Feeling Groupie

One thing I thought would be fun would be to review a legendary terrible album.  While there is typically a massive audience for horrible movies (and many generate a cult-like following), the same is not generally true with albums.  In this, I commentated on and reviewed Lou Reed’s legendarily bad album Metal Machine Music .  It is often considered the worst album of all time and had never listened to more than 4 minutes of it prior to this experience (in high school, I gave up after around 4 minutes).  I gave my commentary throughout the 4 tracks (called A-1, A-2, A-3, and A-4).  Each track is around 16 minutes (except the 4 th track on the linear notes, where the length is listed as the infinity symbol).  Without further ado, here is my torturous experiment.   Prior ·          So scared already.   This is such a terrible idea. Track 1 ·          0:15 – Not t...

In this new entry of the Fictional Festival Series, I am introducing a new festival:  a hard rock/metal festival.  For more information about the series in general, please see my introduction post about this series. This festival is similar to that of a Danny Wimmer Presents festival (the company that does festivals such as Epicenter, Aftershock, Sonic Temple, and others).   I set this festival up similar to Epicenter, where there are 3 days, 4 stages, and 68 acts total (22 on Friday, 23 on Saturday and Sunday).   While the focus is predominately hard rock and metal, there are also 3 rap/hip hop artists on each day, some alternative artists, punk artists, classic rock artists, and more that are similar.   On each day, there is a main headliner that will have a 2-hour set while nobody else is performing, two acts who get a 1-hour set while nobody is performing, one act that gets a 1-hour set while another act is performing for 45 minutes of it, five acts who g...

After a long hiatus from this blog, I finally have released part two of my Confusing Popular Bands Series.  While the vast majority of artists who found commercial success make sense in either a historical setting or music sense, there are some where it is surprising they were popular either at that time or in general; this post focuses some of these artists.  In this series I will discuss around 30 artists who are popular but I am confused by their popularity.  This is not to say that I do not enjoy them or wish they weren't popular (on the contrary, I love several artists who are included in this series).  I typically shied away from the cases where I was surprised that a group that wasn't as well-regarded became popular, since those are usually not surprising given the catchiness of their music or the time period it is being released (think an artist like Nickelback or The Chainsmokers; in a historical setting, their popularity makes sense given music trends)....