Some Records of 2010

High on Fire - Snakes For The Divine
The latest HOF album finds the band routinely going about their business of annihilating the universe. Rather than trying to add more elements to their established sound - the jangly bits, as some of us liked to call 'em and different instrumentation (mandolins or whatever) present on "Death Is This Communion," they've amped everything up a notch and refined it. Matt Pike still manages to blow himself out of the water on each subsequent release, rather than resting on his guitar playing laurels (blow himself doesn't seem right to say, does this make sense?)

Black Breath - Heavy Breathing

Time will tell if this debut ultimately holds up or fades from memory before next year, but the follow up to the excellent "Razor To Oblivion," EP scores with heavy and screamy Entombed-style death-rock and nothing fancy. Also, I have to give full marks to any band that sites "Repulsion," as a major influence.

Kylesa -Spiral Shadow 

I'll confess to missing the boat somewhat on Kylesa. 

I prefer to listen to records by new bands in chronological order if I can help it and the bands earliest recordings didn't compel me enough to put it ahead of the mountain of other records I was listening to at the time. 

This record shows how far they're come in to their own unique sound. Two drummers, Phil Cope's watery vocal distortion, recalling "Rape and Honey," era Ministry, while the music makes me think if Isis at points and at others ("Don't Look Back,") like certain 90's alternative bands I can't put my finger on.

Coliseum - House With A Curse
Replacing hyperactive drummer Chris Maggio and aiming for a less-is-more approach is a bold move but the new Coliseum record is heavy in a different way. The d-beat punk tunes are replaced by something with more emotion and substance behind it, ultimately adding up to their best.

The Black Keys - Brothers
Yup, it made most of the mainstream top 10 lists because it's a damn good record. Instead of garagey white-boy blues it's a smoky, groovy, vintage sounding R&B soul record with vocals that probably come the closest any dude since Sixto Rodriguez has come to sounding like Nina Simone. Bad-ass from front to back.

 
Melvins - The Bride Screamed Murder
Upping the weirdness ante considerably, the new Melvins record is the most experimental of the Big Business era records with a sludge version of  The Who's, "My Generation," the drill-sargeant call and response of "The Water Glass," and the utterly bizarre "P.G. x 3" as standouts on a record that makes a considerable case for the Melvins as heirs to the throne of the recently departed Captain Beefheart.

Bison B.C. - Dark Ages
Flag bearers for heavy music in Vancouver - and deservedly so - Bison makes yet another record, better than the previous one. I'd have to say "Two-Day Booze," is the best track.  James' voice hits that sweet spot, that gives it an extra sense of urgency that comes right before blowing it out completely. * A la Bon Scott on "Night Prowler."

Black Mountain Wilderness Heart

Sister band, Pink Mountaintops, put out an album last year that I mentioned on last years top-ten list. The mountains gang have maintained a consistent standard of quality to go their prolific output. I can scarcely open a review of this band in mainstream magazine without some reference to "retro 70's rock." It does  harken back to the 70's, in that it was an era when bands had the luxury of long careers, which they capitalized on by making interesting records. A band like Led Zeppelin constantly did whatever they wanted without any conscious decision to change their sound. They just did what they did and when it worked, the audience followed. "Old Fangs," features John Lord style keyboard riffs, while "Let Spirits Ride" recalls "Symptom of The Universe." Nice.

Pierced Arrows - Descending Shadows
The Coles sound as though they haven't changed (or tuned) their guitar strings since the last recording session/tour. You can practically hear the dirt under Fred's finger-nails as he slashes away at the guitar chords, that accompany his tortured wail. The re-incarnation of, pretty much one of the best bands ever (Dead Moon). Beautiful trash.

Grinderman - Grinderman 2
Nothing as instantly memorable as "No Pussy Blues,' or "Get It On," but still chock full of fuzzed out guitar strangling from The Bad Seeds alter egos. 

Name Your Poison: Sex

"He's a pistol-grip shiftin' and a lightening rod hammer step.He always busts his knuckles when he's wrenching up his shit."
In the words of the great Sleazy P. Martini, "What good is all the violence in the world unless it is tempered with limitless sex?" Agreed. Mr. Martini also went on to observe that, when you are in France, you do indeed pull down your pants.

Screamin' Jay Hawkins

Auteur of  the classic song "I Put a Spell On You," he obviously never put a condom on himself. He holds the distinction of having the largest number of illegitimate children of any modern day musician(somewhere between 57 and 75) after carelessly tossing his seed throughout North America. Not bad for a dude with a bone through his nose.

George Michael

Hey, what the big deal? Just 'cause the guy makes a habit of receiving anonymous sexual favors in public restrooms? Is that such a crime? What's everyone getting so uptight about?

Motley Crue

Fun fact: in addition to shoving drugs into every imaginable orifice and dating skanky porn chicks, these guys also found time to make some really terrible records!

R. Kelly

"R." was probably trying earn some extra points for creativity, by combining sex tapes, statutory rape and golden showers. Tres bien, monsieur.

Chuck Berry

I hate to break it to anyone who's opinion of Chuck Berry didn't suffer enough after watching "Hail Hail Rock 'n' Roll," but Chuck was into "scat," in a serious way ... and I don't mean the jazz vocal style.

Tim Bachman

Oh how the mighty have fallen .. Who knew the "business," this BTO member was taking care of was with an eleven year old. I mean, might expect this type of behaviour from Burton Cummings but come on...

Gene Simmons

This poster-boy for genital warts never met a vagina he didn't want to put his disgusting thing inside of. I can only imagine how many of his "conquests," asked him to keep the make-up on.

Kim Fowley

I don't know how the man does it but, somehow, The Runaways' former Svengali manages to be 100 times creepier than almost anyone on this list. I don't even know the specific details of his personal life and wouldn't want to...

Factoid: Listening to his voice on his radio show reveals that he has a strange croak, nearly identical to Larry Flynt, no doubt proof that syphilis corrodes the vocal chords

Bono

Of course his official explanation of this facebook-photo gaffe is that he was teaching these underaged girls to read but make no mistake; this bloated, self-righteous fuck likes to play ball whether there's grass on the field or not.

Gary Glitter

Reigning champion of creepy pervs and composer of the now-all-too-ironic "Do You Wanna Touch Me,"  Gary forgot to erase the thousands of volumes of child pornography from his computer before he sent it in for repair, then after his career was ruined, moved to Vietnam to pursue molestation full time before landing himself in prison. Hope he got to bring the shiny suit with him. "Rock 'n' roll, rock 'n' ro - oll, Hey!"

Name Your Poison: Food

"Let's bash the gays, Harass The geeks and trash the punks. But only if there are fewer of them than us."

Food is a strange vice, since we all need it to live. It's like oxygen; you get too much it gets you high, not enough and you're gonna die. Wow, I seriously made that up this second.

Leslie West

Singer, guitarist and pretty much the namesake of the band "Mountain," ie; he was as big as a mountain. Leslie slimmed down to such a shocking degree, he's almost impossible to recognize now. Must be that "Subway diet."

Carnie Wilson

No matter what she did, Carnie Wilson would always be known as "the fat one," in the group Wilson-Phillips and subjected to constant jokes about eating the other two members. She can now be called "the one who got the gastric bypass surgery. Well, she looked a hell of a lot better after the surgery than Star Jones, who looked like some kind of weird raisin.

Meat Loaf

Battled with his weight continually, between making really terrible albums.

Bill Stevenson

Was big... suddenly got enormous! In the immortal words of his former band: "I like food. Food tastes good" 

Rita MacNeil

Or as we affectionately refer to her in Canada, "Eat-a Big Meal."

Karen Carpenter

Fell into the "not enough and you're gonna die," category and died from anorexia.

Elvis Presley

Yup, The King became as famous for shooting televisions, buying Cadillacs for strangers and eating disgusting things as singing and acting in bad movies.

 Pig Champion
Booze, drugs, food; this guy indulged in every excess and got so big he nearly exploded. This look unfortunately didn't catch on like heroin chic.

Mama Cass Elliot

Although is has been proven that she didn't choke to death on a ham sandwich, the rumor persists because we want to believe it. Live by the ham sandwich, die by the ham sandwich.

Name Your Poison: "Alcohol"

"Johnny was a punk, always wore his leather. Johnny was a punk didn't care about the weather."

You like booze, I like booze, musicians like booze. I'm doing a series of lists about substances, the folks who enjoy them and the ones that destroy them. (Hey, that rhymes! Fuck off.)

Grace Slick

Grace may have dabbled in a variety of substances throughout the swinging 60's but it was, undoubtedly, under the influence of good old fashion hooch, during an especially wrecked performance in Germany that she started yelling, "Who won the war? Who won the war?"

Okay then.

Rory Gallagher

Because he blew out his liver, requiring a transplant, and because he was Irish, most who have actually heard of him, assume he was a huge boozer. Pals say he was an average drinker at best, who liked his pills a lot.

I just wanted an excuse to mention this amazing and underrated player, with the beat up Strat, who nearly joined the Stones instead of Ron Wood.

*Unverified awesome rock legend; a reporter asks Jimi Hendrix what it's like to be the greatest guitar player in the world. He answers "Go ask Rory Gallagher."

John Bonham

One of the best rock drummers of all time, Bonzo didn't necessarily hit the booze or drugs much harder than other members of Led Zeppelin, he just had the misfortune to pass out face down and aspirate on his own vomit. Why couldn't it have been Robert Plant?

Bob Stinson

I never knew Bob personally, and therefore, I am probably unqualified to make this judgement call, but Bob strikes me less as the classic alcoholic or degenerate boozer (Westerberg and the rest of the band likely qualified as the latter) than he does, someone recklessly bent on self-destruction. The difference; if boozing didn't kill bob, something else likely would have. He was their Belushi .. or Chris Farley or Artie Lange if you prefer. His choice to continue drinking and drugging, despite his diabetes speaks to this.

Bon Scott

Did Bon really drink or party more than any other Scottish immigrant to Australia would, while fronting the biggest rock band in the world? On the night of February 19, 1980 he did and that was all it took.

Jim Morrison

I once heard a review of Oliver Stone's movie "The Doors," where the Jim Morrison story was summed up this way:

"I'm nobody, I'm drunk, I'm famous, I'm drunk, I'm dead."

Don't forget "I whipped my dick out on stage one time and got arrested."

Jim went on to further prove that, alcohol does indeed make you fat.

Joe Walsh

A frequent guest on Howard Stern's TV and radio show, Joe often appeared wasted and, on one Channel 9 show, passed out under Howard's desk. When he rejoined The Eagles for their reunion tour he signed a contract that said he would stay on the wagon. Fortunately for them, he agreed, since Joe Walsh is the only thing remotely interesting about The Eagles,.

Eddie Van Halen

Who knew Eddie was absolutely shit-canned half the time his fingers were flying across the fretboard. I mean, the whole band did the whole, "carrying a Jack Daniel's bottle everywhere," schtick and were king-shit during the entire cocaine-fuelled glam rock circuit... Eddie's getting sloshed was affecting the band and his relationship with Valerie Burtonelli, (bleh) after the smoke had cleared. then, I guess he took a few 28 day vacations to the old Betty Ford Hotel. I'd have assumed Eddie was the responsible one, at least over David Lee Roth, but Dave's hair all fell out, so they're even

GG Allin

"Didn't an overdose of smack kill GG?" you may ask. Well, sort of... I believe the official cause of death was, "Being GG Allin." Along with "fighting," and "fucking," the third commandment of GG-dom was "drinking." He was buried with a bottle of Jim Beam, as per his wishes.

Alice Cooper
So foolish of me to neglect him on the first go-around. Alice checked himself into a mental hospital for his near fatal alcohol addiction, which lead to several albums which, he claims to have no recollection of writing or recording. Alice has been sober for many years and has switched from boozing as a pastime, to golf.

Shane McGowan

Can you mention alcohol without mentioning Shane McGowan? Well, yes you can, but you can't mention Shane McGowan without mentioning alcohol. Officially the most famous piss-tank since Bukowski (Dean Martin was bullshit) it's amazing that he can even stand, let alone get onstage and spit out the lyrics to Pogues classics. (Which are difficult to sing, don't kid yourself.)

Outsider Artists, Eccentric Geniuses & Straight-Up Nutcases

"When I say I'm in love, you best believe I'm in love. L-U-V. "

Gary Wilson 
Recorded, "You Think You Really Know Me," an album of bizarre, yet danceable tunes, partially in his parent's basement and pressed an original run of only about 300 albums. His concerts were part performance art and often involved him dousing himself with paint, milk and flour, and wrapping himself in cellophane and duct tape.

He retired from music in the early 80's after releasing only a few more singles.  His distinctive yelp is said to have inspired, "Prince," in some form and, "Beck," also cites Gary as an influence. Gary staged a comeback a in the late 90's and produced another album just as weird as the first. He plays occasionally, only in Southern California, as he is afraid of flying and refuses to tour.

Peter Green
Legendary British blues guitarist fronted the original Fleetwood Mac until his schizophrenia became debilitating. At the onset of his descent into madness he penned, possibly his greatest song  "The Green Manalishi With The Two-Prong Crown," a song that is absolutely chilling to listen to, despite the fact that there is great speculation to what it actually means.

Mr. Chi Pig
His lyrics ranged from bittersweet to demented, often in the same song and transcended SNFU's energetic skate-punk. The unusual imagery of his artwork and his sense of humor defined the band. Onstage his use of bizarre props, daredevil leaps and his all-around stage presence made them legendary.
Many were shocked when the normally reclusive Chi appeared looking haggard, clearing tables at the Cobalt. He's gotten his life and a new version of his band together and is back performing.

6025
The erstwhile Carlos Cadona was originally the Dead Kennedy's original drummer but switched to second guitar when Bruce Slesinger joined. He wrote "Forward To Death," and the music to "Ill In The Head," from "Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables," (the latter is the only studio-recorded song he played on) as well as "Religious Vomit," "Short Songs," and "Straight A's". He had creative differences with Biafra and left to play prog-rock. He is rumored to have played with "The Residents," for a brief period before becoming a recluse. His mother became his legal trustee as he was no longer able to care for himself and, according to DK members, he is now a born-again Christian who has spent much of his time writing a Punk/Gospel rock opera.

Gaahl

Norwegian Black Metal is a genre based around image and theatrics rather than actual music. Acts of sacrilege and vandalism seemed the fastest route to gaining prominence in the scene for young men in black and white paint with silly nicknames borrowed from Tolkien novels. Of them, Gaahl is arguably the most convincingly evil. A Vice Magazine documentary reveals that Gaahl's bizarre behaviour began as a defense mechanism to make other residents of his home town afraid of him and leave him alone. He was, however charged with keeping a man prisoner six hours and attempting to make him drink a cup of his own blood (he claims it was self-defense.) If anything, the way he just glares at the cameraman without blinking at the very end of that documentary will give you the creeps

Jandek

Prolific outsider musician made countless albums of melancholy noise and deliberately shrouded his identity in mystery. Eventually he gained a huge cult following, that became obsessed with finding out any sort of information about, "The Representative From Corwood Industries". In a bizarre turn of events he finally appeared in public and began touring in Europe and North America after 20 years.

Captain Beefheart
Beefheart blurred the lines between composer and cult leader when he kept members of his "Magic Band,"  secluded in a house together for 8 months to record the album, "Trout Mask Replica."  The band was forced to transcribe and perform incredibly complex music that he composed on the piano, an instrument he couldn't play. He also re-Christened them with names like, "The Mascara Snake," and "Zoot Horn Rollo." If you think that's strange, you should hear the album.

Roky Erickson
The former lead singer of the 13th Elevators barely escaped the psychedelic 60's with his mind intact.
Schizophrenia, as well as too many acid trips, sent him to the edge of the abyss, but he kept making weird and wonderful music with his band "The Aliens," for many years before disappearing. His re-emergence is documented in the film "You're Gonna Miss Me." Roky is now medicated and playing shows regularly in his hometown of Austin Texas and elsewhere.

Daniel Johnston  

A hopeless romantic and long time McDonald's employee who made albums for a decade before mental illness took over. His songs often alternated between heart-wrenching, wounded love songs for a girl named Laurie who barely knew he existed and accounts of his internal battle with Satan.

Wesley Willis

  A schizophrenic street person, known for his brilliantly accurate line-drawings of Chicago, Wesley made the jump to music, briefly fronting, "The Wesley Willis Fiasco." He then produced about a million albums of strange pre-programmed Casio loops behind lyrics about bestiality, concerts he'd attended, people he knew and various celebrities. Of all the eccentric people I've met, looking into Wesley Willis' eyes as he headbutted me and told me to say "rah," and "roll," was the first time I was genuinely frightened.