Alphabet Soup (20)

Hello, it's Alphabet Soup day again and nearing Z, however today it's T Time. First slot is reserved for the Tubes their debut album has remained a favourite of mine over the many years that have gone by since it's release 32 years ago. The exuberant Malaguena Salerosa , the mad What Do You Want From Life ( a titanic unsinkable waterbed ?) and the desperate White Punks on Dope. A classic album the energy of which..so present in their big live shows was largely lost on the pre-video audience. These guys went almost broke on the cost of their shows.. ..That didn't happen to Thin White Rope , however they too were inspired by the dark side of american culture, failure, desperation, and hopelessness. Twin guitar attack, feedback and lyrics that unsettle...Finally a band that over the years has acquired a strong cult following, not withstanding the fact their four albums all went multiplatinum.The packaging of their albums, the strange videos and some of their members are deep into the metaphysical...more counter culture. All this from a band that called itself Tool (as a metaphor for a big dick)

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The Tubes - The Tubes ( 75 ^ 95mb)

The beginnings of the group originate in Phoenix, Arizona in the late '60s, where guitarist Bill Spooner, keyboardist Vince Welnick and bassist Rick Anderson formed as the Beans. After moving to San Francisco in 1972, the Beans recruited guitarist Roger Steen and drummer Prairie Prince, and later became the Tubes with the addition of Michael Cotten on keyboards and former roadie Fee Waybill on lead vocals. Over the course of the next few years, the Tubes earned a devoted cult following on the strength of Spooner's parodic songs and the group's surreal live shows, which featured Waybill adopting a variety of personas including the "crippled Nazi" Dr. Strangekiss, country singer Hugh Heifer and Quay Lewd, a drug-addled British pop star.

After signing to A&M in 1975, they released their self-titled debut, produced by Al Kooper, this album by the notorious San Francisco group is best known for the blazing anthem "White Punks on Dope." Although the Tubes' raison d'être was their shock-rock stage dynamic, Bill Spooner, Fee Waybill, and company could, on occasion, deliver some offbeat pop splendor. A good example is the song "Haloes," co-written with Kooper, a tough power pop jewel that sounds like Todd Rundgren colliding with Roxy Music. Also of note is "Boy Crazy," which shows off Spooner's guitar skills. Kooper's production is faultless, as are the horn and string arrangements by Dominic Frontiere. In the end transferring the manic energy and theatrical complexity of their live set onto record didn't come off, however, the single "White Punks on Dope" became a minor hit and a radio staple. The 76 follow up album , Young And Rich, suffered much the same fate. The Tubes were ahead of their time..the videoformat would undoubtely have done their presence much good.

After 1977's failed concept record The Tubes Now, the group toured England, where a series of banned performances made them a media sensation. However, during the recording of the concert LP What Do You Want From Live? Waybill broke his leg onstage while acting out his punk character Johnny Bugger; the remainder of the tour was cancelled, and with it died the band's chart momentum. After returning to the U.S., they recruited producer Todd Rundgren and recorded 1979's Remote Control, a concept album exploring the influence of television, good reviews but it met a similar commercial fate as its predecessors. The Tubes choreographed stage productions were expensive to produce, however, and while they earned the band a reputation for being one of the most entertaining live acts of all time, by the early 1980s they found themselves short of money. Their proposed fifth album, the self-produced Suffer for Sound, was rejected by A&M Records, who dumped the band instead, finishing out its contract with the oddities collection T.R.A.S.H. (Tubes Rarities and Smash Hits).

After signing to Capitol, they recorded 1981's Completion Backwards Principle, an album based on an actual sales training instruction manual; both "Talk to You Later" and "Don't Want to Wait Anymore" earned significant radio play, and the LP became the Tubes' first Top 40 hit. Thanks to its provocative video, the single "She's a Beauty" reached the Top Ten, and pushed the 1983 LP Outside/Inside into the Top 20 Albums chart. The band teamed up with Rundgren once again for 1985's Love Bomb, a flop that led Capitol to drop the band just as it was going on tour in support of the album, a tour that would leave the band a half million dollars in debt, forcing them to play low-budget gigs for a year to pay off their debts. After which the Tubes disbanded, and Welnick later joined the Grateful Dead. In 1993, the Tubes reunited; consisting of Waybill, Steen, Anderson, Prince and new keyboardist Gary Cambra, they toured the U.S. and Europe before releasing a new LP, Genius of America, in 1996. In 2000, the Tubes embarked on another extensive tour, issuing the greatest-hits-live album Tubes World Tour to commemorate the event.



01 - Up From The Deep (4:27)
02 - Haloes (4:49)
03 - Space Baby (4:22)
04 - Malaguena Salerosa (3:48)

05 - Mondo Bondage (4:28)
06 - What Do You Want From Life (3:59)
07 - Boy Crazy (4:07)
08 - White Punks On Dope (6:41)

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Thin White Rope - Sack Full Of Silver (90 ^ 99mb)

Taking their name from William S. Burroughs' euphemism for ejaculation, Thin White Rope was founded in Davis, California in 1984; although the time and place of their formation aligned them with both the Paisley Underground and roots-rock movements, the group quickly staked out its own musical territory, divining their own unique brand of dark, surreal desert-rock. Thin White Rope was largely based on singer/songwriter/guitarist Guy Kyser and guitarist Roger Kunkel, with a changing line-up of drummers and bass guitarists. It was noted for its twin guitar attack, innovative use of feedback structures and Guy Kyser's harsh, tightly-coiled vocals and unsettling lyrics .

While Thin White Rope's 1985 debut Exploring the Axis flirted with neo-psychedelia, the 1987 follow-up Moonhead upped the ante by allowing the desperation of Kyser's lyrics to take full command of the music: unrelentingly grim and harrowingly provocative, the album's best songs "Crawl Piss Freeze" and "If Those Tears" were postcards from the edge. Following the addition of new bassist John von Feldt, 1988's In the Spanish Cave continued along the same path, albeit with a renewed sense of humor and more oblique wordplay.

Though garnering little notice stateside, Thin White Rope earned a solid fanbase in Europe, and even became the first American independent-label act to tour the Soviet Union. 1990's Sack Full of Silver, a collection of songs written while on tour abroad. Sack Full of Silver is, in many ways, one of Thin White Rope's most fully realized sets, blending the group's early alt-psychedelic influences and a growing taste for dusty Americana flavors. Sack Full of Silver is defined by the voice of Guy Kyser: the aural equivalent of the flat, parched, endless landscape an environment where failure, desperation, and hopelessness are common currency, adding up one's losses and moving on feels like a great victory. "The Ghost" catches its subject in the moment before that turning point, looking ahead as a life of loss begins to flood in. Revealing that they are working within a wider frame of reference, the group adapt Can's "Yoo Doo Right," distilling the original's 20 minutes into a compact, bursting rock number.

1991's T W R released The Ruby Sea, a dense, atmospheric work highlighted by the riveting "Clown Song." It proved to be Thin White Rope's studio swan song: in 1992 the band split, and while most of the players continued performing in various musical projects, Kyser devoted himself to a career as a botanist. The posthumous The One That Got Away 6-28-92 Ghent, a two-disc live set recorded in Belgium peppered with odd covers of Lee and Nancy's "Some Velvet Morning," Bob Dylan's "Outlaw Blues" and Hawkwind's "Silver Machine," appeared in 1993; Spoor, a collection of demos, remixes and rare tracks, followed two years later.



01 - Hidden Lands (3:00)
02 - Sack Full Of Silver (2:09)
03 - Yoo Doo Right (6:01)
04 - The Napkin Song (1:28)
05 - Americana/The Ghost (8:15)
06 - The Ghost (3:42)
07 - Whirling Dervish (5:36)
08 - Diesel Man (3:40)
09 - On The Floe (4:51)

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Tool - Ænima (96 ^ 171mb)

During the 1980s, each of the future members of Tool moved to Los Angeles. Both Paul D'Amour and Adam Jones wanted to enter the film industry, while Maynard James Keenan found employment remodeling pet stores after having studied visual arts in Michigan.Danny Carey performed as a drummer for Green Jellÿ and played in the Los Angeles area with Pigmy Love Circus. The Keenan and Jones eventually met in 89 and started jamming, gradually extending via friends, playing sessions, the name came about Keenan explains "Tool is exactly what it sounds like: It's a big dick. It's a wrench.... we are... your tool; use us as a catalyst in your process of finding out whatever it is you need to find out, or whatever it is you're trying to achieve."

After only a few gigs, the band was approached by record companies,and only three months into their career they signed a record deal with Zoo Entertainment. In March 1992, Zoo published the band's first effort, Opiate. Described by the band as "slam and bang" heavy metal and the "hardest sounding" six songs they had written to that point, the EP included the singles "Hush" and "Opiate". The band's first music video, "Hush", promoted their dissenting views about the then-prominent Parents Music Resource Center and its advocacy of the censorship of music. The video featured the band members naked with their genitalia covered by parental advisory stickers and their mouths covered by duct tape.
Tool's greatest breakthrough was to introduce dark, vaguely underground metal to the preening pretentiousness of art rock. Or maybe it was introducing the self-absorbed pretension of art rock to the wearing grind of post-thrash metal -- the order really doesn't matter. Even with their post-punk influences, they executed their music with the ponderous, anti-song aesthetic of prog rock, alternating between long, detailed instrumental interludes and tuneless, pseudo-meaningful lyrical rants conveying the strangled, oppressive angst of alternative rock in their songs.

It landed Tool a slot on the third Lollapalooza tour in 1993, which helped their first full-length debut album, Undertow, rocket into platinum status. The single "Sober" became a hit single by March 1994 and won the band Billboard's "Best Video By A New Artist" award for the accompanying stop motion music video. With the follow-up single "Prison Sex", the band again became the target of censorship. The song's lyrics and video dealt with child abuse, which sparked controversial reactions.

In September 1995, the band entered the studios to record their second album. At that time Tool experienced its only lineup change to date, with bassist D'Amour leaving the band amicably to pursue other projects. Justin Chancellor, a member of former tourmates Peach, came on board, and recording of the already-begun Ænima continued. The band enlisted the help of producer David Bottrill, who had produced some of King Crimson's albums while Jones collaborated with Cam de Leon to create Ænima's Grammy-nominated artwork. Tool are conceptually innovative with every minute detail of their art, sonically, the band has never sounded tighter. Long exploratory passages are unleashed with amazing precision, detail, and clarity, which only complements the aggressive, abrasive shorter pieces on the album. There is no compromise from any member of the band, with each of them discovering the dynamics of his respective instrument and pushing the physical capabilities to the limit. Topics such as the philosophies of Bill Hicks (eloquently eulogized in the packaging), evolution and genetics, and false martyrdom will fly over the heads of casual listeners. But those listening closely will discover a special treat: a catalyst encouraging them to discover a world around them to which they otherwise might have been blind.

By the time the band delivered their belated follow-up, Ænima, in 1996, alternative rock had lost its grip on the mainstream of America, and their audience had shaped up as essentially metal-oriented, which meant that the group and the record didn't capture as big an audience as their first album, despite debuting at number two on the charts. After a co-headlining slot with Korn on Lollapalooza '97 wrapped up, Tool remained on the road, supporting Ænima until well into the next year.

During their usual extended hiatus between albums, Maynard James Keenan decided to use his downtime productively by forming a side project, dubbed A Perfect Circle. The band's 2000 debut, Mer de Noms, was a surprise hit, while their ensuing tour was a sold-out success as well. With Tool breakup rumors swirling, the band put the speculation to rest by re-entering the recording studio and issuing the stopgap B-sides/DVD set Salival late the same year. Finally, May 2001 saw the release of Tool's third full-length release, Lateralus, which debuted at the number one position on the Billboard album chart and became the band's biggest hit. They received their second Grammy Award for the best metal performance of 2001 for the song "Schism". Extensive touring throughout 2001 and 2002 supported Lateralus and included a personal highlight for the band: a 10-show joint mini-tour with King Crimson in August 2001.

After the obligatory several-year sabbatical to pursue other projects, the group returned with another chart-topper, 10,000 Days, in 2006. It debuted at the top spots of various international charts. 10,000 Days sold 564,000 copies in its opening week in the US and was number one on the Billboard 200 charts. However, 10,000 Days was received less favorably by critics than its predecessor Lateralus had been. After the release of 10,000 Days, a tour kicked off at Coachella on April 30, 2006. The touring schedule was similar to the Lateralus tour of 2001.

Meanwhile, "Vicarious" was a nominee for Best Hard Rock Performance and 10,000 Days won Best Recording Package at the 49th Grammy Awards. In an interview conducted in May 2007, Justin Chancellor stated that the band would probably continue their tour until early 2008 and then "take some time off". He qualified this statement by adding that the band has already written new material and would surely release another album at some point down the road. A possible project until a next album is to make a "band movie".



01 - Stinkfist (5:11)
02 - Eulogy (8:29)
03 - H. (6:07)
04 - Useful Idiot (0:39)
05 - Forty Six & 2 (6:03)
06 - Message To Harry Manback (1:53)
07 - Hooker With A Penis (4:34)
08 - Intermission (0:56)
09 - Jimmy (5:24)
10 - Die Eier Von Satan (2:17)
11 - Pushit (9:56)
12 - Cesaro Summability (1:26)
13 - Ænema (6:40)
14 - (-) Ions (4:00)
15 - Third Eye (13:47)

a lite Ænima perhaps ?

Tool - Ænima (96, 77min 99mb)

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All downloads are in * ogg-7 (224k) or ^ ogg-9(320k), artwork is included , if in need get the nifty ogg encoder/decoder here !