190n120: 30 Years of Music with Adam Johnson...Episode Twelve: "Champagne for my real friends, and real pain for my sham friends"

161. Cheap Trick - Cheap Trick (1977)

I was only familiar with their wanting a certain lady to want them before this blistering power-pop-punk debut landed in my lap. They were fast, they were scary, and they were catchy. Equal parts Stiff Little Fingers and Big Star, Cheap Trick would eventually fall into the comfy-wumfy place they always wanted in their stadiums across the globe. But here - here they took a moment from huffing gold spray paint to offer an audience their spangled bag for a pull. Here, they sounded like the American answer to Elvis Costello. A truly rousing opening statement from one of the game's expert outfits.

Oh, and Bunn E. Carlos was the best part.

Author's Note: It has come to my attention that I have been listening to this album backwards since day one. I always appreciated "ELO Kiddies" as an album opener, and "The Ballad of TV Violence (I'm Not the Only Boy)" as a scathing closer. But thanks to the internets, my rock-and-roll dream has been proven a lie. I ask any other Cheap Tricksters out there to try my playing order challenge: the next few times you throw Cheap Trick on the platter, start with the second side. You'll be glad you did...and Bunn is still the best.

Recommended Listening: ELO Kiddies, He's A Whore, The Ballad of TV Violence (I'm Not the Only Boy)


160. They Might Be Giants - Lincoln (1988)

Leave it to stereotypical me to really "get" They Might Be Giants in college. Out of their criminally underappreciated pre-Flood works, Lincoln is my favorite. Turmoil had never sounded so capricious. The Johns open up about lots of things--politics, divorce, neurosis, society--and they do it with aplomb and true enthusiasm. The driving force of TMBG all these years has been their dedication to creation. Sometimes pain can hurt just a little less through rainbow Rorschach lenses. Like their forbearers Cheap Trick, They Might Be Giants painted graphic pictures with bright colors. Evocative and inspirational - great, great music for finding one's own creative voice.

Recommended Listening: Cowtown, Purple Toupee, Santa's Beard, Shoehorn With Teeth

159. Metallica - Reload/Load (1996/1997)

Some more lucky fans got to start their relationship with Metallica through Master of Puppets, or even Metallica. I first heard "Fuel" on a jukebox at a Pizza Hut in Decatur, Illinois and it blew my eleven-year-old mind. The rip-roaring slide solo sliced up my brain so bad that I owe my fascination with distorted wah guitar to Kirk Hammett's eighth best Metallica solo. I insisted we stay long enough to listen to the whole album, and about fifteen or twenty dollars later I had my wish. My dad did not like Metallica, so I liked Metallica. So when my parents were stupid enough to go back to that particular Pizza Hut (it used to be an alright sit-down eatin' out location, alright?) of course I insisted on another fifteen to twenty dollars for Load.

To solve the twenty-year-old debate, neither of these albums are worth the time you took to read this sentence; but gods bless it, I can't help but nod my head to a few of these songs. They're not cemented in my memory banks by the grace of nostalgia alone, unfortunately. I actually truly enjoy a handful of these "Metallica songs". For the permanent record, Metallica made some mighty competent hard rock for their sixth and seventh studio efforts. They weren't the liquor-swilling vikings they used to be - they had graduated to upperclassmen that could tour any country with electricity. They brought the songwriting sensibilities from their first four (perfect) albums and applied it to a more radio-friendly template. This was, of course, a mistake in the long run. Success made them lazy, greedy, and mean. Hell, even Jason Newsted left the fold. And he was THE Metallica fan.

But anyway, like anyone with more feelings for these albums besides "*cough**fart*", I've wrangled my own playlist of how these two lesser records could have made a single, solid, more realized slab of hard-fucking-rock music, almost--even--worthy of being called Metallica songs. I counted both these albums as one entry because together they are stronger than the sum of their parts.
As a matter of fact, my passion for playlists was born of making sense of all this mess. While my other friends were busy worrying about what girls would think of this shirt or that, I scrutinized why the same band that recorded "Dyer's Eve" would bother penning a sequel to a song they ripped themselves off for in the first place (the main melody of "The Unforgiven" is lifted straight from a passage in the intro to "Fade To Black"). More or less, it should have gone:

1. Fuel
2. Ain't My Bitch
3. Where the Wild Things Are
4. The House Jack Built
5. Hero of the Day
6. Bleeding Me
7. Devil's Dance
8. The Memory Remains
9. King Nothing
10. Until It Sleeps
11. Attitude
12. Cure
13. Ronnie
14. Low Man's Lyric
15. The Outlaw Torn

And there you have it. Well over five million copies sold between the two of them, but I guarantee that number could have triplicated if my running order had been the one. "Holy shit!" they would cry. "Metallica have made a truly good, not sucky hard rock album! I hope they retire soon so as not to taint their legacy." But because Metallica cared so little for this material they let Avril Lavigne and Sum 41 cover a few of their tunes on MTV seven years later, we'll never know, will we?