Thursday, July 30, 2009

dusting more crap off...

The GF is at work, so I can actually get away with listening to Led Zeppelin without hearing her bitch about it. I haven't actually heard anything from them for a while, since while she likes to listen to the radio in the car, she'll switch the station as soon as she recognizes a snippet of one of their songs.

Led Zeppelin III. I bought the CD of this back in high school. After re-listening, I've discovered that there are two good reasons to keep this. Firstly, Immigrant Song! This was why I picked it up in the first place, and I still love that song. The second reason, which you purists should appreciate, is to learn Atlantic Records' preferred alignment of the spinning part of the vinyl version. The black star should be just slightly off-center in the top hole next to the zeppelin's tail fins. Yes, I'm enough of a dork that I just did that to my copy.

Led Zeppelin IV. One of the first tapes I ever had was a cassette of this album that I'd found back when I was 11 or 12 at a rummage sale. I listened to it constantly on my Walkman. Eventually the tape broke, but I got the CD later on. Listening to it now, I realize that an awful lot of people have sampled the beats from the intro to "When The Levee Breaks"... I knew that sounded familiar.

Notes of interest? Both these discs are the first remasters... got 'em cheap when the so-called "digital remasters" came out in the '90s. They sound fine to my tin ears.

Monday, July 20, 2009

Foetus - Limb

Just got this the other day. This is a good example of how to do packaging right. If you're a fan of J.G. Thirlwell's red, white, gray and black artwork, you get a slipcase and booklet full of it. Some of the music on this CD was previously released, but that doesn't bother me since I only had one of the songs already from the bonus record that came with my copy of Hole. The liner notes go into great detail about the songs and how they were created, which is something else I enjoy in CDs. Sick of buying CDs that are only half-full of music? There's a 20-minute Mp3 as a bonus, bringing the total time to 71 minutes and some change! There's also a DVD with a documentary on it (will edit here once I've watched it).

Granted, all this good content comes with a price - but it's a reasonable price when you consider that most major record labels would have you fork over that much just for a DVD of a band. Besides, this way the money actually goes to the artist. I've bought the last few Foetus/Manorexia/Steroid Maximus discs from foetus.org and have been extremely happy with the service, shipping time and cost, packaging, etc.

Hear some of Limb here.