More Black, More Market, more Placebo for your buck...

And here's part twoof the two-part Placebo project covering their Black Market Music period. Black Market Blood is a six-track EP that assembles the rest of the worthwhile material from the sessions: The two tracks I axed from the original album get reinstated. They were counterproductive in the newly assembled version of the album, but fulfill a definitive need here.  Since almost everything else is slow or midtempo, "Days Before You Came" and "Taste Of Men"are needed here for variety. I still couldn't stomach the stupid, clanging 'hey, we also like Nine Inch Nails' industrial passage of the latter, so that had to go. Yup, house rules here at One Buck Records are sometimes harsh that way. 

The rest of the line-up includes the original album’s hidden track (hey, remember those?), "Black Market Blood", and three B-sides (hey, remember those?). Of those, "Leni", seemingly an ode to a Eastern European prostitute (?!) and "Bubble Gun" are quite good, moody pieces, though I can see how they would have slowed Black Market Music down too much, and maybe that's why they got relegated to b-side duty. And then Black Market Blood closes with an alternate, slowed down version of "Slave Of The Wage", subtitled "End Of The Race" by yours truly in reference to the memorable "it's a race for rats to die" line of the song. That song also amusingly - and improbably - quotes Bob Dylan, of all people: "Sick and tired of Maggie's Farm / she's a bitch with broken arms to wave your worries and cares goodbye". 

All this is good stuff. Not quite as good as Black Market Music, but still plenty good. Stumbling upon Placebo, among others, which caused me to write my little State Of The Onion Adress on modern rock radio, reminded me both to post these two Black Market Music projects and to listen more often to Brian Molko and his crew as well. Here's a placebo you can trust to have the desired effect, so take some more of your pills with Black Market Blood and keep on rockin', folks...