Lost and Found", "I'm Misunderstood", "No. Your Product", "International Robots", "This Perfect Day", "Run Day" and "Do the Robot", the textures brought out by the guitar layers and horns section in "Know Your Product" and "Orstralia" definitely evokes Exile On Main Street-era Rolling Stones and early-1990s indie rock.
  • I must say I have issues with straight-ahead rock and roll records with acoustic guitars on them, as this album does with "Untitled"and "Memories Are Made Of This." To add insult to injury, the song "A Minor Aversion" sounds more like a track from Wings' Band on the Run than a punk rock album.
  • No doubt, the hyperbolic comments from Geldolf and Neill raised my expectations for this record sky-high before I even found a copy of it. Living up to the praise would be difficult for any album. Make no mistake about it, Eternally Yours is a good record, but as much as I listened the shit out of the album, it still left me hoping for more. 
Previous Entries
Fearless (2008) by Taylor Swift
Korn (1994) by Korn
Millennium (1999) by Backstreet Boys
Mr. Bungle (1991) by Mr. Bungle
Selling England By the Pound (1973) by Genesis 
Psychocandy (1985) by The Jesus and Mary Chain
Survivor (2001) by Destiny's Child
The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society (1968) by the Kinks
Me Against the World (1995) by 2Pac
Transatlanticism (2003) by Death Cab for Cutie
Reign in Blood (1986) by Slayer
Bandwagonesque (1991) by Teenage Fanclub


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