An Open Letter to My White Trash Neighbors

Dear White Trash Neighbors,

You will probably never read this. I don’t mean to stereotype, but you just don’t strike me as an excessively literate couple (Hustler and NASCAR fan forums don’t count). Anyway, I need to get something off my chest here.

I know it’s like a million degrees in Los Angeles right now and there’s nothing wrong with taking a swim to cool off. I support, one hundred percent, your right to sit out by the pool with your Unfortunately Named Dog (to protect your privacy, I won’t tell my 20-30ish readers that you named your dog Truck, though I’ve been tempted to call PETA about that brazen act of animal abuse. Why not call him Turd or Nutsack?).

What I can’t abide, White Trash Neighbors, is your apparently urgent need to blast really shitty music really loudly into the courtyard, forcing your neighbors (some of whom are getting ready for work or trying to write or figure out what shit they need to get done for their wedding in three weeks or d) all of the above) to listen to the likes of Metallica and .38 Special and Motorhead and all that other godawful cock-rock you so clearly adore, regardless of whether or not they share your intensely abhorrent taste in music.

I know your welfare check probably just came in (you’re welcome, by the way) and you want to celebrate the good weather with some Corona Lights and some tunes, but you share a building with several other human beings, some of whom are stubbornly attached to antiquated ideas like “peace and quiet” and “dignity.” I realize you might want to turn your music up to cover for the fact that your conversations routinely devolve into borderline domestic assault cases (I also realize, Mr. White Trash Neighbor, that it’s only a matter of time before your shirtless, impossibly white self is chased through our parking lot by the LAPD and camera crew from Cops), but there’s just no excuse to subject your neighbors to the kinds of fuck-lousy music you like to play. As loud as you possibly can.

Am I saying that I would be less upset if you were playing good music? Perhaps, but I’d still be annoyed at your rudeness. You see, being something of an authority on what is and what is not awesome music, I tend to listen to awesome music. But I don’t think you should have to listen to it, White Trash Neighbors, so I don’t crank it up to skull-fucking volume and blast it out my front door while I’m giving my beer gut a little sunshine time. It’s a little thing called courtesy and if a dictionary happens to be rattled off your shelves by the blasting music, you might think about looking it up.

And I know that, given the fact that you are White Trash (and let’s not kid ourselves, White Trash Neighbors. Racist Dave, who lives a couple doors down from you, is racist and you are White Trash. We must accept these things and move on), I should expect a certain amount of Metallica, Guns ‘n’ Roses, and other such inferior cock-rock stuff. And I have a soft spot in my heart for AC/DC, so I might smile to myself knowingly when you blast “You Shook Me All Night Long” the first time (but not the subsequent thirty times, White Trash Neighbors. That’s excessive).

But yesterday, you were blasting “Your Love” by the Outfield. The fucking Outfield. The only time I wanna hear that song is when I’m playing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, because 1) the song is part of that game’s totally 80s soundtrack (which also features “2 Minutes to Midnight”, which is Iron Maiden’s finest hour), which leads me to 2) I can drive around blasting the song and pretending that every ass in which I bust a cap belongs to a member of the Outfield. They need to be punished for this shit, White Trash Neighbors. I fear that, by blasting one of their two hits (the other being “Voices of Babylon”, the title track to an album of theirs that my brother had on cassette when we were little. And you know what? My brother will cop to being a little bit white trash, but even he doesn’t listen to the fucking Outfield anymore), you might actually summon them back into existence and the only way to stop them will be to cross the streams and send them back through the portal into the ghost world (I just beat the Ghostbusters video game, so I know what I’m talking about here).

And the Outfield wasn’t your worst offense, White Trash Neighbors. God, how I wish it was. No, you chose – I can only assume out of pure malice – to blast “Right Here, Right Now” by Jesus Jones, even though it is clearly not 1991 and you are clearly not ten years old. You forced our entire apartment complex to listen to Jesus Scrotum-Scrubbing Jones while you danced about in all your pasty white glory. What kind of animals are you, to subject decent, hard-working people to Jesus Jones on a Wednesday morning? This aggression will not stand, White Trash Neighbors.

I can’t stop you from listening to awful music, but I don’t think it’s too much to ask that you keep that shit within the confines of your own apartment. But I know people, White Trash Neighbors, who can build me a proton pack. So if/when you do manage to summon The Outfield and/or Jesus Jones back to destroy us all, I will be there to stop you. With science.

In closing, White Trash Neighbors, I only ask that you 1) put a fucking shirt on (this thankfully applies mostly to Mr. White Trash Neighbor) and 2) consider your non-white trash neighbors when planning your daily activities. Most people in this building are not white trash, White Trash Neighbors. They probably don’t want to hear “Hold On Loosely” through their closed doors and over whatever undoubtedly better music they are listening to in the privacy of their homes.

Sincerely,

Chorpenning

WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?

Is nothing fucking sacred anymore?

I just found out that My Chemical Romance covered Bob Dylan’s “Desolation Row” for the Watchmen soundtrack. I just watched the fucking video on YouTube. The whole thing. Guess I’m lucky they didn’t cover all 11 minutes of it. But still, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:

Fuck you, My Chemical Romance. Fuck you in the face.

My Chemical Romance’s latest crime against music came at the expense of my favorite Bob Dylan tune. Such an atrocity can only be interpreted as an act of war and I shall respond in kind.

This aggression will not stand, Dude.

Sacred Cows to the Slaughter

An email exchange with my pal Zac recently led me to an Onion AV Club article where the AV Club writers pussyfooted about cultural masterworks that they don’t really understand or don’t really like. I was led to this article by declaring that The Smiths are overrated and Morrissey is a pretentious, boring twat. See, that kind of statement is exactly the sort of thing those equivocators at the AV Club managed to avoid.  Zac thought I could do better and suggested as much, which was like throwing 100 menstruating fat chicks into a tank full of starving sharks. So, without further ado, I present to you The Bollocks! List of Overrated Musical Bullshit, my list of sacred musical cows who should be put out to pasture, shot in the back of the head, and then ground into tasty burgers.

For starters, let’s talk about Borrissey. Er, I mean, Morrissey. Dear Mr. “Meat is Murder”: Food is murder. You think it’s all right to eat plants because they’re not cute, but they’re alive, you asshole. But that’s not enough reason to dislike Morrissey, who is regarded by many as one of the great grandaddies of indie rock. His music is boring beyond compare. The guy is basically a lounge singer and he’s a pretentious one at that. Add slightly better guitars to Borissey and you get The Smiths, who are also vastly overrated. Fuck Morrissey.

Oh, and fuck Led Zeppelin while we’re at it. That’s right, fuck them. Especially that banshee-wailing douchebag Robert Plant. John Bonham was a great drummer, but that doesn’t excuse Led Zep’s shameless skullfucking of some of the best blues music ever recorded. You can claim they invented heavy metal all you want, too. Know what genre I could give less than half a fuck about? If you guessed heavy metal, you get a gold star for the day. You’d be better off listening to the original Willie Dixon and Robert Johnson recordings than canonizing the self-indulgent, cock-grabbing Led Zeppelin versions.

Speaking of Robert Johnson, no white guy has dealt him a greater blow than Eric Clapton, another highly overrated musician. I know, I know, Cream was pretty cool, but Clapton steadily nose-dived after that, meaning his career has consisted of cheesy lyrics and decent guitar solos, a fact often excused by “But he’s a great guitar player.” So is John Mayer and yet, John Mayer still sucks a big fat donkey cock. I don’t care how well you play the guitar, if you write “Waiting on the World to Change,” you should be buried up to your neck in your own shit. Besides, why listen to a band just for the guitar? You don’t read books just for the word “the”, do you? Where was I? Oh yeah, Clapton. Listen to his atrocious Me and Mr. Johnson and you’ll realize that there is only one white guy who should be allowed to touch Robert Johnson’s music and it aint’ Clapton. It’s John Hammond, Jr., whose At the Crossroads album is the only album of Robert Johnson covers that comes close to the original spirit of that great music.

This one is especially for Los Angeles, a city that seems to think otherwise, but all 1980s hair-metal was shitty. All of it. And I don’t care how many reality shows that asshole from Poison has, he is, was, and always will be a hack musician. That goes double for Def Leppard, who are still, for some ungodly reason, putting out albums. Hit the state fair circuit and have done with it.

Also, for the record, I don’t give a shit about Van Morrison. I don’t think “Brown-Eyed Girl” is a particularly good song. I’ll give him Astral Weeks as a good album, but the rest of his stuff can go fuck itself to death in subway station.

To everyone who adored/adores Rage Against the Machine: you’re wrong. There is nothing Rage did that Public Enemy didn’t do better. Tom Morrello may be the most overrated guitar player in the world at the moment.

Speaking of overrated guitar players: Van Halen is included in my statement about ’80s hair metal but they get special mention because everyone thinks Eddie Van Halen invented playing the electric guitar or something. He is very good at playing fast and finger-tapping. But you know what? Finger-tapping is so easy that I could teach you how to do it even if you don’t know how to play the guitar. It’s a gimmick. I’d be remiss, however, if I didn’t lavish special attention on how shitty David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar are. I have heard people argue about whether Van Halen was better with Roth or Hagar and it’s like arguing about whether you should have the shit sandwich with mustard or horseradish.

This will surprise no one, but if I’m talking about shit sandwiches, I can’t leave out Metallica. I’m not a fan of metal, but I know enough to know that Slayer’s “Reign in Blood” kicks the ass of every Metallica song ever written. Lars Ulrich is a shitty drummer and James Hetfield is a terrible singer and a worse lyricist. I could go on about Metallica, but it’s almost too easy to talk about how awful they are.

A lot of people like Peter Gabriel, but I am not one of them. His music is incomprehensible to me, to the point of irritation. What exactly does he do that the Talking Heads didn’t do better? And riding a fucking Seg-Way (is that how you spell it? I don’t care) around on stage? Give me a break.

Black Sabbath had one good song. It was “Paranoid.” Everything else they did was crap and Ozzy Osbourne should be put in a home.

I spent a lot of time trying to like Bad Religion, but I just can’t do it. The Empire Strikes First was mostly all right, but I just don’t care about their other stuff. A lot of people love them, but I’m sorry – just can’t get into it. They don’t suck as bad as The Smiths, but I’d still rather listen to London Calling than any of their stuff.

I once met a dude who told me Peter Frampton was the reason he started playing guitar. I was stunned. Peter Frampton is one of the worst musicians I’ve ever heard and I’m actually quite upset that part of my brain is used up knowing who he is. That talk-box effect is stupid and gimmicky and people who use it should be jailed.

U2 is one of the world’s biggest pop acts and, but for a handful of tunes, I couldn’t care less. Most of their stuff sounds exactly the same to me and I think the Edge has been stuck in a musical rut for most of my lifetime. Seriously, dude, time for a couple different guitar effects. Also, Bono is a douchebag.

A lot of folks here in L.A. love their home-town heroes, The Red Hot Chili Peppers. These guys really piss me off. Anthony Kiedis mostly writes and sings in baby talk and anyone who’s heard a Funkadelic album knows that there’s nothing that funky about RHCP. I’ve heard this band is on hiatus and I can only hope that’s a permanent thing.

Those are all the overrated people I can think of at the moment. If I think of more later, I’ll be sure to let you know.

Bollocks! Predicts the Grammys

Hey, I just realized the Grammy Awards are tonight and thought I’d weigh in on all the excitement.

Aren’t you excited? M.I.A. is nominated for “Paper Planes,” a song that came out 2 years ago! And Radiohead is nominated for In Rainbows, which also came out two years ago! Yay! Isn’t it great that the Grammys are unaware of any good music that came out in 2008? If you’re like me, you’ll probably find the awards show baffling from start to finish, so I’ve provided 10 predictions to help you get through the proceedings.  Watch carefully, and see how spookily accurate I am!

Prediction #1: Coldplay will beat Radiohead for album of the year and, after a cloying acceptance speech, Chris Martin will be challenged to a duel by none other than the Kenny G of the guitar himself, Joe Satriani, who will then throw a tantrum and claim that the Grammy should really go to him. The duel won’t happen, however, because police will arrest Martin for trying to steal Thom Yorke’s identity after seeing  the two men in the same room and realizing that even poor men deserve a better version of Yorke than Chris Martin. While I’m at it, newsflash for Joe Satriani: the song you claim Coldplay ripped off from you actually has a melody and chord structure I’ve heard in lots of songs, not least of which is, partially, “Ana Ng” by They Might Be Giants. Are They Might Be Giants suing anyone over it, Mr. Satriani? No. Because, unlike you, they’re not whiny cunts.

Prediction #2: The hard rock category will implode under the weight of its own suckitude, killing every musician nominated in that category. Okay, that’s more of a prayer than a prediction.

Prediction #3: John Mayer will win something and say something stupid that nonetheless moistens the panties of the 8th grade girls watching at home.

Prediction #4: My Morning Jacket will probably not win for Evil Urges. I mean, look at the nominees. The Grammys are fundamentally incapable of recognizing greatness. If they give the Grammy to MMJ, I’ll buy myself a beer.

Prediction #5: At least one of the winners tonight will say something stupid and trite about Barack Obama. You can’t blame the President for this, though. Just be prepared to hit the mute button ASAP.

Prediction #6: Tom Waits will not be given a lifetime achievement award.

Prediction #7: Should Chris Brown win the Grammy for “Take You Down,” at least five people will die trying to suppress a laugh at the irony.

Prediction #8: People who like M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes” and are inspired to buy a copy of Kala because of that song along will be sorely disappointed (and deservedly so).

Prediction #9: Whoever wins the Rap Album Grammy will probably not acknowledge that Atmosphere’s When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint that Shit Gold is far better than whatever piece of shit they recorded.  I’m acknowledging that here and now, now and forever.

Prediction #10: M.I.A. will go into labor before her performance and be unable to perform because she is the only person performing tonight who I give even a fraction of a shit about.

So there ya go. 10 predictions for an increasingly obsolete and infuriating pageant of bad taste and worse music. Enjoy!

Fender Makes Shameless Plea to Your Asshole Stepdad

I play guitar, which I believe I’ve mentioned a zillion times here. So I buy things, occasionally, from Guitar Center. They send me coupons, the coupons save me a few bucks. Sometimes, they send me other things. It’s an arrangement that I’ve grown somewhat comfortable with (the people at my local GC aren’t strictly “knowledgeable” about what they’re selling so much as they’re “commission-hungry douchebags” about what they’re selling), as much as I’ll ever be with having advertisements sent to me.

Of course, my semi-comfortability with having Guitar Center send me stuff (as opposed to my totally comfortable delight when the folks at Bev-Mo send me a coupon) means that I actually look at the stuff that they send me. Which means that I couldn’t help but notice a flyer from Guitar Center advertising the new line of Fender Guitars due out this month.

Now, for my money, if you play guitar, you either play a Fender, a Gibson, or some shitty guitar that’s not worth the time and effort it takes to deride it. But oh, wait, I do have spare time to deride it while you try to keep the fucking thing in tune and wrestle your off-rhythm rendition of the intro (the only part you know, of course) of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” out of it. (Note: Squier and Epiphone, the respective cheaper brands of Fender and Gibson are also acceptable guitars – more than acceptable in fact. I play an Epi Les Paul and have heard  no complaints about the noise I can make with it.) My point being, I have respect for Fender. Tons and tons of respect. So I can only shake my head at the contents of this flyer, announcing Fender’s new “old” guitars. Fender is proud to announce to your alcoholic, middle-aged stepdad that they now have a guitar he can play that looks like it’s been out on the road for fucking decades.

They’re called Road Worn guitars and let’s be clear: this is the electric guitar equivalent of pre-torn jeans. And it’s coming from a legendary brand. I mean, I would expect this kinda shit from Ibanez, but not from Fender. The idea is that these guitars look like they’ve been on the road since the fifties or sixties, but they’re brand spankin’ new. In other words, if you buy one of these guitars, congratulations: you’re the biggest fucking poser in Poserland. Pray I don’t find you.

The point of playing rock ‘n’ roll hard, in a  rock ‘n’ roll band, is that you beat up your instrument. It gets its various dings and dents from your various musical (mis)adventures and each one is a story from your life that you get to cherish. Or you can just cut out all the hard work, buy a Road Worn guitar, and talk about how your guitar has a dent in it just like the one you saw on Eric Clapton’s Strat back when he was (and you might’ve been but probably weren’t) cool. How exciting is that?! I’m torn between the desire to weep and the desire to kill.

Fender makes some of the best sounding guitars on the planet, they really do. And these Road Worn guitars might sound like the very voice of god (meaning: Jimi Hendrix), but no self-respecting musician with any  kind of work ethic will buy these guitars. The dents are part of the work of playing in a band and if you don’t earn them, you don’t need them. Save your money, play the guitar you already have, and the dents and stuff will come. Trust me.

The Road Worn guitar will hopefully be the Crystal Pepsi of electric guitars, but I have a feeling they’ll do pretty well. There’s a certain would-be rocker segment of our population that is going to go ga-ga for this synthetic piece of rock history (they’re the same people who think Dan Brown is “deep,” drink Bud Light from buckets of ice at Happy Hour, and shell out big-time Pay-Per-View dollars every time there’s an Ultimate Fighting Championship match. In short, assholes) and it’ll probably sell like fucking hotcakes for a while.

Psst… you want a real road-worn guitar? I’ll build you a Pete Townshend model from his heyday. It’ll be a box of broken wood and strings and maybe a couple of volume knobs. That’ll be $5000.

My Year in Lists 2008: The Worst of 2008

Welcome to My Year in Lists!

Regular music reviews will resume after the holidays, but now it’s time to indulge in that not-so-secret passion that every music critic (and many a casual music fan) falls asleep thinking about, usually after an intense wank (and if we’re being honest with ourselves, we must admit that wanking is a large part of what music critics do during their waking hours). I’m speaking, of course, of the completely arbitrary compilation of year-end lists. What was the best song? The best album? The best whatever?

So over the next few weeks, Bollocks! will be bringing you my thoughts on the good, the bad, and the ugly for 2008 (watches as site traffic statistics plummet). To get the bad shit outta the way first, I wanna talk about The Absolute Worst Music of 2008.

It goes without saying that Metallica sucks, but to bestow upon them the dubious honor of Worst Album of the Year would still be to grant them some form of accomplishment, however negative. They’re at least near the top of the Worst Song of 2008 pile, but I’m not good at making long lists of songs that are terrible because, as a rule, I try to avoid terrible music. Here are the three worst songs I heard this year, in no particular order:

“Unforgiven 3,” by Metallica – There was a time when Metallica didn’t make music videos because they didn’t see the need to make commericals for their songs. Then they decided two things: 1) They want money. Lots and lots of money and 2) They hate their fans. These two decisions pitched Metallica headlong into a race to out-whore their past achievements in Whoredom. Taking a page from the Hollywood playbook, they wrote a sequel to a massive hit (“The Unforgiven”). The sequel sucked, but that didn’t stop them from making a third, which really fucking blows. It gets extra “Fuck you” points for ripping off the keyboard part from “Comfortably Numb.”

“Welcome to the Third World,” by The Dandy Warhols – I could’ve picked a lot of songs from the Dandy Warhols utterly shitty Earth to the Dandy Warhols but I really chose to focus on this one for one simple reason. It steals the bass-line from The Clash’s “Magnificent Seven.” For a shitty Dandy Warhols song. That doesn’t say shit… about… shit. The Clash is an iconic band – they’re at least 85% of the reason I’m in a band (and probably a large reason why most people I know who are in bands are in bands) , they made really great music and they meant every note of it. I get that Courtney Taylor thinks he’s Lou Reed and every once in a great while, his Velvet Underground tribute band thing kinda works. But for The Dandy Warhols to rip off the Clash is to spit on everything the Clash stood for. If Joe Strummer were alive today, I’d like to think he would beat the living shit out of Courtney Taylor (and if Lou Reed were alive today, he’d do the same). “Welcome to the Third World” is a horrible song by a horrible band that appears on a horrible album – to call it a shit sandwich would be to offend shit sandwiches everywhere.

But probably The Worst Song of 2008 is “I Kissed A Girl” by Katy Perry. I’ve heard this in passing and I guess it’s a big hit for her, but it’s got some serious strikes against it. Chiefly, Katy Perry cannot sing. The verses on this song are merely unbearable but when the chorus rolls around, I want to stuff my ears full of nougat and run around the malls of Los Angeles slashing blindly with a machete, hopefully severely wounding anyone who would even so much as nod their head or tap their foot to the beat of something so insipid. This song is probably shocking to Katy’s parents, who might remember her better as the girl who started out singing Christian music before deciding that she could make a shitload of money writing schlocky turds like “I Kissed A Girl.” Perry’s debut pop album, One of the Boys, features other great song titles like “Ur So Gay” which annoys me not just for its utterly stupid spelling but also for the fact that this girl is so obviously trying to create shocking mall pop. It’s risque if you were home-schooled and still think girls shouldn’t show their ankles or if you think Jars of Clay is super hardcore, but if you want shockingly graphic lesbian music, pick up an Alix Olson album. Katy Perry is about as shocking and surprising as a post-it note, but I’ve got some song titles for her next album that will really help her kick it up a notch:

“I Finger-Banged Lynn Cheney During Sunday School”

“Dear Mom and Dad, My Boyfriend’s a Black Atheist”

(and last but not least:)

“Who Does A Girl Have to Blow to Get an Enema Around Here?”

So there you go, Katy Perry. You can use any of those you want. I promise not to pull a Joe Satriani and sue you.

So what’s the Worst Album of 2008? Well, for my money, it’s My Bloody Underground by The Brian Jonestown Massacre. This is another band from which Katy Perry can learn a lesson in the “Transparent Attempt to Shock Soccer Moms” department. See, Anton Newcombe has cleverly titled two of the songs on this musical Gorgon “We are the Niggers of the World” and “Automatic Faggot for the People,” and because they have naughty words, hoo-boy, they must be really shocking! Except that they suck. The whole album sucks. It’s Newcombe masturbating in the studio and then asking you to pay for it so he can go buy more heroin. Fuck this guy and fuck his band. The only good thing I can say about them is that, in all their fuckery, they’ve never ripped off The Clash. But you know what? I’m drawing a line here, folks. If the Brian Jonestown Massacre records a Clash rip-off I solemnly swear to find Anton Newcombe and kick his opiate-addled ass. For the good of all mankind. Earlier this year, I wrote that My Bloody Underground is the album I would make if I hated music and wanted to convince other people to hate music as well. In retrospect, I may have been understating things a bit. My Bloody Underground is the album I would make in an experiment where I was trying to create a black hole of shittiness that would suck all of the fun, joy, and creativity out of life.

Douche Bagnetic

It’s Rocktober 1st. Rocktoberfest is coming up on the 18th (if you don’t know what that it is, consider it a pity you’re not invited). I’ve bided my time. I’ve read Tad’s “words” if you can call ‘em that and I’m ready to weigh in.

So what do I think of Metallica’s Death Magnetic?

Though the internet is frequently derided as the home of indie/hipster types (I’ve been called a hipster for voicing my opinion – also an objective fact – that Journey sucks; I include this just so you have some sort of criteria upon which to judge me), it is full of people who will gladly call you a fag in a tirade replete with misspelled words if you happen to suggest either of the following: 1) Metallica sucks or 2) Guns ‘n’ Roses sucks, and Chinese Democracy is more likely to end the world than the Large Hadron Collider (how, you ask? Why, it will create a massive black hole of Utter Suckitude that will pull the entirety of the universe into it; I think Stephen Hawking has published articles on this). Stop by any given music thread on Fark if you don’t believe me.

So I might be incurring the wrath of these internet Metallica-lovers by saying so, but the fact is, Death Magnetic is not only awful, it’s frequently unintentionally hilarious. These are grown men singing about “death,” “darkness,” “blackness,” and things shouting things like “We! Die! Hard!” (clearly a reference to the fact that you get a stiffy when Rigor Mortis sets in). It’s like watching a Wes Craven movie. No one with half a brain is frightened by Wes Craven movies, just as no one with half a brain believes the spolied millionaires in Metallica are really the tortured souls they’re trying to portray on Douche Bagnetic. This shit should be dark and broody, and all that, but the fact is, Metallica is less compelling as a metal band than Dethklok. When you’re getting your ass kicked by a joke cartoon band, it’s time to hang it up.

James Hetfield, as ever, is a histrionic mess on Death Magnetic. I’m guessing that’s supposed to be cathartic for metalheads or whatever, but it sounds ridiculous. When he shrieks “This I swear!” on “The Day That Never Comes”, I feel like he should be a villain in one of the Joel Schumacher Batman movies. Hetfield’s villain  name could be The Nightmare and he could make puns about death and blackness while singing about hunting Batman down “All Nightmare Long.” Sounds more than a little plausible, doesn’t it? Fortunately, the Batman movie franchise is now in the much safer hands of Christopher Nolan.

Unfortunately, Metallica is still a band. There’s a place for brooding on mortality in song, don’t get me wrong. I See a Darkness is one of the finest (and most cripplingly depressing) meditations on love and death (mostly death) I’ve ever heard. But the difference between Will Oldham and Metallica is that I See a Darkness convinces the listener that this is what was on Oldham’s mind at the time, that he’d actually sat down and thought about this shit. Death Magnetic convinces me that Metallica had a meeting where they pulled metal tropes out of hat and said, “Ooh… that would be cool in a song. Like, what if we badly paraphrase Nietzsche and then scream ‘We! Die! Hard! at the end? That would tight, dog.” You see the difference? It’s not merely the subject matter that’s the problem here – it’s the assholes delivering it.

Death Magnetic runs rampant with examples of Metallica’s painful suck – on “Cyanide,” Hetfield drops this turd nugget: “Suicide/ I’ve already died” See what he did there? He rhymed “Suicide” and “died.” And then says “Cynaide/ dead inside.” Point being, this fucker cannot write. There is not one song on Death Magnetic equal in awesomeness or quality to Lordi’s “Devil’s a Loser.” Not one. There is also not one song shorter than five minutes on this album; Metallica has to allow for Kirk Hammett’s noodly, wah-drenched solos (I was hanging out w/ Radio America after their gig at the Viper Room a couple of weeks ago and Tom Stuart brougth up a salient point. When it comes to using a wah-wah pedal, you have to ask yourself one question: “Are you Jimi Hendrix? If the answer is ‘yes,’ then you can use a wah-wah pedal.”). At a certain point, you have to admit Hammett is an accomplished musician, technically speaking. At a cetain other point, you realize that pretty much makes him the Kenny G of the guitar. Knowing a lot of notes and being awesome at playing notes are two drastically different things.

Of course, the elephant in the room here (the bloated, corporate elephant of cock-rock excess) is “The Unforgiven 3.” On paper, this is just fucking stupid. On record, it’s shameless. Especially when Douche-tallica eases you into the song by ripping off Richard Wright’s (rest in peace) awesome keyboard lick from “Comfortably Numb.” Yes, Metallica has resorted to putting bits from great songs in their shitty songs. The result is an aneurysm-inducing failure of epic proportions. We find out in “The Unforgiven 3″ that, according to Hetfield “It’s me I can’t forgive.” I can’t forgive you either, James. Go fuck yourself.

At the end of the day, if you’re like Tad the K-ROQ intern (who was recently found dead, by the way, stabbed repeatly by a shiv made from what appears to have been a broken and/or twisted Red Bull can; contrary to popular belief, I was not at the scene of the crime but in my office listening to the new TV on the Radio album), you’re gonna love Death Magnetic and hate my guts for pointing out that it sucks so hard that it makes me laugh. If you’re like me (a devilishly handsome person with dignity and taste), you probably haven’t even trifled with Death Magnetic. In that case, you might be wondering why I even subjected myself to such torture; I can only answer that my best friend is paying me twenty bucks to sit through Beverly Hills Chihuahua next weekend, so it might have something to do with a masochistic streak buried none-too-deeply under the surface.  Whatever. Go look up “Devil’s a Loser” on YouTube.

Chinese Demo-crazy

So…

The FBI cannot seem to catch an ailing rich kid (and accomplished terrorist) who lives in a cave somewhere between Pakistan and Afghanistan, but they can sure as hell catch Skwerl (real name: I don’t know and I don’t care). What did Skwerl do, you ask? Well, he found himself in the possession of 9 leaked tracks that are supposedly from the perennially forth-coming Guns ‘n’ Roses release, Chinese Democracy. (You’d think Axl Rose, a whore if ever there was one, would’ve tried to get the album out in time to coincide with the Olympics. But he’s too busy blowing record label money on hookers and… well, blow, probably.). Skwerl streamed those nine tracks on his blog and Axl Rose pulled a Metallica (any wonder he used to tour with those assholes?) and decided to bring the hammer down on poor, hapless Skwerl (who was also wanted by the Spelling Police for his epic failure of a handle).

Skwerl was arrested (at fucking gunpoint!) by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and freed on $10,000 bail. Apparently, Skwerl is a black belt in cop-killing-karate or something (okay, yes, I know it’s techincially a federal case, but seriously: at gun point!) because the FBI (who could, you know, be out solving important federal crimes) was apparently not taking any chances when they booked him.

Predictably, the reaction from the GNR (is that how they abbreviate it? I have never cared less about anything) camp (and non-camp) was basically that Skwerl should get the chair. Slash, who is not even in GNR anymore (he’s moved on to the even more corporate and awful Velvet Revolver), said that Skwerl should “rot in jail.” Slash also said that Skwerl’s leakage (ahem: if you are any kind of decent punk band and wish to use the name Skwerl’s Leakage for your band, you hereby have my permission to do so, completely free of charge. I, unlike certain Guns and certain Roses, am not a whore) would cause Axl to “lose a lot of money on that record.”

Um… Slash? Can I call you Slash? How ’bout I just call you Fucko the Clown, ‘kay? Good. Listen up, Fucko the Clown – you’re making two major assumptions of the most deeply spurious variety. First, you’re assuming that every morbidly curious schmuck that stopped by the Skwerl blog would actually have purchased the album if they couldn’t get it for free. Incidentally, this is a common argument that the record industry makes to inflate the impact of downloading (all I’m gonna say on the subject is this: if you really like a band, support them, whatever that means. There are bands that deserve my money and I make damn sure they get it; conversely, there are bands that deserve no one’s money and I do my part to make sure they don’t get it) and make it seem like artists are directly suffering from the epidemic of downloading. The problem is this, though  – I only ever hear major labels bitching about this when some tepid turd of a record by one of their most commercially viable acts is leaked to the 14 year-olds who are slobbering uncontrollably over it. A few years back, when a fan emailed Jeff Tweedy to say he’d downloaded A Ghost is Born (no matter how you feel about piracy, you gotta admit, it takes balls to email a musician and be like, “Yeah, I just stole your record and I was wondering…”) and he wanted to verify the track listing, did Tweedy go all Axl on him and call in the feds? Nope. In an act of increasingly uncommon graciousness, Wilco put a tab on their website where you could donate to alleviate your guilt over downloading their album. Dontate to whom, you ask? To the band? No. To Doctors Without Borders. And they raised a shitload of money, too. Wilco issued a statement that said (paraphrasing here, but not by much) that they don’t exist to make and sell CD’s; they exist to play music for people who like to hear them do so (this is one of a zillion reasons I fucking love Wilco, by the way.). Are the major labels going to shit a brick if you download Neutral Milk Hotel, Jonathan Coulton, or Okkervil River albums? No. Because they don’t know who those people are.

Your second (way off) assumption, Fucko the Clown, is this: that Axl can somehow lose money on an album he hasn’t actually released. In fact, Axl can only lose money on Chinese Democracy if he ever releases the sure-to-suck album for public consumption (because stores have to order the thing, receive it into stock, and move a lot of units without having to return it to the vendor – meaning a physical fucking product has to exist. For the record,  I hope, should Axl ever release this steaming load of dogballs, he loses everything he has and is forced to work at Taco Bell for the rest of his life). So far, only the various labels dumb enough to coddle Axl have lost money on it (dude has blown hella advances on this thing). Seems only fair to me that Axl should feel a financial pinch for locking himself up in a studio to masturbate and then cry foul when one of his two remaining fans gets excited to hear the new tunes.

Which brings me to the thing I really don’t understand in all of this – if you read an article online that has ANYTHING AT ALL to do with Axl Rose or Chinese Democracy (Fark has one or two a week on their music page) and you’re brave (or drunk) enough to flip down to the comments section, you will still find rabidly devoted fans who will literally try to preempt your dislike of an album whose existence is only slightly more proveable than God’s. I’ve seen comments from people who don’t want me to hate the album before I’ve heard it! Well, I’m a busy man. I’ve hated every other GNR release (Slash was a pretty good guitarist back in the day, but now I have Tad Kubler so Slash can – and should – go fuck himself) and there is no evidence I’ve seen that would convince me that Chinese Democracy will be anything other than an overproduced, underwritten, drug-addled, jackoff of an album foisted on the public by a man whose ego long ago outgrew his talent. So, for the sake of efficiency, I’m gonna go ahead and hate Chinese Democracy with about half the level of rage I reserve for pretentious twats like Axl Rose (note: that’s still an ungodly amount of rage). The fact that Axl, a man who is impossible to take seriously as a person, let alone a musician, still has zealous defenders would be astounding if it weren’t such a clear signifier that either 1) the apocalypse is upon us or 2) we’re careening wildly and quickly toward the society envisioned in Idiocracy, which means that one day, Axl Rose will be President. He’ll arrive for his inauguration late, high, and cranky. And Chinese Democracy, the worst album no one’s ever heard, will still only be a rumor.

Skwerl is now making appeals on his blog at antiquiet.com to get people to chip in for his legal defense. You can if you wanna, just pop over there and do it. I leave it up to you. It will be interesting to see if Axl’s label has to prove in court that those songs were definitely going to be on the final release of the record or not. That fat fuck Rose has been at this album for more than a decade – he’s probably got stacks of demos lying around; probably leaks them all the time to guage the public interest. The point here is not that people won’t buy Chinese Democracy because some dude posted songs from it on his blog; people won’t buy it because it will be, without doubt, the biggest disappointment in the history of music. Chinese Democracy has given the handful of GNR fans that remain on this crazy planet the biggest case of musical blueballs ever. There’s no known cure, and it’s just as well; Axl Rose doesn’t deserve fans.  What he does deserve, his fans won’t give him.

But I will:

Axl Rose is (and always was) a fuck-awful singer, a corporate whore, a bigot (‘member that song about “faggots” and how they “spread some fucking disease?”), a beyond-terrible (bordering on infantile) lyricist, and now he’s fat. Have at you, Axl!

The Brian Jonestown Massacre’s Revolution of Suck

Hard truth time: I dug 13 Tales from Urban Bohemia as much or more than the next guy, but I would never, no matter how inebriated I may be, say to you that the Dandy Warhols are in any way, shape, or form, an original band. Their records consistently sound like whatever music they’re listening to at the time. Ditto The Brian Jonestown Massacre. In fact, the hardest part of watching the documentary Dig! is not the constant heroin-filled infighting that plagues BJM – it’s listening to the lead hacks in both bands (Courtney Taylor for the Dandy Warhols and Anton Newcombe for Brian Jonestown Massacre) walk around pretending that they’re going to start a musical revolution. If anything, both bands are perpetrating a musical devolution; both bands sound a lot like early Stones and/or The Velvet Underground. That can be pleasant enough at times and, at their best, both bands pull that off pretty well. But do you need more than one album by either band? No.

Self-proclaimed genius Newcombe’s latest contribution to the pastiche-pile is the horrendous, pretentious, and just fuck-awful turd of a record, My Bloody Underground, a punnily titled album meant to signal that he and BJM have been listening to more Velvet Underground than Rolling Stones lately. Or something.

The songs are long, they are boring, they are repetitive, and their titles are the kind of designed-to-shock horse shit you’d expect from a fifteen year old, “We Are The Niggers of the World” (but ha-ha, this one’s a fucking piano instrumental that Anton supposedly composed when he was but a wee lad. Sweet Zombie Jesus, someone should kick this guy’s ass) and “Automatic Faggot for the People,” the chief would-be offenders among them. Six of the tracks pass the six minute mark and the ones that don’t definitely feel like they do. In short, My Bloody Underground is a long, hard slog through a narrow tunnel of shit, not entirely unlike what Tim Robbins’ character in The Shawshank Redemption has to endure in order to escape prison.  It would be difficult to overstate how terrible this album is, but I’ll give it a try.

Forgoing any attempt at a track-by-track analysis, let’s get down to real shit here: this album is a fucking mess. It’s the product of a heroin-addled ape tooling around a studio with whatever hapless assclowns are still brave enough to be in his band. Half the time, the vocals are buried under droning noise and when they aren’t, you wish they were. “Who Cares Why,” not only exemplifies the masturbatory nature of this album but also my feelings towards it. Lots of musicians have gone the “experimental” route (like John Motherfucking Coltrane, thank you very much) and managed to make it come out sounding like music. My Bloody Underground sounds like shit. In fact, if I hated music and wanted to make the rest of the world hate music as much as I did, I would probably release something very much like My Bloody Underground.

People who can cling to the myth (largely perpetuated by the man himself) that Anton Newcombe is some kind of tortured genius (and I’m sure that’s an ever-shrinking or perhaps – hopefully- non-existent demographic) might be able to convince themselves that My Bloody Underground is yet another artistic achievement for The Brian Jonestown Massacre. I’d wager, though, that these people are probably on the same drugs as Mr. Newcombe. Even if I was a fan of BJM (and I’m not – I acquired My Bloody Awful Album from emusic just before canceling my account with them – it was an act of pure morbid curiosity for which I’ve not yet forgiven myself), I would be pissed to shell out even one hard-earned penny for this bloated circle-jerk. In fact, I’m mad as hell that part of my brain is being used to think about My Bloody Underground. I shall make a rigorous assault on that part of my brain with alcohol.

Anyone who talks (much less writes) about any kind of art knows that there’s a perverse sort of fun to hating an album, a book, a movie, whatever. But I can’t even take pleasure in how much I hate My Bloody Underground. In that regard, maybe Anton Newcombe has achieved his revolution after all – he’s pioneering a new kind of terrible, setting the bar of suckitude almost impossibly high for any pretentious, heroin-addicted douche who might dare to follow in his footsteps and, in so doing, taking all the pleasure out of hating his fucking guts. Well, almost all the pleasure…

Shearwater: Jacking You Off at the Ren-Fair

In their review of Shearwater’s Rook, the good kids over at Pitchforkmedia assert that Shearwater “give ‘pretty indie’ a good name,” which really made me think:

Just what the fuck is “pretty indie” anyway?

Is it Sufjan Stevens? Is it Iron & Wine? Is it Bonnie “Prince” Billy? Of the three, I like BPB the best, Iron & Wine the next best and I really tried to like Sufjan Stevens but I couldn’t tolerate the pretension. So you wrote 23 “songs” about some state, more than half of which are fluttery instrumental pablum. Big fucking deal.

So what so-called “indie” bands/artists do I, an admitted curmudgeon and lover of ugly, obnoxious music (remember, I idolize Tom Waits and think that My Morning Jacket’s “Highly Suspicious” is a pretty dope song) consider pretty? I think The Flaming Lips make pretty music. Ditto the afore-mentioned Mr. Billy (Bonnie to his friends), M. Ward, Band of Horses, and bands that can be arbitrarily tossed in with that bunch. What I’m trying to say is, by my standards (and if you’re dabbling in the subjective art of music -ahem- criticism, you are by definition using your own subjective standards for… well, everything), “pretty indie” never had a bad name. In fact, it’s pretty pop music that has a worse image to me – think Coldplay here.

The myriad positive reviews for Shearwater’s Rook led me to the album with an open and even excited mind. Jonathan Meiburg is, apparently, a member of Okkervil River when he’s not getting his Shearwater on and while I don’t automatically worship side projects (see Golden Smog for examples of why not), if you come from an awesome band, I often find it rewarding to hear what else you can do (see Loose Fur for examples of why).

Rook has been rightly praised for not sounding just like an Okkervil River album . What it does sound like is the bastard baby of Roger Whitaker and Morrissey, conceived at a fucking Renaissance Fair. I can picture Meiburg lilting in and out of that falsetto of his dressed in a crimson cape, pocket full of twenty-sided dice and with a real bitchin’ broadsword collection at home. The guy’s voice is nice enough (I’ve certainly heard few voices like it) but it’s often used to melodramatic effect on Rook and it’s not helped by instrumentation that is, at best, abundant (there are a million instruments on this fucking thing, all make a few hums and tinkles here and there) but resoundingly uncompelling. I can tell that Shearwater can play well together as a band but what they can’t do as a band is make me give a shit about how well they can play – these songs are boring, the titles (like “Leviathan Bound,” “I Was A Cloud,” and “The Hunter’s Star”) are unforgivably pretentious and some, like “South Col” are not even songs – “South Col” is nearly two minutes of weird feedback over soft chords in the background. Just before the song mercifully ends, a flute (I think) squeaks up. Now if you want that to be an intro to a song, cut it down to 30 goddamn seconds and use it to kick into something interesting. Instead, “South Col” is followed by the positively Tori Amos-eque “Snow Leopard.” If you think that’s a compliment, you clearly do not know Bollocks!

Pitchfork loves people who can compose and arrange the living fuck out of something – they literally come down their own throats whenever Sufjan Stevens does anything – and there’s no denying that this album is well-composed. Thought went into these notes, these melodies, all this heap of absolutely narcotic music. I’m not surprised Pitchfork loved it but if you want a great composer and a loving spoonful of indie cred, go pick up Gavin Bryars’ Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet, which features none other than Tom Motherfucking Waits. Let that shit wash over you and see if you can go back to feeling the fucking Illinois(e).

My vitriol notwithstanding, Shearwater has not made a horrible album. They have made a pretentious and boring album and that, honestly, works for some people – there are people who would suck off a goat to touch the hem of Morrissey’s garments and I can’t, for the life of me, figure out why (best part of The Smiths = Johnny Marr; best thing about Johnny Marr = he’s currently in Modest Mouse) and I’ve already beat the dead horse about how Pitchfork goes to the Church of Sufjan. One could counter-argue that Rook is lovely and, gosh Matt, what’s wrong with loveliness? I would answer that this is my blog, not yours, and that nothing’s wrong with loveliness but I don’t care how lovely something is if it’s fuck-boring. Listening to Shearwater is like overdosing on opium and Nyquil while the animatronic prairie dogs from the new Indiana Jones movie jerk you off and cherubs pound your skull to mush with goose-down filled pillows. There’s plenty of exciting pretty music (listen to Neko Case’sFox Confessor Brings the Flood, an album which proves that you can be forgiven pretentious titles if your music is uncommonly excellent) which only serves to bolster my argument that there’s no reason to make boring pretty music.