Black Sheep Albums: Neil Young's Trans

"Where did you get it?

"From some guy."

"How much did you pay for it?"

"Just a few dollars."

"Why did you ever decide you wanted it?"

"It sounded interesting!"

The kava was flowing in my veins. The camp fire danced before my eyes. Robots barked and chirped from some puny sound system to the beat of programmed drums. And that series of indignant, accusative questions and honest, yet inadequete replies continued.

This exchange was not between a mother and her wayward teenage child, chiding him/her for purchasing the newest, hippest street drug. This was my friend being grilled by his girlfriend about purchasing Neil Young's Trans. I had seen few albums evoke such a visceral response from anyone. It reminded me a lot of when I'd visit the Exclusive Company as a 6th grader and try to keep such offenisve items as Megadeth's So Far, So Good...So What! from my parents' prying eyes, until I could get past the register.

How could the humble Canadian folk/rock/country musician cause such disharmony? It could have had something to do with the cyborgs trying to speak through the iPhone. The display said it was a Neil Young album, but there was precious little evidence to confirm this.

Nate JacobsAugust 7, 2015black sheep albums, nate jacobs, neil young, tunes, robots, transComment

Black Sheep Albums: Kiss' The Elder

Kiss mildly scared me as a child. Their evil Kabuki warrior make-up and devil music was a recipe for disaster, as I already hated clowns. By chance I saw their film, Kiss Meets the Phantom, which is a modern remake of The Phantom of the Opera, with a bunch of changes, most importantly Kiss running around an amusement park which is being terrorized by an evil scientist. That was another thing that scared me: amusement parks, and fairs. From a very early age, I had an innate, visceral hatred of carnies and circus people, always imagining that behind the facade of sawdust and elephant piss there were dirty miscreants spiraling down to new depths of decadence, like that "Rectum" bar at the end of the French movie Irreversible.

Nate JacobsApril 5, 2015KISS, black sheep albums, nate jacobs, the elderComment

Black Sheep Albums: Judas Priest's Turbo

ay, way back in the day, before I really started to get into Judas Priest, Turbo was probably the most infamous metal album I had ever heard of. Various scary words were tossed about to describe it:

DRUM MACHINES

SYNTHESIZERS

POP MELODIES

DISCO BEATS

Shit, any metal band throwing those things on an album was pretty much suicide, I thought.

Nate JacobsMarch 30, 2015black sheep albums, judas priest, turbo, nate jacobs, metalComment

Black Sleep Albums: Black Sabbath's Never Say Die

Megadeth mainman Dave Mustaine once said that Never Say Die was his favourite Black Sabbath album. Dave's pretty nutty, and Never Say Die! is arguably the weakest of the seminal Black Sabbath output (with Ozzy, that is), but that's not to say this album is without merit.

I remember hearing the title track on an Ozzy's Speak of the Devil live album. My high school bud, Sam, had sold it to me for $5, and I just remember thinking, "this doesn't sound like Sabbath at all." Apart from the compelling chorus, the rest of the track sounds like an upbeat Thin Lizzy song, most particularly "the Boys are Back in Town," which never did much for me. So I bought almost all the other Sabbath albums but this, leaving my other friend, Max, to buy every single goddamn Sabbath album. I asked him about this one, and he said it wasn't too good. I stayed away. Let sleeping dogs lie, right?

Nate JacobsMarch 28, 2015black sheep albums, black sabbath, never say die, nate jacobs, metalComment

Taste testing the forbidden fruit.