Entries Tagged 'Reviews' ↓

I’ve never been a huge Neil Young fan.  He’s one of those artists whose greatest hits get played so much on classic rock radio that you’re completely sick of them and I’ve also heard a lot of his stuff that I just don’t care for.  I do, however, love Harvest Moon and Arc-Weld for reasons that escape me since they’re not really that much of a departure from his other stuff.

The concert movie Rust Never Sleeps has always piqued my curiosity though.  The tour that this performance is from was once named one of the top concert performances by Rolling Stone.  If you’re unfamiliar with it, on this tour the roadies were dressed like Jawas from Star Wars and the stage had props like amplifiers whose size was exaggerated so that the people on stage were dwarfed.

The other aspect of this film that had me interested was that it was one of those movies that always was playing at the midnight movies when I was growing up.  By time I was old enough to go to them, the theatre started showing more modern movies so the movies I missed always had a bit of mystery to me.  When I saw the Rust Never Sleeps DVD used  for five dollars I bought it without hesitation.

From a concert perspective the performance is amazing.  A good chunk of the set is solo acoustic which I’m usually not crazy about, but Neil plays songs like “Sugar Mountain” and “After the Goldrush” with a great energy.  The solo songs are so good they almost overshadow his performance with Crazy Horse.  The electric songs are great as well, but based on what I’ve heard before that’s less of a suprise.

From a movie standpoint though it falls flat.  The opening sequence of the roadies shuffling around before the show gets boring after the first 30 seconds.   Same goes for the other interruptions throughout the show – they may have worked for the people in the crowd at the time but sitting through it in the movie becomes aggravating.  The sequence with the Woodstock announcements is beyond boring.

The sound and picture quality aren’t wonderful but for me that’s not an issue considering when it was made.  There is a weird thing about the sound though.  Between songs you can clearly hear Neil’s footsteps on the stage, him dragging the piano bench across the floor, even when he picks up a harmonica out of the glass they’re held in.  I don’t know if that was in the original film or if it’s part of the DVD mixing, or if it was even done on purpose.  It’s just odd.

The bottom line is that Rust Never Sleeps is one of the best concert films I’ve ever seen and I’m not even a big Neil Young fan, although it definitely has made me one now.

“You thought you were dead
Ha! I’m not done with you yet!
I’m going to the morgue to hunt you down
I’m going to the cemetary to find you
I’m going to your grave to dig you up”

- “Ultra Dead”, The Great Kat

In the heyday of shredding back in the late 80s any guitarist not signed to Shrapnel had to do something to make themselves stand out from the crowd.  Which is exactly what The Great Kat did.  The ads in various guitar magazines advertised her hyper-fast versions of classical songs combined with a dominatrix-type personality.

Needless to say, the younger version of me was dying for this album.  Now not so much that I was willing to pluck down however much they were charging to order it via mail, but I kept checking used music stores for it.

Nineteen years later I had a copy of Beethoven on Speed in my hot little hands thanks to my local Half Price Books.  When I paid for it the clerk told me that he had just put it out a couple of hours ago and thought that no one would ever buy it.

“I’ve wanted this for years,” was my reply.  I’m sure the hipsters working there think I’m a dick anyway so what do I care.

Anyway, the album itself is a combination of sped up classical songs like Beethoven’s 5th and Chopin’s Funeral March along with Kat originals such as “Kat-Abuse” and “Guitar Concerto in Blood Minor” (which sounds like something Dethklok would put together).  The whole thing is done pretty tongue in cheek with Kat’s dominating personality coming out in the linear notes (“I’ve got to live with this massive brain 24 hours a day!”).

Unfortunately it’s not very good.  The originals are pretty cookie-cutter and the classical songs lose their novelty after a couple of listens.  That being said I know that there are people who would be completely into this – it’s a very metal album and the guitar work is pretty good.  I think the 1990 me would have liked it a lot more than the 2009 me does.

The Great Kat has a very busy website here.

“The Stones hold the record for releasing the most ‘worst’ live albums:  five, excluding 1970′s worth entry, Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out.  What makes Still Life so abysmally still-born is that it will forever mark the moment when the Stones transmuted from rock band to Las Vegas music review.  U2, beware.” – “Not So Essential Live Albums”, Guitar, September 1997

While the author of the above piece certainly makes a point about the number of bad Rolling Stones live albums (and more bad ones yet to come), I’ve never felt that Still Life was never a bad live album although I wouldn’t put it on my best-of list.  The album starts off with an incredible version of “Under My Thumb” that rocks harder than the original ever did and continues on with some Stones classics (“Shattered”, “Let’s Spend the Night Together”) and some surprising covers for a live album (“Twenty Flight Rock”, “Going to a Go-Go”).  Things start to peter out toward the end which keeps this from being – in my eyes at least – a classic live album.

Reading the above article made me think about the number of bad and just boring Rolling Stones live albums that have come out over the years.  By comparison, a fair amount of live movies/videos have come from the same tours (Let’s Spend the Night Together showcased the same tour as Still Life) and they blow the recordings out of the water.  Despite the huge stadiums the Stones are shown playing in, their live show comes across incredibly well on Let’s Spend the Night Together.  While they’re obviously known for their live shows it never occurred to me before that the visual portion of the performance was so important to it.

On a similar note, I saw that a box set of Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out came out last week that includes five Rolling Stones songs not found on the original as well as the opening sets by B.B. King and Ike & Tina Turner.  I’m torn about whether or not to get this.  Five extra songs isn’t a lot and part of me wonders if the money would be better spent on B.B. King’s Live at the Apollo.

As I previously wrote, I had high hopes for this album based on hearing “Modern Day Delilah”, and I have to admit that Sonic Boom doesn’t disappoint.  After the abysmal Psycho Circus and the subsequent departure of Ace Frehley and Peter Criss I had written the band off as another nostalgia act and didn’t expect them to release anything from this new lineup.

The first thing that struck me as I listened to it is how much of a band they sound like compared to Psycho Circus.  The addition of Tommy Thayer on guitar has improved the band immensely.  He manages to bring a new sound to Kiss while still staying true to the band’s roots.  In the world of Kiss you never know who is playing what instrument, but the bass sound throughout the album is great – if it is Gene Simmons then my hat’s off to him for bringing some great playing.

Standout songs on the album include “Modern Day Delilah”, “Russian Roulette”, and “Say Yeah”.  Tommy Thayer even sings lead on “When Lightning Strikes”, a song that fits in perfectly with the rest of the material.  Of course, this is still Kiss we’re talking about, so the lyrics aren’t exactly Bob Dylan quality, but that’s okay.  The music more than compensates for it. I sincerely hope this is a sign of things to come for the band, releasing music that lives up to the standards they’ve previously set.

After attending Dethklok’s recent appearance in Kansas City, there’s only one thing to say:  Brendon Small is amazing.  Besides the obvious stuff like creating Metalocalypse, doing the voices, and writing Dethklok’s songs, the amazing this is that he can pull it off live.  In addition to singing, he’s able to pull of most of the guitar work on the Dethklok albums with eerie precision.

Their show on October 19th was part of their co-headlining tour with Mastodon with Converge and High on Fire opening.  The show started at 6:30 (!) on a Monday night so I knew that a timely arrival was not in the cards.  I ended up arriving at the Uptown Theater about 8:00, just enough time to hear Converge’s last two songs.

A couple of asides here:  the Uptown is a no smoking venue and their outside smoking area was insane.  Essentially they put up a bunch of barricades outside one of the doors where you could smoke, except they grossly underestimated the number of smokers at the show.  The area was so dense with people it reminded me of the area in front of the state with people pushing and squeezing through the crowd in order to get back inside.  The other thing is that it looked like there were more people waiting in line for the Xbox demo than for beer, so that gives you an idea of the average age of the audience.

Anyway, Mastodon came out next.  I hadn’t heard anything by them previously, but I was blown away by their performance.  They were completely different than what I expected.  They were definitely a metal band, but they’ve managed to create a sound that’s their own.  After hearing their set I ended up going out and picking up their latest album.  I was surprised how much the crowd was into them, it was obvious that there was a large percentage that were there to see them.

Finally Dethklok came out.  As I mentioned before, Brendon Small was incredible as was the rest of the band.  Their set was only an hour long but they managed to tear through a load of songs.  The newer material from Dethalbum II held up pretty well next to their older material.  For me the best part was watching Small and the other guitarist absolutely nail the solos.  It was just amazing to watch.  Normally I’m not a big fan of bands playing their songs identical to the recorded versions but in this case I didn’t mind at all.

BrooklynVegan has some great pictures of their recent NYC show.