Festivus Grievances 2014

For festivus this year, the taint ticklers did not even bother dressing up. We wore pajamas and drank hot apple cider. After complaining about the state of the world, we took turns airing our musical grievances. A few of the taint ticklers are asleep. Once they can be aroused and are coherent, we will add their complaints to the list.

Anita Papsmear:

I hate to sound like a broken record but my musical grievance for 2014 is much the same as in the past…Taylor Swift. I just don’t get it. Her lyrics are simple, her music is nowhere near “country,” and I still haven’t seen any real “art” from her. If I hear one more person say how they “caved in” and “now like her music,” I will literally projectile vomit until my uterus spills out over my lap. 

Class Warrior:

I am mostly okay with the state of the world’s music scene. Grievances are few this year. I saw live music performances more than once this year, so I cannot target myself as I usually do. Here are the grievances:

1. Cookie monster vocals. Enough already! What the fuck. This vocal style sounds like shit. It has always sounded like shit. You don’t sound angry or evil, cookie monster. You just make me want to listen to something else. Countless bands have been ruined by these vocals. I demand an end!

2. Band name creativity is at an all-time low. While it is true that good band names are getting harder and harder to come by every year, I don’t believe that all the good names have been taken. We just have to apply ourselves. Just for the hell of it, let’s try to think of some good names. I will limit myself to the theme of...enemas! This is an underexplored region for band names—perhaps justifiably so—but if you want the public to remember you, or if you want them to think “I wish I’d thought of that first,” you could do worse than an enema related name. On to the names!

Terminal Enema
Chronic Enema (that one’s for all you pot smokers/enema enthusiasts)
Enema School (title of first album: Expelled)
Enema Storm
Reverse Enema
Enema Friend
Enema Fiend
Enema Chuggers
Apples and Enemas
Metal Enema
Blood Enema (or insert your desired inappropriate enema fluid here) (insert! get it?)

That’s enough. Eleven (or more) bands now have names. Next theme: GG Allin song titles.

3. Capitalism kills music. Among other evils, it traps otherwise capable, talented musicians in shitty jobs. All that time these people could have devoted to practicing, writing songs, and playing music for people gets devoured by waiting tables, flipping burgers, selling useless shit to alienated people, or any other set of boredom and immiseration. Let’s kill capitalism instead.

Dave:

Like many of the contributors to Tickle Your Taint, I am a life long metal fan. However, I’m just not feeling it anymore. The whole metal community is really uninspiring to me as of late. The fans celebrate formulaic sounds, and bands put out insincere, formulaic records. I have only been interested in three national releases this year, the Eyehategod album I reviewed, the new Godflesh record, and the new Obituary record. I’m tired of stoic *insert sub-sub-genre here* metal fans who take that sound oh so seriously and snub their nose at anything that deviates from these specific musical values. It seems like whenever I try to share anything different with an avowed metal fan they look at me like I just pulled my dick out and started masturbating in their living room.  Fuck it I’m out!

Five-Inch Taint:

This year, fortunately, I do not have many grievances. It was such a magical time musically (see my best of list).

With that said, I have to air some grievances against one of our own (again). Null, you have steered me in the wrong direction musically for a second time in three years. A few years ago he directed me to Taylor Swift’s Red of which I enjoyed a couple of songs on the album. This year, he spoke highly of Lana Del Rey’s new album, Ultraviolence. Produced by my namesake, Dan Auerbach, this album is a big steamy turd. Another band, The 1975, comes to mind when thinking about mediocre music. I’m not even sure if Null recommended them to me but I’m going to blame him anyway, because it seems like something he would do. I would rather listen to paint dry then listen to this album again.

Another grievance is old women at shows who flash their nasty boobies to the band. Seriously, if I wanted to see some dried up leathery sacks of flesh I’d make some beef jerky. You ruined that concert for me and scarred me for life. I’m a little more dead inside after having seen you bare yourself in order to get the attention of the band. You almost ruined boobies for me…and I love boobies!

One final grievance about a local music venue: Damn you Burt’s Tiki Lounge for closing up shop right before my beloved Voo Doo Glow Skulls came to perform. I will miss your dirty, grungy bar with your television playing all the time (even during concerts). I saw some great shows there: Anvil, MDC, and some great local bands. But, you denied me from getting my punk-ska fix for the year.  

Jimmy “Explosive Diarrhea” B:

Albany, Oregon Art and Air Festival: I hate to do this, but for the second year in a row, the mighty Blue Oyster Cult – or more precisely the Albany, Oregon venue – makes my grievance list. The sound at this show was atrocious. It was boomy and indistinct. The audience was there to drink, and chatter. It seemed like nobody was there to listen to music. This may have been my last free outdoor show. The experience is always disappointing.

Dave: Our own wonderful and brilliant taint tickler, Dave, joined one of my favorite local bands, Paranaut, in 2014. But, he kept forgetting to give me a heads up when a show was in the works. As a result, I was only able to make it to one Paranaut show. It was awesome. But don’t worry Dave; I still love you.

Mrs. “Explosive Diarrhea” B: Yes friends, my spouse makes the list this year. She refused to attend a lot of great shows with me, the Meat Puppets for example.  She seems to have the reached a point in her life, for reasons I cannot explain, where she is only willing to go to a show if it involves Wishbone Ash, Blue Oyster Cult, or Murder by Death. But, don’t worry Mrs. Explosive Diarrhea; I still love you.

The Mississippi Studios, Portland, Oregon: I was able to get the wife to attend two shows in 2014, one of them was Peter Buck and Alejandro Escovedo at Mississippi Studios. The venue made the decision to cram so many people into a tiny space that we were literally hip to hip. It was so tight that I wondered if they guy behind me was trying dance or ass fuck me.

Portland, Oregon: Unlike my spouse, my daughter loves going to shows. But, there are few all ages venues in Portland. We get lucky sometimes and find something suitable. But, most of the venues let us down.

The Hawthorne Theater, Portland, Oregon: I didn’t even attend any shows at this horrible venue in 2014, but I hate it so fucking much, that I am angry at its continued existence.

Thrill Jockey: I was surfing the web one night when I discovered that a band I love, Guapo, had a new album. I immediately and figuratively plunked down 13 bucks on the album. Only after making the payment, did I notice I had paid $13 for a download. Fuck! I don’t download. Now what do I do? I emailed Thrill Jockey, the record label, to ask for my money back. I got no response. I now have a digital album on my computer I do not want. I am probably a dinosaur, but I hate fucking downloaded music. CDs and records make me feel like I am interacting with bands. I am holding what they produced, reading what they wrote, and admiring the art work they labored to choose. Fuck you Thrill Jockey and your $13 downloads.

The Unknown Reviewer (I forgot the man's name): I am in distress that this year is coming to an end, and Mr. T's undoubted musical talent continues to be unknown to music fans everywhere.  

Kloghole:

1. Cuntry music still is not country music. Given that the cuntry music business will always survive parasitically on the vagaries of fickle, faddish, public whim, I will never be able to listen to the radio or watch cuntry music award shows without wanting to wretch.

2. All the fuckers who have caused my friends and I grief over the past few years so that I has just given up on music. I can only recall going to one proper show, and that was after I sorted through my ticket stubs. I went to the DOA farewell show with fellow taint ticklers. I also crashed the punk rock reunion in Rapid City. Other than that, I stumbled into pubs where bands were playing, but I have been grossly negligent about getting to music shows.

3. There is a lot a shit that I would like to include in my grievances, but I am so fucking out of date, I thought they happened this year. J.J. Cale is dead? Queensryche sued each other? WTF? That was years ago? New metal sucks. New metal is already passe? Maybe, I will catch up in a few years to be pissed about the stupid shit in music that happened this year.

4. The iPod is dead! There, I said it. While I am not a big fan of oligopolies, I could put my whole music collection in one little device. I have my own private radio station. It was fucking great. Instead of updating the device with a flash drive or reinventing the device, it’s just been chucked in the bin. There is no fucking way I can fit more than a fraction of my music on my phone. Fuck it. I guess I just have to keep my fingers crossed that my current iPod will last long enough for flash memory to reach 200gig in some other portable devices.

5. While I am on the subject of iPods, Toyota can suck the fucking dingleberries off my hairy bunghole for their masochistic iPod interface on their radio. Had I known that their GPS is about as fucking useful as a monkey with a map in your glovebox and their goddamn radio locks up the iPod, I would have saved the fucking money and got the cheaper model.

I am glad as hell this year is coming to an end. Fuck 2014. May 2015 not suck an infected testicle on a leprous lion with Tourette’s.

Sweet Dreams Motherfuckers!

Null:

The worst thing about my grievances is that, over the years, they haven’t seemed to change much. The fact that major labels continue to put out multiple versions of the same record with various bonus tracks here and other bonus tracks there continues to infuriate me. It is an overt attempt to get consumers to buy several copies of the same album. Major record labels continue their longstanding tradition of being putrid corporate scum. I salute any artist that refuses to take part.

A further redundancy of my grievances is the waning quality of CD-Rs, or recordable CDs. I believe this issue has been addressed during every grievance list I have written here on Tickle Your Taint. Since the beginning of this site, the quality of CD-Rs has continued to worsen. These days one can look through a CD-R like a fucking lightly tainted window because they are all so cheap and thin. And as an added bonus most of them will play in one CD player but not in the next. If you can play it in your car then you can’t play it in your home stereo or visa versa. I searched the internet for good quality CD-Rs that would stand the test of time. I found some expensive CD-Rs called MAM-A Gold that have a lifetime guarantee. They are good, but guess what…they won’t play in my portable CD player. Fuck this shit. I’ll quote Lemmy, “All things come to he who waits but these days most things suck.”

U2 needs to go away. What came first the Apple commercial or the new U2 record? No one can tell. To simply infer that U2 have maintained a shred of integrity or concern for the outside world is an insult to humankind. If Bono maintains “free market” capitalism will save the world then he can burn in hell with the rest of ‘em. It is a shame too because I really liked their first 6 studio albums. Their plane went down in Germany 23 years ago.

I read a John Mayer interview where he said, “There is no such thing as selling out anymore.” We…are…fucked.

I am like a broken record and a digital transfer won’t make that any clearer.

Scott:

(Writing a term paper.)

SoDak:

1. R.E.M. Complete Rarities for I.R.S and Warner Bros. Both of these collections were released only as a digital downloads. What a fucking waste. Maybe I can burn them onto a shitty CD-R that will not even play on my stereo. The general trend toward disposable music is exhausting.

2. The lack of creativity for CD/album covers (also just bad covers in general). As part of the trend toward disposable music, album art seems to be experiencing a painful death. Fortunately, metal bands seem to still put some effort into covers, even I think many of them are silly. Bob Seger has never really had good artwork on his albums, but Ride Out, as well as his previous release, Face the Promise, are tired. Oh yes, Bob, an open road, a motorcycle, you are really making a connection now. The same is true of Bruce Springsteen’s High Hopes. I think a child with a brain injury created the covers for Johnny Marr CDs. Morrissey has completely lost his marbles. World Peace Is None of Your Business is attempt at being clever, but remains uninteresting. The cover for his Very Best of CD looks like he pleasuring himself in the bathtub. The cover on Swords, as Null has first told me, looks like his standing in the woods and he has to take a shit. The worst cover this year is U2’s Songs of Innocence. What the fuck? At first glance, it looks like a middle-aged man going down on a young boy. NAMBLA members are probably jerking off to the cover right now. To make matters worse, the boy is the son of the man (who is a band member). Now, it looks like a cover that celebrates pedophilia. I have read interviews where the band tries to explain the symbolism on the cover. Forget. If you have to explain the meaning so much, it is not fuckin’ clear. Horrible choice.

3. Many critics have noted the lack of originality in mainstream country music, given the endless slew of songs about parking lots, parties, trucks, tight jeans, etc. (Some of the older country music singers have indicated that the power of story songs has been lost.) This past year, I thought the most glaring example of this is represented by Lee Brice’s song, “Show You Off Tonight” and Jason Aldean’s song, “Show You Off.” Technically these are different songs—one song has the word “Tonight” in the title. I looked and was surprised to see that the songs have different songwriters. Guess what the songs are about? You guessed it: some asshole is excited to take his lady out on the town to present her as an object (or piece of eye candy) for everyone else to drool over. Somehow, I guess this elevates the guy in this situation. These songwriters must be drinking from the same toilet.

4. Disappointing/Bad Albums: I only list a couple, by artists who I generally like. Mark Kolezek is getting worse every year. His record, Benji, is a rambling diary of non-sense. I think he believes that he is being artistic. I now wish he would just stop making music. Lucinda Williams put out a stinker this year with Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone. While her voice has been getting progressively rough, it still invoked plenty of emotion and felt part of the music. Here she sounds like she is croaking out the words and meandering outside of the song. The pain is spread over two CDs. Not sure how this record make the year-end lists for many folks.

Travis:

(Sleeping at the dinner table.)