First Armistice Day Review

An 8 out of 10 from the POD People! Read the full review here.

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My Music Library - 1972

1972 didn’t pack the wallop that 1971 did. While it had its share of classic albums, the volume of greatness was diminished. At least, that’s how it looks from over here.

The cultural impact of the 60’s came to an end. The Summer of Love had long since faded away in the miasma of the ghettos and failed hippy communes. The Boomers realized that Peace and Love didn’t pay the bills, and thus had to get jobs.

The drugs carried on though. While they were said to expand the horizons of artistic expression in the 60’s, all they represented in the 70’s (and the 80’s) was the hedonism of rock stardom. Having already claimed the lives of Hendrix, Morrison, Joplin and many others, they would go on to wreck the careers of those they didn’t consume.

Black Sabbath was a case in point. Success made drugs and alcohol all too accessible for the band members. As they went into the studio to record their fourth album, Bill Ward’s drug use was so great, it’s a miracle he survived. “Snowblind” is a track on the album that makes the now obvious cocaine reference. It was also supposed to be the name of the album, but the record company chickened out and renamed it Volume 4. But as there was no Volume 1, 2 or 3, it really didn’t make sense. Maybe they were going for a Led Zeppelin 4 marketing riff.

Neil Young sang about “The Needle and the Damage Done” on Harvest. Songs like “Heart of Gold” and “Old Man” spurred the album’s sales but, for me, there really isn’t much else to listen to.

ZZ Top wallowed around with the Blues in Rio Grande Mud. David Bowie, when he wasn’t hanging with the Mott The Hoople crowd, became the cosmic glammer Ziggy Stardust and told of us of The Rise And Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars. The Eagles, Styx and Blue Oyster Cult released their eponymous debuts. Steely Dan also got their start with Can’t Buy A Thrill.

Occasionally, I’ll pick up the greatest hits album from a band if all I know (and like) is their material from the radio. Then, if I really like it, I’ll go back and explore their catalog to see if I can find some hidden gems. Sometimes it works. Other times, it doesn’t.

I liked Steely Dan’s collection A Decade of Steely Dan. So when BMG followed Columbia House into oblivion, I picked up a few albums cheap. This exploration mission was a bust. I’ve discovered that I only like their singles. From Can’t Buy A Thrill, that means “Do It Again”, “Dirty Work” and “Reelin’ In The Years.” The other stuff is just run of the mill 70’s studio dreck.

I liked Jethro Tull’s compilation Living In The Past, but I haven’t really explored much of their catalog. Thick as a Brick also came out in 1972, but I don’t really have strong feelings for it. It’s one of those albums where Ian Anderson just sounds too smart for the rest of us and he’s letting us know it.

But back to bands making their debut.

The Scorpions (yes, them) released Lonesome Crow. Long before they were rocking us like hurricanes, they wandered around Germany trying to pick up on the beat vibe in their own way. By 1972, they found their way into the studio. What they came up with was a long way removed from the music that would help them fill arenas, but the foundation was there: solid guitar riffs and dynamic vocals.

Yes squeezed two albums out this year: Fragile and Close to the Edge. Fragile built upon the success and song stylings of The Yes Album, however, keyboardist Tony Kaye departed the group and was replaced by Rick Wakeman. Why? Well, the story goes that Kaye wasn’t a big fan of the Moog synthesizer and other modern keyboards. Wakeman was not only proficient at it but his technical chops were more advanced. As such, he was able to bring up the level of play of the bands keyboards to that of its bass and guitar players.

The opening track, “Roundabout”, was also the lead single. Coupled with “Long Distance Runaround”, the album brought in new fans that hadn’t jumped aboard the Yes train with their previous work. I don’t know why exactly. While Classic Rock Radio had fully embraced The Yes Album which had several songs that got airplay, maybe back in the day radio stations were slow to come around to it due to the length of the songs.

Besides the two singles, “South Side of the Sky” and “Heart of the Sunrise” round out the long tracks on the album and they are great. The band each had their solo pieces to highlight their skills. Even Jon Anderson experimented with the multi-track vocals on “We Have Heaven.”

Oh and Roger Dean did the album artwork, the first of many for Yes.

The band would take the long song concept to the next level on Close to the Edge. The title track is almost 19 minutes long (a whole album side) with the other two (“And You and I” and “Siberian Khartru”) clocking in at about 10 and 9 minutes. Being able to ignore the tyranny of radio, the band were afforded the opportunity to explore the bounds of progressive rock. Well, it still had to fit on a side of vinyl (or pause like Thick As A Brick).

While the music is exceptional, with twists and turns in dynamics and progression, the lyrics wander into obtuse mystical babble. If one thinks of Anderson’s vocals as just another instrument accompanying the medley rather than trying to decipher their meaning (without the aid of Eastern philosophy), then one can just enjoy an otherwise excellent album.

Deep Purple reached the pinnacle of the their career with Machine Head. It serves as one of the foundation stones for hard rock and metal. It's chock full of blistering riffs, driving beats and soaring vocals. And it's a great album to play along to (assuming you can keep up). "Smoke on the Water" has to be one of the most popular songs that aspiring guitarists cut their teeth on.

The album opens with "Highway Star". The listener is thrown into the back seat to cling for dear life as Blackmore's guitar and Lord's keyboards race down a wide open road trying to outrun the other. Ian Gillian's vocals scream in overhead while Glover and Paice bring the engines to life. It's all freedom, fast cars and faster women and what could be better than that.

After the breakneck pace of the opener, the listener gets to take a breather with "Maybe I'm a Leo", a bluesy number. "Pictures of Home" picks up the pace with soliloquy of some poor chap marooned in some distant, cold land. Blackmore and Lord take turns with some great solos. Glover is given a chance to show his skills while Paice adds in some nice fills here and there. After a funky intro, "Never Before" moves into an upbeat parlance though Gillan croons about how a woman stomped all over him, "She took my name, she took my body, then she threw away my soul."

Everyone knows "Smoke on the Water", a song telling the tale of how the album came to be made. For a song that barely made the cut, it's ironic that it became such a big hit. That opening guitar riff is a chunka chunka monster.

Jon Lord's shows off his keyboard chops at the opening of "Lazy". The rest of the band pick up the beat and the whole thing evolves into this great up tempo blues rock number. Vocals are minimal and don't show up until midway through the seven minute number, but Gillan uses the brief spot to shine, as well as lay down a harmonica solo.

The album closes with "Space Truckin'", a sci-fi romp through the heavens. While the lyrics weren't anything to trip to, they got the job done. The driving chorus with Gillan imploring the listener "Let's go space truckin'" while the music cascades down scale with a grinding sound that recalls rocket laden semis barreling their way through the solar system.

A live album, Made in Japan, followed. It's a must have for Deep Purple fans who either never got to see this lineup of the band or want to have something to remember them by. The tough part will be deciding which version to get: the 1, 2 or 3 CD version.

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The Doomsday Channel

When The History Channel first started in the 90's, people joked that it was "The Hitler Channel" due to its perpetual broadcasts of documentaries about World War Two and the evil dictator. I don't know if that was due to the dearth of non-WW2 documentary programs (which I doubt) or more to do with our culture's fascination with the despot.

During this time period we saw the emergence of Hitler accusations in our political culture. The first Hitler reference that I can recall was Bush The Elder likening Saddam Hussein to him when the Bastard from Baghdad rolled over Kuwait. Ten years later, every politician and his (or her) favorite pundit was comparing someone to Hitler or his 1939 appeasers.

But now The History Channel (it likes to just be called History these days) has moved most of that stuff off to The Military History Channel, a channel I don't have. Except for the occasional run of Band of Brothers or a rundown of the presidents, history doesn't factor into much of its programming. Instead we have decidedly non-historical fare like Ax Men, Pawn Stars and Ice Road Truckers.

We also have MonsterQuest, a show about cryptozoology, and UFO Hunters, which you can figure out from the title. One can make the argument that both of these shows have a smidgen of history in them. MonsterQuest investigates whether mythical creatures ever existed and pores through historical records to find them. UFO Hunters kind of does the same thing except the targets are aliens. Yes, I know it's a stretch.

The network's saving graces are How The Earth Was Made and The Universe. These two shows deal with geological and cosmic history respectively. Neither is what I'd expect but they're still very good shows.

But what bugs me about The History Channel is its obsession with the end of history. The end of the world. Long before that 2012 movie came out, The History Channel was trumpeting our doom with documentaries about the end of the Mayan Calendar, Nostradamus, The Bible Code, and every other documentary about prophets and potential catastrophes. With the release of the movies, the frequency of these shows has only increased.

Now showing these shows on occasion would probably be ok. But the constant drumbeat of doom is too much. For instance, take Life After People. The premise of the show is this is what the world looks like if people suddenly disappear. They couple CGI with real world examples to make their case. But it's Ozymandias over and over again. You don't need to watch more than one show to get it, yet I believe that it's going into its third season.

Then there's the doomsday documentaries. The Mayan Calendar, the Bible, Nostradamus and a slew of others are trotted out before us to weigh in with their dire warnings. They even drag bona fide scientists in to describe the effects of say, an asteroid impact or a plague to lend credibility to the whole mess. But in no case does an asteroid impact, gamma ray burst, solar flare, magnetic pole reversal, or polar shift bring about our extinction in these prophecies. They all describe how humanity suffers terribly, but endures. That's not to say that were these things to occur, they'd be nothing short of extinction level events. But you can't mix prophecy with them because all the prophecies say that life goes on.

However, the producers of these extinction orgies cherry pick their prophecy pieces. While they're quick to point out that the fifth cycle of the Mayan Calendar comes to an end on the Winter Solstice of 2012, it's just the end of the cycle. The Mayans note that as each cycle ends, there's tremendous upheaval. But the calendar doesn't end: a new cycle begins.

As terrible as the Book of Revelations is in the Bible, it has a happy ending: Christ lives with us and wipes all our suffering away. Even Nostradamus's prediction of the rise of the third Antichrist and the oncoming third world war doesn't wipe out the planet or our species. He forecasts a happy ending with a thousand years of peace to follow the conclusion of those terrible times.

I wonder what's the point of these doomsayers anyway. If they're right, are they going to go around and gloat? "See? I was right! The world is ending!" Is that something you'd really want to brag about? In humanity's last hour, that's not going to make you all that popular. You might not even live to see the last moment. It must be short term gain.

I have to imagine that these shows are pulling in the viewers. Why else would they keep showing them? Our culture seems obsessed with its own demise, whether it's mere entertainment or paranoid bunker builder inspiration. So the doom and gloom producers get rich and/or famous in the short run and hide away in some cabana in the tropics hoping that their predictions don't come true.

So will the doomsday phenomenon grow, especially now with its own channel (books and movies aren't enough!) running the end of the world on a nightly basis? When 2012 runs around, will the hysteria about the end of the world become self-fulfilling? As long as the Doomsday Channel continues, I think the phenomenon will grow.

In the meantime, I'll change the channel. Adult Swim is more fun anyway.

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Two Short Stories

I like short stories. I believe Stephen King once likened reading them to one night stands while novels were more being married. I think the analogy fits (especially in his case), if you don't look too hard at it. I can read a short story in an evening before bed while a novel will often take me months (lack of time, fatigue, other lame excuses).

Then again, maybe he was talking about writing them. Anyway, recommended stories for your snowed in weekend.

Do you remember the movie, The Thing, back in the 80's? It was John Carpenter's remake of a 50's flick and starred Kurt Russel. If you do, and you're a fan of it, read "The Things" by Peter Watts. It's the story from The Thing's perspective, as only a biologist turned writer could tell it. (TotH: Scalzi)

For a lighter look at Cthulu, try "I Cthulu" by Neil Gaiman. It's either an old favorite or hidden gem, depending on how much of a Gaiman fan you are. Thanks to Edward Morris for sending it my way.

And this is probably the coolest ski mask ever.

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