Matt and Andrew's CD a Day project

October 1: REM - Man on the Moon original soundtrack
October 2: REM - Reveal
October 3: REM - In Time: The Best Of, 1988-2003
October 4: REM - Rarities and B-Sides, 1988-2003
October 5: REM - Around the Sun
October 6: The Divine Comedy - Absent Friends
October 7: Athlete and Shed Seven
October 8: Feeder - Seven Days in the Sun and Turn
October 9: A & Doves
October 10: Embrace - I Wouldn't Want to Happen to You and Make It Last
October 11: Flogging Molly - Within a Mile of Home
October 12: Better than Ezra - Live at House of Blues New Orleans
October 13: Feeder - Come Back Around
October 14: Supergrass: Supergrass is 10; the Best of 94-04
October 15: Supergrass - Bonus Live EP
October 16: Manic Street Preachers - Lipstick Traces: A Secret History (disc 1)
October 17: Manic Street Preachers - Lipstick Traces: A Secret History (disc 2)
October 18: Soul Asylum - Hang Time
October 19: Various Artists - Sweet Relief II: Gravity of the Situation - the Songs of Vic Chesnutt
October 20: Waiting for December - Turnaround
October 21: Dishwalla - Pet Your Friends
October 22: Jimmy Eat World - Futures
October 23: Jimmy Eat World - Futures (demo disc)
October 24: Various Artists - Midpoint Music Festival Compilation 2004
October 25: 3 Colours Red - Revolt
October 26: Lemonheads - It's a Shame About Ray
October 27: Lemonheads - Come on Feel the Lemonheads
October 28: The Verve Pipe (self-titled)
October 29: Music from the motion picture Team America: World Police
October 30: Various Artists - Budweiser True Music
October 31: Reubens Accomplice - I Blame the Scenery

Best album: Jimmy Eat World - Futures
Worst album: Reubens Accomplice (hm... strangely fitting)
Most disappointing: (sigh) REM - Around the Sun

Boy, October was a bit of a hodge-podge for me, wasn't it? It appears REM are flagging a bit in the rock marathon, and Jimmy Eat World are coming on fast. Meanwhile, I probably listened to more $1 British singles than are healthy.
Yes, yes, this is now nearly a month behind; but I'll catch up quickly. Look for November new releases from Stroke 9 and Collective Soul (and maybe U2). Also, I need some Christmas money, so it's time for another round of Keep-Or-Sell. And maybe, just maybe, Matt will rejoin us for a very special Christmas edition.

October 1: REM - Man on the Moon original soundtrack
October 2: REM - Reveal
October 3: REM - In Time: The Best Of, 1988-2003
October 4: REM - Rarities and B-Sides, 1988-2003
October 5: REM - Around the Sun
October 6: The Divine Comedy - Absent Friends
October 7: Athlete and Shed Seven
October 8: Feeder - Seven Days in the Sun and Turn
October 9: A & Doves
October 10: Embrace - I Wouldn't Want to Happen to You and Make It Last
October 11: Flogging Molly - Within a Mile of Home
October 12: Better than Ezra - Live at House of Blues New Orleans
October 13: Feeder - Come Back Around
October 14: Supergrass: Supergrass is 10; the Best of 94-04
October 15: Supergrass - Bonus Live EP
October 16: Manic Street Preachers - Lipstick Traces: A Secret History (disc 1)
October 17: Manic Street Preachers - Lipstick Traces: A Secret History (disc 2)
October 18: Soul Asylum - Hang Time
October 19: Various Artists - Sweet Relief II: Gravity of the Situation - the Songs of Vic Chesnutt
October 20: Waiting for December - Turnaround
October 21: Dishwalla - Pet Your Friends
October 22: Jimmy Eat World - Futures
October 23: Jimmy Eat World - Futures (demo disc)
October 24: Various Artists - Midpoint Music Festival Compilation 2004
October 25: 3 Colours Red - Revolt
October 26: Lemonheads - It's a Shame About Ray
October 27: Lemonheads - Come on Feel the Lemonheads
October 28: The Verve Pipe (self-titled)
October 29: Music from the motion picture Team America: World Police
October 30: Various Artists - Budweiser True Music
October 31: Reubens Accomplice - I Blame the Scenery

Best album: Jimmy Eat World - Futures
Worst album: Reubens Accomplice (hm... strangely fitting)
Most disappointing: (sigh) REM - Around the Sun

Boy, October was a bit of a hodge-podge for me, wasn't it? It appears REM are flagging a bit in the rock marathon, and Jimmy Eat World are coming on fast. Meanwhile, I probably listened to more $1 British singles than are healthy.
Yes, yes, this is now nearly a month behind; but I'll catch up quickly. Look for November new releases from Stroke 9 and Collective Soul (and maybe U2). Also, I need some Christmas money, so it's time for another round of Keep-Or-Sell. And maybe, just maybe, Matt will rejoin us for a very special Christmas edition.

Reubens Accomplice are some Phoenix buddies of Jimmy Eat World; sort of like the Steve and Edie if JEW were Frank Sinatra. Like Steve and Edie, they're not that talented, but Jim from JEW throws 'em a bone by playing "extraneous percussion" on here. (what, like egg shaker?)
I picked up this album at Waterloo because it was only $2, and that's good, because it's only worth about $2. Most of the songs come off as watered-down, sub-par Jimmy Eat World covers, until track 11, "Borders," when the band all of a sudden do a fantastic impersonation of late '80s REM. If you're really interested, they do have a new album out, and they're opening up for, of all people, Jimmy Eat World on their spring tour next year.

Supposedly this is a compilation featuring the Budweiser True Music Live bands (12 Pearls is the OKC band, ya know), and there are eight of them on here, but they're at the end of the CD. At the beginning are album tracks from Morrissey, the Darkness, the Von Bondies, the Streets, and Ben Kweller, all of which are top-notch. As for the Bud bands? I liked Welbilt, and Buckra and El Guapo were both good novelty-hits. Wasn't a fan of the others.
This CD came free with Blender magazine a month or so ago, so you might still be able to find a copy somewhere.

Amer-ee-ca! Amer-uh-ee-ca! Am-air-ica, f*ck yeah!
If you don't know what I'm talking about, you need to go see Team America, and then you need this album. Because Trey Parker and his little jew-fro hanger-on Matt Stone (you know, the South Park guys) are back, and this soundtrack album of original songs is hilarious, assuming you have no politically-correct pretensions whatsoever. Try "Everyone has AIDS" or perhaps "I'm so Ronery," sung by North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il's doppelganger puppet. If I hadn't listened to Jimmy Eat World's new one this month, this would be the album of the month. For real.

I don't know what's more surprising, how great this album was, or how crappy its follow-up, Underneath, was. I'd been a fan of that Verve Pipe song "The Freshmen;" I was a freshman in college at the time, how could I not be?
I didn't pick up the Verve Pipe's first album, but then a free copy of this one came to the Tulane newspaper's offices, and I snagged it because I liked the first single, "Hero." And... I was pleasantly surprised. Then very surprised. Then totally into it. This, seriously, is one of my favorite albums. Like a lot of follow-up albums, it's about the perils of being a rocker: check out "Supergig" or "La la." As a DJ in Oklahoma City said about the time this came out, it's like Verve Pipe spent two years in a basement listening to Matthew Sweet. Which is cool with me.
That's why I was so completely disappointed when Verve Pipe's third album came out and it completely sucked. I believe I sold it back within two weeks of buying it, I was so pissed off. So, here's my recommendation, kids: if you want some Verve Pipe, buy this album and download "The Freshmen." That's all you need.

At some point either right before or right after this album came out, Evan Dando admitted to an interviewer that he'd smoked so much crack in one sitting a whole week of shows had to be cancelled.
This album is a lot more unfocused than Shame About Ray; Belinda Carlisle and Juliana Hatfield show up to do backing vocals, and Rick James plays bass and sings backup on the song "Rick James Style" (with the chorus "don't wanna get stoned / but I don't wanna not get stoned"), but it all seems a little loosey-goosey. Then Dando tells us he doesn't want us to suck his dick on the song "Big Gay Heart," and it all makes sense: this man is a junkie, and he's fried out of his head. Which would also explain the follow-up album, 1996's Car Button Cloth, which lyrically made no sense whatsoever (I sold my copy back years ago), and the fact that the Lemonheads haven't put out any material since then. Wasted talent: more fun or less fun to listen to than no talent at all? Let's discuss on the message board.

Most people remember the Seattle scene of the early '90s, but there was also a parallel scene in Boston at about the same time: Pixies, Breeders, Belly, Dinosaur, Jr., Letters to Cleo, Throwing Muses, Juliana Hatfield, and the Lemonheads, among others. As it's turned out, they weren't as influential to what's on the radio today as the Seattle bands, and the Boston bands didn't sell as many albums, so they've sort of been forgotten.
This was the Lemonheads' breakthrough album, and it was a big influence on me in junior high, especially the rocked-out cover of "Mrs. Robinson," though the originals are good, too. My old buddy George Irwin used to know how to play "Rockin' Stroll," which I remember thinking was cool. Even on this album, you could tell something was up with Evan Dando... a song about "my drug buddy"? Hmm...

When i'm in my truck, sometimes I dip into a really old music collection that's in a case in the backseat. This is one of those albums. I bought it back in England, after (maybe before?) I saw the band play at the student union in Manchester. They had a pretty big hit in the UK, called "Beautiful Day," which is on here, and then I believe they broke up after the follow-up single tanked. This is a good album, and I recommend it if you ever find it in a cut-out bin somewhere (it was released in the US on Epic, and I believe "Beautiful Day" got a little bit of airplay). Imagine someone who grew up listening to Oasis, the Verve, Nirvana, and AC/DC in equal proportions, and you can imagine what this sounds like: pretty damn good.

So 12 Pearls got invited to this festival in Cincinnati at the end of September, and got invited to put a track on the official compilation CD, which is awesome. You can get your own copy at this website. And I finally got around to really listening to my copy today. I'd had it on in the car on the way back from Ohio a couple of times, but you know how it goes: you're talking, you're not really listening to the music, man.
And... it's good. Really good. Seriously. 12p's been on a couple of other compilations , and they've been aggressively mediocre, but all the bands on here are good. Not necessarily hit singles, but great songs. I especially liked Ryan Adcock, Blasternaut, and Coltrane Motion, though I saw Coltrane Motion's set at the festival and they were terrible live. Oh, and track 15 is by a little band called Twelve Pearls. They're not bad, either.

On previous releases, Jimmy Eat has let some of the original demos for their albums trickle out, and they were radically different from the finished product, allowing a window into the creative process (or letting you see what a rocker would sound like as a slow, acoustic song, or vice-versa). So, as a bonus to their new album, you could buy the deluxe edition for $2 more, containing demos of all of the tracks.
And... it's completely inessential. Either the weird demos were removed in favor of later takes or the band had a coherent vision of what they wanted to accomplish, but the demos really aren't that different from the finished, polished product. "Work" does sound pretty good with a distorted drum loop, though.

The reason I've gotten so behind in posting on this thing is that I wanted to really let this album digest with me before writing about it. Not to sound cooler-than-thou, but I've been into Jimmy Eat World since early '97, when I heard "Call It In the Air" on a CMJ sampler and picked up Static Prevails at the Mushroom in New Orleans in the $2 cut-out used bin. I ordered their self-titled EP and had it sent to me in England, I bought Clarity the week it came out, and I remember eagerly listening to an advance copy of Bleed American that the lead singer of 13 Stars brought with him to a show with 12p in Lawton in the summer of '01 (for some reason, listening to JEW in a metal club in Lawton seemed really subversive at the time). Simply put, I believe Jimmy Eat are the best young band out there (they're only my age), and have the potential to be spectacularly huge.

So does Futures deliver? Oh, yeah. It takes the best parts of Clarity and the best parts of Bleed American and builds on them. The band's jumped to the next level. I love it when a band gets some hype behind it, gets a lot of backing from the record company, and makes good on the expectations. Liz Phair is on backing vocals, and Gil Norton, the guy who produced Foo Fighters' Colour and the Shape and the last two Feeder albums, is behind the boards, so you know some money was thrown into this project. Man, this album is good. But you don't have to take my word for it...

Yes, not only do I own this, but I own an autographed copy of this album. I am that cool. Dishwalla got a lot of flack for that "Counting Blue Cars" song, the one that speculated that God was a woman. When I first got to Tulane in the fall of '96, there were flyers around campus for the campus radio station that said something like "down with the Dishwallas and Everclears of the world! Listen to good music! WTUL 91.3 FM"
The trouble with me was, I thought Dishwalla was good music. Shows what I knew. The funny thing about this album is that most of the songs are pretty hard except for "Counting Blue Cars," which is probably why they're now thought of as one-hit wonders.

These were some nice boys from Georgia that we hung out with at a music festival in Nashville about a year ago. They'd moved from Rome, Ga. to Murfreesboro, Tenn. to "make it." (why Murfreesboro? You got me.) Anyway, we traded discs, and I've been meaning to pull this one back out for awhile.
It really is good, solid roots-rock, with one drawback: everything, down to Patrick Collum's voice, sounds waaay too much like the Counting Crows. Which is probably why they weren't signed, and their website is now defunct. Tough luck, guys.
If you ever find this online or something, download "Sometimes" and "Come Home Elizabeth." You won't be sorry.

Matt (hey everybody, remember him?) was nice enough to procure this for me at a Randy's M&M bargain bin sale a few weeks back 'cause it has an REM song on it.
Vic Chesnutt is a guy from Athens, Ga. who's paralyzed from the waist down and writes quirky acoustic songs. Michael Stipe discovered him and produced his first couple of albums. Sweet Relief is a charity organization that works to pay musicians' health coverage. So REM rounded up a bunch of their celebrity friends to do Vic Chesnutt songs, and it's a pretty A-list group on here (in 1996, when this came out, at least): Garbage, Hoote and the Blowfish, Soul Asylum, Live, Smashing Pumpkins, Cracker, and Indigo Girls, among others. Madonna even does backing vocals on Joe Henry's song.
Is Vic Chesnutt a great songwriter? Eh. Some of these songs are pretty decent, but even the good ones are better lyrically than musically.

As an interesting footnote, the REM track is recorded with a drum machine, eerily foreshadowing Bill Berry's departure a year later.

I think Soul Asylum are a really interesting case in rock history, because they somehow managed to hang around in the national music scene for 10 years without being any good, then suddenly had a huge album with a bunch of hit singles (Grave Dancer's Union), then went back to mediocrity. This album's from 1988, and I gotta admit, it kinda sucks. There are two good songs, "Sometime to Return," and "Cartoon," and the rest is pretty much crap.
Unfortunately, I bought it for $2 or something in a used bin probably 10 years ago, and it's so beat up nobody would buy it back from me.

Now disc 2 is pretty good; showing off all the Manics' influences, from the obvious (Guns 'N Roses, Nirvana, three Clash covers) to the less obvious ("Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head," "Can't Take My Eyes off of You," a George Michael cover).

Got this in the discount import bin at Waterloo; disc 1 is a collection of b-sides over the Manics' career, and disc 2 is all cover versions. Disc 1 was a bit boring; no real stand-out cuts, though it was interesting to hear "Judge Yr'Self," which was supposed to be the lead single from the Judge Dredd soundtrack before Manics guitarist Richey Edwards disappeared.