Cum On Feel the Noize

During my formative music years, the Smashing Pumpkins were the band for me. As such, I inherited the attitude problem that came with my allegiance. Pearl Jam? No way. Hum? Rip-off artists. Sunny Day Real Estate? Not a chance. I've grown up a little since those days (say what you will, however, about Mr. Corgan and company) and have come around, in one way or another, to the Pumpkins supposedly mimicking peers.

Sunny Day Real Estate was the first of the 'copycat' bands that won my favor. I listened to and subsequently purchased Diary during a trip to a newly-opened Blockbuster (listen to any CD in the store!) Music over Christmas break of my freshman year in college. It only took a couple of tracks and one look through the album's smile-inducing artwork to hook me on the band. After a few plays, I discovered that Sunny Day Real Estate didn't do a whole lot of stealing from anyone, particularly the now largely electronic bald one.

Several years, multiple albums, one reunion, one new band, and a solo career later, Jeremy Enigk still intrigues me. I can't come up with another artist or band with similar means that has produced a similarly diverse or startlingly abundant sampling of music over the last ten years. Strangely, that excessive prolificacy seems to be a dividing point for Sunny Day Real Estate. Enigk has piled more textures, instruments, and production into his albums. Some argue that the added layering, sampling, and production ruined the band (and Enigk) for them. I, on the other hand, see the non-stop expansion in Enigk's work as an indicator that he is constantly exploring and expanding on his ideas. For better or worse, the density of his later work shows us that Enigk doesn't - or can't - leave any idea until it has been laboriously explored.

Despite multiple attempts, I haven't been able to sell myself Enigk's most recent album World Waits. It is, as should be expected, much more polished than Return of the Frog Queen. However, World Waits neglects to keep my attention for more than a song or two -- there's probably just not enough going on for me. That said, I'm going to skip back a couple of albums and share Fool in the Photograph as my download for the week.



Sunny Day Real Estate
The Rising Tide (2000)
Fool In the Photograph (download)

Jeremy Enigk is playing tomorrow night (Wednesday) at the Double Door in Chicago. I'll be there.

And all that mass stupidity

In 1966 the rock concept album wasn't exactly widespread or very commercially viable (it would be another full year before the Beatles introduced the concept album to the masses with Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band). So it is of some surprise then that the first album recorded by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention was a concept album focused on the mindlessness and naivety of the American public. Considering the target and subject of the songs on Freak Out! it has always surprised me that Zappa was able to record more major label albums later in his career.

Freak Out! features Zappa's sharp, satrical wit turned against the American public mindlessly consuming anything the media proposed or reported. Lyrically Freak Out! is as sharp an indictment against mindless consumerism as anything written by Marx or Ginsberg, but what makes this album such a great example of what a concept album can be is the music chosen to present the argument. Zappa will eventually be remembered as one of the most talented American composers of the 20th century, and even at this early stage of his career he was capable of creating a sound all his own.

The real genius of Freak Out! is that Zappa eschews his ability as a composer to instead draw heavily from the musical styles popular during the time he was lambasting. A song like "Go Cry On Somebody Else's Shoulder," sort of the anti-love song, is made even more effective performed as a traditional Doo Wop song. Freak Out! includes perfect examples of Doo Wop, rock, R&B, puncuated by more experimental orchestrations that all take on entirely new meanings upon close lyrical inspection.

One of the songs that has stuck with me since the first time I listened to Freak Out! is "Trouble Every Day," a bluesy rock protest song. "Trouble Every Day" stands out in part because Zappa's lyrics don't subvert the protest song format like so many other songs on Freak Out!. At times much of Freak Out! veers toward parody ,but "Trouble Every Day" pulls int he exact opposite direction towards serious critique of the media. Unfortunately "Trouble Every Day" is perhaps even more relevant today with the advent of the 24 hour news channel.



Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention
Freak Out! (1966)
Trouble Every Day (download, 5.5 MB)

Metal Revival

This summer, I ended up getting last minute tickets for the Intonation Music Festival. I wasn't overly excited about the lineup or about spending two days in what was scheduled to be the usual July in Chicago combo of rain, heat, and humidity. Throw in long lines, outhouses, and more Threadless tees than you can count and you're nearly looking at a day best spent in somewhere with air conditioning. I'm glad I went, though. I not only had the fortune of seeing the surviving members of the Wu Tang Clan (with a stage full of hos) and Jon Brion perform, but I was also introduced to The Sword.

At some point in time, almost everyone in our group was a serious (is that possible?) metalhead. When The Sword started off their set by sounding not entirely unlike Testament (pre-Demonic), they immediately grabbed our attention. We ended up making our way to the front of the stage to take in the entire set, and if Jon Brion hadn't followed up The Sword with some utterly amazing things (looping part 1 2 3, Baby You're a Rich Man, I Believe She's Lying), The Sword would have been handed the much-coveted "Guy in the Crowd With No Critical Relevance's 'Best of the Fest'" award. Instead, they went home disappointed and in second place.

As I remember it, the first song that we heard from The Sword was Freya. Freya is a definite throwback to the bands and sounds that made me like metal in the first place. The song chuga-chugs along with some great licks that are incorporated into the rhythm line that drives the song instead of being delegated as solo/lead material and left for the middle of the song or, more recently, one of the 7 kind-of-middles of the song/aria/medley. The Sword's set continued with track after track of old-school tricks. I spent the majority of the concert with a smile on my face revelling in the fact that I was watching a live band play decent thrash metal that I'd never heard before in the year 2006.

After the show, I went home and started digging out and listening to my favorite metal albums from my angrier days and realized that, over time, those albums haven't gotten any worse. As I listen to those albums now, I end up categorizing an unusual amount of tracks as 'great songs that everyone would love' and, in a strange way, some of those gems are bizarro pop songs for me. Which, of course, proves that there are absolutely no serious metalheads.


The Sword
Age of Winters (2006)
Freya (download)

(If you're in the Chicago area, The Sword is Playing at the Metro with former metal greats In Flames on Sunday, December 17th.)

Four women and a Koala Bear

Ah the night before Thanksgiving... a night full of traditions such as getting drunk wherever you live before waking up at the crack of dawn the next day, driving hungover to your family's house for Thanksgiving dinner. Or the tradition of driving to your family's house on Thanksgiving Eve, meeting up with old friends and getting drunk so that you can wake up groggy at noon at your parents' place and help pour the cranberry sauce out of the can.

For me, an old tradition that I haven't taken enough advantage of in recent years, is the annual Superjane Thanksgiving Eve party at Smartbar. This year not only am I going to see the highly important, highly influential, highly impressive all-female DJ collective of Heather, Colette, Lady D and Dayhota, but I get to see Kid Koala at the Abbey Pub. Since we're only writing about one artist/song at a time here at Colossal Blunder, I'm just going to let you enjoy video of a routine that I'm sure Mr. Koala will drop tonight that still blows my mind every time I see it:



Now that you have been awed by some amazing turntablism, lets return to one member of Superjane, the DJ with angelic but booming voice, Colette. While I can't say that I was wowed by her debut artist album, Hypnotized, I did thoroughly love her latest mix for the House of Om series.

Heather and Colette each compiled a mix for this double CD compilation. Both mixes showcase what each of the DJs are best at. While Heather's has her absolutely beating the box with up front new school jackin house, Colette's mix is a little less focused in terms of track selection. But what brings it all together for Colette's mix are her vocals over the top of some heaters and some otherwise subpar tracks (Max & Brian's "4AM" is definitely one of the later that gets saved by Colette's vocals).

Colette's singing has always been used in her live sets to accent her own vocals (ususally singing doubles to her voice on the track or belting out the lead line over an instrumental of one of her own tracks), or to really pump up the energy on other people's tracks. In her recorded mixes, her vocals are the glue that hold all the tracks together. How else could the semi-cheese club sounds of Home & Garden's "All The Same" play nice with Bryan Jones' new school classic "Chicago Jack" and the Greenskeepers' bizarro electro workout, "Man in the House"?

While nostalgia keeps Our Day as my favorite Colette mix, the House of Om mix comes in a very close second.



Colette & DJ Heather
House of Om (2006)
Home & Garden ft. Colette - "All The Same" (Download)

p.s. Over at my other blog, A Thought and A Song, I've got my Autumn Driving Mix -- twelve songs to use for a long drive (i.e. a drive from Champaign to Chicago). Check it out.

I Just Want to Feel

Of all of the CDs I've ever bought, City is one of the albums that I have the most vivid memory of actually purchasing. On a Sunday afternoon that saw me feeling particularly despondent about college, I stopped off at the record store before leaving for school to pick up something that would make me feel a little less homesick for the drive back. In those days, there was always comfort to be found amongst the bins of overly-elaborate and completely unreadable fonts and satanic, blood-spattered album art, and I left the store with Strapping Young Lad's City in hand.

At the time, I hadn't been listening to metal for very long and I hadn't quite gotten over outright screaming in lieu of actual singing. Since most of the tracks on City can be easily mistaken as overly-processed, unrestrained, and wholly indiscernible noise, I didn't think much of it after my first attempt at a listen during my drive back that day. I know now that City is just too much for a casual, uninterested listener. It is overwhelming, busy, distorted, fast, loud, and largely unintelligible. Luckily, there were two things that pushed me to spend some more time with it. First, my friends never stopped talking about this album. Second, there is so much that happens aurally that I could not keep writing it off as noise.

City is an album about depression, anger, emotional turmoil, and self-discovery and every piece of it, artwork included, operates within the context of mental and emotional overload. It captures the intricate interaction between order and disarray that comes with any emotional struggle: despite what is going on inside your mind, life relentlessly moves on with its own unstoppable momentum. City is hyperactive, unyielding, and unforgiving and it also happens to be one of the most depressing albums that I've ever heard. Detox is the best representative of City as I've defined it above. It isn't the most outrageous track on the album, but it should be enough to either suck you in or draw you away.


Strapping Young Lad
City (1997)
Detox (download)