Tool: ÆNIMA by Rolling Stone

I hate reviewing new music. Hate it.
As a musician who has seen my fair share of rough reviews, I know how it feels to hear (err- read, as in “This Has Been Written And Therefore It Is So“) someone talking mean about your baby.
The good ones? In one ear and out the other, honestly. But the bad ones… hurt a little. Add into it the fact that these days, when they’re bad, they’re not just bad - they’re BRUTAL.
Only you know what it took to make this album.
Only you know why you did what you did - and if you have any art to your stuff, you don’t go explaining every little step. Them’s the rules. Half the fun for me as a listener is finding my own meaning in songs; as an artist, the most excitement I get from music is hoping others catch what I’m putting out there. I like those dynamics, the risk is worth the reward. The price of that risk can be that no one gets anything you’ve done, or worse… compares it to something you can’t stand!
Only you know what the album - your new baby - means to you.
Logically, it would follow that only you know how it feels to be told, “DAMN! Your baby is ugly.”

I’d like you to keep that in mind from here on out as we put a slight twist on the term “Album Review” with what we call, simply:
Reviews… of Reviews.

Most of the time these babies will be of current albums that we think should get a little more attentive attention. We’ll do our best. Most of the time. That will be all well and good, but as I’ve stated before: I don’t believe that a review is even worth reading unless the person reviewing the album has had some time to experience that album beyond what I’m convinced is the usual regimen of today’s “music critic” - a cursory listen to something the “critic” gets in the mail scattered between reality television shows and too many hours on the XBOX360. I think the real soul of this idea will come from revisiting some of the albums that have stood the test of time after having originally been panned by the self-important fascist regime of Those Who Cannot Do.

With that in mind: Let us begin.
My first offering was in many ways the inspiration for this perspective on the traditional “album review.” Almost 15 years ago, Tool put an album out that changed not only my perception of where Rock music could go, but most of the Stavesacre boys’ perspective (No… what???) and that of an entire generation of Hard Rock music fans and musicians:
ÆNIMA

I’d been a fan of the band since the first E.P. because I felt they bore favorable comparisons to Quicksand. After I spent some time really studying the artwork of the Opiate E.P. I got kinda creeped out, immediately deciding Quicksand was more my speed. Then Undertow came out and I thought, “Hold on… this band is on something else,” Plus: they scared me, honestly. I’d met Danzig and was familiar with the whole Mysterious Rock Singer as Badass image. It was all the rage in the early 90’s: The Frightening Artist.
Where Danzig had all the Devil imagery in his songs - he’d taken the totally original Vaudevillian-meets-B-Horror-Movie cool of the Misfits and appeared to have convinced himself that he really was some kind of werewolf or something - but this band was talking about… other things. Things that were actually both disgusting and utterly disturbing - real things. I won’t go into detail, but suffice to say that some of the previously untapped metaphors utilized in songs called “Prison Sex” and “4º” left one feeling slightly light headed upon repeated listens.
After I saw that creepy little video for “Sober” - where Maynard appears as a blurry nightmare of an image for about 2 seconds - I remember thinking:
Maynard is far scarier than Glenn Danzig - like, I think he’d do something crazy if they got into a fight, like eat his liver or something.
And I wasn’t the only one.

By the time ÆNIMA dropped, Quicksand was history (along with what I’d mistakenly believed was the second wave of Punk Rock) and Danzig was about as scary as that kid from school who played Dungeons & Dragons. (Or World of Warcraft for those of you who have no idea what a 12 sided-die is.) I clearly remember hearing “Hooker With A Penis” for the first time in Jeff Bellew’s truck when the LP came out earlier than the CD - he put it to tape and we listened with our mouths open as about 5 minutes of pure Poetic Justice erupted from the speakers. (more on that later)
When the CD came out I stopped everything, got it home and went directly to my room. Even as an (almost) grown man in his mid-20’s, I didn’t want anyone interrupting me while I was listening to it - headphones on - from start to finish. I probably listened to nothing else for a solid month or two. There was just so much going on that you couldn’t just listen to the album, pick out the single and tire of it immediately. From the mix - layers and layers of power and melody - to the music - brutal, intricate, melodic, powerful, etc. In my mind it was the perfect Hard Rock album, my generation’s “important” Hard Rock album.

Then, the critics got hold of it.

Back then - a million years ago, when people still bought magazines - I used to check out what Rolling Stone and SPIN had to say about anything that I was into. They were the Authorities. I was stoked when a band I’d already known about was on the verge of success - it was like a nice big, “I Told Ya So.” ÆNIMA was great, all of my friends and I knew it was great, and we were looking to tell the world once again: “Told ya.”
I opened Rolling Stone Magazine and this is what I read:

Noise as purgative: Tool shove their iron-spike riffing and shock-therapy polemics right up the claustrophobic dead end of so-called alternative metal in the name of a greater metaphysical glory – something along the fuzzy lines of Jungian cyberoccultism. That’s all very admirable and even a bit impressive; anyone who tries to elevate heavy music above cock-rock clown time is to be encouraged. Still, the best parts of Ænima come when Tool just let the music rip and dip with the broiling, avant-metal ferocity of Led Zeppelin’s Presence. Also, let us call a moratorium on concept CDs that come with lightweight “Intermission” instrumental tracks. If you need to take a piss in the middle of the record, just hit the pause button.

Now… what this doesn’t show is the fact that it got 1 out of whatever they were giving - I honestly forget because I immediately dismissed anything this magazine had to say about hard music from the moment I read the last line of the review. It was such a slap in the face: You’re jocking artists like LIVE, BUSH, R.E.M., Hole and… SON VOLT(???) and you’ve just treated this album as self-indulgent Prog-Rock, or to be more specific “taking a piss”??? (Plus: Britishisms? Seriously?) Good grief, this Fricke guy strikes me as one of those dudes who talks like he’s in Oasis but lives in Ohio. (BTW: if you can find the SPIN magazine review of this very same album, you’ll find an even more brutal and dismissive splooge of snobbery) Hey millionaires! You suck!

Wouldn’t be the first time anyone has said that. Hmm, wonder why they jock Led Zeppelin all the time now? Whatever, different subject…

ÆNIMA was new. New, in an age of not much new; new, meaning fresh, original and (sometimes in this case, disturbing, but ultimately) NEW.
Songs like the aforementioned “Hooker…” were a new take on the relationship between band and fan - and the brutal extension of what really goes through the mind of someone who’s just had some ignorant little shit tell them they’d sold out; the title track was a Shane Lechler kick to the groin for any person who really believed that their skewed self-image were actually a thing of value. “Stinkfist” (or, more comfortably, “Track #1″) was social commentary on the way we as a society have become desensitized by over-stimulated media blitzing… I think. Okay, I hope; “Eulogy” was about as final a coffin nail on the Martyred Hero complex as one could imagine. Throughout the album, artwork to sound bites, there was dry, hard as nails gallows-humor to keep it moving: Images of California sinking into the sea as punishment for it’s sins by way of an album cover that could have come out of a CrackerJack box; tributes to the late Bill Hicks; and lyrics, lyrics, lyrics. From unusual metaphors to clever word plays (Album Title: ÆNIMA. Title track: ÆNEMA) this album goes to great lengths to give the listener something to figure out. And the melody? There’s a moment on the song “Jimmy” that shows you just how amazing this guy’s voice is - should shed some light on why someone like Tricky, another artist who was actually doing something new around that time, said, “I wish I had a voice like the guy of Tool.”
At that time, who in Hard Rock was writing at this depth? No one. Maybe… Trent Reznor? The lyrics at times were both revealing & vulnerable (”Jimmy,” “Third Eye”) and sarcastic social commentary (”Stinkfist,” title track, “Hooker”). Every once in a while just plain… batty. “46 & 2″ is still my favorite song off the album but I’ve never taken it too seriously - it’s just a great song. And that bass line…
That’s the other thing: No one out there was doing the musical calculus that these guys were. Rage Against the Machine had all kinds of spitfire and venom, and while musically they were superior to most every other “Hard Rock” band out there, Tool was doing bizarre time signatures and layered compositions that brought to mind less Led Zeppelin and more… Peter Gabriel? (I remember hearing the David Bottrill would be taking Sylvia Massy’s place on the album… not sure if he acted as engineer or more, but the difference in production between this and the first two releases was night and day.)

The album opened up options for Hard Rock music in general - people saw that art didn’t have to be sacrificed in order to have force. (although, again: Jane’s kinda already started that ball rolling…) Essentially, ÆNIMA gave Hard Rock fans and musicians an option to be more than just meatheads.
No one told me these things… they’re just the conclusions I’ve drawn after years of listening to these songs, drawing them in and working out the artistic interpretations that were available to me. The point is… to say this album merely “elevated c#@%-rock” is a gross understatement. The album has depth that only the truly devoted listener knows is there - to pan this disc as an average Hard Rock album that simply needs to let the band do its thing is just… seriously incomplete in it’s evaluation of the album in question. There is power, imagery - some disturbing, some simply poignant - here that the “cursory” listen will not allow a full appreciation of.

This might just be what happens when you review something as a job - you’re over it, you give it a quick once over and move on. Maybe it’s what happens when a Jazz guy has to review a Rock album.
Or maybe it’s just what happens when someone who has never done this, is given a job telling those who have done this… how to do this.

“Those who can’t do teach. Those who can’t teach, teach gym.”
— Woody Allen

Blame American Idol

I subscribe to exactly two magazines.
Ligonier Ministries’ devotional study guide, Table Talk and the mildly sarcastic but highly entertaining, Entertainment Weekly. I get the occasional episode of HM in the mail, but as regular subscriptions go, Table Talk and EW are the only staples in the home of the Salomons. Salomen, if you will. Anyhow, Table Talk is what I read with my coffee, EW is what I read… when I feel like reading magazines.
I enjoy it because it’s quick and funny, with sharp humor and in my humble opinion, pretty decent taste most of the time. I share a lot of their opinions on movies and music. I’ve even been turned on to some solid books The Terror, Lush Life and Island of the Lost. (It was the first place I heard about that gigantic downer that landed on Oprah’s Book list for like, 3 years, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, which was a lot like watching this:

- only with better writing and a lot more sadness. Thanks for that - ’cause the world needs more sadness.)

Anyway, I usually read each weekly edition from cover to cover, looking forward to the next week’s edition about two days after the one in my hand showed up in my mailbox.
Usually.
This latest edition has me… uncomfortable.
It started with the cover:

And followed with the story inside.

… Once in a very long while, someone arrives who doesn’t just dominate American Idol, but challenges and even changes it. Idol has always positioned itself as a portal to what ”America” (meaning, its particular viewers) desires in a newly anointed star. It’s no accident that each episode’s opening credits showcase faceless CGI humanoids striding toward their destinies. Idol stars are supposed to be blank slates, ”relatable” folk with extraordinary talent whom we elect in an orderly fashion and elevate to success.

Meet Adam Lambert. Adam has messed all that up. Adam is nobody’s idea of a blank slate. Adam is a surprise.

Essentially all that is a lead up to the “big” controversy: Adam Lambert might be gay.

“Wait a minute! This guy is… g-g-g-gay??? Well I NEVER! Somebody grab a rope!!!”

I live in Southern California - lived in Long Beach for a couple years. I worked in Hollywood.
Gay is not shocking. Gay doesn’t even strike me as especially… special. You want shocking and special? One night outside the Roosevelt Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard, a man ask my friend Margaret for a cigarette - when she held one out to him he got an exasperated look on his face, huffed and then lifted up two stumps. He was born without hands. “Can’t you light it for me?”
(How does one begin to…? Never mind)
That was kinda shocking. Gay? Not so much.

I could care less if dude is gay, straight or capable of card tricks. Seriously. It’s not my concern - I love everybody. I am uncomfortable with people telling me what I’m uncomfortable with, but this isn’t about whether or not I need some total stranger defining my character - we’ll save that for another day. The cover declares this guy the “most exciting” contestant in years - that’s what’s burnin’ my butt. For those involved, the conversation has officially changed and music has nothing to do with it. So… just what we need: Another image first, talent later scenario.
I liked it better when the artist had a great song, then I cared enough to actually find out that artist’s life beyond the music. Now we switch that around, and the reason we’re supposed to buy this kid’s albums is because… he’s “different.” Something seems fishy here.

He’s exciting, why?
Why, on this “singing show,” is this guy so exciting? I thought American Idol was about the singing, I had no idea it was a “portal” to the American soul. Why didn’t anyone tell me this?

This talk of Adam Lambert’s “specialness” and verve has very little to do with singing. On a show purportedly about undiscovered singing talent, at issue here is image and fashion… otherwise known as something other than singing. Again.
When are these people gonna learn?
“He has a big voice.”
Y’know, so have like 90% of the people who’ve ever made it to the finals for the show. The celebrities on TV shows talk about their charities in the same way: it’s an afterthought. Why is he any more exciting than anyone who preceded him? Because he looks like Pete Wentz with way too much foundation? Peter Parker with way too much foundation?

Appearing right before us is a very convincing example of why the music industry sucks.
It starts off being about music, gets sidetracked on image and then, like a child that sees a pretty butterfly, completely forgets the original point, too busy chasing after some irrelevant “angle.” Next thing you know, music is not even what we’re talking about anymore.

I used to watch American Idol all the time.
First it was kind of exciting - watching singers who’d never really had a chance before get the opportunity to be successful. It was occasionally hilarious, watching those people who sincerely thought they were great singers prove to America that they were not. Every once in a while you’d get the entitled kids, so sure of their future Star Quality after being fed years of lines from their stagemothers/snakeoilsalesman/stalkers “vocal coaches,” only to be systematically and irrevocably shut down. It lost some of its luster after the second or third idiot who showed up wearing a diaper or dressed like an androgynous wizard in order to get a shot at 15 seconds of utterly willful self-humiliation disguised as “fame”; the excitement was in full wane when all the actual singers with actual vocal coaches and a couple actual failed record deals (… or photo shoots) started lining up. Like most aspects of the music industry, it turned into a lot of posturing, a lot of “playing the game” and so forth.
The final nosedive into Lame Pond? While this “singing competition” devolved into a popularity contest that parents would feel comfortable allowing their 9 year olds to become involved with, it somehow remembered that it was at one time a “singing competition” - and as a result, it sort of half-assed it back to music. Quicker than you can say “Kelly Clarkson” we had a popularity contest for the kids and an Adult Contemporary Orgy for the parents.

AHHH! What they’ve done to the music… I’m sorry, but I call it quits when Barry “Staple Face” Manilow is supposedly giving people advice on how to be a Pop singer today. Add in those same 9 year old girls out there screaming their brains out for a man whose smile starts behind his earlobes? Gimme the remote.
(You wonder why every other one of them does lousy after they win this show???)
I mean… Andrew Lloyd Weber? Plus: At a certain point in one’s life, one must ask oneself, “Am I really entertained by the latest poorly executed Jim Morrison wannabe, especially when he insists upon staring ever-so-longingly into a camera?”

That’s a lot of dork to deal with on purpose.
After last season’s über Adult Contemporary, “Yay-We-Got-Chris-Daughtry-After-All!” finish, it just wasn’t that fun anymore, honestly. David Cook may really be talented, but he’s now contractually obligated to the dimwits responsible for this.

Oh hey, check this out.
(teehee.)

I’ve heard Randy Jackson say it over and over: “This is a singing competition.”
Really? ‘Cause it seems more like a high school election.
I’ve been aware that the show was more about image than it was about talent for a while now - one need only check out a couple seasons ago when this chick with a decent voice:

Finished ahead of this strange little dude with an amazing voice:

And yet here we are, with magazines like my beloved Entertainment Weekly giving their valuable cover space to Adam Lambert. All this stuff about the dude’s flamboyant personality and so very little about music. The article asks the question:

Can an openly gay contestant win American Idol?

The conversation has officially changed.
What if the dude is actually… good? Will we ever know?
What if he wins and his album doesn’t sell? What if he doesn’t win and it sells like gangbusters?
See the dilemma we’ve got on our hands? Music really has nothing to do with it anymore so essentially no matter what happens, this guy’s story is gonna be about whether or not he’s gay - with some singing sprinkled in for color.
It’s not exclusive to American Idol, by the way - but they’re an easy target so… I say blame them.
Someone’s gotta pay. Someone’s gotta set an example.
Someone’s gotta be the example if we’re ever gonna get music to matter again - why not them?

Beastie Boys Get All Da Vinci Code

PunkNews Reports:

Two apparent new tracks from Beastie Boys have surfaced. “Lee Majors Come Again” and “B Boys in the Cut” were part of a bonus 7″ that came with select copies of the band’s recent 4-LP reissue of their 1992 album, Check Your Head.

“Lee Majors Come Again” can be heard here, and “B Boys in the Cut” can be heard here.

The band’s new record is expected this summer, and they’ll be one of the headliners at Lollapalooza in August.

Don’t you just hate it when bands do weird and thought-provoking crap like this? Wouldn’t it be so much better if they just debuted their songs on an overplayed, overexposed iTunes commercial, as opposed to letting their true fans do a little digging? Geez. So ’90’s.

Last.fm moves to a subscription-based streaming service for much of the world

So, source of all relevant news-type information, Punknews.com says:

Popular music/social media website last.fm has started charging users outside of the United States, United Kingdom and Germany a fee for their streaming radio services. After a 30 song trial period expires, users must pay a €3.00 monthly fee to continue utilizing the streaming radio services. Some reasons behind the change were given on the site’s official blog:

Last.fm Radio has always been ad supported, which means we sell ads on the site to cover the cost of running the service and paying the music licensing fees. If you’ve spent more than 5 minutes on the site you’ll know that the Last.fm community is international to the extreme – we are made up of people from practically every country in the world. Last.fm is a better place for it.

However, we simply can’t be in every country where our radio service is available selling the ads we need to support the service. The Internet is global, and geographic restrictions seem unfair, but it’s a reality we are faced with every day when managing our music licensing partnerships.

The rest of the site’s features (scrobbling, recommendations, charts, biographies, events, videos, etc.) will remain free in all countries.

I suppose my only question here is… What?
I don’t know, I’m sure there’s a scam somewhere in here, but I’m too burnt out to create find it.

“Oh, he’s like Pearl Jam!”
- Jim Gaffigan

No plans for new D.R.I. album, says guitarist Spike Cassidy

By way of Punknews:

In an interview with MorbidZine.com, D.R.I. guitarist Spike Cassidy ruled out the possibility of a new studio album. He notes:

I’m not sure. We live in four different states across the country. Washington, California, Texas and Florida. Just to practice will cost thousands in plane fare alone. Money that we don’t have. We all have our own lives and families now, conflicts in scheduling keep us from touring right now. We might be able put together some shows, but it wont be easy. We have a long way to go before we are working on a new album again. I just hope we can play a few shows.

The band has not released any new material since 1995’s Full Speed Ahead, despite touring off and on for the past couple years. The band went on hiatus back in 2006.

Sounds familiar…
Guys, call me.