Many years ago, more than I care to count, my girlfriend at the time accused me of saying that "everything cool was invented by Pink Floyd, the Melvins, or Steve Albini." Up to that point, I was unaware of the degree to which I was singing his praises, but it's no surprise that I was doing so to the point of annoyance - at the time, I was listening to his catalogue with alarming regularly... much to the chagrin of anyone who happened to be riding in the car with me. And while that girlfriend did end up a Melvins fan before long, I don't think I converted many members of my captive audiences to Albini's music.. their loss. But then, this week was everyone's loss. I suppose I got to see the news of Steve Albini's death a little before it entered the general consciousness - I'm friends (in both the original and social media senses) with enough musicians and music fans, people who appreciated for him for himself and his work, rather than his adjacency to l...

This is an anniversary that, as the quintessential 90s kids cuspers X-lennials Oregon Trail Generation “ geriatric millennials ” was impossible to avoid. While we may not have been teenagers when their final album was released, the echo that Nirvana left throughout our adolescence was massive. Even aside from their own music and attitude, they helped open the door to an “alternative” culture that affected every part of our lives. When the Nevermind anniversary rolled around a few years ago, we didn’t do a Never Say Disc feature - it seemed like everybody was talking about the record and impact it had. This time though, the coverage seems muted, limited mostly to the fans and music scholars. And that’s a pity, In Utero is a unique and significant record… to us personally, to the music and culture of the time, and, yes, to the people that made it, even on the edge of the precipice. We have the hindsight of knowing what happened next, and there’s no way to separate this record from t...

Star Wars Day may have come and gone, but this May has a different significance for the franchise: the fortieth anniversary of the third film, The Return of the Jedi. Not only did this movie bring the original phase of Star Wars to a close, its significant in the lives of the Never Say Dice founders as the both the first Star Wars movie to be released in our lifetimes, and as the series’ ending during our most formative years (Ewok movies notwithstanding). While it’s no longer Star Wars’s cinematic capstone and many of its plot points have been rendered moot in subsequent installments, Jedi remains an important part of our development, both in our relationship to the franchise and in our understanding of what narrative means and is capable of. So let’s venture to the Galaxy Far, Far Away for the final time… or so we once thought. A : Return of the Jedi is little more than a marketing ploy to get children to buy toys. That's why they put the Ewoks in there. Cute little furry things...

In previous New Year’s posts , Never Say Dice has gathered up the courage to do some self-reflection and spend a little time reviewing and making New Year's resolutions. It might be time to check in on how we did with 2022’s propositions, but this year we’ve decided to take things a bit easier on ourselves. We’ve all had a few rough years, and while we encourage you to make your own resolutions, and will still make some ourselves, we think everyone could use a break. Instead of the pomp and circumstance of New Year's resolutions, how about we take a look at a few things we plan to enjoy in the coming year taking the guise of past media, present media and media yet to come. - A A : Much to my chagrin, Never Say Dice has yet to complete all of the accomplishments I had hoped it would in 2022. I can say, however, that we've made significant progress on those fronts and leave it at that. As far as personal goals, I’m happy to say that I've spent some time playing games wit...

The NASA mission may have been canceled, but the They Might Be Giants album lives on in its memory. The album cover that looks like it comes out of the writing of Douglas Adams * , and built like how we pick images for this site. That cover alone should give you a good expectation of the strangeness within. It is a classic clash of music, controversy and the weirdness you come to expect if you’re a fan of They Might Be Giants. Perhaps it is not their most popular recording, even at the time, but there are a number of interesting things to look at and listen to as the album celebrates its 30th anniversary. So take a look with us in our rear-view mirrors and check out Apollo 18 in actual size in this edition of Never Say Disc.  - A  * It does appear in Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke , though. - B A Side : Apollo 18 is a strange album full of trademark They Might Be Giants weirdness, and I have a strange relationship with it as well. I wouldn’t call it my favorite of their ...

This year both the blog's founders have turned or will be turning 40, and Ozzy Osbourne’s solo career is celebrating similar milestones, with 2021 being the 40th anniversary of both the US release of his debut solo album Blizzard of Ozz and the worldwide release of its follow-up, Diary of a Madman. We reviewed Black Sabbath's debut album around this time last year for its own 50th anniversary as the first installment of our “ Never Say Disc ” segment, and it’s only fitting to follow it up with a post on the former Sabbath singer’s first solo efforts. In the future, we'll probably take a look at Dio's early solo work as well. Before then, and when our obsession with dice games allows for it, we hope to cover other artists, genres and topics. But first, we’re off to see the Blizzard… - A A Side: My copy of Blizzard of Ozz has been played so many times that I didn’t really need to do another listen before starting this post (even though I did anyway). It was one of the ...

One rainy Sunday a few weeks ago, I was stuck in traffic and listening to one of my all-time favorite records: Black Sabbath’s self-titled 1970 debut. Briefly, I lamented that I hadn’t gone into music criticism, despite my love of good music writing and Scrooge McDuck quantity of amassed unsolicited opinions records. If only I had a some kind of venue to try my hand at it...  and then I remembered that I did! Before I made it past the stoplight (it was that kind of rainy Sunday traffic) I had come up with the idea of a media review section for this blog, the name “Never Say Disc,” and our subject of its first post. Given our shared love of Black Sabbath and the fact that Halloween would fall on a Saturday this year, it was obvious that we'd need to inaugurate our new media section by talking about Black Sabbaths’s Black Sabbath . - B  Side B In my personal history of rock music, there is a specific point at which All Things Were Set in Motion, a temporal locus, if you will. A...