The Dog Star Omnibus Guide to Music

Links to all 

music-related content 

here at the Omnibus below.

"As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods / they kill us for sport."

- Shakespeare (quoted recently by the even-more-eternal-now Eric Cantona)

1.

THINGS OF THIS NATURE

-  007 Mix
-  Albums I Listened To in... (July, August, September)
-  Halloween Mix

-  Oregon Emporium (1998) Mix
-  Songs from my Senior Year
-  Ten Soundtracks
-  That Ten Albums Thing (Ended up being that Fifteen Albums thing.)
-  Twelve Christmas Albums
-  2004 Mix

2.

RANDOM OVERVIEWS 

or LISTEN-THROUGHS

Like a lot of people my music tastes are eclectic, and the below doesn't give an altogether accurate picture of what I listen to with week-to-week regularity. That's probably true of everything in this Table of Contents post, actually; how the heck does such a thing happen? 

Just for fun, here's a quick list of listen-through projects begun (all albums acquired, time staked out (i.e. one hour in the morning and afternoon of my workweek dedicated to listening/ notes-scribbling, one hour on the weekend or free-weeknight to research, spreadsheet created with all the bells and whistles, yadda yadda) but abandoned: B.R.M.C., Budgie, Girlschool, Led Zeppelin, Motorhead, U2, and ZZ Top. In most cases, these were abandoned because there's only so many ways I can write (to paraphrase a friend, who was paraphrasing Chris Farley) "Dude, this song is awesome. TOTALLY AWESOME." Other cases, I just don't have all that much to say; there's tons to say about all these bands and their catalogs but maybe I didn't just didn't have it in me.

Or: maybe one or all of them will still show up one day, given world enough and time.

In alphabetical order of the ones that did get completed:

- Not an overview of my own, but links and notes for two exceptional overviews of The Beatles.  
- The Beach Boys in the 1970s, pt. 1 pt. 2  

- Robert Cray (Ten faves. "Start the Day with Cray" was a thing I did for a year or so.)
- The Doors (my favorite band my junior and senior year in high school. Thanks, Oliver Stone.)
- Harold Faltermeyer (As recently as yesterday I listened to like an hour of this guy; my girls know "Crockett's Theme" and the "Top Gun" theme at least as well as they know "Old Town Road" or the "Sophia the First" theme.

- Genesis in the 80s
- Shooter Jennings and Stephen King, "Black Ribbons". 
- Kraftwerk (my eldest daughter's one-time favorite band.)
- Oasis (The Aharon Klum Invitational)
- The Rolling Stones: 1968 to 1982
- Sade (Studio and Live)
- The Shining (the opera)

- Sonic Youth
- Bruce Springsteen (with Bryant Burnette and may I say I'm particularly proud of that project; take a bow, Bryant!)
- Ten Songs of the Van Hagar Era
- Fifteen Songs of the Van Halen David Lee Roth Era

3.

MUSIC VIDEO

At one point I seriously considered turning the blog over into an all-music-video-review format. I thought it'd be a fun way to dive back into the MTV years of my youth. Buuuut, like so many things, the idea kind of came and went. In theory I'd love to do more videos. (I had a Huey Lewis trilogy planned - I still think about dissecting that "Heart and Soul" video sometimes. Anyway.)

- "Self Control" - Laura Branigan
- "The Wild and the Young" - Quiet Riot

4.

PROG ROCK

My love letter(s) to a much-maligned genre.

- 25 Prog Rock Albums For Your Collection
- Rush (My Favorite Albums)
- Whatever Happened to the Prog-Men of Tomorrow? (i.e. the 80s and Beyond)

And speaking of much-maligned genres:

5.

METAL AND HAIR METAL I'VE KNOWN

My first love, musically. (Followed by Men At Work, Men Without Hats, and the Raiders of the Lost Ark soundtrack. I can still recall when those three albums - along with Judas Priest's Sin After Sin - were the only ones I owned.) 

- 30 Essential Hair Metal Albums 
- Black Sabbath in the 1970s:  (1) Black Sabbath  (2) Paranoid  (3) Master of Reality  (4) Vol. 4  (5) Sabbath Bloody Sabbath  (6) Sabotage  (7) Technical Ecstasy and Never Say Die!

- "Hysteria" by Def Leppard
- Iron Maiden: (1) The Di'Anno Years (2) The Bruce Years, pts. 1, 2, and 3, and (3) The Blaze Bayley Years
- Judas Priest: My Favorite Albums
- Kiss (also some more Iron Maiden)
- New Wave of British Heavy Metal

~

Last Edited 11/3/2019

Iron Maiden and Kiss

I think I've written about this before in these pages (although I can't remember where) but I'm not the most technically savvy person. A friend of mine checked this blog on his phone and tells me it wasn't optimized for mobile reading. I made a face like Joey Tribbiani doing math in his head, and I still don't know if it is or isn't or what that entails. I do know that when I look at the blog on my own mobile. the whole right side of the page is missing, i.e. all the old blog links and my Table of Contents/ favorite posts:

These guys.

Is that what it means? (shrugs) Do people even look at those posts, anyway? I can never tell. Anyway, pursuant to cleaning all those up a little, I'm compartmentalizing a few of these and going to re-do some of them. So if you see a few "Table of Contents" posts coming down the pike, that's what I'm up to. Ye regular readers, feel free to skip. (I guess that goes for non-regular readers, too. Housecleaning alert!)

Anyway, if you clicked on the "Iron Maiden" or "Kiss" link in the Dog Star Omnibus Guide to Music, then away we go, below. 

1.

Here's an overview sort of post ("The Nature of the Beast.") I used to feel I needed to introduce a topic to the internet when I wrote about it. Ah, old-blogging-me! Now I can't even be bothered to provide plot summaries or tell you what comic which screencap is from. 

Here's a history of Iron Maiden Eddie, the coolest mascot going. Man I love looking at those old singles-covers. My brother and I would draw those in our art books all the time. (His were always much better - I never found the knack for illustration. Although once one of these drawings was found by my folks, who, not knowing the context, though I needed psychological help. I love telling that story.)

Here's an overview of Maiden on DVD that I think came out pretty well. That Flight 666 movie is gold. 

And finally, an Essential Maiden Albums to Own post that was meant to introduce a "Thirty Days of Maiden" month where I covered my 30 favorite Maiden songs. Which would be fun but probably tedious; anyway it never happened. 

What's that? You want to know what those 30 favorites would've been? Oh, all right. Of the Di'anno era, it has to be "Running Free," which is just a classic on the order of "Rock and Roll All Night" or any other big anthem you care to nominate. (I have a persistent movie sequence that plays out over the last minute or so, of someone running through and dribbling round the opposing team's defenses before clearing the keeper and firing one into the back of the net and then England wins the World Cup and Steve Harris becomes Prime Minister. The End.) The Dickinson era is much more of a challenge; how to pick just one favorite song? It's easier to do it by album:

Number of the Beast - so many classics. The title track and "Run to the Hills" are metal / Maiden staples. But "Hallowed Be Thy Name" is likely my favorite.

Piece of Mind - "Revelations" probably. But what an album.

Powerslave - "Back in the Village," "Losfer Words," or "Aces High."

Somewhere in Time - "Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner" or "Heaven Can Wait." or "Sea of Madness." Or the title track. 

Seventh Son of a Seventh Son - "Infinite Dreams" or "The Evil That Men Do."

No real favorites from No Prayer for the Dying or Fear of the Dark, although I like plenty of tunes from those. Ditto for the last couple of Bruce-led Maiden efforts. But Brave New World ("Dream of Mirrors," "Ghost of the Navigator", "The Nomad", that ending to "The Wicker Man", which I'll never forget being part of 8000 fans jumping up and down chanting that with all the lights and flames going crazy and the band on stage with big grins on their faces watching us, singing it back to them) and Dance of Death (title track, "No More Lies," "Wildest Dream," "Montségur") are both essential.

The Blaze Blazely era (see my posts for why I call him that) have a surprising amount of Maiden classics: "The Unbeliever, " "2 a.m.", "Man on the Edge," "The Clansman," and "Sign of the Cross" just to name a few. 

And:

2.

"Kiss is as American as Bugs Bunny or Indiana Jones." 

So I said in my overview post of the band (again following the since-discarded idea of "I need to introduce this concept before talking about it or the internet will be hopelessly confused.") I stand by this assertion. 

Album by album: 1974 to 1982 here, and 1983-1998 here. What about Kiss in the 21st century, you ask? No problem: please see "Kiss in the 21st Century." There will likely be a sequel to that in the future dealing with whatever DVD or CD comes out detailing their (latest and allegedly last) farewell tour. 

Here's a post on Attack of the Phantoms aka Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park. 

(Gene voice) "Oh yeah!"

Each of the original members has released a memoir:

- Face the Music: A Life Exposed by Paul Stanley. (Lame title. I bet he was pissed the others took the titles below. That's what you get for being last, Paul.) Fun tidbit about this post: each and every week, the page-counts for this one go up by a fairly uniform amount. That could just be people finding the post, but I like to imagine Paul's long-suffering Personal Assistants required to find every mention of him on the web and refresh the page 50 times to keep active page-counts up. 

- No Regrets by Ace Frehley. Or as Chuck Klostermann called it "No Details." Ace has been writing pt. 2 of this for years. Given his memory problems I imagine this process entails getting everyone who ever knew him together and asking them what he was up to do. I look forward to reading it nevertheless. I still say a fictional biopic of an alien from Jendell would've been the better conceit, for this or the proposed sequel. Ah well. (I also did a post of my favorite Ace Frehley tunes; enjoy.)

- Makeup to Breakup by Peter Criss. Another terrible title. A raunchy, guilty-pleasure of a read, which doesn't really make its author come across too well. Ditto for:

- Kiss and Makeup by Gene Simmons. Gene probably made sure to write his memoir first so he could call dibs on that title. Like Paul says in his book, Gene's main accomplishment as a businessman (I say this as someone with zero accomplishments as a businessman, so no need to remind me of how unworthy I am in the comments; I know. Believe me, I know.) is taking credit for the work of Paul Stanley others. Whether or not this book is an exercise in such a thing, I don't know. Good read, though. (And RIP to Gene's Mom, whom I rather enjoyed getting to know in the chapters dealing with Gene's early years in Israel. Peter calls her out for not letting gentiles in her home in his memoir, but I bet it was more that she thought Peter and Ace were just a couple of scrubs and didn't want them scuffing up her furniture or urinating on the floor.) 

I only reviewed one of the "Kiss books" out there: Kiss and Sell by CK Lendt. A wonderfully dishy book on the most excessive phase of their career (surrounding the "Dynasty" era). In these days of my blogging career, I felt I had to leave lengthy excerpts from any work in question. I've given this up, but man, I remember holding this book open in my lap and furiously typing up all the sections quoted in that post. Rather ridiculous amount of hand-copied text in that post - imagine an actual book review that reproduced that much of the book! - but as a Kiss fan, I still love reading about that crap.

I also wrote a story (loosely based on "The Beard Hunter" by Grant Morrison from his stint on Doom Patrol) about a man who hunts his enemies with knock-out darts and then face-paints them in Kiss designs, before being hired by the Kurt Cobain Died For You Society to take out Dave Grohl. I came close to getting this one published a couple of times but it was never meant to be. Of any of the stories I sent out during that period  (2005-2007) this always got the most fun responses. No takers, but a lot of bemused back and forth with submissions editors. 

~

There! Now when I re-do the Music post, I don't have to include separate links to all the above but can just link to one (this) post. Mission accomplished. 

Springsteen

From September 2017 through this past week and weekend, Bryant Burnette (The Truth Inside the Lie, Where No Blog Has Gone Before, You Only Blog Twice) and I did an album by album overview of Bruce Springsteen's discography under the moniker of "Saturday (or Sunday) Night (or Morning) Springsteen." 

With the recent release of Western Stars I figured it was time to get a Table of Contents sort of post up for all our reviews and overviews. Bryant was kind enough to supply all new capsule reviews of each album for this here post. Click on the link of your choice for track-by-track reviews, screencaps galore, and other fine commentaries. 

"Like a river that don't know where it's flowing /

I went out for a ride and I just kept going."

Greetings from Asbury Park (1973)

This sounds today very much like what it is, i.e., a first album by a performer/band still trying to figure out their sound.  But it's better than most such albums, and you'd have to respect it if only for the career(s) it launched.  I think it's got a lot to enjoy in its own right, though; and if I try to astrally project myself back to 1973, I think I have to conclude that from a point of view of that "when," I've never quite heard anything like this album.

The Wild, The Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle (1973)

This is very much a sequel to the first album, but it's a sequel that deviates from its forerunner in sound, scope, and weight.  There are some absolutely killer tracks on here, and for my money, the entirety of Side B is gold.

Born to Run (1975)

I mean, what can you say?  It's not the sound of ALL rock and roll, but it's definitely THE sound of a certain kind of rock and roll, and in that regard it will probably never be topped.  Springsteen, wisely, rarely tried.

Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978)

(Bryan here: How many times does Bruce make this face in the 70s and 80s? A lot.)

Here's another sequel; this one to Born to Run, and in many ways most of what I said about E Street Shuffle also applies to this one.  Born to Run gets all the glory, but I think this is actually a better album by a marginal degree.  But who's checking margins on these two masterpieces?  (Us, I guess!)

The River (1980)

This two-album set reflects a desire in Springsteen to run away from what he'd created in the foregoing half a decade.  Not with any malice or refutation, but with an acknowledgment: he'd climbed THAT mountain already, and he didn't want to try to better what he'd done, so he'd do something a little different.  Which The River mostly is; not entirely (it's not like you wouldn't recognize this style of music if you bought the album when it came out in October of 1980), but in little ways.  It's a great set of tunes, and in the end, that's probably all that ought to matter.

Nebraska (1982)

Now THIS was a true divergence.  If you bought THIS album on release day (some two years after The River) without knowledge of what you were about to hear, you probably would be a bit rattled.  It's not to everyone's tastes, and it's not even to the tastes of all Springsteen fans.  However, I'd venture a guess: most Springsteen fans who don't dig this album are perhaps fans more of the E Street band than of Springsteen himself.  If so, their ambivalence might make sense: this is Springsteen's core, his essence.  And it's his best album.  With maybe one exception...

Born in the U.S.A. (1984)

Rarely has a better collection of tunes been grouped together on a two-sided piece of vinyl.  What's your list of the best rock albums ever recorded?  If it is missing Born in the U.S.A., it's invalid.  I'm not saying it's THE best; but I am saying it better be in the conversation, or it's not a conversation worth having.

(Bryan again: Hear him, hear him.)

Live 1975 - 1985 (1986)

I want to be clear about what I'm about to say.  No misunderstandings, please; I'm glad Bruce Springsteen is still alive.  BUT ... if fate had decreed that he had to die early, I'd say he ought to have died sometime in the early months of 1986, so that this box set could serve as a tombstone, epitaph, and canonization.  Because in a way, it kind of already does.  Again, I'M VERY GLAD it's not in a literal sense.  But if such a thing had had to happen, 1986 would have been the best possible time.  The only good thing to come from it would have been the reverence that would be bestowed upon those years and upon this set, which is so awesome that it almost makes you wish Bruce had gone out in a blaze of some sort of glory.

Tunnel of Love (1987)

And now for something completely different...  Well, look: it's not hard to see why some people might have turned their noses up at this in comparison to what had come before it.  Hell, I'm the guy who just had to dance around not saying that he wishes Springsteen had died at the top of his powers, and thus ascended into the realm of myth and legend.  No myth or legends are apt to come out of Tunnel of Love, which is indeed a completely different thing.  And yet, it's got enough excellence on it that it really does add to both the myths and the legends, provided you are willing to expand your notion of what that means.  Great album; not iconic, maybe, but great all the same.  And, I'd argue, the last great album he'd make for quite a while.

Human Touch and Lucky Town (1992)

A weird idea, putting out two albums on the same day.  Doing that kind of denies them their own identity, and you wonder why it wasn't just a double-disc release under a single title.  But the albums do have their own identity, provided you are interested enough to look for it.  In the case of Human Touch, it's ... uh ... well, I don't know, but I know it when I hear it.  If that's an anticlimactic pronouncement, well, it's an anticlimactic album.  It makes for interesting supplemental material to a biography, but the tunes themselves are mostly not great.  Some aren't even good.

Springsteen and his new band sound more engaged with the material on Lucky Town, but in all honesty, it's six versus half-a-dozen; the distinction doesn't make all that much difference.

MTV Plugged / In Concert (1992)

This is the sound of a guy trying to keep up his awesome live presence with a different cast of musicians.  And it's not a bad try!  You can tell that Springsteen is going to put on a great show no matter who is on stage with him; give him a microphone, a guitar, and a bunch of ferrets in tutus, and it would probably still be fun.  This is better than that.

Greatest Hits and more (1995)

A good sampling, and a few good "new" tracks, but there's no excuse for this not having been two discs.

The Ghost of Tom Joad (1995)

Springsteen delivers a book of mediocre poetry and does so in musical format.  I love a couple of the songs; the rest, I can't even remember.  It's not that they're bad; they're just so ephemeral that the wind takes them and they go someplace I can't mentally access them.

Tracks (1998) and 18 Tracks (1999):
Pt. 1 and Pt. 2

A hell of a collection of tunes, most of which will never be heard by a mass audience.  If somebody had been a bit more mercenary, there are probably three or four top-ten albums that could have been made from all this at the height of Springsteen's powers.  But hey, so be it; the hardcore fans know what's up.

Live from New York City (2001)

We've yet to see Jesus return on HBO, but we did see The E Street Band return, and if Jesus returning can be better than that then we've all really got something to look forward to. 

The Rising (2002)

A strong collection of tunes, done absolutely no justice by paltry ideas about what "Bruce Springsteen" should sound like.  Hey, look, I get it; it wasn't 1979 anymore.  Maybe trying to sound like it was wouldn't have worked.  But in trying to sound like 2002, they managed only to sound like 1979 trying to sound like 2002 Man, be what you ARE...!

The Essential Bruce Springsteen (2003)

(Bryan here: Kind of weird of Bruce to put out another retrospective so soon after Greatest Hits isn't it? This one is a better selection of songs for my money.)

Devils and Dust (2005)

Scroll up to my comments about The Ghost of Tom Joad.  Same for this one.

We Shall Overcome: The Pete Seeger Sessions (2006)

This is Bruce's only post-eighties album that actually satisfies me.  All the others have a few good songs at a minimum (and most have a few greats), so you'll never catch me wishing they didn't exist.  But whatever happened on this album didn't happen on the others; this is the sound of inspiration striking.

Hammersmith Odeon London '75 (2006)

(Bryan here: I guess I don't have any summary remarks from Bryant on this one, probably because he was really not feeling this one on our listenthrough. Click the link for all the grumpiness, as well as links galore to vintage E Street sound and mayhem.)

Live in Dublin (2007)

Springsteen live albums tend to be pretty glorious, don't they?  This one is no exception.

Magic (2007)

Boy am I glad we did this series of posts!  Thanks to that process, I now know that I can blame some of my dissatisfaction with new-millennium Springsteen albums on piss-poor production.  This album wasn't the first to have lousy sound, but it might be the lousiest-sounding of them all.  It sounds fake.  It sounds like a computer simulation of "Bruce Springsteen."

Working on a Dream (2009)

Not a whit better than Magic in the sound department.  Some decent songs, though.  

The Promise (2010)

How is it even possible that after Tracks, there can be this much great stuff still lying around?  Other bands must hear this and begin weeping.

Wrecking Ball (2012)

I don't LOVE this album, but it's a step up from the previous couple, and it sounds like Springsteen is still very much engaged with the process of writing songs.  He's trying new things, he's not simply copying and pasting his old style.  Still, I think he needs to find a producer who really understands his career; that hasn't happened in a good long while, even if they all swear they do.

High Hopes (2014)

This isn't great or anything, but it's fundamentally solid.  If Springsteen puts out albums "only" as good as this and Wrecking Ball for the rest of his career, then he's still doing alright in my book.  I'll be there for every bit of it I can get!

Chapter and Verse (2016)

 
I'd happily have listened to a full two-disc set of stuff from this era. And you just KNOW such a thing could have been done. (This one also reviews The Ties That Bind.) 

Springsteen on Broadway (2018)

Coming soon.

Western Stars (2019)

The best album of new material he'd put out since The Rising, if not Tunnel of Love. I think this is rather a triumph; maybe just a low-key one, but when you've had a career like the career this dude has had, that's saying something.

~