The only reason I still review new albums by Tourbus Ampersand is because I demand that all of my pages be as complete as possible (aside from those live Pearl Jam albums). I don't like the music of Tamsham Arbitrage at all. So let's do this quickly, while I'm intoxicated on something clear.

There are lots of strings and acoustic guitars (as well as pianos, of course, for that is Ms. Armsock's key instrument) on this lousy record. My wife points out: "It's like she went shopping for new ... read more

Okay so I'm hanging out with Tikki-Tikki-Tembo-Nosa-Rimbo-Cherry-Berry-Roochi-Pip-Berry-Pimbo the other day, and all of a sudden he falls into this muhfuckin well. And I'm all like, "WTF!? Get out of that muhfuckin well, Tikki-Tikki-Tembo-Nosa-Rimbo-Cherry-Berry-Roochi-Pip-Berry-Pimbo!" And he's all like, "Dude, get someone - I'm totally-ass drowning!" So I runs to the old cobbler man and I'm all out of breath and scared so I says to him I says, "Hey, ... read more

Hay, if George Bush asks you what I thought of the movie Deep Throat, be hilarious and say, "W., Mark felt..." and then just start laughing and whip your dick out and pee on his shoe. Then punch him a hundred times in a row in the face, take a razor blade and slice his body neatly into two pieces, and then cement the two outside portions together so that the internal organs face the outside, fall out and glop all over the floor. Then vacuum all of it up, empty the vacuum bag into ... read more

What is this, 1975?

No?

Then why are we sitting here listening to this boringass Joni Mitchell confessional female singer-songwriter piano boring bullshit shit???

Myra Ellen Amos has become nothing more or morer than a middle-of-the-road bland woman adult contemporary Natalie Merchant ass-fucker. The lyrics are indecipherable poetic repetitions supposedly inspired by 9/11 and the plight of the Native Americans, and the music belongs on an orthodontist's inoffensive (except to people with ... read more

I know that most critics tend to lump this in with Paul Rodgers' 2000 tour-de-force Electric, but the truth is that they really aren't all that similar. For example, the Paul Rodgers album features all original tracks by Paul Rodgers, while the Tori Amos disc is simply an arrogant collection of cover tunes completely ruined by some sort of smug, half-assed attempt to make a kind of obvious statement about how women are viewed by the male-dominated entertainment field or something. At least, ... read more

When I considered the prospect of sitting through a 2-hour Tori Amos double-CD, my initial thoughts involved the little-known terms "torture" and "suicide." But strangely, the first disc is pretty good! It's an all-new studio disc featuring the same general house dancey sound as The Choir's In The Hotel, but with much more piano presence, as well as sundry echoes, copious delays, hella weird noises sliding in and out of the stereo mix and an overall wild, woolly, ... read more

When I heard that Torpid Ambush was putting out a new album, I was all like "Yes! Torky Anus has a new album out!" So I went to store to buy the new Torny Flameass CD and BOY! Was I surprised! It didn't hardly sound like the Thorny Clambake I knew at all! If anything, it sounded like an electronic bass-throbbin' house dance dark dancey club band for teenaged girls with tattoos and black lipstick. I was all like "What happened to the Turkish Orangutan I used to know?" And the ... read more

Eww. EWW EWW EWW!!!! Suddenly Tori gets a hankering to be a strong predator-type woman like early PJ Harvey. So she adopts those same fucking irritating vocalisms - yelling really high-pitched ugly tuneless shit, letting her voice crack on purpose (because that's "real"), adopting stupid "tough girl" accents, straying WAY off melody in the name of "coolness" - basically destroying an album that wasn't all that good anyway!

Same mix of lone piano songs and ... read more

I'm going to completely project here, because I don't know anything about what drives Ms. Tori. But it sure SOUNDS like she enjoyed that bit of mainstream success she had with "Silent All These Years," and thus turned her back on the idiosyncratic side of her song composition to offer up as many easily digestible follow-up hit single candidates as possible. Aside from one really creepy tappity song that may have been an outtake from the first CD for all I know ("Bells For ... read more

Not feeling very whimsical today. Some prick keeps trying to fax something to my home phone and no matter how much printer paper I eat, I can't seem to get their message to come out of my ass. Got some DIPSHIT conference call in a few minutes even though this is supposed to be a day off for me. But could be worse - two people at my office are getting the axe today, and nobody knows who it will be. I guess we'll know on Monday when these two people are blasting out some tasty blues-influenced ... read more

This photo pretty much says it all. But let's continue, if only for the love of words and the vivid images which they conjure. First of all, regardless of what you may have heard, this album is NOT "pop metal." I have no clue why that old wives' tale has been spreading down from generation to generation. It is an '80s keyboard pop album - and a particularly bad one! You know how Madonna left dance to do pop a few albums into her career? When the mindless dancey fun of "Lucky ... read more

Holy frijole senor, GG at age 36 looked like a mass murderer and sounded like the Cookie Monster. His once vital young spiteful shit scream has devolved into an unintentionally humorous Muppet growl and his new band the Murder Junkies plays COCK ROCK METAL!!! Seriously. Not like power ballads and stuff like that, but you could definitely hear like the Scorpions or AC/DC playing these riffs. Though a lot of the songs are supercatchy in a midtempo late-period Ramones-type way, it's certainly not ... read more

Country/western music is outlaw music, after all, so ol' self-outlaw-fancier Allin thought he'd give it a whirl. This is straight C/W music, with clean guitars, pianos and bouncy bass lines, and GG is (choke!) SINGING!!! In an odd twist of fate along the lines of Dylan cleaning up his larynx for "Lay Lady Lay," GG sounds like a warbling seal as he relates his tales of tough-guy macho drug use and showoffitudeness. Some of the songs are good, but the others sound just like the good ... read more

Talk about a Confuse-o-Licious! The album' s called Murder Junkies but the band? The band's not called Murder Junkies at all! It's called AntiSeen! And it's from the rural south, birthplace of Mark Prindle (but in a different state)! And even better, the band only plays on half the album! The other half is a man of average intelligence trying very very hard to sound like a dystopian poet of great insight. A Jim Morrison style dionysus that hits himself in the head with a microphone to show that ... read more

Following Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas?" project in the UK, an idea for the creation of an American benefit single for African famine relief came from activist Harry Belafonte, who, along with fundraiser Ken Kragen, was instrumental in bringing the vision to reality. Several musicians were contacted by the pair, before Jackson and Richie were assigned the task of writing the song. Following several months of working together, the duo completed the writing of "We Are ... read more

Apparently the groove on this record was etched backwards, allowing the listener to place the phonograph needle in the center of the record and watch it work its way to the edge. It's this sort of exciting novelty that makes so many of us yearn for the 'good old days,' before cutting-edge technology rendered vinyl obsolete with the introduction of the cassingle.

Less novel is the audio component, which features live versions of four Freaks, Faggots, Bleeps & Blunders songs and a terrible ... read more

Okay, that's not a very nice sentiment. But look, the guy hated everybody; it's not like he was going to make an exception for black people. Plus, he clearly just recorded this song for shock value; there's no actual racist substance to it at all. In fact, here is the entire lyric, but with the offending word replaced by "cracker":

No room for you
No room for you
In my eyes
No room for you
In my eyes
No room for you in my world
No, no room for cracker
No room for cracker
No room for ... read more

This is the album that made me a GG Allin fan (from afar, of course), so let it do the same for you! Nineteen horrific tracks, covering the gamut from spoken word to country/western to hardcore punk to avante noise to industrial noise to trash grunge to AC/DC-style hard rock -- all driven into the dirt by a disgustingly reverbed mud-level guitar tone, shitty airplane hangar-quality production, vomitously low, grizzled screamed vocals and yet another batch of stupid, offensive lyrics with no ... read more

By this point, GG's voice was getting REALLY rough, perhaps from all the little pieces of poop stuck on the sides of his throat. But all three riffs on this three-riff single are too basic generic pop-punky for my blood (taste).

(taste my blood)

The title track is hilarious and ridiculously mean-spirited, but "I'm A Gypsy Motherfucker" sounds too much like the Ramones' "All The Way," and "Hangin' Out With Jim" might as well be Screeching Weasel for its complete ... read more

Where in Sam Frank's Disco did GG Allin's voice disappear to? Suddenly he doesn't just sound scraggly - he sounds downright disgusting! He's just screaming his obscene lyrics like there's a huge ball of disgusting phlegm lodged in his throat that he enjoys having there so he's not bothering to hack it up in public like a generous person would think to do. And his new band The Holy Men don't even play "punk rock"! They're distorted, trashy and noisy as hell, but the music is more of a ... read more