Vai kicks ass! I hope you don't associate him and his solo stuff with the 80's metal scene he was part of.
OK, now i have a chance. This came out in 1997 and was truly the band's breakthrough album, setting up their best album, The Moon & Antarctica Heart Cooks Brain (is just audio on a black screen, don't know if it is like that on purpose). [youtube]KtnMI5SPkQk[/youtube] Doin' the Cockroach [youtube]yotGYtMnMF0[/youtube] Trailer Trasih [youtube]vqA8numGywg[/youtube]
Sonny Sharrock - Ask the Ages (1991) One of the best jazz guitarists ever with one of the best saxophone players ever in arguably the best jazz album of the 90's. I know alot of people here aren't fans of the more avant garde jazz but you can't deny that it's a great work. Sadly it was his last. My picks so far: Radiohead - Ok Computer Buena Vista Social Club - Buena Vista Social Club Fugazi - Repeater Guided by Voices - Bee Thousand Beastie Boys - Check Your Head Tricky - Maxinquaye Pavement - Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain Sonny Sharrock - Ask the Ages
I'll make my pick a bit later, I'm in class right now and I can't go search for a bunch of videos and such.
i have been silently watching, holding my tongue and handing out rep (you must spread blah blah blah), but I just have to chime in on this one... great pick...
My guess is not for a while. See the partial list and we are still going up (towards the top that is), not down: 1)bojendyk 2) Karl K 3) SirManchester 4) Dr. Know 5) sch2383 6) Toon³ 7) Quango 8) ForeverRed 9) taosjohn
Queens of the Stone Age - Queens of the Stone Age 1998 I'll let the music do the talking. Regular John [youtube]eWAnIVlhyYw[/youtube] Avon [youtube]xW2AKkwJb_c[/youtube] Mexicola [youtube]_dTBOd4PEHs[/youtube] If Only [youtube]zmDerhC0Hic[/youtube]
For my next selection, I choose The Mollusk from Ween. Released 1997. Arguably the best album from the Gene and Dean, this is part typical Ween novelty-sarcasm record, yet part serious at the same time. Some great songwriting. It's Gonna Be (Alright) [youtube]9RWk-j5ko-M[/youtube] Waving My Dick in the Wind [youtube]f2oNjT4Sdmg[/youtube]
Wow. That is an inspired choice. A wildly and somehow completely understandably underrated record. Amazing songs, musicianship and production. And hilarious.
For some melodic picks: Bojendyk's draft pick #8: Sleater-Kinney The Hot Rock Dig Me Out is slightly stronger, but The Hot Rock still kills just about everything else that anyone has to offer. This is Sleater-Kinney at their least assured, most nervous, most vulnerable, most full of regret and sorrow. Corin and Carrie sing their parts here almost as if they were canticles. In Bergman's Persona, there's a scene in which one character tells another about an affair she had on a beach; the story arouses the viewer, not least of all because of the character's grief and guilt over the matter. Sleater-Kinney, on this record, achive a condition something like that. "Get Up" [youtube]ubyVReV2gDc[/youtube] (When Corin sings "Do you think I'm an animal? / Am I not? / Do you like fur? / Do you wanna come over?," I melt.) Draft pick #9: The Halo Benders God Don't Make No Junk This is a highly, highly underappreciated record. Halo Benders were a supergroup of sorts: they consisted of Built to Spill + Calvin Johnson of Beat Happening + sonic dude Steve Fisk. Again, the two voices work like a canticle: Calvin Johnson's deep, throaty (and, frankly, bad) voice and Doug Martsch's lonely tenor. Johnson has a gift for melody and words that most people would envy; he also has a stage presence that you either love or hate. "Freedom Riders" live in Boise, Idaho [youtube]AokAIPd4vc0[/youtube]
For my next selection in the draft, I choose my one curtsey to the Seattle scene... Frosting on the Beater, from The Posies. Released 1993 This record was on heavy rotation on my CD player in late 90s, early 2000s. I heard "Dream All Day" on WXRT here in Chicago, got the record, and found virtually every song on it to be very very good. Great songs, great ensemble playing, great singing/harmonzing, powerful dynamics. "Power Pop" music at its finest. A very nice acoustic version of Solar Sister. [youtube]B4QWdMyGaoI[/youtube]
Thanks. I have a soft spot in my heart for Ween. As you may know, their fans are absolutely rabid -- the closest comparsion is to the fans of Phish or The Grateful Dead. Ween are seen by these fanatics as some combination ofThe Beatles/Zappa/Beefheart. They consider them -- with some justification -- as a unique combination of great songwriters/musicians and scathing satirists/cynical humorists. Their live shows are supposed to be tremendous -- everyone, really, play the youtube of Dick in the Wind. Great stuff. We certainly know after their prodigious output that Gene and Dean can write and sing songs in any genre, poking right through the pretensions. To me, some of their songs seem cynical and juvenile for the sake of being that way, but on every record there are absolutely tremendous songs that are nothing short of superb. I have a Ween playlist on my iPod, and it's one of my favorites. They are a band that, for me at least, demands playlisting, rather than album listening. The Mollusk is one of the few I can listen to from start to finish.
Awesome choice--and one I almost, almost picked in my last post. Personally, I always thought that Ken Stringfellow got a little screwed by the label, being that all of the singles from the Posies' first three records were Jon Auer songs. (On this record, Ken's songs are pretty clearly the strongest.) Their earlier two records were staples on my stereo in high school; they make me cringe a little now, but they're worth hearing just to hear how gracefully and easily they wrote perfect pop songs (w/ strong Hollies, Big Star, and XTC influeces) when they were barely out of high school. This record, however, has dated well, and the same can't really be said of the two earlier records. The Posies famously got a lot of grief from their record label. Frosting wasn't the record they had planned to release; they had recorded an entirely different record before it, and either they or the label (I'm under the impression that it was the label) forced them to scrap it. I have no idea how many of those songs eventually resurfaced on Frosting and whether the scrapped album has been bootlegged. I think I may look into that now . . . They played in Bellingham and Seattle constantly when I still lived out west. Every time they had a show coming up, I'd say to myself, "Eh, I suppose I'll go if I don't have to work that night." Thus, I saw them over a dozen times.
Thanks for that history. Didn't Stringellow and Auer do a lot of co-writing? Or can you tell whose songs are whose the way you can tell Lennon from McCartney, even with co-writing credit? I only own two Posie's Albums -- this one and the one immediately after (where Fountains of Wayne drummer Bruce Young took over, and you can tell). I like the second one too, though FOTB is better. I bet the live shows were pretty good if the youtube video is any indication. It is difficult to maintain good singing harmonies live, but it looks like those guys could do it.
I'm basing it mainly on who took the vocals, but on Frosting, the songs Stringfellow sings sound markedly different from those that Auer sings, so I suspect there was a Lennon/McCartney dynamic there. The one after Frosting is sort of where I lost interest, although I didn't give it a huge number of listens. "Grant Hart" was a cool song. The first two records have some good moments, but like I mentioned above, I listened to them a lot in high school. These days, they sound like . . . something I would like if I were still in high school. Some shows were certainly better than others, but even during their less-inspired shows, they never flubbed a harmony. Very good performers in that regard. The bad shows generally featured mostly new material, and their material is such that it's best to hear it at a volume lower than 110 decibels.
No I didn't. I assumed the person before Sir M. pm'ed him Good idea to PM Dr. Know, I will do it now. I am just trying to keep things moving as I am excited about my next pick still being on the board