Saturday, December 1, 2012

Don't Confuse Motion With Progress



After a decade and a half of thinking The New Bomb Turks "Scared Straight" CD wasn't worth the 2 cents' worth of plastic it was pressed on, I've started to change my mind a bit -- one of the unfortunate by-products of me now having a CD player in my upgradeable hoopty as well as plenty of time to listen to extra bullshit like this stuff. I've generally thought that the first couple of Turks LPs were two of the finest records ever made by man, while anything else they put out afterwards was pretty much nothing but crap meant for nose-pickers who read Gearhead and really liked the Hellacopters, but this one (their first for Epitaff) is actually NOT THAT BAD. Although, I still think it's funny that they added horns to some of the songs (as well as some boogie-woogie piano), which is something that apparently every band is told to do to-- even decent songwriters like The Replacements and Tommy Keene-- in order to make their stuff sound more commercially accessible. You'd think that shit like hair metal and '70s acid rock would've killed off horn sections as a paying gig forever, but no, instead of falling out of favor, that supposedly low-profile trombone player is actually smirking to himself on the sidelines, cashing hefty checks from Brett Gurewitz while waiting for Aerosmith to bring him in for their next hit single.




New Bomb Turks -

"Hammerless Nail"

"Professional Againster"

"Cultural Elite Sign-Up Sheet"

"Jukebox Lean"

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Knew you'd come around eventually - ha! Give Nightmare Scenario another try someday because I put that up there with the first two records

Tom from Columbus said...

Didn't mean to be anon --- Tom from Columbus, OH (of course!)