this is not pitchfork

(Where QOTSA becomes the first band to have its entire studio catalog reviewed)

I heard about this album long before I actually heard it. I enjoyed Kyuss and was pretty much infatuated with Josh Homme, but for some reason I hesitated to buy this. Then my buddy at Mr. Cheapo’s records – who always seemed to know what I would like – talked me into buying the CD.

It was late fall, maybe early winter of 1998. Either there was some kind of meteor shower going on or I was just into stargazing late at night in the cold. I don’t know why I did this, I just remember I did. I took my CD Walkman and a blanket, went out to the backyard in the middle of the night and laid back on a lounge chair while I stared at the stars and listened to Queens of the Stone Age.

You know how if you stare at the night sky long enough, everything changes? You can see more stars, or single out stars or planets or see shapes in the stars other than the constellations. The sky is an ever changing canvas and what you make of the stars and planets and even airplanes is the art. That sky I was staring at was the perfect metaphor for what I was listening to.

I played it three times and each time I heard different things, different sounds. This was undefinable because it kept changing on me; the underlying feel was one of a rock album, but there were so many things within, all this spacey, robotic sound piled on top of melodies and riffs that were at turns soothing and then jolting. I’d focus on one sound, one bass line or drum beat and then it would be something else entirely, dragging in all the other sounds around it to make a cosmic constellation of music. The album was a rocket that took me on a ride through outer space, shooting through fiery galaxies and rotating planets and shooting stars.

I’m not saying I had an out of body experience listening to QOTSA. Maybe an out of mind experience, though.

There were a couple of versions of this; the original studio album, the movie soundtrack, and the original cast recording from the Broadway show (I’m sure there are others). This is the one I remember the most, and contains my favorite versions of the songs.

My mother gave to me this love of musicals. I loved the whole idea of telling a story through songs, of people bursting out into spontaneous song and dance. There was something very powerful to me about relaying a story through music. I remember listening to the Fiddler on the Roof album and being intrigued by the story within in a way I might not have been if it were simply told to me.

The same thing happened with Jesus Christ, Superstar. Mom had the album for a while – I distinctly remember the almost plain brown box it came in – and I guess she started playing it again when the movie came out in 1973. Up until that point, my religious education consisted of a one hour catechism class, once a week, for a couple of months each year. We colored pictures, we read parables, we prepared for communion. Every Sunday, mom sent us off to church where we were supposed to put the things we learned into play. Mostly, I just played this game with the scripture book where I would find the longest word I could and then spend the next 45 minutes making smaller words of it. Church did not interest me; catechism taught me nothing but how to color inside the lines.

While listening to Jesus Christ, Superstar didn’t teach me about religion, per se, it did give me a much clearer understanding of, and sympathy for, the main players in the crucifixion story. The album came with a lyric booklet and I read along with each song, taking it all and forming a much different opinion of the story than the opinion they were trying to make me have in church. I formed an opinion that stayed with me for a very long time, through years of religious education, then into Catholic high school – it was an opinion that I kept to myself because to say it loud to my parents or teachers or any relatives would surely end with me either being struck by lightning or ostracized. It wasn’t until I ended up in a Catholic college (St. John’s University) that I finally talked to someone about all of it. I ended up having an hours long talk with the professor of one of my religion classes, a priest. We talked about Jesus Christ, Superstar, at first about the music, then about the message and when I told him my feelings; that while I believe Jesus existed, I also believe that he was just a regular guy, just a man with a mission – albeit a good one – who got in over his head and believed his own hype, and went on a power trip which ultimately led to his eventual demise. We discussed Pontius Pilate, and how we both perceived Judas as a victim of the cult of Jesus. It felt so good to have someone – especially a priest – listen to me and mostly agree with me.

I went home that night and listened to this soundtrack again. I know it’s a rock opera, it’s a theatrical production and it’s not scripture by any means, but it fully encompasses my view and my opinion of the story; I still get emotional listening to it, and I do listen to it at least once a week. When people ask the question “What albums have had the most impact on your life?” I think of this one. Jesus Christ, Superstar made an eleven year old girl understand the complicated thoughts that went on in her head when the nuns were trying to give her a version of a story she didn’t believe. It made a 25 year old girl accept the fact that she was, at best, agnostic, and helped her explain to her family that just because she doesn’t believe in God, does not mean she doesn’t believe the teachings of Jesus are a good way to live your life, and it still makes this 46 year old very emotional to listen to it.

I promise, this will be the first/last time I write about religion in a music review.

The only thing I knew about Bill Nelson when I first heard the song Acceleration was that he had been in the band BeBop Deluxe. I liked the song enough that I had the import guy at the record store where I was working order the EP it was on (Chimera). For some reason, I never really listened to it. It wasn’t until a year later when we got in the Vistamix album (which was Chimera in its entirety, plus a few other songs) that I decided to give Nelson’s music a full listen.

Vistamix immediately worked its way into my brain and my very being. The way it attached itself to me was almost organic; the weird beats, the synthetic sounds and Bill Nelson’s odd voice formed together and grew out of that vinyl like twisted vines from exotic trees that wrapped themselves around me. The music enveloped me, became part of me and made me feel this connection with all the parts of musical sound in a way that I thought only a microdot of mescaline could show me. I was tripping without benefit of chemicals. I was tripping on this music.

I would spend hours upon hours in the months after that experiencing Vistamix in new ways; one night listening to nothing but Acceleration over and over and the next night doing the same thing with Flaming Desire or Another Day, Another Ray of Hope. I’d play with the equalizer settings on my stereo in an attempt to catch notes I may have missed. I listened on speaker, then the other. Vistamix was this huge musical experiment for me.

Later that year I had the pleasure of seeing Bill Nelson play at My Father’s Place in Roslyn, New York. His live performance matched every feeling I got from listening to the album. I remember being so completely blown away by the show that I thought at one point “I’m going to remember this forever.” And I did, right down to the blue light that bathed Nelson on the stage that was about two feet in front of me.

I still listen to this album every once in a while. It never loses that feeling of getting me lost inside the sounds.

Driving home from work one day last week, Makes No Sense At All was on the radio (Yes! Husker Du on the radio!). It was one of those March in New York days where it’s not quite warm out, but warmer than it’s been, so you squirm out of your jacket as you’re driving and open the window a bit, as if it were really spring.

This song – hell, this whole album – was made for a day like this. Flip Your Wig is spring. It’s that first breath of fresh air after a stale, dark winter. It’s melting snow and buds on trees and daydreaming about what to plant in the garden this year. It’s uplifting in a way that belies some of the lyrics, but is fully understood by the musical tone. There’s a freshness and crispness to Flip Your Wig that makes the world seemed bathed in a clean light.

That’s not to say the usual Hüsker Dü sentiments aren’t there. There’s still the anger and the passion and the quiet rage, but they’re delivered with a blast of spunk, which may be something like pop punk, but a bit harder. Flip Your Wig is a record that makes me want run through a field of flowers in a flowery dress and straw hat, with Divide and Conquer playing in the background, like some warped version of a Massengill commercial.

I may be the first person to use a feminine product analogy for a punk album. I hope I’m the last.

I keep saying I love Van Halen. I’ve been saying it for years. I define my love for VH as existing only for the band in its original form, but I’ve been pretty fervent about my adoration of them, and David Lee Roth in particular.

Now I’m sitting here looking through their discography and playing a few choice songs and thinking, there’s not one album except for the first that I would listen all the way through. In fact, there’s about one good song on each of them. The rest is filler. I’m holding Fair Warning in my hand, turning it over, examining it as if it were some lost relic from an ancient civilization, wondering, what the fuck did I do with this thing?

Ah, there it is. I have figured out what I did with this thing. I put it on, went to song #5, and played Unchained for half an hour straight. That’s it. I mean, I don’t think I would even recognize songs like Sunday Afternoon in the Park or Hear About it Later if I heard them, and while I would immediately know So This is Love, that doesn’t mean I’d ever want to listen to it. Fair Warning is about 28 minutes of crap wrapped around 3 1/2 minutes of awesomeness. And maybe that’s what makes me love Van Halen, that they could throw so much crap at us and we took it, because there was always that one moment when they stopped flinging feces at you and did something really amazing.

I don’t know how I went from a lost relic analogy to monkeys in a zoo, but there it is.

Unchained is Van Halen in a nutshell; Eddie’s blistering guitar, some rockin’ harmony and the unabashed cheesiness of David Lee Roth, which is outweighed only by his ability to make every song sound like a party. The rest of the album is, oh hell, make your own monkey feces analogy here.

Fueled by an acrimonious divorce, insomnia, pent up anger, escalating depression and a diet of Surge soda, mini Snickers bars and cigarettes, I went on this metal rampage in the late 90’s. I was listening to Korn and Slipknot and maybe even a little Limp Bizkit here and there. The pounding drums and screeching guitars were perfect for what I was feeling, but the lyrics were making me dumber for singing them. They were lyrics for kids, songs about being pushed around in school or dealing with juvenile assholes or, in the case of Fred Durst, being a juvenile asshole.

And then came Sehnsucht. I didn’t know what the hell these guys were singing about, but it was in German, so it didn’t matter. And I didn’t care. The music was so powerful and raw and heavy, it served as an excavator to my emotions. It brought up everything I was holding deep down and let me throw it up with abandon. It was like my brain was vomiting anger. Till Lindemann’s vocals were gritty, guttural and evil and even when English versions were released of Du Hast and Engel, I wouldn’t listen to them. It was so much better in the original German; the songs were able to encompass everything I needed to feel without the lyrics getting in the way, with Lindemann’s voice serving as an all-purpose primal scream. Yea, I made up my own words. I don’t know German, I can’t even make my voice sound like it’s speaking German. But when you’re dealing in heavy metal and the adrenaline that comes with six gallons of soda that makes you piss a toxic shade of green, you just make shit up until you listen to it enough times where you can finally replicate what he’s saying and you’re all like “Fuck yea! I’m singing in German!” and then you pound your fists in the air and go find a vagrant to beat the shit out of. Or, you just have a mosh pit for one in your living room. With the blinds closed.

I saw Rammstein three times on the Sehnsucht tour. I’ve never seen a band that was able to translate the clean, raw power and heaviness of a record into a live show without losing some of the feeling. But Rammstein pulled it off. Yes, there were fire and explosions and simulated sexual acts on stage, and that was all well and good and awesome. I loved the shows for that unabashed, spit in your face attitude inherent in the music, the intense bass lines, the way I got so caught up in the power of the music that I wanted to go stand in the middle of pit and take it like a man, but then I remembered I was way past the age of doing that, and probably way past the age where one is supposed to enjoy this kind of music (fine, I love the shows for the fire, too).

The most awesome thing about Sehnsucht is that even though I’m years removed from any kind of anger or bitterness or the need to lash out emotionally, and even with this new found inner peace and contentment, the music always stays new and fresh for me, without dredging up any of the negativity formerly associated with it. Where bands like Korn and Limp Bizkit held my attention momentarily and their CDs eventually became beer coasters, I will still rock the fuck out to the entirety of Sehnsucht.

Some people loved Yes and this particular album because they believed the music was of a higher level than other bands of the time; those people believed that if you pretended you understood the lyrics (which no one ever really did), it made you seem intellectual. I adored Yes and I loved Close to the Edge, but there was no expectation of being intellectual in this for me. To put it bluntly, Yes were a good band to get stoned to.

Oh, they were pretentious to the very core. Songs were divided into parts, and had names like Siberian Khatru and lyrics that read like the slush pile in a poetry editor’s office: “A dewdrop can exalt us like the music of the sun.” Ok, maybe there was a time when I thought the words within meant something. Then again, I once thought the words to Stairway to Heaven meant something. Such is the folly and drug abuse of youth.

My love of this album stems from the fact that I associate them with good memories. What I remember, anyhow. It was a lazy, self-indulgent time; we only had a little freedom left before we had to worry about things like college and jobs. We chose to take some of that time and spend it in a make believe world where rolling joints and Kevin’s Lord of the Rings obsession were the perfect match for words like “and space between the focus shape ascend knowledge of love”.

My “classical rock” phase (see also, ELP) turned out to be a very short one, as my attention span just could not stand the repeated listens to And You and I, or any of Yes’s other two hour long paeans to the space time continuum. This was the end of the 70’s. My brain was rewired for four chords and lyrics like “beat on the brat with a baseball bat”; organ solos and “moon gate, climber, turn round, glider” were gone as soon as I eschewed the bong for a six pack and the Levi jacket for a Ramones t-shirt.

[This one is from the suggestion box]

Many years ago, I saw Type O Negative at (I think) Irving Plaza. The guy I was dating at the time was working for Roadrunner Records and we were able to sit upstairs in the VIP section. At the table next to me was Peter Steele’s family, including his grandmother. I wanted to be mortified for her when Steele came out on stage and started slinging his usual slew of profanity and vulgarness, but when I looked over at Grandma, she seemed to be beaming with pride.

And that’s the beauty of Peter Steele. He’s so self-deprecating and so utterly charming in his offensiveness that I couldn’t help but smile along with Grandma. But the same things that he uses to charm me, are the things that make me not take him seriously.

I love Steele’s voice, especially on Christian Woman. But there’s something so over the top about it, as well as Black No. 1, that I had to question every goth queen who took these songs to heart. The thing I love most about Type O – that over-the-topness – is the very thing that a lot of people miss. Or maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m supposed to take it seriously. What made those girls decked out in black lace and combat boots at their show swoon over lines like “feel her god deep inside of her” is what makes me almost giggle. I say almost, because the quality music that backs up the hyperbolic lyrics – that driving bass and the way the song picks up as they go into the “Jesus Christ looks like me” chorus – keeps me listening to them. There’s also the seductive bass line of Black No. 1, the punk speed of Kill All the White People, the chorus of Set Me on Fire, the obvious pain of Blood and Fire and the way they take Seals and Croft’s Summer Breeze and turn it into something heavy and sinister – all things that make me look past lines like “For her lust/she’ll burn in hell/her soul done medium well,” or at least see the humor in them.

It makes me wonder what went on when they created this album. I have to think some of these lyrics were written with a wink and a nod. I bet Grandma Steele thinks that, as well.

I saw the Cars at Forest Hills Tennis Stadium some time in the 80’s. They came out on stage, launched into the first song, then proceeded to play most of their catalog without stopping. They never once acknowledged the audience. They never moved from their spots. There was no musical ad libbing, no banter, no eye contact, nothing that would make you think they even realized there were several thousand people sitting there in a light rain watching them play.

When I thought about it later on, I realized that’s the way Cars songs were meant to be played; without fanfare, without any extraneous notes or vocals. Just the precisioned perfection you hear on their records. Their brilliance lies in the simplicity of the tunes, in the clean, uncluttered feel of each song. You don’t dance to the cars (lord knows we tried, but everyone in the club would just end up sort of bopping along quietly while finishing drinks whenever a Cars song was played). You don’t emote the to Cars. You don’t feel their pain. You don’t take out your air guitar. You just listen and enjoy.

This album was, in a word, linear. Where other bands at the time were all curvy lines, the Cars were symmetrical and straight. However, their simplicity was only skin deep. Beneath the minimalism were catchy hooks, killer riffs, amazing melodies and clever lyrics. They managed to layer so much into their songs but have it all sound so clean and technically perfect.

The true testament to the beauty of this album is how well it has stood the test of time for me. Every time I hear Moving in Stereo or Good Times Roll, it’s like I’m hearing them for the first time; unlike most of the music I listen to, this album doesn’t transport me back to any specific time or place or event. It is always in the here and now.

Some days you just wake up in a mood. You’re all emo even though you have no reason to be. Maybe you had a bad dream, maybe you’re PMS, maybe you just like reverting back to your young adult self when life was full of emotional pitfalls and unhealthy relationships. And you remember when you used to sit in your room and overthink every situation in your life and imagine that you are the saddest person in the entire world, so sad that they should probably hold a benefit for you, something like Hands Across America, where everyone joins together to try to bring you out of your intense funk. But you’re all like, leave me alone, let me wallow in my belief that I am alone with my sadness.

That’s when you take out The Queen is Dead and you listen to the whole album five or six times while nursing a drink in one hand and a joint in the other and by the time you get to the last playing of I Know It’s Over, you realize there is no one in this world sadder or more pathetic (in a completely adorable way) than Morrissey. And you’re ok with that, because someone has to depressing songs, and your poem “My Heart is Blacker Than That Black Outfit You Wore to the Cure Concert And I Hate You” is just a ripoff of Bigmouth Strikes Again, complete with Joan of Arc reference.