Deep Purple - Deep Purple in Rock (1970)

Warner Bros. Records ■ WS 1877

Released June, 1970

Produced by Deep Purple

Engineered by Andy Knight, Martin Birch, Philip McDonald

Side One:	Side Two:
Speed King Bloodsucker Child in Time	Flight of the Rat Into the Fire Living Wreck Hard Lovin' Man

Ah, Deep Purple "Mk. II".

Why, out of all the bands that have gone through such monumental lineup changes (Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac, etc) they are the only ones that seem to have become firmly labeled with "version" numbers is beyond me. Perhaps it's because the lineup change has such a drastic overall effect on songwriters--we can say "Barrett-era Floyd"¹ and "Peter Green" and "Bob Welch" and so on, to notate the controlling voice's change. I don't know--anything would be just a guess, and it's likely just an indicator of the varying mentalities of fans that Deep Purple's chose that approach.

Still, "Mark II" has its place highest in the echelons of music, particularly for being so thoroughly entrenched in hard rock when it was rapidly morphing into heavy metal (though most of the albums at the time given that have largely sloughed off that title as it has gained higher and higher minimums of power/volume/aggression/speed/etc over the years). Indeed, if the average person can assign anything to the name "Deep Purple", it is probably "Smoke on the Water", their monstrous hit from two albums (and years) farther on, Machine Head. Now, of course, "Highway Star" has gained a measure of fame from its inclusion in Rock Band, so there might be that further connection, but it, too, comes from '72's Machine Head anyway.

Davenport Cabinet - Our Machine (2013)

Evil Ink Records ■ 

Released January 15, 2013

Produced by Travis Stever and Mike Major

Mixed and Mastered by Mike Major

Side One:	Side Two:
Night Climb (Intro) Deterioration Road Simple Worlds Sister Servant These Bodies Our Machine	Black Dirt Burden Drown It All New Savior Dancing on Remains At Sea Father

NOTE: There are two obvious points here I could gloss over, or choose to address, and I've decided on the latter. First: It has been quite a while. I'm working two jobs now, so in the interest of not just rushing through listening, writing, or both, I've been simply letting things slide, and instead working out a schedule that works for the jobs and for my own sanity. I apologize all the same--I'm obviously not even close to succeeding at my original goal of "a record a day," which has effectively become impossible without becoming Robert Christgau in writing style. And Christgau is often too acerbic for my tastes anyway.

Second: This is also why I've chosen to omit the "day numbering" in the title of the entry. I should hope it was not exactly something people looked forward to (at least, as compared to actual content), so I also hope it will not be missed too severely.

I'll admit that part of the reason I ended up delaying at first was that I'd originally hoped to work this album in to its "logical" place, though that has long since passed. I knew it was coming, but could not nail it down in all senses, and I knew quickly it could not arrive in an alphabetically correct place (indeed, we've already seen three records that come after it in the alphabet). It's such a good record though, and I wanted to give it a spot here. Of course, I say that and did not, at the time, have it on vinyl--heck, it wasn't available on vinyl--as it was only announced then to be coming.

Day Fifty-Four: Decapitated - Winds of Creation

Earache/Wicked World ■ WICK011LP

Released April 11, 2000

Produced by Piotr Wiwczarek (aka "Peter (VADER)")

Side One:	Side Two:
Winds of Creation Blessed The First Damned Way to Salvation	The Eye of Horus Human's Dust Nine Steps Danse Macabre Mandatory Suicide

In discussing metal, I typically refer clearly--at some point, anyway--to my first ever "real" metal band, which was Morbid Angel.¹ Indeed, it was their second album, Blessed Are the Sick that really "clicked" with me finally, once I was able to get used to David Vincent's vocals (and thus, forever after, the "cookie monster" growling that typifies death metal at large). I actually ordered the album direct from their label, Earache, at the time, back when I was still in high school. Coupled with it were a handful of stickers for other bands, like December Wolves and, well, Decapitated. Because I still knew so little about metal, I took those two names as inspiration for further exploration--and, hey, I was an eMusic Unlimited member at the time (when there still was such a thing), which meant their partnership with Earache opened the door for me to try just about anything I felt like that they recommended.

Day Fifty-Three: Death Cab for Cutie - Narrow Stairs

Barsuk/Atlantic Records ■ BARK 75

Released May 12, 2008

Produced by Chris Walla

Recorded by Chris Walla and Will Markwell

Mixed by Chris Walla ("Long Division" by Alex Newport

Mastered by Roger Seibel

Side One:	Side Two:
Bixby Canyon Bridge I Will Possess Your Heart No Sunlight Cath... Talking Bird	You Can Do Better Than Me Grapevine Fires Your New Twin Sized Bed Long Division Pity and Fear The Ice Is Getting Thinner

It has been a long time since I could just drop the titles of tracks in order like this, but that's always an indicator of how much I like an album--that is, when I was typing up the above information, I only glanced at the inner sleeve to be sure of the actual phrasings (eg, the tense of "The Ice Is Getting Thinner", which I thought was past tense, as it is at the end of the song), but otherwise just typed them out. Now, on occasion, this really just reflects a lack of memory as to where a side ends, and sometimes just means I can't put them back in order in my head. But when I can, it means I've listened to an album straight through--a lot.

Day Fifty-Two: Dead Man's Bones - Dead Man's Bones

ANTI-/Werewolf Heart Records ■ ANTI 87047-1

Released October 6, 2009

Produced by Tim Anderson¹

Side One:	Side Two:
Intro Dead Hearts In the Room Where You Sleep	Buried in Water My Body's a Zombie for You Pa Pa Power

Side Three:	Side Four:
Young & Tragic Paper Ships Lose Your Soul	Werewolf Heart Dead Man's Bones Flowers Grow Out of My Grave

It's always a puzzle, how to present this band.

It's difficult to throw out a description of the band itself and get people to stop long enough to listen--two amateur non-musicians write strange, semi-macabre songs that they sing and play with a children's choir. A novelty, maybe, or a curiosity--but more likely, it sounds like something you wouldn't want to listen to.

And there's that other thing.

It's kind of like trying to present Brother Ali and skip over the fact that he's a white albino Muslim rapper. It's a lame pigeonhole, but it gets people's attention, and his skills generally hold him up past those facts. That's the sort of thing that should happen here, as well, but because we aren't talking about simple, concrete facts that we may even deal with ourselves, it becomes different. But, of course, I can't properly discuss an album the way I do and constantly write [redacted] for one of the two "founding" members.

Day Fifty-Two - Needle Scratch: The Two Dollar Pistols with Tift Merritt

Yep Roc Records ■ YEP-2015

Released October 26, 1999

(Vinyl released December 11, 2012)

Produced by Byron Mckay and John Howie, Jr.

Engineered by Byron McKay

Mastered by Tim Harper

Side One:	Side Two:
If Only You Were Mine Just Someone I Used to Know We Had It All Suppose Tonight Could Be Our Last	Counting the Hours (I'm So) Afraid of Losing You Again One Paper Kid

This will mark the second time I've fiddled with the alphabet in writing here, but I think my reasons have been solid in their non-arbitrary nature at both times--last time, I was covering an album on its release, and this time, well, I'd just been hoping to see a Two Dollar Pistols vinyl release to put up here anyway, and within days of stating this "aloud" this appeared before me for order, which I proceeded to place immediately (of course!). In and of itself, that would be a bit of a cheat as there are other albums I've deliberately looked up to keep my end-of-letter lists short, but this one is a release by someone who has been open and supportive of both of my attempts at writing, including this very blog. That, too, wouldn't necessarily dictate shifting the order of writing, but the fact that it's his birthday? That, I can make an exception for.

Day Fifty-One: Darkest Hour - The Eternal Return

Victory Records ■ VR495-1

Released June 23, 2009

Produced and Mixed by Brian McTernan

Side One:	Side Two:
Devolution of the Flesh Death Worship The Tides No God Bitter	Blessed Infection Transcendence A Distorted Utopia Black Sun Into the Grey

NOTE:

After a forced hiatus (stemming from borrowed cars and loaner couches), I am in a position again to write here and take up where I left off. It was fortuitous in many ways that this came when it did, as it gives me a chance to try to put into effect some ideas I had for how to go about this process.

Darkest Hour is one of those bands I found myself listening to more by chance than almost anything else. In the midst of my earliest experiences with metal--wherein I was leaping from the then-popular "nu-metal" acts straight into extreme metal of the "death" variety--I was left somewhat rudderless, but still quite fully powered. I turned this way and that, able to listen purely for enjoyment's sake and nothing else, as I gathered up the sounds that I liked without regard for community reputations, obeisance to or violations of trends or traditions, and without even internal expectations. It was a nice time in this respect--one soured quickly by my first community of musically-oriented folk in the heavier direction. The scattered voices I heard prior were also similarly isolated, and shared that lack of socially inflicted focus.