R&R Crapper

from an email I sent earlier to DD:

 

The R&RHofFame induction ceremonies last night - I watched it. The whole damn thing and I felt like I had some monstrous narcissistic suppository shoved up my a**. Jann Wenner sucked up to Ahmet Ertegun - dang that dude must be powerful to be this feared in death. Aretha Franklin could go on a diet and a Third World country would then not starve. Ronnie "Spector" Bennet's speech went on and on and why the heck are The Ronettes even invited when Phil "Pull My Trigger" Spector is already in the Hall with plans afoot to switch himself with the wax dummy model of himself if he gets convicted of shooting more than his mouth off. Next up was the first artist of the night I used to idolize: Patti Smith. She went on too long and then decided to make a political statement by becoming a cover band. She should have been booted from the place as soon as she launched into what she said was an "anti-war" song "Gimmie Shelter" instead of performing one of her own songs. Sidebar digression: my own interpretation of "Gimmie Shelter" is that the song is addressed to the protestors in the streets instructing them to cool out or their actions could lead to civil war in their own cities while eventually the song admits that even love could start war too; a typically ambivalent Jagger/Richards composition that's open for discussion so IF Patti wants to equate it as a simple bromide against WAR "ugh what is it good for" then so be it, but dammit do your own song chick! I would have enjoyed a marathon stretch of "Horses" fer sure. I did like "Rock n Roll N-------r" even if it was ragged sounding since I thought the word "n------r" was verboten these days [it got censored here - see]. Next up was VAN HALEN or in this case Michael Anthony and Sammy Hagar: a truly tedious and crapulent filled segment. Velvet Revolver's induction was complete product placement (themselves) garbage - not one true word of appreciation spoken and then, oh SH*T then, they proceeded to butcher the hell out of "Ain't Talkin' Bout Love" including Weiland singing the wrong words. "You've got to set me free, baby" WHAT was up with that. It's "You've got to bleed for it, baby." Ugh. Then Paul Schaeffer and his band of crum bums managed to do damage to one of Van Hager's best moments with Anthony and Hagar assisting. I'm surprised they had the time to play since they seemed to mainly be busy kissing up to Eddie Van Halen all night. The dude needs help yada yada so what - he fired both of you a**clowns. Take a shot at him instead of being whimpering turds. Al Sharpton wouldn't take such crap, but he darn sure knows how to interject himself into media events as he took another podium in honor of James Brown. Blah!!!!!! The highlight of the night was up next when Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five got in. Melle Mel told the gangster rappers of now where to stick it and let us know he was a grown 45 year old man. REPRESENT, hell yeah. Then they went out and tore the roof off the sucka - the first 5 minutes or so being transcendent (they looked they actually rehearsed unlike the other acts) and almost bringing me to tears every time they got to a part once rapped by the deceased Cowboy (always my fave of the Five). This was followed up by the verbose Eddie Vedder (please keep him away from making speeches someone) who went on and on about REM and while it was heartfelt and at times touching he really needs an editor. I was staying up just to hear Bill Berry say love to his family and then he didn't even get to talk after Stipe went on and on and on thanking everybody and their mama even including a little bit to the people that should have been thanked first, the FANS. Then they had to go and remind me of why I once adored them by doing "Begin The Begin" and "Gardening At Night" before lapsing into crap REM in the end. The all-star jam with Patti and the others was completely uninspiring dreck and now I'm tired and cranky since I didn't get all the sleep I usually get. Never again will I watch such garbage, life is just too short, unless KISS finally get in of course.

Greedy Gus's

The RIAA is at it again. Now it's webcasts that are in their sights. Support independent artists and visit RIAA Rader to make sure you're not giving them one thin dime.

Starwood Ad From May 19, 1989 Metro

Since Starwood appears to be closing its doors for good how about an old advert for the venue. I don't know if it will be completely legible and this might be be a good thing. This way you won't be able to tell they misspelled Kwame and Eazy-E in the Rap N Ride concert listing for June 10, 1989. That must have been a dope show with Kwame, Eazy-E, J.J. Fad, Special Ed, Kid N Play, Sir Mix-A-Lot, 2 Short, and N.W.A. along with a carnival midway. If hip hop wasn't your thing there was always Spam Jam on May 20th headlined by T. Graham Brown with Garth Brooks one of the many supporting acts for this flea market, cookoff, and concert combo. May 24th was a school's out party with the Bulletboys, Winger, and Cinderella at the top of the bill. Party on!!!

Old Metro Ads

More to come.

You Can Take The Redneck Out Of Louisiana

No mail today means no bills so props to all our Presidents living and dead. I've got no funky stories to tell today, no musical proverbs to drop, and just generally feel like an out of date cheese spread on a stale cracker. I've heard that nervous breakdown bald is the new thing, but I'll just stick to my traditional February angst and localized blah.

spontaneous compost combustion

Pure analog movement - does this mean swilling on heavenly milkshakes with Darby Crash at the Vicious Ice Cream & Soda Shop or perhaps punching one's head into the largest 8-track player in the universe. Perhaps it means transcribing every lyric ever penned by Lemmy in elaborate monk style script and when done you rip it up and burn it, go on a three day bender, and then start again. Faint echoes of "Party people in the place to be" body rock their way across the frozen digital tundra of my mind leaving traces and flashes of steel and whited out record labels that "say hey, say ho!" Simplification ends with amplification cross pollination the center won't hold but I've got one middle finger strong enough to hold on.

What ever happened to New Jack Swing; wasn't that the thing.

Bobby Jimmy & The Critters for Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. You can't exterminate greatness like "Gotta' Potty." The signs all point to a magnitude on the one explosion of funky fresh goodness. Free bread and flea circuses. Nonsensical instumentals with black tails and tie banquets of distorted contortions. Take a chance, James. Calgon gonna' sho nuff take you away. Dinosaurs are learning on Sedimentary Street; they ate Gordon and Susan reet petite. Lord Dunsany's rap, "Man is a small thing, and the night is large and full of wonder." He forgot to add "Fergilicious."

The Hold Steady are not the best "indie bar band" in America. They are simply the best band.

The pack of desolate angels on the corner might have liked comedy bits, but they were downright hostile to digital bits. They thought it led it to the inflation of knowledge without wisdom and "hey buddy, can you spare a Camel cigarette?" Just longing to be considered a nemesis to authority. Like those feisty broads in the Dixie Chickens. No sexists, those angels. Reality extrusion intrusion: I miss country stores - their dusty counters old chocolate tiny black and white portable television with bunny ears dark mysterious items inventoried for decades rusted paint peeling sign outside screen door slamming Leo peppermint all this and a bag of chips.

'Til next time.

TANG & Adult Nappies

The adult diaper industry has been reeling ever since the death of spokeswoman June Allyson, but is pleased to announce their new celebrity: crazy psycho astronaut lady!

Richey Made A Splash

Whether Richey James of the Manic Street Preachers jumped from the Severn Bridge after disappearing on February 1st, 1995 or not he made a splash on this planet. God rest your soul if you're dead. If not; I hope you're happy and eating well.

View From The Muddle

I've been searching my mind for some adventures to post; maybe about the night of the Thumposaurus people throwing chicken bones on the hood of a Pontiac Sunfire, or the time some punk in a Volkswagen Beetle tried to punch out DD's lights. How about the night where Ralston showed some dudes in Nashvegas that you shouldn't threaten him with a lead pipe. Maybe I could write about those days when Bruno and I used to sneak whiskey into the movies and be staggering by the time the credits rolled. I once got kicked out of E.T. for smoking and just generalized mischief like hollering at the people who told us to put out the cigarettes. I was all of 14 and now I can't even stand to be in the same room where a cigarette is being smoked. I stll jones for it, but the stank is too much. This then free associates into , "Hey didn't that E.T. Atari game really bite."

More adventures snippets: climbing the fire tower on Tiger Hill outside of Murfreesboro and watching the sunrise from its perch which would sway with a good wind, descending into Snail Shell Cave with one flashlight and a six pack of fruit coolers for provisions, journeying to Chapel Hill at midnight to try and catch a glimpse of the light - the only lights we ever saw were atop the county cops coming to run us off, and there was the time my cousin Freddy and I hitched a ride with the freak, as opposed to frat, who had caught his hand in a meat grinder when he was a kid; I had been terrified of the guy ever since I saw him sucker punch C.L. one afternoon on the Smyrna football field. C.L. was a football player who was fighting this freak named Pickel, over what I don't know. A huge crowd gathered to watch and C.L. was winning. He had Pickel on the ground when meat grinder hand leaped into the fray. The the high school teachers ran us off, but meat grinder and his cronies caught up with C.L. down the street and broke his ribs by repeatedly hitting him with a 2 x 4.

Luckily I've never been in a 2 x 4 fight. I did grab a bat and chase my cousins around the yard once. I had bumped my head on a swinset and they had laughed at me. I was disappointed when my parents took the bat away from me. These were the same cousins that liked to call me names, threaten to throw me out of the boat when we fished on a pond, and pummel with their fists everytime the adults weren't looking. I suspect now that they liked watching me go kamikaze on them, They'd push me to the edge where I would promptly drop off screaming and punching everything which made me look like the bully when the parents decided to investigate the yelling.

Now I'm yelling at myself that I've moved beyond adventure remembrance and landed straight into the psychological minefield that used to be my youth. I don't know if I want to delve back too far these days. I've entered a rationalistic era of thinking with the present on overwrite. Symbols and all the potent imagery I once considered the truth are falling away. For example: I was flipping through the few channels of television I watch when I caught some The History Of Rock And Roll last night. It was the "guitar hero" episode and while I dug the music as always I found myself gagging on the "guitar represents freedom" spiel of Steely Dan and session player "Skunk" Baxter. No, I thought, a guitar represents a guitar. Nothing more; it's just something that some people like James Burton play exceptionally well and others like me play very poorly. I'm sure I believed this "freedom" rhetoric when this documentary first aired around ten years ago. I also once thought the line "hold on to 16 as long as you can" was brilliant and look at what a goon Mellencamp has become. Which is the most scary thing. That I'm turning into some boring old goon who wouldn't think of having an adventure now. So, bare with my angst. It's just the view from the middle for me is all muddled.

Wow, I'm Really Posting To The Blog Today

While I may sometimes get wistful that my blog is not among those listed as "freshly rolled" at Nashville Is Talking it is just a temporary thing. I don't think they can pick up my feed anyways. Plus, as far as wistful goes, there is the concrete fact that I haven't posted much this year. Why is that? Are you done with this blogging thing? Was it all just some silly fade or phase?

I dunno. You tell me. I'll get back to you later. I just wish they'd take this cold weather and stuff it up a polar bear's...watch your mouth! But I'm just talking about polar bears. If there are any left what with the Al Gore global warming bit and all. How's that for proof that I've just not got anything to post these days.

I did find out something new about the Soulfish wife after 10 years of marriage. She doesn't like funk music. That sound you hear might be James Brown rolling over in his grave if he's been buried yet. I've submitted the wife to liberal doses of Starchild's Bop Gun, but she's not responding yet. Perhaps a dose of Jon Spencer Blues Explosion's mid-period thump can bring her around. It's sort of funky.

The main reason for blog absence is just that nothing's happening. Sure, Van Halen are reuniting as well as The Police and while this is news I'm not getting too excited about it. I saw Van Halen with Dave at their peak so I'd attend a reunion gig with a pair of the trepidatious high tops and with Wolfie in for Michael Anthony it won't be a true reunion anyways. The Police reunion does get me hyped up, but I doubt I'll get to see them. I might venture out to Bonnaroo for a single day, but I don't know if I could handle smelling that many hippies all day just for an hour's worth of music from Sting, Coupland, and Summers. The other thrill killer is that you know ticket prices will be through the roof.

The biggest motivational problem I've got is the season. I hate winter. I hate being cold. I want it to be warm so I can go for a 30 mile bicycle ride. I want to mow the grass. I want to shoot basketball with Emmy. Teach Harper how to ride a bike. Watch Liam on his battery powered monster truck. Which leads me right back to global warming - can I get some for February

Thrasher

In case you hadn't heard; the first 12 issues of Thrasher are now online. Last Days Of Man On Earth also recently had a shredding post on some Thrasher skate punk compilations. I was inspired by such things that I got my old Santa Cruz Tom Knox model board out of mothballs and popped some ollies in the garage.

CD Review: Radio Moscow

The wah-wah pedal looks like a gas pedal and like a gas pedal there's a perilous line between giving it too much too fast and being too timid with it. Too much and you flood the car. Too little and it'll take you several hours to go around the block. Radio Moscow's self titled debut could have been called flooded carburetor. That's right; Parker Griggs has a wah-wah pedal and he's not afraid to use it.

Psychedelic blues rock from Ames, Iowa is better than your usual average heartland rock, and while principal player Griggs is young and ambitious - Radio Moscow came about after he slipped a demo tape to Black Keys guitarist/singer Dan Auerbach - he tends toward an older person's pace with little hint of the danger and excitement truly great rock and roll produces. Radio Moscow's music is a lukewarm bath of bashing blues rock bathed in Bloodrock and Blue Cheer. It aspires for head shop greatness with an appropriately ramshackle sound captured well by Auebach in his studio in Akron, Ohio, but it's just missing a spark. It's like Michael Jackson's "Beat It" without Eddie Van Halen's bitching guitar solo.

My bet is that this bunch, Griggs, bass player Luke Duff, and drummer Mayuko (Gore Gore Girls, Cyril Lords), might just kick out the jams live in a way that would make the studio cuts mere reference points. And reference points are okay. Medical desk references are generally boring until you actually catch a disease and then you're glad you had some background so the doctor couldn't completely fleece you. So pick up Radio Moscow on Alive Records. It might not blow your mind, but if Radio Moscow can bring the noise in concert you'll be just a little more prepared than the person you take to the show.

CD Review: Leopold And His Fiction

What will come to mind after hearing Leopold And His Fiction -
Picture this: two dudes are walking toward a street corner, one is carrying a guitar and the other one a snare drum, and they walk right into each other bumping guitar and drums together producing a sound that, while not new, still sounds fresh. "Hey you got my Strokes in your White Stripes!" "No, you got my White Stripes in your Strokes!" Daniel Toccalino evokes both bands with his vocals, but it’s his guitar sound that I really like. He plays with a mellow harshness that's Detroit meets Cali meets Muddy Waters. Ben Cook provides a perfectly sparse backbeat which is complimentary and evocative. Musical duo instrumentalists often over play to make up for the traditional instruments they lack, but Leopold And His Fiction avoid this trap managing an austere heated blues rock blend which aims to please and often does.

She Ain't Got Time

Shakey Mama