Goodnight Keith Moon

This is terrific. Particularly if you ever read the original 1,000 times to your daughter.

Actually, it's pretty great even if you haven't read the children's book before.

http://www.goodnightkeithmoon.com/index.html

Them Crooked Vultures riff it up old school

Just when you thought all the monster heavy rock riffs had been written, Them Crooked Vultures – the Homme, Jones, Grohl supergroup/power trio – has delivered a self titled 13-track, hour+ collection of monster riffs that would have sounded at home on any of the recordings of Jones’ former supergroup, Led Zeppelin.

Fans of Zep and Queens of the Stone Age (Homme’s main gig) will hear a lot to like on this album. In fact, Them Crooked Vultures (let’s call them TCV for short) sound exactly like what you’d imagine a merging of both bands would sound like. All three musicians are doing what they do best, particularly Grohl who despite his successes fronting the Foo Fighters, really belongs behind a kit. Thankfully, there is little resembling the Foo Fighters on this album.

Aside from the easy comparisons to Zep and Queens (anything Homme touches will get that Queens sound, just listen to the Arctic Monkeys’ Humbug, which he produced) the most apt comparison I can make is to Cream, another super power trio that worked primarily in heavy duty rock riffs that had more in common with Godzilla steamrolling Tokyo than they did to the traditional blues from which they cribbed.

Cream’s virtues are largely the same as TCV's. All the members can play, though Homme is nowhere near as flashy an ax man as Slow Hand – that kind of playing is even more out of fashion than the monster riff. Homme’s vocals recall Jack Bruce a lot more than Robert Plant. And the material -- though TCM’s is lyrically darker in keeping with the times -- has an overall psychedelic flavor.

The strongest tracks on TCV get their strength from these virtues. The opening track, “No One Loves Me & Neither Do I,” begins with a very Zep-sounding, bouncy riff before the volume and intensity are cranked up to 11 mid song and the riff goes through some mind-numbing shifts that have to be heard to be believed. The same is true for “Elephants,” a nearly 7 minute romp that rolls out three huge tempo changes before any singing even begins.

Unfortunately, TCV shares Cream’s weaknesses. They seem so enamored of their riffage that some tracks go on for way too long. They are beyond tedious… they are nearly hypnotic. The nearly 8-minute “Warsaw or the First Breath You Take Before You Give Up” is interesting enough (not to mention an awesome song title), but about four minutes in, the track descends into some Homme guitar noodling before resolving into an atmospheric section some 6 minutes in. By then you've completely forgotten what you’re listening to.

Overall, Them Crooked Vultures is a good album by an excellent band. There are no stinkers here. Even though some are forgettable, every song has its merits, but I wonder what this might have been like had it been edited by a few tracks and 15 to 20 minutes (Eliminating the 7:30-minute closing track "Spinning in Daffodils" would have solved half the problem). A little focus might have made TCV an album that’s not just good but really superb. My guess is that a live recording by these guys would be even better.

Nirvana Live at Reading: Fun again!

We're fast approaching the 20th anniversary of Nevermind, the album that launched a thousand big label deals for indie acts in the '90s and defined a new movement of rock. So great is that album and the influence it had on everything that followed that it's hard to talk about Nirvana the band. It seems that every time you talk about Nirvana it takes on the weight of a whole musical movement. The band is not just a great rock trio. It is the sound of a generation.

Still, despite all of that cultural weight, there are several revelatory things about the new Nirvana concert album: Live at Reading released this month -- particularly for anyone who hasn't really listened to the band in a while, and then only their commercial releases. I count myself in that group. Loved them when they came out, but quickly tired of the overexposure. By the time they were doing their famous MTV Unplugged appearance, I was over the band. It just wasn't fun anymore.

The first time through the new CD, it occurred to me that Nirvana may be the loudest and most discordant band to ever go multi-platinum. This CD, a document of a legendary headlining gig at the 1992 Reading Festival in the U.K., is an hour and 17 minutes of gloriously loud and furious sludge topped by all those great melodies delivered by a singer that sounded like he just might loose a lung. It's power pop run through a bloody meat grinder.

If the greatest virtue of rock music is its ability to scare the listener and make the squares cover their ears in pain, Nirvana may be the best there ever was. No band playing to tens of thousands was ever so messy. And no arena band ever delivered such lyrically painful and dark material as "Drain You," "Polly" or "Aneurysm." The F-You ethos of the generation had already been well worn by the post punk of the late '80s, to which Cobain always acknowledged a great debt. But here, in Nirvana, that attitude was perfected in a screaming, distorted yet musical way that never really had a peer.

The second revelation, along those same lines, is that Butch Vig really polished this band when he recorded Nevermind. The album -- which has been certified 10-times platinum -- might have had success, but probably would never have been in the position to knock Michael Jackson out of the number one spot in January of 1992 had the band's sound not been processed into a more listener friendly format by Vig.

On Live from Reading, the band plays nearly all of its smash-hit album Nevermind intermixed with great tracks from the band's muddy debut Bleach -- "School," "Negative Creep," "Blew" and "About a Girl." None of the songs have ever sounded better. Live from Reading gets the Nevermind classics the raw energy they deserve.

Finally, it's just great to have a Nirvana album that's a blast from start to finish. The energy in this long set never flags. Not even for a moment. It's a terrific collection that even includes an early version of the In Utero classic "All Apologies."

If you forgot why Nirvana is considered the standard bearers of the early '90s grunge/alt/indie or whatever-you-want-to-call-it scene, this album will remind you.

Say it Ain't So: Weezer continues suckitude

Listening to the new Weezer album Raditude will make you stop and ponder if what you believe to be true is really true. By the time track 4, "Can't Stop Partying," pummels your ears, you wonder. "Was this band ever good?" It's hard to believe, but yes, Weezer was a great band... one of the best.

Liner Notes has always believed Weezer's first two albums to be very good. The band's second, Pinkerton, is pretty close to being a masterpiece -- a sharp, thematically cohesive album with heartbreakingly terrific songs. There are world weary laments like "Tired of Sex" and "The Good Life" and of love unrequited "Across the Sea" and "Pink Triangles." Each is the work of a desperate man looking for what he cannot have -- the stuff of compelling song.

Weezer developed its early reputation on smart and heavy guitar pop and lyrics that really got the now-famous angst of '90s kids. And the band's front man and principal songwriter, the appropriately bespectacled Rivers Cuomo, was a perfect hero of the ne'er-do-well -- a man millions muddling through life could relate to. It was a band that first hit the mainstream with a song about a relationship unraveling like a sweater, leaving its protagonist, naked, "Lying on the floor. I've come undone."

The band that made those first albums is still as talented on Raditude, but with Pinkeron 12 years and fading in the past, the angst of the band members, and clearly of Cuomo, is long gone. This is the band that in 2005 released the wretched album Make Believe (produced by Rick Rubin!) and a single called "Beverly Hills (That's Where I want to Be)," a song so devoid of substance and artistry, it could have been better performed by a kazoo quartet.

No, the new Weezer is a content, and happy arena rock band. Gone is the band that delivered the debut album's "Say it Ain't So," which is perhaps the bands best song to date. Gone is the irony, the angst, the desperation, fear, beauty and bizarre humor that defined Weezer's wonderful roots. The new Weezer is mainstream and enjoying it. Gone is Cuomo as Buddy Holly. He's now as interesting as Rick Springfield.

Take these songs with titles that tell you all there is to know about their themes: "The Girl Got Hot," "Can't Stop Partying," "In the Mall" and "Let it all Hang Out" (in which he actually sings the lyrics: "going out with my homies.") There's nothing to analyze. It's quite clear that the band that meant so much to the nerds of the nineties is now nothing more than a jock rock soundtrack special.

If there is a bright side, it is this: Raditude is probably better than average when compared to the great swath of middling mainstream rock targeted to tweens. Cuomo might have lost his mojo for writing songs that matter, but he's a great pop song craftsman (that Harvard music degree has to account for something, right?). The band still rocks and does so as well or better than any band you'll hear in heavy rotation on a CW show. The stage is there in the sharp, loud sound, but the actors are long gone.

Perhaps, Cuomo knows all of this. Liner Notes believes he does. He's too smart not to know that his new songs have none of the edge of his earlier work. The old Cuomo may be long gone -- clearly the man is too successful to fret about his self worth and agonize over failed relationships -- but the Cuomo singing about pre-teen concerns and frat boy revelations is more disingenuous than if he had simply tried to re-imagine the past.

Liner Notes is not sure why we continue to believe there's a chance the band would return to form. There have been whiffs of it -- there are some good moments on their fourth album, Maladroit. But with each release since Make Believe those hopes have sunk. Raditude will probably be a favorite of teens growing up right now. It's got great hooks and the concerns are teen concerns. But for those of us who know what Cuomo and crew are (were) really capable of, this one hurts (again).

Buck: That new Pearl Jam album is awesome

So, Liner Notes does have a music-related post...

Don't know if anyone caught it but Joe Buck, in one of his endless yammering sessions with the insufferable Tim McCarver during game 4 , said he had listened to the new Pearl Jam album and that it was pretty terrific. Yup, Buck likes the Jam.

Does that mean Buck is cooler than you thought? Or does this mean that Pearl Jam is about as hip as Lindsay Buckingham...Liner Notes has pondered this very deeply and thinks it's the latter.

Liner Notes is pretty sure that if the conversation had continued, McCarver was going to discuss his love of Grizzly Bear.

It's Whiskey Time

Liner Notes keeps this blog in his spare time. For the last two weeks, most of that spare time has been consumed by postseason baseball and the usual baseball watching activities -- drinking beer, drinking bourbon and drinking bourbon and beer in a bar. Liner Notes' nine in this series is the Phillies, and every time the 7th inning rolls around and Charlie goes to the pen, it's whiskey time.

It looks very much like baseball is going to last through Thursday night... By next week Liner Notes will get back to the serious business of music scholarship.There's a lot of stuff out there -- Best albums of the year, worst albums of the year, a new, terrible Weezer album to write about and some Northwest Philly musicians to catch up with.

Until then, excuse the downtime. Liner Notes hopes everyone's enjoying the series. It's been great so far. Go Phils!

(Note: Liner Notes really likes referring to itself in the the third person unfamiliar for comedic purposes. This may be the whiskey talking. It's hard to tell.)