'Queens Of The Stone Age'

I like a band with an identity, with a home. Upon releasing their eponymous album lead singer and guitarist Josh Homme said, "I just wanted to start a band that within three seconds of listening, people knew what band it was.”

No one is like Queens of the Stone Age. I can pick out one of their songs within probably 10-15 seconds of the song starting. Furthermore, they’re probably one of the more unforgiving bands to have a hit on rock radio the last 25 years. “No One Knows” from Songs For the Deaf is as scorching of a song as the Queens have released and it’s still really great.

The Queens’ roots go down to the stoner rock group Kyuss. After they broke up, Homme toured with the Screaming Trees and eventually decided to start a new band. After several line-ups, it settled on Alfredo Hernandez on drums and (after completion of the album) Nick Oliveri on bass (Homme played bass on this album). Of course, Homme, Hernandez and Oliveri were essentially Kyuss.

Queens also has its roots in the deserts of southern California and you hear it in the music. There’s a dry irritation and heat that comes off the songs. It’s stark and scary. It runs hot and yet you can’t get away from the cold nights. It’s rock music for coyotes. 

'Shalimar'

This is an odd choice for the list. It’s a soundtrack to a Hindi film in 1978 called Shalimar. It starred what appears to be some of the more popular Hindi film stars of the day in addition to Rex Harrison.

Harrison plays a dying crime lord who challenges the best thieves in all the land to steal a precious gem, Shalimar. S.S. Kumar plays a low-level thief, who through a series of misunderstandings and identity theft is adopted into the inner sanctum of the criminal underworld.

I haven’t seen the film, but I can only assume Kumar succeeds in either stealing the diamond and/or bringing down Harrison’s dastardly crime syndicate and getting the girl. There’s always a girl.

It’s not a Bollywood film as I’ve learned only refers to films produced in Bombay (now Mumbai, but once the “Hollywood” of Indian cinema, hence the name). The soundtrack, however, is unique as it is a multi-layered collection of 1970s kitsch, traditional Indian instrumentation with a healthy splash of Western music.

Otherwise, I can’t see much of a reason why this soundtrack is on the 1,001 list. Outside of being "ultra stereophonic." 

'Stand!' & 'There's a Riot Goin' On'

Culturally, it’s hard to find a musical artist that was on par with Sly and the Family Stone. The band encompassed the late 1960s and early 1970s like very few ever did.

There was the rock and hippie angle with socially conscious lyrics of both Stand! and There’s a Riot Goin’ On. Shortly after the success of Stand!, the band played Woodstock already making them a pillar of the cultural times.

Furthermore, with the song "Everyday People,"

they actually coined a phrase, “Different strokes for different folks.” How culturally impactful is that?

Their biggest impact is being virtually the first band of note to have a multi-ethnic and multi-gender band including Sly’s brother and sister, and two white guys, who the Black Panthers were later put pressure on Stone to replace with African American players.

After the success of Stand! the band really hit a rough patch, which in many ways was exacerbated by his rampant drug use. He would later end up broke and busted multiple times for drug possession (it’s rumored that he carried a violin case full of illicit drugs around). It resulted to ruin his career as it was always a gamble of him or a bandmate missing a show. He retired until recently when he’s gigged with family and friends. Otherwise, he’s been a recluse and rumored to be living in a van down by the river, quite literally. 

'Soul Mining' & 'Infected'

The The is basically Matt Johnson and a revolving door of special guests and musicians including The Smiths' guitarist Johnny Marr and Jools Holland.

Outside of a relatively clever band name, this is not remarkably better or worse than most pop-electronic music from the 1980s. 

One note that is worth mentioning is that Matt's brother, Andrew, did some of the artwork for The The under the name of Andy Dog. This included the original cover for Infected, which featured a demon masturbating and apparently completing. The album was pulled and an edited version was released. You can see the unedited version here. 

I would love someone to interview the Johnson brothers and just ask them what exactly they were trying to do. I don't know if the controversy helped with album sales. It probably didn't hurt, but that seems like a pretty shallow reason for doing something. 

Furthermore, was the record label thinking the same thing assuming that repackaging would cost less than the free advertising they'd get for having a demon ejaculating on himself? 

'Sons And Lovers'

Every son loves his mother and it should be no surprise that this is a common theme in literature. I say "love" only because it's the best word. In fact, the mother-son relationship is so dynamic that it shapes most males to their detriment or otherwise.

The United States government once claimed that they disallowed women in battle because it would be too traumatic for the male soldiers to see a woman die. That's because when a male soldier is bleeding out all they ask for is their mother. All women are sort of their mothers.

D.H. Lawrence wrote Sons and Lovers while his mother was ill. The first draft of the novel was lost due to him leaving it to tend to his sick mother. The story itself is a mirror of his mother. He felt she married below her social standing. Paul Morel's mother falls in love with a poor, drunk and simpleton miner. She lives a hard and unremarkable life fighting off her dullard husband and preventing him from spending their meager pay on drink.

I can relate. My parents divorced when I was 15 and it was probably another five years until my mother starting "dating" guys. She was in her 40s and 50s so it wasn't anything like it sounds. It was older, grandfatherly like guys from her church. Everyone was lonely.

I probably ran at least one of them off. I was in college so I wasn't around. But one guy was not unlike Paul Morel's father: Unintellectual, unambitious and physically unfit for any basic action like going to a museum or traveling.

Yeah, I understood that she was lonely and it makes me sick sorta thinking about it. However, that's no excuse for compromising even if the scales were even. I would like to think I did all of this because I love her. But I don't if it was altogether altruistic or built out of jealously.

'Finnegan's Wake'

I’ve done what most haven’t. It took me forever to find a copy of Finnegan’s Wake and I learned that’s probably due to the fact that it’s simply one of the hardest pieces of fiction every written.

I’m not saying I “got it.” No one “gets it.” You read it and then find CliffsNotes to basically translate it.

I will say, some of the syntactical contortions James Joyce undertakes is really, really remarkable.

'Shadowlands' & 'Ingénue'

Not to take away from the massive steps forward the United States has made in accepting of the homosexual community, but k.d. lang came out of the closet in 1992, during the very heart of her massively successful career. And no one seemed to care.

lang is sorta weird for several reasons, none of which include her sexual preference.

For one, she sings and plays pretty weird music. At the time, however, it was popular to like country-ish pop, easy-listenin’ rock. It’s why Bonnie Raitt sold about 10 billion albums and why Dwight Yoakum wound up so popular that he became a part-time actor.

k.d. lang got popular by playing this moody country adult contemporary that nobody that liked country listened to but everyone that was pretty lame loved. There is no way this should have been popular. The only explanation was that it happened in the 1990s and a lot of weird things happened in music during the 1990s.

What also is weird is that the United States fully embraced an openly gay celebrity. The same year she “came out of the closet,” lang’s album, Ingénue, went double platinum. Double platinum. It was mega-popular. Every one over the age of 30 bought this album. These are the same people that 20 years later are thumping their Bibles and bemoaning the rhetoric of same-sex marriage, basically condemning the country as a modern Sodom. In fact, they did more for normalizing homosexuality than anyone.

Plus, lang is Canadian.

k.d. lang is extremely popular and there’s no viable reason why she should be outside of the fact that Americans love lesbian Canada pseudo-country contemporary adult pop music. Go figure. 

'#1 Record' & 'Third/Sister Lovers'

Big Star, a lesson to all artists. It’s fleeting and no matter what you have going for you it probably will never happen. If it does, it doesn’t last long.

Alex Chilton had the name. He was the lead singer of The Box Tops and had a hit record with “The Letter.” Then there was Chris Bell, the talented guitarist and lead singer. Two really legit songwriters and artists, one with a claim to fame. Furthermore, the band was based in Memphis along with the distribution power of Stax Records.

On top of all that, Big Star was a power pop band built around melodies and hooks. They weren’t anything out of left field with its foundation based in The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. Critics loved them.

Yet, their career probably peaked recently when a documentary about the group was released and interest in the band probably hit an all-time high.

What went wrong?

Stax Records couldn’t promote the band appropriately. This responsibility was eventually given to Columbia Records, who did not want to mess with small-label band so copies of the record couldn’t be found in the record stores.

Bell later quit the band as they continued recording and continued finding a dead end through distribution and marketing. He would die in a car accident at age 27.

So, before you declare a band as being eternal or some sort of pillar of the zeitgeist, remember that there’s thousands of better bands and artists that never got the chance. 

'Led Zeppelin I' & 'Led Zeppelin III'

Order of an individual’s favorite Led Zeppelin album, chronologically.

Everyone initially loves Led Zeppelin IV or ZOSO because of “Stairway to Heaven.”

Then they realize it was just an indulgent jack-off session so they start to like Led Zeppelin II because it has a lot of radio hits and by this time you’re an older teenager and it’s also a plodding mess of hard rock and early metal.

You age. And you adopt Led Zeppelin I as your favorite album because it’s “genuine” and “pure Zep” because it’s them doing blues, which is all Led Zeppelin really were. At this point, you’re a true asshole because you like a British band solely for ripping off poor, unknown black Americans, who did all these songs and did them nominally better.

You age a bit more and probably are reaching your mid-20s when you realize that Led Zeppelin IV (ZOSO) is, again, the best IN SPITE OF “Stairway to Heaven,” which remains a pretty overrated song.

After a multi-year respite and dalliance with Houses of the Holy and Physical Graffiti, you finally come to the conclusion that Led Zeppelin III is the best album because by this time you are 30+ and not a total retard. Although, in the back of your brain, you still think Physical Graffiti might still be better.

I just finished reading Hammer of the Gods, one of the most well-known of rock and roll biographies and although thoroughly entertained it didn’t take long for me to realize that Led Zeppelin were, in fact, total assholes. I mean, Jimmy Page’s opinions of women alone make you question their entire body of work and aesthetic. Women were basically third-class citizens to him.

John Bonham appears to be a total drunken lunatic. Peter Grant might have been one of the most unethical humans outside of genocidal totalitarians.

Robert Plant was no prince, but in comparison he comes off looking like a sweetheart.

It’s a revealing read to say the least. This was Jimmy Page’s band (I don’t think it ever became anything different outside of his heavy heroin addiction later in the band’s career). He was with The Yardbirds, they split and the record companies basically attempted to rebuild it with Page and some pieces including fellow session player John Paul Jones. They picked Plant and Bonham from the English hinterlands and took off.

It’s also noteworthy how American Led Zeppelin were. They didn’t cut their teeth on the British tours and clubs. They went to America almost immediately behind the name power of “The New Yardbirds” and Page. They toured excessively with an American stadium tour every year.

Knowing who these people were doesn’t necessarily change the way you enjoy their music. If you’re like me, you’re as tired of the 15 or so songs that they jam on classic rock stations as any bloc of songs in history. And it’s not like they’ve been overplayed, so to speak

; they’re just not very good. Zeppelin’s true brilliance comes with their lesser known songs. In fact, a good barometer to find these songs is finding out what songs guitar magazines put in their tablature sections. I ignored all those songs early in life and now they’re my favorites.