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Edited by Walter Hoeijmakers
Read
all about the albums that inspired Bottom in the making of
their newest effort: 'Feels So Good When You're Gone'. Check
the band out at [http://www.bottommusic.com/]
We
here at the BOTTOM camp basically consist of three hot-headed
people with strong opinions and big mouths, and the music talk
in the van can get pretty damn heated. The idea of narrowing
down 10 cds that we can all agree on sounds like a good brawl
in the making. We go down swinging, always.
That
being said, the lists of bands that follow are just small bits
of the crates of records we'd end up with on a desert island.
(Hey, look in the van. We're not known for travelling light).
We're all pretty different musically, but we meet in cool
places. Nila's got the metal blood, and also loves drum and
bass, hip hop, funk. That's where she and Clementine meet.
Clem loves funk and jazz, but also swampy, southern rock,
classic rock. That's where she and Sina meet. Sina loves that
stuff but also loves the hard shit, Pantera and Neurosis,
where she and Nila meet. We all love the stoner scene, we all
love testosterone-fueled badass ROCK, we all love great
songwriting, great playing, real lyrical content, emotive
singing, great sounds, great production, great music. There
are many musical threads that bind us together, and part of
what we love about this band is the way our incredibly diverse
musical backgrounds all converge and work together.
The
underlying string tying us to each other: we love it heavy.
Heavy in sound, heavy with meaning, heavy with emotional
playing and pushing the limits. Heavy is not just how it's
played but how it settles in our soul, how the music stirs up
those bottom-dwelling emotions and affects us forever. We may
differ about who should play it and what we call it, but above
all we each believe in the power of music to heal, to
frighten, to inspire.
[ S I
N A ]
BLACK FLAG &
NIRVANA the collections When I
hear these records, I feel like slamming my head into a
cinderblock wall. They are raw, personal, and intense. It's
where every other record is scaled.
FU
MANCHU "In Search Of" Years
back a friend and I found a copy of In Search of... at Venus
Records on St. Marks Place in NYC. A rare score! Giddy, we ran
back to our studio to crank it up. Holy God Damn, Happy!
Happy! Joy! Joy! I was on the floor. By track four, I was on
the horn with my drummer, "dude, you gotta hear this shit!
Fuck!" By the time the 'Falcon had landed', I was plotting
ways to pocket my friend's new disc. Two weeks later, I had
out-smarted him of his prideful possession and became a closet
Fu junkie. All evidence was hidden under my mattress. He'd
ask, "have you seen that Fu CD?" My coy response, "gosh, no
you can't find it? That sucks." Eddie, Mark (Fu '91-94) and
Ruben are Nebula now, and I'm a huge fan. Eddie flies, Mark
can hold down a bass line with a broken middle finger held
together by 15 stitches and Ruben plays with fire better than
anyone. Together they can make a three-letter word into three
syllables. Ready set, you try:
RRRrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaadddddddddd!!. Eddie once told me "I play
simple shit, I just make sure the grooves are interesting."
He's too modest. Eddie Glass, Eddie Glass, EDDIE GLASS
forever!
MONSTER MAGNET "Spine Of God" Essentially there are
three things in life, the world above, the world below, and
the area being pulled in both directions and..."You don't yank
on the spine of god". Yeah, but the Bull-god sure knows how to
tug on his benevolence long enough to con him out of some
unearthly tunes. Satanic gypsy, poet, doper, sex fiend,
mythical anti-Christ, savior, high school drop-out, Wyndorf
paints a picture so clearly you can reach right into your
stereo and touch the frayed KISS patch on his army coat while
exhaling a huge bong hit. The lyrics, melodies, riffs, and
rhythms are too perfect, it makes me wonder if god, the devil
and Dave Wyndorf are all the same being. It's too good, too
evil, and too human all at once.
BUZZOV*EN Anything The more the hairs on my neck
stand on end, the more I'm terrified by it, the more I find it
irresistible. The songs are pained, dark, angry, and
infectious. Kirk's vocals are raw and emotional. The grooves
gallop like a pissed off rabid beast in a swamp:
thunder-footed, hungry and irritated by the vermin under its
claws. "I can feel your anger as you crawl to the front. I
will never know why, I will never get hurt. (Forget it.)" We
had the fortune of kidnapping Kirk 'Dirt kicker' for a
four-day stint through the Carolinas. Kirk is a glorious piece
of work: angel-prophet by day, white devil by night. Rumors of
our K. Lloyd adventures spread, and so... we were told "what
the hell are you doing with those guys? That's the worst thing
you could do. Imagine 12 guys, a van, blacked out windows,
smashed in lights, living like maggots, pissing, druggin'-guys
hanging together just to see how gross they could be." Could
you expect anything less from the creators of "To a Frown" or
At a Loss"?
NICK DRAKE "Pink
Moon / Five Leaves Left" I love wordsmiths
(Lennon, Reed, Dylan) but here's one that is a guru on guitar
to boot and hits me in a quite moment. Drake wrote sweet,
dark, melancholy lullabies "for a troubled mind". The most
mesmorizing are his acoustic ditties like 'Smoking Too Long'
often recorded on his four track in his apartment. Nick was a
mysterious guy who made mysterious songs and died a mysterious
death in the late 70's. He made about 5 albums in his short
life of 27 years but "Time has told me not to ask for more".
BLACK SABBATH "Master Of Reality" At the fine ripe
age of 13 or 14, deep in a heavy Appetite for Destruction
episode of my life, listening to the AM-jammer, I heard Sweet
Leaf for the first time. I pondered the heavy guitar sounds
for a moment and let out a small, short chimp-monkey noise.
"ooh?!" toward the end OZZY sings, "people don't know what
you're about, They put you down and shut you out ." I think I
let out another monkey noise and scratch my head and turned to
my older bro, "what's this?"
[ N I
L A ]
SOUNDGARDEN "Badmotorfinger" I played to this
record until my roomates hid it...
MOTORPSYCHO "Demon Box" ...and "Trust us" and of
course "Timothy's Monster" and oh I hate this band for having
at least one song on every record that makes me wanna stop
playing because they did it and said it and why bother and try
to do it too... "Plan #1", "Vortex Surfer", these suckers, I
will never see them live as they are from Norway and I would
be disappointed anyway, aahh I hate them.
SYSTEM OF A DOWN "System Of A Down" holy shit...take
Sugar: how can you play the same three bass notes over and
over and the song is perfect, kicks your ass and has all the
dynamics you need...damn. Simplicity at its most amazing,
really fun to play to...
ELECTRIC WIZARD "Dopethrone" ...and one of the 2 cd
set that I only have a copy of ( sorry...) and don't know the
name. This band was like aspirin when it got really bad on the
last tour. Nicely bass heavy headphones and you will get
through it. Yes, I do accept them and Motorpsycho as my
saviors.
KYUSS "Welcome to Sky Valley" Yeah, now it's
a classic, but when I got it I didn't like it, too muddy.
Well, I was on the Metal trip and everything was shrill and
the snares "pinged". Then one day on a long summer drive (and
we didn't get a lot of sun), I got it...
[ C L
E M E N T I N E ]
CCR "Cosmo's Factory" I remember my dad
had this record in his collection and I just loved it from
before I can really even remember. I used to sit on the floor
and play it on my little pink stereo, the same one I played my
Disney records on, and listen to it over and over. My dad
taught me how to dance to it, I was I think like three years
old. I thought the cover photo was a picture of a garage, and
I just would stare at it... It wasn't until I was in my 20s
that I saw that record again and realized it was a photo of a
recording studio. The day I went to Fantasy Studios with Billy
Anderson to get our record mastered was an amazing day for me.
I walked in and there was Cosmo's Factory up there on the
wall, looking down at me. It was definitely a moment in time
when I had a feeling that my dad was hanging out for while,
taking a break from rock and roll heaven or wherever the hell
it is we go when we die.
It's funny, I look at the way
I play now and it all seems to come back to bands like this. I
want to play for the song, play simply and expressively so the
vocals can come to the forefront and tell the story. To convey
the story in the melody of the drums, in the rise and fall of
emotion and excitement. This music sometimes sounds silly now,
but when it comes down to it, many of these songs are really
just perfect songs.
LED
ZEPPELIN Anything What can I say.
I'm a drummer. How could this not be my favorite band of all
time? And it taught me that the sound of the recording has so
much to do with what makes a band great. How many great bands
and great songs get swept under the rug because the sound of
the record is muddy or shrill or just not fun to listen to.
"When The Levee Breaks" is the perfect example. Beautiful
playing, beautiful sounds, just a basic blues song but it
always just hits this amazing cord with me and I get chills
every time.
THE JESUS LIZARD "Goat" Frightening. Sparse. Heavy
Groove. Great sounds. Great drumming.
HELMET "Aftertaste" This record was the
soundtrack to my life last year. It's perfect. I know exactly
what Page is talking about and I didn't understand it till I
went on the road and left everything behind. The drumming
totally grew on me, and now I love it. It's not my style, but
the more I take tips from it the better I get.
THE
BAND "The Band" I feel dumb
listing these old records in this list, but these are the ones
that brought me to play the way I play. "Cripple Creek" says
everything about the kind of drummer I aspire to be. His
playing is swampy, sexy, light-hearted, serious, emotional,
loose, groovy, and above all, simple even when doing something
unusual or complicated.
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