Christmas 2007 CD - "Epic Guitar Rockers"

8th Anniversary Mixed Tape

This year's Christmas CD has morphed into the Anniversary Mixed Tape/CD/gay file download (c'mon, let's face it - while downloading files is certainly easy, it's not even a fraction as cool as buying the CD/album/tape or even 8-track). Hopefully this whole downloadable Christmas CD/Sendspace shit will work OK...(I think these are m4a files or some shit - the iTunes ones that can only be played on iTunes because Steve Jobs wants to control you and your thoughts. So if you want to put these songs on your Zune player, I don't know what to say to you (except this: Do you really have a Zune player? I thought those things were only theoretical...))

If there's been one constant for me over the past 25 years of so, it's that I just wanna rock man. Whether it was me when I was 14 rocking out in my bedroom to horrible-sounding (yet gloriously rocking) Zeppelin bootlegs or me today rocking out listening to Stickpony while priming woodwork in my garage, the feeling has not changed one lick. The moments I like the most are when a band seems to be on the edge - you know, right on the edge of total out-of-control rockage - those raucous, energy-level-pinned-at-eleven-moments. That's what it's all about for me. Such moments are common at live shows (if you're going to the right shows, that is), but are much harder to find on studio recordings. So I gathered some of my recent favorite studio tracks and slapped them together to make up this year's Christmas CD (actually this mix originally contained 2 additional songs - Texas Tabloid by Stickpony and Four Leaf Clover by the Old 97s, but I ended up leaving them off since they didn't seem to fit as well with these more guitar-centric tracks). Download and enjoy (if, after listening, you have any suggestions of tracks in the same vain for me to check out, let me know. I've got plenty of air-guitar to go around...)

In the Aisles Christmas CD 2007 - "Epic Guitar Rockers"

track 1: Amphetamine by Steve Wynn and the Miracle 3

http://www.sendspace.com/file/4mbagp


I stumbled onto this song while casually listening to a coworker's Pandora station and it kicks ass. I'm sorry, I mean it kicks ass! This song hits the ground running with a prominent driving bassline and very cool feedbacky guitar shit for the first minute or so. Then it's lyrics > more guitar > cool dual-guitar thing > guitar solo > vocals > the "I'm gonna live, until the day I die" refrain (complete with the great "Na na na na na na na yeah!" backing vocals.) The super slow fade-out serves this song well, as it gives you the sense that the band may in fact continue to kick ass indefinitely. Everything about this song rocks.

track 2: Haze of Drink by Slobberbone

http://www.sendspace.com/file/55zg0x

If aliens landed in my yard and - after the mandatory anal probing - they asked, "What's this 'rocking the fuck out' we've heard so much about?", I'd play them this song by Slobberbone (and actually, probably the entire "Barrelchested" album on which this song appears). This song starts out with a guitar sound that I can only describe as the reving sound this awesome electronic hand-held drag racing game* I had as a kid made as your rpms increased as your "dragster" revved through a gear. Great stuff. The song's high energy, hard-drinking based lyrics and super-cool guitar tone combine perfectly to make this a "must-crank" song around here. And the solo at the end fits the song perfectly.







*this is my favorite handheld game of all time (yes, it's even better than that football game where the players are hyphens). It currently resides at the tippy-top of my "List of Stuff I'm Looking to Get at a Yard Sale for Less Than $4.50"



track 3: Confidence Man by Oakley Hall

http://www.sendspace.com/file/laywbm


The Neil Young style guitar abrasion sets the tone for this song right out of the box. I love the 4 perfectly placed snare drum crashes at 1:12 that brings the band into the body of the song. I love the chanting style of the lyrics and how they play off of and into the abrasive guitar leads. (Note: this song is even more impressive when you hear how good their softer, mellower songs are. Oakley Hall is a great band.)

track 4: Noon as Dark as Midnight by Lucero

http://www.sendspace.com/file/v39yub

The slow, dour lyrical portion of this song is a great lead-in to the hard rocking that dominates the last 3 and half minutes of this song. Check out the tempo change at the 3:00 mark - for all you lame jambands out there who think 18 minutes of aimless guitar playing is "jamming", you're wrong. This tempo change is the backbone of what real jamming is (at least in my opinion - my opinion is the only one that matters, right?). After some of that shit, they then slow it down and you think they're going back into another lyrical section, but instead there's the cool backscratching guitar part. Then that turns from what you'd traditionally expect to come next (a slower lyrical section) and instead they start jamming even harder. This is the kinda stuff Phish based a career on - and let's face it, they were the hands-down masters of it. I still can't believe more bands across all genres don't adopt this lyrics > guitar solo> [tempo change] harder guitar solo > lyrics approach to rocking out. I'd like to see at least 1 such track on pretty much every rock record (but preferably 2. Really, I'd like there to be 3 on each record. Now I'm just getting greedy - 3 is unrealistic. 2 will suffice...).

[bonus track] track 5: Coma by Guns N' Roses

http://www.sendspace.com/file/mejsx4

I added this as a "bonus track" because the style of this song doen't really fit with the other songs. But I can't have a mix of epic guitar rockers and not include Coma. If you can look past the cheesy elements of this track (the heartbeat sounds, the talking, deep voiced Axl with the "Zap the son of a bitch again" shit), it really gets going at the 6:05 mark. The final 2 minutes of the song contains some of Slash's best (and most overlooked, in my opinion) guitar work and it gels excellently with the fluid, yet syllable-intensive, vocals. WARNING: Including this as the last track was an absolute must, so you can stop the track before the nails-on-a-blackboard inapropriate, ill-conceived and just plain stupid drum smash that ends the song. It's this little drum fill thing that makes me hate Matt Sorum to this day (even though Bill Carr got me his autograph on a cocktail napking like 11 years ago. Thanks Bill)

Note: These are all copyrighted studio tracks. I know posting these on sendspace is kinda fucked up - and I feel badly about it. Really, I do. However, like everyone who does something that's inherently wrong, I have finagled a way to justify it to myself. If any band/lawyer/manager/bassist's mom involved wants these tracks removed, just let me know (but let's face, no one's gonna download these fuckin' songs. No one ever listens to me!!!! [weep]).