3 comments about Jar of Flies/Sap.

1. As the Title suggests: Alice in Chains epic "jar of flies" has been put in a double disk feature with their original EP "sap" of the good ol days.
   
   If you already have sap and jar of flies I wouldnt bother with this, since there are no bonus tracks. I just found it to be a joy to have both come together in a double disk.
   
   Sap is, in most rights, a different sound to Alice in Chains sound that everyone is familiar with (be it really from Jar of Flies onwards really) but you cannot help and appriciate its unique sound and as a fan, I listened to it without anything but expectations of a great (but very short) album. I was not dissapointed.



2. This is a double-disc I'd found and bought at a used store years ago, and had never seen another one until right now. It's basically just the two "Jar Of Flies" and "Sap" Ep's packaged together. It has no extra tracks, but the originals are there, and the majority of the artwork from each disc. I think the two would have made a nice single-disc, but hey. This is a sweet thing for the collector, or for that person who never got either Ep before. I'm glad I have mine.



3. This album was the first i heard form Alice in chains. It has an idealic balance of soft, mellow music right through to their "typical" style. This vinyl edition is a must to listen to, especially with the SAP LP which has a lot of unusual tracks that you would not normally expect from such a top notch band. To an Alice In Chains fan that does not have this album, then what are you waiting for? Truely a musical master piece!

No comments about The Else.

3 comments about The Pastoral -- Not Rustic -- World of their Greatest Hits.

1. If you listen to this album and don't like it you may just be retarded. Sorry but it is true. Sue Me.



2. Not being pleased with any other reviews for this album, I take it upon myself to change that.
   This is the first offering we Americans got from these drunken Scots. This is possibly their most accessable record because it is their most simple. Like the rest of their work to come, it is sloppy, lo-fi, and anti-PC. Their style (on this album)is part country, part garage, and part the Fall, all served with all the drunken punk attitude you could ask for. The cover of "Stand by your man" is brilliant (especially following the lyrical content of the previous songs).
   So throw back many beers crank this up and invite your PC friends over to watch them squirm.



3. This is a great cd: 1 Part Hank Williams 1 Part Sebadoh III 1 Part Guitar Wolf Mix it all up and it rocks like nobodys business

No comments about Pitchfork & Lost Needles.

3 comments about Precious.

1. OK, let's talk about the music itself. I don't think I have heard a more moving melody in a long time--maybe Sarah Brightman's "The Journey Home" from her Harem album. The various remixes are haunting renditions of some of the most beautiful music I have ever heard in the piece "Precious." Now the lyrics. OK, ya, I bought this single at about the time I saw Brokeback Mountain in the theatre, sometime in late January '06. The lyrics could have been written for the movie. Images of the Brokeback story are conjured up each time I listen to Precious, and each time I have been so intensely moved I have had to shut the music off on a couple of occasions to compose myself. So, buy this music. It will touch you on all levels.



2. The first single off of Playing the Angel, "Precious," lends itself well to the remix treatment.
   
   On this disc are two pretty dramatic reworkings of the single. Sasha's Gargantuan Vocal Mix heavily reengineers the song into something like a Daft Punk track, replete with vocal distortion and huge beats. This one definitely feels at home either in a club or in the car.
   
   The Misc. Full Vocal Mix is a more sinister version, full of little noises and dark detours. I like how it sounds, but the creepy atmosphere doesn't quite match up well with the lyrics. Still, this remix has its moments, and if you're looking for a cool variation on the song, this one works.
   
   Lastly, the B-side of "Precious" is "Free," an angry synth rocker with a heart. Its two personalities never quite mesh, however, leaving this one just shy of DM's best B-sides.
   
   These three tracks are worth buying if you really enjoyed Playing the Angel, and are interested in exploring variations on its sound. But it does seem that we should be getting more than three tracks on one disc; remember the epic singles for "Walking in My Shoes" and "World in My Eyes"? They were almost like entirely separate albums. Hopefully, DM will one day return to those longer singles. Their fans will appreciate the extra effort, and pay up for the music.



3. Obviously, this version of Depeche Mode's "Precious" single is lacking the album or radio version, and in it's place we get two extended club remixes and oddly, a rare Depeche treat, and that is a real b-side vocal song, which hasn't been done since the "Only When I Lose Myself" single in 1998.
   
   The two Depeche Mode remixes here are standard stuff, the sort of material Depeche fans are accustom to. This is shown on the seven minute plus remix featuring pumping club beats (sharing little resemblance to the original song), known as "Sasha's Gargantuan Vocal Mix Edit". It's a good remix, but as said before, only if you are looking to be dancing. The "Misc. Full Vocal Mix" is arguably better in my opinion, with some interesting sonic additions to the original.
   
   The main attraction here though, is b-side "Free". This one sits alongside "My Joy", "Dangerous", and "Surrender" on the great Depeche Mode b-side list. It is definitely worth the price of this single. It is very reminiscent of the Violator era, with distorted analogue synths, a crunchy beat, and a smooth delivery from Gahan.
   
   Overall, Depeche fans will need this for "Free", and get a couple decent club mixes out of it, but look to the other version of the single for the extraordinary radio mix of "Precious".

5 comments about New Picnic Time.

1. Pere Ubu's 'New Picnic Time' is, to begin with, a startling rock music, joyously performed. The greedy and selfish critic would have you believe that this `stuff' is `difficult' (ie beyond us plebs) therefore more relevant, but this is plainly not so. `NPT' positively hums with good tunes and delightfully unforced spluttering singing, so why is it `difficult'?
   Obviously PU are one of those groups sure to make the critisorial elite and intellectual cognoscenti explode with (quiet) excitement. Plunder the thesaurus in search of new and powerful superlatives to expound. Theorize generically about PU, a dislocated but potent rock force, and their high positioning in the performance/art hierarchy.
   Important stuff indeed, and about as useful as a viper up your trouser leg.
   If you're going to stalk the periphery of this-thing-we-call-rock-music, then you might as well do it wearing great clod-hopping boots and banging a bin-lid. Such is the delight in the sheer audaciousness of people who loudly make a music that is worthy of anguish among the assessing minority. Themselves, through vast years of `knowledge`, and time-served at the listening booths and concert halls, take great pleasure in knowing better than us. Speak down to, and not for us. This is a pop-group that needs retrieving.
   So, if PU want to make albums, it's important they do so in this setting, and with half an eye on the immovable block of very little indeed, that hides itself from humanity, but is omnipresent in most that we see today.
   Looking at it from above, it's all shimmer and light. A true rock fan MUST dance with glee when hearing `NPT', WILL celebrate IT'S celebrating of age-old rock ideals of being madly original and (in a good way) experimental.
   There's nothing safe about `NPT'. It's a vast rebel yell of an album, more overt than a hundred Green Days, and the whistling, yelping of singer David Thomas is worth a thousand times the sycophantic posturings of a Bono.
   The songs themselves are nigh on beautiful, but you'll get no indication from the extraordinary titles. You gotta submerge yourself in them. There's fast rockers, slow ballads, in fact, everything-in-a-cliché, you could possibly want from a great rock'n'roll record. It's a kind of bellicose `Marquee Moon', if you can imagine Verlaine and co, on stilts, heading to Kingdom Hall.
   It's a feel-good album too. It can raise a smile with the best of `em, without any of that strained attempt at forced fun you sometimes have to suffer. The same modus as good Capt B, only more mainstream, more streamlined. Initially, the songs SEEM to run round like headless chickens, but after repeated listening's (essential with ANY PU), they reveal themselves as very tight and stable, smooth as silk and easily as seductive.
   In other words, this is a deep and vital music, worth every effort you need to make. Gladly unshackle your senses from the years of insidious and sideways abuse by critics, who despite prolonged extolling of it's many 'difficulties', would dearly love to keep it to themselves.
   They have no intention of giving PU up to the world. So smug in that hard-earned comforting impracticable, and safe on a higher tier of thought, it's one way they can sleep soundly in their beds.



2. The "New Picnic time" is an album that I greatly enjoy. Some may say that it is too experimental and becomes too fast... or whatever reason. The truth is that this is an album that can grow on you very fast. When I first got it, I was lost and impatient. Back then, a song over two and a half minutes would boar me, which is a side effect of being part of the generation with the attention span of a goldfish hopped up on coffee and PSP abuse, which is what most people are now. But as I listened to it more I found that this record has very strange energy to it. The only track I could do without is the opening track "the fabulous sequel", which is like a version of "not happy" without as much thought put into it. But tracks like "A Small Dark Cloud" and "All the Dogs Are Barking" really make this album. Other tracks, like "Make Hay", "Small Was Fast", and "One Less Worry" give another spin on the quality of this record. These songs are musically interesting and give some room for thought. In "Art of Walking", which isn't nessecerely their best, has one song "Go" that would have fit in this part of the album very nicely. Actually, that song sums up the theme through out "New Picnic Time".
   The record concludes with the song Kingdom Come, which ends things well. It is echo-y and has a keyboard that sounds like a custom car horn.
   So my point is that this pere ubu stuff can be seen as very good, it depends on how you look at what they were trying to do.



3. During the late '70's, a new Pere Ubu record was a huge event in my life. When New Picnic Time was released, I eagerly snapped it up and rushed home to listen. "IT'S ME AGAIN" blared through the speakers at ear-splitting volume. The grin on my face stretched from ear to ear. The Fabulous Sequel indeed! In the wake of Dub Housing, this is certainly a fabulous effort.

   Pere Ubu is truly a love/hate band. I've cleared parties faster than a half dozen cops could've by spinning a Pere Ubu disc. But the few who stick around to listen are saying "Wow, this is really cool, who's this band?"

   New Picnic Time is classic Pere Ubu. Buy it or better yet buy the Datapanik in the Year Zero CD box set.




4. Yes he sings some lyrics about Jehovah's Kingdom on here (to the discomfort of other band members) ... yes they were on the verge of pretentious excess, caused by the singer's domination of the band ... yes some of the tracks here are so-so moody meanderings ...

   But the better part of this record is fantastic! I mean, good grief! Really unbelievable!

   I'm almost speechless as to how beautiful parts of this record are. I came here to say something, so I'll say that on tracks like the first two each member of Ubu is contributing to a strong, slightly bizarre rhythm that moves and grooves. I'll also say that Tom Hermann (who left after recording this) was a genuinely astonishing player and that he left the evidence all over this record. Highlights are the first two tracks and "One Less Worry"; those tracks make nearly all of the history of recorded music seem like a mere build-up to this.




5. Like The Byrds' NOTORIOUS BYRD BROTHERS before it and Six Finger Satellite's LAW OF RUINS after, Pere Ubu's NEW PICNIC TIME is the literal soundtrack of a band falling apart...brilliantly. Coming as it does in the band's history between the extreme avante garde noise rock on DUB HOUSING (1978) and the outright art attack of THE ART OF WALKING (1980), NEW PICNIC TIME, Ubu's third album and guitarist Tom Herman's last (for almost 20 years), has remained much misunderstood throughout the band's history, perhaps owing to it's "deformed blues ethic" (to quote Trouser Press) and the twisted and bleak tunes (many of which hinter on falling apart at any instant) that make up it's sequence. It's not quite as accessable as some of their other albums, but it remains perhaps their finest achievement.

   The album opens with a near-pop crash ("The Fabulous Sequel") and takes the listener through dada blues, rock, musical breakdowns ("One Less Worry"), and waxing sonic frustrations ("Make Hay"), all of which David Thomas sings, screams, bleats, howls, moans, whines, and laughs his way through until ultimately finding peace at the very end with "Jehovah's Kingdom Comes!" (revisionistically re-titled over the years since as "Kingdom Come" and "Hand A Face A Feeling"), quite possibly the most beautiful Jehovah's Witness hymn ever written. Over Herman's and Tony Maimone's calming dual guitars (no bass is used), Scott Krauss' simple drums, and Allen Ravenstine's trumpet-like EML playing, Thomas coos that "you and I need never die" and the song ends in an abrubt fadeout.

   Maybe it was a hope for the future, for himself and/or for the band, but following their summer '79 tour, Herman left (eventually co-founding Tripod Jimmie), was eventually replaced by Red Crayola's Mayo Thompson, and the band took a direct dive in absolute art, never quite looking back to the absolute honesty and brilliance they achieved on NEW PICNIC TIME.

   Buy this, study it, play it endlessly, LISTEN to it, and let it seep into your system. NEW PICNIC TIME will get to you, if you let it.

5 comments about Mellon Collie & the Infinite Sadness.

1. This album is in a league of it's own. The diligence with which this album was written truly shows. Nothing short of genius. Just remember, the Pumpkins always deliver.



2. There are some UNDOUBTEDLY classic songs on this album, and Billy Corgan's songwriting is top notch! However, I'd say I enjoyed only about half of the songs on the disc. Billy Corgan's voice can be annoying sometimes, and their "harder" songs are poorly executed and just kinda emo-ish and lame. This album should be listened to in sort of a story structure, but for a new Smashing Pumpkin fan like myself, stick to Siamese Dream for now.



3. Okay, I doubt much of a review is needed. Who hasn't heard at least a few of the tracks on this album by now? I love this album, it gets regular rotation on my stereo and probably will continue to for quite some time. I only rate it at 4 stars because one disc is clearly better than the other. The first disc of this concept album is absolutely brilliant, it has a little of everything and by itself would've been at least a 5 million sold album. There are only 4 or 5 tracks I like on the 2nd disc which makes it harder to get through, a lot of the slower ballad type songs are on it and that's not the Pumpkins at their best.
   
   But the album is worth buying for the 1st disc by itself and the fact that songs like "1979" and "Thru The Eyes of Ruby" are on disc 2 is just a greatly added bonus in my opinion. I don't think this is the best Pumpkins album, I'm still partial to Gish myself, but this album reveals a band in better harmony than their previous 2 efforts, even if Billy played all the guitar and bass himself.
   
   Side note: Jimmy Chamberlin on the drums is a joy to listen to throughout this album, drug addict or not, the man plays with passion and it's great to hear. Buy the album!



4. Solid Rock album my dad loves it for his brithday. He told me every track rocks and nothing short of a mind blowing perfect album by a solid rock band. His view and mine this was the bands best album.



5. Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness is the Smashing Pumpkins most complicated and prettiest album. This epic contains two discs so expect a lot of different styles of music, you get a little bit of everything, beautiful ballads with haunting melodies, the alternative rock anthems, and Corgan's quirky unique songs. How can you go wrong with songs like: Thirty-three, Tonight, Tonight, 1979, Bullet with Butterfly Wings, Lily (My One and Only Love), Where Boys Fear to Tread and etc. Important album of the '90s, buy this masterpiece today!

No comments about Burning in Water.

No comments about It's a Wonderful Life.

5 comments about The '59 Sound.

1. I'm seldom moved to offer reviews since I will only do so when I have unusually high praise to offer. In this case, I really do. The Gaslight Anthem is a terrific band, and this is one of the very best albums I've heard in the last five years.
   
   It's all here; the song writing and the musicianship are top notch, the production is exciting, and the music ... well, there are lots of obvious influences here - The Clash, Springsteen, Lou Reed, Tom Petty - but the result is an instant classic filled with rhapsodic passion, edgy toughness, and rock poetry. Really, you can ride this one all over town. It really doesn't get better.
   
   They should be stars - they're already my heroes.
   
   Joe Strummer is smiling.



2. I heard this CD on a story on NPR.
   
   I loved the clips that I heard so I bought the CD. It's one of the best that I've heard this year, and that includes Fleet Fox, Bon Iver, and Conner Oberst.
   
   The lyrics are great, and the music is very catchy. Why is this group not more popular?
   
   And if you like this CD their first CD, Sink or Swim, is as good or better than this one.



3. Alright, to start with the Gaslight Anthem isn't a punk band. They're on a punk label (more or less) and tour with punk bands, but don't think you're getting a straight up punk cd. This is a classic rock record that falls firmly in between some of the classic songs of Springsteen and Tom Petty. Bouncy, catchy rock tunes about teen loves and '50's culture. It's good. It's real good.



4. I guess how much you dig these guys depends on how many great bands you've seen in your life. I bought this from Amazon after reading the raves on iTunes. Once I got the disc, after three quarters of the way through, I chucked it back in the stack, and I probably won't fire it up again. So I went back and reread some of the more critical iTunes reviews, and they were right. No great shakes.



5. In my humble opinion The Gaslight Anthem are the most exciting band I have has the good fortune of hearing in the last 20 years. The raw emotion, the fantastic storytelling and excellent music combine to take you to another place. The mix of rock, punk, blues, country (you name it they have it here) creates a sound that is just addictive. Their previous releases were simply sublime and the 59 Sound just makes their passage to greatness all the more certain. If there is any justice left in the music industry they are going to be huge! 5 stars, no question!