• Big Chief - Face (rock): This came recommended by two people. It reminds me of bad Temple of the Dog. I tried on three occasions to get past the fourth track, but each time ended the listening with “Life’s too short for this…” This is one of the few CDs that I’ve bought in recent years that will end up back in the used bins at the record store. D.
• Clutch - Elephant Riders (hard rock): One of the few Clutch CD’s that I liked before I liked Clutch. It’s like Kiss meets something heavier than Kiss…without the snazzy outfits. It’s no Pure Rock Fury, but it makes the grade. B.
• Face to Face - Don’t Turn Away (pop-punk): The nineties: when punk went soft and gave birth to a pop-punk bastard that barked less, harmonized more, and whined just as much. Face to Face is in that Blink 182 slash Bad Religion region that fits neither punk nor pop. B+
• Black Label Society - 1919 Eternal (Metal): You may know Mr. Zakk Wylde as Ozzy Osbourne’s guitar player. I prefer to think of him as the front man of the Black Label Society. Envision Ozzy’s guitars with a deeper voice over them. I had held off on buying this one for a while, as a store clerk told me that this album was crap, and then encouraged me to buy albums that made me want to pick flowers and kiss puppies. Man, did I miss out. I will never listen to that clerk again. Ever. B+
• Entombed - Inferno (metal): Tune your guitars really, really low. Now, sing about death and blood and hell and crap. Got it? Good. Now, move to Sweden. You are now Entombed. I really thought that this album was going to be death metal, but it’s not. It’s death metal with Al Jorgenson (Ministry) style vocals, making it Death Metal Lite. B
• The Vines - Highly Evolved (rock?): Take the Hives, and cross breed them with the Who and you have the Vines. It’s garage-y and catchy, but I didn’t find it as rockin’ as either of it’s parents. B-/C+
• Miles Davis - Collector’s Items (jazz): I’m not a big fan of Miles Davis. Actually, I think that he’s overrated. But this album is really great. I’ve seen it only twice in record stores, and both times it was $18. Thanks to Amoeba, I got it for under $10. The bad news is that it’s a mere 44 minutes in length, and two of the seven tracks are alternate takes of each other. The good news is that this is classic 1950’s jazz, featuring not only Miles Davis, but Sonny Rollins and Charlie Parker (listed as Charlie Chan). This is also the only album that Rollins and Parker ever recorded on together. I rarely do this: A.
• The Muffs - The Muffs (pop-punk): The trouble with early 90’s pop-punk is that it’s not clever enough to be pop and not heavy enough to be punk. It’s catchy, and the lead singer’s voice is scratchy. I rhymed. See that? I should be in a band. Clever. Shut up. B-
• Old 97s - Fight Songs (Country): It’s not really country, it’s underground country. I first saw the Old 97s in a shit ass sports bar across the street from the Boston Garden. They were playing with my old band, and consequently rocking a crowd of about ten. I encouraged one of my band mates to trade Rhett Miller a t-shirt for a CD. I took the CD, and he got nothing. Nothing! Muah ha ha ha. I would go to their shows and talk to them briefly, and it got to the point where the lead singer at least knew me by name and would even ask about me if I wasn’t there. There was a lot of times that I wasn’t there, because I stopped listening to their new music. Trust me, I tried. But with the advent of Fight Songs the band changed it’s target audience from alterna-country fans to teenage girls. This album is on the edge of gay, but it was $5 and I couldn’t pass it up. C+

There are many more to come…

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