The Official Soundrack to The Wash!

If you've read the title of this post and are a bit confused, I completely understand.  Normally, a soundtrack accompanies a film.  Allow me to explain.

Eric San Juan is a musician, author and all around great guy who I've known for a while. As an author, he's written books about Hitchcock and Kurosawa, broken down television series like Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead and has even published graphic novel collections.  

As a musician, he records under a number of names pending the project type.  Whether it's the chaotic guitar noisescapes of his M2 moniker, the more conventional XSweet or the laid back sounds of Tape Theory, Eric's music is never predictable and never boring.  His albums have accompanied me on dive boats, airplanes and even to other countries.

So imagine my surprise when he contacted me out of the blue to tell me that he'd recorded a soundtrack to my novel The Wash!  

I was floored!  Having an artist who you admire contact you and tell you that they were inspired by something you wrote is an amazing feeling.  Add to that, when he shared the early mixes of the tracks with me I found that I really liked them. They were mysterious and unsettling in the best of ways and I agreed that they would be perfect accompaniment to a film version of The Wash (at least as I see it in my head).

The album is now up for download and it's completely FREE!  Eric explains the process behind the album in his post here.  You can also find the link there to download it.  

For those of you who want more, I have a special deal for you.  Eric was kind enough to give me access to a bunch of outtakes and extra tracks from this session.  If you'd like them, then all you have to do is review The Wash on Amazon.  

LINK TO THE WASH ON AMAZON

Simply go to the link above and leave a review.  Send me an e-mail at w.cary.christopher@gmail.com along with a link to your review.  I'll reply to you with a link to the outtakes.

I really hope you enjoy Soundtracks for Horror Moves: Music Inspired by The Wash.  It's been playing on my iPod pretty regularly since he posted it.  I hope it gets its fingers way up under your skin and makes you anxious and so creeped out you can't sleep.  

As always, I have your best interests at heart.

October Music and The Ocean

Those of you who read the blog know that I’m a huge music hound.  I love most types from pop to jazz to blues, heavy metal, classical and even classic country.  As long as I can remember, music has been my one refuge when things seem bad and I’ve even noticed (and commented to some of you reading) that my listening tastes tend to change with the seasons themselves.

Fall is upon us and with it comes my favorite time of year, Halloween.  My birthday is in October.  My daughter’s birthday is also in October and we just make the whole month one long party.  It’s around this time of year that my listening tastes become slanted more toward rockabilly, punk and metal.  Bands like The Cramps, Nekromantix, The Horrorpops, The Birthday Massacre and soundtracks from Suspiria (Goblin’s best work), John Carpenter’s The Thing and pseudo-soundtracks by The Midnight Syndicate will go into heavy rotation over the next few weeks.

That said, this week I found myself listening to a song that’s definitely not in that vein and realizing that I’d almost unconsciously mimicked the lyrics in my own life.  As most of you read, I lost my Dad about a month ago.  I spent a couple of weeks in Texas helping my mother get things sorted and then when I came back here, I realized that I hadn’t really dealt with it myself.  I spent the next couple of weeks kind of going through the motions of work and home.  Then something clicked and I asked Karen and Lil if they wouldn’t mind going down to Laguna Beach after work one night. 

We hit up Husky Burger on PCH and then crossed the street and headed down to Shaw’s Cove.  We wandered along the rocks and watched the waves crash.  There were some cool blow-hole effects happening in one spot and the high tide was just starting to subside.  We waited there and watched set after set roll in until the sun finally started creeping down enough that the air got a little too cold for us.  Once we got back to the car and started driving home, I realized I felt better.  A lot better.

The ocean has that effect on me.  I’m not sure why. 

A week later, I found myself throwing a Counting Crows disc into my car stereo.  “A Long December” (a song that I’ve liked for a long time despite it being overplayed) came on and the last verse struck me.  For the one or two people out there who may not know it, the lyrics are about a guy who's reflecting on the past year, realized it's kind of sucked and is looking forward to the new year in hopes that it'll be better.  The last verse goes like this:

And it’s one more day up in the Canyon

And it’s one more night in Hollywood

It’s been so long since I’ve seen the ocean

I guess I should

I’m not the biggest Counting Crows fan, but I don’t think I’ll be able to hear that song again without automatically thinking about the last few weeks and how good it felt to just sit and listen to the waves for a while.

Starting next week, we'll start posting about the Halloween movies being viewed this year (including a couple that Karen and Lil may or may not particularly like).  On Thursday, I'll post up the last Horror Histories for the time being.  It was supposed to go live a month ago but life got in the way.

Happy October, everyone!

SPUNK - How the Sex Pistols Pirated Themselves

Nothing quite shook my world like discovering punk rock and while the first songs I heard were Dead Kennedys tunes, it was the Sex Pistols who really grabbed me by the short hairs.  The first time I heard "Anarchy in the UK", it was a life changing experience.  Here were the snarling, menacing guitars that I’d loved hearing on songs like "Won’t Get Fooled Again", only they were more stripped down and raw.  This wasn't the record that made me want to pick up a guitar.  That honor goes to The Who's album Who's Next.  This was the record that made me want to pick up a guitar and WRITE! 

So believe me when I say that I have a little bit of a Sex Pistols obsession.  They really only put out one album, Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols.  Every release after was either a collection of demos or featured only part of the band.  However, I have multiple copies of this single album.

I own the American release.

Here's the Italian release (which came with a killer "punk" flyer advertising other bands from that time).

And I own the picture disc version.


I've also owned it on cassette and currently have the CD.  Aside from those, I have vinyl copies of bootlegs and follow-up releases that most people would never bother looking at, much less buy.  Suffice to say, John Lydon has made more than his fair share of royalties from me and I'm not sorry to have handed over the money.  

However, there is one Sex Pistols album in my collection which is special and there's a great story behind its creation.

In 1976, The Sex Pistols and the British punk scene had finally come to the attention of major record labels.  The music establishment realized there was money to be made off of all these kids who were dressing weird, forming bands and could barely play their instruments.  EMI signed the band to a two year contract and stuck them in the studio right away with producer Dave Goodman. 

EMI was a very old school, British label.  They knew about the Sex Pistols reputation.  How could they miss it?  Still, they thought that on some level it must all be part of an act.  They expected The Pistols to be proper musicians when not on stage or in front of the music press.  That was a huge mistake.  

Thus, when the band was asked to be on the Bill Grundy Show as a replacement for Queen, the Pistols acted as they always did and completely shocked a nation by calling the host a "dirty fucker" on live television.  According to Steve Jones (who uttered those offending words and a few more) it was because Grundy (a much older man) had made a pass at a teenage Siouxsie Sioux who had come to the set with them.

Whatever the circumstance, the only impression most people came away with was that The Pistols were animals and suddenly, EMI had a problem.  In order to save face, the label dropped The Sex Pistols and cut their losses less than a year into the band's contract.

While the mainstream press made them out to be devils, one record company took a chance on them anyway.  They were soon signed to Virgin Records who put them in the studio and recorded what would be their only official studio album Never Mind The Bollocks.  

Here's where my elusive album comes in.  In the months leading up to the release of Never Mind The Bollocks, another record started circulating in the U.K.  It was referred to as SPUNK and came in a plain white sleeve with no mention of the name of the band on the album label. It was a bootleg and it was sold out of the back of record shops.  Word got out pretty quickly that this was in fact the Sex Pistols, despite the song titles being changed on the label.  

For instance, the first track "Lazy Sod" was pretty obviously "Seventeen".  "Nookie" was actually "Anarchy in the U.K.".  "No Future" was "God Save the Queen".  There was no doubt in anyone's mind that these were the EMI sessions the band had done with Dave Goodman.

Virgin was furious.  The band's manager Malcolm McLaren had retained all rights to those recordings so they immediately thought he'd been the one to release them.  This would have violated the band's contract and McLaren denied he'd had anything to do with it.  Virgin was never able to directly connect it to him so they dropped their investigation into the matter.  Instead, they finished production and shipped Never Mind the Bollocks in October of 1977.  To this day, no one knows for sure who leaked those tapes, but anyone who's read anything about Malcolm McLaren knows it was probably him.

The thing about SPUNK for hardcore Sex Pistols fans, is it's the only recording of the band's original lineup.  Glen Matlock, the original bass player, played on the EMI sessions but he'd been fired by the band before they signed with Virgin.  Sid Vicious had been brought on to replace him, but to put it charitably, Sid couldn't play the bass for shit.  Instead, guitarist Steve Jones played all of the bass parts on Nevermind The Bollocks, so if you're me and you really want to hear the band at the height of their powers, you want to hear SPUNK.

Which brings me to the University of Georgia in 1998.  I was living in family housing with my wife and as we were walking to the mailboxes one day, I found a two crates of records just sitting there.  I left them, thinking someone would claim them.  They were still there a week later, so I brought them back to our apartment.  I reported them to the office and said if anyone wanted to claim them I'd be happy to give them back.  No one ever called.

There, in the middle of one of the crates, was SPUNK. 

It's not worth a ton of money, especially since it's been released on CD now, but I have it on vinyl and that's what matters to me.  Its sound is much less polished than Never Mind The Bollocks, but the band is tight and it's my favorite of my Sex Pistols vinyl releases.

Why?  

Because unlike all the others, it found its way to me.

Five Bands Vol. 5 - For The Love of Vinyl Album Covers

Don’t be scared away by the word "vinyl" in the title of this column.  We’re not even going to touch the question of whether pristine virgin vinyl sounds better than a compact disc.  See, my hearing is basically screwed on a number of levels.  I spent many years in front of amplifiers both on stage and off without wearing hearing protection.  Thus, I do have some hearing loss so you could play me a virgin pressing of something and I likely couldn’t tell the difference between that and a CD. 

So why am I talking about vinyl?  The reasoning is even geekier than any argument about audio.  It has to do with album cover art.  If there is only one thing I bemoan about the switch from vinyl to CD and now to digital streaming, it's that the artwork shrank.  There used to be something I really enjoyed about getting that vinyl album with the double gatefold sleeve and perusing every inch of it for some small clue as to what the band was about.  It was mysterious and it went beyond just getting the lyrics on the album sleeve.  It was about looking for the essence of the music in the cover art itself.   

I’m 49 years old and I will still pull out an album cover on occasion and take it all in while listening to music.  In this column,  I'd like to share some of my favorites with you. 

The Five Albums In My Collection With My Favorite Art:

1.  Miles Davis - Bitch's Brew:  Seriously, this is a work of sheer genius both for the content of the album and the artwork on the cover.  Shrinking it down to a five inch by five inch CD booklet is like shrinking down the Mona Lisa to a wallet picture.  Laying on the floor staring at this while Miles Runs The Voodoo Down plays is about the closest you can get to touching God without help from recreational drugs or a life of chastity and meditation.  The inside of the album cover contains one of those awesome old marketing pieces from Columbia where someone tries to explain exactly why this album is amazing.  In this case, Ralph J. Gleason writes everything he needs to in the first paragraph (but of course then goes on to write thirteen more).

“There is so much to say about this music.  I don’t mean so much to explain about it because that’s stupid, the music speaks for itself.  What I mean is that so much flashes through my mind when I hear the tapes of this album that if I could I would write a novel about it full of life and scenes and people and blood and sweat and love.” – Ralph J. Gleason

2. KMFDM – UAIOE:  This one wrapped me up so tight it took years to untangle my brain.  The music is as brutal as any KMFDM album, but it’s that cover art (all black, red and white) that had me lying on the bed, staring at it over and over again.  The island in the background exploding into a blood red sea is freakish enough but the face staring out at you is infinitely scarier.  There’s a look in his eyes that screams anarchy and the lazy right one hints at madness.  There’s the bit of saliva that has escaped from his front right tooth and is sliding over his lower lip.  There’re the small drops of sweat beading down from his forehead and there’s the smile that says, “It'll be fine, just trust me.”  He is the true face of The X-Files Cigarette Smoking Man.  When the towers in New York went down in 2001, this is the face I thought of, smiling and walking away from the destruction.  When we first moved into this house, I wanted to frame this and put it on the wall in my home office but my wife outvoted me.

3. Lou Reed – Lou Reed:  So all I’d ever heard by Lou Reed was Walk on the Wild Side and (thanks to MTV) I Love You Suzanne.  I found this record in a used record store when I was about 16 and I remember buying it because of the name, but the cover wrapped it’s corners around both lobes of my brain and captivated me.  There is so much going on here.  First, you’ve got New York in the background, which is exactly what should be on the cover of a Lou Reed album.  Then you’ve got this wave breaking down the center of the street.  What the hell is that about?  Oh but wait, Lou’s name is spelled out in flowers floating above while hummingbirds flit around it.  Then, below is this Faberge egg unfolding to reveal a jewel-encrusted flowerpot. 

And of course, all of that is there just to throw you off the trail of the real essence of the album. Lou Reed’s first album is all about the figure in the lower left hand corner.  The dark bird with its head down, half cast in shadow and ignoring the mystery, wonder and beauty of what’s going on around him is the distillation of the ten songs on this album.  I got all of that from listening to it repeatedly and studying the cover and who knows?  I could be totally wrong, but that's what it says to me and my listening experience was better off for it.  

4. Kraftwerk – The Man-Machine:  If album cover art is meant to create an impression of the contents of the album, no other artists may have hit the mark truer than Kraftwerk.  Despite many people trying to get me to listen to Autobahn and Trans-Europe Express, I just wasn’t a big fan.  Which leads me to one day when I was 17 and loitering in Spec’s Music in Lakeland, Florida.  My favorite record store clerk saw I was picking up Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark' Crush album.  He quickly steered me over to Kraftwerk, which prompted me to explain how much I didn’t like them. 

He gave me the record.  Seriously, he must have written it off as stolen or something but he slipped The Man-Machine into the bag and told me to give it a serious listen.  The Man-Machine is much less cold and robotic than some of their earlier stuff and as I stared at the album cover, I realized that they had subtly insinuated that on their cover.  The red shirts, snappy black ties and dynamic diagonal lines of the cover art suggested something that was still regimented but more stylish, slanted and off-kilter.  Sure enough, The Man-Machine was only a few steps removed from that OMD album and the cover art was much cooler too.

5. Elvis Costello – Armed Forces:  I’ve saved the best for last.  When it comes to cover art in my album collection, my copy of Armed Forces takes the cake.  Then, it smashes the cake, bakes another one and takes that one too. 

First off, there’s the cover with its herd of elephants standing next to the bones of their fallen.  The painting is gorgeous and the elephants are a symbol of unstoppable power representing the music on the album inside.

Closer inspection of the album cover reveals that this isn’t your normal sleeve.  In fact, to open it, you have to flip it over where you’ll find significantly different cover art mixing images of soldiers, tanks and pop art.  Plus it’s split horizontally across the middle allowing you to unfold it.

Open those two flaps and your brain is assaulted with color.  This time it’s less military (although there are some sailors in the upper half).  But like that puzzle in the Hellraiser movies, there’s still more to unfold.

A visual bomb has now gone off and it’s blowing the rods and cones in your optic fluid through the back of your skull.  Luckily for you, you’ve peeled back the fruit to its wonderful nugget of sonic goodness, but inside there’s more than just the album. 

Remove the vinyl and you get the total visual of the “Elvis Costello and The Attractions Armed Forces” artwork.  That’s still not the end though.

Aside from the album itself, there's an EP of a live performance as well as individual cards with photos of the band members.

Hours.  Hours and hours and hours were spent poring over this cover art while listening to Accidents Will Happen, (What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding, Goon Squad and Oliver's Army.  Despite Imperial Bedroom having my favorite Costello song (Beyond Belief), Armed Forces is my favorite Elvis Costello album.  Even today, when I play it on my iPod I appreciate it more because of the time I spent with its cover, soaking in the music and appreciating every note, every word and every pause between tracks.

Long live Vinyl.

One more thing!  Since we're talking about retro stuff, why not pick up a copy of my book The Wash?  You can even get a good, old-fashioned paper version of it!  You can follow this link to my Amazon author's page to get a copy for yourself.

Thanks for reading and I'll see you next week!

Crossdressing, South Africa and How America Forgot about Queen

If you’ve been checking in here over the last several weeks, you’ve seen a lot of articles about rock concept albums and weird places to visit in Southern California.  Today, I want to keep the focus on music, but this time it’s not connected to any ongoing series.  It’s a post about Queen and I’m doing it specifically for Lisanne Harrington, but I hope you all enjoy it as well.

I’m a casual fan of Queen.  When I was hitting the age where rock music was starting to help me define who I was, Queen was already kind of out of fashion.  All the hard rocking guitars of their early stuff had given way to faux rockabilly and disco beats.  I like most of the hits and I totally get the genius and talent of Freddy Mercury as a frontman, but I never fell head over heels for them which is how I missed this tidbit.

See, originally I was going to write about rock music’s role in breaking down taboos and rearranging cultural norms and to do that, I was going to tell you a quick story about high school, Billy Squier and Queen.  Then I stumbled on something that I hadn’t heard before and a few rabbit holes later, I’m staring at this page trying to figure out how to work it all in.

Most people think of Queen as a staple of rock and roll, universally loved and accepted everywhere.  After all, their songs “We Are The Champions” and “We Will Rock You” have permeated pop culture so much that kids sing them without even knowing where they came from.  Most people don’t realize that American audiences turned their back on Queen when they were arguably at the height of their powers and the reason mostly had to do with their image. 

Queen had a string of huge hits worldwide from 1975 – 1981, including “Bohemian Rhapsody”, “Another One Bites the Dust” and “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”.   They’d also been a favorite of hard rock fans due to songs like “Stone Cold Crazy” and Brian May’s guitar heroics.  Even early on, there had always been rumors that the band’s lead singer, Freddy Mercury, was gay, but he’d never publicly acknowledged it (and wouldn’t for years).  It didn’t seem to matter to most fans, but on the cover of their album The Game, Mercury changed his image.  

Gone were the long hair and silk outfits.  In their place was short hair and leather.  Mercury wasn’t coming out publicly in words, but visually he wasn’t hiding anymore.  That rubbed American audiences the wrong way.  As Queen toured the States, Mercury became the target of some pretty bitter fans who didn’t really want to confront their own feelings about sexuality.  Instead, they saw fit to throw disposable razor blades at him during shows (this actually happened) as if to say, “Just end it already.” 

But Queen always followed their own muse and even as album sales in the U.S. lagged, the band stuck by their singer.   In a particularly defiant moment, the band shot a video for the song “I Want to Break Free” completely in drag.  It was a single off their new album called The Works.  Basically the message they were sending was, “If you can’t find this fun and funny, then we really don’t give a damn if you buy our record or not.”  You can see the video below.

For any other band, that would have been the final nail in the coffin, and as far as most people at the time were concerned, it was.  At my high school, it was really uncool to like them and if you happened to be playing their cassette in your jam box after football practice, there was a chance you’d get punched just on principle.  Queen had trouble with sales in the States and didn’t even properly tour the U.S. with the album.  Instead, they enjoyed their popularity in other countries and wrote off America for the next two years.

Unfortunately, they started to lose face at home and abroad thanks to a very stupid decision on the band’s part.  During that time, Queen decided to play a concert in Sun City, South Africa.  This was during apartheid and those who are old enough will remember there was a huge push in the music world to boycott the country.  Artists as diverse as Cyndi Lauper, U2 and Little Steven all banded together and created an organization called Artists Against Apartheid.  They urged Queen not to play the show, but once again the band followed their own muse.  They argued that they weren’t playing for the government.  They were playing for the people in South Africa who were everyday fans and deserved to hear their favorite band play.

It was a tone deaf response and it began to cost the band dearly.  The decision caused a huge rift between Queen and other popular acts of the time.   It also caused a row in the music tabloids and soon, Queen was feeling the heat in their home country as well. 

 

When Bob Geldof gathered the most popular U.K. artists at the time to do a charity single to feed starving people in Africa, he didn’t invite Queen.  He very publicly avoided them, basically stating that they were part of the problem.

This was like a slap in the face to Freddy Mercury.  He went on record as saying how disappointed he was and the band did their best to control the damage.  At this stage in most band’s careers, you read about the inevitable breakup and perhaps a partial reunion of two members under the old band name. 

Instead, something pretty magical happened:  Live Aid.

It was the world’s largest benefit concert.  It took place across two continents (three if you add the Australian version which aired six hours earlier than Live Aid officially kicked off).  Every major rock and pop music act on the planet ended up playing it.  The Who reunited for it, as did Black Sabbath.  Pop music giants played alongside blues and metal artists.  It wasn’t just an event, it was an EVENT!

Geldof decided to reach out to Queen despite his anger over the South Africa concerts.  Queen jumped at the chance and in one, short set that was broadcast live across two continents, Queen not only won back their old fans, they gained thousands of new ones.  It turned out to be the performance that solidified Queen as a rock band for the ages.  Watch the entire thing in the link below.

Freddy Mercury absolutely OWNS that crowd.  Brian May later called it, “The greatest day of our lives.”  He said that the band themselves played okay but Freddy Mercury took things to another level.  After the performance was over, Elton John rushed back to find them and declared, “You bastards!  You stole the show!”

It was the moment where sheer talent overcame the prejudice of image and forgave bad decisions.  

At my high school, nobody gave anyone crap for liking Queen after Live Aid.

Until next week, enjoy the links above and check out my Amazon author page where you can pick up my book The Wash.  It has absolutely nothing to do with Queen but you'll likely enjoy it anyway.

The Great Concept Album Horror: The Grand Finale

For the last several weeks, I’ve told you the stories behind some of the worst concept albums in rock music history and also a couple that are downright fantastic.  For the final column in this series, I’d like to give you a short list of some others that are magnificent.  A few of these are going to be very familiar but if you haven't heard them in a while, you should do yourself a favor and spend some time with them again.  

Pink Floyd – Dark Side of the Moon:  It’s hugely popular and famous.  Everyone’s heard of it.  If you haven’t listened in a while though, revisit it.  There’s a reason it’s the best selling concept album of all time.  It's practically flawless in its execution and flows so seamlessly from song to song that you could teach a class on proper album sequencing with it.

It spent 741 consecutive weeks  on the Billboard Album Chart.  That’s over 14 YEARS!  It has sold copies in the millions and deservedly so.  The entire album is linked above.

My Chemical Romance – Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge:  This is not an album for everyone as the music is harsh and abrasive, but check out this concept.  A man loses his life in a gunfight.  He makes a deal with the Devil in Hell that if he delivers the souls of a thousand evil men to Satan himself, he can get his life back and return to the woman he loves.  Satan hands him a gun and the rest is a breakneck ride.  That's the kind of concept that should be launching a comic book series or even a movie, so it comes as no surprise that after this album, the band's mastermind, Gerard Way, began writing for Dark Horse Comics on the side.  He was also recently announced as a writer for Marvel (on a Spiderman series, no less).

   
   My all time favorite MCR track is on this album.  It’s called “Helena” and I’ve linked it above.

Frank Zappa – Joe’s Garage Acts I, II & III:  What’s not to love about Frank Zappa?  Well, that depends on how much of a sense of humor you have.  Personally, he's one of my heroes.

The man was smart as a whip, a musical genius and had an impressively irreverent sense of humor.  All of that is apparent on Joe’s Garage.  Warning though, this is not an album for everyone.  It tells the story of the evils of rock and roll in some hilariously ribald and (let's be honest) juvenile lyrics.  While it’s not for everyone and kind of falls apart in the third act, it’s still a fun listen.  The story is told by the "Central Scrutinizer", a shadowy character who is warning the listener of the dangers of following the rock and roll lifestyle.  In particular, he wants to make sure that you keep those awful sexual urges in check (whether you're a guy or a girl).  Eventually, it goes on to preach about the values of sex robots (again, tongue firmly planted in cheek here).

   If you're not sure whether to give this a shot, listen to the link above (but be warned that it's NSFW).  The song is called "Why Does It Hurt When I Pee?".  I'm pretty sure you can guess the subject matter.  

Queensryche – Operation: Mindcrime:  It’s a heavy metal concept album that not only tells a well thought out narrative story, it does it effectively and with style.  In fact, it is done so well that the band was able to successfully play it live in concert in its entirety.  Behind the band, two video screens showed animated clips to thread the songs together in the few places it was needed.  I saw this tour when it hit Atlanta and it was amazing!

Operation: Mindcrime tells the story of a young heroin addict who is used as an assassin by a shadowy organization.  When he falls in love and decides to make a break for it, all manner of hell comes down on him and the woman he loves.  It is incredibly effective, with just the sort of down ending you want from a story like this.  The entire album is linked above, but again it may not be your cup of tea.  If you don't like your guitars loud and your rhythms driving, then you may want to go somewhere else.

Rush - Clockwork Angels:  There is no reason that the final studio album by Rush should be this good.  What's more, it's a fantastically realized concept album set in a steampunk world where life is dictated by an all-powerful Watchmaker.  One young man decides to go his own way and encounters a ton of weirdness.  

Drummer Neil Peart came up with the concept and then worked with novelist Kevin J. Anderson to write a book to accompany the release of the album.  It was so well received, Anderson wrote a sequel called Clockwork Lives.  Musically, the album is everything Rush fans love about this band.  The song "Caravan" is linked above but you can find the full album on YouTube in Playlist form.

   And of course there are a lot more great concept albums out there.  Feel free to share your favorites with me in the comments or on Facebook.  I hope you’ve enjoyed the last eight weeks or so of concept album craziness.  I know I enjoyed writing them.

  Speaking of enjoying writing, I really enjoyed writing my book The Wash and I'm pretty sure you'll enjoy reading it.  Check it out over at Amazon!