Review: Chuck Berry's 'After School Session' (Chess Acoustic Sounds Edition)

Chess Records' very first LP was the soundtrack to the 1956 exploitation flick Rock, Rock, Rock! It was a compilation that split time three ways between two doo-wop groups and the grandaddy of rock and roll, Chuck Berry. 

At the time, parents and teachers were still expecting this whole rock and roll fad to breeze over pretty quickly. How could music with such dumb lyrics, Paleolithic musicianship, and mindlessly generic tunes last? 

Review: 'Koko Taylor' (Chess Acoustic Sounds Edition)

Soul was one of the most youthful and vital genres of the sixties, so you really have to stand back in awe when reconciling Koko Taylor and Koko Taylor, her debut album released in 1969 when the singer was forty, which is well past retirement in the pop game. 

Review: 'I'm a Believer My Life of Monkees, Music, and Madness Updated'

Micky Dolenz could have easily gone off on some massive ego trip. He was the lead singer of the biggest hits by the biggest band of the mid-sixties. His face was mugging on TV every week for two years. He befriended The Beatles, toured the world, got screamed at a lot (although not as much as Davy), and did some very odd things to a Moog synthesizer. Yet, Micky seems to have somehow come through Monkeemania with his humbleness in check and his sanity mostly intact. 

Review: Vinyl Reissued of 3 Hole Albums

I can't think of a band that arrived with more baggage than Hole. By the time they released their first album in 1991, Courtney Love was already partnered with the biggest star of the barely-there-yet alternative revolution. Her explosive personality was all over MTV, and her myriad controversies were about to turn Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair into The National Enquirer. 

All this Love made it hard to take Hole's music at face value. That may have actually been a boon for Pretty On the Inside, which is way too abrasive and tuneless to get much traction on its own merits outside of the hardest of hardcore grunge puppies. I also can't think of another debut album by a pretty popular band that is so hard to listen to, with only the somewhat garagey "Loaded" and somewhat psychedelic "Clouds" having enough distinctive personality to rise above their own lack of melodies. Pretty On the Inside makes Bleach sound like Meet the Beatles. 

Review: Ventilator's 'Reseda Spleen'

As a former obsessive bedroom Portastudio recorder myself, I've always had a soft spot for home recordings: Pete Townshend's Scoop compilations, Liz Phair's Girlysound tapes, the first ten years of Guided by Voices. These recordings have an atmosphere that is decidedly unpolished and full of forbidden "you weren't supposed to hear this!" allure. 

I'd never heard of Matt Devine's home-recording project Ventilator, but I was curious because of my fascination with straight-to-High Bias-TDK music. Imagine how hoodwinked I felt when I heard Ventilator's Reseda Spleen! This album sounds as lo-fi as Revolver! That's probably because Devine cheated by not using one of those shitty cassette recorders Phair and GBV and I used. He used a proper Tascam 388 ¼" reel-to-reel tape recorder (purchased from a Mighty Morphine Rangers stuntman for $1,000, no less) and got a proper professional engineer to mix it. Earl Mankey engineered freaking Beach Boys albums! Not good ones, mind you, but still...The Beach Boys! Who just happens to have a Beach Boys engineer hanging around their home? What kind of home recording is that?

Review: 'Pretty in Pink: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack'

Pretty in Pink is not my favorite John Hughes movie. Andie is too mopey, and we don't really want to see her end up with major appliance Blane; we want her to end up with Duckie, even though Duckie is kind of a creep. He's friends with Andre Dice Clay, for chrissakes! It's the one John Hughes movie in which the adults are much more likable than the kids. Harry Dean Stanton and Annie Potts really save Pretty in Pink.

Psychobabble's Psychedelic 500: #25 - 1

Welcome back to Psychobabble's Psychedelic 500, in which I count my personal fave psych songs from 500 all the way down to #1! Today, let's see what's happening in the end, my only friend, the end, from 25 to 1...

25. The Left Banke- "Desiree" (1967), in which the normally mellow Left Banke pound out a spiraling prog riff worthy of King Crimson.

Review: The Cranberries' 'Live at the London Astoria II, 1994'

A whopping nine months before finally releasing their second album, The Cranberries played half of No Need to Argue during a set at London Astoria II. They also played seven tracks from their superior debut album, on which Dolores O'Riordan was really on fire, sounding particularly possessed as she whispered and snarled through a demonic "Not Sorry" and hopping happily on the band's best song, "Dreams". 

Review: 'The Bad Seed' Blu-ray

In 1954, William March published a book about a child who kills not because she's an invading alien, like the kids in The Midwich Cuckoos, or because she's the antichrist, like the kid in The Omen, but because she's entitled, covetous, and completely immoral, like Donald Trump. Because of its all-too-human monster, The Bad Seed was a genuinely scary novel, and with its tight storytelling and clearly defined characters, it was ripe for adaptation into an equally chilling movie.

 The problem was it was a little too ripe. Producer/director Mervyn LeRoy should have sat on The Bad Seed until Hollywood was ready to make a picture about children killing children without pulling punches. Instead, Warner Bros. rushed it into theaters in 1956, forcing LeRoy to defang March's tale with camp eight years before Susan Sontag even got a chance to define the term.

Review: 'The Star Trek Archive: 100 Objects and Stories from the Final Frontier'

Star Trek has been granted longevity that few franchises could ever dream of because it was smart, well-written, had a specific point of view, and was full of memorable, lovable characters. But, like all enduring sci-fi works, it was also full of stuff. Just as Star Wars had its lightsabers and landspeeders, Star Trek had its phasers, tricorders, Enterprises, tribbles, and pointy ears.