2 Skinnee J's - SUPERmercado/Volumizer/Sexy Karate

This is one of those things that I know I should be ashamed about. It's cheesy. Rock + rap. Nothing good can come from this.

I still love it. I think. It's been a while.

Pluto - ITS A SONG ABOUT PLUTO BEING A PLANET IN THE FACE OF SCIENTIFIC ADVERSITY. If that doesnt make yer geek heart swoon you are dead inside. It's great. If you don't think so, you are a jerk.

Wild Kingdom - Hmmm. Nope.

The Best - Geek love again, references to Sonic the hedgehog and mario. chorus is lacking. illusions getting shattered.

Ball Point Man - Ok much better, I'm a sucker for stupid shit like "I'm more novel than War and Peace" and I'm left with the idea that when these dudes actually try they've got some interesting ideas, but retrospectively those ideas seemed much more densely packed. It should be noted that we've already hit astronomy, video games and comic book refs so where do we go from here?

In the Clutches of the Diabolical Sgt. Stilletto - So full admission, it is hard for me to separate all of this from the fact that I saw this band on this tour, and they had funny costumes and did synchronized dance moves and karate kicks and we were all drunk. There's still some base level awesomeness going on here though. The fact that the one guy sounds like a 311 b-side might mitigate this somewhat. Not going to lie, there's some pretty stupid shit going on here, but hey its a party. Breakdown in the middle is fun for a little bit.

The Whammy - Motiviation to talk about this song is lacking. meh. Rampagingly uninteresting.

You're A Champion - This really was a fucking weird time for music, theres def a post-G. Love thing (aaaaggggghhhh) going on here, although its much better than that, i mean boutros boutros ghali name-drops earn at least some respect from me. And theres some "rocking guitars", but its not limp bizkit mook-metal or anything. 1998. Weird year. (and uh i had to look at the back of the CD to find out the release date, and i would have placed it much earlier.)

(718) - See people (not me) adore late-period beastie boys, so i shouldnt really feel all that bad about this, but oh as this album goes on its getting harder to justify my positive memories.

The Good, the Bad, and the Skinnee - Fuck it, I love this. And I don't think it's nostalgia talking here, there's something to this - again there are moments where this album lives up to some weird magic promise that is kind of always there, but only clicks a few times.

Riot Nrrrd - ok if nothing else this deserves adulation due to brilliant song titling, but after that fades, uh shit, its another great song. Organ stabs are perfect, synth pad weirdness is dead on, all of this reminds me why I always had these guys shoved into that odd Len/Bran Van 3000 category (which also means that I didn't really have to judge them as rappers, because lord, they are NOT GOOD in the grander scheme. Top Canadian rappers tho!)

Organic Machine - Fuck this. This song is bullshit. Skip.

Mind Trick - Oh yeah remember that whole geek reference game, yeah well, Jedi Mind Trick. GET IT! GET IT! Sub MC Paul Barman/MC Chris shit level references, and jammy geetars = shut the fuck up. Terrible closer, taints album, bah.

Price Paid: Who knows? Probably retail. Quit fucking snickering.

Rating (1-10): 7.

OK SO, i've just hit the first multi-album artist here, and I don't think that I can do track by track for everything, so it's just highlights from here out.

Volumizer - Horns Of Destruction is FUCKING GREAT. MC #2, who in general SUCKED on the first album (Special J. oh hahahaha oh my sides) is kind of killing it here. 3 Minutes also right there among the best moments of the first record, somewhere on the way the band became some sort of totally respectable funk combo, and the production is ridiculously solid, lots of background flourishes, hooks a plenty. huh. Lyrically still half-clever half-stupid. Maintaining rule of not actually measuring these dudes as MC's, but instead as guys who enjoy hip hop and are doing what they can helps me stay positive. We are definitely slipping into some frighteningly 311/Sugar Ray territory here (both of which I fully expect to give a one album passionate defense of in a week/3 years respectively). J Guevara (oh hahahahahaha see do you get it! J! like the band!) is slipping into some slightly more lucid Chuck Mosely territory on this album, which is probably a step in the right direction (side note: did I buy the Chuck Mosely solo record at a pawn shop for 50 cents recently OH YES I DID). Going to lose my local cred card and say that Girl With the World in Her Eyes is like an Atmosphere song, but fun. Also it has a moment in the middle that makes me feel like Weezer might have had some positive effect on the world, which seems inconcievable considering all the horror they spawned and their dogged efforts at releasing shitty fucking garbage.

OK, I'm just going to go ahead and say it (go shame!) this is a great album. I could keep liveblogging it, but why? It's fucking stupid magic.

(1-10)? 9. Yep I'm serious.

Sexy Karate - Broken beat skitter at the beginning is jarring but good. hmmmmppphhh rapping weakness in full effect though. And this production awesomeness sullied by frontman ineptitude appears to be a theme, talking dudes seem to be very into themselves, and garbage white boy hip hop and more now then ever, commercial appeal, which given what we all know about their meteoric rise to fame is painful. song 3 is fucking awful. song 4 is some sort of serious turn which is hilariously out of character and also no good. ah fuck song 5 is like biz markie slow jaw sensitive without biz markie charm or biz markie talent or biz markie persona. not awesome. song 6 WORSE, what the hell happened in the 1 year gap from the last album to this? song 7 is titled "Friends Don't Let Friends Listen to Rap Metal" and uh really you are going to throw in an ICP diss? this is getting embarrassing. The rest is just as shitty. Don't bother.

(1-10) 4. oh well.

1000 Homo Djs - Supernaut

Ok this one I remember buying (actually buying a couple of times because for some reason various assholes who I have lived with have purloined it over the years), but I last listened to it uh at some point I can't recall. It's been a while.

Supernaut - Still love this as much as when I first heard it, which is def not par for the course re: much of the industrial swamp that lives in my CD collection. All the parts of what made Ministry great (when they were) in full effect here. Drums just bashing away, shreddy guitars, distorto vocals (Trent Reznor iirc? Credits are unclear on this) that are still intelligible.

Hey Asshole - GRIND GRIND GRIND, speechy whatever is a little tiring, but the chanty stuff in the backround is holding it together. The unfortunate effects of hanging out with Jello Biafra rear their ugly heads here, lots of self-important off the pigs vibe that just kind of always sounds embarrassing in retrospect. 3 minutes tooooooo long.

Apathy - Grit-boogie sleazepile that still doesn't sound dated somehow, even though it certainly is. I always thought (until filth pig and everything other than the first couple Pigface albums) that there was some weird magic that this whole chicago crew managed to pull off where they rarely sounded cartoonish, which is a problem most "evil" industrial metal (ish) has. These dudes sound like real live out of control drug addicts, mostly because they were, the creepy dudes that linger in the back alleys of bars waiting for something undefined. Bonus points for evil skronk saxophone.

Better Ways - Repetition at its finest, vocals kind of unnecessary and pretty dumb. It's weird how wide the sonic palette is in this stuff, obv not recorded in some hi fi anything, but its all just so slabby and monolithic. Might be the last gasp of twitch era ministry in its approach, and the more I listen to it the more I love it. I take back my comment on the vocals, in a noised out Twitch context they work just fine. Fantastic.

Price Paid: $2.50! Go me!

Rating 1-10: 9. No seriously, I have no significant complaints, and hearing this again is tons of fun.

12 Rounds - My Big Hero

Ok I have no memory of buying this, or why, or whatever. Nick Cave is on here somewhere, and the main claim to fame seems to be that the dude from Bomb the Bass and his wife are the core members, which I can't imagine sent me out in a quest for it. The lady on the front cover looks a lot like Amanda Palmer, but again I don't think that was the swing vote in favor for owning this. Maybe someone gave it to me?

shrugs.

Come On In Out of the Rain - Creepy mechanical creatures slithering around and percussing. Hmm, lady singer sounds like a Tricky collaborator reject, or Alison Goldfrapp and Beth Gibbons singing live without the benefit of monitors. Kids, hitting notes is cool, don't believe the hype. Still there's something interesting almost going on here. This dude apparently went on to program all those recent Nine Inch Nails albums that nobody cares about. Feather in his cap!

Pleasant Smell - No one should name a song this. Singer lady is getting WORSE somehow. Pretty damn boring and slow. Lyrics are CRAP.

Sunshine - Huh, 1998 was the sort of year that made albums like this happen. Musically I can almost stand it, but it's still a pretty embarrassing reminder of what used to pass for spooky in the late 90's.

My Big Hero - Ok this just has to be nepotism. No one would let this person sing if they weren't married to them. The Portishead ripoff train is starting to get ridiculous and I want to get off.

Something's Burning - So apparently when you get sick of ripping off Portishead, you start poorly ripping off Moloko. I feel kind of bad for this lady, somebody should have pulled her aside and dispelled any illusions she might have had about how the adoring throngs were going to just gobble this up.

Where Fools Go - First positive response! Intro uses a "Red Right Hand" sample to great effect, with an interesting reinterpretation, but then it all falls apart because lady starts singing again and she just uh can't.

2 Miles - Back to Goldfrapp's first album, complete with whistling and spaghetti western guitars. This is actually the best track so far, because lady isn't trying to do all that much, sticking in her comfort zone of 7 or so notes. If I heard this on random play, I wouldn't get all that angry, which is hardly a ringing endorsement, but it is a small victory for this record. In fact, I will go so far as to say that I actually like this.

Bovine - So this album is pretty heavily backloaded which is an odd strategy. This song is kind of working for me as well. Lyrics are still mind-bendingly stupid. OH NO THOUGH, we just had a "hardcore" shouty part and it was pure garbage. Gained good will slipping away rapidly.

Me Again - More adequate instrumentation, singer laid back and thus less annoying. Wikipedia says they toured with the Sneaker Pimps, which makes me shudder with the power of naptime and dislike.

Mr. Johnson Take a Bow - I have no idea where this song just came from, but it is so much better than anything else on here that I have to assume that someone in the band stepped in and said "Hey lets try to close out the album by not sucking". This is by far the standout track on the album, but don't go running off to listen to this and thus get tricked into buying it, because NOTHING else on here is really more than mediocre.

PURCHASE PRICE: Totally unsure, price tag says $6.95, but I can only assume this came out of a dollar clearance bin or get left at my house by some poor unfortunate that felt bad about throwing it away.

RATING (1-10): 5. At least it isn't !!!.

!!! - !!!

SO lets get this whole name thing out of the way first. It's dumb. I am forced to start with this because I guess that punctuation comes first in the alphabet. I know its chk chk chk, or durp durp durp, or whatever other repetitive noise you want to use to sound smarter than your friends, but whatever. I think that I bought this on the recommendation of a former roommate that owned the vinyl Bright Eyes box and thus shouldn't have been trusted (not that there isn't bright eyes coming up in this blogs future, I am like a catfish eating the shit off the floor of river music). I think i listened to this once? It shows up all the time in my last.fm because if I don't pay attention and just start things going it's the first song on there, so I guess I have listened to the first 15 seconds of the album like 4000 times.

The Step - slow build, good for wandering off and ignoring. singer is bored, ani difrancos little plastic castle horn section seems to have been called into the studio, but there isn't much for them to do, so they leave. sounds a lot like a band that met each other in the parking lot and dont know each other all that well. singer sounds like he might have auditioned for les savy fav but wasn't comfortable getting vocally weird or wearing rainbow leggings and being fat.

Hammerhead - funk without funk. lead singer is going all big audio dynamite on me but more boring. oh good, nauseous sounding breakdown. congas never make anything ok. thank god this is an ep i think.

KooKoo-Ka FUk-u - jesus what a stupid song title. MUSHPILE, hate this, hate the band, hate the singer. just looked at total time of album and although there are only 7 songs, this clocks in at nearly 45 minutes, dreams of EPness destroyed. more stupid wooziness going on here. oh look you found the pan button, fuck this band.

Storm the Legion - Ok, for the purposes of honesty, I am going to commit to giving each song at least 50% before dkipping it, which means this album only has to be 23 minutes long. "LSD taught me a lot about me" how fucking stupid is this. And hey, thats just touching the surface of how stupid the lyrics to this song are. This is just fucking terrible.

There's No Fucking Rules, Dude - Elevating plodding to an art form at this point. Wait that sounds positive, but I don't mean it that way. I feel like I am getting dragged down into the boring party this band is having in its living room, and all my friends have been smart enough to leave and I'm not sure how to get a ride home so I'm stuck with these assholes. FUCK, this song is nearly 9 minutes long so I have to give it 45 more seconds more before i can hit the skip button. WHERE IS MY CAB, THESE PEOPLE ARE BORING.

Intensify - Had a moment where I thought I remembered this song and liked it, but then I realized it sounds JUST LIKE A CAKE SONG that I have enjoyed. Yeah thats right you hipster fucks, I thought I was enjoying this, but then I realized that I liked it because you RIPPED OFF CAKE hahaha stuff that in your art school portfolio you dicks. ok 7 minutes, stay strong, you can make it. While I wait, I am kind of obsessed with figuring out which cake song this was, but now, we have a kiddy shout along clap section. Poor kids, stuck in the studio with your shitty, shitty music. Oh good, skip time is now.

Feel Good Hit of the Fall - So is this a clever joke on Feel Good Hit of the Summer QOTSA? If so, why? If not, still why? Glad to set the tone with this piece of shit as a first listen, it really affirms why I never listen to stuff I own anymore. This is better than anything else so far, mostly because of the wooly synth moments, but still ugh.

PRICE PAID ACCORDING TO USED STICKER ON CASE: $8.95. fuck me.

RATING 1-10: 3

OH BOY

So as a spinoff to the other MASSIVELY SUCCESSFUL blog that I have been inadequately contributing to, I have given myself a new assignment.

It should be clear by now that I am a PROLIFIC blogger with great attention to frequent updates and deep, thought-provoking content. So by no stretch of the imagination should this be viewed as some CHEAP PLOY to force my creative wellspring of AWESOMENESS to flourish through some sort of automated shame-based tactic. OH NO SIR, this is just another sweet venue through which my honeyed tongue can drip my UNPARALLELED CRITICAL WISDOM into your SUPPURATING LEPROUS ILL INFORMED EAR. So just lean back and enjoy it.

I have too many CD's, more than ONE MAN can stand. It is a terrible cross to bear, and your sympathy has been marked and noted. As a result, I don't listen to them. Ever. BUT TODAY that will change. TODAY! For the next unknowable time period, I am going to listen to them. All of them. Alphabetically. One a day, until some gulf oil spill creeps up the Mississippi creeps up into my house and drowns me in thick black tar. Or I get bored, or busy with something else.

Note for the uncautious - THIS WILL SUCK, MUCH OF THE TIME, OR A LOT. We will all lose.

*disclaimer: claims of accurate alphabetization are wholly inaccurate. this will suck. lots of this stuff was free. the most shameful stuff was probably purchased with REAL AMERICAN DOLLARS in some sort of drunken stupor and/or (FULL DISCLOSURE) ill-informed excitement about stuff that I thought was awesome, but was in fact crap. I do not make any claims about accurate inclusion of terrible things I buy during the course of this, such materials are more likely to be reviewed on fantastic team blog http://jjjusten.blogspot.com/