A Year in the Life of Bottle the Curmudgeon What You Are About to Read Is the Book of the Blog of the Facebook Project I Started When My Dad Died in 2019
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A Year in the Life of Bottle the Curmudgeon What you are about to read is the book of the blog of the Facebook project I started when my dad died in 2019. It also happens to be many more things: a diary, a commentary on contemporaneous events, a series of stories, lectures, and diatribes on politics, religion, art, business, philosophy, and pop culture, all in the mostly daily publishing of 365 essays, ostensibly about an album, but really just what spewed from my brain while listening to an album. I finished the last essay on June 19, 2020 and began putting it into book from. The hyperlinked but typo rich version of these essays is available at: https://albumsforeternity.blogspot.com/ Thank you for reading, I hope you find it enjoyable, possibly even entertaining. bottleofbeef.com exists, why not give it a visit? Have an album you want me to review? Want to give feedback or converse about something? Send your own wordy words to [email protected] , and I will most likely reply. Unless you’re being a jerk. © Bottle of Beef 2020, all rights reserved. Welcome to my record collection. This is a book about my love of listening to albums. It started off as a nightly perusal of my dad's record collection (which sadly became mine) on my personal Facebook page. Over the ensuing months it became quite an enjoyable process of simply ranting about what I think is a real art form, the album. It exists in three forms: nightly posts on Facebook, a chronologically maintained blog that is still ongoing (though less frequent), and now this book. Some of my reviews are positive, some negative, some have barely anything to do with the album at hand. They might not be what you expect from album reviews, but I hope you at least find the good ones entertaining. They tend to be train of thought reactions rather than calculated essays; some are heavily researched, some are completely off the top of my head. If nothing else, know that I'm really listening to them and whether they are amazing or abysmal I want you to go listen to them too if you ever get the chance. There are no photos of the covers like on the blog, but presumably you can find them online. They are meant to be read one day at a time with the actual album, but I won’t tell if you just enjoy a good binge read (wink, wink). P.S. I call myself Bottle, because it's funny. 1) Spirit – Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus I debated heavily how to start our journey. Should we go right for the good stuff? Or, should we kick it off with pure shock? Nah, let's start with the mildly obscure 4th album by my favorite psych-rock band, Spirit. Hey, if Hendrix gave you the nickname "Randy California" you can't be too bad. Give it a listen, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. Interesting fact, the track list on the back of the jacket is completely out of order. 2) Plastic Ono Band - Live Peace in Toronto, 1969 That fourth album by Spirit (a band we'll hear at least a couple more times) was such a treat that we must unfortunately suffer today. Side A is pretty much a bunch of talented musicians playing for fun with no real rehearsal time. Side B however, is a special treat. Remember, the only rule on this bus is: listen to the whole album. Hating it is just as good as loving it, and if you want Lennon and Clapton jamming together, you're gonna get Ono bleating like a goat having an epileptic seizure "all over you" for an encore. Why? Because Johnny Boy didn't give a damn whether you liked it or not. Now sit down, shut up, and listen to the first ever performance by The Plastic Ono Band - Live Peace in Toronto 1969. If those poor unsuspecting Canadians could handle it and clap, so can you. I promise the next one will be less mentally taxing. 3) The Beach Boys - Surfin' Safari I just couldn't send you off to beddy-bye with plastic Ono nightmares (I'm not a complete monster), so here's a palette cleanser: the first Beach Boys album, Surfin' Safari. Tomorrow we'll head back to prog-rock town, but no hints or spoilers. I'll also tell you that I'm using a very cheap, plastic USB turntable called the ion iTTUSB. The turntable may be cheap, but it has an adjustable counterweight and the phono preamp and DAC on it are pretty decent. It really is running straight from USB into my computer and out to my headphones with perfect RIAA EQ, and no artifacts or strangely distorted effects. Almost certainly discontinued by now. 4) Procol Harum - A Salty Dog Tonight we're listening to A Salty Dog, by Procol Harum. It's got Folk, and Blues, and strings, and horns, and one of the most red-velvet cake lead guitar tones I've ever heard. I mean it, you can practically taste the cream cheese frosting on Robin Trower's guitar doodles. I'm partial to Side B, but it's an enjoyable listen from start to finish. Go check it out while I decide what to throw at you tomorrow night. 5) Emerson, Lake, & Palmer - Tarkus So, I know about Emerson, Lake, & Palmer, but I've only ever heard a handful of tracks. Let's change that. Here's Tarkus, the sophomore album that nearly drove them apart, and took a long time to win over its audience. But, look at that album art! Side A is a 7-part suite about semi-mythical creatures portrayed in the titles and artwork, the protagonist gets stabbed in the eye and runs off into the water; it's everything I've ever tried to construct, and I haven't even heard it before tonight. It is prog personified, with wacky organs and synths, badass guitar solos, and occasional singing. Side B is "some other stuff," and that's cool too. I generally sneer when people say things like "why didn't I find this sooner?", but for me it's because I listen to anything all the time. I'll never get to hear everything, but I try to make a dent. This is a great album, and it's earned a spot on my "listen to this 300 more times shelf" next to Spirit and Procol Harum. Definitely go check it out when you get a chance. 6) Fever Tree – Creation My original plan was to just do one album each night (unless the first one was somehow unsatisfying), but tonight's choice of Tarkus was based on cool cover art for an album I've never heard before, and since there's 2 rum and coke's for every can I'm more than happy to say this is an awesome cover for a band I never even knew existed (which for me is saying something). I hope I'm not disappointed... ... and the answer is "yes and no." The band is quite good and I want to hear their other 3 albums, but this album shows some definite disadvantages holding them back. In no particular order: - They can't seem to decide if they are pop-folk or blues- rock, which wouldn't be bad if they were recognizably the same band in both genres. - The band is primarily a front for the producers/songwriters, and you can tell. There's a little something that just comes across as manufactured in every track. Like, a lyric that doesn't sound right, or a clearly contrived string arrangement. It genuinely sounds like Scott and Vivian Holtzman were workhorsedly imitating a particular band or song that was already popular, but they weren't creative enough to really do it right. - There's no stylistic coherence to this album at all. One moment they sound like real contemporary rockers Steppenwolf or Iron Butterfly (both bands we'll hear a lot in the near future), the next they are singing a faux Neil Diamond ballad, then there's Spanish guitar and trumpet, and tempo/meter shifts for no musically relevant reason. So, to recap, if I just randomly picked any track from this album I'd say "that's really interesting," but when you smash them all together I think "is this a compilation album of the singer's session work?" Oh well, it's certainly not the first time a cool cover left me feeling underwhelmed, but I definitely wouldn't call any particular track terrible. We'll give it a good solid "meh." At the very least, I had a lot to say about it, and that should count for something. 7) Steppenwolf - Monster Speaking of Steppenwolf, let's listen to Monster (a good version of the negative comments I had about Fever Tree). I dare you to find a more relevant statement about our present day country than the title track suite of 3 connected songs, AND THAT WAS 50 YEARS AGO! I love this album, and it's one that I constantly listened to on my dad's gigantic record cabinet (it's got the skips to prove it). That guitar solo on Draft Resister, the spastic piano/guitar duet that is Fag, and real female background singers! Every track is an anthem for the people, a reminder that whatever narrative you've been fed is simply untrue, a plea for basic human compassion and consideration, and the cover art is sideways!!! This is an album worth having in your head while going to sleep.