The Crazy Album

What Happens When Rock Stars Lose Their Minds
By John Moe, Special to MSN Music
Rock music is all about iconic albums: the Catchy Debut, the Uneven Sophomore Effort, the Live Album, the Greatest Hits and the Embarrassing Late-Career-Let's-Try-It-One-More-Time Release. But none of these is quite as intriguing as the Crazy Album. This one usually occurs after a group has had some success, shaken off some measure of big-label control and wants to take on a really big project that will stretch them as artists. The Crazy Album is also a litmus test. It can reveal the limitations of the artist's talent and the limitlessness of the artist's ego. Or, it can be amazingly awesome-tacular and catapult the artist to a new level of recognition and success. The possibility of the latter is all the incentive many acts need to attempt the Crazy Album.

Sure, some artists release exclusively Crazy Albums (Flaming Lips, Beck) and some never will (it's hard, though ultimately worthwhile, to envision a Backstreet Boys concept project), but there are a surprising number of acts that try it just once.

Let's take a look at some of the big hits and huge misses of Crazy Album efforts.

Bob Dylan: "Slow Train Coming" (1979)
Really, you could make a case for almost any Bob Dylan album being the Crazy Album, but this 1979 collection of Christian tunes stands out. Recorded after Dylan says he was visited by Jesus in a Tucson, Ariz., hotel room (!), it was filled with enough theology and preaching to delight believers while making Dylan fans wonder what the hell happened to Bob. Still, being an album by arguably the greatest singer-songwriter of all time and a guy who always fared pretty well at surprising people, it was still pretty damn -- excuse me -- darn good. At the time, Dylan swore he'd never play secular music again, but in a couple years, the Crazy subsided and secular Bob was back.
Craziness Factor: 6

Kiss: "Music From 'The Elder'" (1981)
The sound stemming from the combination of glam/monster megaband Kiss with the form of prog rock is roughly akin to the Alan Parsons Project being systematically fed into a wood chipper. The band had already produced two live albums and four simultaneously released solo albums by 1981. And, while "Gene Simmons as balladeer" is pretty Crazy, "Music From 'The Elder'" featured a young boy being recruited by a secret society of elderly crime fighters, thus earning it Crazy Album status. The reaction was so stinging that within two years the band would be removing their makeup, singing "Lick It Up" and making society even worse.
Craziness Factor: 8

Styx: "Kilroy Was Here" (1983)
Here we see an example of the Desperation Crazy Album, often trotted out when a band's popularity has begun to wane and it feels a need to reinvent itself and possibly pursue an idea that has been kicked around for a number of years. When the Beatles did it, it became "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." But Styx is not the Beatles, and so you get this. Most famous for the melodramatic single "Mr. Roboto," it's a concept album of a futuristic world where an oppressive, ultra-conservative regime wants to stamp out heavy metal. Or something. You'd think that eliminating metal would delight Styx, but whatever. While "Mr. Roboto" is roundly and justly mocked, several other songs have never received the mocking they deserve.
Craziness Factor: 4

Radiohead: "OK Computer" (1997)
To many casual fans, Radiohead was best known for putting out the morose-yet-catchy song "Creep." But that was before the triumphant and highly Crazy "OK Computer." The band abandoned the more personal songwriting of their first two albums and fashioned a futuristic sci-fi dystopia. "OK Computer" was a huge critical and commercial success, skillfully combining innovation, intelligence and quality music. Radiohead has released other Crazy Albums since, but none would ever touch the hem of this Crazy garment. "OK Computer" was their turning point.
Craziness Factor: 8

Guns N' Roses: "Chinese Democracy" (Never?)
After 13 years and with more than $13 million in production costs; a lead guitarist who, for a while, wore a KFC bucket on his head; and, more speculation, confusion and mockery than anything ever made by any humans anywhere ever, Axl Rose, along with whatever temps he managed to round up, is once again very close to releasing this album. Supposedly. It was scheduled for this month, then quietly withdrawn. Again. It could not possibly be worth the wait, and it might not be as bad as everyone expects, but, regardless, there is no way in the world it is not the Crazy Album.
Craziness Factor: We'll go out on a limb and say, on a scale of one to 10, this will be a 45.

WATCH OUT FOR THE POP TARTS!

Click on the image to enlarge
Since I have a young daughter, I frequently keep up on street drug news such as what kids are nicknaming drugs and what the new trends in drug use are, for example. In my recent research, I came across an article that explained the newest trends in drug marketing, which are flavored drugs and attractive packaging. Dealers are adding flavors such as strawberry, raspberry and chocolate to drugs such as meth and pot and puting them in attractive, fun-looking packages that are appealing to younger kids. One of the articles I read said that the main reason dealers are doing this is because they need to appeal to an even younger target market because the anti-drug campaigns at the junior high levels are seemingly successful, as drug use among the Junior High age group is down significantly. Also, dealers know that if a child does not use any type of drug before he/she becomes an older teen, he/she will most likely never use street drugs. Therefore, they are using attractive packaging and drug flavoring to appeal to that market in hopes of gaining new customers. What a scary thought! When you see the pictures I have posted, you will know how potentially dangerous this new trend is. The packaging may be funny to us adults (I have to admit I was greatly amused), but I can see how it can be especially attractive to kids, and also deceptive because a lot of the packaging looks like food/drink items that are popular with kids. See what you think...

THINGS KIDS SAY

I'm a single mom who will probably be entering the dating scene someday, so when I read this I just had to post it on my blog because I thought it was absolutely hysterical!

“On one of our first dates, my boyfriend Chris took me to a luau-themed party. When he came to pick me up, my son Adam answered the door, after which Chris presented me with an orchid flower lei. Adam, who was about seven years old then, said, “Wow, Mommy, that was nice of that man to give you such a good lei!’ It took a lot of control to not burst out laughing!”
– Cherie, 35, St. Simon’s Island, SC

AMEN!

Don Cheadle says there is not much quality work in Hollywood right now. “There is a dearth of good work in this town,” the “Reign Over Me” star tells the London Observer. “There is such a corporate mentality in Hollywood. Artists aren’t running the show. Haven’t been since the Seventies; the studios are in a way more resonant of the Fifties, but now there’s even more of that going for the greatest common denominator.” . . .

OZZY SNORTED ANTS...so what's wrong with ashes?

Associated Press--LONDON -- Keith Richards was joking when he claimed to have snorted his father's ashes along with cocaine, a spokesman said Wednesday.
"It was an off-the-cuff remark, a joke, and it is not true. File under April Fool's joke," said Bernard Doherty of LD Communications, which represents the Rolling Stones.
Doherty declined to say any more about why Richards made the statement in an interview with NME, a pop music magazine.
"The strangest thing I've tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father," the 63-year-old guitarist was quoted as saying.
"He was cremated and I couldn't resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow. My dad wouldn't have cared ... It went down pretty well, and I'm still alive."

QUOTEWORTHY

The media … have been universally untrustworthy because they have their
own notions of what I should think and what I should do.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Business Week, March 12, 2007

FORMER STEELER DEPLOYED TO IRAQ

HONOLULU (AP) - A former NFL player who joined the Marines and was motivated by college roommate Pat Tillman, who died in Afghanistan, was heading for the war in Iraq Tuesday night.

Former Pittsburgh Steeler Jeremy Staat, is following in Pat Tillman's footsteps.
Lance Cpl. Jeremy Staat, a former defensive lineman for the Pittsburgh Steelers and St. Louis Rams who had been playing Arena Football, was one of 300 Marines in the 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment being deployed from Kaneohe Bay. The unit is expected to be in Iraq for seven months.

"The way I look at it, we're spreading freedom, and you have to support the troops and you have to support the war," Staat, 29, told KITV in Honolulu on Tuesday as he prepared to leave from Hawaii. "You can't just tell some Marine who just lost his buddy that we supported you but not the war, because in that case you're basically saying that Marine, his buddy, just died for nothing. We're one team."

Tillman, who played defensive back for the Arizona Cardinals, was killed by friendly fire near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in April 2004. The Defense Department is investigating allegations of a coverup, including the Army's failure to tell Tillman's family for several weeks that he had been killed by gunfire from his fellow Army Rangers, not by enemy fire, as they initially were told.

Tillman gave up a $1.2 million NFL contract to join the Army Rangers.

Staat said he felt compelled to join the military after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, but Tillman, who was his roommate at Arizona State, advised him to stay with professional football until he qualified for retirement benefits.

"I felt there is more to life than just a game," Staat said, adding that Tillman's death helped motivate him to enlist.

Staat played for the Steelers from 1998-2000, and played two games with the Rams in 2003. He was playing for the Los Angeles Avengers of the Arena Football League before being put on the league's suspended list.

He graduated from the San Diego Marine Corps Recruit Depot in March 2006.

To enlist, the 6-foot-5 Staat said last year he dropped from 310 to 260 pounds. He said three months of boot camp training gave him a deeper appreciation for team camaraderie.

HONEY, PICK UP SOME MILK & A HOME MORTGAGE...

Taken from The Wall Street Journal
Wal-Mart Stores, underscoring its continuing push into financial services, has quietly renegotiated the terms of leases with a number of banks operating in its stores, giving Wal-Mart itself the explicit right to offer mortgages, home-equity lines of credit and consumer loans.

A portion of one lease, obtained by Dow Jones Newswires, also gives Wal-Mart (WMT, news, msgs) the ability to offer debit cards and investment and insurance products directly or through a third-party vendor.

In the wording of the new lease, Wal-Mart said it could "offer these products and services in the checkout lanes, at the customer-service desk, through automated-delivery channels, kiosks" or at any other place in the store.

The new lease language comes at a time when Wal-Mart has generated controversy over its repeated efforts to enter the banking business, a push that has drawn fierce opposition from the banking industry, some members of Congress and activist groups.

The Bentonville, Ark., retailer has a pending application to establish an industrial-loan company in Utah but has promised publicly that it won't open retail bank branches.

The company minimized the importance of the changes, as spokesman Kevin Gardner said the lease language didn't "signal anything new."

"We've been offering services like check cashing, money transfers, branded credit cards and bill payments for some time," he said. "Our strategy is to continue to grow our existing financial services to continue to save our customers money so they can live better."

Gardner wouldn't say why the leases also protected Wal-Mart's right to eventually offer items it didn't currently sell, such as mortgages, home-equity loans and investment and insurance products. He also didn't say when the company might roll out any of these products. "We have not made any announcements," he said.

JUSTICE FOR THE SPOLIED RICH

Reuters-NEW YORK - British supermodel Naomi Campbell was sentenced to community service as punishment for throwing her mobile phone at her housekeeper. The New York Post reported Tuesday that Campbell had been assigned to mop floors with other community-service workers at a Sanitation Department warehouse in Manhattan starting March 19. A court official confirmed the story but declined further comment.
Now, I would just love to see Paris Hilton get busted for something and be sentenced to wearing Goodwill clothes for a month and have to scub out McDonald's dumpsters or something!

WALKEN FOR PRESIDENT 2008

REDNECK TIME OUT

SMACK MY BITCH UP

Someone my brother works with had WAY too much time on their hands and decided to create this image of my brother, G-Unit...

Yo, beyotch! Grab me a 4o and back that ass up, fo shizzle!!!!

EXACTLY WHY I WANTED COLTS TO WIN SUPER BOWL

TONY DUNGY. He is the main reason why I rooted for the Colts in the Super Bowl. Yes, I wanted to see Peyton Manning finally make it to the Bowl and win, thus officially earning the best QB in the NFL status. And yes, it was a great moment in NFL history for Dungy to be the first black coach to win the NFL Championship. I wanted the Colts to win because Coach Dungy is a Christian man, a man with a great deal of integrity and respectibility. I was most impressed with Coach Dungy's answer when he was asked about the "social significance' of his victory during the post-game show on CBS. He responded, "I'm proud to be representing African-American coaches, to be the first African-American to win this. It means an awful lot to this country. More than anything Lovie Smith and I (are proud) not only (to be) the first two African-Americans (in the Super Bowl) but CHRISTIAN coaches showing that you can win doing it the LORD'S way. And we're more proud of that." I admire him for not being afraid to speak of his strong faith in public and to put his faith in action as he coaches his team. According to Curt Smith, president of the Indiana Family Institute in Indianapolis (IFI), Dungy works with IFI projects defending the family and is "a comitted man of faith" who is "a wonderful role model for those in public life." Smith also said, "America is a culture that loves sports, and to have someone at the pinnacle of the top sport give a clear testimony and Christian witness, I think is just remarkable." And so do I. Congratulations, Coach Dungy!

DEMS TRYING TO SQUELCH FREE SPEECH?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her radical allies in the U.S. House want to impose burdensome regulations on grassroots activists and the lawmakers they hope to influence.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Senate rejected the grassroots provision in its lobbying-reform bill. Senate bill 1 initially included language that would have mandated oppressive reporting standards for grassroots-lobbying groups. That language was removed after hundreds of thousands of people complained to their Senators.
Tom McClusky, vice president for government affairs at the Family Research Council, said the Senate victory doesn't mean the issue is moot. He anticipates Pelosi, a California Democrat, will introduce a similar provision in the House.
"But the Pelosi bill is probably going to be even more onerous," McClusky said. "It's going to have a lot of reporting."
It would make grassroots organizations so busy with reporting every move they make, he said, that it would discourage them from doing anything to inform people about the issues.
"If I ran into a Hill staffer in the supermarket, I would have to report that to the federal government," he noted.
In the meantime, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., has introduced ethics-reform legislation that takes aim at the executive branch.
Waxman claims his bill "promotes openness and accountability in government by banning secret meetings between lobbyists representing special interests and senior government officials." But experts say any citizen communication to a government official on a policy matter would require documentation in a public database.
Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee, said the bill would hamstring government officials when they feel the need to seek advice from outside sources.
"The individual contacted by the public official would be aware that their conversation would now become a matter of public record," he said. "The citizen might be unwilling to offer candid advice to the official, fearing negative ramifications for his business, his tenure prospects or his family relationships -- to cite just a few ways in which a 'chilling effect' would occur."
An e-mail sent by a concerned citizen, contact with a sign-holding protester, a casual encounter in a church pew -- all would be logged into a government database. Even advice from a spouse would be covered under Waxman's bill, Johnson said.
As the House prepares to look at the issue, Amanda Banks, federal analyst for Focus on the Family Action, said members need to attend to the real issue.
“Instead of focusing on the executive branch as the Waxman bill does, or on grassroots activism, as the Pelosi bill is expected to," she said, "the House should focus on the location of the real need for lobbying reform: the U.S. Congress.”

HOLY CALAMARI!

This huge squid was caught in early February in the Ross Sea off Antarctica by a New Zealand Fishing crew. It was weighed at 990 pounds, which if confirmed on shore would break the earlier record by 330 pounds. New Zealand Fisheries Minister Jim Anderton said that the squid is likely the first intact adult male colossal squid to be caught successfully. The frozen squid will be transported to New Zealand's national museum to be preserved for scientific study. Colossal squid are estimated to grow up to 46 feet long, can descend to 6,500 feet and are extremely agressive hunters. Steve O'Shea, a squid expert at the Aukland University of technology quipped "if calamari rings were made from this squid they would be the size of tractor trailers."

MURTHA USING BUDGET TO FORCE TROOPS HOME

According to an article in today's Tribune-Review, Rep. John Mutha ( I mean Murtha) is planning to limit President Bush's spending in an attempt to force him to bring our troops in Iraq home. Murtha has emerged as the leader of the Democratic opposition because of his control of the Pentagon's spending bills and his clout with Democrats regarding defense issues. Murtha will detail legislation by mid-March that will set stringent rules on combat deployments, such as how long troops can stay, the equipment they use and whether any money could be used to expand military operations into Iran. Murtha says that so few units could meet the high standards he wants in place that Bush will have no choice but to start bringing troops home and would not be able to keep some 160,000 troops in Iraq for months as he had planned. Murtha was quoted as saying that " this vote will be the most important vote in changing the direction of the war...the President could veto it, but then he wouldn't have any money." Does Mr. Murtha have any plans in place to deal with the fallout that will most certainly happen if the Bush administration is forced to withdraw our troops? Does he and his liberal cronies plan to use some type of diplomatic strategy in dealing with the Iraqi al-Qaida? What he and the other anti-war Dems are proposing is exactly what al-Qaida and other Islamist movements want! This is a critical time in history for the United States...we either emerge from this epoch in history as a strong, no-bullshit leader that does not cave in to terrrosism and pacifist rhetoric or we digress into fat, lazy, overindulgent losers who will, no doubt, be forever engaging these types of people.

PICTURE WORTH MORE THAN WORDS

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY

John 15:13 Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

UGLIEST OUTFIT I'VE EVER SEEN

I enjoy looking at the pictures of the best & worst dressed celebrities of the Oscars and Grammys, and this year was no exception. I thought Carrie Underwood, Mary J. Blige and Ludacris were some of the best, but what I am about to share with you is the absolute WORST ensemble I have ever seen in my entire life! This "Swamp Geisha" getup worn by Imogen Heap even whoops the shit out of the f*ing swan disaster that Bjork wore many Grammys ago in my opinion, but you be the judge (notice the rubber frog in her hand--WTF!!!!)

QUOTEWORTHY

"What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"
-- Patrick Henry, March 23, 1775