Musical Balance, Q4 2021: Wobble, Wobble, Wobble

As you might remember, gentle reader, I often posit that my musical purchases are evenly balanced between jazz songbirds and heavy metal, although the heavy metal often has female lead singers, so maybe my taste in music is pretty and lovely sounding women.

Well, since the end of August, my music balance has become all a-wobbly as I have bought music outside those simple genres (although in August, I’d admitted to buying jazz music by non-songbirds).

If you’re wondering, here’s what I got:

  • Chapter I: Monarcy by Ad Infinitum. Metal, female lead.
  • American IV: The Man Comes Around by Johnny Cash. Uh, country? Because my oldest son asked my my favorite Johnny Cash song, and I said it was the title track, but then I realized I had no Johnny Cash in my library.
  • The Dana Owens Album by Queen Latifah, after I heard her singing a jazz standard on WSIE.
  • Trav’lin’ Light by Queen Latifah, ibid, although the song I heard came from this album.
  • Chapter 2: Legacy by Ad Infinitum.
  • Welcome to Fat City by Crobot. Hard rock. A couple of the favorites on my gym playlist are from this band.
  • Original Album Classics by Pretty Maids, a five CD set that includes Red, Hot and Heavy, Future World, Jump the Gun, Sin-Decade, and Stripped. My beautiful wife introduced me to the band via Future World fifteen or so years ago; given how much I liked the band, it’s taken me a long time to fill out my collection.
  • Undress Your Madness by Pretty Maids, their 2019 album.
  • Sabotage” by the Beastie Boys (single, MP3).
  • Intergalactic” by the Beastie Boys (single, MP3). Funny; I have put these on my gym playlist, but I have not yet downloaded the first Beastie Boys cassette single I bought (“So Whatcha Want?”). I’ve never bought a whole Beastie Boys album.
  • The Pioneer” by Follow the Cipher, who are long overdue for a real CD or album.
  • Independenz by Null Positiv. I ordered the CD directly from Germany and got a signed picture from Elli Berlin for my effort.
  • Mirror, Mirror by Eliane Elias. A jazz songbird and pianist I heard on WSIE; this album is mostly the pianist.
  • American Dream by Diamante. C’mon, man, I warned you.
  • BRKN Love by BRKN Love.

So that’s 9 rock/metal albums versus 3 jazz records with 1 Johnny Cash album with three singles, of which 2 are rap and 1 is metal. Definitely unbalanced, and unfortunately no metal additions to the gym playlist yet (although I have added the Beastie Boys songs, but mostly for non-intensive workout listening).

But enough about that. Let’s talk about Elli Berlin, Melissa Bonny, and Linda Toni Grahn.

Melissa Bonny fronted Rage of Light before Ad Infinitum and is Swiss.

Elli Berlin is German, natch, and fronts Null Positiv; she does both clean and unclean vocals.

Linda Toni Grahn wore some glue-on (I hope) studs above her eyebrows in the videos for the songs on Follow the Cipher’s self-titled debut album from 2018, but I think she looks better without.

All three are worth a look and a listen.

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