The Doors

READER SPOTLIGHT: Holen MaGroin

This is the second Reader Spotlight at mikeladano.com.  Last time we spoke to Harrison from Australia.  This time…it’s the man, the myth, the enigma…Holen MaGroin!

 

Mike: Holen, I’m glad you agreed to sit down and chat.  I realize that you want to retain your anonymity.  How would you like us to address you? 

Holen:  I shall be addressed as Sir Guybrush Threepmorningwood. Always address me as sir. I have a very fragile ego on account of my infamous pretension, and need consistent approval from my fellow human beings to function.

Mike:  OK, Sir Guybrush…it won’t be hard to remember at all, thanks for that.  Now there has been reader speculation that you are from Australia.  Care to comment?

Sir Guybrush Threepmorningwood:  Harrison needs to step up his deductive game if he ever wants to make it as a detective. I’m proudly a heartland American. Unfortunately I’m also in the Bible Belt though, so there’s a lot of evangelical bungholes here. My practicing religion is Transcendental Nihilism.

M:  You’ve written some great reviews for us, but also some of the most bizarre.  The Shining comes to mind.  If I may be so blunt…what the hell, man?

SGT:  I hope that greatness and bizarre intertwine. I’m not sure I quite understand what you mean, but I’ll put it this way. If you were a Blue Jay during a full moon on the last day of a leap year and you broke a bottle of water, what color would the sound make? You see? Now it is all clear, isn’t it?

M:  Clear as mud.  One of my favourite lyrics by the Canadian group Sloan goes, “It’s not the band I hate, it’s their fans.”  Name that band for you.

SGT: That would probably be Nirvana. I don’t hate their music. I hated what they did by saying all the bands before them sucked, and Kurt’s “I’m so scared of fame that I signed to a major label and wrote a pop album” bullshit seemed so transparent to me. Nirvana does have quite a few tunes I enjoy. But their fans are a different story, especially back then. Any time a rock band reaches a mainstream level of success, they’re going to attract some crazy people. Nirvana certainly did, and Kurt decided to eat lead when they were still huge. So we’ll never see how their audiences would behave once all the fair-weather crazies just at the show for “Smells like Liquid Ass” had left them for the latest trendy group. It was those simpleton fans that ruined good music by deeming all rock that wasn’t hair metal at that point “grunge”. Seriously, any new band that didn’t have gang background vocals was grunge in the magazines. So a fantastically underrated band like Blind Melon gets written out of history because they’re seen as just a grunge band. Most people thought a grunge band meant a lesser clone of Pearl Jam or Nirvana. That’s why that scene burned out in a few years. The music was either a bad Nirvana copy, or it was being buried by bad Nirvana copies because everything was considered grunge now. Blind Melon put out two classic albums in their debut and Soup, and not many people have ever heard them because they’ll only ever be known for that single “No Rain”, which couldn’t sound less like them if it tried. It doesn’t sound like anything else they did. They’re not grunge at all! People categorizing things and forming groups ruins everything. I don’t hate Nirvana though, just the fair-weather fans that jumped on the rock bandwagon only to jump ship immediately after Kurt checked out of Hotel California.

I will have to add that people who worship Mike Patton piss me off too, they’re such fan boys. The whole “Patton is God” doesn’t mesh well with the fact that Patton is a total contrarian and the antithesis of a rock god. I love Faith No More and Mr. Bungle (Angel Dust is probably my favorite album of the ‘90s), but I don’t feel the need to suck Patton off for all of his zany projects of screaming and nasal whining. I just hate this whole worship culture. Worshipping stuff is creepy. Religious or not, having so much blind devotion for something just rubs me the wrong way. If you worship some dude, it’s like you’re trying to give the guy an oversized ego and elevating him to a status greater than a man. You can respect a guy’s work without spooning him. If I see a celebrity on the street I really don’t feel an urge to bug them. It just seems artificial.

M: As a huge Faith No More for most of my life, I totally get it.  Do you have the gift of music?  Can you rock an instrument?

SGT: I played the trumpet in middle school, but I quit because our band director wasn’t a character whose company I enjoyed. I can rock the drums okay, mediocre at bass, and I can come up with some decent song structures. I’m working on a single that will see the light of day hopefully by this Christmas.

M: I’ll look forward to hearing that!  

I often talk of a moment of clarity.  A moment when rock and roll suddenly “clicks” with a person for the first time.  I wrote about mine in the first chapter of Record Store Tales.  It was Iron Maiden’s “Run to the Hills” and life was never the same again.  Do you have a similar story?

SGT:  I was into the rock in a casual kind of way for a while, just the singles and crap like that. I listened to the first few Van Halen albums quite a lot, but I didn’t feel like I was getting any kind of deep connection. It was enjoyable, but not much more. Then I got Permanent Waves by Rush and it all started to click. That’s still my favorite Rush album, every song is fucking spectacular. That’s when the album format revealed itself to me, and I truly took on the Kids in the Hall mantra of “greatest hits albums are for housewives and little girls” from their record store skit on The Doors.

I had a narrow mind of what I thought rock could be until I listened to Rush. They really opened my head because the next album I got after Permanent Waves was Signals. Signals happened to be way different than Permanent Waves. It had many more keyboard orientated songs and it didn’t rock quite as hard. Not nearly as guitar orientated, but I grew to love it because the songs were great. It opened my mind wide to diversity in rock music, and how it could incorporate influences from other genres and contemporary sources. It was also the first of many times I’ve pooped my pants listening to music. It was that good.

M:  Changing gears for a moment.  Farts:  proud of ’em?

SGT:  That depends on the situation and your relationship status. If you’re single and really looking to establish a connection with a nice girl, then it’s probably best to blame it on the dog. But if the two of you have been dating for a while, I say loud and proud, or as Pantera would say, “Hot and Heavy”.

Stand up and squeeze. That will single-handedly gain you the favor of her dad, more than anything else you could possibly do for her. If it turns out that it’s more than gas coming out, make sure to aim for the wall and do a terrible job cleaning it up. This will anger your girlfriend and she’ll ultimately just clean it for you. That way when you’re married you can shit all over the place and never have to pick it up, and you can still blame it on the dog for poops and giggles. Take extra care to miss the toilet when you’re in the bathroom. The more time she spends cleaning is less time she spends nagging. Just don’t get it on any of her things or you will feel the wrath.

M:  Who’s the coolest person you’ve ever interviewed?  How about the worst?

SGT:  I don’t know about coolest, but I once contacted a dead guy using an Ouija board. He was pretty rude. But I guess when you’re dead you’re entitled to be rude. I don’t think I should tell you what he said because it’s pretty heinous. Actually, the body part of mine he wanted to use rhymes with heinous. Let’s just leave it at that.

M:  What bands, still alive and kicking, do you still want to scratch off your concert bucket list? 

SGT:  I want Racer X to do another tour so Paul Gilbert can blow my mind with Street Lethal in person. That album slays, the riff to the title track is one of the coolest I’ve ever heard. So complicated and yet still pretty catchy.

M:  What’s the last great band you discovered?

SGT:  There’s this band that started up in the 1960s that I’m not sure how many people have heard of. I only found out about them because I read an article about them getting sued for this song they wrote called “Stairway to Heaven”. The band is called Led Zeppelin, I’m not sure if you’ve heard of them? I don’t know if they were ever that big, but they had quite a few albums and a weird concert movie. It’s a fun time; you should check them out if you’ve never heard of them. You’re LeBrain so you might know them.

M: You ever dance with the devil in the pale moonlight?

SGT:  No, but have you ever rubbed another man’s rhubarb? Do you wanna get nuts? Come on, let’s get nuts! Honey-roasted preferably, those are the best kind. You’re buying, right?

M:  I’ll play the nut allergy card.  Thanks for doing this interview with us.  In the last Reader Spotlight, Harrison listed the members of his “dream super group”.  Care to take up the gauntlet and try your own?

SGT:  Yeah, I can manage that.

 

Roger Waters – Bass, backing vocals

Geddy Lee – Bass, backing vocals

Billy Sheehan – Bass

Tony Levin – Bass

Geezer Butler – Bass

Bob Daisley – Bass

Sting – Bass, backing vocals

David Ellefson – Bass, backing vocals

Jason Newsted – Bass, backing vocals

Steve Harris – Bass

Eddie Jackson – Bass, backing vocals

Derek Smalls – Bass, backing vocals

Ben Shepherd – Bass, backing vocals

John Paul Jones (he’s from that Led Zeppelin band) – Bass

James Lomenzo – Bass

Paul McCartney – Bass, backing vocals

Gene Simmons – Bass, backing vocals

Eric Avery – Bass

John Deacon – Bass

Jack Blades – Bass, backing vocals

Rob Grange – Bass

Billy Gould – Bass

Gary Karr – Bass

Flea – Trumpet

Glenn Danzig – Lead Vocals

Stewart Copeland – Hi-hat

Rick Wakeman – Keyboards

Bill Brufford – Drums

Phil Collins – Drums, backing vocals

Stephen Perkins – Steel Drums

Phil Rudd – Drums

 

They would ideally get up on stage and tour playing “Big Bottom” by Spinal Tap. They would immediately leave the building after playing this one song. Hopefully one of the bass players would hit the infamous brown note and the entire audience would shit their pants. If Chris Squire was still alive he’d be on the list too.

 

Thanks Sir Guybrush Threepmorningwood also known as Holen MaGroin!

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REVIEW: Elektra’s 40th Anniversary – Plunderphonics (1991 Elektra promo EP)

scan_20170127Elektra’s 40th Anniversary – Plunderphonics (1991 Elektra promo EP)

This is one of the weirdest CDs I have ever run across.  Remember in 1990, when Elektra did that anniversary CD called Rubáiyát that featured Elektra’s new bands covering Elektra’s old bands? It was the first release of Metallica’s “Stone Cold Crazy” and the first time anyone heard a hint of what Metallica were up to in the studio after Justice.  This promotional EP is a companion piece to Rubáiyát.

So what’s this EP? A “plunderphonic” is like a remix. The big difference is, they use only finished recordings, no multi-track master tapes. No going back to strip a vocal out of a song, no fiddling. Only actual snips of complete songs are used. A “new” piece is creating by chopping up and rearranging bits from other previously recorded pieces. Therefore, anybody can make their own plunderphonic using readily available songs. The man who invented the term, John Oswald, did the “plunderphonics” for this very rare promotional EP. His lightning-fast edits keeps things surprising.

The main attraction here, and the reason I own the CD, is a piece called “2 Net” by Metallica. I bet you never heard of that one, let alone heard the piece! It is a 1:21 mash-up of “Stone Cold Crazy” with a bunch of bits and bobs from …And Justice For All, and it’s as weird as that sounds. It’s a blur, almost incomprehensible. Fitting the thrash giants’ riffs into 1:21 will tend to have that effect. Building a composition out of Hetfield barks and Ulrich snares is fun as it sounds, even though it’s over before you can figure out what’s going on. Oswald mixed in some of Queen’s “Stone Cold Crazy” vocal for some melody. Crazy!

The most interesting track is the most unlikely: A cross between Carly Simon’s and Faster Pussycat’s “You’re So Vain”. The end result, “Vane” makes the two into one. If you have ever wanted to hear Taime Downe and Carly Simon perform the song together, this is your chance. It’s incredible how well the two versions contrast, since Faster Pussycat is about as different from Carly Simon as anyone can imagine.  It zips from Taime to Carly and back again, as they trade words almost seamlessly!  Another successful track is The Doors’ “O’Hell”. This is (obviously) based on “Hello, I Love You”. Bits of other Doors songs provide more instrumentation and effects.  Fans of Morrison will absolutely adore it and imagine their own plunderphonics to invent.  The MC5 arrive with “Mother”, based off the Kick Out the Jams album.  It’s a lot of shouting and screaming and it’s all good.  For something soft, check out “Anon” by Tim Buckley.  This is taken from Buckley’s “Anonymous Proposition”, made shorter and psychedelic.

It is very hard to describe the complexity of these tracks.  There could be hundreds of individual edits per song, because there is so much going on.  The Simon/Pussycat song is a great example of how this is more than just a gimmick.  It’s art, and anybody can try to do one themselves.  In fact, without knowing the name for it, I have heard many plunderphonics before, at our annual Sausagefest countdown.  Tom and Uncle Meat are skilled at making them, but I have never heard anything like these five tracks before — ever.  These are above and beyond anything I’ve heard in the field.

The liner notes indicate that five more plunderphonics were planned for this CD, but not included.  “Recipes” for making your own are inside.  It’s almost like five bonus tracks, but you have to make them yourself!

Rating this CD is difficult, and since it was never meant to be sold, almost pointless.  However you can find reasonably priced copies on Discogs, so a rating is necessary.  This CD is interesting.  It’s good, but it’s not meant for listening for pleasure.  It almost acts like caffeine to the brain.  Every song has so much going on that you are constantly listening and trying to catch it all.  It’s also short, so buy wisely.

3/5 stars

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REVIEW: David Lee Roth – Diamond Dave (2003)

DIAMOND DAVE_0001DAVID LEE ROTH – Diamond Dave (2003 Magna Carta)

One can indeed judge a book by its cover. David Lee Roth is hands-on with every aspect of his product, be it a photo shoot, a recording session, or an interview. He must have known his Diamond Dave album was crap, so he made a terrible cover to match it. Check out the tan, that wig and them pants!  (Also notice:  furry walls!)

This album, following up another aborted Van Halen reunion and the surprisingly powerful album DLR Band, switches gears and shows Dave’s “multi-faceted side”. Sure, we all know Dave likes disco, jazz, blues, showtunes, and standards.  It’s Dave doing what he did very successfully on Crazy From the Heat, and trying to do so again.  To make an album of this stuff would be fine, but Diamond Dave lacks any sort of zap.  At all.  It’s just one “who cares” cover after another, a couple crappy originals, and a Van Halen tune.

Dave’s voice just doesn’t generate the heat it once did, and all of Diamond Dave suffers for it.  The way Van Halen did A Different Kind of Truth used a lot of production on Dave.  Here, Roth is a whimper, a wheeze, a breathless gasp at the greatness that once was. To listen to this album in one sitting is an exersize in stamina. I know because I’ve done it.

Positives:  Instrumental moments on the Steve Miller cover “Shoo Bop”.  The ace rhythm section of LoMenzo and Luzier are complimented by a guitarist named Brian Young who is shit-hot on this.  Then Dave goes all dance-y on it…ugh.  “She’s Looking Good” is old-school and well done.

The indigestible:  The Doors’ “Soul Kitchen”.  Nobody needs to cover the Doors; Dave makes them sound like Smash Mouth.  Hendrix’ “If 6 Was 9” has too much of Dave’s boring talking voice, but not enough crooning.  His cover of the otherwise excellent Beatles number “Tomorrow Never Knows” (which he actually had the audicity to rename “That Beatles Tune”!?) sucks all the life and innovation out of a great song, as he wheezes to the finish line.    This is by far the worst song, even though he also covers “Let It All Hang Out”.

There is only one number here worth owning, which is his Las Vegas version of “Ice Cream Man”. He did this shortly after Your Filthy Little Mouth with Edgar Winter, Omar Hakim, Greg Phillinganes, and Nile Rodgers!  According to Dave’s autobiography Crazy From the Heat, this was recorded in a live in a video shoot.  The video was never released, but the audio finally was.  It lives up to the hype if not the wait.

Decide what you are willing to pay for one or two songs, and buy accordingly.

1/5 stars

Sausagefest XII: The Complete Countdown!

There were some pretty awesome picks this year.  I have to give Scottie props for “Coming Home” by Iron Maiden, from the excellent Final Frontier album.  I found some things a bit surprising, such as the overplayed-on-radio “Black Betty” by Ram Jam, placing so high.

“Thick As A Brick” was the live version, so just over 10 minutes.  Other long bombers included all of “Supper’s Ready” by Genesis, which resulted in a tirade by Phil for just as long, about how much he thinks it sucks!  (And he’s an old-school Marillion fan…surprising.)  And of course there were several Maiden tunes that clock in well over 5 minutes.

For your edification, here is the official Sausagefest XII Countdown:  75 tracks, plus 35 tributes.  One tribute for each person that submitted a list!  110 songs over one weekend!  Awesome.

1 Toronto Tontos Max Webster
2 Long Cool Woman in a Red Dress The Hollies
3 The Grudge Tool
4 Rooster Alice in Chains
5 Supper’s Ready Genesis
6 Papa Was a Rolling Stone The Temptations
7 Mississippi Queen Mountain
8 Black Betty Ram Jam
9 Locomotive Breath Jethro Tull
10 I’m Your Captain Grand Funk Railroad
11 Wasted Years Iron Maiden
12 Low Hanging Fruit Tenacious D
13 Green Eyed Lady Sugarloaf
14 Hey Joe Jimi Hendrix
15 Headlong Flight Rush
16 Roadhouse Blues The Doors
17 Thick as a Brick Jethro Tull
18 Powerslave Iron Maiden
19 Bohemian Rhapsody Queen
20 Trapped Under Ice Metallica
21 Nautical Disaster Tragically Hip
22 No Quarter Led Zeppelin
23 Mr. Blue Sky Electric Light Orchestra
24 The Wizard Black Sabbath
25 Mama Told Me Not To Come Three Dog Night
26 Blackened Metallica
27 Jungle Boogie Kool and the Gang
28 Telegraph Road Dire Straits
29 Sanitarium Metallica
30 Renegade Styx
31 Eulogy of the Damned Orange Goblin
32 Throw Down the Sword Wishbone Ash
33 Electric Worry Clutch
34 The Alabama Song The Doors
35 Rise of the Fenix Tenacious D
36 Livin Thing Electric Light Orchestra
37 The Shape I’m In The Band
38 Mother Danzig
39 The Chain Fleetwood Mac
40 No One Knows Queens of the Stone Age
41 Die Young Black Sabbath
42 Bang Bang Terry Reid
43 Caught Somewhere in Time Iron Maiden
44 Buried Alive Avenged Sevenfold
45 Dream Police Cheap Trick
46 Would Alice in Chains
47 Don’t Fear the Reaper Blue Oyster Cult
48 Zero the Hero Black Sabbath
49 Pool of Booze Volbeat
50 Parabola Tool
51 Why Cant We Be Friends? War
52 Rock and Roll Led Zeppelin
53 While My Guitar Gently Weeps The Beatles
54 Breadfan Budgie
55 Strutter KISS
56 Holy Wars Megadeth
57 Old Man Neil Young
58 Southern Man Neil Young
59 The Pusher Steppenwolf
60 Tempus Fugit Yes
61 Fight Fire With Fire Metallica
62 Kielbasa Tenacious D
63 Green Onions Booker T and the MG’s
64 Weird Beard Fu Manchu
65 Tonight’s the Night Neil Young
66 BYOB System of a Down
67 The Zoo Scorpions
68 As the Years Go By Mashmakhan
69 Toxicity System of a Down
70 Deuce KISS
71 Space Truckin’ Deep Purple
72 South of Heaven Slayer
73 Rocky Mountain Way Joe Walsh
74 Roadie Tenacious D
75 Rock and Roll Motorhead
TRIBUTES
TOM Earache My Eye Cheech and Chong
ERIC Rosanna Toto
BUCKY A Day in the Life WAR
LAMB LORD The Wizard Uriah Heep
LEBRAIN Well You Needn`t Herbie Hancock Quartet
TROY Caught Up in You .38 Special
ERNIE Apocrophon The Sword
SCOTTIE Coming Home Iron Maiden
RYAN Still Counting VolBeat
SEB Demiurge Meshuggah
PHIL Under Black Flags We March Arch Enemy
CHUCK New Fang Them Crooked Vultures
TYLER G. Come on in my Kitchen Robert Johnson
C Time After Time Savage Steel
CHAD She`s a Rainbow The Rolling Stones
DR DAVE Ogre Battle Queen
LOGAN Cowboys From Hell Pantera
GRANT Around the World Red Hot Chili Peppers
WAYNE Inside Looking Out Grand Funk Railroad
CAM Red Hot Mama Funkadelic
AARON High Caliber Consecrator Clutch
JOHN B. I Stay Away Alice in Chains
TAL Dear God XTC
LAMB LAD Kick Out the Jams MC5
ALEX Chicken Strut The Meters
TREVER Volare Dean Martin
FRANK Whiskey in the Jar Metallica
JAGGER Frozen Love Buckingham/Nicks
MARK E. Are You Mine? The Arctic Monkeys
JON K. Stone Deaf Forever Motorhead/Metallica
TYLER W. We Are All on Drugs Weezer
MARK S. People are Strange The Doors
JUSTIN Monsters Blue Oyster Cult
MIKE Monarchy of Roses Red Hot Chili Peppers

The official video