Back to the Music

I started this off intending it to be mostly about music with occasional meanderings about life in general, but those two seem to have switched places in the topics priority list. They kind of come together in today's entry though, since right now everyday life does have quite a bit to do with music.

Ever since "The View From Here" (see two posts back) took over my consciousness -- and it's still in heavy rotation -- I've bought SEVEN new albums to add to the collection. Obviously I have a significant problem. Here's the back story on each....

Tool: Lateralus
I've been vaguely aware of Tool as a 93X band, and even bought a cassette of theirs way back when. Yeah, I said cassette. That should tell you how long ago this was. I decided to give them another shot because my cousin the headbanging pharmacist pointed out to me that there are a lot of quirky little puzzles to this album that have to do with the Fibonacci Sequence. As a math teacher, that was too intellectual to pass up. And that aspect of the album is pretty cool. But more importantly, it ROCKS.

Bruce Hornsby: Levitate
This came out on what proved to be the historic New Release Tuesday of September 15. B.H. is an easy entry in my top 10 of all time, probably top 5, and seriously, if you have never seen him and his band the Noisemakers perform live you have not yet experienced the true potential of live music. After seeing him in concert one night, my sister, who was not an off-the-chart fan the way I was but probably went to the concert so I would have someone to go with, walked out of the theater in astonishment saying, "There's no way he can have any album out that is as good as he is live." It's a very good point, but one I'd have to give serious thought before I could say whether or not I agree. But this new one? Because it is credited to "Bruce Hornsby and the Noisemakers" it is truly a band effort. This one would give you an idea of what you're missing.

Dream Theater: Wither
Sept. 15 release #2. Of course if Dream Theater releases anything, I'm getting it. This was a digital single from iTunes of the song "Wither" from their newest album "Black Clouds and Silver Linings." In a universe that made sense, this song would be a huge, huge hit. But it won't be, because too many friggin' people can't stop dancing to Lady Gaga long enough to sample a greater quality of popular music. I didn't get this just because I wanted to be Insane Collector Who Buys Everything The Band Releases, but there were some cool bonuses on it. One is a reworked piano ballad version of the song which is strikingly beautiful, one is the vocal demo of the song that the songwriter, John Petrucci, sang (and he's really not that bad), and the third was the vocal demo for another song on the album, "The Best of Times," sung by the drummer Mike Portnoy (who's no Petrucci when it comes to singing). In fact, after downloading this I deleted original version of the song that came with the single. I don't need two copies of it.

Porcupine Tree: The Incident
Sept. 15 yet again. I love telling people the name of this band because I know there are many that hear it and immediately think "What the hell....?" The band has a catalog of progressive music that is very spacey like Pink Floyd, while being very guitar driven at the same time, almost to the point of sounding industrial. Very, very cool stuff. This new album is a double CD, and merits a distinction: The first CD is comprised of one song broken into 14 parts that blend together, making it the only song in my iTunes library that continues unbroken for an entire 55 minutes. The music geek in me loves that into tiny little pieces.

Muse: The Resistance
Yeah, you know when I bought this by now. Muse is a newer band that I discovered fairly recently: I don't know if it was DaM who introduced me to them first, or if I read how Petrucci got Portnoy interested in them and thought that was a good enough endorsement for me. An interesting band that works in parts of Rush, a LOT of Queen, and their own collection of musical and lyrical idiosyncrasies. Not as rocking as I'd hoped for compared to their other stuff, but all the same it's a pretty cool album. There are a lot of Queen echoes in there, and since Queen is in a three-way tie as my favorite musical act, that is not a bad thing. Side note: Anyone who makes any comparison between Adam Lambert from American Idol and Freddie Mercury needs to hop on a rocket ship and get off my planet. NOW.

Megadeth: Endgame
9/15/09. Holy crap does this make up for any other album on this list that I said didn't rock enough. I almost didn't buy it because honestly, I've always seen Megadeth as kind of hit and miss. They tried hard on this one though. I was laughing out loud at how much I liked this within the first five seconds of the second song.

Mark Knopfler: Get Lucky
Okay, this was released on Sept. 15, but I did not buy it then. Knopfler, once the voice and driving creative force behind Dire Straits, put out a solo album about ten or so years ago called "Goldenheart" that was okay, but didn't really catch on with me. I saw this one on the iTunes new release page, and thought, eh, I'll pass. Five albums is enough for one day, even for me. But then today when I got home from helping Mr. and Mrs. Bomani move into their new home, I had a voice mail from my sister that told me two things. (1) Our parents' puppies, whom she is currently caring for and I will be next week, crapped in their crate for a second day in a row. This makes me want to have them at my house even less than I already do, which is saying something. (2) Mark Knopfler's new album is AWESOME, and she more or less commanded me to get it. Now, usually it's the other way around with us, as I try to get her to listen to new bands or artists. So I figured, okay, if she feels that strongly about it and she knows my library well enough, why not? So I downloaded it.

No opinions of it yet, though. Because right now I'm still listening to Megadeth rock the paint off my office walls.