Block Albums

Have you ever seen Limp Bizkit on a cruise ship, sailing away from Miami into ungoverned waters, watching as your cell signal fades away? I have. This is not a brag. Listen . I saw Limp Bizkit multiple times on a cruise ship in 2015 and twice on the Family Values tour, once in 1998 and once in 1999. They headlined the second edition of Family Values. That was the first concert I saw a girl/woman flash a band. It was very sad. That has stuck with me and will most likely stay with me until I have no more Limp Bizkit memories.  Lesson: Rich musicians are not necessarily successful musicians. Conversely, unpopular musicians are sometimes unpopular for good reason. Somewhat related, there are great bands on bad bills. Living Colour was on that same ship with Limp Bizkit. They're still great and Vernon Reid is a very nice person to interview.  View this post on Instagram A post shared by Brandon Wetherbee (@ymte) Block Albums is by Brandon Wetherbee. He hosts  Y

Such a problematic band that became even more problematic when one (both?) of the guitarist became born again. When nu-metal was at its peak, I was convinced it was the future of rock and roll and maybe even rap. I was very, very wrong. I saw Korn multiple times at their commercial peak. It was fine.  Lesson: Don't force it. It's fine to like one or two songs from an artist without embracing them wholeheartedly. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Brandon Wetherbee (@ymte) Block Albums is by Brandon Wetherbee. He hosts  You, Me, Them, Everybody . Please consider his  Patreon . Thanks for reading. 

Would I have ever enjoyed this band if I didn't go to college? I hope that doesn't come off as elitist, i just heard a lot of stuff multiple times that would have otherwise faded into the background. Without living in a dorm, without working in a record store, I don't know if the British band would have been more than an act I recognized on television and film soundtracks.  Lesson: If you hear something pleasant, it's always OK to ask, "What is this?" View this post on Instagram A post shared by Brandon Wetherbee (@ymte) Block Albums is by Brandon Wetherbee. He hosts  You, Me, Them, Everybody . Please consider his  Patreon . Thanks for reading. 

The album I may have played the most in my 30s, "Here Come the Warm Jets" may be my ideal record, not my favorite, but the record I hear and feel like I most want to understand. It makes me want to pick up a guitar and noodle, record something, hit piano keys, record loops, go back to the guitar, hum something, keep recording and deleting until there's something, anything palatable. It's inspiring. Truly. Eno is an inspiring figure. His output as a solo pop artist, Roxy Music member, ambient music maker and record producer is massive and outstanding. The way he thinks about art is also outstanding. I do not believe in keeping your heroes at arm's length. I want to know as much as possible about them and the work and if I get a bitter taste and forever turned off, that's fine, there's more than enough great art I can never digest due to being alive in the 21st century. Yet I don't know a ton about "Here Come the Warm Jets." Other than a not ve

I'm more into Metallica in my late 30s than I was at 13. What does that mean? Am I regressing? Was I just too judgemental as a teenager? Is it a mixture of both? My earliest memories of the most important thrash metal band involve attending the town fair as an 7-year-old. Hearing the music blasted by ride operators, getting creeped out by the Metallica t-shirts worn by the teenagers and cutting my hands on the glass from the 'plaques' I won by throwing darts through balloons did not leave a positive imprint on my musical memories (Did every town or country or state fair have those 'plaques'? It was maybe a 5 inch by 5 inch photo with a piece of glass over a photo of athletes or bands or cartoon characters in a cardboard sleeve. I won Michael Jordan and Chicago Cubs logo plaques and didn't realize I was literally playing with glass and cut my fingers without knowing I was cutting my fingers. This relates to the band because the majority of plaque options were ban

I'm going to do my best not to parrot my music taste into my kid.   This is the band that changed my life. This is their most important record. It's not my favorite, but it's damn near perfect. It was played often throughout my teenage years and 20s and still occupies a large portion of my musical brain. I'm going to do my best not to make my kid love it or hate it. But a Nirvana shirt was already purchased for them. And yesterday at the park they played with a kid in a Nirvana shirt. And the first album I made sure they heard, front to back, was In Utero . (That sentence is ripe for an Onion and/or Hard Time headline.) So who am I kidding?  Rather than rehash uninspired, nostalgic dribble, I'll focus on the kids aspect of this music. The Muppets cover "Smells Like Teen Spirit" in the Jason Segel Muppets film. It's really good. It’s on a playlist for the kid. They like it so I played the original version and they didn’t cry or scream so I’m counti

Bill Withers' debut is near perfect. Released before I was born, the songs sound like they've been around forever. They're foundational without trying to anything but what they are. I have no doubt you'll hear these songs as often as I did. I'm not worried about your Withers' consumption or what you'll learn from this record.   You'll hear "Ain't No Sunshine" when you need to hear it. You'll hear "No Diggity" and realize its foundation is "Grandma's Hands." You'll hear "Harlem" and notice that the same controversies and scandals and characters that practice illicit deeds have always been around. Those moments may be memorable and maybe even foundational, but they won't tell the story of Withers. The cover of "Just As I Am" features the blue collar worker outside his job at Weber Aircraft in Burbank, California, holding his lunch box. He was 32 when the record was released.

I wrote a few hundred words on how this is an effective album to illustrate to a kid that the cocaine trade is a bad career choice, but I don't see a lot of shirts on the playground featuring Tony Montana. I do see a lot of kids wearing Marvel superhero costumes and shirts. Today we saw a Tony Stark. Would we have seen a 5-year-old Iron Man without Wu-Tang Clan member solo lps?   "Fishscale" predates the first "Iron Man" movie, the first entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, by two years. Ghostface Killah's debut, "Ironman," predates it by 12. For comic book fans, Iron Man was not even in the top 5 most important comic book characters in that decade. Between 1996 and 2006, I think it's safe to say Spawn ranked higher than the foundation of the biggest movie franchise (in a completely unscientific, top-of-my-head ranking of superhero cultural relevance from 96-06: 1. Batman 2. Spider-Man 3. X-Men/Wolverine 4. Fantastic Four 5. Superman). I'

I am not a Fountains of Wayne fan. I enjoy some of their music but they've never been in my rotation. I think they're a valuable band to the power pop canon but for one reason or another, they didn't do much for me. I like "Utopia Parkway" and their self-titled release, but if I wanted to hear this type of sound, I'd put on Fig Dish or Caviar. Maybe my regionalism is showing. I should make it clear, I think they're a quality rock and roll band.    Anyways, the passing of Adam Schlesinger from COVID-19 was jarring. He was 52. 52-year-olds shouldn't die from something like this. His death was one of the first to make the music loving public realize the severity of Coronavirus. Lesson: Do whatever you want, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else, as soon as you can. And "Denise" is a very good song. So listen to it.  View this post on Instagram A post shared by Brandon Wetherbee (@ymte) on Apr 2, 2020 at