Blue Oyster Cult: Club Ninja

Blue Oyster Cult: Club Ninja

1985

Columbia Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl & Compact Disc

Track Listing: 1. White Flags  2. Dancin' in the Ruins  3. Make Rock Not War  4. Perfect Water  5. Spy in the House of the Night  6. Beat 'em Up  7. When the War Comes  8. Shadow Warrior  9. Madness to the Method


I've looked for a copy of "Club Ninja" for a good decade now, so my opinion can't help but be colored by the glorious acquisition of the album, so even if this was a suckwad album I probaly wouldn't be able to see it. And by all accounts, "Club Ninja" just so happens to gets cited as an example of a "suckwad" album in most critical circles...

It's a good thing I'm not a critic, then...I happen to really  like this album. But I'll admit it's got quite a bit going against it...

 

1. It follows the commercial (and critical) disappointment "The Revolution by Night." I covered "Revolution..." awhile back, and yea, it's a defnite step down from "Fire of Unknown Origin."

2. With the departure of keyboardist Allen Lanier we're down to only three original members...

3. BIG 80's PRODUCTION!! Oh boy, does this have it all...The echoey gated drum sound. Glossy, soft-edged guitars, and cheesy synths that are so far removed from Allen Lanier's usual tasteful keyboard style. This aspect will probably be the biggest turn-off for most people, but as I've said many times before, I grew up with 80's production so it doesn't bother me. I'll listen to "Asylum" by Kiss, for example, and it doesn't phase me much. Sure, I'd prefer a return to the harder-edged 70's style, but there was no way that was gonna happen in 1985...But yea, we're a long way from the Black & White period. That much is for sure...

 4. Take a look at the songwriting credits! Outside songwriters!!! Hey, waitasecond...Isn't every Blue Oyster Cult album full of outside songwriters? Well yea, but these are different ones...There's no Patti Smith or Sandy Pearlman, or Michael Moorcock here...I mean Richard Meltzer turns in "Spy in the House of the Night" but that's it...The rest of it was written by folks like Bob Halligan Jr. (who also wrote songs for Judas Priest in the 80's) and country songwriter Larry Gottlieb.  Surprisingly, these guys turn in some of the albums best songs...

5. Drawback Number Five...and this is a big one...They actually record a song called "Make Rock Not War"!!!! And it's exactly as cheesy as you're imagining! Especially that "tough" gang-chant chorus! I have to hand it to this song though, the part in the pre-chorus that goes, "So don't wait no more!" is pretty cool. They should have just developed that melody a bit more and made that the chorus...

Alright, so I named some drawbacks, which I believe are all fair criticisms. Now for the good points...



1. THE ARTWORK!!! Maybe my favorite BOC album cover! I love that spacestation shaped like their logo...So great...Take a moment to soak in the beauty...

...the back cover rules too! There's a robot samurai thingy that kind of reminds me of the Silver Samurai from the old Wolverine comics...

 2. "Dancin' in the Ruins." Man, is this an amazing song, featuring one of their most expertly executed choruses...It just soars suddenly...On the first listen or two this song steals the show so successfully that the rest of the album's subtler, spacier material  just kind of goes in one ear and out the other...Plus, this song has one of my favorite videos ever! A post-apocalyptic teenager wasteland clip with the band sporting their new Japanese-inspired look...Mainly, I watch this video so much because of the scene that occurs at around the one-minute mark where the guy does a skateboard-dance...ROFLMAO...You just have to see it...I have posted the video directly below...I think you'll be glad you took a couple minutes out of your day for this...

3. Oh yea, that subtler, spacier material! This album seems to be remembered as a bloated 80's metal self-parody. And that element does certainly exist here but I was surprised to find that most of the album features a dense, mysterious, futuristic sound...Songs like "Perfect Water," "Spy in the House of Night" and  "Madness to the Method" are sleek yet somehow hazy and spongy... I guess the closest comparison I can come up with is "Shooting Shark" from the band's previous album, only not as great as that track was...Anyway, it's not a style you can find anywhere else except for maybe other BOC albums of this era...

4. Radio funnyfuck Howard Stern is on this album! He does the spoken word intro on the beyond bizarre "When the War Comes." I've listened to this album a dozen times now and I still can't make heads or tails of this song. It appears to be the type of  uber-serious after-the-war song that you'd get  in the 80's but this one happens to be punctuated by those comedic "ooga chaka ooga chaka's" from "Hooked on a Feeling"? Wha-?! Even if those backing vocals and Howard Stern weren't there, it would still be a weird song...Nonsensical interlocking vocals and a dense, creepy and cheesy mood permeates...One of the weirdest BOC songs, hands down...Right up there with "She's As Beautiful As a Foot" in the weird department...Do I love it or hate it? I don't know...

5. This is probably the most important one actually...It's a Blue Oyster Cult album I haven't heard a krillion times! If I was you I'd take the same path I did...Buy all the other album first, wait ten years and then buy this one...It's like finding a whole new wing of your same, old house! A very 80's wing, though, so again, if you have an aversion to that generic 80's sound, I'm recommend avoiding this altogether.  But I swear to you, this album grows in stature every time I hear it...I would say it's on par with "Revolution by Night" and it surpasses "Imaginos" and that's not bad company if you think about it...



Oh, and it's waaaay better than Bad Company...


Anyway, let's kick off this weekend, right. Maybe throw an 80's flashback themed Friday Night Record Party...Here's "White Flags" by Blue Oyster Cult...Enjoy...

Blowfly: Disco

This is a bit of a warning...This particular post probably isn't safe for work..So if your boss is in the room you might wanna play a game of Minesweeper or something instead...You'd probably be in less trouble getting caught with that on your computer screen...

And if you're at home and there are kids present you might want to send them outside for a nice game of Jarts or better yet, send them to work...

Here's a picture of a baby chicken for no reason...Alright, do you have your adult shoes on? Alright...Here we go....






















Blowfly: Disco

1977

Weird World Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1.  Shake Your Ass  2. What A Difference 3. Bad Fuck 4. Suck It  5.  Spread Your Cheeks  6.  Freak Out  7. Kiss It All Around 




If you haunt used record stores long enough you're inevitably going to run across records featuring some masked man, usually flanked by some of the nastiest naked women you're ever going to have the misfortune of seeing. And you're going to ask yourself, "What the hell could this possibly be?"

Was he maybe related to the Human Fly? 

 Turns out Blowfly is the alter-ego of songwriter/producer Clarence Reid, who released a long stream (still going to this day) of raunchy party records that usually consist of foul-mouthed parodies of popular songs of the day. Imagine a dirty, old Weird Al (the two were actually label-mates at one point)  who miraculously finds a way to fit the words "dick" and "lay" into every song. This particular album turns its attention towards the disco fad, which was in full swing at the time (this was released the same year as "Saturday Night Fever" to keep things in context)...

I received this as a Christmas gift from my wife last month. I could not tear my damned eyes off the hairy-bellied woman on the front cover! What the hell?! Whatever floats your boat I guess..And I don't have much room to talk...I've got quite the happy trail going too, so...

(pictured above is the most famous happy trail of all time..I always saw it as chest hair but my brother Jason pointed out that it's clearly pubes...)

I think the best thing about Blowfly is that a lot of times you can see the punchline coming a mile or two away (Example: As soon as you hear the song "Bad Luck" pop up, you instantly know the word "luck" is going to be replaced by the word "fuck." And as soon as you hear the word "fuck," it's always going to be rhymed with "suck.") Then from out of nowhere he'll suddenly hit on something that's legitimately clever and  hilarious and it ends up hitting you ten times harder than it should...(Check out the end of his 1980 track "Convoy" for the ultimate example of this...His spelling routine there is the funniest shit I've heard in my entire life...)

Anyway, back to this "Disco" album...It's actually better performed than you might expect when looking at that gloriously sketchy cover... The music would sound just fine playing in the background at Studio 54 while you're doing a few lines with Bianca Jagger.  Oh, and Blowfly is a surprisingly good vocalist! He has a kind of gritty southern soul style with an unexpected honeyed sweetness...I mean, listen to "Spread Your Cheeks." It's not the type of voice you'd expect to hear when you're listening to a guy sing about lubing up with Vaseline before taking a long drive down the Hershey Highway with his favorite girl and believe it or not, it actually adds some dignity and gravitas to the whole ordeal...I'm going to have to state the obvious...Blowfly is pretty awesome...

Now I wish I would have picked up all those other Blowfly records I'd passed over the last few years...Especially that one with the great "Zodiac" cover...

I love that cover. But yea, I could figure they were some sort of 70's party records but I never bothered to dig up the details, until I happened to catch the Blowfly documentary on Netflix one Saturday morning...

I highly recommend this movie...If only to get the privilege to see Clarence sit at a piano and sing "Shittin' off the dock of the bay...Watching my great big tuuuuurds float away..." You also get to watch the dirty old man delivering his golden filth to a whole new generation of fans...Bless him...

Here's "Bad Fuck." Enjoy...

 

Blitzen Trapper: Wild Mountain Nation

Blitzen Trapper: Wild Mountain Nation

2007

Sub Pop Records

Format I Own it on: Compact Disc

Track Listing: 1. Devil's A-Go-Go  2.Wild Mountain Nation  3. Futures & Folly  4. Miss Spiritual Tramp  5. Woof & Warp of the Quiet Giant's Hem  6. Sci-Fi Kid  7. Wild Mtn. Jam  8. Hot Tip/Tough Cub  9. The Green King Sings  10. Summer Town  11. Murder Babe  12. Country Caravan  13. Badger's Black Brigade


I missed out on this one when it came out...I didn't hear Blitzen Trapper until 2008's "Furr," so I kind of slept right through their big acclaimed album. Shortly after hearing "Furr" I put a parrot on my shoulder and pirated a listen to "Devil A-Go-Go" and it kind of turned my head around a bit...

"Furr" was mostly down-home country rock with indie rock overtones, but "Devil's A-Go-Go" sounded more like a straight-up indie rock that had been broken apart with a big-ass hammer and glued back together all side-cocked...I was very interested and kept my eyes open but I couldn't find a copy until suddenly I started to see these early Blitzen Trapper albums appear on the shelves again.

Hot damn, this album is all over the place...Luckily, I have a soft spot for schizophrenic albums that spill kaleidoscopic ideas in a gazillion directions all at once. Although, there are a couple predominant influences that I can pick up on...A lot of early "Westing" era Pavement lo-fi skronky-rock ("Miss Spiritual Tramp" and "Hot Tip/Tough Cub" in particular) and freak-out LSD era Flaming Lips...Check out "Woof & Warp of the Quiet Giant's Hem" it sounds like a cross between "Hit to Death in the Future Head" and those mad filler songs the Who used to write on "A Quick One" and "Sell Out"...

And let's not forget the southern rock undercurrent that ebbs and flows and shit throughout the album... Most notably on the title track where you can feel the band look at each other wide-eyed in a  "Look what we pulled off!" type of moment...All the disparate styles and genres suddenly snap together and it's BLITZEN TRAPPER IN ALL CAPS!!!! I can't blame them for pursuing that style on the subsequent albums...It feels classic yet it's undeniably their sound...The other shining moment is "Futures & Folly" which is also country-rock but it's done in a style that I don't think they've attempted since...A sweetly sung folk stomp that works in siren-toned keys...Listening to it, it's  easy to hear an alternate future where the band decides to follow this path instead and ends up a spacier counterpoint to the Shins.

Y'know, I can see how their subsequent albums might have alienated some of their earlier fanbase...Its unique "up for anything" style likely plays to a different audience entirely: Folks who are into multi-faceted albums that you can revisit  it endlessly and  hear new things upon each listen... Maybe when the band traded it all in for a shot at the classic rock pantheon, the indie rock world did lose a little something special.  In the end though, I still find myself leaning more on the side of  their more accessible albums like "Destroyer of the Void" and "American Goldwing" so I don't know what the answer is...

Let's check out "Wild Mountain Nation" by Blitzen Trapper...Enjoy...

Big Audio Dynamite: Higher Power/F-Punk

I have previously covered all the other Big Audio Dynamite albums, but as you can recall from those posts, I couldn't find copies of the band's final two albums. Well, shortly after I wrote that, I went to Zia records and found both CD's, so I'll be covering them in one post today...I'm running super late for work today, so I didn't especially get a chance to edit it so it might come off as a bit choppy, but screw it...Here we go...



Big Audio Dynamite: Higher Power

1994

CBS Records

Format I Own it on: Compact Disc

Track Listing:  1. Got to Wake Up  2. Harrow Road  3. Looking for a Song  4. Some People  5. Slender Loris  6. Modern Stoneage Blues  7. Melancholy Maybe  8. Over the Rise  9. Why Is It?  10. Moon  11. Lucan  12. Light Up My Life  13. Hope


I can remember buying this on cassette when it was a new release...I remember playing the first four songs over and over and then it sat unplayed for years. One day in 2000, I pulled it out of the ol' tape case and was blown away by "Melancholy Maybe." Then I lost my entire tape collection and never heard the album again until 2013.

This album is ridiculously spotty...Why is the running time so damn long (nearly 70 minutes) when the band had so few good songs this time around. There's no way they could have narrowed this down a bit?  Their mellower house-inspired direction isn't as appealing as their earlier, wordy, dance-punk. What bothers me the most though is the lack of great lyrics. Man, remember how good their lyrics were? Especially those first two albums! Half the appeal of songs like "A Party!", "Battle of All-Saints Road", and "E=MC2" lied in the dense, dazzling lyric sheet. They seemed to have so much to say then and went through such great pains to say it so right...Oh well...

 And again, not much of this actually bad....It just seems a bit dull when compared to their other albums ... The first four tracks definitely still hold up. "Got to Wake Up" is a promising opener, but I think it actually promises a bit too much. The  nagging, "Message from dreamland early in the morning, you gotta wake up and get out of bed" hook is one of the catchiest things they ever wrote, and much respect to anyone who can actually make waking up early in the morning sound like fun. It's 7 am right now and I can tell you, in no uncertain terms, that waking up early in the morning sucks!

"Harrow Road" follows and turns out to be another high-point. At the time I thought it sounded like  it could have come off of "Combat Rock" or "Sandinista!" but looking back I think the rawer, roaring-guitar style foretells "F-Punk" more than anything.  This version is diminished somewhat by the superior ska version that appears on "Planet BAD's Greatest Hits," so I tend to take the album version for granted, but I really shouldn't...



I have already discussed the single, "Looking for a Song" in the "Planet BAD" post I did last year, and I still stand by my assessment. Alright enough song, nothing to write home about. See, I used to write my Mom every weekend to tell her how much I liked the "E=MC2" and "Contact" singles but I didn't feel inspired enough to send her a letter about "Looking For a Song." Maybe I will though...Yea, $0.46 isn't too much to spend for a stamp! I bet she;ll be happy to read about a single that came out 20 years ago! Let me run to the post office real quick!

Wait?!?! $0.49?!?!?!!! Godammit!

 Oh yea, remember earlier when I was talking about how my 2000 re-assessment of the album provided the conclusion that "Melancholy Maybe" was the best song on the album? Well, it turns out I think I overrated it a bit...Definitely a good song, but it doesn't raise my rafters like it used to...The chorus resolution is a little too weak for my tastes now...The chorus starts out like it's going to be a real killer, but the last line sounds kind of like a shoulder-shrug...Out of nowhere, the melody suddenly takes a turn towards an old 1930's type thing...I maintain those verses are freakin' stellar, however. This time around the song that turns out to be the unexpected surprise is "Moon." A sweet ditty that proves there might have been something to this gentler, more-whimsical approach.

And really. outside of the fine "Some People" (which rules here, but would have probably been a middle-of-the-road track on "Megatop Phoenix") that about covers all the worthwhile material on here. The rest of it is either boring or an updated dance version of English music-hall music, that I don't have too much interest in...They should have really cut this monster down a bit. If it was around the 40 minute mark and had a filler-free track-listing I would probably play the hell out of this, but as it stands it's the one I turn to the least...

Here's my edited version (which would still give a good 40 minute running time):

1. Got to Wake Up
2. Harrow Road
3. Looking for a Song
4. Some People
5. Modern Stoneage Blues (I'm not too into this song, but everyone else seems to agree it's a real winner, so I'll give it the benefit of the doubt, even though I don't particularly agree)
6. Melancholy Maybe
7. Why Is It? (Boy, this one is hanging on by a thread for me...)
8. Moon
9. Lucan (This song doesn't bowl me over just lying there in the middle of the album, but it seems like it'd work as a slow-burn closer)

Nine tracks might have seemed a bit skimpy in the 90's, when every album had to be 70 minutes, but no one seems to have a problem with "This is Big Audio Dynamite"'s 8-song track listing, so I think the less-is-more adage holds up...

But sequence it however, you like...This is just my recommendation...

Here's"Got to Wake Up" by Big Audio...

Big Audio Dynamite:F-Punk

1995

Radioactive Records

Format I Own it on: Compact Disc

Track Listing: 1. I Turned Out a Punk  2. Vitamin C  3. Psycho Wing  4. Push Those Blues Away  5. Gonna Try  6. It's a Jungle Out There  7. Got To Set Her Free  8. Get It All From My TV  9. Singapore  10. I Can't Go On Like This  11. What About Love? 12. Suffragette City (hidden track)


 People tend to single this out as the band's worst album, but I don't think those people have played this back to back with "Higher Power." My God, this album whoops that record's ass! It's still a tad too long (and man, this is a perfect example of an album that would have been much improved if trimmed just a little), but everything about this is superior.

The sound this time around leans more towards straight-up rock, but the dance element is still there, it's just pushed to the back of the mix in favor of cranked guitars on most of the tracks. The sonics are pretty interesting actually, Mick sounds like the microphone is resting on his lips Close, dry, immediate and raw. The lyrics still aren't quite what they were, but the songs pull this through.

Opening track "I Turned Out a Punk" still steals the show. At the time I can remember everyone pointing out that this appeared to be Mick's attempt at realigning himself with punk, since the genre  had suddenly become all the rage again, but this seems utterly unrelated to Green Day. More roaring and garage rocking than pop-punk. His vocal delivery also seems to distance itself with the cartoon snottiness of pop-punk...Instead he uses a numb, monotonous delivery that works perfectly for some reason.

It's also a thrill to hear Mick revisit the "I Can't Explain" riff for the hundredth time on "Psycho Wing." I think a lot of people have a much dimmer view of the recycling than I do, but I say fuck it...The song rocks, the chorus is ultra-catchy and my day is a little brighter for hearing it, which is all I usually ask for in a song...

"Get It All From My TV" finally gets the "Higher Power" music-hall experiments right, and it seems all it took was adding a little more heft in the guitar department and some trashy drumming...Again, hearing Mick singing about his girlfriend's tits is a bit of a let-down after all the brilliant lyrics he had given us in the past, but this chewy bubble-gum is an alright consolation prize...And it's nice to finally get some lyrics extolling the virtues of TV! So many songs knock it, but TV has given us so many wonderful things...

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

                                                                         Exhibit C

Exhibit D

Exhibit E

Exhibit F

I think I've made my point...

The whole album's pretty good. There's only a couple weak tracks: "Push Those Blues Away" is so generic that it hardly even registers as a song in my mind..."Singapore" is also not that great, but at least it triggered memories of a long-forgotten news story involving  an American who got a hot-ass in Singapore for vandalizing a car or something...

 They also trigger another better-suppressed memory in "It's a Jungle Out There." This time it's that irritating "jungle' techno beat that was everywhere in the 90's...Ugh! I hate that beat...It would have actually been an alright track without the jungle beat...

Things close on a high-note with "What About Love?" which is lovely ballad indeedy. Another good example of sampling used as an enhancement to a proper song rather than a means to an end...Oh yea, there's a hidden cover of Bowie's "Suffragtte City," but they don't screw around with the "7 minutes of silence" bullshit...It starts immediately after "What About Love?" so it's alright by me.

"F-Punk" is super out-of-print these days, so chances of finding an affordable copy are pretty slim until someone reissues it, but if you run into a reasonably priced CD, I say go for it...I rank it pretty high in the BAD discography, despite all the hate it gets...

Here's my official ranking from best to worst (subject to change with my next listen to any of these albums)

1. This is Big Audio Dynamite

2. No 10 Upping Street

3. The Globe

4. F-Punk

5. Tighten Up Vol. 88

6. Megatop Phoenix

7. Higher Power

Yay! I got to do a list! All legit blogs have lists...Now I should probably do a political rant or something:

"Blah blah blah (pretend these "blah's" are mad-polarizing political statements) blah blah blabbity  blah! And what about all this liberal blah-blah! Blab blab blooty blah boot-straps blah blah. Remember the immortal words of Thomas Paine:

Sit on that one!!"

Now here's "I Turned Out a Punk" by Big Audio Dynamite...Enjoy...

Adrian Belew: Lone Rhino

Adrian Belew: Lone Rhino

1982

Island Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. Big Electric Cat  2. The Momur  3. Stop It  4. The Man In The Moon  5. Naive Guitar  6. Hot Sun  7. The Lone Rhinoceros  8. Swingline  9. Adidas In Heat  10. Animal Grace  11. The Final Rhino



For the longest time I  looked at the title of this album and saw it as "Love Rhino." I think it's the cursive on the front cover that made me think that...Of course once I actually bought the album and saw it typed out, I realized the error of my ways. However, things like that make me afraid to do this blog sometimes...What if what I see as "Pet Sounds" by the Beach Boys has actually been "Pep Sounds" by the Beach Bums all along and I've been publicly humiliating myself this whole time?!?! Oh no!!

Nah, I'm just kidding...I love being wrong! Here are some times I was wrong in previous posts:

Here's a post from the September 24, 1996 edition of the Friday Night Record Party blog:

"Jennifer Love Hewitt's self-assured debut reveals her as a singer-songwriter par excellence, cut from the same cloth as Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen...Her fierce lyrical wit belies her young age and 17 years from now there's no doubt in my mind that songs like "It's Good to Know I'm Alive" will live loud and strong in the hearts of discerning music listeners for generations to come...In fact, I predict that "I Want a Love I Can See" will be the National Anthem of the United States of America by the year 2012!"

Obviously  I was very wrong. It turns out that the album was not actually her debut album. That honor goes to 1995's "Let's Go Bang."

Here's my December 1968 post about  "20/20" by the Beach Boys:

 "Most impressive of all is "Never Learn Not to Love." A killer number that's the songwriting debut of a promising young talent who goes by the name Charles Manson. This track absolutely slaughters the competition with its razor-sharp tambourine, stabbing cellos and blood-on-the-wall lyrics. There's no doubt that the name Charles Manson will someday be synonymous with gentle, love-lorn, baroque chamber pop..."

I was wrong. A closer look at the credit reveals this song was written by Dennis Wilson alone and not by gentle, love-lorn, baroque chamber pop-meister Charles Manson. Silly me.

Alright, Adrian Belew is best-known for being the front-man for the 80's iteration of King Crimson and the guitarist on some of the Talking Heads and David Bowie's best work. Last year I did a post on his second solo album "Twang Bar King," but I didn't cover his debut, "Lone Rhino" because, well, I didn't own it then...I can remember going to FYE and seeing both "Twang Bar King" and "Lone Rhino," but only walking our of the store with "Twang Bar." When I went back to pick up "Lone Rhino," someone else had already bought it. Oh well.

I eventually ran across a copy at Zia Records and picked it up.  The two albums are actually very similar...David Byrne-worship that strongly recalls the twitchy, nervous world-funk of middle-era Talking Heads.  If you ever wished that "Animals" from "Fear of Music" could be expanded into a 30 minute album, then these early Belew albums are for you...Actually, the guitars are even more far-out and brain-melting than the Talking Heads material (and possibly some of the King Crimson stuff too), as he coaxes an endless array of animal shrieks and squawks from his six-string... Even songs I don't much care for, like the big-band swing parody "Adidas in Heat" contain fascinatingly contorted leads...

To me, the best tracks are the opening ones...I enjoy shaking my big, bouncy booty to "Big Electric Cat''s" African funk. But as much as I enjoy "Cat," I might like "The Momur" even more.  Fast-paced, catchy new-wave-pop that tells a story about the narrator's wife turning into a momur. Wait, you don't know what a momur is? Let me draw one in MS Paint real quick...

  Okay, it's official...Pictured above is a Momur.

So kids, remember to send in your own pictures of the Momur, and I'll take the three best entries, scowl at them disapprovingly, crumple them up and throw them into my fireplace...

(crackle. crackle)

Alright, let's listen to "Big Electric Cat" by Adrian Belew...