{"id":18186,"date":"2013-04-05T11:17:34","date_gmt":"2013-04-05T15:17:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/?p=18186"},"modified":"2013-04-05T11:17:34","modified_gmt":"2013-04-05T15:17:34","slug":"listening-to-28","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/?p=18186","title":{"rendered":"Listening To..."},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>David Bowie - The Next Day. Uneven. There are a bunch of interesting songs and a handful of songs that just fall flat. It's generally the slower ballads that don't interest me here; the rest is fun and funky. But, that's pretty typical of how Bowie's albums sit with me; even classics like <em>Ziggy<\/em> and <em>Hunky Dory<\/em> have a few clunkers. <em>Scary Monsters<\/em>, I can barely listen to. So far I'm liking this better than that. Some of sounds and little touches in these new songs recall older hits: guitar bits in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=5IRuyiT2zmE\"><em>Dirty Boys<\/em><\/a> that remind me of <em>Fame<\/em> - but only a little. So, it sounds like a Bowie album.<br \/>\nPretty good. <\/p>\n<li>Bob Dylan - Tempest. This is the first time I've ever bought a <i>new<\/i> Dylan record. Wow. His voice is rough and gravelly. Musically... there are a few things I won't mind hearing, when he does his show here. But there are some things that really grate on me. The title track, for example, is a fourteen minute recitation of the Titanic story, over unchanging music - I swear the boat sinks a dozen times in those 40+ verses. The track before it is an eight minute recitation of a triple murder\/suicide murder. The track after, a long ode to John Lennon. He steals, alludes, quotes, reworks and retells lyrics from ... everyone, which is interesting. But, on the whole, his lyrics today don't have anywhere near the zing of his lyrics from the 60s and 70s. That he's no longer the same verbal wiz is forgivable, but what wears me down is that he hasn't let up on quantity, even as quality has declined. Classics like \"Tangled Up In Blue\" and \"Ballad Of A Thin Man\" are long, but the words sparkle. Here, not so much. They just go on and on. I like most of the songs towards the front of the record (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=mns9VeRguys\">ex<\/a>), but it drags at the end where the long songs bunch up.<br \/>\nNot my favorite.<\/p>\n<li>Bob Dylan - World Gone Wrong. This one sits a lot better with me. They're all folk standards, recorded simply: just Dylan, his surprisingly deft guitar guitar playing, and some harmonica. Some of them feel a little long, but they don't even approach the grinding tedium (sorry!) of \"Tempest\". I hope <i>this<\/i> Dylan shows up for the show.<br \/>\nBetter.<\/p>\n<li>Iron Maiden - Number Of The Beast \/ Piece Of Mind. Bought these during a couple bottles of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.brasserie-dupont.com\/dupont\/Default.aspx?Page=moinetteblonde\">Moinette blonde<\/a>. The music is better than I remember, the lyrics worse. I didn't realize how progressive these guys were, at the time. And, frankly, I was more of a Judas Priest fan when I was 14; I liked Priest's harder, less-fussy approach. But, nearly thirty years later, I can appreciate how much of a monster Maiden was - how technically adept and how thunderous their music is. I even got over my \"Paul Dianno was better than Bruce Dickinson\" delusion: Dickinson is just an <em>amazing<\/em> vocalist.<br \/>\nA nice stroll down Hazy Memory Lane.\n<\/ul>\n<p>Y'all got anything new?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>David Bowie - The Next Day. Uneven. There are a bunch of interesting songs and a handful of songs that just fall flat. It's generally the slower ballads that don't interest me here; the rest is fun and funky. But, that's pretty typical of how Bowie's albums sit with me; even classics like Ziggy and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-listening-to"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18186\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}