High Blinder's Narrow Minded Reviews

The High Blinder’s Myopic Narrow-Minded Reviews

Muddy Waters – An excellent disc to submit, as I’m a little embarrassed to say this is the first Muddy Waters CD I have heard start to finish. Not at all what I expected. Much more psychedelic and spacey. On some songs, it works really well, “I Just Want to Make Love to You” sounds great. Others, like “Hoochie Coochie Man” sound excessive, and can’t compare to the more stripped down original. I’m a big organ guy (Ken’ll vouch) and I love the Hammond B-3 sound on a lot of these tracks. Several of the tracks, if you stripped the vocals out, sound just like Cream. I can’t decide whether he is trying to sound like them, or whether they were influenced by this disc. I suspect the former, as this feels like an attempt to cash in on the hip sound of the day. The upshot is that this disc encouraged me to go back to discover some of Muddy Waters’ other works, which I like better. 3 stars

Marillion – I guess the nicest thing I can say about this disc is that if I didn’t have the cover in front of me, I would have thought this was an old Genesis album. The playing throughout most of the disc is tastefully restrained and the vocals are excellent by prog standards. “Kayleigh” is a very good song, and “Heart of Lothian” is pretty good as well. I can’t say I understand the implied concept behind this disc, but it didn’t make me want to fling it out the window. “Blind Curve” drags on a few minutes too long, and I think the slower, quieter material works better than tracks like “Waterhole”, but all in all not bad. I think this falls neatly into the Ken Boucher “good in its genre but not my bag” category. 2 stars.

OK Go – I had a hard time connecting with this disc, and I’m not sure why. There are some pretty good power pop songs, such as “Do What You Want”, but I thought most of the CD was rather generic. The better tracks sound like early Who/Kinks, the worst of it sounds like warmed over Franz Ferdinand. Guitarist and vocalist are fine, production is ok, but there just wasn’t anything that grabbed me one way or the other. 2 1/2 stars

Ray Davies – Ray is on my “Burp & Fart” list, meaning he could release a disc of himself doing said activities, and I would buy it the day it hit the stores. So, it came as a big surprise to me that I was really disappointed with the disc on the first several listens. Not enough guitar, and the songs weren’t up to my perceived standard of Ray’s material. However, the disc has really grown on me over the past several weeks, it seems to get better with each listen. The lyrics are first-rate, and Ray’s voice is in top shape. “Life After Breakfast”, “Runaway From Time” and “Thanksgiving Day” are excellent additions to the Davies catalog. I still think the album could have used a little more punch; it is surprising to me that Dave Davies’ presence is so pronouncedly missed. Especially well done when compared to what his peers (Townshend, McCartney) have done lately. 4 stars

Guided By Voices – Hard to render an opinion on the first 5 tracks, they sound as if they were recorded underwater on a Radio Shack tape recorder. There are some really good pop songs, “Big School”, “Motor Away”, “Don’t Stop Now” are the highlights. Other material, like “Hot Freaks” and “Auditorium”, is not as successful, the songs sound as if someone left the tape machine in the garage running. More than a few numbers feel half complete (particularly the “Alien Lanes” material), as if the band couldn’t be bothered to finish it, and threw it out there anyway. I cherry-picked about 40 minutes of this for my mp3 player posterity (mostly the Mid-Marine and “Do the Collapse” numbers); but ultimately, I found the low fidelity to be too much of a distraction on the rest of the material. I would love to hear what would have happened if the band could have recorded with a decent producer.


Discussion Question

I’ll say up-front, I hate most all music videos. It is my belief that the whole music video craze spawned by MTV some 25 years go is primarily responsible for the following societal problems:

- The now accepted belief in television (and many movies) that a shot can not be held longer than 2 seconds
- The fact that image matters far more than music in getting airplay
- The fact that Flock of Seagulls & Billy Idol had hit records.

It was very difficult for me to even think of 5 videos that don’t feature Sheryl Crow or Liz Phair worth discussing. I feel fairly confident I will spend a minute rotting in hell for every minute I wasted watching MTV, VH1, Fuse, etc. (an hour for each time I watched Cher’s “If I Could Turn Back Time” battleship video).

The 5 videos that I would classify as artistic:

1) Hurt – An amazing piece of work by Cash & director Mark Romanek. Skips the pyrotechnics and relies on moody lighting. Simultaneously devastating and beautiful.

2) This Note’s For You – I absolutely loved Neil Young taking the piss out of the MTV establishment and several of his contemporaries. The fact that MTV banned it made it even funnier, particularly after they wound up giving it video of the year.

3) Bastards of Young – Another great anti-video, courtesy of the Replacements. If you haven’t seen it, the video consists of 1 shot of a speaker for the entire length of the song. Nothing else. Classic.

4) Don’t Come Around Here No More – I loved the marriage of Petty’s trippy, psychedelic song with the “Alice in Wonderland” story, especially the hookah smoking caterpillars. Petty is one of the few artists who consistently puts some thought into his videos.

5) Subterranean Homesick Blues – The original video, shamelessly ripped off by INXS in the 90’s.

I actually forgot about the second part of the question. But I subsequently decided my video would be Neil Young & Crazy Horse performing "F#$#%'n Up" over a montage of GWB press conferences.