Mercury's Musings

  Fun House  is the second studio album by The Stooges. Released in 1970, it is considered seminal in the development of what would eventually become punk rock as we know it today. Having never heard anything on this album before, I was shocked to read that it came out in 1970- which probably says a lot about this album's influence. "Down on the Street" is a great opener, with it's bluesy, almost proto-thrash metal riff. I was also a fan of the hilariously vulgar "Loose." Wasn't expecting that saxophone to come in on "1970," but that was a lot of fun as well. All around, solid album.

 Ugh, Drake. Drake is one of those artists whose mass cultural appeal is completely mystifying to me. I find his voice grating, his rhymes cringeworthy, and his beats boring. It's also pretty surprising to see a Drake album considered among the 100 best albums of all time. I get that he's really popular, and has had some influence in a particular cringeworthy style of rap, but come on. The Marshall Mathers LP  is #145. I get that it's popular to hate on Eminem, particularly with how lackluster his last decade or so has been, but that album changed the game. Even more egregiously, Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City  is #115. In Kendrick's case, he does have an album at #19, so I can understand not wanting two of his albums in the top 100, but GKMC is a modern classic. In contrast, we have Take Care . Come on, bro. Take Care  is an hour and a half (!) of mostly mopey, whiney, and all-around insufferable pablum. There's something about Drake's obnoxious way of being both bra...

Which ancient kingdom in Central Asia gives its name to a species of two-humped camel? ANSWER: Bactria 2. What is the first name of the child born to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex on June 4, 2021? ANSWER: Lilibet 3. The last two letters in the initialism IPCC (an intergovernmental body of the UN) stand for which common phrase? ANSWER: Climate Change 4. Which American rock band has released the albums Murmur, Out of Time, and Automatic for the People? ANSWER: R.E.M. 5. The Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque are located in which city? ANSWER: Jerusalem 6. Which operation in calculus measures the rate of change in a function? Formally, it is equal to the slope of the tangent line of a function at a given point. ANSWER: Derivative 7. Joe Biden has nominated which American attorney to replace the vacate seat of Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court? ANSWER: Ketanji Brown Jackson 8. Code Red, Voltage, and Live Wire are flavors of which soda? ANSWER: Mountain Dew 9. What...

Man, this album was a blast. I'd never really gotten into R.E.M.; I was only familiar with a couple of their hits, and despite being vaguely aware of them as a highly respected pillar of alternative music, I never had much of a strong opinion either way. After this album, I'm probably going to have to delve more into their stuff, because I thoroughly enjoyed this one. Michael Stipe's voice took a bit of time to for me to appreciate, but the more it's definitely very distinctive and fits the mood of the album very well. "Drive" is an awesome opening track, with it's downtempo pace and surprisingly well-suited string arrangement. "Try Not to Breathe" has an almost Celtic feel to it, with its lilting rhythm and vocal melody. I also really enjoyed trying to make heads or tails of the somewhat inscrutable lyrics on this album ("The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite" is great in this regard; the lyrics are at once bizarre and perfectly fitting). Hones...

Man, this was a throwback. I loved Metallica in high school. I listened to their first couple albums obsessively, and learned a bunch of their stuff on electric bass. That said, I haven't listened to them a ton since then, as my musical tastes shifted both to more extreme death metal, and into rap and other genres. This was probably the first time I've re-listened to a full Metallica album since 2012 or so, and man, what a trip down memory lane. Everything about this album is great. It's melodic, heavy, aggressive, and epic. Metallica are one of the few bands who really mastered the art of composing metal songs with an almost symphonic quality. The long instrumental interlude in the middle of the title track is a great example, with its harmonic section leading in to a heavy breakdown, followed by truly epic guitar solo. Disposable Heroes is also a great track, with a handful of awesome thrashy riffs. Metal bands who can really make an eight minute track running time are fe...