If you have ever wondered why the f*ck did the Chipmunks have to exist, now you know. None of us could have comprehended such higher purpose at the time.
10 year old me: "This is dumb. Why do they even produce this squeaky music?" Voice from the future: "The year is 2020. A global pandemic rages and major cities across the globe are ghost towns. However, the spark of civil unrest has been lit, and riots are spreading across the US as the president marches through the street with a bible and riot cops at his side. Within the year, violence will even overtake the capital as the very security of our democracy is threatened. Then, and only then, will you understand the chipmunk sludge punk album."
@@ryanwalraven812 I wish your comment didn't evoke such feelings of negative nostalgia in me. I wish it didn't. This is one of the best things I've read on RU-vid in a minute.
@@MarthaRoseQuartzOh, Christ, they were utterly repugnant to me--but I was really fascinated by the music and the production technique as a kid in the mid-late 80s. I figured out how they did it by playing around with a record player and a tape recorder (I was a big electronics geek at the time). The thing is, before computers, you really had to have talent to do this. You have to sing precisely at half speed AND with perfect pitch--otherwise it sounds like hot garbage (like what I managed to create lol). I really don't know how much of the music they made themselves and how much of it was instrumental tracks mixed with their voices (and if that changed over the years), but you can hear in the earliest cartoons that they were still getting the hang of even doing the voices, although it's possible they did them really slowly for young children--not sure on that. A couple of years ago (I think when the pandemic lockdown had just started, because I was really scraping the bottom of the barrel for things to do) I found the sludgefest, and I was like "THESE GUYS WERE F!@#$ BRILLIANT" hahah. I had recorded a little of it and slowed it down off the air as a kid, but I did not have the perspicacity to appreciate it. Plus, some of the genres of music it resembled hadn't even been invented yet, I think.
The Sludge Never Dies album was a watershed moment for the band. Coming off the Chipmunks On 16 Speed album release and tour, the band was reeling from personal issues and substance abuse, but Alvin's determination to put together a new release before the end of '89 proved stronger, and a rambunctious 4 week studio session that involved at least 3 overdoses and one small fire culminated in this 51 minute clanger, an experimental, defiantly weird album that left critics sharply divided but was widely popular across the midwestern sludge and post-punk scene.
"Kids In America" is a lot darker after I saw that documentary about the Chipmunks' legacy. I'll never get that infamous scene out of my head, the interview with that 11 year old boy from '91 who says he got addicted to smack after seeing Theodore inject on stage. It ended with him flicking his arm and trying to get one of his veins to surface up while he wrapped a big rubber strap around his bicep. "I just tell my parents that they're spider bites."
I remember listening to this on Vinyl, and Theodore Has a Crisis and Vocalizes in Terror was a beautifully absurd way to end Side A, whose context is lost in the digital age.
I know I’m a bit late to the party, but “Theodore has a crisis and vocalizes in terror (interlude)” has absolutely been performed by either Moby or Björk.
A little know fact is that bjork and Simon had a kinda fling when she was still in the Sugarcubes she does an interview where she basically admits that the peyote fueled jam sessions with Simon provided her inspiration for the vespertine album. The interview is for her hometown paper so it's in Icelandic and hard to find
Theodore was probably the most traumatized of the group. Even with the physical abuse he suffered from Alvin (not to mention the drugs), the gaslighting he suffered from Simon was probably more debilitating. It's sort of a perfect storm situation. I get that he should still be responsible for his actions, but I can't help but wonder if Theodore might have made different choices that night, refusing Alvin's GHB spiked drink, and standing up to Simon, who had a very peculiar relationship to Elanor, the tragedy that unfolded, wouldn't have, and Elanor would still be alive, and Theodore wouldn't be in prison.
It's just a great song in general in terms of being slowed down. I've found versions that I'd say even surpass this, which I never thought I'd ever say.
These were all distributed on records when they were first released, so all you had to do was play the record slow to find their real voices. The reason they sounded squeaky was simply from playing the voices at a high speed, which is the reason for all the record scratching in this song.
Yeah, it comes from a shovelware game which was created around the time, and due to, the popularity of those live action movies, given the other songs included in the game (like Walking On The Sun), it seems like anyone higher up didn't really care what songs they threw in there so they just changed the lyrics barely enough to the point where they could keep a kid friendly rating and I love that.
It's a damn shame that Alvin took "rock and weed" a bit too literally. He got out of rehab the day they started recording, and the day it hit the shelves he was back in for his fifth stint. Amazed that they didn't get dropped by the label sooner, given the fact that he just about killed Theodore during "Kids In America." You can still hear his screaming if you pay close attention after Alvin shoved his face into an amplifier.
This album was rife with studio interference. While arguably a more critically acclaimed album, this sharply divided the band that eventually lead to them splitting up. Theodore refused to play any of the songs in a even time signature, which lead to them hiring session drummer Jeff Porcaro to replace him on every track. Fresh out of rehab for the 4th time Alvin got really into working out and, by all accounts, was probably on steroids. He was always about to explode and the band felt they were always walking on egg shells. Simon was constantly trying to keep the peace, which lead to Alvin eventually breaking his jaw with a mic stand during the recording of Kids in America. His agonizing scream was left in the mix and can be heard at the 20:58 mark.
The notion that Porcaro re-recorded *all* of Theodore’s parts is a myth, it was just the opening and closing tracks, which Alvin wanted done in a very precise way that Theo just couldn’t hack. To his credit, he’d master it by the time the SND tour got underway. Check out their Live in Boston album, Theo nails Blitzkrieg Bop like a boss.
My favorite thing about this band is the way that on every album, everyone has their own pet favorite song, their own little obsession. I almost wonder if Alvin and the boys were really tapping into some deeper vein of the Jungian unconscious, like they figured out a way to say the same words we've heard before, the same platitudes and slogans that threaten to drown all our thoughts, our intentions, in bland consumerism and starry-eyed poptimism, and whisper those same words to us in a slurred-speech spell that penetrates past all the bullshit and becomes something like an addiction, a substance, an poisonous obsession, much like the ones that each of the members themselves struggled with, like perfection reflecting perversion in a cracked mirror. Idk. Maybe I'm rambling, the weekend's liquid quagmire is starting to take hold. R.I.P. Alvin
it's not 1/16th. it's a 33.33 repeating record being played on a 16 speed turntable. so it's a little under half speed. or maybe it's a 45 speed record, meaning it's a little above 1/3 speed
@@seanbrautigan7906 I wouldn't say Hurt specifically, but it absolutely feels like 90s NIN. I was trying to place exactly what 90s vibe it was giving me and you cracked the code for what I was thinking.
I saw these guys open for Carcinogen in my friend's basement in Oakland back in '93. Alvin was huge into speedballing at the time and threw up all over the crowd and himself during Kids in America. someone who Simon owed money to showed up and tried to fight him on stage and we had to kick everyone out and their show stopped early. Carcinogen still went on and was fucking awesome though
I cant believe they forced Alvin into the studio after he shot up his girlfriend with that fatal overdose. They had to shove him into the record label's company car just as they shoved her stretcher into the ambulance. This recording perfectly captured the guilt he was trapped with inside the mic booth. The chambers of his heart being eaten alive. Not knowing by the time he finished laying this track down, she would be dead, and he would be laying her casket down as well.
That interlude though. The day the fandom held their breath. I will never forget that first moment, when we all though Alvin and Co. had finally cracked into pure acid while on tape.
16:22 and 36:16 after several failed albums and conflicts within the band caused by Alvin's heroin addiction, in 1994 the Chipmunks released a post-grunge album as a last ditch effort to stay relevant and save the band from being dropped by their label.
I’ll never forget the split in the fanbase’s opinion when this project dropped, just mere months after Alvin’s untimely death, and years removed from the split of the band, “Sludge Never Dies” was either a shameless, gross, lame attempt at a cashgrab, or it was a beautiful, transcendent, fitting artistic end to the group and their discography. It was more of a collection of unreleased works that were made back in the group’s hay-day, but with finished/polished composition and mastering from Dave and other producers, it had a bit of a newer flavor to it. It really brought the band back into prominence and put Theodore back onto his feet, so for what it’s worth, thank god for this album and may Alvin rest peacefully with God.
If you are not listening to this at volumes so high that the neighbours think that you are covering up the sounds of murdering someone, and call in the police - you are not listening at all.
The last thing Alvin was involved in before he locked himself in the microwave the last words of him were not words more so screams and the sounds of his popping blood and skin
I'm glad I was there when it all happened. A moment in history like this only comes once in a lifetime, never to be repeated. Thanks for bringing back all the memories I was trying to forget.
I relate. sludge, doom, and the economics of global colonialism at the height of the industrial revolution are the only three things i have any interest in anymore
Christ, forgot how much love they put into Walkin' On The Sun. Through all the pain, suffering, and Mocscow Mule infused rampages they really let Theodore go CRAZY with his vocal work on that track (and the interlude of course). Fun fact! The nastily modulated guitar riff was performed on a bootleg Casio by Carmen Alonso of Jem and The Holograms fame. Despite being a prolific drummer, she was known to experiment with synth production and dub every chance she had outside of touring. Pretty sure she was onsite by pure coincidence during the recording of Sludge Never Dies, might've been a schedule overlap for all we know! The ONLY reason she was credited as a collaborator, but not listed as a feature, was because her agent had a hunch that the Chipmunks were just a few inches away from teetering over the edge and bro wanted to minimize Raya's odds of getting roped into that bullshit.
That was actually Alvin shooting at simon's feet for playing the wrong tempo. The Chipmunks refused to do another take, so they had no choice but to leave it in. Their label really wanted to give them a cleaner and more commercial image, but no matter how hard they tried they couldn't hide the Chipmunks' darkness and toxicity
Theodore has a Crisis and Vocalizes in Terror (Interlude) is one of the most disorienting and terrifying things I've heard in a long time. (^ Complementary)
You may be right! I may be melting... But it just might be some 16 speed you're lookin for... Im becoming sludge, don't try to save me This may be wrong, I'm melting down, but it feels so right!!
This period was an inevitability. All those years, being a " cover band" and having their work hijacked and sped up ....for a GAG? I didn't blame them a bit for saying to hell with it. They financed the first one with their own money. The label ,being a label, smelled money.
I CANT BELIEVE THE BASSIST FOR MY FAVOURITE 90S SLUDGE METAL BAND WAS HIT BY DRUNK DRIVER!!!!!! (haha guys get it it sounds like acid bath haha im original guys haha)
it's like some lost sub-pop record. i'm half expecting steven jesse bernstein to jump in with a four minute rant about john hinckley and nancy reagan or something.