#1045: The Lost Chapters: Doctor Kathryn

The original title for this chapter was “My Sister, Age, and How Things Change”.  It was originally Chapter 8.

RECORD STORE TALES #1045: The Lost Chapters: Doctor Kathryn

My sister had some distinct musical phases.  Early on, she decided that she was going to like most of the music that I liked.  At first that meant Quiet Riot, Kiss, and Motley Crue.  Motley Crue was her favourite, but not for the right reasons.  They were her favourite because a) Nikki and Tommy were really tall, and b) they both had spikey hair.

There was further evidence that my sister was bordering on wimp territory.  One was that she didn’t like W.A.S.P.  In fact she hated W.A.S.P.  I’m not sure if it was Blackie Lawless’ voice, or if it was the fact that he drank “blood” from a “human skull”.  Either way, I liked W.A.S.P. a lot, and if she didn’t like them too, this demonstrated an unhealthy streak of independence.

Then, the proverbial shit hit the fan.  (We didn’t have air conditioning back then, just fans.)  One day in 1985, she decided that she liked The Pointer Sisters.  And Cyndi Lauper.  And Corey Hart.  She always liked Bryan Adams, but I forgave her this.  Bryan wore jeans and T-shirts, so he was still firmly in rock territory, even if he wasn’t heavy metal.  (I didn’t find out for a while yet that Bryan did in fact have some metallic roots.  He wrote several songs with Kiss, including the heaviest material on the Creatures Of The Night album.)  The music that Kathryn liked was incorrectly labelled by us as “New Wave”.  We didn’t know that New Wave was a term usually used for bands like Blondie, Devo, or the Talking Heads.  We just assumed all crappy pop music with synthesizers was New Wave.  And New Wave was bad.  Very very bad.

Back then, life was simple.  Life was black and white.  Whatever MuchMusic’s “Power Hour” played was good.  Everything else was bad.  The only exceptions to that that rule were Kim Mitchell and Bryan Adams.  I’m not sure why Kim was an exception, except that he and long hair, and that I liked him, and so did the next door neighbour.  If you wanted to boil it down further, stuff with guitars was good.  Stuff with keyboards was bad.  And the stuff Kathryn listened to didn’t have any guitars, just lots of keyboards, fake synth drums and people with really silly clothes and hair.

There were a few exceptions.  I had never known a Van Halen without keyboards, so I accepted them.  They were clearly a heavy metal band.  The Power Hour played them all the time, David Lee Roth had wicked hair, and everybody was talking about that guitar player.  Even if I didn’t know the difference between a guitar and a bass, and thought that Michael Anthony was in fact Eddie Van Halen, I decided that Van Halen were cool.  You were allowed to like them.  Eventually I sneaked ZZ Top into the list of music that was allowed as well, because one of the neighbours said they were like Van Halen.

So if the music Kathryn liked was bad, and the music I liked was good, you can imagine the arguments.  They were glorious and often ended in physical injury and/or destruction of property, and not just by me.

Her awful taste in music even held back my own progress.  She liked Bon Jovi first, therefore I had to dislike Bon Jovi—until they released that damned “Wanted: Dead Or Alive” song.  The song was so good, so undeniable, I had to let Bon Jovi into my life.  I still think it’s a fantastic song, well written, well played, with some beautiful 12 string guitar.  (Another reason Bon Jovi didn’t make the grade at first was due to their keyboards.  This does not explain why Europe did make the grade.  There were many inconsistencies.)

Kathryn’s rebellion worsened.  Her taste in music declined.  I won’t even begin to list some of the awful music she listened to, but I will say that she bottomed out in 1990 with New Kids On The Block, MC Hammer, and Vanilla Ice.  Obviously, this was a person who had no clear idea about integrity within music.  However, like a junkie who hits rock bottom, she eventually started to rise up again, with a little encouragement from Her Loving Brother.

The turning point was when Vanilla Ice cancelled his Kitchener tour date in early 1991.  His reason stated was that he was too big a star to play a town like Kitchener.  There was an instant hatred for the man all over town.  Kathryn sold her Vanilla Ice tape immediately.

There were some other clear signs of improvement.  A newfound obsession with Cheap Trick was good.  Sure, they weren’t metal, but they were definitely rock!  Hell, they even worshipped Kiss within their song lyrics.  I happily encouraged this love of Cheap Trick, and even bought her Cheap Trick tapes.  I think most of her Cheap Trick collection was courtesy of moi.

Rod Stewart came next.  I feel that perhaps Rod snuck in the door due to his enormous hair, but I didn’t care.  Rod still had a rock pedigree.  I encouraged her love of Rod.  I asked her questions about him and his music.  It was like carefully manipulating a mentally ill person back to health, and I was succeeding in a marginal way.  I felt that she’d never come all the way back to metal, even though she owned tapes by Bon Jovi, Def Leppard and Poison.  Yet I was satisfied with the progress we were making.

Now, 15 years later, I own Rod Stewart, Cheap Trick, Bryan Adams, The Payola$…all music that she introduced me to.  She got the last laugh.  I’ll never admit that she was always the smarter one (I can’t, since she never understood any movies we watched) but I’ll admit that she got the better of me on this one.  We even attended concerts together.  It started with Blue Rodeo, then we saw Jann Arden and Amanda Marshall.  While I still won’t own any albums by Arden or Marshall, they both put on excellent shows.  Blue Rodeo blew us both away and now they’re one of my favourites.  I’ve never seen any band more often than Blue Rodeo, and I’ll argue that they’re Canada’s best band, with Rush as a close second.

Even my parents get points.  They sure hated “Big Balls” by AC/DC, but now I own more Johnny Cash and Gordon Lightfoot than they do.

Now, I certainly can’t allow Kathryn to come off as the winner in this chapter.  So here’s a punch in the arm for you.  There, now we’re even.

#1044: Top Eddie Van Halen quotes

I don’t know what I was collecting these quotes for, but I found them on a hard drive recently, and so here are my favourite quotes by Eddie Van Halen!

“I can’t read music. Instead, I’d do stuff inside the piano, do harmonics and all kinds of crazy things. They used to put me in these annual piano contests down at Long Beach City College, and two years in a row, I won first prize – out of like 5,000 kids! The judges were like, ‘Very interesting interpretation!’ I thought I was playing it right.”

“The one thing I do have is good ears. I don’t mean perfect pitch, but ears for picking things up. I developed my ear through piano theory, but I never had a guitar lesson in my life, except from Eric Clapton off of records.”

“It’s music theory, not music fact”

“If it sounds good, it is good.  Who cares if you didn’t do it modernly.”

“To hell with the rules. If it sounds right, then it is.”

“I destroyed a lot of guitars trying to get them to do what I wanted, but I learned something from every guitar I tore apart, and discovered even more things.”

“Music is for people. The word ‘pop’ is simply short for popular. It means that people like it. I’m just a normal jerk who happens to make music. As long as my brain and fingers work, I’m cool.”

“David Lee Roth had the idea that if you covered a successful song, you were half way home. C’mon – Van Halen doing ‘Dancing in the Streets’? It was stupid. I started feeling like I would rather bomb playing my own songs than be successful playing someone else’s music.”

“It’s all about sound. It’s that simple. Wireless is wireless, and it’s digital. Hopefully somewhere along the line somebody will add more ones to the zeros. When digital first started, I swear I could hear the gap between the ones and the zeros.”

“If you have a great-sounding guitar that’s a quality instrument and a good amp, and you know how to make the guitar talk, that’s the key. It starts with the guitar and knowing what it should sound and feel like.”

“Actually, if I could deliberately sit down and write a pop hit, all my songs would be pop hits! Let’s put it this way. I play what I like to hear. And sometimes I like to hear something poppy, and sometimes I don’t.”

 

MOVIE REVIEW: Jodorowsky’s Dune (2014)

JODOROWSKY’S DUNE (2014 Sony Pictures)

Directed by Frank Pavich

What do Alien, Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Flash Gordon, Masters of the Universe, The Terminator, and Blade Runner all have in common? They all bear the imprint of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s attempt to make a film version of Frank Herbert’s Dune in the mid-70s. 2001: A Space Odyssey was the definitive space movie, and Star Wars was just a gleam in Lucas’ eye.  Dune, considered by many to be unfilmable, was perfect for Jodorowsky.  The Chillean-French director was considered a madman, albeit one with a sky-high imagination.  Of Dune, he sought to give the audience a druggy trip without the drugs.  But he also sought to make so much more – “a prophet”, he described it.  Something that would change the consciousness of the audience, and the future of movies.  Free the imagination, the mind, the soul.  He saw it as something much bigger than making a film, and so he assembled a team of “spiritual warriors” to join him in making his vision real.

His warriors included the Swiss genius H.R. Giger, known for his biomechanical style. Comic artists Chris Foss and Jean “Mœbius” Giraud were on board.  (Ian Gillan fans will recognize Foss’ style from the cover of his Clear Air Turbulence album.) Special effects genius Dan O’Bannon sold all his possessions and moved to France to work with the team. Pink Floyd and Magma were assigned to do music for specific planetary settings. Mick Jagger, Orson Welles, Salvador Dali, David Carradine and Udo Kier signed on, with Welles to play the grotesque Baron Harkonnen. Jodorowsky convinced him by offering to hire his favourite French chef for his catering.  As the key character of Paul Atreides, the messiah of Dune, who could he cast but his own son Brontis?  The boy went through gruelling physical and mental training for  the role.

The team assembled what is now known as the Dune book, an incredibly detailed shot-by-shot storyboard, several inches thick, and filled with images that found full motion and sound later on in the aforementioned films.  Giger’s designs are especially recognizable, including one that foreshadows his famous Alien Xenomorph.

Jodorowsky used Herbert’s Dune as the basis for his own, but began to drastically change the storyline.  Some of his original ideas were brilliant, but his ending is completely baffling.  In an “I am Spartacus!” moment, Paul dies, which does not happen in the book.  Suddenly his consciousness transfers to the people of planet Arrakis, who all proclaim to be Paul.  The planet comes back to life, with green jungles and blue oceans appearing.  Arrakis then breaks orbit, and shoots through space to share its new joined consciousness with the universe.  Heady stuff perhaps, but a sharp change in direction to Herbert’s more serious science fiction style.  Jodorowsky believed in his story, with an unbelievable passion.  He is visibly angered at what comes next.

When movie executives told him that the film had to come in at 90 minutes, it was the beginning of the end.  No, he said.  Eight hours, or 20 hours, he would make the movie he needed to make!  Studio executives don’t like hearing such things, and fearing budget overruns, cancelled the Jodorowsky version of Dune.  His team scattered, with many such as Giger, O’Bannon and Foss meeting soon again on Ridley Scott’s Alien.  The Dune project was handed to David Lynch, who Jodorowsky believed was the only other person who could have realized the movie the right way.  It filled him with feelings of dread that soon turned to glee when he saw just how bad Lynch’s Dune turned out.  Yet he knew, it had to be the movie executives who ruined it.

This is the story of Jodorowsky’s Dune, a documentary film by Frank Pavich.  You will be stunned by the images that this team created, and by Alejandro’s deep passion for making his art.  This is your own chance to see what might have been.  Blu-ray recommended.

4.5/5 stars

REVIEW: Foo Fighters – Sonic Highways – summary

The Meat Man was always pushing.  “Watch this, listen to this.”  To his credit, he introduced me to a lot of music this way.  He wasn’t so open to my suggestions, but Roky Erickson is a personal favourite now that I discovered through Meat, by watching the Foo Fighters’ Sonic Highways series.  Most of things he pushed me to watch or listen to never stuck.  A few, like the Moody Blues and Roky, did stick through multiple years.

Over the Christmas holidays of 2014, he pushed again and we spent an entire day watching the Sonic Highways series.  I took down his comments, and wrote eight reviews on the fly in a single day.  Eight hours of viewing, eight hours of writing.  I resented a lot of his pushing, but this time, the push was really worth it.

I wanted him to return in the new year to help me finish and get the series posted.  What he realized then, and I did not, was that the series was already finished.  It didn’t need any polishing.  Sure, it could have used some more connective tissue but the key words were all there.  I waited and waited for his return, but he was simply not interested in revisiting.  So the reviews sat there unpublished for nine years, until I finally decided to post them now.

I’ve never written a song by song review of an album before so this was something that only ever happened once.  I’m grateful that I did it and I hope you enjoy it.  I owe Meat a thanks for pushing me this time.  I haven’t played the album since.

 

Sonic Highways 1 – Chicago “Something From Nothing”

 

Sonic Highways 2 – Washington – “The Feast and the Famine”

 

Sonic Highways 3 – Nashville “Congregation”

 

Sonic Highways 4 – Austin – “What Did I Do?/God as my Witness”

 

Sonic Highways 5 – Los Angeles – “Outside”

 

Sonic Highways 6 – New Orleans – “In the Clear”

 

Sonic Highways – 7 Seattle – “Subterranean”

 

Sonic Highways 8 – New York – “I am a River”

 

4/5 stars (album)

5/5 stars (series)

 

 

 

REVIEW: Foo Fighters – Sonic Highways 8 – New York – “I am a River”

FOO FIGHTERS – Sonic Highways 8 – New York – “I am a River”

New York City.  The end of our journey, and the very last song on Sonic Highways.

We’ve had a hell of an education so far.  New York is the final stop, the “greatest city in America” according to Grohl.  If you make it there, you can make it anywhere, says LL Cool J.  Every style of music could be heard just by turning the dial.  Tin Pan Alley, Billy Holiday, Woodie Guthrie, Lou Reed, New York Dolls…the scene was eternal and endless.  The streets, and the recording studios, were tight and crammed with people.

CBGB’s, Max’s Kansas City, the folk singer-songwriter scenes all formed a potent mix of styles.  The Ramones and Dead Boys emerged, as did the hip hop scene.  Hip hop started in New York, in the Bronx, but soon spread to Brooklyn and Queens and Long Island.  Guys like the Beastie Boys made the jump from punk rock to hip hop, because the attitude was the same.  “Rap seemed like a party, and then Public Enemy came out,” says Grohl.  They introduced a militancy that hadn’t existed in rap before.  Chuck D was influenced by the things he saw around him in the aftermath of the Vietnam war.

Woodie Guthrie did something similar.  He “wrote what he saw” which is something Dave Grohl tried to do, for a change, on “I am a River”.  Dave noticed that things are all connected, the stories and the people.  “I am a River” also refers to an underground river that runs beneath Electric Lady studios.

Jimmy “Shoes” Iovine became one of the most powerful men in music, and he was right there recording John Lennon and Elton John in the late 70’s.  Electric Lady studios, built by Hendrix, was the place for artists like Kiss, Bowie and Zeppelin to record.  But Dave chose the Magic Shop, in Soho.  Owner Steve Rosenthal has a collection of vintage keyboards to use (and bands like Coldplay did use them).  So did Norah Jones, Arcade Fire, and David Bowie.  The Magic Shop isn’t in the nicest part of town, but it does have an incredible sounding drum room.  Butch Vig recorded Sonic Youth’s Dirty there.  The room even has a Neve board.

When MTV stopped playing rock and roll, the Magic Shop had to do something to survive.  Now, the main income in made in another room, restoring old classic recordings for permanent storage.  The future, says Steve Rosenthal, is “cloudy”.  He doesn’t know if recording studios are obsolete in the face of laptops and easy home recording.  The final interview presented is with President Obama, who thinks it’s more important to produce art than to consume it.  “It’s all about the garage band, the juke joint, the jazz club.  It’s about people rejecting what’s already there to create something entirely new.”  It’s the American dream he says.  Play some rock and roll, take a chance, and make it.  Obama refers to “musical rivers” that connect us, bringing us back full circle.

Finally, “I am a River” closes the Sonic Highways series and album.  It has a long, slow and meandering Floydian intro, and a pleasant easy melody.  Dave mentions the “water” beneath the “subway floor”.  It’s your typical Foo Fighters closer. It builds from quiet to more epic, with choruses of shimmering guitars.   It’s nothing new for Foo Fighters, but it is basically everything you expect for a closer.  A youth string section joins them to end the album in style.

As an album, we applaud the Foo Fighters for the concept and vision of what into making it.  Without the TV series, however, we would have no inclination about what makes each song different.  Sonic Highways would remain “just another Foo Fighters album,” all but interchangeable with the last two.  That’s unfortunate.

Episode 4.5/5 stars

Song 3.5/5 stars

Album 4/5 stars

Series 5/5 stars

REVIEW: Foo Fighters – Sonic Highways 7 – Seattle – “Subterranean”

A HUGE thank you to Uncle Meat, who found the original writeup for this episode of Sonic Highways in his email.  Now the series is posted complete.  Thank you!!

FOO FIGHTERS – Sonic Highways – 7 Seattle – “Subterranean”

Seattle. The home of Nirvana and the birthplace of the very first Foo Fighters demos. It’s a place Dave is intimately familiar with.

Low black clouds, rain and long isolated winters really informed a lot of the gloom Seattle was known for. Dave didn’t know anything about the city before he moved there. “It’s really cold,” a young Dave says on an old home movie. Today, it is a place for both bright and dark memories. It’s become more commercialized, too.

Robert Lang studio is a weird, stone building that a killer drum sound. No walls are parallel and all surfaces are uneven. Robert Lang would trade studio time to help pay excavating costs, and he’s still not done building it. It has rooms deep underground. He almost got buried alive a couple times. A neighbor’s wall collapsed. It was also the last place Nirvana recorded. Since Nirvana, Death Cab for Cutie, Dave Matthews Band, and the Presidents of the United States of America recorded there for the vibe. Foo Fighters returned a few times.

Seattle didn’t have much going for it in the 1970’s except for Heart. Even Heart weren’t really associated with Seattle, because they were always out touring. A new wave/punk scene started bubbling under, as it tends to. But rock bands didn’t tend to stop in Seattle; it was too far out of the way. The scene had to create itself, because that was the only way for live music to exist there. Sub-pop records put out records by the Melvins, Green River, Soundgarden, Mudhoney and more. There was no thought of commercial success.

The bands were sloppier than what was on MTV, and the scene was typified by small sweaty shows with loads of audience interaction. Nirvana were actually latecomers and didn’t even have a name with they started recording. They weren’t expected to go anywhere, but they quickly found their footing. Meanwhile, bassist Nate Mendel was playing with Sunny Day Real Estate, who later became 1/2 of the first Foo Fighters lineup. Dave Grohl recorded about 40 songs towards the end of Nirvana, by himself, which were not meant for public consumption. The songs range from hilarious crap to future Foo Fighters hits. They weren’t meant for Nirvana either, since Kurt already wrote songs so naturally.

Nirvana exploded. So did Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, and Soundgarden. Seattle became the place to be, and grunge became the fashion. It became a commercial business. When Kurt died, Dave had to discover his love of music. As for Seattle, new people and new scenes soon took the place of the old, though the old still persists and inspires.

“Subterranean” was recorded in that studio deep underground. Hawkins played the drums, and Dave the cymbals, in order to get better separation. Dave makes a great “lead cymbalist”. Regardless of the setting, the band make recording look like a shitload of fun. Ben Gibbard from Death Cab joins them on guitar for this Beatles-vibed ballad. There’s also some Floyd in the grooves. It’s good to get a slow song at the stage of the album, and it fits the gloomy mood of Seattle. You might even read some Layne Stayley influences into the lyrics about being “deep in the dirt”.

Episode 4.5/5 stars

Song 4/5 stars

 

Sonic Highways 1 – Chicago “Something From Nothing”

 

Sonic Highways 2 – Washington – “The Feast and the Famine”

 

Sonic Highways 3 – Nashville “Congregation”

 

Sonic Highways 4 – Austin – “What Did I Do?/God as my Witness”

 

Sonic Highways 5 – Los Angeles – “Outside”

 

Sonic Highways 6 – New Orleans – “In the Clear”

 

Sonic Highways – 7 Seattle – “Subterranean”

 

Sonic Highways 8 – New York – “I am a River”

 

REVIEW: Foo Fighters – Sonic Highways 6 – New Orleans – “In the Clear”

FOO FIGHTERS – Sonic Highways 6 – New Orleans – “In the Clear”

New Orleans.  Streetcars, paddlewheels, big brass and the Foo Fighters.  Let’s rock!

The city is alive with music, all day and all night.  It starts with the jazz, Louis Armstrong all the way down to Harry Connick Jr.  Little Richard transformed it into rock and roll.  Dr. John was born there, and was mentored by Louis Armstrong.  Preservation Jazz Hall was the historic place to be, but could it stand up to the full blast of the Foo Fighters?  The streetfront venue picks up all sorts of crowd noise, from horses to passing musicians.  It’s all part of the charm.

In this installment, Dave speaks to Allen Toussaint, born and raised in New Orleans, in a segregated city.  It was actually illegal for black and white musicians to share a stage together.  “It just seemed jive to me,” says Dr. John, who played with who he wanted to play with regardless of the consequences.   Allen Toussaint wrote one of his biggest hits, “Summer Nights” which was directly inspired by the New Orleans sky at night.  Also from New Orleans came the “first family of funk”, the Meters.  The funk they produced was a new form for New Orleans – the Meters sound.

The Foo Fighters were invited to play the Jazz Festival, an historic event that couldn’t even happen until the end of segregation laws.  Until then, a jazz festival in New Orleans was simply not possible.  It’s an honor to be invited.  New Orleans was a cultural mecca, rich with distinct influences from around the Gulf of Mexico, and Africa as well.  Dave’s also invited to the Hall’s piano player’s house to eat and jam with his family.  It’s a really old fashioned traditional way of life.  Music is more important to the people of New Orleans than any of the other cities they visited.

When Katrina hit, seven of the eight members of the Preservation Hall band lost their homes.  It had a devastating effect but also brought people together.  The people learned to appreciate music just a little bit more.

It’s hard to get Grohl back into the Preservation Hall to work on the chunky, Motley riff of “In the Clear”.  The French quarter has its charms, and he’s busy hanging at the bar across the street with Nate Mendel!  Once they get their shit together, “In the Clear” emerges as a singalong hard rock track.  The lyrics reflect the perseverance  of the city, but the music doesn’t have any of its rich cultural sheen.  For a song inspired by New Orleans, and jamming with these local musicians, it would have been nice for them to shed a bit of the rock.  You can’t hear any influence of the old.

Episode 4/5 stars

Song 2/5 stars (Meat)

Song 3/5 stars (LeBrain)

REVIEW: Foo Fighters – Sonic Highways 5 – Los Angeles – “Outside”

FOO FIGHTERS – Sonic Highways 5 – Los Angeles – “Outside”

L.A.  Home of Pat Smear and the Germs.  Pat wouldn’t live anywhere else.  It’s Hotel California!

Lots of people went to L.A. to make it.  Very few did.  The first that did in the 1960’s had sunny, California sounds.  Then came the excess and rock and roll stylings of Motley Crue.  To a young Duff McKagan, straight off the bus from Seattle, it was “the wild west”.  The desert itself attracted the artist types and a hippy mentality.  Foo Fighters recorded The Color and the Shape there, but on a day off, Dave went into the desert to find an obscure studio called Rancho de la Luna.  It was home of the “desert scene” there.  Daniel Lanois helped set it up.  It’s the weirdest studio you’ve ever seen, loaded with weird, creepy and quaint nicknacks.  It’s tiny. How the fuck are the Foo Fighters going to fit in that room?

That little room necessitates all five players to be in close quarters.  No room for pianos this time, so it has to be a bare arrangement.  In the desert, there is nothing to distract the artists.  Except Joe Walsh, who shows up to lay down a quintessential solo, blowing the mind of Taylor Hawkins, who just gushes.  “That was so fuckin’ RAD!”

Meanwhile, guitarist Pat Smear is eager to hit his old home town.  Rodney Bingenheimer was the DJ you wanted to impress back then, if you wanted to make it big.  He was the first to play Pat on the radio.  He was known as the “mayor of Sunset Strip”, knowing everybody and owning the coolest clubs.  Iggy Pop played there.  Paul Stanley would check it out to see what bands were coming up.  Joan Jett and Lita Ford were regulars.  They formed the Runaways in L.A., and struggled with the sexist assholes and persevered.  Pat Smear ended up as one of their groupies.  Pat formed the Germs with the very disturbed Darby Crash, who influenced Nirvana’s frontman (and Smear’s future bandmate) Kurt Cobain.  They were also the band who convinced Duff McKagan to play music.

As a footnote, Darby Crash purposely overdosed on heroine, in order to be remembered as famous.  Even this backfired when John Lennon was killed the following day, meaning nobody would ever remember the death of Darby Crash.

Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age was born in Palm Springs, “on the edge of civilization”.  Mario Lalli, Scott Reeder, and other cornerstones of the stoner rock scene would take a generator out into the desert and play concerts by word of mouth.  They’d take mushrooms and put on a show.  According to Scott Reeder, “there was nowhere for you to play, where you could get that fucked up.”  The environment was “lawless and free”, and that was the beginning of Kyuss.  They were the antithesis of what was happening in metal at the time: the precision and speed. This was more about making a big, heavy detuned noise.  According to Grohl, Kyuss “blew my fucking mind.”  He bought extra copies of Blues for the Red Sun just to give to people.

“Outside” doesn’t sound as much like Foo Fighters as much; Grohl’s voice has a thinner sound this time.  The lyrics recall the openness of the desert.  “There’s a long straight road, out of the cold.”  The chorus is really memorable.  There are certain guitar licks that sound like they were lifted from past Foo Fighters songs such as “Everlong”.  It’s really special on that Joe Walsh solo, where he makes two notes sound more important than any others in the whole song.

Episode 5/5 stars because Kyuss

Song 4/5 stars