Lamont - Muscle, Guts and Luck & Thunder Boogie

 

Happy "4/20" everyone! I haven't partook in "the act" in a long while now but I still have a fondness for the celebration... as unconventional as my method may be anymore.

That said, nothing screams "Drunk on whiskey and beer, grillin' and rockin' the fuck out on a nice night in the hills of TN" to me more than the jams of Lamont! Well, OK, in all fairness I haven't been here all that long so I'm sure some would beg to differ but from what I've experienced this evening, they fit like a camouflage, thrift store trucker hat! (Too cliche?)

Lamont is a three piece from Massachusetts that no longer exists and as far as I'm concerned, didn't get the proper due they deserved when they did. That is unless you consider getting a song on a Tony Hawk video game "making it". Straight up, no frills, AC/DC worship with some boogie woogie shred to stand out. Infact, the title of their full length "Thunder Boogie" sums it up perfectly. Hard "rawk" with a heavy enough dose of blues, honky tonk, rockabilly and cowpunk to satisfy without the corniness and pretension that usually follows suit. Actually, the rockabilly/cowpunk aspect supplies a lot of the interesting tempo shifts. Oh, and did I mention the grooves?! It seems like these guys are friends with Scissorfight which doesn't surprise me much either. Their singer strangely reminds me of Mark Arm. I dunno, whatever?! 

Yeah yeah, they didn't reinvent the "R-n-R" wheel but fuck it! It's Rock-n-Roll man! Throw this on and start partying already! Shit, if you want reinvention, go force yourself to listen to some of the garbage people are calling "indie" today... 

Just sayin'.

Not to be confused with the newer, fruity shit-fest Swedish band of the same name. Who let that happen? Talk about your "garbage indie"!

For fucks sake people, "RAWK!!!"

The singer looked exactly how I thought he would. Not sure why I thought as much but...

Melvins - The Maggot

Sorry for the lengthy delay. Solid internet is finally up and running. In true bitter irony however, the day the net went up my external HD went DOWN! As in, "To the floor" down. Needless to say, a lot of music went bye-bye!

Any who...

Do you love this album like I do? When it came out in '99 did you jams this til you puked! (Oh wait, that was my early 20's partying!) Did it make you bang your head so hard you strangely resembled King Buzzo on a less than humid day? Me too my friend! This is easily one of the top Melvins releases in my book as it's pretty fucking solid throughout. Every track owns right down to the Fleetwood Mac cover of "Green Manalichi (with the Two Pronged Crown)". The only bad thing that could've ever been said about this album is the way the Melvins; with all their "wit, humor, wisdom and glory"; broke each song into two (count 'em...2) individual tracks.

Why was this a problem you ask? Well, at the time I suppose it wasn't. Put the CD on, listen through it...no problem. But you see, in the "Dark Ages" of the late 90's, before the time of Ipods and the like, I had a 400 disc CD player and liked shuffle. Here in lied the problem. You'd be rockin' along to "AMAZON" and then somewhere in the middle *POOF* next song! LAME! Now with Ipods and my persistent inability to choose only one Melvins album to listen to at a time (Come on, it's like your own personal jukebox!) it seemes like even more of a bummer no one has fixed this.

That is, until now!

Thanks to Garageband and my lack of anything better to do, Melvins fans (and fans of the act of shuffling) can now rejoice! I present to you "The (fixed) Maggot"!