The Massed Gadgets Of Hercules

This week is Pink Floyd Week. What does that mean? Well, for one thing, the band rereleased its entire back catalogue on Tuesday in neat little remastered digipacks, along with a boxed set exhausting every last angle of Floyd’s masterpiece, The Dark Side Of The Moon (more on this later). To add to the fun, the band members are appearing throughout the week on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon (or whatever it’s called) along with more modern groups like Pearl Jam and the Foo Fighters. Personally, I think all of this michigas is prelude to a reunion announcement, but I’ve been disappointed before.

So I thought it high time I did a feature here on Chin Slinky about Pink Floyd, my favorite band and one of the first groups to turn me on to this thing called “music.” When I was a teenager, blissfully ignorant of everything short of Top 40 radio, my dad heard Floyd’s second live album, Delicate Sound Of Thunder, at work, and brought home just about everything they ever recorded. The rest of my puberty was spent with Floyd in the background, so it’s little wonder that they grew on me. (Funny story: One day my dad left The Final Cut on after leaving me, my sister, and a friend behind at the house. My friend decided to fuck with the switch that activates the heating gas in the house – something I had been advised by my parents never to do – until I told him to stop. A few moments later, the explosion that ends “Get Your Filthy Hands Off My Desert” resounded through the house in stereo. I grabbed my little sister under one arm and dove out the front door with my friend, convinced the house had just imploded. Well, I find it funny.)

Anyway. I’m going to provide a bit of a history lesson here, and along the way, I’ll touch on the albums that make up the boxed set Discovery, released this week, that make up the bulk of the Floyd catalogue. The only omissions are Relics, a largely redundant rarities collection, and a couple of live releases like PULSE and the aforementioned Thunder.

Pink Floyd formed as “The Pink Floyd Sound” in 1964, with Roger Waters on bass, Rick Wright on keyboards, Nick Mason on drums, and Syd Barrett handling guitar and vocal duties. They released their first album, The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn (named after a chapter in the children’s book The Wind In The Willows) in 1967, after gaining popularity on the backs of a few popular singles like “Arnold Layne.” A major band in the then-burgeoning psychedelic rock scene, Pink Floyd were from the start a very visual animal – their concerts were filled with projections, whirling lights, and various other props and distractions. It was no place for an epileptic to be, that was for sure.

A lot of people swear by Piper; I’m not one of them. People think Syd Barrett, the most influential member of the group at this time, was some kind of genius, and although the sound of Piper was incredibly ground-breaking, I don’t think it’s aged very well. Sure, there are some great tracks here – “Interstellar Overdrive” is an amazing freak-out instrumental, and “Bike,” with its musique concrete ending, is fantastic – but overall the sense of wide-eyed childish whimsy pales in comparison to what the band would later produce. I mean, half of the songs are about cats and garden gnomes, for Christ’s sake.

At the end of 1967, Barrett entered the end of what had been a long psychological downward spiral. His use of hallucinogens, coupled with the fact that the fucker wasn’t entirely there to begin with, made him a sporadically-functioning musician, to say the least. To bolster their live performances, guitarist/vocalist David Gilmour was brought into the fold… and Barrett was driven out of it, a move that caused enough consternation and guilt among the band’s members that it would later provide the basis for some of their most moving material.

The follow-up to Piper, A Saucerful Of Secrets, was released in June 1968. Barrett only featured on a few songs, most notably on the closer, “Jugband Blues.” Clearly somewhat aware of his condition and his surroundings, Barrett penned lyrics to that effect, singing

It's awfully considerate of you to think of me here
And I'm most obliged to you for making it clear
That I'm not here

Elsewhere, the band, written off by the music press due to Barrett’s departure, was trying on new styles and sounds. The fairy tales on Piper were given a bit of an edge and more of a propulsive sound, with tracks like “Let There Be More Light” and “Corporal Clegg” (the latter being the band’s first, but not only, anti-war song) showing a clear evolution from their earlier counterparts. The title track uses “Interstellar Overdrive” as a jumping off point for their obsession with long multi-part suites. “Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun” is an ominous bass-driven song whose lyrics are cribbed from a book of Chinese poetry.

In 1969, Pink Floyd recorded the soundtrack to a hippy flick called More, and while the album that resulted is mostly forgettable, one can hear the beginnings of hard rock on the proto-metal “Nile Song” and “Ibiza Bar.” Of greater interest is the follow up to that soundtrack, the double album Ummagumma, which was divided into a live record and a studio record. The live record is pure gold. Its four tracks are all superior to their studio versions, stretching the sound out longer and harder than ever before. It was clear, from this point, that something significant was going on, and the talent on display was enough to make most music critics eat their earlier words about Pink Floyd’s future.

The studio record is another matter altogether. The band “breaks up” here, with each member doing his own thing for a quarter of the record. Rick Wright’s contribution, a keyboard piece called “Sysyphus,” drags and drags; Nick Mason recorded “The Grand Vizier’s Garden Party,” a suite for percussion, and it really is beyond boring.* David Gilmour fares little better with one of his first compositions, “The Narrow Way.” The only really solid material here comes from Waters, who provides the pastoral “Grantchester Meadows” (whose 3D sound, which finds headphone listeners hearing bees buzzing in first one, then the other ‘phone, would later become an integral part of the band’s repertoire) and the funny “Several Species Of Small Furry Animals…” which might be the world’s first techno track.

About a year later, the band regrouped and released Atom Heart Mother, which is an interesting album in a formative sense but an average one in a critical sense. The title track, recorded in collaboration with professional whackadoo Ron Geesin, incorporates an orchestra into its 23:44 length; although you might not listen to it again, it provides a sense of where the band would go in the future with tracks like “Echoes” and their later albums, which are often one long song divided up into multiple tracks. There were also three “solo” tracks, and then there’s the failed experiment of “Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast,” which may simultaneously be the most promising-sounding and disappointing song in the band’s arsenal.

Meddle was released in 1971. This is where shit gets really interesting. Things kick off with a brilliant instrumental, “One Of These Days,” a truly otherworldly bit of charging guitar and drums that also finds the space to incorporate (natch) the Dr. Who theme. “Fearless” is a good, standard rock song that ends by interpolating a billion drunken soccer fans singing “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” But both pale in comparison to the closing track, which fills up all of side two, the epic “Echoes.” I simply don’t know of 23 minutes that passes by so quickly. From the opening guitar chords, which sound like a pinging sonar, to the majestic choruses and wigged-out sound effect center, everything that makes Pink Floyd “Pink Floyd” is firmly in place.

The band’s follow up to Meddle was a soundtrack to the film La Vallee called Obscured By Clouds, and it sucks. That’s all I have to say about that. (Except to add that nothing in the Floyd catalogue truly sucks – their worst shit is better than most band’s masterpieces – but Clouds, as much as it pains me to admit it, is eminently ignorable.)

All of which brings us to the 1973 release of The Dark Side Of The Moon. This wasn’t a case of several shorter tracks supporting a central, larger piece. This was one long song, drawn out over 43 minutes. A study of modern life and madness in all its glorious forms, Dark Side went on to sit on the charts for 741 weeks. 741 fucking weeks. Holy shit. If that’s not an indication of how good this album is, then nothing is going to do it for you. At this point, Floyd was firing on all cylinders, making use of everything they had thus far learned: 3D sound effects (there’s a reason everyone used this album to test out their car stereos), incredibly tight composition, and themes that found universal acceptance.

To say the album is about insanity is a little like saying the Declaration of Independence is about freedom. It is insanity, whether it’s the madness of war (“Us And Them”), politics (“Brian Damage”), mortality (“Time”), or just plain old lunacy (“On The Run”). At this point, almost forty years after its release, it’s pretty difficult to say something about Dark Side that hasn’t already been said. Put simply, this album changed music more profoundly than Nirvana’s Nevermind, in both the hearts of those who accepted it (every prog-rocker ever), and those who rejected it (the entire punk rock movement).

(The recent re-release of the Floyd catalogue also includes a very large boxed set dedicated to this album; similar sets are set to be released for Wish You Were Here and The Wall. Even as a Floyd fanatic, I cannot recommend this boxed set, laden as it is with so much DVD and Blu-ray garbage. It’s virtually bankrupt in terms of b-sides – which don’t exist in the Floyd universe because they almost never released singles – and demos. Avoid it, and its hefty price tag, at all costs.)

Fresh off their success, the band toured for a while, performing Dark Side mostly in its entirety long before anyone got the idea into their head that albums should be performed live in their entirety. In 1975, they released Wish You Were Here, which, along with Dark Side, forms the binary star at the heart of the Floydian universe. I say this because this is ultimately where the band found its biggest success, and this was the culmination of all four members having an equal say, something that wouldn’t last much longer.

Wish was built on a dual premise: a fond tribute to Syd Barrett (who materialized during the album’s recording as an almost unrecognizable gutter fool) and an attack on the music industry. The immortal “Shine On You Crazy Diamond,” divided into two parts and spanning the better part of 26 minutes, remembers Barrett as the idealist that he was, while “Welcome To The Machine” and “Have A Cigar” eviscerate the record-making monster that the band was beginning to find itself chained to. The title track, one of the most beautiful numbers Floyd ever recorded, is (you guessed it) an anti-war song.

After Wish You Were Here, things started to get a little strained in the Floyd camp. Wright and Mason were begin marginalized by the escalating creative war between Gilmour and Waters. Waters was (is) a control freak who wanted to dominate the band’s songwriting duties. Wright was a cocaine addict whose ego simply couldn’t withstand Waters’ brow-beating, and Mason was a happy-go-lucky sort, eager enough to go along to get along. This left Gilmour to try and stand up for the rest of the band. By no means a weak man, Gilmour still found his hands full with Waters’ tyrannical approach to leadership, and it was here that a fracture began to grow.

Animals, released in 1977, was the first of three albums that would come to classify the “Waters era” of the band. A concept album (aren’t they all?) built around Orwell’s Animal Farm, Animals divides the human race into three groups: the power-hungry movers and shakers (“Dogs”), the sanctimonious makers of social dogma (“Pigs”), and everyone else (“Sheep”). Despite the straitjacketing concept and the lack of input from the rest of the band, Animals is still an excellent album. Its three central tracks are all long and convoluted and complicated, prime examples of what later got dubbed “space rock” and full of excellent lyrics to boot. (Only Waters could pen a mouthful like “It’s too late to lose the weight you used to need to throw around” and have it sound like poetry.)

Entering the studio to record the next album, the band found itself at a Waters-dictated crossroads: either they were going to record The Pros & Cons Of Hitch-hiking (which eventually became Waters’ first solo album) or they were going to dive into a massive double album undertaking called The Wall, complete with stage show and film accompaniment. They chose The Wall, a fundamentally flawed but conceptually stunning examination of a rock star’s disintegration, mental collapse, and cathartic recovery. Abandoning the long song structures, Waters, under the watchful eye of uber-producer Bob Ezrin, turned out pop hit after pop hit in service to his muse: the emotionally wrenching “Mother,” the soaring “Comfortably Numb,” the surging “Run Like Hell,” and of course, the tour de force “Another Brick In The Wall, Part 2.” “Brick” was essentially a disco-rock hybrid whose central refrain, “We don’t need no education,” became the rallying cry of disenfranchised youth for decades to come.

The central conceit behind The Wall was the rocker’s alienation from his audience, a theme that Waters was obsessed with. During the Animals tour, he had become increasingly disillusioned with playing gigantic arenas, to the extent that he finally lost his cool one night and spat in a fan’s face. Envisioning a way of bricking himself off, he devised the central concept for The Wall, and the songs simply followed from there.

The tour behind The Wall, which found the band caged in by an actual wall of Styrofoam bricks, bankrupted most of the band and left them virtually empty-handed. (The exception to this was Rick Wright, who had been fired and then re-hired as a session musician. Wright, collecting what was essentially salary, was the only one to walk away from The Wall tour with anything like a paycheck.)

Ideally a follow-up of companion songs to Waters’ magnum opus, The Final Cut changed its sound on the outset of the Falklands War. Waters, who grew up without a father thanks to World War II, hated war with a passion. So he took the tracks that never made it to The Wall, mixed them with some art rock and anti-war rhetoric, and released The Final Cut. The last Floyd album to feature all four members, Cut is essentially a Waters solo album – it even says so, on the back cover: “A Requiem For The Post-War Dream, By Roger Waters.” Gilmour, Wright and Mason had little, if any, say over the album’s style, format, or release. Nor would they want to. A caustic piece of soapbox sloganeering, The Final Cut is a love-it or hate-it propositions for most fans (Kurt Loder actually gave it five stars in Rolling Stone), and its songs have yet to be performed live by any incarnation of Floyd the group; its inclusion on subsequent greatest hits packages has been more of a tip of the hat to Waters than any kind of graceful acceptance into the Floyd milieu.

Declaring Floyd “a spent force,” Waters, who no longer felt he needed the other three, moved to dissolve the group. Gilmour took his case to court – fuck you, Roger – and won the right to keep the Pink Floyd name. Without Waters to contribute, the band’s sound changed radically.

An attempt to both pick up where Wish You Were Here left off and to incorporate a more modern sound into the Floyd persona, A Momentary Lapse Of Reason (1987) fails on both counts. Which is not to say it doesn’t have any good songs – it does. “Learning To Fly” is a great rock song, “Sorrow” is perfectly haunting, and “One Slip” and “Terminal Frost” simply don’t have enough fans, as far as I’m concerned. But overall, it’s just not as good as the other Floyd albums. This is Floyd at the other end of the bell curve, and despite its popularity (and the massive tours that followed), Lapse signaled the beginning of the end for the once proud band.

If Lapse isn’t very good, the last Pink Floyd album, The Division Bell (1993), is downright dreadful. Abandoning all concessions to pop and rock, Bell is a turgid affair devoid of humor and warmth. Only its final track, “High Hopes,” sounds remotely Floydian; the rest, divided between meandering instrumentals and poorly disguised stunts like guest star Stephen Hawking, just falls flat on its face. That a solid Floyd fan like me went into the record store on that late winter day in ’93 and bought Soundgarden and Nine Inch Nails records instead goes a long way towards hammering closed the coffin.

After touring for The Division Bell, the group decided to call it a day. Gilmour released solo records, Mason wrote a book, and Wright did whatever it was he felt like doing (cocaine, probably – I’m sorry, that’s harsh and purely conjecture). The band milked its catalogue for the better part of two decades over the course of live albums and greatest hits compilations. The four men grew into old men. (Bizarrely enough, Gilmour, who was a good-looking young man, grew into an ugly old man. Waters, on the other hand, who was a horse-faced, toothy monster of a young man, is quite a handsome older fellow. But I digress.)

In 2006, Barrett, living in seclusion and obscurity, passed away. Rick Wright died of cancer in 2008. But before he passed away, the group put aside its previous animosity (perhaps in deference to Wright, who was almost certainly sick at the time) and performed four songs at Live 8.

It remains to be seen whether Nick Mason, Roger Waters, and David Gilmour will ever play together again. For a while, the stars seemed aligned in their favor: Gilmour and Mason appeared at a Waters solo concert to perform songs from The Wall, and this recent series of appearances on Fallon may be a sign of good things to come. Then again, Waters has publicly announced plans to continue touring his solo version of The Wall for the foreseeable future.

Regardless of their future plans, there is no denying this band their legacy. Profoundly moving songwriters of the highest quality, Pink Floyd’s music will grow and expand and continue to influence musicians for decades, if not centuries, to come. As for me, they remain a strong link – nay, anchor – to my past, to my formative years, and to the reasons why I came to love music in the first place.

And they will always remind me of my father. Rest in peace, Dad. Wherever you are, may you always Shine On.

*I’m going to digress a little here to expound on the merits, or lack of therein, of Nick Mason and Rick Wright. These two are really not the most talented individuals. Mason can keep a beat and Wright can play the piano, which is more than I can do, but in the pantheon of technically gifted musicians, they rank pretty low. Waters and Gilmour aren’t so hot either. (Actually, Gilmour is pretty good. Waters is an average bass player.) The distinction I often offer newcomers to Pink Floyd is this: the band is made up of fantastic writers, but not so great musicians. This may be why Floyd’s live shows are so filled with light shows, props, and other distractions – because they just aren’t that shit-hot. Consequently, anyone expecting a truly mind-blowing jam at a Floyd concert is bound to be a bit disappointed.

Primus
Green Naugahyde

It's been a loooong time since Primus put out a proper album - 12 fucking years, to be precise, if you're not counting the throwaway EP they put out in the early aughts. In that period, they've toured several times - just long enough to keep people interested - and morphed from funk-punk-prog pioneers into a kind of jam-band for metalheads, managing to make long shows out of 8-song sets. Not that anyone minds - I saw them at Roseland a couple of years ago, and the crowd was so excited they demolished the barricade in front of the stage, something I haven't seen at Roseland ever, despite having seen bands like Slayer and Pantera there. But the question remained in every Primus fan's head: When they do come back, what the fuck are they going to sound like?

I suppose calling myself "ambivalent" about their new release, Green Naugahyde, isn't going to put me in the Music Critic Hall of Fame. But that's how I feel, nevertheless. I so badly want to give this album a good review, it hurts. Because I love Primus, and have since I first heard them in 1991. But I'm a music critic, and I'm an objectivist, so, here goes: The new Primus album is a decent, but not very good, slice of musical pie.

Songs like "Hennepin Crawler" and "Last Salmon Man" sound like Primus songs - that is, they're rhythm-section-driven funk jams with a lot of Zappa-esque guitar in the background - but there's two fundamental things missing here: the thrash and the danger. The thrash sound was a significant element in their early records. You could pogo to this music, or, just as happily, you could beat someone the fuck up to it. No matter how calm the song started, it was only a matter of time before frontman/bassist Les Claypool got around to pounding the shit out of his instrument.

Then there's the danger. No matter how light-hearted Primus songs may sound, they look pretty violent on paper. Someone almost always dies at the end of a Primus song, whether it's "John The Fisherman," swallowed by the ocean, or "Bob," who "hung himself in the doorway of the apartment where he lived," or "Jerry" the race car driver, who died a fiery drunk-driving death. The new songs on Naugahyde lack that element of shit grim-and-gory that made Primus such a bullet in the teeth in the first place. (The only track that maintains a glimmer of this attitude on Naugahyde is "Jilly's On Smack," a dark-ish number whose timbre is constantly belied by Claypool's histronic vocals.)

I think the problem - aside from the band making way for new drummer Jay Lane, the third of their career - can (I hope) be chalked up to the fact that the group hasn't recorded together in at least a decade. They've played old songs in that time, sure, but they haven't functioned as a songwriting unit in quite a while. Here's to hoping they don't wait another 10 years to find their common groove.

Red Hot Chili Peppers
I'm With You

At this point, being disappointed in the Chili Peppers is a little like being a Mets fan - it goes with the territory. The quality of their recorded output has been on a steady decline since career highpoint Blood Sugar Sex Magik, and that was 20 years ago. When I found out that secret weapon guitarist John Frusciante was leaving, and being replaced by relative newcomer Josh Klinghoffer (more on him later), I hoped for a new beginning. Or at least, something better than their last album, the sprawling (and boring) Stadium Arcadium.

I'm With You is that new beginning, but it's also a bit of a letdown. Don't get me wrong, it starts strong: "Monarchy Of Roses" is the hardest, most energetic song the Peppers have recorded in over a decade. Combining pounding drums, distorted vocals, and rapid-fire bass, this is 21st century Chili Peppers at its finest. Follow-up "Factory Of Faith" is a decently funky number too - no complaints here.

Then: thud. "Brendan's Death Song" is the latest in a long line of ballads from the former funk-punk icons, and as usual, frontman Anthony Kiedis' attempts to sound serious are about as solemn as a priest playing pick-up-sticks with his buttcheeks. In fact (as usual), Kiedis remains the weakest link in the band, laying down borderline retarded raps over otherwise semi-decent songs all over the album.

The second weakest link? Josh Klinghoffer, the new guitarist. My God, is this guy boring. I would describe his instrumental style, if only he had one. Most of the time, he remains content to follow the rhythm section around like a lost puppy. Which leaves it up to bassist Michael Balzary (I refuse to call a man in his 40s "Flea," no matter how he colors his hair) and drummer Chad Smith to carry the show.

They do, but barely. At this point, even the talented members of this band are running out of steam. There are a few good songs towards the end of the album ("Even You Brutus," in particular, makes excellent use of the piano), but it's a too-little-too-late scenario all around. I'll always be a Chili Peppers fan - I've followed them this far, might as well see this shit out to the end - but I'll always be a little disappointed, too.

Various Artists
Muppets: The Green Album

Look, you don't fuck with the Muppets, okay? They're a veritable institution for people of my generation. Smarter than Sesame Street and with better production values than The Electric Company, the Muppets have been revered since their invention in the late 70s as the touchstone for fun, educational puppeteering. I don't care if you can see the sticks and wires; that shit was fun. You don't fucking front on the Muppets.

So if you're going to release a high profile tribute album featuring some of today's hottest acts, you pick and choose those acts with a discriminating air. Or, maybe not. Whoever put out this farce of a collection (Disneymusic, I'm looking at you) needs to be pinned to a wall.

I mean, check out these artists: The Fray? Alkaline Trio? Some douchebag from Atreyu? What is this, K-Tel Presents Emo Hits! Sounds Of The 00's? You know when the best band here is My Morning Jacket, something foul is afoot. Maybe the budget was bad, maybe the selector has his head up his ass, I don't know. What I do know is, this album is mostly a travesty - a spit in Kermit's bulging half-moon eye.

Given that the majority of these hacks have no innate talent, it's up to the original writers of the songs to provide most of the artistic heft. Sure, "Mahna Mahna" is a classic, but what do The Fray bring to it? Nothing. Same goes for the "Muppet Show Theme" (OK Go) and "Rainbow Connection," which Weezer and Paramore front-cunt Hayley Williams butcher. Where are the artists whose playful sense of whimsy - The Flaming Lips, Green Day, Jesus, anybody but who's here - could give these songs something other than a straight-faced reading?

The only highlight is a cover of "Bein' Green" by Andrew Bird, who lends an aura of sincerity to the proceedings that the song demands. Otherwise, this collection is more than a complete and total dud - it's an insult in a Digipack.

Faith No More
Angel Dust

This one's for Ted, who openly challenged me to do it on Facebook.

Faith No More was already a band when vocalist Mike Patton joined for their third album, The Real Thing, in the late 80s. But they weren't a great band, and The Real Thing, despite its popularity (and the enduring single, "Epic"), didn't really change that. It wasn't until Patton grew comfortable with the band - and the band grew comfortable with Patton - that they achieved brilliance. They found that genius on the follow-up, Angel Dust, one of the most confounding, bizarre albums ever to be released on a major label.

The first time I heard Angel Dust, I was a newbie to Faith No More, and didn't know what to make of it - only the poppy "Everything's Ruined" and the thrashier "Malpractice" stuck with me, while the other songs whipped by in a total blur. My loss. Just about everything here is a perfect song. "Land Of Sunshine" carries over The Real Thing's penchant for an immediate opening with heavy guitar and keyboard; the lyrics are taken from fortune cookies and late-night TV. The lyrics on the next song, "Caffeine," make no sense, but the song throttles forward on its own bad will towards threatening ends. "Midlife Crisis," perhaps the best known song here, merges pop and rock in such an audacious way that it barely charted as a single. "RV" is a country song in waltz-time.

And so it goes. There's so much to cover here - the death metal of "Jizzlobber," the avant-garde "A Small Victory," etc. - that I could go on all week. Suffice it to say this is never a boring listen. Closing with an ocarina-driven cover of John Barry's theme to "Midnight Cowboy" (I mean, what the fuck?!), Angel Dust is Faith No More's finest moment, and their most enduring masterpiece.

Three 65, Day 55
Melvins, Houdini

Melvins are a power trio (except when they're a four piece) from the Seattle area, consisting of Buzz Osbourne on guitar/vocals, Dale Crover on drums, and whoever is unlucky enough to be playing bass guitar with them at any given time. The reason I say "unlucky" is because Melvins (I refuse to call them "the" Melvins, I don't care what the press notes say, la la la la la) go through bass players like a pubescent boy goes through Kleenex and Vaseline.

Despite this problem with the bottom end, they're one of the best bands around. You want to talk about grunge, forget Nirvana, and fucking forget Pearl Jam - this is the real shit, right here. Slow, dirty, and heavy as fuck, Melvins have been churning shit out for over 20 years, without hiatuses or vacations to slow them down. And while some of it may be downright unlistenable - once every four or five releases, Melvins screws the pooch and releases something you just can't enjoy, just, like, a full hour of feedback or something - much of it is very, very good.

Houdini is the best of the best. From the rumbling intro of "Night Goat" to the spry pop of "Set Me Straight," this record finds the band at the height of its powers. Maybe it's because Kurt Cobain had recently introduced Melvins to a major label and helped produce, or maybe it was just their turn to be amazing. Who else could make a cover of Kiss' "Goin' Blind" into a funeral dirge, huh?

I saw Melvins open for Primus in 1993, shortly after starting college, and at the time, I had no idea who the hell they were. They scared the pants off of me with a cover of Led Zeppelin's "When The Levee Breaks" before roaring through "Hooch," the first number on Houdini. "Hooch" is nothing but nonsense words strung together by heavy percussion and turgid metal riffs. Come to think of it, that describes every Melvins song. Long may they rule!

Three 65, Day 54
Jesu, Silver EP

Jesu is a project that falls under the "Justin K. Broadrick" umbrella. For those of you out there who don't know who Broadrick is (probably many of you), here's a quick refresher course. He was a pioneering member of Napalm Death, back before grindcore even had a name, and went on to found Godflesh, one of the best industrial bands in existence. After their demise, he took on a lot of other names - Techno Animal, Ice, Final, etc. - but the one that garnered the most interest was Jesu.

Initially a combination of My Bloody Valentine-style feedback washes and crushing guitar and drums, Jesu quickly morphed into the closest thing Broadrick has ever done that's "pop." Silver was his second release, and it opened up the door to exposure in a lot more venues than Broadrick had ever enjoyed before.

The title track opens the record with lush, melodic guitars and a wave of purest feedback. Somewhere in there, Broadrick's vocals - usually grunting and drill-sergeant shouting - croon about age and death in a style that's almost palatable. "Star" is one of the best pop songs he's ever recorded, a long piece with propulsive drumming that picks up the energy level and carries it straight through to the remaining two tracks, "Wolves" and "Dead Eyes." (Someone at Pitchfork.com once said you could assemble any number of indie band names from the song titles found here. Haha, Pitchfork - one on you.)

The entire record effectively captures the mood caught on the front cover of the album: that of being lost in a large, foggy wood somewhere around dawn, deep in the winter. It's cold, it's lonely, it's aching - everything a Jesu album should be.

Three 65, Day 53
Black Sabbath, Master Of Reality

Master Of Reality was where Black Sabbath really refined its sound into a pure, elemental force. The first album, Black Sabbath, had a lot of dabbling in proto-metal and blues, and the second album, the landmark Paranoid, was a breath of fresh air. But Reality is where the band really hits the mark.

The most important thing to remember in talking about early Black Sabbath is, simply, when these albums were first released, there were no reference points. Sure, there was stuff by The Doors, and Blue Cheer, and a couple of others. But Black Sabbath was doing something no one else had even considered. Metal? What the fuck was that? Even vocalist Ozzy Osbourne, for decades the very face of heavy metal, couldn't fathom the term.

So what sounds staid to your ears is really revolutionary, considering the time period. Take the soloing halfway through "After Forever," which hasn't appeared - anywhere (except maybe on a Sabbath album) - previously. Ditto the solid riffing, which was like blues sped up to a gallop. (And people call Sabbath "slow and crushing.")

"Sweet Leaf" opens the album with a paean to pot, one of Ozzy's (many) drugs of choice. The aforementioned "After Forever" gets inside the head of a religious man, which is valiant, considering many of Black Sabbath's songs deal with the devil. "Children Of The Grave" features one of the most identifiable, beautiful riffs to ever darken a heavy metal song. One listen to that throbbing grind and you can actually hear the furious dead kids stampeding across the English countryside.

Sabbath would release other good albums - they still had three decent ones left in them at the time of this record's release, although ambition - and, to a lesser extent, keyboards - would eventually do them in. But for my money, if I'm going to listen to Sabbath, and I want the pure stuff, I turn to Master Of Reality, every time.

Three 65, Day 52
System Of A Down, Toxicity

Combining the genre-hopping fluidity of Mr. Bungle, the political angst of Rage Against The Machine, and the full-on metal attack of Slayer, System Of A Down are one of the few "nu-metal" bands that sounds like they're actually evolving the heavy metal scene.

I bought Toxicity when it first came out, and I had my reservations. I hadn't liked their first album so much; "Sugar" was a great song, but I thought the band's reach exceeded its grasp. Not so on Toxicity. Here, the band is fully in control of both its sound and its ambition.

The album starts off with the furious "Prison Song," which features the unforgettable couplet "All research and successful drug policy shows that treatment should be increased / And law enforcement decreased while abolishing mandatory minimum sentences" (try fitting that to a 4/4 beat) and rightly takes the American penal system to task.

From there, it's off to the races. The album doesn't slow down until track 6 (the excellent, bipolar "Chop Suey"), with thrashing guitars, wild drumming, and the insane vocals of Serj Tankian, whose range is almost as broad as Mike Patton's. Even the slower songs (the title track, "Aerials") that show up towards the opposite end of the record are among the finest metal recorded in this century.

Unfortunately, this would be the last good System Of A Down album, for one reason and one reason only: They let one of the guitarists sing on the follow-up. Sure, Serj Tankian sings as well, but the guitarist in question, Damon Malakian, should not be allowed near a microphone. Ever. Compared to the full throttle roar of Tankian, Malakian sounds like a whiny little brother. After a lengthy hiatus, the band has returned; please, please, PLEASE keep the whiny little prick away from the mic.

Three 65, Day 51
Misfits, Walk Among Us

File under pop-punk (really): The Misfits were never the hardcore band hardcore fans wanted them to be. One listen to their first album, Walk Among Us, is enough to prove that.

The Misfits were originally fronted by Glenn Danzig, before he was, you know, (gothic voice) "Danzig." Back when he still had a sense of humor, in other words. Taking their cues from 50s and 60s b-movies in the horror and sci-fi genres, the Misfits quickly became known for ferocious live shows and a guitar-driven attack that merged poppy harmonies with psychotic metal.

Take "I Turned Into A Martian," the album's second track. It starts off heavy, but soon enough, Danzig's doing that "whoa-whoa" thing with his voice like an Elvis impersonator. The showmanship of the King runs deep in the Misfits' DNA; all you have to do is listen to the opening seconds of the live track, "Mommy Can I Go Out & Kill Tonight," and hear Danzig say "Yuh!" before launching into the song. That's all. It's such a lip-curled tribute that the next minute, as thrashing as it is (and it is thrashing), is almost forgotten in the joke of the moment.

The Misfits released a couple of other albums, including Static Age, which were quite good. Eventually, Danzig decided to form Samhain, and then the band Danzig, and things were never quite the same. Some members reformed in the 90s (if you can count the drummer's roadie's brother's cousin's roommate a former member), and as things stand, the band is just laughable. If you're going to go out for the Misfits, insist on the originals.

Three 65, Day 50
Nirvana, In Utero

I've reached Day 50, and cannot believe I've gone 49 full days without once covering a Nirvana album. Granted, they don't have the largest discography in history - they're no Grateful Dead - but they are one of the most important bands in history.

The metalheads all love Bleach, and everyone loves Nevermind; no one but a weirdo would state that Incesticide is their favorite Nirvana record. But it takes a true punk to prefer In Utero over anything else in the band's recorded output. For me, this album - the last one the band put out, before vocalist/guitarist Kurt Cobain screwed the pooch and blew his brains out - is the epitome of Nirvana-ness, the ultimate sound the band wanted to produce.

Atonal and dissonant, intentionally abrasive, In Utero is Nirvana at their snarly best. Take a look at the first line on the album: "Teenage angst has paid off well / now I'm bored and old." Unlike other bands who only played at discomfort (namely Pearl Jam), Nirvana was genuinely shocked at their success, and a little more than off-put by it, too. So they responded to their newly found fame by putting out the rawest, angriest album possible.

In Utero has no accessible "in," other than maybe "All Apologies" (and even that ends with feedback); it's all sharp edges. And even with that intentional fuck-you posture, it still comes off as a pure pop-rock album. Take "Rape Me," for example, which caused such a consternation with big chain retailers: a song with such a violent subject comes off as a total anthem, a document of vulnerability so poignant it could only have come from Cobain.

I'll be honest. I prefer the difficult stuff to the easy stuff, any day of the week. But Nirvana sugarcoats its jagged little pills so well, it's hard to tell the difference here.

Three 65, Day 49
Big Black, Songs About Fucking

All the great, great music you love, the Nirvanas, the Tools, the Ministrys, the Nine Inch Nails... all of them have at least one of their roots traced back to Big Black. Steve Albini's band of pranksters from Illinois were the first at marrying electronics to sheer guitar angst, and some would say they were the best.

The central conceit behind Big Black is simple: thrash out on guitar, set the drum machine to maximum, sing about whatever makes the audience uncomfortable, and fuck all the rest, including production values. That Albini ever became the go-to production guy for a generation of alternanerds looking to get street cred for their debut is one of the biggest jokes in rock music. The guy turns on a microphone and leaves the room; simple as that. Fuck Pro Tools, fuck processed sounds, fuck polish: Just record it, slap a sticker on it, and sell it.

Fucking was Big Black's last album - they knew it at the time, the audience knew it at the time, and Albini was determined to go out with a bang (pun most definitely intended). "Bad Penny" is the ultimate synthesis of Black's sound, the final snarl: "I think I fucked your girlfriend last night / Then I fucked all your friends' girlfriends / Now they hate you." The song topics here are about murder, debauchery, sex and death, the ultimate pigfuck anthems for a group of Midwestern teens to disaffected to care about much of anything. It's no accident that of all the bands to cover Kraftwerk, Big Black were the only ones able to inject pure hatred and evil into it (see "The Model").

The album ends with "Bombastic Intro," thirty or so seconds of pulsing drum machine and screaming guitar. That they ended their career with an intro is an insight into Albini's modus operandi: be contrary, and confound at all costs. One can now find Albini fronting Shellac, and doing things like playing bowling alleys at 10 am on January 1st. Fuck you? No, fuck you.

Three 65, Day 48
Rollins Band, The End Of Silence

I first got into Rollins Band shortly after high school; I thought, based on the title of the song "Blues Jam" and Rollins' poetry, that he was going to be some kind of grizzled, laid-back jazz/blues dude a la Tom Waits. God, how wrong was I.

Henry Rollins (or just Rollins, as he prefers) was the frontman for the influential punk band Black Flag. When that band imploded, he formed Rollins Band, a hard rock / funk metal collective that carried the "Rollins message" to the four corners of the universe.

"Low Self Opinion," the first song, hit me like a ton of bricks, because after high school, I had no esteem for myself - at all. "If you could see the you that I see / when I see you seeing me / you'd see yourself so differently / believe me" is the ultimate line; I nearly broke down crying when I understood it. Because there were people in my life that felt that way, I just had to find them. Corny as it sounds, the first song on Silence was the beginning of the end for the high school bullies that sought to keep me under foot.

Rollins also tackles relationships on songs like "Grip" and "You Didn't Need." But the real meat of the album comes towards the second half, when the songs slow down, get all groany and feedbacky, and it becomes a grind of pain and loss: "Obscene," "Just Like You" (about Rollins' relationship with his much-hated father), and the aforementioned "Blues Jam" (anything but).

True, Rollins' lyrics are a bit hokey, and the music is a bit same-y over the course of the album. But if you're going to have just one album by Rollins Band, forget something like Weight, which was successful only thanks to the videos, and pick up End Of Silence.

Three 65, Day 47
Stone Temple Pilots, No. 4

A lot of people don't like Stone Temple Pilots (henceforth referred to as STP for the sake of my carpal tunnel syndrome), and that's okay by me. I get it. I mean, they started off as a cash-grab - Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Alice In Chains were all original bands, and STP raped their sound for everything it was worth on their debut album, Core.

But a strange thing happened over the next few albums: the outer STP, the grunge-clone, stripped itself away - molted - and a real, honest-to-goodness band emerged. The fully formed STP explored its softer side on their second album, Purple, and found melody with their third album, Tiny Music. But it was their fourth album (rather anticlimactically named No. 4) where everything came together.

Sure, the first three tracks bring the hard rock goods - "Down" is one of the heaviest songs they've ever recorded - but I want to talk about the pop. "Church On Tuesday" closes with vocalist Scott Weiland singing "na na na na," which is... weird for a band as overtly hard rock as STP. "Sour Girl" takes things even farther, with a psychedelic pop sound that, minus the studio polish, could have made it to college radio in the late 80s. Elsewhere, "No Way Out" is a mix of both styles - heavy on the verses, atmospheric and psychedelic on the choruses. And "Atlanta," the closing ballad, sounds almost exactly like The Doors - no mean feat for a band that started out aping the Seattle sound.

Three 65, Day 46
The Flaming Lips, The Dark Side Of The Moon

Being a huge Pink Floyd fan, and a huge Flaming Lips fan, I was all over this shit the day it came out. The two seem like perfect companions; after all, the Flaming Lips are practically a latter-day Floyd, minus the internecine tensions.

Too bad that it's ultimately disappointing. Certain substitutions work: the wailing klaxons and coughing that replace the clocks at the beginning of "Time," the spoons that are substituted for the cash register at the beginning of "Money," etc. These are all nice little touches, but when it comes to soul, when it comes to depth, the album ultimately fails.

Take the vocals on "The Great Gig In The Sky," for instance. Peaches is an interesting choice, but as a substitute for Clare Torry, she just doesn't cut it. Her shrieks sound like an animal in pain, instead of a woman in ecstasy, and it just doesn't work. The same goes for the substitution of all the male voices interviewed on the original album with Henry Rollins - sure, he's saying the same thing, but he comes off as gruff and confrontational instead of affable and warm.

Pretty much everything on this record plays out this way. Sounds good, don't get me wrong, but this is tough stuff the Lips are tackling, and they're just too out there to handle the more grounded elements of Pink Floyd's sound.

Three 65, Day 45
Miles Davis, Bitches Brew

I wanted to write a lot about this album, but unfortunately don't have the time. Which is just as well, because I don't really have the vocabulary to describe it perfectly. I'm not one of those jazz-bo nerds who will tell you about "tonal modalities" and "arpeggiation." I just know what I like, and I love this album.

This is nearly the first in a long round of "jazz-rock fusion" albums that Davis and the jazz community produced in the 1970s (if not the actual first). The musicians sought to unleash the chaos of jazz over the chaos of rock and roll and perhaps merge the two. It works better than you might think. Although nothing here "rocks out," per se, all of it sounds a lot more energetic than regular jazz. And it sounds dark, too, in a way jazz never really sounded before, dark and haunting. Horns pierce the gloom of dark keyboard and percussion runs, sounding like whales dying in a sea of ink.

Davis would release other jazz-rock fusion albums, including the excellent In A Silent Way and The Complete Jack Johnson, but none of them hold a candle to this milestone. Not just another jazz album, Bitches Brew is an iconic display of talent from one of the greatest musicians of all time, and thus defies categorization as either jazz or rock.