Dan's Favorite Heavy Metal of 2018

I'm wrapping up a two year stint as a reviewer for MetalExpressRadio.com having reviewed nearly one hundred albums, and have contributed my 2018 "best of" radio show, which will air on New Years' Eve. Here's a sneak peak of my favorite releases of the year:

13-11. Judas Priest--Firepower, Dee Snider--For The Love of Metal, Lizzy Borden--My Midnight Things. I cheated and made my top eleven a top thirteen, putting these battle-scarred veterans and their commendable releases in a three-way tie for 11th.

10. Fantasy Opus--The Last Dream Complexly layered, epic in scope, reminds me of late Arch-era Fates Warning while sounding nothing like them.

9. Last Pharoah --The Mantle of Spiders A very NWOBHM sounding debut from an American band. Lots of fun and what a great title and an especially great title track.

8. Against Evil!--All Hail the King! A thrash band from India that has some sonic similarities to Death Angel, one of my favorite bands, all time. Punchy.

7. Sonic Prophecy- Savage Gods Another fun band with a classic metal sound. "Night Terror" is an especially good track.

6. My Regime--A Peek Through The Pines I fell in love with My Regime with last years' Deranged Patterns. This one is a bit less Slayeresque, sounding somewhat in between Deranged Patterns and last year's Shadows Remain from Band of Spice, ringleader Spice's other current product. He's had a prolific and varied career; check out Spiritual Beggars as well.

5. Witherfall--A Prelude To Sorrow Their second album; get last years' Nocturnes and Requiems also. Intricate, expertly crafted metal that reveals more nuance with repeated listening. "Portrait" off their debut was one of my favorite songs of the year.

4. Dark Hound--Dawning American stoner/thrash metal; seek out their first couple independent releases. Hard hitting and heavy.

3. Sin Theta--"No Allegiance" My #3 pick isn't for an album at all, but an unreleased demo track that I just happened to run across in the metalexpressradio folders. Eight minutes of metal bliss, stellar performances at every position in a song packed with great ideas and riffs. I must have run twenty miles on the treadmill this year just listening to this song. 2019 should see them release their debut EP.

2. Ascendant-A Thousand Echoes  Debut album from a Dubai-based band, three members of which grew up in Syria. Unbelievably good songcraft from a new band whose emotive power and song structures hearken to Powerslave-era Iron Maiden. Lindsay Schoolcraft lends vocals on the haunting "Morning Light", a standout track (a ghost story!) on an album utterly devoid of weakness. I can't recommend this one enough.

1. Voivod--The Wake Their best album, especially when packaged with the Post Society EP of a few years ago and a live set. The spirit of Piggy is strong in this one, an endlessly thrilling album from an iconic and sui generis band.

Thanks to all at MeralExpressRadio.com for some great times and great music!

I Live My Life by Hawkwind's Teachings

Went right for the treadmill after work today--hmm I never noticed how irony-laden that statement is--and put on Hawkwind's Coded Languages: Live at the Hammersmith Odeon November 1982.  I love Hawkwind, but especially live Hawkwind. The band's roster has changed dozens of times over the 49 years of their existence and, more so than just about any other heavy band I can think of, each permutation utterly transforms the live sound. I was listening to the album above, Glastonbury 1990, in my car, and although both it and Coded Languages have a few of the same tracks like "Brainstorm" and "Angels of Death", they sound almost nothing alike. Only two of the musicians--mainstay Dave Brock and Harvey Bainbridge play on both of the sets, one  a furious headlong aural assault (with barking dog), the other more an introspective, atmospheric journey through time and space. 

By mile two I think I was in another dimension. 

Phoebe's Phavorite

DON'T FORGET! LIVE CHAT WITH ME AND ALL YOU ZOMBIE KIDS Tomorrow-- THURSDAY, 8 EST at The HAUNTED HOUSE




In Generation Dead I mentioned a number of bands that Phoebe and Margi like to listen to--some of the bands were fictional, some weren't. The Rosedales--whose picture is hanging in Phoebe's locker, are thankfully one of the non-fictional bands. I say thankfully, because if the Rosedales didn't exist, I'd want to invent them--but the invention would never be as good as the real thing. They have a brand new album entitled Once Upon a Season . I've just finished listening to it a second time through and it is, hands down, my favorite album of 2009. And I got a lot of good stuff this year. If I had my way, the Rosedales would be doing the soundtrack for a Generation Dead movie, that's how much I like the Rosedales (of course, if I had my way, there would be a Generation Dead movie already in production).

I'm not going to do a typical track-by-track dissection of the album, I'm just going to urge you to use those iTunes and Amazon gift cards you'll be getting in your stockings this year on the new album. Give "Cold, Cold Heart" or "Nightgown" or "Never Coming Home" a listen if you are skeptical. Heck, give any of them a listen.

Off-the-cuff descriptions I've read typically lump them in with "horror-punk" or "horror-rock"; I first became aware of them from hearing a track on a horrorpunk compilation. "Horrorpunk", typically, is an industry term for "Misfits copy-band". Understand that I love Misfits copy bands--but the horrorpunk label applied to the Rosedales does them a real disservice, because they have a sound that is all their own. Clean, layered vocal harmonies, atmospheric arrangements, haunting lyrics, music that alternates between driving rock (mostly) and a few lush, quiet acoustic moments that are as breathtaking as they are unexpected, as in "Meet You There". And the thing is, your breath has already been taken away by the epic scope and relentless pace of the earlier numbers.

Okay, I admit it. I'm a total fan. But listen for yourself. Here's a video from one of their songs from their earlier release, Raise Your Spirits:



A ten-spot will cover the album download, and leave you a little change left. You can apply it towards the two new Misfits songs that came out last month, if you. Or if your richie aunt gave you the mega-sized download card, get the Rosedales 'Raise Your Spirits as well (less than twenty bucks for the two!); I promise you won't regret it.

Phoebe's Playlist Part II

A few blogs ago I linked to my guest spot on Largeheartedboy.com, where I was able to write about some of the music that I listened to when I wrote Generation Dead, music that coincidentally would likely be on Phoebe's iPod. Pretty much everything in that column is uptempo, loud music. So what does Phoebe like to listen to when she's in a quiet, reflective mood? When she's pensive, thoughtful, or relaxing? (Phoebe, for the record, never "chillaxes", btw. Well, yes, she listens to that loud stuff when relaxing, but she also has moments that create a more soothing aural space. The three This Mortal Coil albums help create that space, especially the unbelievably good Filigree and Shadow, and there's an album called Space Age Freakout by Glide (Will Sergeant of Echo and the Bunnymen) that we quite like. During the editing of Kiss of Life I was introduced to a recording artist by the name of Joe Frawley, and he's recently released a CD with called Emperor of Daffodils with an ensemble that I (and thus, Phoebe) have fallen in love with.




Joe's solo work defies easy description, drawing from a number of genres and styles, usually incorporating "found sounds" to create amazing sound collages. This is music that takes you places; often to places you've likely never been.


Here's what Joe has to say about the inspiration for the album:

Artist's Statement
I came across this You Tube video- and apparently there are others like it- of a young woman doing her makeup, talking about which eyeshadows she likes, how she puts on lipstick, etc. And then people would comment back saying "you're so pretty", "that shade looks good on you". It occurred to me that a web cam functions something like a magic mirror to some people, as in: "Who's the fairest of them all?" And it wasn't just one video, she had dozens of them. A lot of the samples you hear on this project come directly from that source. This was the initial fascination, which then lead to further explorations of the idea, from slightly different angles, including the male perspective. I have always found it fascinating, for example, to watch a woman put on makeup. It's a whole world I know nothing about, and have no place in- the world of feminine beauty rituals. This is what lead to the idea of an Emperor of Daffodils (that is of narcissists- the flower in French, narcisse, is named after the mythic figure). I imagined it as a fantasy for a man to have dominion over an empire of self-loving beautiful women, a fantasy which could easily turn dark, as you can imagine. This CD has been the most strictly programmatic work I have made, and I found working within the limits of the concept to be creatively liberating. I am encouraged by the results of this recording and hope to do more collaborative work in the future. –JF


Definitely something Phoebe would want to check out. You can check it out and listen to excerpts of the music at Joe's site joefrawleymusic.info. Eight bucks gets you the new limited edition CD--only fifty made! And I have one of them, so you might need to hurry!

And February is a Little Brighter Today

Keep reading for exciting contest giveaway!

I don't want to give you the impression that I've been taking this February lying down. I have made attempts, some major, some minor, to "reverse the curse" of this month that I hate so much.

Today I downloaded the new Morrissey album, Years of Refusal, because really--what better way is there to cheer yourself and others up than to listen to some Morrissey?



If it sounds like I am joking, I assure you I am not. I'm deadly serious.

I've always found Morrissey's songs immensely cheering. His ability to mine his own apparently deep wellspring of pain and make it somehow universal--and often comic-- has always impressed me, especially when he expresses that pain with a somber lyric over a jaunty, jangling piece of music.

Love the Smiths, love his solo recordings--which by now far outnumber those of the Smiths. Of the albums that bear his name, Vauxhall and I is my personal favorite. The first Smiths album I bought, when I was in high school, was Meat is Murder. My favorite book named for a Smiths song is Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before by David Yoo.

If you were to call my cellphone, you would not hear my voice if I didn't pick up. Instead if my voicemail picked up you would get a short clip of Morrissey singing "Suedehead"..."Why do you telephone?" (Funny that you should hear Morrissey's soft tenor, because what I hear--my ringtone--is the harsh "Raining Blood" riff by Slayer).

If I had to create a playlist of my twenty favorite Smiths/Morrissey songs, my already already unstable brain would explode, sending nasty brain-juice squirting out of my ears, ruining my one good shirt. Either that or the mere contemplation of an imponderable like narrowing the Smiths/Morrissey canon would collapse my mind, creating a black hole that would suck in even more air and all of the contents of my tiny office, even my tiki playing cards and my Power Girl action figure. Only Twenty?? What about Rubber Ring? What about Hairdresser on Fire? Urrrghh! Blatt! Arrrgh! (And all of Danny's tiny universe disappears within the black hole at the center of his rapidly deflating head).

So I'm not joking around at all when I say I'm ecstatic that there is a new Morrissey album and it is now on my iPod. To prove it, I'll send an arc of Kiss of Life to one randomly chosen person who correctly identifies a Smiths or Morrissey song title that I've used either as a blog entry title or as a quote within the blog itself. Send your entries to WatersDan at aol dot com. Good luck!

I think I'll go have a listen.

Happy of the Day: The Ting Tings

Yeah, riding high on love's true bluish light




I love when I find music that I can share with my children, because there is nothing quite so infectious as a child's positive response to new music--I played the new CD We Started Nothing from The Ting Tings on the way to get an allergy shot, and the kids were instantly hooked. This makes me extremely happy.

I'd love to be able to play the new CD from Buckcherry, Black Butterfly, for them, but it has a parental advisory, probably because it has the word %&^$#, also the word *&$#@! and the word %&$#@**, which they manage to use as a noun, verb, adjective, adverb, and somehow, a preposition. They also talk about using (&*^, putting a $%@# in a *&^#@#, and &&*&^$ sideways in a tree house. There are also some tender love songs.

I feel hypocritical denying my children the trashy, %$@#*&ing glory of Buckcherry, first because I've listened to it daily (One of my favorite bands, I sprang for the deluxe edition because it has two extra songs)since getting it, and also because I think I was about my daughter's age when I began listening to, um, "Rated R" music like AC/DC, Kiss and Van Halen, bands that today seem pretty tame on the overall-offense-to-society scale. Within a few years though, my taste--although quite broad--would expand to include the Dead Kennedys and Slayer, bands I definitely don't want my kids to listen to at this point--which of course just makes me feel even more hypocritical, because I think listening to the DK's at an early age helped shape, in a very positive way, my political world view--Jello Biafra's social conscience, although shrill at times, definitely got me thinking about social conditions in a way I might not have, and years later I'm greatly thankful for that experience. I feel hypocritical also because I really can't make any argument about Slayer being socially redeeming in any way--but I love, love their music, the visceral punch of it. My ringtone is "Rain in Blood". I have 27,209 songs on my iPod, and I'd let my kids listen to maybe 1200 of them. What a jerk.

Putting all this internal angst aside, I love the Ting Tings, and I love that my kids love the Ting Tings. Exuberant is the first word that comes to mind when I try to describe their music; We Started Nothing is the sound of a band (two insanely talented people, really--Katie White, who plays guitar, the bass drum, and sings, and Jules Di Martino, who plays drums,electronics, and sings). Katie, as the lead voice of the band, has an energetic delivery that is sassy and sharp. She has a wonderful voice; airy and sweet in "Traffic Light", punchy and forceful in "That's Not My Name" (my current vote for song of the year). From the opening tune "Great DJ", the Ting Tings (who took their name from a Chinese coworker of Katie's, how cool is that? And it is a Mandarin term for "band stand") the Ting Tings establish themselves as pure pop, pure fun. There isn't a bad song on the album, which alone is a rarity these days, but each song on the disc might actually be great. Like, stunningly great, so hook-y and smart. There are traces of some earlier woman fronted bands like Blondie and the B-52's here (and also not as widely known bands like Bow Wow Wow, Dee Lite and the Sundays, I think), but the overall effect is something fresh and new. I recommend it highly if you need a new happy music CD (and who doesn't) and/or something you can listen to with kids in the car.

Although, my kids were a little stunned when I played "Shut Up and Let Me Go", because of the song's liberal use of the "S-word" in the chorus--they think "Shut-Up" is the S-word, God love them.

I love my kids. I love the Ting Tings. You will, too.

Oooo Weee Oooo He Looked Just Like that Dude from Winger

I was fortunate to be in Boston with an old friend (Lord, did he look old)last night, someone that I went to both high school and college with. Of the many halcyon memories that we sifted through, we did an extensive deconstruction of all of the concerts we went to back in the day, not only the big arena shows (Danny's Fun Fact: I was almost killed coming home from the Monsters of Rock--Metallica, Van Hagar, Scorpions, Dokken, Kingdom Come. I was sitting in the shotgun seat and woke up just in time to scream at the driver, who had fallen asleep and was in the process of drifting over three lanes of traffic towards the concrete barrier. After narrowly avoiding a deadly collision, he asked me how I managed to wake up just in time, and I told him that I had a dream where the ghost of Cliff Burton was yelling at me to wake up and get out of his dream. We pulled over and pounded a six pack of Jolt cola immediately after) but also club shows and the local stuff we saw while at UConn.

I asked him if he'd ever seen Avant Garde when he was there, and I was disappointed when he said he hadn't. Avant Garde looked like a hair metal band, all spandex and hairspray, and lyrically they could stray into hair metal territory with songs like "Never Forgot" and "Standing in the Paris Rain",which are songs about being all sensitive with girls. Musically, though, I thought they had more in common with bands like Fates Warning or Metallica than Poison--the song "Renaissance" off the demo tape in particular has a great twin guitar riffs and some wicked drumming.

They were five kids from the high school that bordered UConn, and I thought they were great. I heard them play two or three times, and ended up buying a tape they were hawking at the shows. Here it is:



I thought they had real promise. The songs were original and catchy. They cleary spent some time crafting both their songs and their presentation, but they also seemed to have a sense of humor and fun about what they were doing. There's a partial song on the tape called "Free Fall" that they sang as "Tree Frog" during one of their sets, which they and their fans, myself among them, thought was pretty hilarious. I remember being particularly impressed by their drummer, a tall red headed guy who set up his kit in this weird vertical way. I think he played at the front of the stage with his back to the audience, so that everyone could see what a titanic skin basher he was.

I think I saw them twice, and would have gone to see them again but they stopped playing locally. I heard a rumor that they'd all gone to L.A. to seek their fortune. I looked forward to them maybe getting signed and producing a whole album, but instead I never heard of them again until about a year ago.

I kept the tape, though. It was one of the few that I kept after my Great Cassette Purge of 1995. I listened to it quite a bit, and was smart enough to make a copy so as not to degrade the original, and I've since burned the songs to mp3 and have them on my iPod. And, ha ha! You'll never get them! And they're awesome! Ha ha ha ha!

Sorry. A year or so ago I read somewhere that one of the Avant Garde guys--the guy I actually bought the tape from--was Rivers Cuomo of Weezer fame. This kind of broke my brain for a bit, mainly because Rivers is now one of the least metal-y looking guys in rock, and also because I'm huge Weezer fan. I have most of their music on vinyl, which I mention to quell any doubts about how hardcore a fan I am. "In the Garage" off the blue album could practically be my biography.

My old friend (I was just kidding about him looking old, that was just me being bitter about him having retained more of his hair than I did--he showed me the bag he keeps it in) now works at Harvard, where Rivers graduated from not that long ago. Isn't that cool? Why do we say "small world" when the tiny moments of synchronicity like this actually expand the realm of possibility?

One of the other things that my friend and I talked about is some of the ways kids will differ from our generation (X) as time passes. X'ers use Internet tools like Facebook, etc. to track down a small percentage of friends we regret losing touch with. Contrast this with the youth of today, who have grown up attached at the e-hip with everyone they've ever gone to school with since the age of seven. Instead of tracking down forgotten chums and teen sweethearts, y'all will spend the rest of your lives trying to cyber-ditch all those people who just won't go away. I feel bad for you, too, because ditching is a lot harder than finding.

Sorry, kids, but history will prove me right on that one.

In the meantime, Weezer have a new album. You should get it

At Fates Hands

I’ve gone a little crazy with CD purchases lately, mostly trolling through the used Cd bins. A trip to Northhampton got me the first Byrds boxed set, the new B-52s album, and the Damned’s Phantasmagoria, which you might have noticed was the first (admittedly intermittent) “Album of the week”. Yes, I already had the vinyl, but the CD had two remixes I didn’t have. That version is out of print, and it was only seven bucks!!! What was I supposed to do? Not get it? Hah? I’ve also been getting a lot of neat Pink Floyd related stuff, like The Body from Roger Waters and Ron Geesin, a weird 4 song sampler from a recent David Gilmour show that was on PBS, and the Zabriski Point soundtrack, which I’m dying to listen to because it has a whole bunch of “lost” Floyd tracks. I also picked up a CD reissue of the first Sweetwater record, a CD from a German prog band named Jane, and the just released remaster of Perfect Symmetry from Fates Warning.

PERFECT SYMMETRY, Fates Warning 1989


The new CD comes with a bonus disc of demos and a bonus dvd of concert footage. I’m one of the stars of the dvd!

Well, not really. But I think my jaw hit the floor when I looked on the back and saw that some of the concert footage was shot in New Haven, because I was at that show! How cool! A chance for a rendezvous with the much younger me!

The footage was shot in 1989, and in 1989 Fates Warning was second only to Iron Maiden in my personal pantheon of rock gods. Like Maiden, they had endured after the potentially devastating loss of their first singer, John Arch, who stayed on for one more album than Maiden’s Dianno did, departing after the brilliant Awaken the Guardian. Fates came back with Ray Alder and No Exit, an album that got them some Headbanger’s Ball play on MTV with “Silent Cries”, and also had an eleven minute opus in “The Ivory Gate of Dreams”. Their music was riffy but intricate, and the lyrics were introspective and interesting. Perfect Symmetry picked up where No Exit left off in terms of it’s subject matter, with guitarists Jim Matheos and Frank Aresti writing songs about loneliness, alienation, and growing up. PS was the seventh CD I ever owned, the first of their releases that I didn’t own on vinyl.

I watched the concert while on vacation in Maine. I think I saw myself a few times—I think that’s me, the hulking blond brute headbanging and pounding his fist in the air near the front of the stage by Matheos. It’s hard to tell, as there are a number of hulking blond brutes, with hair equally as medieval and long as mine was. I wish I could remember more about the show beyond thinking it was great—not the details of the show as much as the details of my own life from that time period. What was I thinking? What was I feeling? Was I worried about a test or a term paper? Was I going out with Kim the next day? What story was I working on? When was the last time I’d been home? Had I switched majors yet? As I started to scrutinize the footage looking for my younger self I started to worry—what if I looked right in my younger eyes and didn't recognize me?

I don’t even know for certain who I went with, which is terrible. I have a pretty good idea, but I don’t remember. I do remember who I went with to my second Fates Warning concert, though. I remember this because I never made it to the show. My roommate Freddy and I borrowed a car, a VW Rabbit, from a guy that lived on our floor, filled the tank and went. We were about halfway to New Haven when the car started acting funny, so we pulled over and noticed something we should have noticed before, namely that the car was a diesel. Oops! Freddy called his dad, who performed one of the most amazing feats of mechanical might I’ve ever seen—he actually removed the gas tank so he could drain all of the engine-destroying unleaded fuel, replaced the now-dry tank, and poured in a gallon of diesel. We drove back to the dorm, handed over the keys, and held our breath for about a week. Our friend never mentioned having any issues with the car.

I think I was supposed to carry that story to the grave with me. Sorry, Freddy, wherever you are! I miss you, man!

Watching the concert again, I remembered that I thought Ray butchered “The Apparition”, one of my favorite John Arch songs, but that he was devastating on the newer material like “Nothing Left to Say” and “The Ivory Gate of Dreams”. The video evidence seems to corroborate my sometimes Swiss-cheesy memory. Strangely, I own guitar picks from both guitarists from this very show. Matheos’ tossed his to me after one of the acoustic breaks in Ivory Gate of Dreams (this would have been a perfect video moment, alas, the camera’s eye did not witness it)and I found Aresti’s on the floor after the concert. One is blue, one purple—I don’t really know whose is whose--they are pictured below, along with a couple other hard-won picks from my collection:



In the video, a mosh pit breaks out every so often, and a few people dive on the stage and are promptly rushed off by the bouncers. The footage is dark and a little grainy and it is hard to make out any faces other than those right in front of the stage, but from time to time a shaggy Great-Pumpkin like head rises out of the mullet sea and I think that it might be me.

This hazy apparition makes me wish that the dvd had one extra bonus feature—the ability to transport the viewer back in time. What would I say to Young Danny, in the moments between when he’s banging his head against the stage? What would I say to alter the course of his life, which, a few moments before writing this, led to me scanning the Perfect Symmetry DVD for proof of my youth?

I’m reminded of one of Matheos’s lyrics from the album, from the song “Chasing Time”:

I’ve watched in silence
As a stranger within me grew.
Detached and distanced from the day
While youth’s precious years flew.

It doesn’t take me very long to realize that I wouldn’t say anything to young Danny. I’d offer no cautionary tales, no wisdom of ages, nothing that would bump him off his current trajectory, floundering and directionless as it is, awash with heavy metal music, comic books, and static acts. I wouldn’t change a thing.

But maybe I would shoulder my way through the crowd, throw my own fist in the air, and bang my head alongside of him.

We Have A Winner

iGoth!!!! If you are out there, please send an email with your address to TommyWilliams17@aol.com so I'll know where to send your new shirt! Congrats!

Still no "Under the Influence, Pt. III". I went to Yankee Stadium yesterday and saw one of the most amazing games I've ever seen, from the nosebleed seats way up on the third tier. Well played by both the Padres and the Yankees, Joba fanned 9, and Rivera K'd all three batters he faced in the 9th to end the game.

You know what? The nosebleed seats are pretty cool. We were close to the plate on the first base side and when a batter would pop one back foul the ball would seem to hover at eye level a few moments before falling back to earth.

Plus, free hat day!!!! Yeah, boooooiiiiiii!

I see I'm remiss on my album of the week as well, so I'll keep it mercifully brief.

REVOLVER, The Beatles, 1966



Revolver is the best album ever recorded. Any questions?

Moon-washed College Halls

MISPLACED CHILDHOOD, Marillion, 1985



I discovered this one soon after I went to college, and Fish's lyrics, although obscure at times, were very attractive to me as a wannabe writer. The album's conceptual themes of losing one's innocence and saying goodbye to one's childhood (and later reconciling with one's childhood) also resonated with me in being away from home for the first time. Throughout high school I listed mainly to metal, punk, and post-punk (and a few of the "classic" rock bands like the Beatles and Pink Floyd, but once at college I broadened my horizons in all directions, one of which was progressive music. I picked this up because Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden said Marillion was his favorite band. Kim wasn't really into Celtic Frost, Slayer or the Dead Kennedys, so Marillion, like Floyd, became something we could listen to while hanging out and studying. Most high school music memories are of times with friends or by myself, most college music memories are of Kim.

"Kayleigh" is a very sad but beautiful song about a breakup, and it was a favorite of ours throughout our time together at school, so much so that we knew what we'd name our daughter when she was born some years later.

And Everyone You Meet

A few new reviews in the 'Reviews' section--check 'em out.


DARK SIDE OF THE MOON, by Pink Floyd,1973

My parents bought me a Sears stereo for Christmas, 1984. The Sears stereo was a paragon of utilitarian design, a lightweight box construction that had a turntable, eight-track player, and dual cassette deck. This was in ye olde dayes, kids, before digital music, when we used to dub music by hand--by hand, I tell you!--listening carefully for the exact moment to lift the needle or pause the cassette to conserve the maximum amount of usable tape. I think back to all of the hours I spent making mixtapes, when now I can make a huge setlist on my computer in about five minutes. It was painstaking work, and woe betide a sibling who walked past the stereo with heavy feet when the recording light was on.

My parents bought me three records that Christmas as well, two Iron Maiden 12 inch 45s, the Aces High and Two Minutes to Midnight singles, and Dark Side of the Moon. It was a gatefold record, which was a big deal back then, and it came with two posters and a bunch of stickers.

One of the many things that fascinates me about this album is how its meaning to me morphs over time. Already more than a decade old by the time I got it at age fifteen, it instantly became my favorite album to listen to on the headphones while doing homework, writing, reading, or just staring up at the ceiling. It was an album I'd put on when I started dating Kim and was background music throughout our time in college together. When my kids were babies, I liked to put Dark Side on when rocking them to sleep, always making sure to turn it down when the alarm clocks hit at the beginning of "Time", although usually they fell asleep before "Breathe in the Air" was over. Old Santana records used to knock 'em out, too. I expect that it will have another meaning for me when my kids grow up and leave the house.

Depending on my mood, I can listen to the album and summon up any of these memories, and more. If I feel the need to connect with my teenage self, or the me when I was a young man in love, or the me who held and rocked his babies, feeling their tiny hearts beating against my chest and hearing "Long you'll live and high you'll fly" play softly from the speakers, I can just by listening the the album. And if I don't want to reach back into the past, I can play the songs, open my mind, and connect with the present, or if I'm really fortunate, the future.

Some albums are static; I'll listen to them and they'll take me to a specific moment in time and that's great, but my favorites seem to be the ones whose meaning and "feel" grows and changes along with me. This is one record in particular that never seems to let me down in that regard.

The Final Countdown

Two weeks from today, Generation Dead will finally be out. Can't wait, can't wait, can't wait (wags tail).

In case you are having trouble recovering from that disturbing image, here's a much more attractive one in our newest bloggy feature: DAN'S ALBUM OF THE WEEK, in which I will take time to discuss one of the many, many (many) albums from my collection, focusing on those that warped or enhanced my mind in some way. First up,

PHANTASMAGORIA, by The Damned 1985



The Damned were mostly a punk band, the first in England to release a record, the "New Rose" single, but this album is pretty Goth. The singer Dave Vanian dressed like a vampire long before the Goth was a real movement, right down to the white make up. He's a great singer and a good guy, good enough to pose for a picture with me at one of their shows (I'll post it if anyone cares).

Most of the songs on Phantasmagoria are about dreams or love or love and dreams, except for Grimly Fiendish which is about being Grimly Fiendish. I bought it when it was first released in 1985 because I liked the cover and because I liked a lot of the earlier Damned songs. I was lucky enough to buy the Canadian import of the album, which had a great song, "Eloise", as a bonus track. I listened to this album about as much as any other when I was in high school, which meant I listened to it an awful lot. I like all of the songs, but the first two, "Street of Dreams" and "Shadow of Love" really get me. The album is both spooky and romantic, which to me is the essence of Goth music. Hearing it puts me in an introspective mood, and also makes me want to reach for paper and pen.

And yes, the model on the cover was in my mind when I started writing about Phoebe, except I picture Phoebe with longer hair. I also can picture Phoebe smiling, which I can't really picture the Phantasmagoria girl doing.

By the way, does anyone who wasn't around in 1985 ever use the term "album" to describe a music release anymore?

In closing--please go visit Tommy. He's getting very lonely over at mysocalledundeath.com. and really is interested in what synonyms you might have for "zombie".