Dissin' Music
When I was out in California I picked up five CDs at Rasputin Music to listen to since the car didn't have the xM I expected:
The Who - "The Ultimate Collection"
The Airborne Toxic Event - self-titled
Against Me! - "New Wave"
New Order - "(the best of) New Order"
Pixies - "Wave of Mutilation: Best of the Pixies"
The Who I know I like, I just didn't have any of their CDs. The Airborne Toxic Event I've talked about, it was kind of a random, discounted buy and damn I'm glad I did. I had Against Me!'s previous CD, and liked it a lot, and this one wasn't quite as good, but was still worth the buy. Even if probably the best song, Thrash Unreal, has the refrain "No mother ever dreams her daughter will grow up to be a junkie." Real uplifting there.
So that leaves the two other "best of" CDs, from bands I wanted to know more about. The Pixies one was solid. The only song of theirs I really knew was "Here Comes Your Man", but I know how influential they were, and I remember one of my college roommates, Karl, was a big fan. It's an odd CD, because there's no other songs on it that really scream "this is a great song", but almost all of them are listenable, which you rarely get from any CD, even a greatest hits CD.
The New Order CD, however, was a huge disappointment. I love their type of sound, even as it has translated to the Killer, or what I like to call "the best New Order song that New Order didn't write", the Bloodhound Gang's "The Bad Touch". But outside their four radio hits (True Faith, Bizarre Love Triangle, Regret, and Blue Monday) the CD is pretty weak. They don't do much that's imaginative from a lyrical perspective, the vocal tracks kind of run together, and there's little interesting instrumentally. It's like they had to distill all their talent into those four huge hits, all of which still get significant airplay on alt-rock radio today (probably the only older bands that still see play on alt-rock radio are punk forefathers like The Clash and the Ramones). I guess this was double disappointing because it was the second most expensive CD of the ones I bought, after only the Who (and only a dollar less than that double CD).
So that's my review. Listen at your own risk. And just bum Pixies stuff off Doruk; apparently he loves them enough that he downloaded about their whole library for Rock Band, and Reese bitches every time he has to cycle through it to find the songs he wants.
The Who - "The Ultimate Collection"
The Airborne Toxic Event - self-titled
Against Me! - "New Wave"
New Order - "(the best of) New Order"
Pixies - "Wave of Mutilation: Best of the Pixies"
The Who I know I like, I just didn't have any of their CDs. The Airborne Toxic Event I've talked about, it was kind of a random, discounted buy and damn I'm glad I did. I had Against Me!'s previous CD, and liked it a lot, and this one wasn't quite as good, but was still worth the buy. Even if probably the best song, Thrash Unreal, has the refrain "No mother ever dreams her daughter will grow up to be a junkie." Real uplifting there.
So that leaves the two other "best of" CDs, from bands I wanted to know more about. The Pixies one was solid. The only song of theirs I really knew was "Here Comes Your Man", but I know how influential they were, and I remember one of my college roommates, Karl, was a big fan. It's an odd CD, because there's no other songs on it that really scream "this is a great song", but almost all of them are listenable, which you rarely get from any CD, even a greatest hits CD.
The New Order CD, however, was a huge disappointment. I love their type of sound, even as it has translated to the Killer, or what I like to call "the best New Order song that New Order didn't write", the Bloodhound Gang's "The Bad Touch". But outside their four radio hits (True Faith, Bizarre Love Triangle, Regret, and Blue Monday) the CD is pretty weak. They don't do much that's imaginative from a lyrical perspective, the vocal tracks kind of run together, and there's little interesting instrumentally. It's like they had to distill all their talent into those four huge hits, all of which still get significant airplay on alt-rock radio today (probably the only older bands that still see play on alt-rock radio are punk forefathers like The Clash and the Ramones). I guess this was double disappointing because it was the second most expensive CD of the ones I bought, after only the Who (and only a dollar less than that double CD).
So that's my review. Listen at your own risk. And just bum Pixies stuff off Doruk; apparently he loves them enough that he downloaded about their whole library for Rock Band, and Reese bitches every time he has to cycle through it to find the songs he wants.