End of Silence

I’ve been keeping these in a separate MySQL database back when I was trying to code my own PHP website and WordPress was a new thing. I was using PHPNuke and that site got hacked due to a vulnerability in that platform which pretty much pushed me to no more custom coding and trusting WordPress. So anyway, in the interest of keeping things searchable and in one place, I’m going to just do this as a blog post. Here’s the DID list that I made about 20 years ago and to its credit, it hasn’t changed. I’d certainly add to it but I don’t think I’d remove any of them. And some of my comments are dated given what happened later. I’ll add a few footnotes at the end given 20 years of insight.

• The Shape of Punk to Come – Refused – 1998 – This album is the total package. It’s too bad they broke up before I could see them live. The singer moved on to form International Noise Conspiracy.
• California – Mr Bungle – 1999 – I had to have something with Mike Patton on it, so I decided on this one. It has a diverse enough sound that I wouldn’t get bored over repeated listenings. As with most of my choices, there’s not a bad song in the bunch.
• Bone Machine – Tom Waits – 1992 – Again, this was tough. I might have picked Swordfishtrombones or Mule Variations.
• The Low End Theory – A Tribe Called Quest – 1991 – One of the best hip hop albums ever. Like many other albums, it blended jazz with the rhymes and pulled it off the best, in my opinion. I might have picked the Roots – Do You Want More?!!!??!
• Blue Train – John Coltrane – 1957 – If I’m gonna be stuck, I’m gonna need something mellow. There are several that I might have chosen, but this is my favorite.
• Spiderland – Slint – 1991 – One of the many musicians that I played with while living in NYC turned me onto this album and Shellac’s At Action Park. I’ll be forever grateful.
• In On The Kill Taker – Fugazi – 1993 – This was a tough one. I’d really like to have the entire Fugazi catalog with me. They’re truly an amazing band. Probably one of my top 3 favorite artists.
• I Against I – Bad Brains – 1986 – This one combines hardcore with reggae and other influences. Can’t compare to anything at the time.
• The Fat Elvis – Big Boys – 1993 – This is a compilation that was released along with The Skinny Elvis. It encompasses three of their later albums. The greatest band to come out of Austin. Ever.
• OK Computer – Radiohead – 1997 – Most people seem to pick The Bends as their favorite. This one is mine. I don’t particularly care for the earlier stuff.

As I said, a lot has changed since I wrote that list but it still holds up. I’ll comment on each now that I’m posting them again in 2023.

• I did end up seeing Refused reunite at Fun Fun Fun Fest with Henry. My YouTube channel has video from that show
• Mr Bungle is back with Scott Ian and Dave Lombardo in the band. How cool is that? I haven’t had a chance to see that combo live. Tomahawk was probably happening at that time too but they’re amazing. And then that Dillinger Escape Plan album with Mike Patton is genius (Irony is a Dead Scene)
• Not much from Tom Waits lately, but Mary and I drove to Houston to see him on the Glitter and Doom tour. Totally worth it.
• Tribe being my hip hop choice is hard to defend because I’m only allowed one. Paul’s Boutique might win now. Or one of the Roots albums. Not sure. Or Madvillain
• I’ll just say that I like The Bends better than I did at the time that I wrote this but it’s still not better than OK Computer and they did a bunch of great stuff after that.
• I ended up getting a tattoo of the wolf spider from Spiderland on my right forearm so that tells you how much I like that album. It was a good sign that the guy that I picked to do the tattoo is also a huge fan of Irony is a Dead Scene
• Fanboy related to Fugazi and Slint, I’ve had social media / email interactions with Ian MacKaye and David Pajo. My photo from the last Fugazi show in Austin at Emo’s on Sixth is the shot that comes up when you google them due to my Creative Commons attribution and wikipedia picking that up. I’ve also contributed to Fugazi’s live archive with ticket stubs and photos.

I wrote this on Jan 14 2021 and never published it presumably because I wanted to get all of the songs finished on the ratings / commentary and I probably had other things to say, but it’s clear that’s never happening so I’m posting it as is from then because I think I had some good stuff here anyway.

I don’t normally listen to the Talk is Jericho podcast and I honestly don’t have a very high opinion of him (and it wasn’t improved by this episode), but since the topic was comparing Anthrax’s Spreading the Disease with their subsequent Among the Living, I have to weigh in. I feel I owe it to…whoever. He had Charlie and Scott from Anthrax and Eddie Trunk who I didn’t know it, but was working at Megaforce when Among the Living was released.

The premise of the episode format is that you take each track head to head and pick the winner. Scott and Charlie acknowledge at the start that they’re biased. I think it’s kinda arbitrary to use the album order to compare the tracks, but I don’t know the history for this particular idea. I’ll bet you’re shocked but I have opinions. First, I have some back story to relate to what the “panelists” also shared.

My introduction to thrash metal started with Metallica’s Master of Puppets. I remember buying the album. I’m pretty sure I was in Arlington and might’ve been on my way to a Rangers game with my father. I was already haunting Bill’s records (RIP Bill) by that time, but the store I remember was similar and I must’ve found it via liner notes. We didn’t have the Internet in 1986, kids. Anyway, up until Master, I had been mostly into bands like Ratt and Iron Maiden. Master of Puppets blew me away and I, of course, read the liner notes to that record which led me to Anthrax’s Spreading the Disease. Much like Eddie who mentions this in the podcast, I was blown away by Joey’s vocals over the thrash. I’ll save my opinions so I line them up with the ones from the podcast.

Separate from the decisions comes the commentary…

• I always wondered why they used the preacher from Poltergeist II to represent Randall Flagg from The Stand. I thought it worked on the album cover but it was a little odd. Jericho had no idea. It also sounds like nobody came after them about it.
• I love that Eddie Trunk is the one who bought the original headdress for the Indians video
• The talk about I’m the Man being safe as a b-side to I Am the Law in the UK and being obscure if it failed is hilarious in retrospect. Also, I own that 12″ and we fucking loved it when it came out. I need to digress to the Z-ROCK and Arcadia theater live recording that ended up on the I’m the Man EP
• Scott translating all of the acronyms was great. Adolescence in Red was supposed to be a clever update of Rhapsody in Blue? I NEVER would have guessed that.
• I’m as torn as Eddie on the Lone Justice / Caught match up. I LOVED Lone Justice and how on top and out front Joey’s vocals were but I have to give it to Caught. That was by far the hardest choice.

What an interesting day. I’ll start with a happy belated birthday to one of my drumming godfathers, Charlie Benante, who celebrated a birthday yesterday. I love Charlie for so many reasons. He’s really a renaissance man. He’s responsible for not only some of the most amazing drum parts, but also many of the guitar riffs and the album art for Anthrax over the years. He’s on the same level as another drumming godfather (but more of a peer since we’re less than a year apart agewise), Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson. I bring up Questlove because he posted today about his disappointment at never being exposed to Pink Floyd’s The Wall until this week. It really struck me how we can all live in our music bubbles even as supposed educated adults. I know how he refers to Soul Train as his babysitter and his musical tutor over the years. I discounted that show as a kid but it was really an amazing showcase for so many artists.

The Pink Floyd connection flows farther into what me finally watching the first episode of Get Back, the new Beatles documentary from Peter Jackson. It turns out that as a part of that documentary and the making of Let It Be and Abbey Road, they were considering doing their first live performance in 3 years at Sabrata, a Roman amphitheatre in Libya, before ultimately deciding to do that rooftop gig. It’s relevant to the Pink Floyd discussion since they did Live at Pompeii in another amphitheatre only about a year later. I have to wonder if they somehow got the idea from the Beatles or someone involved in the Beatles or if that was just a common idea at the time?

I’ll note that going full circle back to hip hop, apparently the video for Gratitude by the Beastie Boys was an homage to Live at Pompeii. In fact, Money Mark commented about it in Questlove’s Instagram post about The Wall.

I was a huge Metallica fan in the late 80s. Huge. It’s not an exaggeration to say that Master of Puppets changed my life (for better or for worse?).

I don’t remember why or how, but I bought the album in the Spring of 1986. For some reason, I recall buying the record on the same Saturday that my father and I went to see the Rangers play the Yankees in Arlington. If that memory is correct, it means I bought it on May 10, 1986. It was barely a month before they played the Bronco Bowl in Fort Worth. I remember the date of the show and I still have the ticket stub.

So when the deluxe remaster box set was released late last year, I decided it was worth it to get a copy. My enthusiasm for the box set caused me to go and get a copy of Back to the Front. The book had been in my wish list from the previous year, but I hadn’t purchased it. I have to say that it’s a pretty great book and I highly recommend it, especially if you were a fan around that time, but I do have one gripe with the book. It follows the chronology of the tour pretty well and includes a huge amount of detail. The quote about the show that I saw on June 3 at the Bronco Bowl is completely inaccurate.

Sorry, Tobias Strul. Ozzy didn’t play the Bronco Bowl. The June 3 show was a Metallica headline show. They played several headliner shows while the Ozzy tour took a break between the first and second US legs. The tour dates for the Ultimate Sin Tour prove this out. My guess is that he saw them at the Tarrant County Convention center a month earlier on May 10th. I remember seeing James in the concession area at the Bronco Bowl before the show which I thought was really cool. I was unfamiliar with the band’s earlier material, so when they closed with Whiplash as one of the last songs, I thought they were saying “Witness”. Not long after the show, I bought both Ride The Lightning and Kill Em All. I remember hearing the news of the death of Cliff on tour in Europe while listening to the late Saturday night metal show in KNON. I remember loving the Garage Days Re-visited EP (and still do). Perhaps if there’s a re-print, they’ll fix it?

I did see Ozzy a few years later at Reunion Arena also corroborated by the tour dates in Wikipedia. I certainly would’ve remembered seeing him in a tiny venue like the Bronco Bowl.