LISTENING PARTY: Bat Out Of Hell

There's one week a year, usually in late October-mid November, that we call "Stoked for the Loaf" week at Stately Tressel Manor. It's the week where, inexplicably, I become enamored with the recorded ouvre of Marvin Lee Aday, known the world over as Meatloaf. To most youngsters, Meat is just that guy with the man boobs in Fight Club, but he also has probably the most impressive trilogy in recording history with his Bat Out Of Hell series. I know what you're saying; There aren't that many trilogies in recording history, and while it's true that nobody was clamoring for "Use Your Illusion III", we shouldn't let Axl Rose's shortcomings overshadow the 'Loaf's achievement.
Now I've resisted doing Meatloaf for several reasons. 1)I'm never really sure if Meatloaf is taking himself all that seriously, which means making jokes at his expense are really jokes at my expense. And I hate anything that makes me look bad. That kind of funnels into reason two. 2) I don't know how openly I should flaunt my love of Meatloaf. Because when I do these livebloggings, I only do them for albums that I have genuine affection for. I wouldn't pick on an album I didn't think was good somehow. So, by the very nature of doing a Meatloaf album, I'm admitting that I think Meatloaf albums are somehow good. Which is only partially true. The truth is that I think Meatloaf albums are totally awesome. 3) Since the songs are so frigging long, I worry that I might run out of things to say in the twelve minutes it takes Meat to finish singing "Paradise by the Dashboard Light." But here we go: I figure if Meat can sustain enough energy to perform two hours worth of these songs being two hundred pounds overweight, I should certainly be able write about some of them for forty-four minutes being twenty pounds overweight.

"Bat Out Of Hell"- Oh god, we're only four measures into this song and I'm already tired. I think you can pick up on Jim Steinman and Meatloaf's theatre background in the way the song opens with an overture. By the time we're forty seconds into this album we've already heard six hundred different musical ideas, all of which are about sexual braggadocio. Which is pretty funny when you consider the album was written by Jim Steinman:

And produced by Todd Rundgren:


two of the most lady-looking dudes I've ever seen. I mean, really Jim Steinman looks like he just came from wherever that place is that old ladies go to have sex with old bikers. And I mean that he's the old lady. Because he looks like an old lady. Meatloaf also had long hair at the time, but he's sensibly realized that old hair on men doesn't look that great. I guess luckily for Jim Steinman he's really an old woman.
And looking at Todd Rundgren reminds me of a story from when the band Hanson first appeared on the scene: we were all tooling on Hanson, and then our bass player said, "Yeah, but the lead singer is pretty hot," not realizing that the lead singer of Hanson was in fact a boy. I mention this because I have to admit that looking at Todd Rundgren turns me on. Because he looks like a girl.

So the point is that I can see the combination of two guys who looked like girls and a guy who looks like he ate a middle linebacker needing to prove their manliness. So they do it with the maybe the gayest sounding rock n'roll songs about men getting it on with ladies of all time.

"You Took The Words Right Out of My Mouth (Hot Summer Night)" I hate songs that have parenthesis in their titles. There's no place for parenthesis in rock n' roll, unless you're doing a Works Cited page. So what's the point of the parenthesis in this case? What was so important to Jim Steinman about it being a hot summer night that it needed to be added to the title? My other favorite thing about this song is Jim Steinman's spoken word introduction: because if there's anything that rock songs need less than parenthesis, it's spoken word introductions. But Steinman loves them, so he starts this song with something about werewolves, and virgins offering him shit under the full moon light, like her throat. I don't know. It grosses me out to think about it, especially because I think this is how Jim Steinman talks to girls all the time. So you couple that with the fact that he looks like Karen Black in Children of the Corn IV, you can imagine that he doesn't get a lot of ladies. Which would explain why in the songs he writes it sounds like he's never heard a woman talk before, because it's clear he never has.


"Heaven Can Wait"-This is ballad about Warren Beatty. I think. Or about not getting laid.

"All Revved Up and No Place to Go"- Wait, another song about not getting laid. This is really making me reconsider what exactly they mean by "Bat Out of Hell." For the record, I think that Meatloaf, even being overweight, got revved up but then got to go places. Sexually. The man has an animal charisma. I think he did okay with the ladies. Probably because he wasn't always approaching women with tortured metaphors about I'm a werewolf and my penis is a motorcycle.

"Two Out of Three Ain't Bad" -I love this song. I love it despite the fact that Steinman has Meat tell a girl that he's crying icicles instead of tears. I love it despite the fact that the verses seem to indicate that the girl isn't in love with our protagonist, but the chorus makes it seem that the guy is all about hooking up but doesn't want to commit. (I want you, I need you, I'm never going to love you, so two out of three ain't bad.) I love it even though in almost any endeavor except baseball , two out of three is kind of bad. It's a 66.67%, which is not enough to transfer it to a four year accredited college. (Okay, by the second go around, the chorus starts out by explaining that the girl is telling him that she's never going to love him, which makes more lyrical sense--as much lyrical sense as one can find on a Meatloaf album.)

"Paradise by the Dashboard Light"- When I was in high school, they played this song at every high school dance. There was this really beautiful girl named Santina, and she and I would command the dance floor every time the DJ threw it on. The dance basically consisted of Santina busting out some really sweet moves, while I stood about three feet away from her doing my best middle-aged Dan Ackroyd impression. You know, just swinging my arms and snapping my fingers, occasionally moving my feet. And by the end I would be exhausted.

By the Phil Razzutto part, where he makes the not even slightly obscured sexual references, I'd basically be laying on the floor, gasping for breath, while Santina strutted around my winded corpse. We performed this at every dance throughout high school, but she never wanted to go out on a date with me. Looking back now, the fact that I was as in-shape as a 55-year old Dan Ackroyd who didn't have the stamina to make it through an entire Meatloaf song might have had something to do with it. But luckily for everybody involved, I realized that, and didn't do anything crazy, like write an overblown rock opera about it and then entice my overweight friend into performing it.

"For Crying Out Loud"- I kind of forgot how short albums that originally appeared on vinyl are. Limited by the format, they usually top out at 40 minutes. So now we're almost to the end of Bat Out of Hell, and you get the sense that if only they had a full 72 minutes that compact discs offer, Steinman and Meat could really explore the depths of the guys who don't get laid phenomenon. But as they were hampered in by only forty minutes, they decide to end the album with this solo piano piece that really encapsulates, rather succinctly--oh, shit here comes the Philharmonic Orchestra. This isn't going to be over anytime soon. Well, hopefully, they will use it tastefully and subtly--oh wait, Meat just asked the girl if she can see his Levi's busting apart. And now here comes the glockenspiel. We're none of us escaping with our dignity intact with this one. I just checked the liner notes, and this song is performed by BOTH the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Because if there's one thing a song about blue balls needs, it's TWO fricking orchestras playing at the same time. And I think that might be the ultimate metaphor to describe Bat Out of Hell.

And it gets worse with the sequel.

LISTENING PARTY: Radio KAOS

I think that what the world needs more of is sci-fi concept albums. I know that we all have our favorites: Kilroy was Here by Styx, 2112 by Rush, Psychoderelict by Pete Townsend, that album that Isaac Asimov recorded with Rage Against the Machine. But my favorite, by far, is Roger Waters' Radio KAOS. And it's not because it's the story of a paraplegic boy interfacing with the world's computer systems to threaten the world with nuclear annihilation. It's not because Roger Waters believes in the power of a radio DJ to save humankind. It's because he believes that the soundtrack of the future is white English guy funk.

"Radio Waves"- There are some concept albums that have a loose concept that you really can only glean from reading the liner notes and interviews with the artist (e.g. any album Tori Amos has ever released)and there are some that act like a soundtrack to a movie that doesn't exist, with the concept hinted at with interstitial material between the songs (The Wall, before The Wall movie existed) and then there's "Radio Waves", where Roger Waters just tells us about Billy in his wheel chair, picking up radio waves through the computer system that allows him to communicate. This isn't really enough to fill up an entire four minutes, so Waters just spends the rest of the time naming US cities. Highlight: when he sings "Oklahoma City" and then lets out a 'Yeah!' after it.

"Who Needs Information?" So we get our first snippet of dialogue before this song, where DJ Jim Ladd plays DJ Jim Ladd who takes a call from Billy. Billy tells him he's from the Valley, and when Ladd thinks he means San Fernando, Billy calls him a schmuck and tells him that he meant Wales. Isn't that kind of a ridiculous thing to expect a DJ in L.A. to guess? It would be like I told you I spent the day in the city, and you, knowing I live in Southeastern Massachusetts, guess that I meant Boston, and I was all like, "No, The Emerald City of Oz! Jesus, you douche!" Okay, the song's about halfway over and I still haven't even started talking about it yet. Waters gives us a snippet of information about the plot of Radio KAOS, which somehow involves Billy watching his brother throw a cinderblock or something off an overpass. That's like two lines in the whole song, the rest of which is just typical Roger Waters-I hate everybody especially everybody else from Pink Floyd that isn't me. And it segues, rather unconvincingly from R&B background vocals, and a lite funk horn part into a Welsh choir. Because I always put those two things together. Just like I put together the plot from 'My Left Foot' with 'War Games.'

"Me or Him"- Let's slow things down here guys. Let's enter ballad territory and explain a little bit more about where everybody's coming from. So, apparently, after throwing a cinder block off an overpass, Billy's brother gets sent to jail. I don't know what he was expecting. Like, I've heard of people spitting off an overpass, but a cinderblock is just a whole other level of douchery. So Billy, all sad that his cinderblock throwing brother is in jail, decides to start calling into radio shows, and apparently he becomes so popular that people all over the world tune in to listen to him. Which seems about as likely as someone from Wales starting WWIII, so you can see that the window of disbelief is closing rapidly. This doesn't really work very well as a concept album because so much shit is happening, so much backstory needs explaining. That's why the best concept albums have such simple concepts. You know when your mother sees a really complicated movie, and she starts trying to explain it to you, and it doesn't make any sense because she just tells you snippets and forgets to fill you in on the most important parts. Now imagine if she wasn't your mother, but instead was the former bass player of Pink Floyd. And imagine while she's telling you about it, a competent but lifeless band played lite funk tunes behind her. There, I just saved you $8.99.

"The Powers That Be"-So three songs into his eight-song masterpiece, Roger Waters has decided to abandon the storyline he's been building so compellingly to throw in a song about how the world is run by a powerful cabal of leaders and businessmen who don't care about the common man, common men who can communicate with complex computer systems with their brains. And then he's decided that Mike & the Mechanics isn't going to steal his thunder, so he invites Paul Carrack to sing much of the lead vocal on this track. I wouldn't be surprised if that makes this the most successful song of Roger Waters solo career, because Carrack also sang lead on Squeeze's biggest hit, "Tempted." Which I think was about packing toothbrushes and combs and also about Cold War politics. I THINK.

"Sunset Strip"- I can't believe this song is written by the same guy who wrote "Animals." Because it sounds like mid-80s Don Henley. Except instead of the smooth California vocal stylings of the Eagles, it's sung by someone who sounds like one of the weird angry Muppets who used to appear on early Saturday Night Live.


"Home"-Okay, we've only got three songs left, and the plot hasn't really moved in two songs, and Waters includes a long DJ bit about different kinds of fish. I've struggled to tie it in as a metaphor for what's happening on the album, but it seems more like a private joke between Roger Waters and Jim Ladd. Although that seems unlikely, since can you picture Roger Waters being part of an private joke? This guy has only laughed once, and that was only the scary maniacal laugh at the end of "The Dark Side of the Moon." Also, we just passed my favorite part of the whole album, when Waters sings "Cowboys and Arabs" and he double tracks it, because it needs to be highlighted. I'm assuming Cowboys are the U.S. and Arabs are well, Arabs. This song also has nothing to do with the over-plot dealing with Billy's plan to annihilate the world because he's...bored? Pissed his brother was incarcerated for throwing a cinderblock off an overpass? Maybe he just hates the radio programming on radio KAOS. And since it seems to only play really lame lite-funk tunes by Roger Waters, maybe Billy's got a point. My second favorite of the whole album just passed by, too, where Waters sings "could be a baker, could a Laker, could be Kareem Abdul Jabar" which is the first time I've thought about Kareem since I was seven years old.

"Four Minutes"-Okay, right after "Home", Billy tells Jim Ladd that he's pressed the button, and Ladd laughs and hangs up on him. And then, for some reason, Ladd seems to really take it seriously, and starts to make announcements about the end of the world coming. A woman, it might be Clara Torres-who was the lady who orgasmed all over 'The Great Gig in the Sky' on Dark Side, is now orgasming all over this track, which is called four minutes to represent the four minutes I guess Waters thought we would have from when the Ruskies pushed the button and actual nuclear annihilation. I think a really good Twilight Zone episode would be if the button were actually pressed and then somebody sat down to listen to 'Four Minutes' and then halfway through just looked over at his wife or someone and said "Shit, it's really taking its time, huh?" Waters is really throwing out all the stops here, including using the sequencer part from 'On the Run' (again from Dark Side) as well as snippets of Margaret Thatcher speeches, and then it all builds to a crescendo: "Goodbye Billy," Jim Ladd says. And you think maybe the album is over. But you didn't count on one thing: Bob Geldof.

"The Tide is Turning (After Live Aid)"- Okay, as far as I can tell, Roger Waters was so moved by Live Aid, the big all day concert Bob Geldof put together to battle famine in Africa, that he wrote this song. And I guess I'm supposed to guess that Billy also saw Live Aid and then decided not to destroy the world after all. I have another hypothesis, though. Billy did destroy the world, and the afterlife is this song, over and over again. That's right, for our sins, we've all gone to Hell. This is probably the catchiest song Roger Waters has ever written, and I remember feeling moved when I watched his concert from the Berlin Wall, where he played the whole of "The Wall" one of my favorite albums of all time, and then closed out with this song, because after the fall of the Berlin Wall, maybe it did feel like the Tide was Turning, more so than Freddie Mercury rocking the crowd at Wembley Stadium with "Another One Bites the Dust" or something. Okay, so the song is winding down, and Roger Waters sings 'The Tide is turning' over and over again, and near the end, he says 'The Tide is turning, Billy', which of course is a reference to the main character of his thirty-seven minute epic (who has only like four lines, and isn't even mentioned in half the songs) but then, the very last line is "The tide is turning, sylvester." WHO THE HELL IS SYLVESTER? I have no idea. Is it the cat from those cartoons? Then who is Tweety? Who is the Old Lady? I think maybe I've missed Disc 1 of this album. This can't be it. But at the same time, I thank God that it is. Because I made it about thirteen minutes into this before I wanted to destroy the world. And scarily, it's actually an album I like. Especially since it includes this guy:


Who represents....maybe American imperialism? Or mutually-insured destruction? Or just cats with lisps?

LISTENING PARTY: Vs.

The first time I remember hearing Pearl Jam was at Kim Volner's 13th birthday party.

It was a pool party, but I don't remember if I knew that, and so I wore a pair of jeans instead of swim trunks. Apparently at jerk school they teach you that that is a secret code that you want to be thrown in the pool, which I was--by some jerks-- and after being fished out of the water by a 13-year old girl, I wandered around in my sopping wet jeans until I sat down on a towel in Kim's basement. And I saw the video for "Jeremy" for the first time. Needless to say, I related.

But I've never really been able to relate to Pearl Jam since then. I can see why people like them, I certainly admire them for the decisions they've made as a band (I remember their valiant fight against Ticketmaster, which meant they played at out-of-the-way venues, like Lobster Hut) but I have never really been able to like them. But late in 1993, when they were releasing their second album, I felt they were such a part of zeitgeist that I needed to have it. But I hedged my bets. Because while I did pick up "Vs." (although my copy was one of the early pressings with no title, because PJ hadn't decided on one--oh, you iconoclasts!)I also picked up the new Squeeze album "Some Fantastic Place." I wanted to be cool, be on top of what was popular (and back then PJ was popular--at the time "Vs." broke the record for most albums sold in a single week) I was still the kid who wore jeans to a pool party, the kind of kid who was more excited about the new Squeeze album.

"Go"- Pearl Jam seemed at the time to favor one word song titles. Later on this very album they made "rearviewmirror" all one word, so I thought it was like a rule they had. How wrong I was. By the way, this song sounds like you'd expect a Pearl Jam song called 'Go' to go, which is totally different than how an R.Kelly song called 'Go' would go.

"Animal"- The chorus to this song is "I'd rather be with an animal" which is a pretty harsh thing to say to a person, unless you're Trent Reznor. Because he wants to fornicate with you like you were an animal. I say, let's just leave the animals out of this, shall we?


"Daughter"- This is the only Pearl Jam song your mom knows. It is also the only Pearl Jam likely to be heard at any Bat Mitzvahs.

"Glorified G"- Eddie Vedder's lyrics on this song are about as subtle as the most unsubtle thing you can think of. I'm very much pro-gun control, and I think if Veds and I ever sat down to talk politics, we'd get along very well. So would me and Noam Chomsky, but I wouldn't want to buy his album.

"Dissident"- So this is the story about a lady who keeps a dissident in her house for the night, but then turns him in when the authorities come. I knew cats who wrote songs about stuff like this. We used to pick them up and throw them in the pool.

"W.M.A."- Okay, I also agree with Eddie Vedder that institutionalized racism exists in the US. I agree that there is plenty of race-based police brutality. But the only thing getting beaten in this song is my head, and the thing that's doing the beating is Eddie Vedder's righteous indignation.

"Blood"-In the early 90s, Pearl Jam inspired approximately 1200 high school bands and every last one of them had a song called 'Blood'. Near the end of the track, you can almost hear Stone Gossard's dad wander down in the basement to tell them to keep the noise down because Aunt Carol is coming over.

"rearviewmirror"-I remember hearing this song and thinking it was the first Pearl Jam song that sounded like a song, and not just a collection of riffs with Eddie Vedder screaming about NAFTA. rearviewmirror has a lot of things that other songs have, like verses, and prechoruses, and choruses, a coda! It's like somebody got the band a book of musical terms for Christmas. Unfortunately, Meatloaf did this song so much better (and longer) with "Objects in the Rear View Mirror May Appear Closer Than They Are" which just makes me wish I was listening to Bat Out of Hell II instead. Or Squeeze. Shit, I've made so many wrong decisions today.

"Rats"- I've never done this before, but I'm thinking about quitting. I don't think I can make it through the rest of this record. Because this song would be a million times more enjoyable if I could even get the sense that Eddie Vedder wasn't talking about metaphorical rats. Like, if he was singing a song about real rats, just filling you in on facts about rats. Did you know that rats can fit through a hole the size of a quarter? And any rat can jump as high as your face? I would enjoy a song like that a million times more, which is to say I wouldn't enjoy it all, since zero times a million is still zero, and that's how much enjoyment I'm currently deriving from this song: zero.

"Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town"- This is the other song from this record, along with "Daughter," that you are likely to still hear played on the radio today. I hate when this song shows up on the radio, not because the song is terrible (although it does sound like Pearl Jam straight up stole an outtake from R.E.M.'s 'Automatic for the People') but because it invites the DJ to make a comment about how long the song title is. Which just reminds me how much I hate DJ patter. Almost as much as I hate elderly women.

I'm sorry, I don't think I can bring myself to listen to the last two songs on this record. I thought this would be kind of fun, but it's been torturous. So instead I will listen to that Meatloaf song I mentioned earlier and one of the songs from the Squeeze album 'Some Fantastic Place'.


I love the idea that young Meat knew a kid who died while flying a bi-plane.


Oh, Squeeze, you make it all alright.

LISTENING PARTY: Magic & Loss

The same day I purchased Mighty Like A Rose by Elvis Costello, I also picked up Lou Reed's Magic & Loss. God love the cut-out bin. This is Lou Reed's concept album about the deaths of the legendary songwriter Doc Pomus and an unnamed friend, both from cancer, both within a year of one another. This might be the hardest "Listening Party" for me to do because the subject matter of these songs is so deeply personal, so deeply heartfelt, and so deeply, deeply earnest. But then again, this is the haircut Lou was sporting at the time:

Somebody wants you to know this is a Getty image, apparently

"Dorita"- This is a serious album for serious people. Do you know how I know that? Because Lou starts it was an instrumental 'overture' or as he labels it "an invocation of the human spirit in music." Really, Lou? Because you know that wankcase who goes into Guitar Center just to play all the guitars with no intention of ever buying any of them? "Dorita" sounds a lot like his wanky guitar noodlings. The guys behind the counter at Guitar Center aren't impressed, and neither are we, Lou.


"What's Good"- Another reason I know this is meant to be a serious album for serious people is that each song has a subtitle. This one is called 'The Thesis.' I learned in ninth grade English class that you never tell your audience what your thesis is. But I never went to grad school, and I'm pretty sure Lou Reed did, and maybe that's what they tell you to do there. This is my favorite song on the album. The other day I mentioned a few quotes from Mighty Like A Rose that were contenders for my senior yearbook quote, and this song has one too: "Life's like sanskrit read to a pony; life's good, but not fair at all." It's probably the truest thing Lou Reed has ever written. Or at least tied with that bit in Walk on the Wild Side about that guy going down on other guys while dressed as a girl. Or all the songs about guys getting stabbed that he's written. But this is the most adult, thoughtful thing he's ever written, and he put it at the beginning of his thoughtful and adult album. It's all downhill from here.


"Power and the Glory Part I"- Reason number 3 why this is a serious album for serious adults is that it features songs broken up into parts. Like a classical piece of music. Or the Star Wars movies. Speaking of Star Wars, this song features the vocal stylings of jazz legend Little Jimmy Scott. I don't really know why he's here, other than Lou Reed thought he'd have Little Jimmy Scott sing on his record, and when you're making serious music for serious people you can totally just do whatever the hell you want. Also, if making pretentious music were some kind of video game, Lou Reed would've just gotten a dozen new lives for name-dropping 'Leda and the Swan' halfway through this song.

"Magician"- There's not a whole lot to say about this song, and I better save what little I do have to say because it's one of about six songs on this record that has practically identical music on it. I think you can get away with that when you're doing a concept album. For example, on Pink Floyd's 'The Final Cut' record, Roger Water sings the whole album on one note.


"Sword of Damocles"-So I was 15 when I heard this record for the first time and I bet Lou Reed thought that naming a song 'Sword of Damocles' would send a kid like me running to an encyclopedia (remember those?) to find out what he was referring to. Unfortunately for him, Mr. Burns made a reference--with visuals!!--to the Sword of Damocles, like, two years earlier. If the Simpsons had made me aware of the prevalence of using methamphetamine among cross-dressers, I don't think I would've needed Lou Reed at all. This song is probably the most tuneful on the record, and Lou Reed almost sounds like he's actually singing a few times.


"Goodby Mass"- Okay, so this is just Magician again, with different words. And a misspelled title. Who spells it 'Goodby'? I think one would pronounce that "gud-be" and maybe that's what Lou Reed wants us to do. The subtitle to this song is 'In A Chapel Bodily Termination.' Say what? Apparently when you're the legendary Lou Reed you don't need correct spelling or correct grammar. Oh my god this song did that thing where you totally thought it was over and then another verse started. It's probably not a surprise that a concept album about death would make me want to kill myself, but the surprise is how much it makes me want to kill myself.

"Cremation"- The subtitle to this one is 'Ashes to Ashes' which seems like maybe the typography guy switched the two of them up. This song is really pretty good. Lou probably should've just put out this song with 'What's Good' and 'Sword' and called it an EP. Or filled the B-side with feedback. I think I'll mention that Lou engaged the services of the great Rob Wasserman on bass for this album. Lou has usually had pretty good taste in bass players, which is good, because most Lou Reed songs only have two chords in them, so it's up to the bass players to make them sound different from each other.


"Dreamin'" Oh, Lou. No one will ever take you seriously if you start dropping g's off your words!

"No Chance"-This song is different than most of the other songs on this album. A few weeks later, I picked up Lou Reed's 'New York' album, and basically "No Chance" sounds like every song off of that album. So if you listen to song, you can basically skip 'New York'. And if you've ever heard 'Sweet Jane' and 'Perfect Day' you've basically heard every Lou Reed song ever written.

"Warrior King"- I've made it two and a half minutes into this song without having typed anything. I seem to remember liking this song a lot when I was 15. So I think I've spent the last two and a half minutes trying to figure out what was wrong with me when I was 15.

"Harry's Circumcision"- This is Lou Reed's song about a mohel.

"Gassed and Stoked"- This song's chorus is an operator telling you that this is no longer a working number, which I think was, in the early 90s, supposed to represent the finality of death: the person you are trying to call is dead, and that is why the number no longer works. But listening to it today, it just sounds like Lou's friend didn't pay his cell phone bill.

"Power and Glory Part II"- Do you know how sometimes you really like a movie, and then they make a sequel and it's terrible? Or how sometimes you really don't like a movie, and then they make a sequel anyways, and you can't believe anybody would want to see it, and then one night you flip past it on cable and it's unbelievably terrible? Guess in which way 'Power and Glory Part II' is terrible.

"Magic & Loss" aka 'The Summation.' This song is six minutes and thirty nine seconds long. I think, if you just listened to 'What's Good', 'Sword of Damocles' and 'Cremation' it would take you less time. So that might be my recommendation. Although I do like the last minute or so of this song, where I'm guessing somebody in the control booth signaled to Lou that maybe his concept album needed a big finish, so he dialed it up to '4'. Yes, this is a pretty low key album, and to be honest, I probably prefer the seven times he plays the song Magician with different lyrics to the other numbers where he tries unconvincingly to rock.
I read an interview with Lou about this record, where he said that it was supposed to be instructive, it was supposed to tell people how to deal with death. He hoped, in 1992, that other musicians would follow in his footsteps. He even made a suggestion: MC Hammer should do a concept album about the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. If only Hammer had listened to ole Lou, we might have been spared 'Addams Family Groove.' After all, there are fates worse than death.

LISTENING PARTY: Mighty Like A Rose

(Note: There are no Youtube videos for any of these songs, and trying to embed links to napster didn't work, so if you're curious what any of these songs sound like, you can listen to the entire album free here )
I've been thinking about Elvis Costello's Mighty Like A Rose a lot the past few days, for two reasons. I've recently moved into my grandmother's old house, and I purchased MLAR on an October afternoon 15 years ago with my father before visiting my grandparents. The second reason is that my beard is itching like crazy. This reason is relevant because sometime between the 1989 release of his album "Spike", which at the time was his biggest US hit ever, and 1991 when MLAR was released, Elvis grew probably the grossest beard of all time. He had a habit of following up big commercial success with something really offputting: for example, after his huge song Oliver's Army made the album "Armed Forces" a sales juggernaut, he got drunk in a bar, made racist comments about Ray Charles, and then got beat up by a girl. That he was able to claw his way back from that, primarily on the back of his single Veronica is astonishing. And then he grew the beard:


Anyway, this is the album he made. I have a deep affection for it, although it tends to be one of his more maligned albums. It has a nasty streak, but if EC's beard was half as itchy as mine is, I understand.

"The Other Side of Summer"-My favorite part of this song is that it has a verse dedicated to talking about how stupid "Imagine" by John Lennon is. I thought I was the only one who felt this way. My other favorite part is that it has, and I checked the liner notes, three different bass parts. Everything on this album is so thick sounding, the musical equivalent of split pea soup. And nothing says split pea soup like three different bass players. (The liner notes by EC also revealed that most of this song was cut live, meaning that all three bass players were playing at the same time. This is many people's versions of hell~ especially anybody who lives below someone listening to this song on a stereo system with a subwoofer.)

"Hurry Down Doomsday (The Bugs Are Taking Over)"- Do you need anymore evidence of the beard's misanthropic effects than the title of this song? Any song that wishes for nuclear annihilation that isn't written by Randy Newman is bound to be pretty severe. This song only features one bass player, the great Nick Lowe, which suggests to me that all the rest were killed by radiation from the nuclear fallout.

"How to Be Dumb"- This song only features one bass player, too, but it's written about a bass player, so that counts, right? This song is allegedly (like OJ killed his wife allegedly) about former Attractions bass player Bruce Thomas, who wrote a book about life on the road with EC. This might be the most vituperative song ever written. And if you don't know what vituperative means, Elvis is going to write a song about you, too. All that having been said, this is the most "classic" EC song on the record, and if he didn't call Bruce Thomas "the funniest f**ker in the world" very clearly enunciated, it might've been the single. At one point my senior year, I considered using the song's last lyrics as my yearbook quote: "Scratch your own head, stupid, count up to three, roll over on your back, repeat after me: don't you know how to be dumb?" Luckily wiser heads prevailed.

"All Grown Up"- I question the appropriateness of a man who just wrote a song called 'How to Be Dumb' writing a song about being all grown up. This is the song where Elvis first works with a string section. Perhaps coincidentally, this is also the song where many people stopped liking Elvis Costello.

"Invasion Hit Parade"- Damn that beard must be itching him like hell. Because this song makes him sound miserable. It features only one bass player, but it does feature two Elvises, as he credits himself twice, once as "DPA MacManus" (his given name) and as "E.C." Although in fairness, I surmise that the reason he uses his surname is because his father is credited with playing trumpet on the track. So maybe he just wanted to highlight his dad's involvement. Or maybe, since he credits himself as playing an instrument called "Radio Hail, Hail Freedonia Breakthrough" (which sounds like he's scatting into the blades of a small office fan) it's also possible every decision he made on this album was made just for perversity's sake.

"Harpies Bizarre"-On this song, there is only one bass, but it is hung upside down. I'm not kidding, the credits read "hung upside down Rickenbacker tremelo bass." So my question, given EC's penchant for verbally eviscerating bass players, is the bass player himself also hung upside down? This song also features a bassoon, meaning it is the favorite EC song of my friend Jess, who used to be a concert bassoonist, even though she's never heard it. Bassoonists are a loyal breed. Well, at least I assume so, since if they weren't, I'm sure Elvis would've written a song about it.

"After the Fall"- Elvis writes in the liner notes that this was the last album he recorded where he still thought in the two-sided vinyl format, meaning that he meant for this song to be the last song on side A. And since this song is probably the most depressing and tuneless song I've ever heard, my guess is that he didn't really want you to listen to the seven songs on side B. In all likelihood because you'd either hung yourself halfway through this song, or because you'd smashed the record into pieces.

"Georgie and Her Rival"-I've seen Elvis over a dozen times in concert, but I've never heard him play this song. I bet he's forgotten it even exists. But it's not terrible, and paying attention to the lyrics for the first time ever, it's a pretty clever little story song. Elvis even sounds like he used a ton of hair conditioner in his beard, because he doesn't sound like he wants to kill you musically.

"So Like Candy"- This song was co-written with Paul McCartney. From the Beatles (I know, I know, I bet you thought it was the guy from Wings.) Bass player count: two. I think it's the only song from this album that he still plays live, and it's pretty clear he likes it. There's a great line at the end about "Candy" taping a note to a record sleeve, which is one of those terrific images that seems so real. Things that seem less real? That anybody in the latter half of the 20th century is named Candy.

"Interlude: Couldn't Call it Unexpected No.2"- Who called for an interlude? Even if it did feature the Dirty Dozen Brass Band? And what kind of guy calls in the Dirty Dozen Brass band and has them play for 21 seconds? Same guy who thought this was a good look:

"Playboy to a Man"- Also co-written by Paul McCartney, except this time it's the guy from Wings. According to the liner notes, Elvis sang this song through a long rusty lead pipe. There's no joke that goes along with that. I just wonder who went to the junkyard to fetch the long rusty lead pipe? I will bet all the money in my pockets versus all the money in your pockets it was the bass player.

"Sweet Pear"- Where is Elvis meeting all these girls with the weird names?

"Broken"- This song was written by Elvis's then wife, Cait O'Riordan. When I was a teenager, I used to imagine getting married to somebody with as Irish a sounding name as Cait O'Riordan, but I would skip the part where she wrote songs that I recorded on my albums. I also skipped the part where she was a 14-year old boy, because that is who these lyrics sound like they were written by.

"Couldn't Call It Unexpected No. 4"- Don't bother looking for number 3. It's like that prank where kids release 3 goats into a school and paint 1, 2, and 4 on the sides so that everybody's looking for "goat number 3" all day. The final lines of this song were also contenders for yearbook quotes: "I can't believe I'll never believe in anything again." There's a truth bomb, right there. He sounds almost happy on this song. Know why? No bass player. Just a tuba. And how many bands do you think would be improved by replacing their bassists with tuba players? If you answered all of them, you would be correct. I've seen Elvis sing this song several times, and each time he shuts off his mike and sings out into the hall un-amplified. It's a show-boaty thing to do, no doubt, but he's smiling when he does it, as if to say "Holy shit was that beard itchy."

AMPERSAND

Me rocking out circa 1997. Jesse is in white behind me, and Darrell's in blue.

In 2000, I acquired a Tascam 4-Track recorder. In the past I had used the condenser mics on tape decks and karaoke machine to record my songs, and I believed that by having access to the same recording technology that the Beatles used to make "Sgt. Pepper's", I would be able to record a masterpiece.

This is what I came up with.

Most of this was recorded in the room above Darrell's parents' garage, although a few tracks were recorded in my dad's sunroom, and two more in my dad's basement. Somewhere among my possessions is the mock liner notes I had prepped for this CD, where I think I came up with a name for each recording space. So I think Darrell's house was called "Helen's Way Studio" because he lived on Helen's Way, and I called my dad's sunroom "Sunroom Studio" which at least sounds like a real studio name. Which is beside the point: I was kind of a douche.

(Click on each title to listen to the song.)
"Sulky Skirt" The song had its origin after I went to see Elliott Smith play at the Axis, which most nights operated as a dance club. There were two girls there who looked like they had come for club night, but decided to stay for the concert. They looked miserable, which isn't surprising if you're expecting to make-out with a random guy while grinding him to the beat of the extended mix of "Believe" by Cher, but instead are listening to a musician who would later kill himself by stabbing himself in the heart.

"Shade" (version 2) I did mention this was intended to be an album of love songs, right? This song might be the best example of this, except that, in an attempt to obscure any personal details, the lyrics in the verses were intentionally obscured. So if you are wondering what's going on, only I and maybe half another person know. So don't worry about it. We first recorded this song in an up-tempo version (dubbed version #1) and then later re-recorded it with my dear friend Heather on harmony vocals. I came up with the idea of adding electric piano AFTER we recorded everything else, which means that it's slightly out of tune.

"Aztec Girl"- Alright so three songs in to my great album of love songs, and I'm batting 0.333. This song is a spiritual cousin to Shade, in that it's based on a true event-the same that Shade was based on-but from a different person's perspective. This song has some of the worst puns I've ever written, and for those who have followed my writing career for a while, you know THAT IS SAYING SOMETHING.

"Safe"-This is the oldest song here. I wrote this in the fall of 1998, for a girl who really needed to be kept safe from me. I think I really wanted to go for an Elliott Smith vibe on this song, especially with the double-tracked vocals. These are some of my favorite lyrics ever, even though they do include the word 'fart.'

"Thumbelina"- I wrote this one about a girl I worked with. I suspected that she might have a crush on me, and the fact that she was 17 and I was 20 freaked me out enough that I wrote this song about an older man and a much younger woman, which is how 17-year old girls look like to 20-year old guys. This might be Darrell's favorite song of mine.

"Rainy Day"- This was intended to be a concept album, but really maybe only five of the ten songs fit. This is one of them. The lyrics obscure a real event, featuring the same cast of characters from "Shade" and "Aztec Girl" and while this song is way way too long, I like the accordion playing, and there is profundity in the refrain "Why don't you save your rain for rainy day?" that I think I might have missed way back then.

"A Little Island South of Nebraska"-This was inspired by a dream I had about a bunch of different girls I knew. I wrote about half of the song before I realized that the first line of each verse just so happened to spell out the same word. I then added a few more lines that also spelled out that same word. I think you can tell, if you read the lyrics closely, which ones are accidental and which ones are purposeful, because the accidental ones are way better. I remember adding a bass part to this song, but it must be way down in the mix, because I don't know how to mix things.

"Oubliette"- An oubliette is a medieval prison cell that only opened from above, and had round, smooth walls. So basically, once someone was dropped in, they could never get out. This song is also about a girl.

"Fred Astaire"- This song has a really beautiful melody, and pretty terrible lyrics. It also has some terrible singing. I was referencing a movie called "Funny Face" that I had never seen. My roommate owned the video, and she once suggested we watch it, but I always had something else to do. Like write songs about movies I had never seen. So I apologize to any Audrey Hepburn/Fred Astaire fans who think I've bastardized their favorite film. The "percussion" mentioned in this song is me slapping my car keys against my palm. We were like the MacGyvers of pop music.

"Zero One"-This song was the impetus for me to record an "album" because I thought the conceit in the chorus (I am the zero and you are the one) was so good, and that 2001 would be the perfect year to release that song. I think it might have been inspired by those "why-was-six-afraid-of-seven?" jokes. And I'm pretty serious. So, while this song was recorded in 2001, along with nine other songs, and we actually burned up dozens of CDs (with artwork printed on them) this "album" had pretty poor circulation. Until 2009. And while in my current relationship, it is true that if I am the zero then my fiancee is the nine, "Zero Nine" doesn't have the same ring to it. C'est la vie. Anyway, apologies for the digital distortion at the end; it's what I get for keeping my CDs loose in boxes when I move.

I hope you've enjoyed this embarrassing look into my past. It continues on tresselsound where I am now posting tracks from my 2002 CD "Songs About Girls" which I recorded live in my Dad's office two days before I left for a road trip to Virginia. Spoiler alert: I sold enough copies to put gas in my car.

Bang A Gong: The Music of RJT

I wrote my first solo song called "She's Alive" in 1994. I wrote it on a Thursday, taught it to my friends Darrell and Brad that Saturday, and then performed it the following Tuesday night in front of 700 people at our summer camp talent show. It was the largest crowd I have ever played for. Eight years later I finished up a summer residency at a local coffee shop performing a song about how Charlie Chaplin and Adolf Hitler look alike to about 17 people. So just like the Beatles, I moved into the studio, recording songs at a pace that alternated between ferocious and moribund, and I've decided to preserve the whole catalog, the "Ryan Tressel" box set if you will, on the internet in all its glory. I'm going to start with the first recordings I did in 2001 when I traded my friend Stephanie an acoustic guitar and $75 for her Tascam 4-track recorder. The first songs that I recorded with my friend Darrell where collected onto a CD entitled "Ampersand", the opening track of which SULKY SKIRT can be listened to here .

The song had its origin after I went to see Elliott Smith play at the Axis, which most nights operated as a dance club. There were two girls there who looked like they had come for club night, but decided to stay for the concert. They looked miserable, which isn't surprising if you're expecting to make-out with a random guy while grinding him to the beat of the extended mix of "Believe" by Cher, but instead are listening to a musician who would later kill himself by stabbing himself in the heart.

Sulky Skirt, written by Ryan J. Tressel, recorded and performed by RJT and D.Morey.