Record of the Year
Hosts Chris & Steve use Spotify streaming data, Billboard charts and 2 damn fine sets of ears to determine a year's biggest, best and most beloved music.
Record of the Year
ROTY 1991 | Stevie's Time Capsule
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Today on the program Steve reveals his 1991 Time Capsule - an hour of music from the year that he just couldn't live without.
Listen to Stevie's 1991 Playlist here:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5sUbuat5e0aFzNUSzNOYaM?si=c3e261d26b5c4274
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Hello and welcome everyone to Record of the Year 2.0, the show where we use Spotify streaming data, billboard charts, critical consensus, and two sets of damn fine ears to determine the year's biggest, best, and most beloved music.
SPEAKER_09And this is volume five of 1991, where today I'll be sharing my time capsule, an hour-ish of music from the year that I just couldn't live without, Chris.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, and I'll be sharing my time capsule on our next episode of the program. But today it's Steve's time to shine. Steve, let's get right into it. Tell me about the process of compiling your 1991 time capsule. Okay.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, no, no, no, it was great. It was great. You know, I went through the entire list, looked at a lot of different releases that came out in the year 1991, and pick some of my favorites historically, some uh some nostalgic favorites, but also pick some music that I've always kind of admired admired from afar, that I don't like maybe have a super close relationship with, but maybe want one. And when I look back on all my time capsules that we've compiled so far, these are definitely songs I want to remember from the year 1991.
SPEAKER_06And just to be clear for first-time listeners, our time capsule, these songs, it's an hour of music. We can have repeats of artists, it doesn't matter if they're on the list or not, if they're well streamed or not, doesn't matter. It's just 1991, what do I reach for? Not what is this list dictating for me. Yes. And um, we've shared our time capsules in advance, so I've listened to Steve's, he's mercifully listened to mine, and uh, so we'll be able to comment on each other's choices, ask questions, and uh kind of get into this material and why it was chosen.
SPEAKER_09And mostly highlight some of the cool music that came out in the year that maybe we wouldn't get to highlight otherwise.
SPEAKER_06Right, exactly. It's an outlet for honestly, like my big thinking was there's not enough of us in the show, it's all dictated by other people's reviews and other people's habits. Sure. Be it listening habits or writing habits and stuff. So it was just a way when we first did 1970 to be like, you know what we're lacking is like us.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_06I was like, how have I not talked about Neil Young yet? But he's like my perhaps my favorite artist of all time, and yet he didn't come up in any discussion. And it's like, well, that seems wrong because 1970 is one of the best Neil Young years ever. You know, so that that was really the way in, and maybe we'll be hearing about Neil Young. We might be at some point in this time capsule discussion. Um, did you find it easier, harder, the same, just different than compiling your other time capsules?
SPEAKER_09This year was a little bit tougher than previous years. I felt like I had to dig a little bit deeper here in 1991 because as much good stuff as there is, right? And there's some heavy hitters. We've discussed seven bangers of albums. Big boys. Big boys. And you know, I definitely had to reach a little bit further into the into the back catalog to find some stuff. Right. But as you're gonna find out, some of them I have uh some interesting relationships with to say that.
SPEAKER_06I'm really intrigued because I was surprised by some of the choices here. Some are like so on brand that it's almost like a caricature, yes, as are mine for what it's like. Uh, but some I'm like, wow, interesting pull, you know? And even some of the choices from some of the bigger albums that we've discussed, because obviously there's gonna be some of the big hitters here. They did make some of the best music from this year, so we're gonna represent the Nirvanas and Pearl Jams because it's just natural to um, where you went with those choices was interesting to me.
SPEAKER_09And let's do uh a little game here for the listeners. So uh maybe a slight spoiler, but we've discussed seven records from the year 1991. And I am proud to say that on both of our time capsules, six out of seven of those records make an appearance. There's one artist whose whose music we discussed that does not appear on either of our time capsules. So that's something to keep keep a lookout for.
SPEAKER_06And if you heard our previous episode, I bet you can guess which artist that is.
SPEAKER_09Well, Steve, you want to get rolling? Let's roll it right out here. And by the way, my time capsule I tried to put into a pleasant flow, more for your listening pleasure, CK. I know you shuffle these sometimes, but there there is maybe some unlistenable things. But I also like a flow when I'm listening here, so I I try to keep that in mind.
SPEAKER_06Well, that's evidenced by your first choice here, which is an album opener on its respective album, and here it is, kind of beautifully opening up your time capsule.
SPEAKER_09These Shrouded Temples by Corrosion of Conformity. A band that I always tried to get into as a kid, believe it or not. They had a radio single on the album that came, maybe two albums after this, in like '96 that I heard on the radio. I was like, oh, that's a cool song. Let me let me get into them. Uh, and I bought this record and it's, you know, it's called Blind. It's uh it's okay, it doesn't sound the greatest. The drums really 80s sounding. The guitars are cool. Um, you might know a guy from Corrosion to Conformity, Pepper Keenan, who played in the band Down, uh, who was with Phil Anselmo and some guys from Crowbar. Huh. If you've ever heard of them.
SPEAKER_06I I'm more familiar with Pepper Johnson, a former uh linebacker for the New York Giants, 80s and 90s. But uh that name is actually familiar to me as well. Probably through you, honestly.
SPEAKER_09So this tune, you know, uh These Shrouded Temples, it starts with some guitar feedback and then comes into a spooky, diminished thing. Perfect album opener really sets the ambiance. There's some interesting drum parts here. But the real reason I chose this song, Chris, yeah, is because way, way back in I don't know, 1998, maybe we had the TWA. Yes. The Trampoline Wrestling Association. Yes. Alliance, excuse me. Oh my goodness.
SPEAKER_07I wasn't gonna correct you, but it is Alliance.
SPEAKER_09The Trampoline Wrestling Alliance. My character, of course, was none other than Lucifer.
SPEAKER_06And mine was Sergeant Spam.
SPEAKER_09We were we were bitter rivals. Bitter rivals. And Lucifer's entrance music at one point in time was The Shrouded Temples. I believe it was an angle where Fester, one of the other characters, was supposed to come out, and his music started to play, but then there was some some static, there was interruption, and then this song played, and who came out but that dastardly Lucifer to thwart Fester's plans for TWA gold.
SPEAKER_06You know what's funny is when I heard this, I said, This is very familiar to me. This sounds like it was Steve's entrance music, but I always associated your entrance entrance music with Seasons of the Abyss. Always or in the Abyss, whatever. But the the um Slayer song, which wasn't it at some point? Probably. Yeah. So I rethought that, but I'm so glad you're confirming that now because when I heard it, I was like, this is familiar to me, and I think it's wrestling related. Yes. I couldn't quite place it. That's amazing.
SPEAKER_09So that's kind of the main reason I even picked this song. My time capsule is like an hour and five minutes, and this song's about two and a half minutes. So I definitely didn't have to have this, but I said, you know what? I when I go back and think of 1991, I do want to remember this because uh it it brings back some good memories. What what do you think of this song? I think it's sick.
SPEAKER_06I really like it. I actually generally think it sounds good too for hard rock music at this time. I don't think it's overprocessed, like the Aussie stuff and some of the Guns N' Roses. It's not really that hyped up. Um, I don't think it sounds great. Yeah, probably my favorite aspect of the song outside of the composition is really cool. I like that it's instrumental. Yeah, because you know, like with me, heavy music, it kind of lives and dies by the vocals. Sure. And I don't think the singer Carl Egel Agel, I don't know how to say his name, but he I don't think he's bad. He's kind of in that Lemmy Hetfield school of like gruff vox as opposed to growly, at least in the stuff that I heard. I listened to some other tracks on the record just for reference. And if this song had those, I wouldn't like it as much. Sure. But I think like the composition is really cool and it doesn't sound half bad. And again, doesn't overstay its welcome. Great opener to your time capsule, and I'm sure a great opener if you were to listen to that full record. Like sometimes you would skip the interstitial intro opener instrumental thing. And I don't think if you're a fan of that band, you would not skip this song.
SPEAKER_09It's really a great song. Yeah, no, this is not one to skip. Coincidentally, you mentioned vocals. Pepper Keenan, he would become the main vocalist for Corrosion of Conformity a couple of years after this.
SPEAKER_06Did you see Corrosion of Conformity? I feel like they were like a perpetual opening band for bigger hard rock acts. I don't think I've ever seen them. It was Clutch that you saw.
SPEAKER_09No. No? I saw Prong? Prong. There you go. My first concert, Ozzy Filter, and Prong.
SPEAKER_06I always associate those two. Typo negative is another band. I always put in that era of like third-tier hard rock bands that like were never really on the radio, we're never on MTV, but you knew about. Yeah. Because maybe they were on tour with other bands. What do you think is better? Blind by Corrosion Conformity or Blind by Korn?
SPEAKER_09Ooh, blind by corn. Yeah, 100%. I mean, come on. I mean, Battle of the King Conform. Talking about an opening track. And the Battle of the Blind. Oh, Korn's Blind might be one of the best opening tracks ever.
SPEAKER_06So it'd be Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, Corn, Corrosion Conformity.
SPEAKER_09Battle of the Blind.
SPEAKER_06Uh uh, Val Kilmer and At First Sight.
SPEAKER_07Oh my goodness. Is that the movie when he's blind?
SPEAKER_09Anyway, not important. I used to think Roy Orberson was blind.
SPEAKER_06Oh, yeah. No, he just had Coke bottle glasses.
SPEAKER_09I always assumed he was blind. How does he know this woman is so pretty? Well, he felt her face.
SPEAKER_06Oh my. Stevie, you want to keep it moving?
SPEAKER_09Let's keep it moving. Right out of the Shrouded Temples, we go into a classic outshined by Sound Garden.
SPEAKER_15Things are looking so good. I'm looking cannot for you. Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_09One hundred and thirty-one million streams on this bad boy. Little bit, little bit more played than Corrosion and Conformity. You don't say. Yeah. So I'm gonna go on record right now and say that I think outshined is maybe my favorite sounding rock from the year. I think the drums are kind of dry. Very dry. They're not overprocessed, but it's almost a big welcome change after what we've been hearing. I think the guitars sound great. I think the bass is very present. I think Chris Cornell's voice, like obviously, he's one of the best singers ever. But I feel like his voice just shines through on this track so nicely.
SPEAKER_06This is so cool. I was somewhat surprised to see this on your list in that I don't associate you with Soundgarden, despite the fact that they seem like a band right up your alley. It's just not a band you were ever that close to, I feel.
SPEAKER_09Unfortunately, I wasn't. Um I wish I was, because that well, I I guess it's not too late. I guess I could uh change. Maybe that's the whole purpose of the show. You know, there you go.
SPEAKER_06Opens up doors.
SPEAKER_09No, I chose Outshined mainly because a band that I used to play with about a decade ago, Little Blue Pill, we would cover this song regularly. And it was always one of the highlights of of the night for me because I loved playing it. Drop D, it's in seven, there's some hidden little quirky measures at the end and the double chorus. It's just such a powerful song. One of those ones you just sit on the stage and you kind of like groove along and it feels so damn cool.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, I will say now, this is not in my time capsule, but it was on my long list. Nice. This was because I I just always dug the verses of this song and the pre-chorus. The thing that keeps it is actually I don't love the chorus. It just makes me feel like now I know Soundgarden was before this band, but it sounds like Monster Magnet would write it. It's like the thing of Soundgarden that a lot of later hard rock latched onto that I just didn't like. Just the fact that show me the I don't think it's a bad melody. I think it and I think it's bitching. It's just like coming out of that pre-chorus, it feels like it's from another song.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_06You know, in the pre-chorus with the so now you know, which is like psych rock. So good. And then the seven-four verses, which are like so my jam, yeah, Cornell sounds great. That part, the chorus, which you think it would be like the best part, is actually the part that takes me out of it. But that's just me. I'm not saying it's bad. It's just I'm on a certain wavelength, and then that chorus jars me out of it slightly. But if I heard the chorus unto itself, I'd probably think sick part. If that was on Metallica's Black Elm, I think it was awesome.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_06So maybe I just have different standards for SoundGarden. I will freely admit, I am a super unknown, down-on-the-up side soundgarden fan more than I'm a bad motor finger sound guard fan. And you know, louder than love sound guard. That was never really my thing. And I think Super Unknown is a masterpiece for what I'm saying.
SPEAKER_09Oh, absolutely. And great, great podcast. Uh record of the year did cover Super Ungarn.
SPEAKER_06Yes, with Zimmy, and it's one of our best rated rock albums of all time. Yeah. Because the writing, the production, the performances, just all top-notch. It's just probably like too long. But yeah, have you listened to the full Bad Motorfinger? Did you own this record?
SPEAKER_09I'd never own this record, and I have not listened to the whole thing.
SPEAKER_06Me neither. I've actually I I don't love how this sounds, but I don't think it sounds bad for the time.
SPEAKER_09Yeah.
SPEAKER_06It's like a, you know, relative to Super Unknown, I think this sounds like ass. Relative to alt-rock contemporaries, I think it sounds really quite good. I think you're right on there. Yeah, Cameron's drums are dry, but maybe still a little thin. I mean, Matt Cameron's an amazing rock drummer, especially in Saugarn. He would later go on to be in Pearl Jam. Yeah. I mean, he just quit Pearl Jam, actually, um, after 25 years of playing with them. But uh still like it doesn't mar any of the performances. There's still like the guitar tones are big, Cornell's voice is incredible. Um, like I said, this was I won't say it was knocking on the door of my hour of music, but it was in my hour and a half of music. Yeah, for sure.
SPEAKER_09Let's talk about the lyrics for a second. So I found the chorus is actually giving some nods to Pearl Jam and Andy Wood. Oh wow. So show me the power, child. I'd like to say. So apparently that's a like almost like a prayer to Andy Wood that I'm down on my knees today. Yeah, it gives me butterflies, gives me away. The butterflies possibly being an even flow Pearl Jam reference, because these guys were all contemporaries.
SPEAKER_06Sure. And obviously, Temple of the Dog was kind of a mashup between members of Pearl Jam, members of Soundgarden, and a tribute to the late Andy Wood of Mother Lovebone, the band that Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard were part of before Pearl Jam. And actually another song that was on my long list did not make my cut, but was even closer than Outshined was Say Hello to Heaven off of the Temple of the Dog record, which is a Chris Cornell tribute to Andy Wood and a beautiful song. Sure. It's just like there's only an hour and I went a direction.
SPEAKER_09But um I'm sure we'll get to Temple of the Dog on our supervisor.
SPEAKER_06I would think on our superlatives. Yeah, I would think so. They need to be represented because Hunger Strike and that whole record is probably a lot of rock fans' Dark Horse favorite record of 1991. You know what I mean? Just because it's like not overplayed and it's just like the best combination of bands. You know, there's no Nirvana in there, but it's like the ultimate Seattle band, really. Pretty cool. And I think Eddie Vetter recorded his vocals on Hunger Strike before Pearl Jam even went into the studio for 10. It was just like, hey, we've been playing with this singer. Can he come in? And like it was kind of spontaneous.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, I was wondering about the timeline of that whole recording.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, it predates, I believe, the Pearl Jam 10 sessions.
SPEAKER_09Wow.
SPEAKER_06Yep.
SPEAKER_09Super cool. Two more lyrics that I think we'd be remiss to not mention.
SPEAKER_06I think we share one of them. Let me hear yours.
SPEAKER_09Well, the the big, the big famous one, look in California, but feel in Minnesota. Yeah. What a line. Yeah. What a line. Chris Chris Cornell. Uh I have a little quote here. Chris Cornell comments about Outshined that it may be understood as all shined out. Kind of a falling feeling of confidence or satisfaction. Going into a feeling of self-doubt, self-consciousness, and even self-loathing. So there you go. We're pretty pretty heavy. But that that line, look in California, feel in Minnesota. Yeah. And then the other one, which I have misheard for years, the grass is always greener where the dogs are shedding. It always sounded like shitting. Oh, I thought it was shitting. Apparently it's shedding. Oh. As in shedding their fur. Interesting. They're molting. They're molting.
SPEAKER_06If you look at my my notes right here, I have two lines in a row. I'm looking at California, Minnesota, and Gratz was greener where the dogs are shit. I wrote shitting because genius.com had it as shitting. Okay. Um, but I like both, you know? Yeah. I mean, I think they're both ridonculous, but and I'm not sure either are true. No, though the shit would actually help. Well, I don't know. It's fertilizer.
SPEAKER_09You've never fertilized a garden with dog fur? Not yet. You got a couple of dogs up there.
SPEAKER_10Come here, boys. Go to the garden.
SPEAKER_06Give me that Go roll around the garden, would you? Be a doll. If we weren't still under like a foot of snow, I would definitely do that. Yes. How about the rhythmic variation in the final chorus of this?
SPEAKER_09So there is a bar of six four. So the chorus is in four. Then there's a bar as they repeat the double chorus. There's a bar of six four and then into a bar of five eight. One, two, three, four, five, six, one, two, three, four, five, one. Super cool.
SPEAKER_06A part that only Soundgarten would write. Yes. On a song like this. There's Matthew bands, there's Proc bands of this era. I'm not saying they wouldn't write this. I'm saying a mainstream, quote unquote, alternative rock act, which it's probably a misnomer, but you understand what I'm saying. None of those other bands are touching timings like that.
SPEAKER_09No. And they did not do this intentionally. They just played around and said, this sounds cool. And I imagine that that particular part as they're rehearsing it probably went through many iterations until they like, no, that's how it has to be. Yeah. And I I always love to think about how do those guys count that? Where maybe if they're not even aware that there's something happening, like what are they, what are they thinking to get through that part, which is quite complex. And if you try to reproduce it, I have to count.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. You gotta either just feel it or be right on top of counting it because it comes and goes fast.
SPEAKER_09And playing that song live was that was always the big change, you know, you'd rock out the whole song, it's like, oh, here it comes, here it comes, okay, and hopefully get it.
SPEAKER_06I remember Kim Thyle when we did our Super Unknown episode, he was talking about how heavy music to him always sounded too organized. He's like, it almost felt like it was classical music, and that turned him off from a lot. He liked heavy, he liked distorted guitars and loud drums and stuff, but he didn't like how people composed heavy music in the 80s because he he just thought it was too regimented. So he said Soundgarden's goal was always to introduce some uh chaos into the mix, be it crazy guitar solos, because Kim Thyle is not a melodic guitar player, but his solos are nothing if not energetic, chaotic, and kind of like evocative of energy, if nothing else. And this is like a collective rhythmic version of that, I think, which is like you think you're comfortable now, you think you can feel where the edges of this frame are. Well, I'm gonna blur the edges right now, but we're gonna do it together. Yeah, and Matt Cameron is a master of that. His first studio album with Pearl Jam as the drummer uh was Binaural, which came out in 2000. And there's several songs on that record with mixed meter, which is something that meaning different time signatures throughout the song, which is something that Pearl Jam never really did. They had a couple songs in five, but really they never messed with a measure of three, a measure of five, a measure of four until Matt Cameron came into the picture. So I think he had a lot to do with that. As well.
SPEAKER_09Super cool. Kim Thio, by the way, calls Bad Motorfinger the heavy metal white album. Wow. That's it. So it's their masterpiece? Apparently. There you go. Exactly as you said, bringing some chaos into the fold.
SPEAKER_06Yep, for sure. Well, you know, successfully done and successfully chosen. That's a great, great first proper song in your time capsule.
SPEAKER_09Thank you, thank you. Moving right along, we get to No More Tears by Ozzie. We covered this one in depth, Chris, on our album episode for the No More Tears. Yeah, just on our previous episode. Yes, sir. You know, I went back and listened to this last week, and it just hit me much differently than it did when we were preparing to discuss the album. And I felt like I was 13 years old again. This song is so badass. I maybe should have given a 10. I gave it a 9.5. You know, the bridge, I think one of the reasons I dinged it a half a point was because the bridge maybe was a little too long and maybe took me out of it's so awesome. The bridge starts off with this flute solo, and the chord changes is B flat minor to G flat. Although I guess they're tuned down a half step. So they'd be B to G. They're playing B to G, yeah. They're playing B to G. So then that transitions to E D E F G. So let me let me say that again. E to D, okay, down a whole step, back to E, up a half step to F, then up a whole step to G. Which prepares us for the next part, because then we go to D. Up a fifth to D. Then from there, we go D to C, down a whole step again. But then we go to B flat. Oh. Down another whole step. And then we land back on G. Whoa. So chromatic. And this this part to me, it's just this is like the Beatles right here. Yeah. This is like, you know, day in the life. Or I'm the walrus or something. Yeah. It very chromatic, weird key shifts.
SPEAKER_06Very cool. It's interesting to me that it starts B to G and ends B flat to G.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_06And you almost don't notice. You know it gets weird. It's not a part that's disguising its weirdness. It's kind of leaning into its weirdness. Right? Like that middle section saying, Look at me, I'm prog rock. Isn't this weird? But the harmonic stuff is almost like just a small part of that. It's the sound effects, it's the shift in feel and everything. Yes. But it's interesting where it ends up considering where it starts.
SPEAKER_09Yes. And then and then even after the part I just left off on, then it goes into the guitar solo, which is a little bit more uh F G D minor. Gotcha. A little bit more tonal. What is the main key of this song? D. Okay. The bass lines in D minor. Cool. I also found a bad lyric alert. You I know.
SPEAKER_06Ozzy.
SPEAKER_09And I I thought of this specifically for you, because you you're really good at finding these, but the the line that said, you know, I never wanted it to end this way. My love, my darling. Believe me when I say, to you in love, I think I'm falling. Oh no. To you in love, I think I'm falling.
SPEAKER_06Thanks, Yoda. Jesus. That's when he met Yattel. I believe. Oh yeah. That's not great. For what it's worth, I never noticed it. Um I probably should have. Uh yeah, man. I I I love this track. Um, I didn't spin it a ton. I would usually skip it listening to your time capsule, favoring the songs I knew less well. Sure. But every time I heard it, I loved it again. Particularly like I love Ozzy's melodies throughout this song. His verse melody, um, the pre-chorus and and kind of his languid melody there in setting up the choruses. I love the central bass riff, obviously. I like the scope of the song. There's these rhythmic variations, you know, towards the end of the song that really hit hard with added beats and stuff. Did you ever break that down?
SPEAKER_09You know what I'm talking about? I do, and I never broke it down, but you're reminding me of something that I every time I hear this song all the way through, there's one part, I believe it's coming out of the first chorus into the second verse. There's just like a little, you know, four-bar instrumental break. And the bass drum, boom, chom, ch, boom, boom, chch. There's one double stroke that he does, and it tickles me every time because it's just it's different. It never happens again. Right. And it's just so like quirky. Good old Randy Castillo.
SPEAKER_06Wish we can get back in there. You can alter your uh musicianship score.
SPEAKER_09Well, you know, go up and have a point for that double stroke. That's all it takes.
SPEAKER_06Have a point for a stroke. That's funny. Um, anyway, awesome song, awesome pick. I figured there'd be some Aussie. I wasn't sure what song you'd go with.
SPEAKER_09Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Makes sense where you ended up.
SPEAKER_09Gotta have a little Aussie. And then we gotta have something a little, a little left to center here. Maybe this one surprised you. How about ordinary average guy by Joe Walsh?
SPEAKER_04I'm just an ordinary average guy.
unknownMy friends are boring. And so am I.
SPEAKER_03We're just ordinary average guys.
SPEAKER_09Six point three million streams. Ordinary average guy is nostalgia in a bottle to me. I picture driving down the road in my mom in the backseat of my mom's car with this song cranked up on 94 HJY, the home of rock and roll.
SPEAKER_06Oh, this was a radio song?
SPEAKER_09Oh, absolutely. And I get that's that's where I know it from. And this ordinary average guy is such a wild song. Though let's start with the lyrics. What what do you think of these lyrics? Because they are bonkers.
SPEAKER_06I mean, if you think about I have a central thesis that I'm trying to convey and I'm gonna write things in support of that thesis, it doesn't come better than a song like this. No, it's a ridiculous thesis, but a very well realized one. Oh, I always I always respect that, honestly.
SPEAKER_09Yeah. I quote this in my own mind all the time, specifically the last verse, which I actually sang to like a classroom of children not too long ago. Really? Because I I think I I think I prefaced it with you guys want to hear a song that's kind of gross. Of course. Everyone's like, yes. Of course. In my mind, like, should I do it? Well, yes. So every Saturday we work in the yard, pick up the dog dew, hope that it's hard. Woof what take out the garbage and clean out the garage. My friend's got a Chrysler. I've got a dodge. We're just ordinary average guys.
SPEAKER_05Oh man.
SPEAKER_06It's a great verse. It's hope that it's hard is one of the greatest. Like, everyone gets that. I have dogs now. I've never had dogs in my life. I'm 42 and I finally have dogs. But and I've yet to pick up poop. I'm not gonna lie. That you know, Allison remains on poop duty. Yes. But I've seen a lot of dog poop. You've seen it. We can see some right now if we walk like 10 feet out that door. Can we go look? I'm hoping. Um, and uh boy, that's relatable. It's such a great, simple, evocative lyric. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01As stupid as it is, you know, and and Joe Walsh is probably like, you know, I was just I came up with this idea. I just thought, you know, where are we really at?
SPEAKER_06What happens with Joe Walsh? What is how does he sing as well as he does, considering how badly he talks?
SPEAKER_09Yeah, I don't know if I've heard many interviews with him, but he sounds just like that.
SPEAKER_06I you would think he was in the room. Wow, Joey. Isn't he no, he and Ringo Star are like brothers-in-law. I think they're married to sisters. Huh. So they're like friends, and like uh I think Joe Walsh would play in the All-Star band, the Ringo star in his all-star band at points. And um, I remember Joe Walsh, God, maybe he met George Harrison or Paul through Ringo back in the day. And he was like, Man, when you guys play, Andrew Bird can sing that guitar riff, you know, that did it. He's like, That's so hard. How did you guys do that? Like, I learned it, it took me all day. And uh, and Paul was like, Oh, that's two of us. That's not we, we, that's two guitars doing that. And he was like, Oh man, I spent all day learning that. Anyway, but I I just love that. He's I will say, Joe Walsh, listen to interviews with him. Um, I remember seeing him on that Foo Fighters Sonic Highways documentary that um Dave Grohl made, where they would go to different music scenes in different cities around the country and record a song in all these different cities and usually bring in a representative artist to collaborate with. And they brought in Joe Walsh when they recorded out at that, like um God, it was it Indigo Ranch, you know, like where Queens of the Stone Age and Caius would record, and they brought in Joe Walsh to do a guitar solo on this tune. And I just remember thinking, damn, Joe Walsh is so hooked up, his playing is so great. Obviously, we love the James Gang stuff. Oh, yeah. Like we've covered a few of those songs over the years. Like, I that's some of the best classic rock stuff between his guitar tone and the band's playing, the songwriting, his singing. I way prefer the James Gang to the Eagles, and I'm not an Eagles hater, but like James Gang is awesome, and I don't know nearly enough solo Joe Walsh. It was cool to get exposed to this song.
SPEAKER_09Well, before we get more into the song, how about in 1990? Joe Walsh was part of a supergroup called The Best. Have you heard of this group? No. All right, it features Joe Walsh, of course, Keith Emerson. We have Skunk Baxter. Oh, yeah, play with Steely Dan, Doobie Brothers. He played with a guitarist. Simon Phillips, oh yeah, who played with Pete Townsend, Jack Bruce, and Jeff Beck on drums and on bass. Johnny and whistle. No. What and they did a few shows in 1990.
SPEAKER_06Wow. Are there any like video recordings or anything? Did you check them out?
SPEAKER_09I'm not sure. I did not check them out, and I'm not quite sure.
SPEAKER_06Um I love now knowing that because I I've never heard of that before. Keith Emerson of Emerson Lincoln Palmer fame. Before Emerson Lincoln Palmer, he was in a band called The Nice. So I like that he was in a band called The Nice and the Best. Clearly has a naming convention, and then he went the opposite direction for ELP.
SPEAKER_09Wow. Yeah. Good old uh good old Keithy boy. Let's talk about the chord changes here to ordinary average guy, because it's a quirky change. C to E minor, B flat to F. It's almost like that E minor wants to be a G chord, and I think most other writers would probably make it C G B flat F almost like a Nirvana progression, very uh you know, pattern-based. But throwing that E minor changes things. It's also kind of a reggae tune. Yes. Which is wild. And then it has these super 80s sounding synths.
SPEAKER_06That's the biggest issue with the song from my perspective. Because I think the songwriting, again, charming, not something that I'd be like, oh my god, this is amazing, but very well realized in a ton of entertainment value. Oh. But it's those synths that kind of take me out of it.
SPEAKER_09And then the bridge, by the way, more wild synth, almost indiscernible pitch. Like if you try to play along with what's happening in the bridge. And then we go to E flat, which is the minor third of C, so big tonal shift, down a half step to D minor, down another half step to D flat, and then the guitars play this A flat chord to an E flat chord, and then we're back to C. It's so disjointed that bridge. It just it and it's a weird little section, but it kind of almost perfectly bridges these ridiculous lyrics. Interesting.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, it's funny because we did talk about a couple songs that do that modulation up a minor third. I think Mr. Big and The Man Who Wants to Be With You, and we reference Living on a Prayer as a song that does that as well. Moves from G up to B flat.
SPEAKER_09We reference And this one goes chromatic. It doesn't even do the thing in the new key.
SPEAKER_06No, exactly. It goes to the new key, which is a lift, but then really it gets obtuse there. Yeah. That's very cool.
SPEAKER_09Yeah. So ordinary average guy loved this tune. I actually spun this on the way to a gig a couple of weeks ago, like, or maybe more than a couple of weeks ago, before I even knew it was on the master list. It just came into my head. I was like, oh yeah. No way. Oh crap, this is on the oh yes, this is going in the time capsule. That's awesome. Absolutely. Let's keep things moving. Going again completely out of left field here. We started, you know, we started with some metal, then we get to some weirdness. And now we're going full on jazz, baby. Chariots by John Schofield. 36,000 streams. Johnny boys. Cisco. Johnny. Going to Cisco, by the way. Front row. Come on. Where? Matt Walsh at the Odium.
SPEAKER_06He's playing the Odeum in his Greenwich.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, in a couple of weeks on a Sunday, I believe. Wow. Do you know who's in his band? Bill Stewart. Wow. And the bass player I don't know. Wow, is Bill Stewart? There you go. Yes, he is. So maybe they'll play this song. Maybe. Maybe they'll play Chariots. We got on the Chariots recording, Bill Stewart on drums, of course, Joe Lavano on saxophone, and Mark Johnson, no relation. On the bass. This was the second Schofield album to feature Joe Lavano, and it was the first to be released as the John Schofield quartet. And to feature our boy Bill Stewart, one of the finest jazz drummers who's out there, really.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. Were you familiar with Mark Johnson, the bassist before this? Me neither. I had never heard the name. It's a very generic name. No offense, Steve Johnson. Mark Johnson. Very generic name. He's played with everyone. He played with Matt Pat Matheny, he played with Stan Getz, uh, Philly Joe Jones, Jack G. Jeannette. Like, he's a hitter. He's a hitter. I had never noticed his name. Bill Stewart and Joe Lavano, I've known their names forever. Yeah. Even if I, you know, couldn't place them necessarily among bands. But and John Schofield is someone we've been a fan of for a year. We used to see him a lot back in the early 2000s. In Coventry.
SPEAKER_09I was referencing the famed Coventry show the other day with uh Schofield's Uber Jam band.
SPEAKER_06Yes, with Adam Deitch on drums. Adam Deitch, what a what a show that was.
SPEAKER_09Yeah. In a field.
SPEAKER_06About six minutes from where we grew up.
SPEAKER_09In the middle of nowhere. Coventry, Rhode Island. So crazy. So awesome. You know, the bass player on this recording, Mark Johnson, and on a lot of Schofield stuff, you know, if you don't know John Schofield's music, it's it's jazz, but it's really this kind of funky, this groove jazz. And Schofield's bass players, he he must tell them to do this, but they have little to no variation in their lines throughout the song. You could once you learn the pattern, the bass is not going to change very much, which is great because then it frees up, you know, the improvisation on top of it.
SPEAKER_06Because he really superimposes a lot of non-tonal stuff over his playing in a way that I don't always love. Yeah. As much as I admire Schofield, I would never call him one of my favorite guitarists. Sure. I love his sound because it's just so uniquely him. It's in his attack, it's in his fingers, and obviously it's in his use of the rotary speaker with his guitar. You hear it on this track, chariots, for sure. Um, and again, that's just running a guitar through a rotating Leslie speaker like you would hear a Hammond B3 organ go through, and that's a signature of Schofield's sound. And frankly, he gets that sound even without a B3 uh Leslie speaker as well. It's just kind of his attack.
SPEAKER_09Yeah. But it that can kind of come and go depending on how he's feeling. Right. Yeah, Schofield's Schofield's a great player. So here's the real reason I chose this song. Please. So for the past, you know, two to three years, I've been an active working jazz musician, and I I play with a great trio. And Chariots is one of our go-to songs. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, when we need when we need a little lift, when we want, you know, when we want to groove out for the audience, we do about four John Schofield tunes. A go-go, I've heard you do. We do a go-go, we do Green Tea, we do a song called Do Like Eddie, and then we do this one, Chariots. So I've I've known this song very intensely for the past three years. So I was very pleased to see to see this on the list. Yeah. Although this is not a streaming, obviously, with 36,000. There's there's one song that streams a little bit better than this on the record. That being said, the other reason I love this song, did you notice any harmonic familiarity with the intro specifically? No. This is the full house theme. Oh my god, yeah. It's it's E to A. Yeah. And it's just it screams for the first time I heard it. I laughed out loud. Oh, this this is just like the full house theme.
SPEAKER_06You just start going, whatever happened to predictability.
SPEAKER_09Of course, full house, one of my favorite TV shows of all time. That's right. Unironically. I got the whole set of DVDs there, buddy. Unironically.
SPEAKER_06It's such a slinky tune. Yes. Uh he and Lavano play so well together. They do. Because their phrasing, it's unto themselves, like individually, it's pretty late and slippery, and a lot of just like bending and scooping into notes. And they're doing it collectively incredibly well. Yeah. And Bill Stewart's groove here, just like that late late. It's like a second line. Yeah, it's a second-line pseudo-second New Orleans kind of feel.
SPEAKER_09And it's just so groovy.
SPEAKER_06Yes. And and yeah, I mean, I the first word I wrote was slinky when I first heard it, because I was not familiar with this tune. I know later period Schofield, that's where I've spent most of my time, particularly his work with Modesky Martin Wood, who's one of our favorite jazz trios ever. And it makes sense why he liked playing with Chris Wood, the bassist. Yeah. Also of Wood Brothers fame if you're a fan of more Americana music. But the bassist of Modeski Martin Wood is a guy who would find the line and just lay it down. And it was just all about how good it felt, not about note selection, really, at a point. And so I think he loved playing over those guys. And Billy Martin is not that dissimilar a drummer to Bill Stewart. Sure. Billy Stewart. Bill Martin and Billy Stewart. Wow.
SPEAKER_09The Billlies. They should have a band called the Billy Boys. I would I'd go see them in a heartbeat. That'd be awesome.
SPEAKER_06Front row for Sko. I love it. Yeah, Sko's a guy who filmed a bunch at uh uh Jazz Fest over the years. I just filmed this past year. He played in a and I will say, it was not a great set. Because sometimes you do like a super jam kind of thing and you don't have a lot of time to rehearse, and there's a lot of material. And but it was Schofield on guitar, Louis Cato on drums, who's the band leader for Stephen Colbert. He's the one who took over from John Batiste at Stephen Colbert's show, and then Marcus Miller on bass as a trio. So you would think, oh my god, wow, amazing. And at times it was. And at times it was a mess. But they opened with a go-go.
SPEAKER_09Oh, super cool.
SPEAKER_06Which was cool. And Marcus Miller, he likes a lot of notes. So that could clash with Schofield. Exactly. It's not like the guy you would necessarily reach for for a Schofield recording, sure. Yeah. But honestly, Scho was the weak link in my opinion. Oh wow. Yeah. It occurred to me, I was like, oh Scho's pretty old now. Yeah. And it just he just didn't seem sharp. When he was on, it was like, oh yeah, baby, give me all that you got.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_06And when it wasn't, I was like, because he plays ugly. Like his sound is inherently kind of ugly.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_06And when you're playing ugly and playing bad notes and not in the cool way, that's a kind of a rough combination.
SPEAKER_09He does these little chord clusters that are very dissonant at times, almost like a piano player. He he walks that line really well.
SPEAKER_06He does. And he's a rock guy at its core. I mean, at his core, he grew up playing rock and RB. Yeah. Again, this is amazing, Sko. Yeah. And it's just, yeah, once you lose some of that finesse, it you start wondering are you trying to sound bad or are you bad? And I'm sure he's not bad. And I'll be curious when you go see him with a band he's more comfortable with how he's sounding. Because I've generally seen him in less familiar playing situations. Like I saw him play with Scary Pockets.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_06One year. You know, he uh he played in um Larry Golding's on organ and then the Scary Pockets band, those guys. You know, like Dead Wax. You know those guys? Yeah, yeah, I've heard of them. Yeah, the founder. Uh the founder of Patreon, his band. Oh wow. Yeah, Jack uh doesn't matter his last name, but anyway Mayhoff.
SPEAKER_07Jesus Christ. Sorry about that.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, no, please. Uh well, you want to keep it going into some more familiar territory?
SPEAKER_09Yes, as we leave the jazz field, there's a gong in the distance. Smoke fills the room.
SPEAKER_10The sound of an electric guitar. Wherever I may roam by Metallica.
SPEAKER_09Three hundred and four million streams. Shake a stick of that, Schofield. Wow. I think Hammett should take some lessons from Schofield.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. He'd be like, first, get a Vox AC thirty. There you go. And uh throw out everything else.
SPEAKER_09You know, we've discussed this uh wherever I may roam in great detail on our on our episode covering the black album. I made note that if I go back and we listen to the beginning of The Shrouded Temples, my my opening track here on my time capsule, this song just wherever I may roam just creates such a cool mystery. Right? And The Shrouded Temples is cool. It's got that spooky guitar thing coming in, but then this so awesome, Metallica. Great.
SPEAKER_06And that's why they're good at that. I mean, uh Unforgiven with that reverse horn, obviously the Enter Sandman intro, the unmistakable um nothing else matters, arpeggio.
SPEAKER_09Setting a vibe in you know, the the musical mission statement, the musical thesis statement of the song. Here it is, here's what you're in for, and it's a great ride.
SPEAKER_06It's a good point. There's a lot to be learned there, honestly, for any songwriter of any genre. Of just like, how about you hear two seconds and you know exactly what it is, and somehow it prepares you for the next six minutes? Yeah. Like Metallica may be among the best bands ever at that skill.
SPEAKER_09Absolutely. One other fact that I found about this song that I don't think we mentioned on our on our episode that the song features a Warwick 12-string bass. Oh, interesting. This is like the year the 12-string bass. You may be the time capsule with the 12-string bass, spoiler alert. There we go. So I'm pretty pretty awesome.
SPEAKER_06Wow. A lot of interesting bass stuff. I've got a bass through line on my list that I'm intrigued to point out myself. In fact, that's the last thing I was listening to when you texted saying, Hey, I'm here. Great, uh come to the door. I was checking one song to see, yeah, oh no, yeah, it is. Okay. Anyway, so bass. Yeah.
SPEAKER_09Bases. All right. Well, it's not surprising that I gravitate to uh to bass bass songs. Let's keep things moving, unless you have anything else to say about wherever I may roam.
SPEAKER_06Uh no, I I love it. I think it's amazing. Um, and I do think we talked about it a decent amount on our biggest albums part one there with Metallica Black album.
SPEAKER_09Keeping things moving from metal to power pop on a plane by Nirvana. Just laden with hooks, on a plane, a song that I've played many times, maybe one of my favorite songs on the Nevermind Record. Love the lyrics, love the bridge. I did make one new realization about this song. Oh, cool. So I had a rehearsal the other day with a it was more of a jam session, and the drummer was pretty busy, and we were playing kind of these pop songs, for what it's worth. And the drummer was trying to do some real heavy, fill-laden beats, and I felt it did not work. It didn't serve the song, number one. Number two, it the bottom sort of fell out of the beat. And me as the bass player playing kind of these unfamiliar songs, it was a little hard to latch on and you know, solidify what I wanted to do because the drums were kind of playing this off-kilter, really fill-heavy beat to accompany whatever part of the song it was. On a Plane features a similar d drum pattern to what I just said. There's a lot of fills and Tom buildups that are could be very interrupting to the song, but it just made me realize how masterful Dave Grohl is. The fact that he can play all these fills and do these little build-ups and break the beat, but yet it works for the song and it doesn't disrupt things and it it keeps going. I mean, clearly great songwriting, but also masterful drumming by Dave Grohl.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, like he just knows his role in the song. It's the Grohl roll. And and I love when he plays the Groll rolls on the snare. I love when he plays the Grohl rolls on the toms. Are you talking about like the the chorus drumbeat when he like builds between every. Yeah, because that's where the space is. He's basically passing a baton, right? Yeah, a melodic or riff baton to Kurt. And um, that's just great playing. It's one of those things that I've heard Butch Vig talk about his love for the Beatles because he loved the Beatles, as did Nirvana. And he was like, you know, the thing with that is if you solo any of the instruments, which you can't really do on Beatles recordings without AI, because they were all recorded at once, and there's a lot of you know shared tracks and stuff like that, you would be able to identify the song. Like if you knew the song, you'd be like, that drumbeat, that's ticket to ride. That he was like, everything was a hook.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_06And that's what Nirvana was at their best. Everything was a hook. Mute Kurt, mute Chris, just hear Dave's drums, you'd be like, on a plane immediately. If you heard the song twice, you'd know. And because there's such a clarity, too, to the part. Yes, the part itself is so simple, elegant, well performed, well struck. You said one of your favorite songs on Nevermind. Yeah. Obviously, we also just talked about a song from the Black album. You could have gone a lot of directions. You love a lot of those songs. What made you determine wherever I may roam and on a plane as your representatives from those albums? Were you thinking I want to represent these albums? Like, talk to me about that selection.
SPEAKER_09Sure. On a plane, I feel like I have a really close relationship with just because I've played it so many times. I don't play solo, guitar, and sing a whole lot, but whenever I have in the past 10 years, I have absolutely played on a plane. So have a real close relationship with it.
SPEAKER_06What do the people sitting next to you in like 10F think about you playing on a plane?
SPEAKER_09It's annoying, right? The head stocks bashing into them. The flight attendant constantly asks me to stop, but I just like I I after this song. You're in an emergency exit roll, sir. Oh, wait. It's P-L-A-I-N, Chris. Wrong plane. Wrong plane. The farmers get pissed. They're just like, turn that ragged off, buddy. Well, Steve and I actually met playing on the bus. There we go. Good old Denny. I was telling Roxy about Denny the other day. Our old bus driver, Dennis. Her uh her bus driver's name is Bob, who I have dubbed Bobby Busboy.
SPEAKER_06Sweet Bobby Busboy. So yeah, on a plane, and then wherever I may roam. Or were there any other close contenders for the Metallica record? Sabbat True, I could see being in the mix.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, wherever I may roam is another one I have a close relationship. I think I told the story how I selected this song for my eighth grade chorus to sing. And I feel like this has always been like a Metallica song that I love. Granted, I always loved, you know, Enter Sandman, but at the same time, it's like, oh, I love this other one that maybe not as many people know. Sure. So yeah and I've played Wherever I May Roam solo Acoustic before. Interesting. I'd love to hear that. It works pretty well, I think. Nice.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. I remember in sixth grade bringing in, no, maybe fifth grade actually, Mr. Blazer, our old elementary school music teacher, said, like, does anyone want to bring in a song to play for the class? And I was like, Oh yeah, definitely. So next next week, I'm gonna bring in my favorite CD, play my favorite song, show up there rocking some candle box. Oh yeah. Far behind. Put that sucker on in front of the class. I felt so lame. So but for what it's worth, even in fifth grade, I'm eight nine years old, it's 1993. I'm playing the saddest bastard song ever for my classmates. And I remember feeling so lame. Wow. And I was like, wait a second, this is so personal. It was so weird, the sensation of like sharing. Here's what means a lot to me. Yeah. And it's weird now that I do this as like, obviously, this is a hobby. I'm not making money from this, but like we're doing this publicly, sharing music we love. So it's basically one big version of showing up in Mr. Blazer's class with Far Behind on the Candle Box CD.
SPEAKER_09I gotta tell a quick story on that same wavelength. Please. And it's highly embarrassing. So, Mr. Blazer, our elementary school. Cal Blazer, Cal, good old Cal. I would bring in many, many songs, and I would always bring in the darkest, scariest heavy metal song. I remember one time I brought in this morbid angel song called The God of Emptiness, which and it's first of all, it was like it's like a six or seven-minute track. And I'm pretty sure we listened to the whole thing, which is, I mean, kudos to Mr. Blazer. I and there's one part at the end where the the lyrics are bowed to me faithfully, he bowed to me splendidly, and I'm in like the front row bowing down.
SPEAKER_07Oh my god.
SPEAKER_09So there was one moment where you know, fine somebody else in the class got enough nerve to be like, We're we're tired of this metal, let's bring in some pop. And they I don't even remember what it was, but it was something, you know, super poppy for the time. Ace of the sign or something like that. It might have been. So I'm sitting in the back of the room and I'm thinking, like, I hate this. So I plugged my ears, I closed my eyes, and I started humming loudly to myself so I wouldn't have to listen to whatever was on. Now, Blazer, he he saw this and he immediately turned the music off, which I did not know because I was humming and my ears are closed. And the whole and I just remember opening my eyes and everyone staring at me, and I'm like, But I learned a very important lesson that day that even if it's music I don't like, doesn't mean I should, you know, completely block it out, number one, or judge it so poorly that I'm not even gonna give it a chance.
SPEAKER_06Otherwise, you'd be humming with your ears blocked for the entire Chrissy time capsule on our next episode. So I appreciate that.
SPEAKER_09But no, very very that was a very powerful time. Yeah, because I well, number one, I was highly embarrassed. Humiliation. But I feel like maybe Mr. Blazer had a a bigger part in opening my my mind. And I talk all the time about how it was like I was a snobby metal kid. If it wasn't metal, I didn't want to hear it. And granted, I didn't quite turn the corner for a few years after that, but in retrospect, that that moment stays with me.
SPEAKER_06Right. Oh, I bet. That sounds like a formative moment. Uh this may be too personal. Question. When did your parents get divorced? Your parents are divorced. My parents are divorced, we're children are divorced. What how old were you when your parents got to be?
SPEAKER_09I was in fifth grade. So 10 or 11. Were you already into metal? Maybe. I got my first Megadeth t-shirt in fifth grade. I remember going to a flea market with a with a friend of mine, Jesse, who I referenced in the in the last uh in the last episode, and I remember finding a countdown to extinction t-shirt and being like, oh, oh yeah. So probably right around that time is when I was into metal, yeah.
SPEAKER_06Because it feels like like the intensity with which you were into metal it like that kind of intensity for anything. Even if you're like, I like tennis, and you start playing it every day, you're like, okay, like I understand liking tennis, but you know, you're gonna get tennis elbow, like maybe play three or four days a week. You're clearly compensating for something here. Yeah. In that level of intensity and kind of like adherence to this metal kind of ethos. I don't know.
SPEAKER_09I was just like, I never I never thought about it, but it's completely plausible.
SPEAKER_06Right. Because definitely my parents, divorce, which my dad moved out in the middle of fifth grade, like that so informed my taste in music and what I was drawn to with lyrical themes, sure, and it you know, dynamics and emotion for sure. And uh and then obviously led to OCD and all kinds of neuroses and stuff like that, which completely corresponded with that happening in my life. But uh yeah, I don't know. I was just I was wondering about wow, maybe you just uncover the source of all my anger. But then you think like, well, imagine if your parents had stayed married.
SPEAKER_09That would have been interesting. And be listening to Bolton.
SPEAKER_07Exactly.
SPEAKER_09Wow. Sorry, well, now to go deeper into Yeah, that took an unexpected turn. Uh let's let's stick with our theme. Do you want to cut that out? No, no, no, that's great. Oh, okay. I love it. Let's uh let's stick with our theme of um, you know, pretentious metalheads, and let's get into my next election. Flattening of emotions by death. Death. Chris, what is your knowledge slash relationship with the band Death? I knew they existed. Okay.
SPEAKER_06I and just barely. That's a start. Yeah. Like if you said name Death Metal Bands, I would never would have even named Death. Yeah. I would have named Cannibal Corpse, I would have named Deocide. Sure. I this band is not on my radar at all. I couldn't have told you what they sound like, but I could have guessed.
SPEAKER_09Yes. And honestly, this band was never on my radar. I had heard of them, I had known about them. I honestly didn't quite get the band Death until probably three years ago.
SPEAKER_08Wow.
SPEAKER_09This band has always eluded me because they don't sound like your stereotypical death metal. 100%. From the vocals to a lot of the music. Because now they have death metal parts, and in part the genre was sort of named after them. All that being said, they just call it metal. Or they call it us metal. Us metal, yes, us metal. Death is such a quirky band. Lots of time signatures, lots of guitar solos, more of a screech style singing than a growl. Very intelligent. And the lyrics, so as we're we're gonna get to another death metal band a little bit later in my list, and the lyrics from death compared to most of your stereotypical death metal, could not be further apart. Yeah. So death, we have Chuck Schuldener, he's the guitar player and vocalist who sadly passed away of uh of brain cancer.
SPEAKER_06Oh my god.
SPEAKER_09Which is which is very sad, and he was driven. So by the time he passed, he was actually done with death, and he had a different band because he felt the death label was not really representative of what he wanted. He was still writing metal songs, but they were really progressive and introspective and really interesting. And he was not the singer of his last band, which is called Control Denied. But very, very cool. On the bass of this recording, we have Steve DeGiorgio. Do you know anything about Steve DeGior? Oh, I know that name. Yeah. Steve DeGiorgio. Fretless five-string bass in a metal context. And he showcases it on this song. There are some gnarly bass fills, almost like a bass solo. I wish it was higher in the mix. I was listening to a MIDI version of this today because I was listening, you know, on the Where did you find that? On Songster. Just following along what the guitars are doing. And the the MIDI bass, which I presume was taken from, you know, some sort of transcription, is way cooler sounding than the actual bass because it's so far back in the mix.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, there's not a lot of bass on thrash and death.
SPEAKER_09No. But the fact that Steve DeGiorgio plays a fretless bass is it's so cool. It's almost out of place, but he makes it work and just these little slides at the places where the bass is exposed. And I think that's another reason why I was never quite drawn to death because it sounds so different. It's this other element of like that I don't think that's supposed to be there. The bass isn't supposed to be playing those cool solo licks over these chuggy guitars.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, that to me, like what you're saying, this doesn't sound like the death metal. This is not what I think of when I think of death metal. It's probably why I like this.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Because I do like this song.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_06I would never spin it on my own, you know, anything like that. But I if I'm gonna be exposed to this kind of music, this is a great example of it. Yeah. And an example that's much closer to what I'm actually drawn to musically. Because I think it's a pretty compelling composition. I think the drumming's great. Yes. And weird. You know what I mean? It's not just straight down the line. Yes, there's sixteenth note double bass drum hits. It's death metal, of course there is. But what he's doing over the top, it's almost like a clave at times. It's a really weird It's like jazz fusion. Yes.
SPEAKER_09It's really metal jazz fusion.
SPEAKER_06There's more like candyria owes something to what death is doing, right? Absolutely. The band that you talked about on your 2001 time capsule, just for those who hadn't heard that episode. Um and yeah, I think the vocals are much more approachable. And I think the lyricism, like even the name, flattening of emotions and the way that it's actually evoked in the song.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Which is basically like in order to exist in the world and to have relationships, there is a certain amount of just numbness that you must experience to survive. Is that's how I interpret it. I didn't read, you know, his, you know, the singer's uh intention, but that's just what it reads like to me, and I love that.
SPEAKER_09Well, here's the chorus. What went wrong to their picture perfect life that they once knew? Flattening of emotions, a mind shared by an uninvited stranger, which comes and goes as it chooses to appear. And one of the cool things about Chuck's vocals is his phrasing. Because I just read those and they flowed really well. If you were to listen and follow along, it's much harder to do. Yes. Because it's very disjointed. His phrasing is so interesting, and I part I would imagine part of that is because he was playing while he was singing this stuff, and he's he's a freak when when it comes to playing some of these riffs and singing at the same time.
SPEAKER_06And I will say, musically, that's my favorite part of the song is the quote unquote chorus. Is that the two minute mark? That's when it stood out to me anyway, and I just noted the time 'cause I was like this. There's a certain amount of clarity to the music there, and then it leads into this blistering guitar solo using. Know what sounds like you know, Phrygian dominant kind of sound. You know, it's a very eastern sounding metal uh guitar sound. And it's the type of thing that Kim Thyle, I'm sure, loved because it is kind of random and energetic and ferocious, yeah. While still being very smart.
SPEAKER_09And I one of the things I love about flattening of emotions is first of all, it starts like hot for teacher. It's got the double bass, yeah, the double bass that kind of fades in, and then we get some cool riffs, and then just when you thought it can't get any heavier, you just get punched in the gut by these crazy fast riffs. And Death is masters at using the rhythmic subdivision to go between time signatures. So most of this song's in 4-4, but occasionally it will go to 12-8, where they kind of go between feeling the 16th note and then the eighth note triplet in those time signatures, and they like just masterfully blend throughout, and it just one of the other things I feel like these riffs, even though they're different, they do uh complement each other well enough where it feels like a song and not just like, oh, here's the first riff, here's the second riff, here's the third riff, let's stick them together.
SPEAKER_06More than most uh metal of the silk, I agree with you. Yes, yes, absolutely. Doesn't have the clarity of a Metallica song, for instance. But as death metal goes, like extreme metal goes, I I do think they're really good at it.
SPEAKER_09So Death started in Tampa, Florida, which is like that's like the death metal hub of the world, especially in the 90s. And I've watched far too many documentaries on death. But they were really like at the forefront of figuring out how to record these blistering fast double bass pedals. And I feel like this example, I I like the sound of the bass drum and death a little bit better than one of the other death metal songs we're gonna hear in a few minutes.
SPEAKER_06For sure. Yeah. Not even also the playing is way better.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_06Like, you know, there's just a solidity and a and a groove, I would say, to this death playing. Just the band itself. Are they considered like one of the best death metal bands ever? Like, are they in that I don't know enough about the hierarchy of death metal bands.
SPEAKER_09I think they're kind of grandfathered in. Gotcha. But I mean, Chuck's genius is recognized. Like he, you know, one of the other funny things about Chuck, if you ever see a picture of him, he was known for going on like MTV Headbanger's Ball, but he'd wear like Ricky Rackman? Yeah, with Ricky Rackman, and he'd wor wear like a shirt that has kittens on it. Oh like he w he was all about not being that death metal guy, yet the music was kind of a sad story. I mean, he had a lot of trouble with like tours, like they never really had a successful tour. There's some great live footage of them in Europe, but it was all very short-lived and kind of circumstantial. It was kinda kind of a sad end. And Chuck just gave his entire life to making this music. It's it's it's it's uh it's pretty impressive. Wow.
SPEAKER_06Well, cool thing to be exposed to. Yeah. I was not I was not aware of death, and um uh ignorance was bliss, but now here we are.
SPEAKER_09But you were aware of my next song. Oh yeah. And we are going in a total 180 direction here. We have Roll the Bones by Rush. Chris, you're probably the biggest Rush fan I know. Oh, wow. Hmm. Yeah, it's probably true, right? You might be the only Rush fan I know. That's what I was pondering was who else do you know who likes Rush? No, I know a few people who like Rush, but I feel like you you know Rush. Yeah. You you know Rush really well. What do you think about their 14th album, Presto?
SPEAKER_06Uh I own it and I never really listened to it because I don't like the sound of it personally. Um, but that has Show Don't Tell on it, which was on Rush Chronicle, which was the first Rush album I ever. I borrowed it from our guitar teacher Mike Zilski back in probably 1997. And I that was my gateway into Rush, so I know that song.
SPEAKER_09So what do you feel about Presto's follow-up, Roll the Bones?
SPEAKER_06Uh, this I did own, and I knew the song Roll the Bones, uh, which is the song you just obviously we just heard. And I knew a couple of other tunes, but I didn't get this immediately when I was first getting into Rush, but the year I got into Rush, they released a three album live collection called Different Stages, of course, which had a modern tour from the Test for Echo tour and then had an archival release from the Farewell to Kings tour from 77, 78 at the it doesn't matter, but it was in London at the Hammersmith Odeon. And Dreamline and Bravado were on that collection. So those are my gateways into this era of rush, and then I ultimately got this used years later, but it wasn't one that I ever had a close relationship with. Um I always assumed I hated how it sounded, and I don't love how what we just heard sounds, but it doesn't sound nearly as bad as my memory had me believe, if that makes sense. Likewise, the synts are far too loud in the mix, much like the Joe Walsh song. It's definitely the downfall of this era of classic rock, hard rock artists for sure. But the core playing and the core tones are actually quite good.
unknownI agree.
SPEAKER_06The mix is really good.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Um, and I love their next album, which was Counterparts. Oh, yes. Came out in '93, and that's an album that has a lot of songs I love, and I think it sounds pretty good. It's very processed, but getting closer to a more slightly more organic alternative sound.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Um, did you own this album? I did. Yes. I think maybe actually you owned it. I don't even know if I owned it, come to think of it, but I would hear it with you.
SPEAKER_09Oh, yeah. We would spin this quite a bit. Yeah. So roll the bones, the title track. What a strange, quirky song that has a lot of cool things happening in it. And some not cool things, but you know, we'll get to those too. Should we just start with the not cool things? Because it's the most entertaining. Yes. The raps. There is a if you are not familiar with this one. Should we play some? Yes, play the rap.
SPEAKER_12Relax. The facts. Stop forward. Stop. That's the thoughts.
SPEAKER_06Sorry, I'm sure windows just went up across our entire listeners' shift immediately.
SPEAKER_09So I viewed this rap completely different after I read this one little quip on Wikipedia. So I don't know if it's entirely true, but if it is, it just tickles me beyond belief. That Rush knew that this rap part is a little cringy. They they were well aware that, like, okay, this is not us. We're trying something different here. We're rolling the bones, as it may be. Sometimes you got to. But they considered to make this part just completely over the top. They considered hiring to do the rap John Cleese. Can you imagine what that would have been like?
SPEAKER_06I would have enjoyed it more than what we just heard, but uh interesting.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, again, I don't know if that's true, but if it is, I just I really want to hear it.
SPEAKER_06But you know He's a notorious crank, too. I'm surprised that he would ever say yes to that. But maybe, you know, maybe he likes kicking some gluteus max.
SPEAKER_09When they do this live, apparently people there's a video where people lip sync the rap, uh. Including Peter Dinklage, Chad Smith, Les Claypool, Tom Morello, and Paul Rudd, among others, who appear in this kind of interstitial video when they play live.
SPEAKER_06They used to have a digitally animated skeleton rap it. Remember that? I've seen video of that. Yeah. Which um so cool. You know, I can't believe you've lost it. Um no, that has a lot of entertainment value, but it is that's windows up as moments get by bands that I love. Because I love Rush, for sure. I mean, you maybe I got into them before you, but we really concurrently spun a lot of Rush back in the late 90s in early 2000s. We saw Rush in 2003, was it?
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_06I yeah, 2002 or 2003. And uh that was awesome. That was fantastic. I'm half tempted to go get tickets to see them with their new drummer.
SPEAKER_05I know. I don't know.
SPEAKER_06I don't think it's gonna happen. But uh, that's the only time I ever saw Rush. And again, on my big list for my time capsule, they didn't make the cut, but I really wanted to get some rush on there because frankly, they are one of my favorite bands, or at least one of the most influential bands at a very formative time of my musical development.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_06And we've never talked about them on the show with any consequence. You know, we've never actually dug in. So I was looking for a way to get them in. So when you sent your time capsule, I was like, all right, not the song I would have chosen, but still at least we get to talk some rush. And I gotta say, like we said about the sound, this song is quite great. Yeah. Like the song itself. Take the rap out of it, take the sense out of it. The chorus song, the chorus, and those verses are amazing.
SPEAKER_09The main guitar pattern is this D sus four to D to D sus two kind of sequence that Alex Lifson plays, but Getty's playing an A underneath all that. So it just kind of creates this cool texture, like this big suspended sound with the A kind of anchoring things down. And then I absolutely love the chorus where Getty finally gets to D. We he finally joins the home key, and he does this awesome little walking bass line thing that kind of doom doom doom goom goom creates some cool, he plays an E over the F chord as he's walking up. So he's yeah, very, very cool. What do you think of the lyrics? Neil Pearl, he writes all the rush lyrics. Yep, the drummer. And yeah, this one is basically about taking a chance. And Neil says, if it's a random universe and that's terrifying, and it makes you neurotic and everything, never mind. You really have to take the chance or else nothing's gonna happen.
SPEAKER_06You know what? This is kind of an amazingly nihilistic song in a way. It's a song about a lack of belief.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_06And I think that those pre-choruses, the why are we here? Yeah, because we're here. Rollerbound line. And then why does it happen? Because it happens. Like, there's no meaning to any of this. And the first couplet of the second verse is like really bleak. Faith is cold as ice. Why are little ones born only to suffer? A line that was written six years before Neil's daughter died in a tragic car accident. She was 19 years old, driving to college, died in a solo car accident, and like eight months later, Neil's wife died of cancer, and like he was left alone. He had no family. But like, this is years before that. So imagine how that affected his inherent nihilism that he's like kind of representing here in this song.
SPEAKER_09That's wild because I always took that specific line to be more like global, like heal the world. But you're right when you think of it in terms. I'm I'm sure that tortured him. Right. I would imagine. I for sure.
SPEAKER_06And uh but but it's also really great writing, and the phrasing in those verses, in the consistency of it, and where the emphasis is falling, and where the rhymes are falling, and it's not a standard like symmetrical phrase structure like we see in a lot of songs that we've been talking about. It's just so rush, it's deceptive complexity, yeah, and it's still so musical. The biggest thing I ever took from Rush was complexity hiding in plain sight. Yeah. Was there a capacity to play songs in odd type signatures with shifting meter and shifting keys and elaborate drum fills and guitar solos, and all have it still be so accessible, yeah, and tuneful and melodic, and with like way better lyrics than songs of great complexity need to have.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_06This is not an example of that because this song is not that complex musically. Rush had kind of turned a corner, we're writing a different style by this point. It had been happening throughout the 80s. But even within that, there's so much headiness, yet so much tunefulness and logic to the way they put these songs together. Um, I think the construction of the song is slightly clunky as Rush goes, but like that also is the nature of bands like this, too.
SPEAKER_09It's interesting you say that because Neil went on record and say that he wanted to avoid too much organization and he wanted to avoid like an architected drum sound. So he purposely left sections unrehearsed. Yes. And he recorded them the day of to get a more spontaneous sound.
SPEAKER_06I think he was like laying low, letting the guys, uh Getty, the singer, and Alex, the guitarist, work up the arrangements. He learned the structures and then went in and played them all like in a day or two, and that's the record. Like Neil is a notoriously meticulous player, and I think he was trying to throw some bones out there and just seeing where they fell. And you know what? He hit snake eyes.
SPEAKER_09And honestly, that's like maybe my biggest critique of Neil is sometimes he just feels too angular. Yes. Where I almost want like loosen up a little, man.
SPEAKER_06Well, Neil doesn't have feel. No, you know, that's the irony. He doesn't, and he tried to learn it, and he studied with a drum teacher, I forget the guy's name now, but was very much of the buddy rich school of swing drumming and just trying to let the stick react off the drums more. And you could see him still struggling like that. He definitely changed the way he played after taking these drum lessons, but he still was just a rigid player, which is why he composed his parts like he did. Yeah. When he's playing his parts, he's the greatest rock drummer. When he's just like playing a beat, it's a little like sterile to me. That's why he's nowhere near my favorite drummer, even though I admire him deeply. And actually, frankly, I love his lyrics even more than his drumming at times.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Um, what do you think of the guitar solo on this one? Uh, just the fact that you don't have an answer to it.
SPEAKER_09Oh, okay. No, it took me a second. It's, you know, kind of standard Alec solo. Yeah. Nothing special. Great tone. Oh, he always has great tone. Yeah. That's it, and that's easy to take for granted with Rush. Because this, you know, Roll of Bones does sound pretty good. Yeah. It probably sounds better than a lot of stuff we've heard. And it's easy to take that for granted. He's like, oh, here's Rush. Oh, yeah, that's that that's that classic Alec Leipzig tone, you know, the bends and the disdain, and it's it's all there.
SPEAKER_06But the phrasing and note selection, it's not one of his best pieces of work. And he and Getty would work on the solos together. And I don't know, they didn't land on a great one here. The Merciful thing, it's like eight measures. It's very short solo, as Alex goes. Usually his solos start and then like go into a whole new section while still soloing. Some of his best solos have that quality. And that's earned in a lot of those songs. I'm glad they didn't go that direction here. This song is not about guitar heroics. Well, you gotta skimp on the solo to make room for that rap. Well, exactly, exactly. Here comes like MC Freshbones.
SPEAKER_09MC Fresh Bones. Speaking of rap, let's let's keep let's keep in the rap genre for my next election. How I could just kill a man. Cypress Hill.
SPEAKER_11So it just killed a man.
SPEAKER_06Is that MC Freshbone?
SPEAKER_09That's uh that's MC B Real. Oh yeah. And DJ Miggs and uh good old Sendog. You know, you gotta love what do you think of Cyprus, Chris? We've never really talked about Cyprusil.
unknownHmm.
SPEAKER_06I guess I like them. Like, I don't think they're special in any way. Yeah. Outside of their distinct voices.
SPEAKER_05Yes.
SPEAKER_06But I do actually like the grittier production style here. Yeah. They're a West Coast band, right? Yes, they are. And this is more of an East Coast sound. And I like that because I do prefer the sound of Wu-Tang and Nas and artists like that to the death row sound, even though I loved Snoop and Dre growing up. Yeah. Um, I like the grittier nature here. I like the kind of amateur-ish nature of this sample assembly a little bit. And there's things about this song I really like, and I love the hook.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Um, yeah. Why did you choose this song, please?
SPEAKER_09I I was surprised to see it on here. I always I've always loved Cypress Hill. I had Cypress Hill put out a live record probably in like 2001. It was after Rap Superstar. And the thing that always tickled me about it, because I also, you know, love the rap groups that you mentioned and definitely have a strong affinity for rap, maybe even stronger now than I ever have, quite honestly. Um the record, live I think it was live with the Fillmore West. There was two sets. The first set was all with the DJ, and they did certain songs, but then they brought out a live band. And I just thought it was so cool and fresh for a live band to be playing some of these grooves over and over, and it just had a different energy. And that was sort of my first introduction into Cypress Hill. And I just I love B Real's voice. Like he it's funny to me that he can be rapping about, you know, some heavy, heavy stuff, but it almost sounds so cartoonish because of his nasal delivery that even though they're talking about killing people, but it's just like I don't get that vibe. It's like a party vibe just because of his delivery, and I think that's kind of hard to do.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, no, I feel that. Um, yeah, funnily I knew this song. I've never owned a Cypress Hill record, but this song is on the Woodsock 94 compilation seating. It's deep in disc two, if I'm not mistaken, but I knew it from that. When I saw the title, I was like, I knew the hook immediately. And I obviously I know insane in the brain, but there's not another Cypress Hill song I know, I don't believe, besides this and that. And it was cool hearing the actual recording. Again, I think it's like a pretty cool sounding track and kind of unique in that it has a bridge. Steve, what do you think about that? A rap song with a bridge.
SPEAKER_09And there's definitely some songcraft happening here. And in the you know, the way he raps through the bridge, it does feel different than the verse. Oh, yeah. And then as he as he plows back into the verse, so cool. That said, that's the part I was talking about with like really questionable production.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. Just give this a listen, folks.
SPEAKER_08It's gonna be a long time before I finish one of the many misses that I had to establish to make my splendid night your weapon sights and you ain't down. Bullshit. Say some work, trying to get you for you.
SPEAKER_06Like, that's just right on the edge of like good.
SPEAKER_09So there are so many samples used in this. So I I went to uh WhoSampled.com to get this. The main sample is Lowell Folson's 1967 hit Tramp, which is the guitar and bass sample. The drums are taken from a song called Midnight Theme by Man Zell. But listen to these other samples that are accredited to this song. Are you experienced? Jimi Hendrix, the hook and the riff. Uh reading the comics by Fiorello Lagarria, the vocals and lyrics. So, like I have no idea what that is, but the fact that it's here is wild. Uh, Come On In, The Music Machine from 1966. I Feel Good, I Got You. James Brown, 1965. That's a subtle one in there. That one is credited to some of the vocals and lyrics. Uh test results from the Good Times TV show in 1974. There's dialogue, apparently. Uh, there's an Otis Redding song, some of the drums, and then the best one at all, which really isn't a sample. I'm kind of surprised, but it's more of a vocal callback at the end. All I wanted was a Pepsi, suicidal tendencies institutionalized all the way back to 1983. A song I know through you. We've we've covered. Covers to cover it in Diabolic Malady.
SPEAKER_06Yes, I was excited to see that little note when I was doing some research. Absolutely. That's fun.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, so how I could just kill a man, I I really like Cypress Hill. By the way, 1992 was their breakout year where they contributed songs to the movie Juice, White White Men Can't Jump, and Lethal Weapon 3. And then they were on the side stage in Lollapalooza in 1992, sharing the bill with The Chili Pepse, Ice Cube, Tool, and STP. Imagine going to that Lollapalooza. Interesting. That would be pretty pretty mental. Yeah. Uh what do you think of the uh lyricism? You know, I like Be Real's rap style, and Be Real is the primary rapper on on the Send Dog, really only just uh contributes into the into the how I could just kill a man. But time for some action, just a fraction or friction. That's the it's amazing.
SPEAKER_06All the lyrics the only lyric I wrote. Favorite line in the song. I think it's the only actually like good line in the song. Yeah. I'm not saying the rest is bad. It's just unremarkable. It's just hip-hop, whatever. Sure. That line is really quite good.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, time for some action. Just a fraction or friction. Fraction of friction. Fraction of friction. That's hard to say.
SPEAKER_06It's hard to say, and it comes out clean and it's just really smooth and phonetically strong and thematically strong.
SPEAKER_09I got the clearance to run the interference into your satellite, shine in a battle light. Sen got the get, and I know that'll get you right. Here's an example, just a little sample.
SPEAKER_01How I could just kill a man.
SPEAKER_06Just a little sample of how I will kill.
SPEAKER_09That's awesome. Good old Cypress Hill. Well, let's keep things moving unless you got more stuff to say about Cypress Hill. Please. We're getting to the end. Moving right along. Hey, hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey, hey. Hey, stupid Alice Cooper. Okay. Gotta love Alice Cooper. So the reason I chose this song, growing up, my friend Brent, who we've talked about, you know, a couple of times here on the podcast. Jai. He Jai. Good old Jai from Jazz Musicians 1. Herman Herman Butster from Jazz Musicians 2.
SPEAKER_07So inside baseball.
SPEAKER_09Yes. Anyway, Brent's dad was a giant Alice Cooper fan. So Alice Cooper was generally on in Brent's house, and we would listen to a lot of Alice Cooper, a lot of his dad's records. This was one that we kind of had on our own because it's definitely in the more modern Alice Cooper at the time we were listening to, which probably would have been like 96. So we kind of discovered this. This, of course, is the record with it's the record is called Hey Stupid, but it also features the big hit Feed My Frankenstein.
SPEAKER_06Which a lot of us know from Wayne's World.
SPEAKER_09Exactly. Exactly. So this is the title track. This one always kind of caught me off guard because number one, stupid is spelled S T O O P I D. Which is like slightly not smart. Yeah. And it's basically about, you know, a guy going to be a rock guy and doing a bunch of drugs, and Alice is just telling him, listen, stupid. Oh, and verse two is about a girl who's suicidal.
SPEAKER_06I think it's like a different theme there in the second verse. Yes. Which I love that he's like, you want to take your own life, you're stupid.
SPEAKER_09Let's talk about who is on this track, first of all. On how about background vocals? Yeah. Ozzie. Ozzie was busy in 91 working with Alice, which seems like the perfect pairing, Ozzy and Alice, but I I don't know how often it happened. But it just seems like they sort of go together like peanut butter and bread.
SPEAKER_06I was I was so surprised by just the sheer amount of cross-pollination in the hard rock scene. Lots. Lemmy writing lyrics for Ozzie. Ozzy singing on Alice Cooper. It's cool that it wasn't competitive. You know, obviously Metallica and Guns N' Roses playing a tour together, which was competitive, but at least, you know, there was a lot of collaboration.
SPEAKER_09And then speaking of Guns N Roses. Oh, we have Slash making a guitar appearance, along with maybe two of the biggest guitar heroes for guitar people ever. Kurt Kobe. Steve Vai and Joe Satriani. Yeah.
SPEAKER_06What a what a trio. Eric Johnson wasn't available.
SPEAKER_09Yes. The G3 was uh was on break. So and how about the bass player? Did you take note of the bass player in this track?
SPEAKER_06I don't think so. Oh, yes, I did.
SPEAKER_09Hugh McDonald. Yes. Who is the guy uncredited living on a prayer? Amazing.
SPEAKER_06We mentioned that already today. Very important baseline, too. The drummer, by the way, Mickey Curry, aka Brian Adams drummer. So the same drummer who plays on everything I do, I do it for you, plays on this track. Amazing. Big year for Mickey.
SPEAKER_09Amazing. Amazing. One of the funny things I found about Hey Stupid, in 1991, alongside the release of the album, there was a promotional CD called Stupid News, spelled spelled the Alice Way, which featured They changed their name to Fox. Yeah. Oh Bird. And this promotional CD featured 15 sound bites read by Alice Cooper. So I want to read you the title of these sound bites because this is so ridiculous. Rock and roll bat belts hits. Okay. Voodoo Snake Cures Headaches. There's a question mark.
SPEAKER_07Yes.
SPEAKER_09She-mail werewolf captured alive. Buying goats woman. Buying goats to watch them faint. Poop lady raking it in.
SPEAKER_07Poop lady.
SPEAKER_09Bar serves human blood cocktails. Russian men won't act in porn. I gotta hear. I haven't, I did not look for this, but these sound wildly entertaining. Wild man raised by cows. Uh-huh. Outer space blobs eating our planes. P L A N E S. Thank you. Man paid $3,000 for being stinky. What a racket. Father shot at son over Monopoly. It's happened almost in my house. Yeah. Single man collects dirty diapers. This is so messed up. Now it hits close to hope. Woman beats self senseless with own hand. Oh my God. Had to beat them to death with her own shoes. Man tries to sell senseless with own hand. What? What? And then Hubby's Ghost Made Me Pregnant. Wow. Yeah, that's that's the uh stupid news promotional CD track. That is stupid. That is I feel more stupid having heard it. Well, here's what's not stupid is the harmonic complexity of this.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, what's up with this song?
SPEAKER_09It starts in C minor. You get the hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, stupid. Then we drop right into A minor. Weird. Or A. I'm sorry. A major. Weird. Weirder still. And then we get this familiar progression, A, F, C, G. Sure. Okay.
SPEAKER_06Very catchy verses, yeah. Straight up.
SPEAKER_09Then the pre-chorus, we pivot a little bit. A D F G, still kind of in that A territory, but then from the G, we get back to C minor for the chorus.
SPEAKER_06Oh, there you go. Pivot point is the five of C. Yeah, sure.
SPEAKER_09And then on the way out of the chorus, we hit a B flat. Then we go a half step down back into the verse in A. Cool. It's like a walk down. Very interesting. You know, again, one of those you, you know, deceivingly complex.
SPEAKER_06That one though is pretty jarring. The shift back out of the chorus, I've always found jarring. It's the type of thing I almost didn't notice it changed key, just casually listening in the car. But that moment always stood out as like, huh? I don't know what that just did. Because like that's not a move. My ear, I can't catalog that in my, you know, my mind's ear. But it stood out to me as abrupt.
SPEAKER_09And this whole song, I don't think I would like it if it wasn't Alice Cooper. Oh, yeah, that's interesting. Alice Cooper just gives it this swagger, and like Alice is cool. Like, if Alice was not on this track, it would just be honestly probably a faceless 80s rock song. Yeah. Exactly. You'd be like, eh. Exactly. Alice, you know, gives it that, you know, and maybe, maybe it's the sophistication of the chords that we just talked about, where it's not just straight ahead, where there's there's all these little harmonic shifts.
SPEAKER_06Well, I would say the strength of the song for me, as someone unfamiliar with the song going in, and so is one that I went right towards because I was like, Oh, Alice Cooper, I don't know the song. Let's let's see what's up. That hook stayed with me after one listen.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_06When I would read that title after that first listen, I could hear the hey, hey, hey, hey, stupid. And that's a gift. Like that's a big achievement. It's just like something that memorable. Yeah. You know, and that hooky. So that's probably the greatest achievement of the song for me. And I like the bridge when he and Ozzie sing together. Oh, yeah. Well, you saw Alice Cooper like two years ago now. I did. Did he did he play the song? Do you remember? He did not play the song. Oh, okay. I wasn't sure if it's like endured like Frankenstein.
SPEAKER_09Okay. He he's one of those guys who has such a deep catalog. He has way more songs than you even know you know. You know, there's there's so many great Alice Cooper songs. Obviously, everyone goes to school.
SPEAKER_05Sure.
SPEAKER_09But you know, billion dollar babies, you know, uh only women bleed. Yeah. Elected. Feed my Frankenstein. There's just there's a whole thing. There's something with 18, right? Oh, I'm 18. I'm 18. How could I forget that? That's one of the best ones. Well, let's uh let's keep things moving here. Let's lighten it up a little bit. Yeah, let's lighten it up a little bit. We're almost done with my list. And uh, you know, lightening things up coming in Meat Hooks sodomy by Cannibal Corpse. So I just want to let let's clear this up. Because we're I'm I'm about to say some really horrible things on this microphone. Cannibal Corpse, they are the musical equivalent of a bee horror movie. Where it's so campy and cheesy and over the top that it's good. And I love bee horror movies. I I'm like a big horror movie fan, but the the stupider the better.
SPEAKER_06Sure.
SPEAKER_09Right? So Cannibal Corpse is sort of like that when you approach the lyrical themes, because number one, I don't think they're seriously considering any of the heinous things that they're gonna say in this song. And I certainly would never condone any of these heinous things. But if it was, if you're looking at it through the lens of this is be horror fiction, then it's fantastic. Because it's so over the top. Yeah. And it's so gruesome and brutal and almost unbelievable that there's a lot of entertainment, there's shock entertainment value in what is there.
SPEAKER_06I'm just relieved by that disclaimer. I was sitting here clenching my bunghole. Just wondering if you're a pack and hook.
SPEAKER_09You know. So this song, Meet Hooks Out of Me, is the opening track on Cannibal Corpse's 91 release, Butchered at Birth, which features perhaps the most vile album cover ever. I would be willing to bet. I don't see how anything could be worse. Maybe there's something crazier out there. There probably is. But why? Well, certainly to that point. I'm sure there was not. Yes. No, definitely not. And the album cover, for those of you who have not seen it, it's a watercolor painting depicting evil zombie doctors pulling a dead baby as it comes out of a dead woman. And then there's a bunch of horrible details. And it it's it's quite evident that that uh that these evil zombie doctors have committed this act many times before. They're old pros. They're old pros based on what's what's hanging behind them.
SPEAKER_06Apparently, when the future lead singer of Cannibal Corpse, I didn't write his name, but George the Corpse Grinder Fisher. There you go, Corpse Grinder. When he first saw that album cover, he uh apparently said, quote, oh my damn. Yes. Which I thought is the funniest quote.
SPEAKER_09So I owned this tape, and I remember finding it at Newberry Comics and snatching it up because in my mind it was super rare. Because this album cover brought a lot of heat with it. Sure. Like there was, you know, lots of parental advisory warnings and like you maybe shouldn't sell this. This was definitely one hidden behind like a there was some sort of thing blocking the cover in Newberry Comics because it's so vile. Which made me want it even more. Of course. What a wild song. It starts off with probably the worst part of the song. I can't imagine you liked this part. But a minute and twenty seconds of this beehive wall of white noise of guitar with some pitch-shifted backwards vocals just underneath, you know, gurgling like some evil potion is about to be brought to light.
SPEAKER_06I I listened to it once and skipped. Because I mean I didn't need to hear it again. I wouldn't even listen to that if it was something I love. Sure, sure. Let alone this, which, you know, spoiler alert, it's not really for me, as you well know. No one would expect. You know what? Actually, we're not going the OPEC route here, where it's like, this actually blew my mind, and I love it. I do think it has entertainment value and obviously a certain amount of just. I like I'm not an extreme person, but I love extremes. Yes. Uh, when other people are exercising them. And so I do appreciate the extremity of a track like this.
SPEAKER_05Yes.
SPEAKER_06My enjoyment of this track, sick to say, was considerably increased by reading along with the lyrics.
SPEAKER_09Well, let's, you know, in high school, Chris, we would uh before school started, we would hang out in the in the lobby of our of our school. The vestibule. The vestibule. And occasionally there would be a cannibal corpse poetry reading session where we would read from the Cannibal Corpse lyrics straight from my tape case. Possibly even this.
SPEAKER_07For sure. I knew this song.
SPEAKER_09Yes. Yeah. Yeah. We're gonna recreate and I I I've cherry-picked some lines because there's some lines I'm frankly just not even comfortable saying.
SPEAKER_06So I'll tell I'll I'll handle those.
SPEAKER_09Okay. So I'll I'll start us off here. Hung upside down, holes punctured through half-chewed gristle, debauchery with dead bodies turning green. Screams of blood saturate, grubs feed on dilapidated stumps.
SPEAKER_07Sorry, that one gets me.
SPEAKER_09Darkness overshadowing. The killing. Disgusting to the world, beauty to my eyes, the body lying naked, discharging my infection. Grinding orifices, my only therapy. Sculpting gore, muscle tissue, reshaping mounds of flesh, deformation, skulls of victims stacked like trophies, bleeding from your arse, sudden blood injection. Wow. What do you say after that?
SPEAKER_06Well, I'm actually more disturbed that I wrote a bunch of lyrics and there was almost no overlap with yours, which just speaks to the depth of the depravity here of stuff that seemed worth noting.
SPEAKER_09Um before you read yours, please. I I just want to say Chris Barnes, the then vocalist for Cannibal Corpse, he went on record and he says, I put myself in different points of view in different songs. This album is pretty visual, it's all there. You don't have to ask any questions. That's how I write. I get a title in my head and I write a little story. So again, back to the B horror movie. If this was a character in the B horror movie, Chris Barnes is doing a fantastic job of laying out what this character does.
SPEAKER_06For sure. I I the thing is I I think he creates a picture or at least a scenario. These are pretty disjointed, though, as lyrics. It's not like it is a narrative structure per se. It's just almost like evocative images pertaining to a situation. Yes. A completely gruesome situation. I I don't really have much else to say, honestly, but you know, crotches I will eat always stood out to me. Upheaval of human entrails, deterioration of graded genitals. Um, and then I this always was funny to me. Condemned to a life of obscurity.
SPEAKER_07Oh, really? Which is like so like not graphic that it's funny to me. And the dilapidated stumps always got me got me.
SPEAKER_09Man, cannibal corpse. Uh, we mentioned musically the death metal scene in Tampa, Florida. I feel like the bass drum on this, it's so active, but it's so clicky. Oh, there is just brutal. In a bad way. I'm not not too brutal. And honestly, I don't love the Cannibal Corpse drummer Paul Mazerkowitz. He he's not like he plays the style. Go back to Poland! Yeah. I mean, arguably he and he helped invent this style of drummer.
SPEAKER_06He's not very good at it though. He's not I don't feel like I don't feel held. I want to be embraced by the depravity, and I don't feel that here.
SPEAKER_09And I I read an article that one of Cannibal Corpse's more recent records that really got slammed for the first time and only time ever they played to a click and Poly Boy couldn't do it. Of course he can't. Yeah. Listen, you heard the drumming. Come on now. Although, on the flip side of that, I am gonna go on record and state that the bass player of Cannibal Corpse, Alex Webster, might be technically one of the best bass players we have ever talked about. Because, first of all, he plays with a three-finger technique. This dude's and his lines, he doubles a lot of the guitar parts, but Cannibal Corpse is also famous for these brutal bass breaks. Uh their most famous song, Hammer Smash Face, which appears in the Ace Ventura movie, Ace Ventura Pet Detective, if you've ever seen that movie. There's a great sick bass run in that. But Alex Webster, he can play so fast and so clean all these crazy riffs. I feel like he's I'd love to hear him do something other than death metal. Because I imagine if he did, it would be awesome because he's technically definitely one of the best guys that we've ever talked about.
SPEAKER_06That's cool. I couldn't really discern that from listening to the track. But the riffs are hard to play, knowing he's doing it with a three-finger technique, which is rare on base. Typically, it'd be two fingers or a pick, but three fingers to kind of get the speed of a pick, right? Tremolo picking. Yep. Very cool. Uh another personnel thing that I think you'll be proud of me. I was looking through the track listing for Butchered at Birth, and I'm scrolling down, and what do I see? A track featuring Glenn Benton. Oh. And my mind went, hey, isn't that the singer of Deocide? It is. And I would only know that because of you talking about him and your 2001 superlatives. That's great. That song, for what it's worth, is called Vomit the Soul. Oh, hey, that's a great one. That's a standout track.
SPEAKER_09I wish this song was uh maybe like a minute and 20 seconds shorter. You had me out.
SPEAKER_06I wish this song was a minute and 20 seconds.
SPEAKER_09Hey, you know, they they can say a lot in a minute and 20 seconds. One last point on Cannibal Corpse. And we actually talked about this last night in passing, as I saw you last night. This time in death metal is death metal is really still thrash metal. It's still very Metallica, megadeth slayer, just with these crazy vocals. It's kind of that on steroids. And you know, as as the years would go on, death metal would become more brutal and and more darker. But this this song, it's really a thrash metal song at its core. Very chromatic guitar riffs. There's some wild tempo changes, by the way. It starts at 150 BPM in 4-4. Then we go to this part in three, the tempo goes down to 100, then the tempo goes down to 90, and the time signature is 9-8, a 5 plus 4 9 8, not even a not even 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3. That's all right. So Cannibal Corpse really in I imagine like Soundgarden, they didn't know what they were doing. Oh, I wouldn't think so. They're just this sounds cool. How did you get the tempos?
SPEAKER_06Did you calculate them?
SPEAKER_09Again, I I have great joy in going through uh Songster. Songster is a great resource because you can watch the tab and listen to it. And this is another one that was MIDI's, which is pretty cool to hear an isolated kind of MIDI version of some of these instruments because the guitars on on Meat Hooks Automaty sound terrible. Yeah, it's just it's literally the wall of white noise. Yeah. And it's not very pleasant. I mean, if it fits the music, kind of great.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_09But at the same time, if you're looking to really oh, what are these guys doing? You're not it's gonna be hard. Right.
SPEAKER_06And what's funny is like, you know, not someone who listens to a lot of death metal, like we talked a lot about Chopsui by uh system, and you could hear very clearly where the verses of Chopsui came from, because it's along the same lineage as what we hear in the verses of a song like this. Yes. You know, and the diminished movement and the little shifts between half steps and obviously the rapid picking and stuff like that. I didn't learn this song, but um I don't know what to play Chopsui either for what it's worth. But uh you could definitely hear they are of they're akin to each other.
SPEAKER_09Oh yeah. Very chromatic. I played around a little bit with this one and just really little chromatic riffs that you kind of move up and down one or three frets and kind of all over the place, and then you know, do some chugging on a single note and move it up a fret.
SPEAKER_06You used to play in a hardcore band, but that wasn't that dissimilar to this, a band called Dyak. Sure. You didn't write the songs, but did you get any insight into like how those songs were written?
SPEAKER_09I I honestly think a lot about how did I even play in that band because the riffs were very disjointed. Yes. And it was just here's this part, and here's this part, and here's this part. And I probably at the time was like, oh, that's the oh three-two-six part, and then this is the seven, five, seven, six part. Yeah, yeah. That's most likely how I you're talking about frets there. It's not timing, yeah. Yeah, because I we definitely didn't write it down. And when you're in those Dyak songs, there would be like So many parts. Probably at least six parts, if not ten parts in a song. Yeah. And I have no idea how I remembered any of it. It's really impressive. Yeah.
SPEAKER_06That's what I think when I see like good choreography. I'm just like, how do they remember to do all that? And they're like, wait, we play like four-hour gigs of music, and I'm sure people that don't play music are like, how do they remember all those chords and those lyrics and whatever? So I get that.
SPEAKER_09But these songs in particular, like Cannibal Corpse Live, their songs are all kind of similar to one another. Where I mean, obviously there's different rips, but they all kind of do the same thing ultimately.
SPEAKER_13Yeah.
SPEAKER_09It's gotta be so hard to just into go by titles. Oh, that's the one where I do this little movie. It's gotta be mind-numbingly difficult.
SPEAKER_06Right. It's mind-numbing, that's for sure. Well, it's mind-numbing. Well, it's ear-numbing, no question about it. So you want to lighten things up with a song about a kid shooting himself in the face.
SPEAKER_09Yes, we're gonna conclude with a something much. No, these lyrics were not written by Chris Barnes. They were indeed written by our friend, Mr. Edward T. Vedder. I that T stands for Tomahawk? No. I don't know. I believe it. Okay.
SPEAKER_06I think his name was Ed Severison or something. His proper name, Vedder was uh not his given name. Oh wow, I didn't know that. But of course, there was some fraternal ambiguity with Mr. Vedder.
SPEAKER_09Either way.
SPEAKER_06As he sings about in a live.
SPEAKER_09There you go. Closing things out. Jeremy, by Pearl Jam. If only his name was Jeremy. Another bass intro, Chris. My second big featured bass intro, very bass-heavy playlist for me. Yeah. When you think about the Aussie tune, Jeremy having this big, another 12-string bass, might I add. And then we talked about Steve DeGiorgio from Death being a fantastic fretless bass player, and then we just talked about Alex Webster from Cannibal Corpse.
SPEAKER_06Also, Getty Lee.
SPEAKER_09How he's in mainstream case. You're forgetty. I'm forgetty. I'm so forgetful. Oh, oh, Getty. Leave me alone. Boo! Boo us both. I don't honestly have too much more to say about Jeremy that we haven't already said. I love Jeremy, love the sound, love the 12-string bass, love the general feel of the song, always love always gravitated towards this track on my Pearl Jam 10 cassette.
SPEAKER_06What did you score, Jeremy? I think I gave it a 9. And you gave Evenflow a 10? Yeah. Talking about 10.
SPEAKER_09Well, maybe 9.5, 9.5.
SPEAKER_06Talk to me about choosing Jeremy over Evenflow. I feel like. And black was a 10 for you.
SPEAKER_09Yep. Even Flow to me is a little bit more tuneful in the guitar arena. I feel like Evenflow is that classic rock sound where Jeremy it is that, but it's less. I love Eddie Vetter's vocal delivery in Evenflow a little bit more than Jeremy. But I think Jeremy's a great song. And you know, I the bass intro is the one that puts it, which is why it's here rather than Evenflow. Where I I love them both, but I as a bass player, and historically, when I think back to my own listening habits from this cassette, Jeremy is the one over Evenflow.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, Jeff A. Ment, the bassist of Pearl Jam for this 10 era, was very intent on I don't want to play four-string fretted bass. Yeah. That's why we hear a lot of fretless bass throughout the record, 12-string bass here. I'm sure there's five-string bass and there's upright bass on the record. There is no four-string fretted bass on 10. I'm sure he, of course, would play it in the future with Pearl Jam, but it was clearly just like an idea he had. Yeah. And he's just a creative guy. I mean, Jeff A. Mant's an amazing songwriter. Um, who wrote this song? Was it Stone Gossard? Who wrote the core music of this song?
SPEAKER_09I'm not even sure.
SPEAKER_06I'll look it up right now. Talk to me more about Pearl Jam. Jeremy.
SPEAKER_09Well, it was the third single on 10, which is probably how I ended up hearing it in the first place. This most likely would have been on uh on the radio. And we've talked before, you you mentioned it already about the the story of a kid who shot himself in class. So definitely a heavy, heavy thematic song. This one also has almost the same changes as black with the with the major chord to the flat six chord. Which is kind of cool. That's like a little pearl jam trick.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. It's got it's got that move.
SPEAKER_09Yeah. Um so who wrote Jeremy?
SPEAKER_06It was written by Jeff A. Men. That's why I was like, I was the second I said stone, I was like, no, I think actually that riff was the in, and that's a Jeff A. Men bass riff. So there you go. A lot of my favorite Pearl Jim songs are written by Jeff A. Men, and this is no exception. I love this song. I mean, it was definitely in contention for my time capsule. I did choose a Pearl Drim song, it is a different one. Um it's a song we can easily take for granted because if you're of our generation, you've heard the song a lot. Obviously, it's not the most streamed or enduring song from the record, but it's among them. Yeah, um, Even Flow is by far the most streamed song from the record, but Alive and Jeremy, both out there in black, obviously. Um something that happens when we hear a song a lot is we just like take it for granted and don't actually appreciate what's there or don't recognize what's there, I'll say. And the bridge of this song is a part that musically always stands out. The try to forget this, try to erase this with the kind of dual vocal part. But when you actually break it down, this again is a song about a true story of kind of a tortured kid walking to a classroom and killing himself in front of his classmates. That's a true story, and that's what inspired this song. And if you think about this bridge, try to forget this, try to erase this from the blackboard. Now, of course, that works metaphorically, but also he stood in front of the class and shot himself in the face.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Like he's literally saying, like, this dude's gray matter.
SPEAKER_05Holy crap.
SPEAKER_06You know what I mean? And obviously take that just the memory and the trauma of that situation out of the lives of these kids, which were obviously forever changed from this moment. So but that's a part that honestly is so good musically, they kind of don't even I know I personally don't even pay attention to what he's singing there because it's so energetic and killer just on a on a on a musical level.
SPEAKER_09It's amazing that the lyrics you just cited to me are far heavier than any of those terrible cannibal corpse lyrics. Oh, they're way more eventual. It's it's wild. Yes.
SPEAKER_06For sure. And you know, and this song, lyrically, just in general, is just Vetter doing something only Eddie Vedder can do. Not a single rhyme in the traditional sense in this entire song. This thing plays like stream of consciousness, free verse writing, but still so tuneful and so evocative in just the pictures that it's painting. I just think his scene setting on a song like this, on a song like black, um, is just so uh strong and visual, and uh it's just something that none of his peers could touch.
SPEAKER_09I can't get much better than Vedder.
SPEAKER_06Exactly. Um Steve, that's your 13th and final track from your time capsule. Do you see yourself spinning this time capsule down the road? Like say you're like, oh, let me revisit some 91. Oh, yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_09100%. Cool. Which is partially the reason I chose the songs I chose. Awesome.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, that's the whole point of it, right? It's like that's how you know you did it. Did you did the you did the job. Yes, sir. Nice. Anything else you want to say about these jams? No. You have to pee. Very badly. Well, we will wrap it up there, but we'll be back next time with Chrissy's time capsule, and that's on the next record of the year.