My Favorite Music of 2010: Them Crooked Vultures

courtesy of my blog: http://cjferrara.blogspot.com

It's December. Time for Holidays, and the year in review. One of the goals of this blog was to chronicle the events of the year. So, it's fitting that this final month will be dedicated to looking back.

I blog entirely too much about politics, and should blog more about music. So, I figured I'm going to train myself by reviewing my favorite Albums of the previous year.

Now, I'm a Napster user, and as much as I like to think of myself as a connoisseur of music, I actually haven't heard that much, but what I DID download this year, I'm going to comment on, hoping that readers who didn't give this stuff a chance would give it a listen.

If you know of music that I should check out, PLEASE comment to me!

The first goes, technically, back to last year, but the end of last year. It's the self titled album by super group Them Crooked Vultures. I'd have completely ignored this group had it not been for a fortunate SNL performance, which caused me to go, "Hey, that's the guy from Queens of the Stone Age! (Joshua Homme) And look, Dave Grohl, ON DRUMS! And who's that old guy on bass?" Turns out it's John Paul Jones. Yeah, THAT John Paul Jones... from Led Zeppelin.

What I love about the album is that it's original without being... how shall I say this... BAD.

So many bands strive to so something different. Unique. A break from the same old pop music. And in doing so, come up with an entirely new sound, that sounds horrible. In their quest for uniqueness, they forget that there's a reason nobody tried to do that before.

Now, two groups that are exceptional at exploring new sounds are Queens of the Stone Age, and way back when, Led Zeppelin. Even Nirvana, when Dave Grohl played drums were unique and exploratory in their songwriting. So put them together, and you are guaranteed to have never heard anything like this before. But in a good way.

What the music industry needs are more musicians taking THIS approach to exploring, and less of the crap that IS out there.

"Them Crooked Vultures" is great for Rock and Roll Palate Cleansing. To stimulate senses after having them been dulled by hearing a lot of classic rock. Instead of hearing the Stones for the 20th time today, pop in this album to wake up your creative sensibilities.