As most of you well know, the internet is host to a seemingly infinite number of semi-literate and wholly-baffling opinions. (See this website for several examples.) Perhaps the greatest concentration of these can be found at the retail monolith amazon.com, where customer reviews defy the laws of grammar and logic more often than not. Let’s examine a few of the different ways we can enjoy the dubious meditations of amazon critics. All reviews are quoted exactly, typos and all, except when personal information has been censored.
1. One Star Reviews of Albums Commonly Accepted as “Great”
…on “Rubber Soul” by The Beatles
“Okay, let’s get it straight! I listen to this CD from the Florissant Valley County Library only once because ALL of the songs are totally BORING! I don’t think I’ll buy this CD…maybe………………………MY E-MAIL ADRESS IS thebeatlesfan*****@yahoo.com”
-This woman thinks Rubber Soul is a one-star album, yet her email address begins with “the beatles fan.” Also, she seems undecided on buying it, despite assigning it such a low score.
“This is nowhere near the finest album ever recorded. I’d say somewhere between #100 & #200. I have heard local bands do better than songs like this.”
-You know, even being on the low end of the top 200 hundred albums of all time would be quite an honor.
“Ok…but i prefer Jim Nabors…his voice and styling is superior to the Beatles…and a much better actor..”
-Unfortunately, few artists stand up to the “Jim Nabors Litmus Test.” People looking for a quick grammar lesson take note, this is exactly how to use ellipses.
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We had a chance to pick the brain of local weird pop mastermind Joseph D. Pizza van der Slice. Mr. Slice to his friends and fans, is responsible for numerous limited issue projects including this years “Opposite Hitler Mustache” recorded under his Nosebleed Island Moniker.
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Pure Pop: What are you shopping for today?
Joseph D. Pizza-Slice: Records – looking around for records, R Stevie Moore, but i know im not gonna find it. ELO, Electric Light Orchestra – see if i can find some more.
PP: What genre’s do you prefer?
JDPS: Pop & Soul - Motown, The good ol’ R&B i don’t know what you call it, R&B or Soul, but the Motown sound and period is what i like, that and weird Pop, Like Ariel Pink, R Steve – Not so into Wavves, and that stuff – I like that new Girls Album – “Album”.
PP: Where do you find out about new music?
JDPS: Friends – that’s where i find out about 90% of my music, I have one friend who does all the looking in the world and he just turns me on to the good stuff.
PP: Where do you shop for new music generally?
JDPS: Pure Pop & Downtown Discs – No online shopping for me – No Computer, I’m about to get one for the first time though i’m excited.
PP: What formats do you prefer?
JDPS: Vinyl and CD and Tape – The big three, i prefer tapes – i guess for listening it’s not the best…. I’m getting a pixel vision camera that records video – onto an audio tape, it’s so crazy i can’t wait to get it.
PP: What was the last album you purchased?
JDPS: ELO – A New World Record, I think Jeff Lynn is quite possibly the greatest post-Beatles, Beatlesesque music maker out there, if that’s even a thing.
PP: Any early suggestions for Album of the Year?
JDPS: I couldn’t call an album of the year – i havn’t heard enough new stuff – I like Yacht’s new one, at least my girlfriend does.
PP: What was the most recent live show you attended?
JDPS: I was gonna go to Happy Birthday but i missed it – but i went to Lawrence Welks & Our Bear to Cross, they’re like Power House Passion Pre-programmed Playing Purple Pussies, I don’t know … *laughs*
PP: If you could recommend one album to anyone, what would it be?
JDPS: I Really like the soundtrack to the Movie “The harder they come” I think that even people that arn’t even into reggae would dig it – Jimi Cliff, really good stuff…
PP: Shower singer or car singer? If so, which songs.
JDPS: Oh man, i have a good answer for that – What was i just singing for like 3 days…. “Yesterday Once More” By The Carpenters! And i’m a shower singer.
5. 2009 Has Been a Great Year for Music: Whatever your genre preference, there’s been a lot of wonderful stuff coming out in 2009. It’s impossible to be brief and concise conveying the scope of quality 2009 titles. Some of my personal favorites include Phoenix’s Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, The Fuck Button’s Tarot Sport, Fever Ray’s Fever Ray and Beirut’s March of the Zapotec/Holland. Of course, I’ve barely scratched the surface.
4. Vinyl’s Still Going Strong: The resurgence of vinyl’s popularity over the last few years has been an absolute blessing for audiophiles. We’re at a point now where it’s safe to assume any given album will see a vinyl issue, often coupled with a voucher for an mp3 download of your purchase. These days, it’s a no-brainer picking sides in the format war. (Incidentally the only new record I purchased on both cd and vinyl this year was Bad Lieutenant.)
3. Reissues Abound: The extent to which an old album can be cleaned-up, remixed and remastered is staggering. 2009 saw the best-sounding records of the 60′s, The Beatles catalog, reissued and sounding vastly improved. It’s nothing short of revelatory to listen to one of your favorite albums after a top-notch remastering. Currently, about half our staff are obsessively listening to and extolling the virtues of the magnificent sounding reissue of King Crimson’s Red.
2. A Good Showing From The Elder Statesmen: Question: What do Bob Dylan, Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr and Yoko Ono have in common? Answer: They’ve all been producing music for over twenty-five years and they all released great albums this year. 2009 has been kind to the old guard, or should I say the old guard has been kind to us in 2009? There’s been so much good stuff from established acts this year, one could ignore all the newer artists and still have plenty to listen to.
1. We Are Still Here: It’s been a tough decade for the music retail industry. CD burner’s, legal and illegal digital music distribution and the prevalence of mp3 players have all put a tight squeeze on our livelihood, and yet we’re still here. Truthfully, it’s a bit of a miracle we’ve managed to hang in, and for that, we are greatly thankful. It’s a lot of hard work, but we believe in it and are proud to continue to make tangible music product available to those who want it.
When Anthology 1 came out in 1995 in a limited vinyl edition, I made a vow to myself that I’d keep buying new Beatles releases only on vinyl. Since then i’d broken that vow twice; first when i had a chance to get a collection of the Beatles Christmas messages on CD (who can afford $200 bucks for the record?), and second, the LOVE project, which isn’t really the Beatles at all but an amazing mashup project.). So why did I buy the remastered Sgt. Pepper compact disc? Maybe I succumbed to that zombie dance at Abbey Road crosswalk that Microsoft created for the Rock band commercial. Or maybe I just plain gave in to the siren song of that word remastered like I’ve always done. Whatever the reason, on Sept 11, I bought the remastered Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. In researching this little rant I found out that the record was released Thursday, June 1, 1967, which means i can say with relative certainty that I bought my first copy of Sgt. Pepper on Saturday June 3, 1967, and probably at Gaynes Shopper’s World in South Burlington for $2.37. Know where Staples Plaza is? Anyway, it was probably a mono copy and I listened to it the way you’re supposed to listen to mono records – on a portable RCA hi-fi with a single 3 inch speaker. Sometime that afternoon I became addicted to “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” and started sketching backgrounds for a cartoon that i wanted to try and make with my father’s 8mm movie camera. He’d stumbled on the single frame possibilities of the camera and had started animating titles for some of his home movies and shown me the trick. A pretty high concept for a 14 year old who’d just brushed up against psychedelia for the first time. Anyway, back to 2009 and that remastered CD. Entertainment Magazine had warned me about the compression utilized in the remastering processing and there WAS a flatness to the music I heard when I put in the disc the next morning.
But there was also a new clarity and subtlety to those songs I knew so well. Here are some of the notes I scribbled during that first headphone listen: … Listen to the fades and the silences…the echoes…the doubled vocals, those hand claps…the first REAL kick in the head is the clarity of “She’s Leaving Home”…the break on “Within You Without You” (that whispered “da ta da two” lead (George?) at the end of the instrumental break) …even in its crystalline remastered glory “When I’m 64″ is still right there with “Besame Mucho” for ultimate Beatle cheese…The fadeout on “Lovely Rita” might have been Charlie Manson’s head’s up for “Helter Skelter” …”Good Morning” has that patented sax chorus that George Martin found for his Boys …Lennon’s “Bye” at the start and that little organ bit in the fade into “Day In The Life”…and of course the inner groove at the end of the now strangely anti climactic “Day in the Life”…
The next morning brought 2 more listens at home on speakers. The CD went on first and it sounded great. Then I got down my copy of EMI BC 13, the Beatles Collection box that first came out in 1978, pulled out Sgt. Pepper, put it on the turntable and set the needle to the vinyl. And there’s that analog/digital divide which I can’t really tell you about. The vinyl is, as they say, warmer, and to this geezer’s ears, the way the Beatles are supposed to sound. But what about those subtleties? Some of them are there in the room as I listen, but on Listen #4, with the vinyl on headphones, all of those little things I thought I was hearing for the first time Friday morning on the CD come right back out at me from the LP. So what is there to write about now?
A few days later I did another listen with my friend Erik. A couple of cuts in both formats and there’s that omnipresent word warmth again. A few days after that I rediscover my copy of Sgt. Peppeb’s Loney Hearps Club Band, a Chinese knockoff on Liming Records from back in the day that I picked up at a porch sale in Richmond, Virginia, and when I listen to it on headphones, some of those subtleties I heard on the remastered compact disc last week come bubbling out through 30 years worth of surface noise. So I guess I’ll end this with, not the Rockband Beatles which a lot of you love, and not the remastered Beatles catalog on compact disc that will launch akagillion memories, rants and lies, but rather, a Utopian to do list.
First, find a good record player and speakers. Second, track down the cleanest LPs that you can find (at least until they come at us with the limited edition remastered vinyl). Third, plop ‘em on, turn ‘em up, and enjoy some great records by a great band. And that’s not to say you shouldn’t be buying these CD’s, cuz I’m pretty sure that at some point, I’ll be getting the CDs of Abbey Road, The White Album and Past Masters, it’s just that, as they say, nothing is real.
-Michael Breiner
Believing, as we do, that you can’t judge a book by its cover, what follows is a list of albums we consider great despite some garish cover art. Feel free to weigh in with your contributions to the list or any disagreements you may have. Ciao.
Neil Young – Zuma
When Zuma came out, Neil Young was coming out of his infamous ditch period, a dark and creatively fertile stretch of albums. Zuma, a more upbeat country tinged album is considered one of his greatest, but unlike the striking and more artistically considered album art of the previous albums, Neil seriously miscalculated with this one. What are we looking at here? A mediocre black and white sketch of what appears to be a pelican-eagle hybrid riding the back of flying naked women over desert terrain. And there’s a pyramid. Maybe there’s some brilliant connection between the music and the image, but it’s an eyesore. Only the idiosyncratic Young would compromise such an upbeat album’s broad appeal with a cover that says, “Put me in a bargain bin.”
Beatles – Magical Mystery Tour
In 1967, it seemed The Beatles could do no wrong. Sgt Pepper had solidified their status as popular music’s most ambitious and capable innovators. What would they do next? Of course, their subsequent music was immaculate. The Magical Mystery Tour EP, which would would later be expanded to a complete album with the addition of contemporaneous A and B sides, is as good as anything they did. However, the EP was released in support of the disastrous Magical Mystery Tour television movie, a masturbatory hour of improvised scenes and half-baked ideas. The EP’s cover, in its original and revised form, has more in common with the film than the music. As difficult as it is for me to write such blasphemy, for a moment, The Beatles seemed completely out-of-touch
Black Sabbath – Sabotage
The last great Sabbath album to feature Ozzy (sorry Technical Ecstasy fans), Sabotage saw Sabbath indulging a number of disparate whims effectively. The album featured two of Sabbath’s greatest rockers, (Symptom of the Universe and Hole in the Sky), ambitious studio trickery, and atypical, keyboard-driven songs. Unfortunately, for all the thought and planning that went into the music itself, the cover is garbage. The band strikes a lazy pose, echoed on the portrait behind them in a black, foggy room. It looks worse than it sounds on paper. What was the photographer saying to them? “You! On the left! Try to look more stilted. Red pants, can I get a little belly peeking out of that leather jacket? Beautiful. Something’s still not right. Can we get Ozzy in a dress?”
Kinks – Lola vs Powerman and the Moneygoround
Driven by the success of “Lola”, one of the Kinks biggest hits, Lola vs Powerman and the Moneygoround was something of a comeback for The Kinks after a handful of brilliant but under-appreciated albums. Eclectic and eccentric, the album was unapologetically honest and cutting, targeting the music industry as well as people of deplorable character in general. The cover is abysmal, featuring the bizarre and unappealing image of two faces spliced together. By all accounts, Ray Davies was really hoping for a hit with this album. Why he’d jeopardize his chances with such a poorly conceived cover, we’ll never know.
Pearl Jam – Ten
Here it is, folks. The worst cover on this list. Ten was one of the biggest albums of the grunge movement, and Pearl Jam has proven to be the most enduring of those bands, continuing to enjoy popularity and success well into their second decade. While most of the grunge elite were breaking up and falling apart, Pearl Jam was just getting started. So what the hell were they thinking with this cover? It features the band high-fiving under pink light in front of a massive sculpture of their name. It screams early nineties, but believe me folks, it was even shitty back then. The worst part has to be the group high-five. A high-five? Preposterous.
