October 2004 Archives

In order to prepare for the experience this CD will give you, I ask that you and a friend please find a telephone pole. You’ll also need to buy some strong rope, and a roll of duct tape. As soon as you find a good pole, ask your friend to tie and tape you securely to it, but leave your arms free. Your friend should also bring a portable CD player and the CD, or maybe beforehand, encode the album to an iPod in 320 kbps MP3s. 

You may be wondering what kind of drugs I’m on right now to be saying all this, or perhaps you’re just wondering why should you do this? It’s rather simple—you’ll need something that strong to keep you standing as you endlessly applaude this awesome record.

I’m not going to lie—the reviews I’ve written thus far have been all amazing praises to excellent recordings. I don’t know why I would waste time or space writing about albums I don’t like. I just wanted to get that out in the open—on with the review.

Overall Review. I love Keith Caputo. I loved him while he sang for the legendary NYHC band Life of Agony, and continued to love him the moment he decided to have a solo career. As far as I’m concerned, Keith cannot do any wrong when it comes to being a musician. His voice alone is unique, distinct, and extremely powerful. He knows how to truly deliver the emotion of a song; the defining vibe. He can carry a note for hours on end. And with that voice comes just unreal, deep, emotional lyrics that I can truly relate to, sometimes even empathize with. I love everything about his musicial talents.

With Live Monsters, I honestly didn’t know what to expect. All I knew it was a collection of live performances of songs from his previous recording, Perfect Little Monsters. As soon as you hear the words "live recordings" or "live performances," you automatically think that it’s not really going to be the best sounding record, but ah ha! We stand fully corrected. I’ll even go as far to admit that the versions of some of the PLM tracks on this CD are much better renditions; the recording of these live tracks is spectacular. Keith surely knows his audio to pick legendary mastering engineer George Marino from Sterling Sound to not only master this record, but Perfect Little Monsters as well.

My track-by-track review. This album has only eight songs, but clocks at around 56 minutes of music, which is great. Long albums mean the tracks are generally 4-6 minutes a piece, but here we have a few that last around 8 minutes long! Yes!!!

Charade (Live, Aschaffenburg, Germany; 9.7.03). This piece of art opens with the same track that opens the studio recording. You hear the audience cheer as Keith and his band—TheDropOutRebelGeniusBand—take to the stage and prepare to kick into gear. Mind you, this track is performed with an acoustic guitar, and you can hear the echo from Keith’s voice through the P.A. as he begins to sing the first few verses. I mean, what else can I say? This track really does speak for itself. You have to listen to it to get what I’m trying to merely convey through words. This is just a real TIGHT version of the song.

Pet K (Live, Eindhoven, Holland; 10.9.03). Here’s a track that makes its debut to the public via a live performance, and then pressed onto this CD. It’s also one of the two I truly love on this album, primarily because how it is played and sung—it starts off real slow and mellow. and then about halfway through, it starts gettin’ a little heavier and louder, as you hear the electric guitar start to warble in the background. Keith then just busts out and takes the song to a whole new level. I love songs that are sung this way—long notes carried out at full gusto. It’s that type of vocals that really evokes a good punch into the soul, you know what I mean? And Keith is the only one I know of who can deliver such emotion with that style. Beautiful stuff, and obviously at the end of the tune when you can hear the audience go crazy, you know they loved it just as much as I did.

Catmeat (Live, Eindhoven, Holland; 10.9.03). One thing we can never put past Keith is his choices for song titles, hehe. At first, it really sounds silly or funny, but as the song plays through and you listen to the lyrics, it all eventually makes sense. It’s safe to say that would be the case with this track, which is my absolute favorite of the entire CD.

Keith’s vocals are quite similar to the previous track as it is in this one. Once again we find the song starting out quietly, real mellow, almost like you’re about to hear a sitar come out from the middle of nowhere. You can definitely hear a 1960s musical vibe floating around in there with the psychedelia happening. Also he continues to bust out with his vibrant, distinct vocals as he cries out, "Take me home, take me home again!" Just another classic take at the Keith Caputo School of Emotional and Soul Evoking.

Were What I Say (Kink-FM Studios, Hilversum, Holland; 10.12.03). Keith and the band dive back into Perfect Little Monsters for their next track, and this version really gives the song the justice it deserves. It’s pretty straight-forward jazzy type of rock that still carries a hard groove because of that electric guitar. Nothing strayed away from the original; all in all this a fine tune—tastes great, less filling.

Seafarer (Kink-FM Studios, Hilversum, Holland; 10.12.03). It seems they visited the Perfect Little Monsters album only once, for it’s right back to an unreleased track. I do enjoy this song very much, primarily because it seems it’s become a trademark for Keith to start out mellow and peaceful, and then explode like a well-shaken can of Coke® after it hits the floor. What makes this tune a lil’ more special though, is how at the end the band busts out in a rock and roll jam with a killer guitar solo and all the fine trimmings. It’s a rock and roll Thanksgiving, and Keith not only shot the turkey, but he chopped its head off, plucked it, seasoned it, and then threw it on the oven, and now the table gives him the honor of carving it. Amen!

Crack of Your Mind (Live, Zwolle, Holland; 9.26.03). It is now the time for us to start turning the bend as we begin to drive on the home stretch of the CD.

Lyrically, this is my favorite track of the record, and honestly, I can easily compare it to the song "Home" from Keith’s first CD, Died Laughing. It just carries that same vibe with me. It’s not ironic that "Home" is my favorite track on that first CD as well. I truly enjoy how Keith carries himself through this song. I can almost imagine him sitting on stage with just a spotlight on him as he sings the acoustic guitar parts, and then as the rest of the band comes in, the other lights focus on them. It’s also the first song I notice that has background vocals as well. "Don’t you throw it all away…" It’s really a very beautiful song.

Got Monsters (Kink-FM Studios, Hilversum, Holland; 10.12.03). What would be the third track from the studio recording makes an appearance as track number seven on Live Monsters. I’ll say it again—this version really defines the song. I do enjoy the piano Keith plays as well. Honestly, this version makes me more sad than the original, but it’s a good sad, not a depressing "woe is me" sad.

Everything Under the Sun (Live, Eindhoven, Holland; 10.9.03). Here we are, on the open road, driving straight into the horizon. We’ve made our turns, drove over the bridges and through the tunnels, and now we land at our final destination.

This album is truly a great CD for taking long drives, you can put it in and listen to it over and over without getting tired of it. I couldn’t tell you what a great song this final track is. Not only is it once again piano-oriented, but it really reminds me of one of the bonus tracks from the Japanese import of Died Laughing, "Yesterday is an Eternity." This track was also covered before that album came out on the first demo Keith recorded called Absolute Bloom, but had a different title then. This track is also a culmination of everything on the whole cd, as in it takes a lil’ bit of slow singing goodness, and mixes it with kick ass psychedelia rock and roll, and just ties it all back down with the same punch-in-the-gut singing as it winds down to the point where you see you have arrived home, or to wherever your destination may be. Good times all the way.

And there you have it, my fine friends—a very colorful review to a colorfully awesome CD. I HIGHLY recommend y’all pick up a copy on straight from Keith’s website (I must give credit where credit is most certainly due: Alan Robert of Life of Agony has done an awesome re-vamp of Keith’s site, as well the official LoA site, and an awesome job with Keith on the Live Monsters digipak design!), Keith Caputo dot com. I most certainly look forward to any and all of Keith’s future solo projects, but of course, I am very excited to hear the new Life of Agony record in 2005. Another interjection, if you will—Congrats on getting signed again, this time to Epic Records! Those short snippets of the new songs found on the official LoA website sound very much in the vein of their second album—my favorite by LoA—Ugly, so I am very, very excited. Now do yourselves a favor and listen to those two-minute samples below, then go to Keith’s site and order the CD!