Mike Salsbury’s Blog

Since the 1980’s, I’ve been pretty fond of the music of Depeche Mode.  Back then, their music was heavily loaded with synthesizer sounds and became pretty mainstream.  This 2005 release, “Playing the Angel” from Depeche Mode is quite a departure from their earlier sound, though the synthesizer element and vocals remain.

Playing time for the album is about 51 minutes.  Individual tracks range in length from about 1:42 to 6:09.  Most are in the typical 3-4 minute “radio length” range.

For a fan of the 1980’s Depeche Mode, today’s group takes some getting used to.  Along with the familiar vocals and synthesizer sound, there’s a new edge to the lyrics and a screaming guitar sound that is a very sharp contrast to the Depeche Mode of 20 years ago.  I think I still like the older sound better, but I can appreciate that it sounds “eighties” enough that the band would have a very hard time attracting newer listeners to their music without this modern “grunge” element that is popular in a lot of today’s alternative and hit music.  If you’re not familiar with the band’s sound today, this album might be too loud and edgy for your tastes. For me, it’s pushing the limit.

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Earlier in the year I review The Bloodhound Gang’s CD Single “Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo”.  It was definitely a good disc.  Thus it was with some enthusiasm that I fired up this album on Rhapsody and gave it a listen.

This recently-released (September 27, 2005) album is the latest from the group.  It contains the title song of the CD Single I mentioned above as well as a number of other tracks.  Overall it pretty effectively mixes techno sounds with rock and the standard Bloodhound Gang lyrical delivery.

The cover of Hefty Fine, as you can see at the right, pictures a very large and apparently naked man inside a cardboard box, along with a warning to parents that the album contains some explicit lyrics (which it does, and which Bloodhound Gang fans expect).

The album runs a bit under 40 minutes, about 3 of which are silence, and that feels pretty short for a modern release to me.  On the other hand, most of the tracks are quality stuff, so better to have a shorter album with decent music than a longer one full of crap…

The album starts with the track “Balls Out” which starts out sounding a little like a dance track, but picks up.  The lyrics are delivered in a rap-like format for the most part, but the instrumentals feature a strong bass beat and some very jamming guitars.  If you thought the “explicit lyrics” sticker was an exaggeration, this song would convince you otherwise before it’s over.  I think I heard most of George Carlin’s 7 words you can’t say on television in here.  On a 1-10 scale, I’d rate this one somewhere in the neighborhood of a 6, mostly due to the strength of its instrumentals.  The lyrics don’t impress me that much, probably because I’ve grown up enough that it takes more than a stream of 4-letter words in a song for me to get a kick out of it.

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admin music album, CD, critique, evaluation, Hefty Fine, music, rating, review, The Bloodhound Gang

As I’ve said before on this blog, I’ve been a big fan of Cyndi Lauper
since her early MTV days.  Back then, I enjoyed her brashness and
the silly videos she did.  Over the years that followed, I began to
really appreciate her vocal talents and songwriting ability.  When
I heard that she put out a new album (thanks to the Rhapsody music
service), I had to play it immediately.  It’s an entirely acoustic
version of many of her most popular songs, such as “Money Changes
Everything” and “True Colors”.

(This, BTW,
is one of the nice things about Rhapsody compared to iTunes and
Napster… you can play an entire album from beginning to end without
having to buy it first.  If you like it, then you can buy it and
burn it to CD or whatever.  If you don’t, it was covered in your
$9.99 monthly service fee.)

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admin music album, Body Acoustic review, CD, cyndi lauper, music, The Body Acoustic

I’ve been a fan of The Beatles since they were still going into the
recording studio.  Granted, I was around 3-4 years old then, but I
remember it well and have never lost interest in them.  They’re
still one of my “go to” bands that I’ll sit and listen to for
hours on end.  In spite of this, I have never really liked much of
Paul McCartney’s solo work.  I like a fair amount of George
Harrison’s, probably 80-90% of John Lennon’s (except where Yoko is
singing), and perhaps more than 90% of Ringo Starr’s.  But with
Paul McCartney, my interest in his music has always been something less
than 10% of the total.  It might even be less than 5%, I’ve never
really tallied it up.  Keep that in mind as you read my review of
Sir Paul’s latest work, “Chaos and Creation in the Backyard”
(which appears below).

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admin music album review, CD, Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, Paul McCartney

For my taste, Colin Hay’s recording career has been something of a
rollercoaster.  One album will really impress me, while another
will leave me wondering what the heck he was thinking recording
it.  Within albums, my reaction is much the same way, and that’s
unfortunate.  His voice and sense of humor are excellent, and I’d
really like to love everything he records, but I don’t. 
Surprisingly, “Company of Strangers” is one of his best and
most consistent albums (at least of those I’ve heard).  The
songwriting is generally great, his vocals are on the mark, and I have
at most minor nits with the instrumentals.

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I’ve been a fan of Gwen Stefani’s and No Doubt’s for some time. 
I have a weakness for women whose voices sound sort of sweet and
innocent but who are willing to sing strong lyrics with a bit of an edge
to them.  Juliana Hatfield (of solo and Blake Babies fame) is
another such artist.  Thus, when I saw that
“Love.Angel.Music.Baby.” had come out, I was immediately
interested in it.  After listening to it a few times, I’ve come to
a couple of conclusions about it.

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admin music album, CD, gwen, love angel music baby, no doubt, review, stefani

Release Date: July 22, 2003
Label: Compass Records
ASIN:
B00009Y3OF
Approximate Price as of 8/3/2005: $14
new, $13 used

All right, I admit it.  I am a child of
the 80’s and 20 years later I still have a soft spot for the music of
the group “Men at Work”.  It should come as no surprise,
then, that I seized the opportunity to listen to Men at Work’s former
front-man Colin Hay performing his album “Man at Work”. 
I wasn’t sure I was going to like it, though.  All too often I’ve
found that when a member of a popular band goes off on his or her own to
record an album, you realize that what you liked about that band wasn’t
the lead singer, but the combination of the singer and the rest of the
band.

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admin music album, CD, colin, colin hay, colin hay review, critique, evaluation, examination, hay, man at work, man at work review, men at work, review

Released: June 1, 1999
ASIN:
B00004TLWM

Having just reviewed Colin Hay’s “Man at
Work” album from 2002, I decided to give another of his albums,
“Transcendental Highway” a listen.  Unlike “Man at
Work”, this album contains nothing from his “Men at Work”
days of the 80’s.  It is entirely new music of his own.  After
a few spins, here’s what I think of the album…

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admin music album, CD, colin, colin hay, Colin Hay Transcendental Highway Review, critique, evaluation, examination, hay, men at work, music, review, Transcendental Highway

It was last year that I first heard of Bowling for Soup (BFS).  It
didn’t take long for their “1985″ song to get to me, being a
child of the 80’s.  I now have all their albums.  This one,
which I hadn’t heard, recently became available on the Rhapsody music
service.  I decided to give it a spin.  Here’s my review.

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admin music album, album evaluation, album review, BFS, bowling, bowling for soup, CD, evaluation, honorable ones, review, rock, rock on, rock on honorable ones, soup

Periodically, I take a look at the search results that led people to
my web site. In a recent examination, I saw that several people asked
the question “What is the importance of a
motherboard?” and sought an answer. For a seasoned
technical support person like myself, the answer to that question is
quite obvious, but to someone who isn’t that familiar with what is
inside his or her computer, it’s a mystery. Since a number of you
obviously want to know the answer to that question, here it is, as much
in layman’s terms as I can make it.

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