Me Right, You Wrong

MT St Helens Vietnam Band- Tried to like it, but it came off as whiney and over wrought. 2

Wire - This got off to a very slow start that made me wonder why they are even recording music 30 years after they were relevant, but it picks up with some more interesting tracks starting with Two Minutes, Clay and Bad Worn Thing. Still 3.5

Amos Lee - You have to be in the mood, but this is very well done, if not just a little too slick for my tastes. The country stuff works better than the more bluesy, R & B stuff. Still high quality is high quality and this gets a 4.

Todd Rundgren - Always a favorite of mine, but after hearing it for the first time in ages, I have to admit that about a third of it just isn’t very good. This is one of those albums that could have been edited down into a classic, but Rundgren wanted to stretch out and have some fun and that led to mixed results Pop masterpices like Black Mariah, I saw the Light, One More Day, It Wouldn’t Have Made Any Difference, Couldn’t I Just Tell You, Dust in the Wind and Hello It’s Me combined with funny/catchy songs like Piss Aaron and Slut are enough to make this a classic, but it ultimately is marred by his penchant for over indulgence. Still, based o the quality of the great songs, it still gets a 4.5

Riot - The musical part of metal – crunchy guitars, simple arrangements, high flying solos is fairly easy to pull off. Where this type of music can fail – and often does – is in the vocals and the words. Screetchy yellers have ruined more metal records than I can shake a clenched fist at. The other pitfall is that the lyrics are either mindlessly mysoginistic, gingoistic or any other istic that calls to mind the kind of illiteracy that plagues many heavy metal bands. Or the lyrics are of the mystical type – another largely illiterate form of writing in which nonsense is disguised as mysticism. That’s why these guys are so refreshing. Just straight ahead rock and roll that doesn’t try to hard to be more than what it is. 4

Accordian - Nicely conceived idea. Clearly the work of a deranged man with too little to think about and too much time on his hands. Bunch of really good songs, though, that would not otherwise end up on the same piece of plastic.

Records that everyone would give 4 stars to: Forgot which ones I wrote down, but I had at least one. Mostly foiled by D'Arcy's penchant for thinking every acknowleged classic is a piece of shit or Greg's overall inconsistency and his never having listened to 60% of the records that everyone else agred with.