Friday, July 20, 2007

Quiz: what should I do this weekend?

Wherein let us pretend I care what you think, it's part of the illusion


I'm thinking I should rip another vinyl album to digital. I have no clear plan about completing this project, more like just grabbing what seems interesting at the moment and I'd like to listen to again. I'm thinking of the following:


As a bonus, I might thrown in Propaganda's The Nine Lives of Dr. Mabuse. Here's one review:
Propagandas’ 'The Nine Lives of Dr Mabuse' 12” version. I don’t recall any exposure to the track prior to my purchase, the presence of the logo and the weird artwork made me stump up my hard earned – the track turned out to be 6 minutes of the darkest pop music with the exotic vocal interplay of Claudia Brucken, Susan Freytag, and musical backing provided by Micheal Mertens and Ralf Dorper, all supplemented by a driving Fairlight CMI enhanced groove. Suitably they became dubbed as "Abba from Hell". Nothing else had ever sound as grandiose, massive, and as frighteningly compelling in my world. 20 years later I still rate that one record in my all time top 10, it's that good. Unfortunately the band, couldn't sustain the flow after releasing a couple of fine singles (Duel, p-Machinary) and one excellent debut ‘A Secret Wish’, they seemed to fall apart at the seams, but give me a classic one off over a lifetime of mediocrity any day.

Update: Whoa-- the AV Club votes for Sgt Pepper. I'm counting it as a vote, how likely is it that two people would be thinking of this at the same time?:
Pepper destroys everything that’s singular and resonant in the Beatles’ music, stripping “She’s Leaving Home” of its melancholy grace, “Good Morning” of its bile and caustic satire and “A Day In The Life” of its epic, bipolar grandeur. At his twee, old-timey worst, Paul McCartney wrote clamorous, cloying little ditties that bordered on novelty songs. Sgt. Pepper takes this rare shortcoming in the Beatles’ canon and runs with it, converting Sir Paul’s cutesy story-songs into terrible vaudeville skits performed with all the subtlety and nuance of an electric chainsaw to the spinal chord. Guest stars Steve Martin and Alice Cooper respectively reduce “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” and “Because” into dopey kitsch.

The musical performances here fall into two discreet categories: bland, reverent mediocrities and creaky novelty songs. The sole exception is Aerosmith’s down and dirty take on “Come Together.” Aerosmith escapes the epic pointlessness of this whole endeavor by making “Come Together” their own—a nasty, warped, peyote-soaked little blues howler delivered with sleazy conviction. It’s the only halfway-credible cover in this whole misbegotten enterprise.

3 Comments:

Blogger Icepick said...

Wow, I would think the AV Club's take would be a vote against.

Having recently seen Bjorn Again, the worlds PREMIERE ABBA tribute band, I have to vote for Propaganda's track. How could someone NOT vote for The Abba from Hell?

7/20/2007 03:18:00 PM  
Blogger bill said...

But after reading that you know you want to hear it.

The Propaganda 12" is only two tracks, so that's pretty easy.

I've only done a couple albums, but for each side (approx 20 minutes of recording time), it's then taking about another 30 minutes for minor sound clean up and breaking into individual tracks.

7/20/2007 03:26:00 PM  
Blogger bill said...

Propaganda presents the Nine Lives of Dr. Mabuse

I'll have more text to add later. Until then, here's the liner notes followed by both sides of this 12" 45rpm from 1984. Produced by Trevor Horn on the Zang Tumb Tuum label.

7/21/2007 10:11:00 PM  

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