Nuts For Music

Figures, right after posting my thoughts on Death Magnetic, I read over at Billboard.com that after just 3 days of sales, Metallica’s Death Magnetic has scored them their 5th straight number one album (wait, St. Anger was a #1? Huh.). They were able to sell almost half a million copies in a really short time frame, which just shows you the popularity the band has among its fans.

It’s great to see a rock band getting a #1 album nod in a day where charts are dominated by Pop and R&B albums. Personally, I don’t think a lot of bands that are due great recognition get it these days.

I’ve been MIA lately with my posts, so I thought I’d start things back up again with one of my all time favorite bands, Metallica. The have finally released their 9th studio album, Death Magnetic. The album has been out for almost a week now and has been getting a ton of air time on the local radio stations here in the Boston area.

It’s been over 5 years since their release of the disappointing St. Anger album, thus there has been a lot of hype and excitement surrounding Death Magnetic. A lot of early reviews prior to its release were applauding Metallica for getting back to their roots, ala the era of Ride The Lightning and Master of Puppets. I’ve probably listened to the album in its entirety 5 or 6 times so far. I wouldn’t go so far to say its on the level of Puppets or Lightning, but its way stronger than the St. Anger effort. Then again, the album has only been out a week and those others have been with me for 20 years…

The most interesting thing about Metallica to me is they seem to be able to re-invent themselves with every album. The classic albums from the 80’s were arguably their best albums. The Load/ReLoad albums were a new twist for Metallica, having a more “mainstream” sound. Death Magnetic definitely has a more refined sound to it than St. Anger, which sounded really rough. I’d say every album they’ve released has its own personality which makes them utterly unique.

I will say this about Death Magnetic. It definitely sounds like a culmination of all of the Metallica albums to date, rolled into one. In a way it makes it a unique album and an album that definitely has a great sound. You can hear pieces of the old 80’s songs, the 90’s songs, and yes, even a little bit of St. Anger in the tracks on Death Magnetic. I think this makes it an album that will definitely stand on its own as a a great Metallica album in the future. You can definitely say Metallica is back to its true self in Death Magnetic.

That said, its a decent effort that I’ll keep spinning in my iTunes playlists. Favorite track on the disc? Track #3 - Broken, Beat & Scarred

Note: Also check out the review of Death Magnetic over at RollingStone.com. Definitely on point for the most part with my thoughts.

I was lucky enough to hear about The Black Keys playing at the Orpheum Theatre in Boston, MA last night (5/17) from a co-worker a few weeks back. Even luckier, Kyle and I were able to purchase tickets. We were sitting up in one of the box sections on the left side of the stage, right near the speakers. Even though our view of the drummer was blocked by the pulled back curtain above the stage and nearly going deaf during the show, we had a great time. In fact, I think its one of the best live shows I’ve ever seen.

Dan (guitarist and singer) and Pat (drummer) played for about an hour or so cranking out some of the new hits off of their album, Attack and Release, like Psychotic Girl, Remember When, and I Got Mine. Kyle and I both thought that Dan was probably one of the best guitarists we’ve ever seen play. This guy could just fly with his fingers and get the entire building rocking out. Even though these guys are a two man band, they rock like bands with twice as many members. Though, I can imagine they get really tired since nobody really takes solos to give other band members breaks.

I don’t have an entire set list, but they played about 15 songs the entire night. Some I didn’t know since I don’t have all of their albums (something I’ll be remedying shortly). They’re headed out to Europe for a while (this was their last show in the States), but next time they’re back in the States in our area, I’ll definitely be buying tickets to see them play. Great show!

The Offspring’s Smash album was one of the first CDs I got my hands onto in high school. I listed the crap out of it for sure, much to the dismay of my parents who classified my choice in music at the time as “noise”. I’m excited though since they have a new studio album, “Rise and Fall, Rage And Grace”, on the way later on this spring (June 17th to be precise). I will definitely be looking forward to this upcoming release.

Like my last post on Trent Reznor releasing his latest album on his web site, The Offspring have released the first single off of their new album on their web site for free download. All you have to do is give them your email address, country, and zip code (if you’re in the U.S.) and you’ll get access to download a high quality (almost 11MB mp3 file!), non-DRM copy of the song.

Like all of The Offspring’s popular songs its catchy and fast paced. The opening riff (which they mix into the song later on) is slower and more melodic than I’ve heard in some of their other songs, but they quickly get into a repetitive crunchy guitar riff which, if you ask me, kicks ass. These guys honestly cease to amaze me because you dont’ hear about them being a great rock band like Metallica, Megadeth, Godsmack, etc. But the consistently put out great effort after great effort. I can’t wait to get my hands on the entire album when it comes out on the 17th of June.

So Nine Inch Nails has released another album on their web site, this time its a freebie. I downloaded it and gave it a spin on iTunes this morning. I didn’t pay it a whole lot of attention because I was busy at work, however, it didn’t blow me away. There were a couple ok songs, but nothing spectacular. I’ll have to give it another spin tomorrow and maybe update my thoughts here, but for now I’m giving it a thumbs down. I definitely applaud Trent Reznor for going to this method of distributing music, even if he charged for it. In my opinion, its great for the music industry. However, I’d hope that the quality of the albums is just as good as if you were doing a typical release through a typical record label. I’m not sure this is up to that level, but I’ll give it a few more spins before completely making my mind up.

I heard this weekend that Metallica’s Lars Ulrich was quoted in a Rolling Stone article as saying that the band would consider all options for releasing material on the Internet for their next album. Their latest studio album, slated for release sometime this year, is their last which they are under contract for with Warner Bros. music. Apparently after seeing what Radiohead and Trent Reznor have accomplished by releasing their albums online has done, Metallica is intrigued about doing the same sometime down the line. This is rather interesting after their battle with now defunct free music sharing service, Napster back in 2000. What I find interesting here is that really nothing has changed since then other than more people are downloading music online (both legal and illegal) instead of buying CDs in stores. So I wonder what has changed their minds? Maybe the fact that they can’t control their music being downloaded for free so they might as well offer it at a lower price. Like I’ve always said, I find paying $5 for an album fair. $10 and up is a stretch. So, if they do decide to distribute music in this way, I’ll be first in line to pay (though I’d likely buy the CD at the store if they didn’t).

For the longest time I’d spin tunes through Apple’s iTunes by playing entire albums. Over time, the problem I started to encounter was that the music got really stale and I’d burn through music faster than I thought I should. Building playlists has typically been a chore for me, so I never really got into it unless I wanted to create a CD for my car. Using a “Smart Playlist” in iTunes didn’t really work for me either since my most played songs were part of entire albums. So what could I do to to build a playlist, but not make it a chore?

I started off with about 10-15 songs in my playlist. Then, I just started playing random music and when I got to something I deemed cool enough, into my playlist it went. After about half a day of doing this, I had a 3.5 hour long playlist. Not quite long enough, but a good start. At least now I’m on my way to having a playlist I can put on shuffle for an entire work day and keep the toons that are spinning fresh over a long period of time. I’d have to say the hardest part is just starting the playlist. Once you get going it picks up steam and you’re well on your way.

I’d be interested in hearing how other people manage their music with playlists. Share your thoughts!

Friday night I headed out to see Rogue Wave at The Paradise in Boston, MA with my buddy Kyle. We go there just before they went on stage to an already packed house. The show was sold out by the time we got there, which I sort of had expected. Things started off slow and they really didn’t seem to have their act together. Turns out, it was the first show of this tour, so we’ll cut them a little slack there. I’d say the band members themselves weren’t what I expected. Their lead guitarist looked to be on something the entire show, though maybe he’s just really into the tunes. Either way its more an observation than anything else. Whatever works!

I’d have to say the best songs of the night were Phonytown and Harmonium. They totally rocked the house with those two songs and I wish they had done more rocking tunes. For a lot of the show, I could hear way more background noise (people talking mostly) than I could hear the band. They also played Lake Michigan, which most people in the house know probably more from commercials for the Microsoft Zune than anything else. One of my comments to Kyle was, I wonder how many people here know of the band itself or heard it for the first time on T.V. during a commercial and decided to Google the band.

All in all I’d say it was an average show. I’m thinking I might head out to see them again this spring when they come back through town. I’m hoping that they’ll be a little more in the groove after having a bunch of dates under their belts.

Do you ever play music from a band that is no longer together? Maybe The Beatles? Maybe Guns ‘N Roses? Pink Floyd? That last one is a big one for me. A lot of people pay $150 -$200 a seat to see Madonna or Bruce Springsteen. The only band that could probably get that kind of money out of me is Pink Floyd. When I was in high school, I could have seen the at the old Foxboro Stadium in Foxboro, MA. But being a young high school kid with no real music identity, I never went. Boy am I sorry. I’ll probably never get the chance to see them. Their music is top notch. Their shows were top notch. Talk about a band that could tie their music into an actual experience in a 50,000 person arena! Nobody is as good as them in my opinion. And I’m only going on what I’ve seen in video.

Alas, they only seem to come together for the occasional charity show and usually its a pain to get them to do that. Note to Pink Floyd. If you guys ever need money, go back out on tour. There are plenty of us that will fork over tons of cash to see you play a quality show live.

I was flipping through my iTunes library yesterday looking for something to listen to that I hadn’t heard in a while and came across The National’s 2007 release, Boxer. I’m sure I’ve had this for a little while now, but it’s received very little air time. The sound from track to track flows great making it another one of those albums that you can easily listen to from start to finish. I’d have to say my favorite track on the album is Ada. Another favorite is Start A War.

Their Wikipedia page says they’ve been influenced by Bruce Springsteen, which I can definitely hear in lead singer Matt Berninger’s voice. He has a similar sound of The Boss. There are both mellow and upbeat tracks on this album. Overall I’d give this album a B+. It’s good, but not totally great.

They have previous releases that I haven’t listened to; Alligator (2005), Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers (2003), and The National (2001). I’m going to try to get my hands on these and see if they’re as good as Boxer is. Definitely a band I’ll be adding to my daily rotation of played music.