As you all know, I try to write my entries ahead of time, so it’s the middle of August as I write this entry.
Summer has been busy with entertaining visitors and playing tourist. As a result, I haven’t been preparing any entries for September.
So I’m going to let the month go without updates. It probably won’t be till September when I can get around to writing more entries.
See you then!
![[Sugababes - One Touch]](http://musicwhore.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/SugababesOneTouch2001103779_f.jpeg)
Rewind takes a look at past Musicwhore.org reviews to see how they hold up today. The albums featured on Rewind were part of my collection, then sold for cash only to be reacquired later.
What happens when you want to write about mainstream pop music without knowing anything about mainstream pop music? You get something that looks like my review of Sugababes’ One Touch.
The then-teenaged trio hooked me in with “Overload”, a single as infectious today as it was back in 2000. I picked up the album on the strength of that song alone, and I ended up liking it.
And as any good music blogging cheerleader should do, I wanted to share that enthusiasm. Just one problem: I was a raging rock snob back then. I knew of Destiny’s Child and TLC only indirectly — I owned nothing by either group, but it didn’t stop me from using them as straw women.
Back then, Disney pop from the likes of Britney Spears, ‘NSync and Backstreet Boys shoved aside alternative rock, which had devolved to Creed and Nickelback. In retrospect, that may have been a blessing. Still, it was tough covering music at the turn of the century when most of what flew off shelves held little to no interest for me.
So I sought refuge in Japanese indie rock and rock en Español.
Nearly two decades later, I’m merely a rock snob instead of a raging rock snob, and my collection now includes TLC and En Vogue. I don’t have any Destiny’s Child, but I do have Beyoncé’s Lemonade. After listening to these groups, the folly of my earlier comparison is writ large.
Sugababes come from a different club culture than En Vogue and TLC. Comparing them would have been as helpful as pitting Perfume against Adele. I do stand by the assessment that the rougher production on One Touch is a softer sell. It’s probably why I preferred Sugababes over American pop acts.
Of course, that reveals a deeper problem. If I knew nothing of American pop music, I would know even less about UK pop music. So I wrote the review I’ve got, not the one I want.
Two months after publishing that review, I lost my job, and Sugababes went on the chopping block when cash got tight. But every so often, I would find myself humming the opening bass line of “Overload”. It reached a point where I found a cutout of One Touch on Amazon and welcomed the album back in my collection.
![[Fastball - All the Pain Money Can Buy]](http://musicwhore.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/FastballAllthePainMoney145007_f-300x300.jpg)
When you can find a second-hand vinyl copy of Suzanne Vega’s Solitutde Standing for $1, does the world really need a reissue that costs $30? Same goes for the soundtrack to Top Gun — was it really such a cultural watershed?
Vinyl reissues make up just a sliver of recorded music sales, but it’s the only sector experiencing rapid growth. So if Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em by MC Hammer can get a reissue, then nothing should stop the following titles from showing up on wax. From what I can tell, none of these titles have ever been issued on vinyl.
The stars aligned for Fastball on this album, but tensions in the band prevented them from capitalizing on that momentum. It still holds up well after nearly 20 years.
You need look no further than Silver Bell to hear how well Flaming Red would sound on vinyl. Griffin doesn’t usually indulge her rock side, but like the title of this album, she burns when she does.
This album was in constant rotation on my player back in 1994, and I didn’t care if it storm up the charts. It didn’t, so the likelihood for a reissue are slim.
I’ve so far not been impressed by vinyl pressings of domestic Japanese albums. The market is still driven mostly by CDs, so Japanese labels don’t put much care into the sound of vinyl releases. In my fantasy world where they did, I would so want to hear Hajime Chitose’s voice on vinyl.
All the ballads on this album should make remastering it for vinyl not insurmountable. Right?
I’m surprised the only album in Hem’s discography available on vinyl is Departures and Farewells. I would have thought Rabbit Songs had been reissued a long time ago.
The last Utada album to be issued on vinyl was DEEP RIVER.
The masters for Duran Duran’s most underrated album is owned by the band, so the fate of a vinyl reissue is entirely up to them. Nick Rhodes has mentioned he would love to see it happen.
Tags: vinyl collecting
![[Boom Crash Opera - Boom Crash Opera]](http://musicwhore.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/boom-crash-opera-self-titled-300x300.jpg)
Between INXS and Midnight Oil, you couldn’t blame a major label artist and repertoire representative for trying to mine Australia for the next college rock success story.
I’m not sure where I heard about Boom Crash Opera, but I suspect it was probably in Pulse! magazine. Similar to Love and Money, I spotted a single for “Onion Skin” at Tower Records and thought, “This looks interesting enough.”
I was expecting Midnight Oil or Icehouse, but I ended up with something funkier and way more boisterous. I thought about picking up the band’s 1989 album These Here Are Crazy Times, but it lost out to many other releases that year.
Boom Crash Opera fell off my radar completely till I spotted the band’s self-titled debut at the Lifelong Thrift Shop. For $1, it seemed worth the risk, plus Alex Sadkin was listed as one of the producers. Sadkin worked with Duran Duran on Seven and the Ragged Tiger.
True to form, Sadkin’s studio wizardry coats Boom Crash Opera with an appealing sheen, but he doesn’t water down the band’s hard, funky sound. If I had been introduced to Boom Crash Opera with this album rather than “Onion Skin”, I might have become a casual fan. The writing on Boom Crash Opera is solid, and while the album’s production is an artifact of its time, it skews toward the era’s better angels.
Boom Crash Opera is still around and pretty much sticks to Australia these days. None of the band’s international releases are in print, nor available on streaming services.
Tags: boom crash opera, vinyl find
![[Shawn Colvin - A Few Small Repairs]](http://musicwhore.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/ShawnColvinAFewSmallRep136690_f-300x300.jpg)
Is there even anything left after June and July sucked all the air out of the release schedule?
Nonesuch reissued this live album on vinyl in May, and now this remastered pressing arrives on CD.
I have an ambivalent relationship with Grizzly Bear. Veckatimest was overrated, but I love Horn of Plenty. Everyone seems to like Yellow House, but I prefer Shields. I also think Department of Eagles does a better job at being Grizzly Bear than Grizzly Bear.
Not that I particularly liked Nick Oliveri, but I haven’t paid much attention to Queens of the Stone Age since his departure. And yet, I still have a crush on Josh Homme.
Nobody noticed, but Living Colour’s 2009 album Chair in the Doorway was a return to form. It seems Living Colour runs on a six- to eight-year release cycle now.
I wondered why this album hadn’t yet received a vinyl reissue. Do you think maybe the labels would do the same for Fastball’s All the Pain Money Can Buy?
(Rage Against the Machine – Zach de la Rocha) + People who are not Zach de la Rocha. Yes, yes, I know Chuck D is one of those people who is not Zach de la Rocha.
Kronos sure has been flooding the store shelves with new recordings. I haven’t gotten around to the albums they released in 2016.
Another solo project from MONO’s Takaakira Goto. Hey, Temporary Residence, how about a US release for Taka’s solo album Classical Punk & Echoes Under The Beauty while you’re at it?
Conundrum: I found a used copy months ago, but … bonus tracks, etched side.
It looks like The Complete Vinyl Box Set is getting split up. I’m keeping my eye out for Redneck Wonderland and Breathe.
A Massive Attack track here, a film score excerpt there, and, oh, Elisabeth Fraser.
I don’t need this compilation on vinyl. I want this compilation on vinyl.
Previous vinyl reissues of this soundtrack were bootlegs, so it’s nice to see Milan Records give it an official release. Also available on CD.
Tags: grizzly bear, living colour, looking ahead, shawn colvin
![[Onitsuka Chihiro - Syndrome]](http://musicwhore.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/onitsuka-chihiro-syndrome-300x297.jpg)
I usually publish this entry at the start of July. Unfortunately, all the releases in which I’m most interested came out in June, and I didn’t want to make hasty judgements. So I held off till I had a few weeks to live with these latecomers.
Labels, why did you all wait till the middle of the year? Couldn’t you have spread some of this joy over the previous 6 months?
Tags: bryce dessner, favorite edition, gaytheist, james mcalister, jason isbell, nico muhly, onitsuka chihiro, radwimps, renee fleming, royal wood, sufjan stevens
![[A Tribe Called Quest - We Got It From Here ... Thank You 4 Your Service]](http://musicwhore.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/ATribeCalledQuestWeGot162268_f-300x300.jpg)
Compiling a Favorite Edition list for 2016 was tough, and the titles in the last half of the original list didn’t have solid locks on their rank, as the revised list now shows.
Perfume has been around for years, but I’ve been mostly immune to their charms. Then someone set the viral clip of a neo-Nazi getting punched in the face on live TV to the 5/8 middle section of “Polyrhythm”. At first, I thought it was clever audio editing for the video, till I heard the song itself and discovered, no, it really does switch to 5/8.
I’ve been playing catch up ever since.
Utada Hikaru’s comeback was welcome, but Perfume provided some needed ear candy to offset the advent of the current leadership in Washington, D.C.
Ty Herndon’s post-coming out album is still indeed a fun, optimistic listen, but We Got It From Here was hip-hop’s A Sailor’s Guide to Earth — both highly ambitious albums with little room for filler.
![[Longwave - The Strangest Things]](http://musicwhore.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/LongwaveTheStrangestThing22303_f-300x295.jpg)
Rewind takes a look at past Musicwhore.org reviews to see how they hold up today. The albums featured on Rewind were part of my collection, then sold for cash only to be reacquired later.
My first reaction to reading this old review of Longwave’s The Strangest Things was: Who’s the douchebag who wrote that crap?
Boy is that writing terrible. As much I roll my eyes at some of Pitchfork’s writing, my attempts to sound remotely worldly fell horrendously flat.
Around that time, I was going through a Dave Fridmann phase. He was the producer behind some of my favorite albums: SAPPUKEI by NUMBER GIRL, Dance, Dense and Denso by Molotov and Cuatros Caminos by Café Tacvba. I picked up Hate by the Delgados and The Strangest Things by Longwave because of his involvement.
Interpol ushered an era where labels signed up bands rehashing Joy Division. This era also included the garage rock revival spearheaded by the White Stripes, while other bands borrowed more than generously from Gang of Four. Franz Ferdinand, I’m looking at you.
My exasperation in the Longwave review was a result of this ’80s gold rush. These bands did a great job of sounding like their influences. I just didn’t get the sense they knew how to sound like themselves.
Now that we’re a decade and some change away from that context, I’m impressed by how well The Strangest Things endures. Longwave injected enough of a personality into their sound to differentiate themselves from similar bands.
I tried to listen to Turn on the Bright Lights by Interpol but couldn’t get through it. I don’t even remember what the Stills sounded like.
I let the album go in one of my collection purges because my appreciation for Dave Fridmann’s production work wasn’t enough to overcome my ambivalence to American indie rock of that era. In 2003, I was still enamored of Shiina Ringo, ACO and Hatakeyama Miyuki.
I like the album enough now to have picked up a used copy on vinyl, but only after finding the CD for $1 at the Lifelong Thrift Shop.
![[Lifelong AIDS Alliance Thrift Store]](http://musicwhore.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/lifelong-thrift-store-sign-300x300.jpg)
Every last weekend in June, the main thoroughfare in my neighborhood closes down for a street festival celebrating gay pride. I usually spend about 10 minutes walking up and down the street to watch people, but I seldom stop at a booth.
That ended in 2016 when the newly-relocated Lifelong AIDS Alliance Thrift Shop set out a bunch of used CDs and vinyl for sale at $0.10 each. Of course, I had to stop and browse. I ended up with Juice Newton, Kim Carnes and Glenn Gould on vinyl, and Ryuichi Sakamoto, k.d. lang and This Mortal Coil on CD.
I had to go into the store to pay with a card, and that’s when I discovered the store’s basement. From street level, all I saw were vintage clothes. I didn’t know about the home furnishings and media down below.
Since that encounter, roughly 130 new titles in my collection come from the Lifelong Thrift Store. I visit the store twice a week, and it’s rare when I don’t leave with a disc or two. It’s tough to beat the $1 price point, but discount days netted me some real bargains. New York Dolls for $0.10? Pink Floyd’s The Wall for $0.75? Sure, OK.
I’ve also started visiting the Goodwill in my neighborhood, but that store’s stock isn’t as extensive as Lifelong’s. The Friends of the Seattle Public Library Annual Big Book Sale is another source of discounted discs.
All these thrift store visits have resulted in some nice discoveries: Thought for Food by the Books, Pinkerton by Weezer, Strange Kind of Love by Love and Money. I also reconnected with some albums I had let go.
Of course, many of the bargains I’m plundering could be heard through my Google Play Music subscription. How have visits to the thrift store introduced me to more new artists than automated suggestions based on my listening habits?
Simply put, recommendation engines can’t account for the research I’ve already done on my own. Yes, I know that fans of Perfume may also like Utada Hikaru and ASIAN KUNG-FU GENERATION. I probably fed the engine with the data to make that conclusion.
The engines also don’t seem to encourage much serendipity. I listen to Ty Herndon and Jason Isbell. The autogenerated recommendations would probably suggest something along the lines of either artist, but rarely anything that would intersect both. And if I listen to both Emmylou Harris and Lucinda Williams, does it really need to bother offering Patty Griffin?
The shelves of thrift store are organized by alphabet and little else. The new arrival cart isn’t organized at all. You have to put in the work to scan each shelf for something interesting, and an encounter with one name can send me on a hunt for something else.
On one visit, I ran across the first two albums by the Streets. I’ve always been curious about Mike Skinner, and for a $1 each, it was a low-risk investment. Not a few weeks later, I found Boy in Da Corner by Dizzee Rascal, which I wouldn’t have thought to pick up had it not been for the Streets.
Thrift shops are usually dumping grounds for stock unwanted by record stores, as previously placed price tags on the discs can attest. And yes, it’s a lot of work sifting through piles of unwanted Ani DiFranco albums to find a copy of Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew with few surface scratches.
But it’s the random encounter with something interesting — for example, a stage work by Harry Partch — that makes the effort worthwhile. It’s also nice to know that the $1 spent on a new favorite album goes to a charity that I support.
Photo credit: Lifelong AIDS Alliance Facebook page
Here are a few titles to which I wouldn’t have listened without the Lifelong Thrift Store.
Tags: music discovery
![[Don Johnson - Heartbeat]](http://musicwhore.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/DonJohnsonHeartbeat1986160135_f-300x300.jpg)
Back in 1986, you probably would have heard me bad-mouthing Don Johnson’s hit single, “Heartbeat.”
Johnson was the star of Miami Vice, a show created after a television executive jotted down the phrase “MTV cops”. It was a great show, critically-acclaimed at the time, but who could take its lead actor seriously as an actual MTV star?
I was a rock snob in training, but even I could recognize the folly of it.
Johnson was ubiquitous back then. Guys dressed like his character, Sonny Crockett, because evidently girls dug guys in pastels. I wasn’t immune to the craze either, except I also dug guys dressed in pastels.
Johnson’s second single, “Heartache Away”, featured the actor in a promotional video singing plaintively with flashbacks to a hot sex scene. It really exploited his sex symbol currency, and I didn’t mind a bit.
I really wanted to buy the album, but I had already declared out loud how ridiculous I found it. Three years later, the show was canceled.
I didn’t think about it again till I spotted a vinyl copy at the Lifelong Thrift Store. I hesitated at first because of that residual skepticism, but $0.25 was a price point low enough to take a risk.
Modern country radio has a more direct lineage to hard rock and hair metal from the ’80s than actual country music from the ’60s. Heartbeat could very well be subtitled The Shape of Country to Come. Tim McGraw could totally work the chorus of “Last Sound Love Makes”, and the only thing missing from “Lost In Your Eyes” and “Star Tonight” is slide guitar.
In that sense, Heartbeat is prophetic. Johnson wouldn’t give Blake Shelton any sleepless nights where vocals are concerned, but there’s a twang in his delivery that wouldn’t sound out of place on a country hitmaker.
Back in 1986, Heartbeat could be a considered a sad conclusion to Rick Springfield’s promise of pop-friendly hard rock. Instead, it’s a fascinating artifact on how ’80s rock would pivot into modern country.
Tags: don johnson, vinyl find