The For Carnation - The For Carnation

The For Carnation – The For Carnation

Touch and Go, 2000

Acquired: Love Garden, Used, 2007

Price: $5

This is the post-Slint project of frontman Brian McMahan and guitarist David Pajo and it sounds a lot like Slint, although it’s much more straight forward and not nearly as awesome as Spiderland. But, during my post-rock/math-rock phase a couple of years ago, I thought this album was the shit. Right now, I think it’s a decent record but it mostly just makes me want to listen to Spiderland, and I’ve been researching Slint while listening to this. It’s an album to ignore rather than one to drool over. It’s perfectly fine, it’s just a little boring.

The Fiery Furnaces - "Single Again" 12"

The Fiery Furnaces – “Single Again” 12”

Rough Trade, 2004

Acquired: Love Garden, Used, 2007

Price: $1

I picked this up when I went on a mad spree of going through all of the Alternative 7-inch records at Love Garden. Each one was 25 cents and I ended up spending $35 and coming home with some fucking amazing records. I grabbed this mostly because it had “Here Comes the Summer” on the B-side, which might be my favorite Fiery Furnaces song (and it is NOT an Undertones cover. Ironically, I have the Undertones “Here Comes the Summer” on 7” though). Ok, it probably is. “Single Again” is a jam, but I think they’re at their best when they’re doing upbeat art-pop songs you can shake your ass to.

End of E

A+B+C+D = $740
E = $24
(A+B+C+D)+E = $764

F is super short, but G is full of amazing and expensive records!

Electrelane - No Shouts No Calls

Electrelane – No Shouts No Calls

Too Pure, 2007

Acquired: Love Garden, New, 2007

Price: $14

Despite the fact that this is a Double LP, and that I typically hate dealing with Double LPs, I feel like this is the one Double LP I own that doesn’t bother me because, thought No Shouts No Calls has terrific flow and is a joy to listen to when I throw the CD in my car, when I pull out the beautiful, glossy LP and place those perfectly heavy slabs onto the turntable, I just want to sit, patiently listen, and flip the discs when I am required to. This is what siren songs sound like, I think. That is, I would drive my ship into the rocks for this lovely, lovely music. The Krautrock influence of their earlier records has been smoothed out, and though it’s still there a little bit in the keyboards and the basslines, it’s basically just mellow pop bliss. Despite the fact that it’s just plain beautiful, there’s a certain complexity to these songs that rewards upon close listening. Although I rarely ever listen closely, I’m too transfixed on how good it sounds, which I guess is why this is sort of a perfect record. There is lots of super cool stuff going on but the most important thing is that all you can really do is listen to it and enjoy. Plus, Disc 1 Side A is easily the most solid side of any Double LP I own with “The Greater Times,” “To the East,” and “After the Call.” Oof. Love it.

Eat Skull - Sick to Death

Eat Skull – Sick to Death

Siltbreeze, 2008

Acquired: Eat Skull show at the Replay, New, 2008

Price: $10

I don’t even know why I went to see Eat Skull, but somehow, that night, I ended up at the Replay. I think I was meeting some girl, or something, but ended up talking to Justin Brown most of the time who told me this was his “Record of the Year” so I figured the band must be good (given that Justin seamlessly took over Alternative Flashback for Gabe and gave me another year of obsessive band-looking-up and discovery). They were good, of course, but mostly they were fucking loud, which made them incredibly good and I kept grabbing Drew’s arm (I was drunk by the time they played) and saying “I can’t believe how fucking good these guys are.” I think they’re among the best of the lo-fi “shitgaze” thing that everyone is doing right now. It doesn’t all sound like the same song fourteen time, and has a great little ebb and flow. This also has some of my favorite album art of 2008! Also, my girlfriend is trying to take a nap right now and asked if I was “trying to wake her up.” I had to say, “No baby, I’ve gotta work through this record collection, and the rules is the rules,” even though I wished I could put on the Electrelane record right next to Eat Skull, which is perfect nap music.

End of D

A+B+C = $541
D = $199
(A+B+C)+D = $740

Goddamn that's a lot of money for four letters. Although, A through D comprises 1/5 of my LPs, so it makes a little sense. I'm incredibly excited to be done with Bob Dylan, and I have recently undertaken another D: Drywalling a fist-shaped hole in my bathroom wall. Did I create this hole? Yes. Was it over a year ago, sometime last summer or spring when I was indulging in my habit of punching at the wall above the toilet while drunk and taking a piss? Yes. There are consequences to drunkenly thinking "I wonder if I can punch a hole through this wall if I hit it just hard enough with my top knuckles." That consequence is buying a drywall repair kit from Ace Hardware and trying to figure out how to patch a hole in your wall when you are not handymanesque in the least. Anyway, there are only two entries for E and only a few for F, so it looks like the variety of is going to be picking up!

Bob Dylan - Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits

Bob Dylan – Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits

Columbia, 1967

Acquired: Half Price Books, Used, 2007

Price: $4

Though this project is both alphabetical and chronological, greatest hits collections are placed after all of a given artists LPs. So, here we return to Highway 61/Blonde on Blonde Dylan. Really, I only own this because I haven’t found a decent/affordable used copy of Blonde on Blonde. Actually, that’s a complete lie because the only Blonde on Blonde song I like on this collection is “I Want You,” and that’s my least favorite of my favorites. Really, I own this because it has “Positively 4^th Street” on it, which is pretty much one of the greatest Dylan songs ever and a wonderfully spiteful companion piece to “Like a Rolling Stone.” The rest is mostly a surrogate for Bringing it All Back Home, which I should have bought at Love Garden when I had a chance one day but decided $7 was too much (and I hadn’t yet gone through my Bob Dylan phase). But yeah, worth owning for “Positively 4^th Street.”

Bob Dylan - Desire

Bob Dylan – Desire

Columbia, 1976

Acquired: Love Garden, Used, 2008

Price: $7

Well, I’m pretty much sick of listening to Bob Dylan. It doesn’t help that I’m packing shit up to move out of my house and it’s goddamned sweltering (and at 10 PM no less!). But yeah, this is the last great Bob Dylan record before he started making mostly shit for the next thirty years. He’s got some OK stuff after this but nothing great. Actually, I don’t even like this record that much. I think “Hurricane” is an admirable return to the topical songwriting of his youth but man, is that shit played out. And I’m sick of calling KJHK DJs a minute into the song telling them to turn it off because it’s a DNP. “Joey” is one of Dylan’s few missteps when it comes to long songs, and it’s just really fucking boring. “Isis” is alright, but again, too long. AND SO IS “Black Diamond Bay!” Oof. “Sara,” on the other hand, is an incredibly heartbreaking companion piece to “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” (in a way). “Oh, Sister” and “One More Cup of Coffee” are also solid jams, but mostly, I don’t know why I bought this. But yeah, this shit is overrated. It’s still goddamned good, but yeah. I’m only halfway through “Joey” now. Kill me.

Bob Dylan - Blood on the Tracks

Bob Dylan – Blood on the Tracks

Columbia, 1975

Acquired: Love Garden, Used, 2008

Price: $7

I pretty much half-fell in love with my girlfriend months and moths ago when she told me Blood on the Tracks was her favorite Dylan record and that “Tangled Up in Blue” was one of her favorite songs of all time. It all seemed very ironic, because I’d spent the entire last year listening to this record, as I was going through a pretty sinister break-up. I ran a gamut of emotions and there was always a song to match it. When I was sad and longing there was “Simple Twist of Fate” and “If You See Her, Say Hello,” but most of the time I was jamming “Idiot Wind.” Anyway, personally, this is my favorite break-up record ever and one I will always have waiting in the wings. Oh, and once I was in Chicago staying with a friend of a friend and he played a really weird version of “Simple Twist of Fate” on acoustic guitar and then forced us to take shots of Evan Williams, so I guess I associate that with this record.

Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited

Bob Dylan – Highway 61 Revisited

Columbia, 1965

Acquired: Love Garden, Used, 2006

Price: $4

I think my newfound boredom with Freewheelin’ stems from the two weeks I spent dutifully analyzing Highway 61 Revisited for a paper I wrote for my Pop Culture of the 1960s class last semester. I chose the topic mid-semester because I knew it would be an excuse to read up on and listen to tons of Dylan and pass it off as schoolwork. Ultimately, I felt it was one of the worst papers I’d ever written. I had set a goal for myself at the end of that semsester: That the last three papers I would ever have to write for college would be not only the worst papers I’d ever written, but they would become progressively worse. I think the absolute worst was the one I wrote for Film Criticism class, which I think was about Holocaust movies and ended up being, in my mind, one of the best papers I’d ever written (second only to the 25 page tome I wrote about Afro-Punk for Popular Black Music two years ago, but only because I legitimately worked hard on that one and didn’t bullshit at all). Anyway, the Dylan paper was better than I thought, or my TA was just a moron (which I think he might have been, but I’m not sure) because he gave me a 93% on it. “Nicely done, Mr. Hrabe,” the comments at the end read. “You have a clear passion for the topic, which good[sic]. Great sense of focus. Well-structured. Good use of lyrics as evidence. A pleasure to read.” I only cite this because this was one of my crowning achievements and made me feel like I’d really earned my PHD in Bullshit. Anway, in the process of writing that awful paper I had to pick quotes out of books about Highway 61 and Dylan and ended up getting caught up for hours just reading. There was this one book about the recording of the record that was absolutely fascinating and made me fall in love with the record again. Anecdotal things like how Dylan randomly grabbed the whistle from some other dude at the session and played it during the opening of the title track. How the excellent B-side “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window” took them forever to record and never quite sounded right. How “Desolation Row,” the only song that I can really consider Dylan a poet, had a full band version until he brought in some rad sort of famous dude to record that Mexican-sounding guitar and how it’s now a masterpiece. How Columbia was aghast at “Like a Rolling Stone” and, since management had recently been shook up, they wanted to split the song and release part 1 on side A and part 2 on side B and how some Dylan’s biggest supporter at Columbia leaked the song to the radio and thus forced the label to let him have his way. Anyway, this and Blood on the Tracks are the only two Dylan records I can listen to all the way through and I think this is easily his masterpiece. It’s earth-shattering and still sounds totally fresh. It’s one of the few records that has absolutely ZERO duds. Every track is a jam and it’s always a pleasure to put this one the turntable (earning it the title of the second-most played record in my collection). Despite being the greatest song of all time, “Like a Rolling Stone” never gets old and I think that’s why it’s the greatest song of all time. It’s always potent and I always (always) sing along even though I mix up the words most of the time. Anyway, I could have probably submitted this word vomit to that class (after dropping in random quotes from 8 sources) and still gotten an A. This record’s real good.