This debut EP is basically 21 minutes of pure loudness. For most of it, I found it most indecipherable, but Owner’s Lament indeed has some shape and is quite good. I really can’t say much for the rest, which sort of felt like indiscriminate screaming over instruments played fast.
The base of where the Meat Puppets are coming from on their second album isn’t so dissimilar from Scratch Acid - lots of loud noise rock - but what separates them is that the Meat Puppets are using an alternative country sound to provide shape and direction. It also helps that some of these songs are familiar having been canonized in Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged performance. But it’s not just those three songs that shine here: Lost, We’re Here, I’m a Mindless Idiot (instrumental), and The Whistling Song (largely instrumental if memory serves) are also highlights. This makes all the difference here as I quite enjoyed this one.
If Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five was a moment in time where hip hop started, this album seems like the very first next step in its evolution. This feels less funk and more rap melding many sounds to elevate the message. These guys have a message that cuts pretty deep while breaking down so many barriers and never seeming like a caricature of themselves. Rock Box is a massive leap forward in bringing rap and rock together. 30 Days is a killer track. Hard Times sets the table for this really well. It’s Like That, Sucker MCs (is this the genesis of bringing the beef to the diss track?), and Jam Master Jay are all highlights of an album that thrills in its deliberate musical delivery as it does with its vocal deliveries. You can just feel the influence this has on the rest of the genre moving forward.
The Essential Track: Rock Box
Up Next: The Honeydrippers - Vol. 1
Fuck yeah. For me, rap will never get better than their first 3 albums.
Come on now. Nothing against Run but this is like saying rock music never got better than Chuck Berry.
Sorry. I am what I am and that’s all that I am.
Let me tell you, Homer Simpson is cock of nothing!
- C. Montgomery Burns
This debut EP is basically 21 minutes of pure loudness. For most of it, I found it most indecipherable, but Owner’s Lament indeed has some shape and is quite good. I really can’t say much for the rest, which sort of felt like indiscriminate screaming over instruments played fast.
The Essential Track: Owner’s Lament
Up Next: Meat Puppets II
Haha, well I appreciate you giving this a shot. An all-time favorite for me. “Greatest Gift” is one of the absolute best songs ever recorded for my money
Scratch Acid is cool. Everyone likes what they like but I find it interesting that "Owner's Lament" aside you found it to be just loudness that lacks shape. This isn't Metal Machine Music or anything. These are basically garage rock songs that are faster and more abrasive than normal, but they have discernible hooks, groove, and structure.
Anders wrote:I do not have a «neoliberal assessment of geopolitics», so please stop writing that I do.
There’s a lot happening here. I’ll note at the outset that this seems to be the most obvious prelude to Nirvana’s sound thus far (we haven’t gotten to The Pixies yet). Loud, abrasive, but also melodic and not afraid to cool it down or do something a hardcore punk band would consider out of character. We haven’t gotten piano interludes (which feel very welcome amidst some of the more spitfire tracks), damn near Americana on Broken Home Broken Heart, and some real incredible tracks in here, namely for me Standing By the Sea, Pink Turns to Blue, Newest Industry and a killer 1-2 combo relating off each other in the instrumental The Tooth Fairy and the Princess > Turn on the News taking the listener from dreamscape to harsh reality while maintaining the same under the surface structure. I was set to be turned off by the hardcore punk, but this has so much more to it.
The Essential Track: Turn On the News (The Tooth Fairy and the Princess belong with it)
One of the existential questions in this thread for me is whether to grade hair metal on a different scale, if for nothing else it’s sheer lunacy. I mean, I won’t, but for hair metal, this ally least skews a bit more metal. Hell, Round and Round is pretty classic and Scene of the Crime is just the right amount of extreme, but I won’t say this was a particular revelation of any kind. It’s cheesy, over the top, ridiculous, and takes itself probably more seriously than it needs to. But there’s nothing wrong with eating up that space every now and then. Speaking of which…
This album is a big part of the caricature that developed around hair metal, and is probably one of the faces of the sub-genre. Again, this album is ridiculous, crazy, and there’s an album Spinal Tap-like dissociation where you’re not even sure whether this is real. Granted, We’re Not Gonna Take It and I Wanna Rock are stadium anthems you hear to this day at sporting events, so it had an impact for sure. Burn in Hell is like a spoof of Black Sabbath perhaps and possibly without meaning to be a spoof. Is it comedy? Unintentional comedy? Well, next we’ll go with what we’re sure is comedic.
The soundtrack to the Rob Reiner mockumentary (rockimentary) comes at an opportune moment here. While it does an excellent job spoofing numerous rock eras, there’s a little extra fun for the sort of rock eras I’ve been covering today. And frankly, in some ways I might have been more eager to listen to Smell the Glove than the last two, but still, this is good fun. Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight, Rock and Roll Creation, and Hell Hole are perfect examples, though nothing cracked me up again quite like Big Bottom. What makes this so effective is how close Spinal Tap sounds to a Twisted Sister. Without knowing in advance, you could confuse them with a real band.
One of the existential questions in this thread for me is whether to grade hair metal on a different scale, if for nothing else it’s sheer lunacy. I mean, I won’t, but for hair metal, this ally least skews a bit more metal. Hell, Round and Round is pretty classic and Scene of the Crime is just the right amount of extreme, but I won’t say this was a particular revelation of any kind. It’s cheesy, over the top, ridiculous, and takes itself probably more seriously than it needs to. But there’s nothing wrong with eating up that space every now and then. Speaking of which…
The Essential Track: Round and Round
Up Next: Twisted Sister - Stay Hungry
this stupid album still gives me nightmares...the dorm room guys next to me used to spin this thing and keep us all up night..one got busted for drugs and the other pitched in the minors for a bit..
One of the existential questions in this thread for me is whether to grade hair metal on a different scale, if for nothing else it’s sheer lunacy. I mean, I won’t, but for hair metal, this ally least skews a bit more metal. Hell, Round and Round is pretty classic and Scene of the Crime is just the right amount of extreme, but I won’t say this was a particular revelation of any kind. It’s cheesy, over the top, ridiculous, and takes itself probably more seriously than it needs to. But there’s nothing wrong with eating up that space every now and then. Speaking of which…
The Essential Track: Round and Round
Up Next: Twisted Sister - Stay Hungry
this stupid album still gives me nightmares...the dorm room guys next to me used to spin this thing and keep us all up night..one got busted for drugs and the other pitched in the minors for a bit..
Is there any song that’s been played more at county fairs than Round and Round?
Let me tell you, Homer Simpson is cock of nothing!
- C. Montgomery Burns
One of the existential questions in this thread for me is whether to grade hair metal on a different scale, if for nothing else it’s sheer lunacy. I mean, I won’t, but for hair metal, this ally least skews a bit more metal. Hell, Round and Round is pretty classic and Scene of the Crime is just the right amount of extreme, but I won’t say this was a particular revelation of any kind. It’s cheesy, over the top, ridiculous, and takes itself probably more seriously than it needs to. But there’s nothing wrong with eating up that space every now and then. Speaking of which…
The Essential Track: Round and Round
Up Next: Twisted Sister - Stay Hungry
this stupid album still gives me nightmares...the dorm room guys next to me used to spin this thing and keep us all up night..one got busted for drugs and the other pitched in the minors for a bit..
Is there any song that’s been played more at county fairs than Round and Round?
I dont know..I was too busy eating hot dogs and butter
One of the existential questions in this thread for me is whether to grade hair metal on a different scale, if for nothing else it’s sheer lunacy. I mean, I won’t, but for hair metal, this ally least skews a bit more metal. Hell, Round and Round is pretty classic and Scene of the Crime is just the right amount of extreme, but I won’t say this was a particular revelation of any kind. It’s cheesy, over the top, ridiculous, and takes itself probably more seriously than it needs to. But there’s nothing wrong with eating up that space every now and then. Speaking of which…
The Essential Track: Round and Round
Up Next: Twisted Sister - Stay Hungry
this stupid album still gives me nightmares...the dorm room guys next to me used to spin this thing and keep us all up night..one got busted for drugs and the other pitched in the minors for a bit..
Is there any song that’s been played more at county fairs than Round and Round?
I dont know..I was too busy eating hot dogs and butter
Deep fry that stick 'o butter and you can take 'em both like a champ.
One of the existential questions in this thread for me is whether to grade hair metal on a different scale, if for nothing else it’s sheer lunacy. I mean, I won’t, but for hair metal, this ally least skews a bit more metal. Hell, Round and Round is pretty classic and Scene of the Crime is just the right amount of extreme, but I won’t say this was a particular revelation of any kind. It’s cheesy, over the top, ridiculous, and takes itself probably more seriously than it needs to. But there’s nothing wrong with eating up that space every now and then. Speaking of which…
The Essential Track: Round and Round
Up Next: Twisted Sister - Stay Hungry
this stupid album still gives me nightmares...the dorm room guys next to me used to spin this thing and keep us all up night..one got busted for drugs and the other pitched in the minors for a bit..
Is there any song that’s been played more at county fairs than Round and Round?
I dont know..I was too busy eating hot dogs and butter
Deep fry that stick 'o butter and you can take 'em both like a champ.
Kill ‘Em All was a great album, but this is Metallica taking the next step, turning metal into almost a classical experience. The songs don’t simple thrash you into submission, but have movements and shape, and some of my all time favorite metal songs (as limited as that knowledge may be) sit on this album. The entire first half is utter brilliance, with Fight Fire With Fire, Ride the Lightning, the classic For Whom the Bell Tolls, and Fade to Black (which the material on the next album is the only real competition with that song). Escape, Creeping Death, and the instrumental The Call of Ktulu give the second half nearly as much firepower as the first. This is an absolutely brilliant album, and maybe only the next one surpasses it in metal for me thus far.
In terms of bands I entered this thread not really fully exposed to, this is among my favorites. And this album fits right into the comfort zone of great albums they’ve put together to this point. Aces High, 2 Minutes to Midnight, Flash of the Blade, The Duelists, and Powerslave were my favorites though don’t sleep on the epic Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which contains several movements and shifts. To this point, the Dickinson era is just as phenomenal as their start, a band that in 5 albums certainly earned their place with the other metal greats.
This was my very first CD in the late 80s. Drawn by 3 of the most classic Van Halen songs, Jump, Panama, and Hot For Teacher, but this signals a different moment for Van Halen, the hard shift to synthesizers. I can recall bringing this CD with those long paper cases to the register and my mother quizzically wondering whether to put her foot down on letting her 10 year old son buy a CD with a cherub smoking a cigarette on the cover. The songs are still party rock at its peak. Add highlights Drop Dead Legs, I’ll Wait, and Girl Gone Bad and this is one of their classic albums - and the last before the dramatic change in lineup.
