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If you like Black Sabbath, you'll love John Tesh
These Internet CD shops give me a good laugh every now and then. I remember a few months back going to one site to see what it could recommend and it showed what purchases folks who bought certain groups were making. It was real funny because it presented these stats like they were stone-cold truth. The BS list of recommends was the funniest because it put Weird Al Yankovic and Parliament-Funkadelic in the top 5 list of recommendations. *AHEAD OF* Deep Purple, Ozzy, Rainbow, and some other groups.
I can't remember the site, but I did go check out http://www.cdnow.com to see what their album advisor could come up with.
The results astonished me.
OK, so a bunch of the recommendations made sense, with links to Deep Purple, Rainbow, and Metallica. Oddly enough, very few Ozzy links got mentioned. What got me going was how lame the connection between BS and the recommend was, if any at all.
Here's the list of some of the more astonishing recommendations cdnow.com made. *I am not making these up.* Go there and check them out for yourself.
If you like BLACK SABBATH, you'll like...
1. Best of Three Dog Night
2. Ra (Utopia) (I have this album. I don't recommend it to BS listeners in general,
but it has some fun tracks on it.)
3. Borboletta (Santana) (This is Jazz-Fusion. I guess someone in the back room
figured jazz is jazz and BS *does* have a jazzy riff or two.)
4. Presto: World's Fastest Classics
If you like BORN AGIAN, you'll like...
1. Earth Mother Earth (Jon Anderson)
If you like DEHUMANIZER, you'll like...
1. Digital Empire's Electronica-B (A various artists compilation of stuff like Prodigy
and what not. Didn't know Dio was big on the techno scene...)
If you like ETERNAL IDOL, you'll like...
1. Pretzel Logic (Steely Dan) (New York Mellow for the guys that dig "Lost Forever?"
Oh yeah, I see the connection. "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" always had
that thunder-in-the-night kinda rockin' heavy metal sound... sheesh.)
2. Third Stage (Boston) (The LAMEST Boston album, at that. Did the guy think EI
was lame and figured if someone likes lame records, he'd steer them in the
right direction? Personally, I like EI, but everyone's entitled to an opinion...)
If you like HEAVEN AND HELL, you'll like...
1. Departure (Journey) (What? are they equating Dio with Steve Perry?)
2. Phil Collins Serious Hits-Live! (Right. "Sussudio" always did sound a little like
"Die Young." You just have to use a REALLY VIVID imagination.)
If you like LIVE EVIL, you'll like...
1. Titanic soundtrack (Oh I get this one. LE has "Children of the Sea" on it. Good one.
That's the only link I can think of.)
2. Big Willie Style (Will Smith) (What's this? Is Dio big in hip-hop circles?)
If you like MASTER OF REALITY, you'll like...
1. Love Supreme (John Coltrane)
2. Time Out of Mind (Bob Dylan)
3. 10,000 Maniacs
4. Your Imagination (Brian Wilson) (All 4 of these really don't make any sense. I think they're
smoking Jimson Weed.)
If you like MOB RULES, you'll like...
1. Ozzman Cometh (Go figure. One of the few referrals to an Ozzy release, and it's from
a Dio record.)
2. Live at Red Rocks (JOHN FREAKIN TESH!!!) (I REALLY HAVE A PROBLEM
WITH THIS ONE. I will have to make an entire posting just to talk this one
through. I really have a problem with this one.)
3. Zoot Suit Riot (Cherry Poppin' Daddies) (I guess Dio *is* big in hip-hop circles.
I stand corrected.(NOT))
If you like NEVER SAY DIE, you'll like...
1. Face Value (Phil Collins) (Like I said before, "Sussudio" sounds a lot like "Swinging
the Chain." All them horns and stuff.)
2. Evolution (Journey) (OK, so I guess Dio isn't the only singer they equate with Steve Perry.)
(I like the album, but it doesn't necessarily follow that NSD leads to Evolution...)
3. Come With Me (Puff Daddy) (I have a problem with this one, too. Not as bad as
the Tesh one, but a problem nonetheless.)
If you like PARANOID, you'll like...
1. Miles Davis, Best of (Miles can play sure enough, but is it "War Pigs?")
2. Out of the Blue (Sonny Red) (More jazz.)
3. Mister Magic (Grover Washington, Jr.) (Is there something to Paranoid that I'm missing?
Is it a monumental work of modern free-form exploratory jazz? Did Herbie
Hancock do guest piano tracks for it that later got edited out? Or is the guy that
made the rec's. just clueless as ever?)
If you like SABBATH BLOODY SABBATH, you'll like...
1. Godzilla soundtrack
2. Gravediggaz (So maybe it's Iommi that's big in hip-hop circles...)
3. Four Way Street (CSN&Y) ("Fluff" may be quiet, but it ain't CSN&Y.
If you like SABOTAGE, you'll like...
1. Suzanne Vega
2. Buddha and the Chocolate Box (Obviously, this one and the one before indicate
Sabotage is one of the folksier albums put out by BS, as any listener to "Symptom
of the Universe" will attest to. It's right up there with "My Name is Luca" and "Oh
Very Young.")
3. George Carlin (Not too bad, but *comedy*? I want music, here.)
If you like TECHNICAL ECSTASY, you'll like...
1. Tribute to Princess Di
2. Lotta White Zombie and s. tendencies (Is there a connection between Rob Zombie,
Geezer Butler, Mike Muir, and Princess Di we were previously unaware of?
I'm going to listen to "Dirty Women" again with this in mind...)
If you like TYR, you'll like...
1. Jagged Little Pill (Alannis Morrisette) (Yeah, "You Oughta Know" is a 100% rip-off
of "Valhalla." I think.)
2. Elton John's tribute to Di (Again with the Princess Di stuff, but Elton John involved
this time. "All Moving Parts (Stand Still)", perhaps? I don't wanna know. Some
things are best left mysteries.)
If you like VOL. 4, you'll like...
1. Billy Joel Grt Hits
2. Simple Minds
3. Everything But the Girl (These 3 indicate Vol. 4 must have been highly influential over
early 80's pop. Probably "Snowblind." Everyone snorted coke in the early 80's.
They even had electives in some colleges about snorting coke. No real surprise
when you put it into that context. That must be it, a generational thing.)
4. Billie Holiday (Again, cocaine is the only link I can see here. Of course, she was coke
before coke was cool...)
Now, I also checked the recommends for the Paranoid/Heaven & Hell compilation and got...
1. Funkadelic (This was unusual. This makes the second BS/P-Funk connection I've seen.)
2. Best of Yanni(Someone must have said, "Best of Yanni? Oh Hell!" near the guy
doing recommends...)
3. Mahavishnu Orchestra (This one lost me. John McLaughlin's forays into heavily
instrumented Eastern music really don't jive with BS. HOWEVER, that being
said, go check out his Shakti album. It is all acoustic and Indian-infulenced,
but has some exquisite guitar work. I love it. It rocks with tabla drums.)
4. Dwight Yoakum (COUNTRY???? Almost as weird as the Tesh one...)
We Sold Our Souls... actually had pretty sensible recommends.
Just for the record, I checked Metallica's "And Justice For All." It recommended the Beatles Anthology and a CD full of sound effects. (sigh)
If these recommendations are based on common purchases, then it makes sense that the more purchased greatest-hits stuff will have more sensible links. Now what I want to know is that if the recommends were not written up, but were based on other albums purchased by the same people, WHICH ONE OF YOU OUT THERE BOUGHT THE DAMN JOHN TESH ALBUM??? I don't care if it was for a gift, you don't do that, OK? That's the kind of stuff false identities were invented for. Now I gotta go buy 2500 copies of Mob Rules AND 10 other albums just to clear the list of garbage. That's 27,500 records - just for one album. I can't afford the others unless you send me money... (BTW, if you do want to send me money, go right ahead. Just don't email any change. Pennies and dimes are OK, but nickels and quarters get stuck in my network cables...)