Dollar Disc Dare Postmortem

I bought, I listened, I conquered!
Or survived, anyway.

So, to answer the query in my original Dollar Disc Dare post, YES you can mine goodness from the dollar rack. I went two for three on this round, a fine ROI for three bucks and a few minutes of browsing.

The Brand New Heavies disc ended up sounding a lot like Shelter, which was great. High gloss pop/funk isn't my usual thing, but I like these cats. Shelter was a bit stronger overall, but for a buck I won't kick. Thumbs up.

New Wave Goes to Hell was a letdown, given its seemingly can't miss high concept. New Wave! Industrial gothic! Geeez people, the thing makes its own sauce!

But there were a couple of problems- firstly, lack of a fresh vision. There's more similarity than you might think between synth-heavy new wave hits and synth-heavy alterna/gothic/techno/industrial. Most of the groups were happy to roll with fairly straightforward covers, which resulted in many tunes sounding basically the same with weaker execution.

I also had some problems with their definition of terms- my idea of "industrial" leans more toward Skinny Puppy, Ministry and genre pioneers like Throbbing Gristle & Einstürzende Neubauten. A lot of these cats sound little different from mainstream electronic dance music. And okay, since when is INXS considered 'new wave'? I liked the cover of Don't Change, but c'mon now.

But then compilations are always a mixed bag. There was only one absolute turd, a profoundly uninspired cover of the tremendous How Soon Is Now that sampled the original Johnny Marr riff and surrounded it with a bunch of lame keyboard noodling. Most were okay and a couple were interesting, creative reworkings of the original tunes. I'd give it a B-. Again, not bad for a buck.

The only absolute wet, barking dog was TTD's Vibrator. And it was a mystery, because his voice is fantastic and everything *sounded* like a real song....but it was just pure ass. Here's a lyrical sample from the first track:

Laughing children seldom weep
Laughing angels never sleep
When your candle is burning low
Strike a match and curse the darkness
Feel it shaking like a bowl of soup
Let it go loop de loop
Starts the shaking
Like you can't stop it

I actually groaned and thought "did I hear that right?" on the 'soup' line.

Just terrible songwriting. One dollar was way more than it was worth.


But two keepers out of three dollar CDs isn't bad. I'll dump TTD in their free box with no regrets.

When next I have free time to browse I'll revisit the dollar rack and see if I can find more diamonds in the rough.