Quick Hits, Vol. 100 (Red Hot Chili Peppers, Green Day, A Tribe Called Quest, Metallica)

Holy shit, I made it to a hundred of these things.  A large part of me figured I would have fizzled out by now.  The best part is that I still think this is fun.  It is almost assuredly a massive waste of my time, as far as my time is valued in six minute increments that can be billed to someone, but as far as a mental release and source of happiness, its worth the suck.  On my drive in to the office this morning, I was thinking how I need to get back to some other writing on here, deeper than these quick hit things.  Including my top ten of the year list, which I need to get thinking about ASAP.  In honor of hitting the big century mark, I'm only going to tell you about bands that I love today.

Red Hot Chili Peppers - The Getaway.   A couple of weeks ago, I finally finished the Anthony Keidis biography (Scar Tissue), which is a great read.  If you enjoy the Chilis, you really should go check it out.  The level of debauchery and insanity that Keidis has put himself through is freaking insane.  Like, totally insane.  Like jumping off a four story building to land in a pool and breaking himself on the lip of the pool.  Like banging his dad's girlfriend.  And this book pulls no punches on the drugs and women and bad acts. But one of the great things that the book does is give a deep look into some of the lyrics from some of the classic albums, explaining how and why he wrote the lyrics to stuff like "Could Have Lied" or "Under the Bridge."  Loved it.

I'm a big fan of the Chilis, so I approached this disc with excitement and a little bit of nerves. Nerves just because I really wasn't that excited about the last two discs from these dudes. Blood Sugar is my favorite (maybe my favorite album of all time), with Mother's Milk right behind that.  The albums before those and the albums after those are also great, but the double-disc overload of Stadium Arcadium, and the plainness of I'm With You had me a little turned off recently.  The last time I saw them play live, I was kind of bummed with the complete lack of any tunes before Blood Sugar.  But, after many listens to this album over the past few weeks, I think it is really good.  I'm down for the trip.  As usual, I think that the key strength in the band is Flea.  The new guitarist is good, Will Ferrell on the drums is solid as usual, and Keidis sounds just as good as ever, but the funkiness of Flea is what makes the RHCP worth listening to in the first place.  The first single from the disc is "Dark Necessities," which showcases that funkiness in the forefront of the groove.

Feel that?  I know you did.  From the pop bass interludes to the general underlying funky weaving that he does - like around the 3 minute mark when he is doing these little waterfalls of bump - this is the good stuff.  Now, its a little slower than some of the best funk bomb tracks (think "Subway to Venus"), but this thing still funks all over the place.  BTW:

The wrestling is legit funny in that.  I feel like Kinghoffer is Robert Pattinson with long hair and Bono sunglasses.  I don't think he sings or says a word for the first 5 minutes.  Do you think the rest of the band was like - "SHUT UP, new guy or we'll fire your ass."  But then he sang in "Dark Necessities."  Maybe they told him only to sing on his new music or else die. Nope, he sang on "Under the Bridge" too, he just needed time to warm up, I guess.  But 13:50, when they all jam out, is also awesome.  I'd never watched one of those Carpool Kareoke things before, but that is good stuff.

The album closer is interesting to me.  I think that spending time in Atoms for Peace probably provided some influence to Flea that he can't shake, regardless of whether he knows it is there or not. Or hell, maybe he intentionally made this song to sound this way.  Because this song, "Dreams of a Samurai" totally sounds like a Radiohead/Thom Yorke track, from the piano and soft singing of the intro, to the lilting, nimble bass line, this reminds me immediately of the Thom Yorke style.  This album is great, that I'm going to leave in the Q and keep jamming.

Green Day - Revolution Radio.  I'd rank the Chili Peppers ahead of Green Day in my fandom canon, but I dig these silly bastards as well.  I wore Dookie out in college, probably listened to it hundreds of times, and Insomniac got similar treatment.  Nimrod and Warning got less playtime, but they still have some great tracks.  And then American Idiot was the soundtrack of about 6 months of my time in Waco.  Great album.  So, this new one doesn't try to pull any "important" Punk-Rock-Opera moves with some big thematic core to the album, but it sounds just like most of their recent stuff.  The great, shot-across-the-bow, we-are-not-here-to-fuck-around first single is "Bang Bang," which makes me want to crank my car radio to 11 and throw my kids out the windows while ramming other drivers with abandon.

The drum fill at 2:50 is pure air drummer-rama-thon gold.  I need to have that song played while I'm in a room full of upright bozo the clown inflatables I can punch to death.  And the message in the track, apparently written from the perspective of a piece of garbage homeland terrorist shooter, is pretty hard too.  Good stuff.  Now, the rest of the album can get a little rote - there's only so many times I need to hear CHORD-CHORD-CHORD-HEY! on an album, but it still feels good to just jam out along with them and bounce to some power pop punk action.  This album definitely does not have the original Green Day swagger of the early nineties, but it keeps the same feel, sound, and flavor of American Idiot and 21st Century Breakdown (seriously, I think "Youngblood" is just a copy of "Whatshername" with different lyrics).  I will keep this album and continue to blare it in my car and think about going full Grand Theft Auto.

A Tribe Called Quest - We Got It From Here ... Thank You 4 Your Service.  I mean, the first track uses a section of the original Willy Wonka movie, which is my love language.  How can I not dig on this album?  Honestly, I figured that the Tribe was done as soon as Phife passed away, the same way that the Beasties disappeared after MCA passed.  But from reading about the album online, it sounds like this one was mostly made while Phife was still alive, and then just completed and released posthumously.
The best thing about the Tribe is immediately evident on here - great jazzy-sample-based tracks and a smooth, fully intelligible flow - which is why they were a massive success back in the day.  Low End Theory was my favorite of their old stuff, which might be the most obvious thing anyone has ever said about a hip hop album - it might be the best hip hop album of all time anyway.  But this one has a bunch of that same flavor (check "We The People..." or "Solid Wall of Sound"), I love the smoothness of their delivery, you don't have to work hard to understand their lyrics, you can just bounce right along and catch on to the words.  The groove of "Dis Generation" is fantastic, just a sunny, floating guitar lick with some hand claps underneath that makes me want to drive down the PCH with my top down. "Enough!!" grabs a nugget of their old school "Bonita Applebum" sitar (?) lick (which I also noticed being used the other day on The Fugee's version of "Killing Me Softly," which is also a jam).  I feel like this stuff references the old school enough to be properly reminiscent without being slavish to the old sound.
The most popular track on the album right now is "We The People...," which cranks up 4.8 million streams on Spotify.

Good stuff in parts (the chorus is some good Trump-baiting stuff and timely, politically charged) but then portions of the first verse from Q-Tip are cringe inducing, trying to sound like the new school talking about getting brain from a chick.  But I can forgive that in favor of the chorus and the groove of the beat.  And the Phife verse.  So cool that they caught some new bars from him before he passed. But more importantly, I'm just glad that this is a new rap track that talks about something interesting and important, and not solely idiot boasts and nonsensical words that rhyme over and over.  This stuff is why rap matters.
They also pay homage to Phife (see "The Donald," which also includes a great couplet from Q-Tip that references Tombstone) without being overly maudlin or centering the whole album on his passing.
My biggest beef with this album is the overload of guest stars: Andre 3000, Busta Rhymes, Anderson Paak, Kendrick Lamar, Kanye West, plus others.  So you end up with tracks that get a different feel - Busta spitting anger all over an otherwise chilled Q-Tip vibe - and I'd rather just stick to the Tribe guys.  The exception that is immediately apparent to me is Paak, whose turn on "Movin Backwards" matches the vibe entirely and sounds just right in there.  This is a good album that I'll keep around.

Metallica - Hardwire...to Self Destruct.  Oh hell yeah.  I always enjoyed Metallica a little bit over the years, ever since talking my sister into taking me to the mall to buy the Black Album in high school.  Have you gone back and blared that album again in your car recently? Absolutely holds up with the crunchiest, roughest, thickest riffage that is still accessible and fun to jam out to.  Anyway, when these dudes came to town last year, I dove deeper and deeper into their tunes and now I'm a big fan of their pre-Black Album work as well.  If I'm in the mood to brood and thrash and pump my fist into the air, this is the right music to hear. That live show was freaking amazing.  You should go see them play if you get the chance.

But, their last albums have been lacking in the real deal swagger department.  Well, I guess Death Magnetic had some good bits, but Load and Reload and Garage, Inc. and (especially) St. Anger all fell short of the classic stuff.

This new disc is apparently a double disc, as I have seen reported on the Internet, although from listening to it on Spotify, it just seems like a super crazy long album.  This is especially true on Spotify, which gives you the deluxe edition that includes 4 extra songs (at 25 minutes total).  The regular album is 12 songs and clocks in at 1:17, with only two songs clocking in at less than six minutes.  This makes for a really long-feeling album, with each song (on the real album) averaging about six and a half minutes.  That being said, the individual songs are pretty bad ass, and don't feel overlong.  You just have to settle in for the extended thrashing and hard groove sound of each track.  The hit is the first track on the album, the shortest as well, called "Hardwired."

Ahhhhhh!  The drums, man.  That is the perfect thrash base underneath the rest.  I think I might break my neck if they come to ACL and I have to destroy everyone within a five foot radius of my position in the crowd.  My only beef is that I feel like the bass gets washed out in the mix so that you almost can't tell that its under there thrumming along in time to the drums.  But that is a tiny quibble with a classic sounding jam.  If I had to pick a song on the album that I could do without, I think it would be "Murder One," but with "Spit Out the Bone" right after that song in the lineup, you forget about it pretty quickly.  This is hard stuff - the wife would not enjoy even a minute of this - but it is lighting up the pleasure centers in my brain.  Keeper.

Happy 100 everyone!