Still Keeping It In The Family.

One of the delightful things about this Blitzeroo is listening to old titles turn up that I had long since lost or sold. Anthrax's Attack of the Killer B's is one of those. It's probably been at least 7 or 8 years since I've owned this CD.

I forgot how much I loved Chromatic Death.

Sweet Music Gods.

In translating the subject line below, I was messing with a German-English translator and stumbled onto this:

Blitz
english translation = Flash War.

Christ, did you know that? Are we, in fact, at war?

Dieser Blitzkrieg kickt Bälle.

The hardest thing to explain about a Blitz is what makes it so special. After all, most people know their music collections pretty well, and what's the benefit of a bunch of obsessive-compulsive rules to enjoy it further? Then along comes a CD like All The Best From Germany.

Out of context, this collection would be a great novelty and kind of fun. But in the context of a Blitz, and particularly your blitz - it's absolutely the perfect CD at the perfect time. Nestled amid a torrent of hard rock/metal like, this little German number is the best kind of antidote and distraction before plunging into Anthrax. It's the context that makes it so great. And it made the Anthrax better too.

A couple of quick things then:

Track 2 - Heidi - Yodelling over a Boney M beat. Nice.

Track 10 - Rhine Medley - What a fantastic surprise to hear the original German translation of Elvis' Wooden Heart. It took me a little under a minute to figure out why the melody was so familiar, but there you have it... Are you familiar with that tune? If not, grab a listen and marvel at the small, small world of popular tunes.

Track 11 - Carnival Medley - Me, a blistering head-cold, the 401 collectors lanes, soul-sucking rush hour traffic, carnival music. You do the math.

Track 12 - Die Kleine Kneipe - What a great song. A really great and romantic little ditty. I was so in love with the tune that I briefly considered taking a German course just so I could understand and appreciate what he was singing about. Then I changed my mind because that'd be a lot of work and he might simply be singing about Die Booty.

Track 20 - Mein Vater War Ein Wandersmann - Good God, help me place this tune. It's killing me. Was it a Looney Tunes cartoon? What? What??

All The Best From Monday Morning.

There's a story here. You're clearly not German, so perhaps this is something from Patty's heritage? Or perhaps some important childhood recollection for one or you? The souvenir of a vacation I don't know about? Or better yet, just an odd adventure CD that you picked up for $4.99 at 7-11?

At any rate, All The Best From Germany reminds me most of the sort of adventure CD I would have signed out from the Oakville Library in my glory days. Just because it was there and I was there and it didn't hurt anybody to give it a listen. And what an adventure.

What I wasn't expecting was how darn catchy the CD is; sort of the German Nanny's answer to Boney M. The highlight of my short day so-far was pulling up at a traffic light, German drinking tunes a-pumping and watching the guy waiting at the bus stop eyeing my car suspiciously. The Honda was most certainly thumping with an oompa-oompa tuba line.

Quite excellent.

Second Generation Angst.

I'm not a superstitious guy. Even so, switching up to a CD called Car Crash Survivor while navigating the 401 Express lanes with one knee did give me pause. But just a little, and certainly not enough to do anything sensible like pull over. Thankfully the Angry Gods of Irony weren't watching...

The worst thing I can say about Alien Ant Farm is that they really suffered by having to follow Allison Chains. In fact, the experience was a little like chasing the Big Ticket with the opening act. Because they're living in the same alt-rock suburb of course, and because after Allison Chains, Alien Ant Farm really sounded like a cover band. The CD didn't suck, but it was a little anti-climactic. Perhaps even a little boring.

Not at all like All The Best from Germany.

Alice.

Making it quick. I'm in a rush.

Can I assume that the sometimes-titled Allison Chains CDs are entirely made up of Alice in Chains? Probably a pretty straightforward assumption, but then it's not right to make any assumptions about your CD collection.

At any rate, here's the magnificent thing. I've never listened to Alice in Chains before. Ever. I couldn't tell you the difference between an Alice in Chains song and an Alice Cooper song (well, save for the fact that I know a few of those.) Thing is Alice in Chains, this totally reputable and (in song circles) adored 90's band is a total adventure-CD for me. Brand-new experience.

Short story.

Love it. Loved it in a hurting kind of way. So much so that I had to back up and relisten to at least a few tracks - particular Dam the River and whatever preceded it. Those songs wrapped together were a bit like a warm blanket, to be honest. And it took me over an hour just to listen to the first 10 tunes. It's gonna be the first collection I'll need to steal stone-cold. Every song. Hope you got track info, me bucko.

Dude Looks Like Liv Tyler

Aerosmith's Permanent Vacation is the first CD to show up with one of your leftover wedding stickies - reminding me that track #9 is a fair Patty request.

Excellent. I hope those yellow tags stay in your CD collection forever.

The Worldwide Shortage of Babies Named Mutt.

Something to think about.

I cruised home tonight listening to Bryan Adams' So Far So Good and the Mutt Lange songs stuck out as clearly as anything I've ever heard from one songwriter. These aren't new songs, of course, but it was only tonight that I realized how easily they could be transformed into Def Leppard or Shania Twain tracks. More specifically the latter.

So the prickly question is this: if the Mutt Lange songs on So Far So Good are all credited as Adams/Lange and the Mutt Lange songs on any given Shania Twain album are all credited as Twain/Lange, and yet all of these songs sound remarkably the same; just what in the hell do Bryan Adams and Shania Twain contribute? Forget about lyrics, because the Adams/Lange songs sound written from the reference book of easy rhymes and love sentiments. We know that it's not the melodies or spunky choruses. So could it be that Lange is just a remarkable pushover when it comes to sharing credit? Is a guitar solo enough to give Bryan Adams songwriting royalties. And are the occasional and spontaneous "yeah"s and "mmm"s enough for Twain to be a co-songwriter?

I don't know. Who can say? I'm not sure that the world of songwriting credit is as regulated and politicked as the world of screenwriting, but clearly something is up.

And who was the better kisser?

Super Pooper

Funny thing about ABBA - I can't imagine I would ever put a CD on outside of a blitz.

The songs always seem so old and tired to me, worn out by some of the crew I knew in University residence or worse still, by the Mama Mia commercials that have plagued the radio for the last 2 years. But in the context of a blitz, the ABBA timing is always quite perfect and the groups always plays so smoothly, Prozaic even. I'd call ABBA Gold a staple.

So nevermind how bland a lot of the music sounds to me now, one song always takes me out of grumpy mode and makes the 7-year old start dancing: Super Trooper. Just love that one.

80 Degree Rawk

...was an absolute blast. Granted it was only the third CD in the Ol' Blitzeroo, but it also carries the distinction of being the first CD to be played twice. Well, most of the way.

First, it was an absolutely manic and off-the-meds experience. I'm sure most mixed collections will seem this way from the outside, but this CD in particular felt a little like a crazy person running through the mall, shouting nonsense and improvising a little dance as they go. Goonies and Ratt and NKOTB and, well...Countdown to Love. I'm not sure what your stream of consciousness was when you built this CD or what connections you were making piling these tracks together. Sure, there's the 80's connection (and the Streets of Fire connection in particular,) but still... I'd love some explanation if you have any. No, scratch that - it's better not to know.

Some tracks in particular warrant a closer examination:

Hold That Snake - Holy crap, is he singing about what I think he's singing about? And is he singing about it like it's that much fun to do? This might be the dirtiest (and happiest) pop tune I've heard since Jack U Off.

Tonight Is What It Means To Be Young - I knew right away, but still had to be certain, that this song came from the same crew as most of the Meatloaf catalogue. My God, so much sappy melodrama and so many over-the-top rock flourishes. It's easiest to imagine everybody involved running around the studio as they're recording, doing those high-Flashdance type kicks. This is probably the biggest guilty pleasure on the CD. Emphasis on the pleasure. Or maybe the guilty. Forget it, it's equal parts both.

Countdown to Love - It bugged me the first time, but more the second time, that he never actually counts down all the way to 1. The last verse pretty much finishes at two. I can understand why, but as a math nerd, it kind of rankled me.

Nowhere Fast - Now this is what I'm talking about. When I saw the 80 in the title of this CD, I expected 80's tunes and more than likely stuff I already knew pretty well. What I didn't expect was music that was new to me and yet soooo familiar sounding. This is the 80's sound that I obsess about. In fact, ugly as it sounds, this is precisely the sort of driving 80's rock tune that I would have devoured in 1987, all the while imagining it was something I wrote and performed (including those random Bonnie Tyler-style drum fills.) Basement lip-synching would've been involved. Ugh, what an awkward confession.

AC Dixie.

Didn't get a whole lot of time to blitz today on account of the weather. Took the train, y'see.

At any rate, one quick thing. You will never, never hear me complain about a CD that starts with rowdy power chords and ends with ol' fashioned bluegrass. .

YTD Lesson #8: Always Give Rock the Right of Way.

Ah, I haven't rocked out like that in a very long time.

On the 401, amid ugly, ugly rush-hour traffic, I cranked the AC/DC to a level that actually left me with a terrible head-ache. Throbbing pain which, to be clear, was the point. The volume was uncomfortable and abusive. There was such shouting and riffing in the car, that I barely noticed how long it took for me to get home.

This is a good start. A very good start.

The first track to really surprise me (so far) came from that thumping dance cover of AC/DC. When the throbbing dance beat started, immediately following Who Made Who? if I remember it right, I thought maybe we'd switched discs. I was pleased to see that we hadn't. And that you'd found a clever way to get around calling this a pure AC/DC CD (which would've alphebatized it after ABBA you must realize, regardless of your alpha-numeric title.)

You must tell me who sings that jazzy, wonderful cover of Highway to Hell by the way (track 17.)

First day's reaction? I'm really happy that you didn't give me track listings. And that most CDs will remain a mystery to me with regards to content. Too many blitzs, for me, are propelled by the impatience to get to the next song or the next CD. It's my ongoing struggle with this exercise to live in the moment and not worry about what I'm listening to next. Listening without track info (or any info for that matter) seems to have solved the problem completely. After all, I'm in no rush to finish the AC/DC CDs for 80 Degree Rawk. I don't know what the hell 80 Degree Rawk is.

By the by, I finished only the first CD and got only halfway through the second today. There's no rush on the part of this blitz. I don't think I'll scarf down 10-12 CDs/week after all.

For Those About to Rock...

So it goes. And it started out really, really, really cold.

Hell's Bells at 6 in the AM, under the blanket of a nut-shrinking -35º windchill. It happens that the Ol' Blitzeroo started with that familiar bell sounding, ran for 90 seconds, and then stopped as the CD player had a winter heart attack and died. [My CD player doesn't last long in frigid weather - strangely enough, if my foot hovers anywhere near the brake, the CD sputters out, then restarts when I return to the gas. If you can explain that, I'd love to hear the reason.]

At any rate, the music came back when the traffic loosened up, and I thunder(struck)ed through the first 8 tracks of your collection. Last thing I heard as I pulled up to work was Are You Ready?

Which, of course, I am.