This is the second album from Big Troubles and the first
album that I have ever heard from the group. It was released in 2011,
obviously. The album is so new that they are still releasing singles from it.
The first single from the album is Sad Girls. It is the first song that I had
heard fro the group. I was surfing the Slumberland records web site and they had
a link to the sound cloud where the track was up. I loved the song and bought
the 7” single as soon as I could. I made a recording of the 7” tracks and
listened to them non stop for a few days after it. I found that I really liked
the quiet sounding lyrics on the two tracks that I had from the 7”. I purchased
the full album, on red limited vinyl, a couple weeks after it was released. I
also found that Slumberland will be releasing a second single later in November
for the song She Smiles For Pictures. This song doesn’t have the same feel as
Sad Girls but is still a good song. I look forward to hearing the b side that
comes with the new single. I have actually talked to the guy that runs
Slumberland a couple times via email and a phone conversation as well. It was a
bit of an effort to find the phone number to the offices but I have a
background in finding addresses and phone numbers so it was not that difficult
really. He is a good guy and I hope that he continues to put out some great
releases and I hope that there is also a release for the last b side from The
Pains of Being Pure At Heart. I want a physical copy of the song Steel Daughter
so bad. You hear me Ma and Pa Slumber!!!
This is the first album from the strange group, Mr. Bungle.
It was released in 1991. This album was introduced to me in my second year of
high school. We used the single Quote Unquote (Travolta) in our homecoming
showcase. I was part of the group that made the showcases every year for
homecoming with the exception of freshman year where it only took 2 people to
create it. I can’t remember what team we played for my sophomore year but I
think that the tag line that we used was something like electrocute the …. We had a fake skeleton being electrocuted in
the chair. We had the song playing on a loop before and during judging. We won
the showcase for homecoming every year. Sometime later in the year I dubbed a
copy of this album. The music is so odd that once you start listening to it is
hard to turn it off. It is sort of like watching a car wreck, you just can’t
turn away. I later found out that the lead singer was also the lead singer for
the band Faith No More. I thought that the vocals sounded similar I thought
when I found this out. I made me like the group even more because I have such a
love of the group Faith No More, I especially the vocal styling of the lead
singer Mike Patton. Warner had the track Travolta renamed to Quote Unquote for
legal reasons. There are many strange samples used in this album as well.
Examples include parts from the movie Blue Velvet, various video games and
pinball machines including Altered Beast and Cyclone. The Cyclone pinball
machine is my all time favorite pinball game. This is just another reason for
me to like this album. I want to buy the Cyclone pinball machine someday in the
future too. There are a lot of sexual references in this album. For example the
song Girls of Porn uses samples directly from the pornographic movie called Raw
Footage. The lyrics are very disturbing describing specific sexual acts that
seem ridiculous but may be real fetishes too. The album as a whole is so
strange and has many different types of music interwoven into this indie rock
album.
This is the absolute first released from Nada Surf. It is a
7” released in 1994. It is a two track single. This single was repressed for
the Nada Surf box set that also contained the groups first five albums and a
special download of a group of rare and live tracks. Both tracks are easily
found. The plan, the A side, is a track on their first album, High/Low.
Telescope, the B side, can be found on their first EP. The first EP was
recently repressed on clear red vinyl. I guess it was actually a couple years
ago now that the EP was repressed but I am sure that you could find it if you
wanted it. For me, this 7’ was a nice bonus in the box set along with the bonus
download album. I love the two songs because they bring me back to my high
school days. Some of my favorite high school memories are of finding new music
via MTV’s 120 Minutes and other shows that were on MTV including Beavis and
Butt-head.
This is the second full album from Nine Inch Nails (NIN).
The album was released in 1994. This is yet another album that brings me back
to my high school years. I remember talking to a fellow class mate about this
album in an art class that I was taking. He made fun of me for getting into the
latest fad. I had purchased the album but did not know the history behind the
band or very much about the previous album and EP. I knew the singles but, at
that point in my life, I did not always keep track of my favorite artists back
catalog. But, because of this conversation with this fellow art student I now
have an incessant urge to fill out an artists back catalog when I find a new to
me artist in the middle of their career. This goes the same for a series of
movies too. I recently purchased a back catalog of James Bond 007 movies on
laser disc. I purchased a ten movie lot and then proceeded to fill out the five
missing movies on laser disc along with the non-EON produced movie as well. The
album was pretty hard core to me at that time in my life. There are some very
interesting things that are going on with the album. It is not so freaky as to
make me feel uncomfortable but it is, for me at least, very hard core. There
were two singles that were released from this album. The first single is called
March of The Pigs. This is a very fast paced and hard sounding song. The saving
grace of this song is the piano/synth breakdown in the song. I think that the
song would be almost too hard with out those break downs. The single was
released as a two disc set. The first disc is packaged in a double disc eco
pack so that when you bought the second disc you could keep the two discs
together in the same case. They did the same thing with the second single as
well. The second single is called Closer. This was the bigger hit of the two
singles released from this album. The most memorable part of the song is the
disco beat used in the drums. The lyrics in the chorus are a little bit raw for
most teenagers though. I suppose that I was old enough to get away with
purchasing this album as it did have the parental guidance sticker on it. There
is also a deluxe version and a dual disc version of this album that was put
out. I think that the 5.1 mix of the album is interesting but I think that the
standard stereo version is still more fun to listen to and I would choose it
over the 5.1 version 99% of the time. The deluxe version has a second disc with
all of the B sides from the album along with movie soundtrack songs like the
Joy Division cover of Dead Souls that is contained on the soundtrack for The
Crow.That is all I have for now...
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