Posts Tagged ‘Living Colour’
Albums You Didn’t Buy – Living Colour’s Stain
Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010
Hate is a hard thing to pull off in a band. On the one hand you have successful hate. It’s no secret that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards would happily dance on each other’s graves Mick Jagger danced on Keith Richards’ grave in 1972 and Keith has been waiting to return the favor (also for the zombie apocalypse when his people will rise up and throw off the shackles of oppression). But that’s a difficult thing to sustain. I mean, David Lee Roth and Eddie Van Halen hate each other similarly, which ended up in Van Hagar (and if you like Sammy Hagar better than David Lee Roth please, take your dominant hand, make a fist and punch yourself in the wedding vegetables as hard as you can until you pee blood for a week. We don’t need any more of your kind around here). Similarly, anyone who saw “Some Kind of Monster” saw that everyone in Metallica hated everyone else in Metallica (hell, even Kirk – who pretended not to hate everyone because, you know, all he does is play guitar solos and there are literally millions of people who could do it better). The result of that, Exile on Main Street? No, sub-Limp Bizkit nu metal…with no guitar solos.
Also, Yoko. No discussion of hate is complete without Yoko.
So, yeah, if you’re in a band and you hate each other there’s a better chance than not that the result will be shitty.
By their third album Living Colour was deep in hate with each other. Original bassist Muzz Skillings had quit and been replaced by Doug Wimbish, who brought an almost obsessive love of the Digitech Whammy Pedal. In an interview shortly after the album was released, guitarist Vernon Reid said that during its recording he and vocalist Corey Glover were arguing to the point of disagreeing just to disagree. It’s really not surprising that the band broke up pretty much immediately following the album’s release, but if you’re going to go out (albeit temporarily) this is a good note to go out on…
Dammit if this isn’t a good slab of hard rockin’ music.
Living Colour was always a band who tried to shoe horn jazz fusion into hard rock and were often overshadowed by their race (Black people play rock music!!!!!), their image (OMG!!!! I love Corey “About the suit, no I don’t surf, I just look good in it” Glover’s hair!!!!!!) and everything other than the fact that they wrote really catchy, sometimes technically complex songs. On Stain, much of their success had already faded and it’s like they just said “fuck it.”
Also, Corey cut his hair
Both heavier and more experimental than either Vivid or Time’s Up. Stain sees the incorporation of electronic elements and “studio as instrument” production taken to a new level (this album, definitely, best experienced with headphones). If all you ever heard was the lead single, “Leave Me Alone” you’re doing yourself a disservice. The music here runs a pretty wide gamut from the pit ready “Auslander” and “This Little Pig” to the industrial funk of “Wall.” “Nothingness” – keeping in the great tradition of ballads about extreme depression – and “Postman” a track about a homicidal mail delivery guy. There really isn’t a bad track here (even the spoken word/synth track “Hemp” succeeds).
And you didn’t buy it, because you’re lame. Luckily for you it’s now available on Amazon MP3. You should go there and get it now. After you buy it, check out their new one The Chair in the Doorway, it’s also awesome.