Before I forget, I want to say a public thanks to Gabe, who sold me his old CD burner so I could participate in this CD swap. Thanks, Gabe. You = cool.
I should preface this by saying that while a number of these songs contain lyrics of a political nature, I don't necessarily agree 100% with everything they say. Although if I were terribly offended by them, I probably wouldn't be listening to the music.
1. Shelter - Message of the Bhagavat (lyrics)
Shelter's style has been referred to as "Krishnacore". I believe they are indeed Hare Krishnas, although I've heard a rumor that they broke up when the frontman left the religion. The Bhagavat to which this song refers is the Bhagavad-Gita, a sacred text from India. A friend of mine who's studied eastern religion tells me that it's basically the Hare Krishna bible and it's all about Lord Krishna teaching some dude named Arjuna about devotional yoga, how you have to do what it's your karma to do. You can learn more about it here, here, or here. I assume that the chanting at the beginning and end of the song are excerpts from the Bhagavad. Other songs on Mantra decry things like eating meat and watching television, and talk about being in relationships for the wrong reasons or losing a friend to suicide. Some of their lyrics are prescriptive, but without being holier-than-thou; they recognize that humans are all error-prone.
2. Vision of Disorder - Suffer (lyrics)
Of all the music in my collection, VOD is probably the most likely to make old folks say "that's just noise". That's a big part of why I like it.
3. Abstract Reality - Dogma 2.1
Abstract Reality is an internet-based band; you can get their music at www.abstractreality.com. They have a really great female vocalist (who lives in Edinburgh and sends them all her tracks over the internet, as I recall), but unfortunately she's not featured on this track. Get a version of "Small Man" if you want to hear an A-Reality track with her in it. AR tend to release more than one version of their songs, and give them numbers as if they were software. Dogma v2.1 is the song that got me interested in the band, and IMHO it's not only the best version of Dogma, but their best song period.
4. The Offspring - Tehran (lyrics)
Before the Offspring were "pop-punk", they were regular punk. If you disagree that this is what punk was like in 1989, you can bite me, because I've made my distaste for genre wars abundantly clear elsewhere. This is an anti-war song from their self-titled debut album which I adapted for CC143.
5. H2O - Forest King (lyrics)
This one's about how hunting is bad and how humans think their superiority gives them the right to be assholes. The bonus track on this album, Go, is a pretty cool punk cover of "Like a Prayer".
6. Orange 9mm - Alien (lyrics)
O9mm are New York hardcore, or so I'm told. They have a black lead singer and a rap/hip-hop influence which is pretty pronounced on this album, Pretend I'm Human.
7. (hed)pe - IFO (lyrics)
hed(pe) call their style "G-Punk", which is just a fancy way of saying that they're also punk/rap fusion. I picked this song because it's about the Roswell cover-up and how aliens will visit earth again and the government won't be able to hide it forever, and I think it's kind of a funny thing to hear them singing about. Most of their songs aren't about conspiracy theories. In fact one of their predominant themes seems to be misogyny, but at least they sort of explain why sometimes.
8. 3rd Bass - Green Eggs & Swine (lyrics)
3rd Bass, a rap act of mixed race, were briefly famous back in 1991 when "Pop Goes the Weasel" (also on Derelicts of Dialect) got played on the radio and MTV (the video featured a weasel running around, and the band members beating a Vanilla Ice lookalike with baseball bats, as I recall). This album, like this song, is alternately funny and intelligent. The group made another album or two before disbanding.
9. Huffamoose - Like a Weed (lyrics)
Huffamoose was a local Philadelphia band that was moderately famous a few years ago. They got played on local radio stations, signed to a major label, and played at Woodstock '94. They released another album and then disbanded, for what reasons I don't know. If you want one of their albums, finding a used copy on the 'net shouldn't be too difficult. According to the band, "huffamoose" is a Canadian slang term for fellatio; maybe Brad can help confirm or deny that. At the height of the band's popularity, the Tower Records store in Philly featured an enormous wall display with part of the CD's cover art and, at the bottom, the words "Ask for one in Canada".
10. Knapsack - Change Is All the Rage (lyrics)
I don't have a whole lot to say about Knapsack. They're good and I had a hard time deciding which of their songs to put on my disc. They've been called emo, and I think it's a fair characterization, but I understand they disagree with it. See above about genre wars.
11. Modest Mouse - Dark Center of the Universe (lyrics)
Read http://www.modestmousemusic.com/bio.html for a story about how The Moon & Antarctica got written.
12. Foo Fighters - Down in the Park (lyrics)
I should have mentioned in my liner notes that this is not actually an original Foo Fighters song, but a cover of a Gary Numan song. The fact that it mentions a "rape machine" is completely coincidental to my decision to include it on my compilation. This track appears on Songs in the Key of X, a soundtrack album for the X-Files TV show (as opposed to the movie, which soundtrack the Foo Fighters also appear on... but I don't have that one). The CD has some good tracks and some bad tracks, but the good ones are good enough to make it worthwhile. As for Foo Fighters albums, I like the first two, but haven't bought any since then.
13. Clutch - Green Buckets (lyrics)
If you gain only one thing from listening to my compilation, I hope that that thing is an appreciation for Clutch. They're an incredible band, funny and intelligent at the same time, and their music is amazing. "Green Buckets" was actually supposed to be a love song originally, and in some ways it still is, although it became more of a social comment on the suburbs, which resonates with me because I grew up in the suburbs and have written about what's wrong with them on more than one occasion. Clutch's career has been a gradual migration from hardcore to straight rock, so if you want to get an album, tell me what you like about them and I'll recommend one. You may have trouble tracking down their stuff if you don't live in the Maryland/West Virginia area, but I've ordered from their website and it's been pretty reliable.
14. Reiver - Whisper
If you like this song, too bad. I only have one other song by this band and it's not as good. The songs are from CDs that my college produced in 1996 and '97 to compile & showcase student music. I couldn't find anything about a band called Reiver on the web so I assume they're no longer together. I think this song is good, if not great; it appears on this disc mostly because of my penchant for rescuing things from obscurity. Here's the blurb about them from the disc's liner notes:
It also gives a phone number to call; whether it's still good is anyone's guess.
15. Stem - Daily Bread
Two of the three members of Stem went to my high school. They used to be called Wake until they discovered that some other band no one had ever heard of had that name trademarked or something. As far as I can tell the band is not still performing together. Flashback was a full-length album and, I believe, the only one they ever released in CD format.
16. Cowboy Bebop: No Disc (Original Soundtrack 2) - LIVE in Baghdad
Like the anime, the Cowboy Bebop soundtracks are an amalgamation of several different genres. "LIVE in Baghdad" is their stab at heavy metal; it's played throughout the episode "Heavy Metal Queen". I am convinced that this song's lyrics are in English, but they're not provided in the liner notes and I can't find any guesses about them anywhere online.
17. Pizzicato Five - Sophisticated Catchy
P5 are J-pop. They're fun to listen to. At least part of the reason I like them is because no one who knows me would expect me to. This song isn't exactly complex.
18. Kae - Acoustic Battle Royale
This is a seven-minute medley of the fight music for (if I'm not mistaken) normal battles from Final Fantasy games 4 through 9, performed by a piano and an acoustic guitar. It was on a promo disc I got from OneUp Studios at MAGFest 2002. The MP3 may have been available online at one point, but I couldn't track it down. The playing is a little rough in some places, but when you're as big an FF fan as I am, it doesn't matter.
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The what mentioned above is total fiction. Please don't take it seriously!
