Heartbreak Beat is unveiling our latest limited-edition tee, an exclusive for SXSW that they're making available for pre-order to those discerning hipsters who want to stay one step ahead of their brethren.
We took Weezer's legendary Blue Album and re-invented it in such a way as to pay homage to our heroes, not that Rivers and company weren't also heroes of ours for a time.
The result is a t-shirt that asks the musical question, "What if Huey, Bob, Paul and Jeff had gotten together an formed a band?" or, at the very least, will make for quite the conversation starter when you wear it to the club, the coffee shop, or to work at the record store.
T-shirts are available for pre-order until February 15, at which time no further orders will be taken. All orders placed will then ship by February 18, 2012.
Every so often, a new icon is born that becomes the voice of its generation, shaping the way young minds think and giving them something to call their own that sets them apart from previous generations.
Then, of course, there is Heartbreak Beat, a new clothing brand designed for people who flat-out refuse to pay $35 for a hoodie that says "Hollister" or "Abercrombie" on it and find Old Navy t-shirts boring.
Heartbreak Beat is for people who are cool and don't need the rest of the world to know it. Wearing a t-shirt with the iconic Heartbreak Beat logo on it will never endear you to the sheep of the world, but it will signify to other discerning adults that you are a person of great substance and wit. They can therefore safely presume that your taste in music, movies and literature is impeccable. They will briefly wrestle with an innate desire to befriend and/or sleep with you. It will not last long and they will soon make your acquaintance. Be prepared, for they will immediately ask which new bands you are listening to. Your Heartbreak Beat t-shirt has gotten you this far. The rest is up to you.
BUY HEARTBREAK BEAT APPAREL NOW!
Call me crazy, but "the '90s" was a weird decade. It started cool enough with Nirvana unleashing the "sound heard 'round the world" via their landmark album, Nevermind, forever slaying the hair metal dragon, but then by 1994-1995 you had Hootie & The Blowfish, jam bands, and the beginning of a prolonged ska and swing music revival.
By the time the '90s came to an end, most, if not all of us were left with a bad taste in our mouths and a bewildered look on our faces, as if to say "What the HELL was THAT?!"
Having said that, the decade wasn't a complete and total waste. While it did take us some serious soul-searching (and head-scratching), we were able to come up with our Top 5 Favorite '90s Bands. Our criteria: In order for a band to be considered, they needed to originate in the '90s. That means that R.E.M., for example, would be excluded from the list because they originated and gained popularity in the '80s.
5. Foo Fighters
A pretty convincing argument can be made that Kurt Cobain died so that Dave Grohl could live. While Cobain's "suicide" had nothing to do with furthering Grohl's career, one must give Grohl accolades up the wazoo for turning some serious lemons into some serious lemonade. In truth, we dig Grohl a heckuva lot more as a personality than we actually dig his music. Sure, we dug the hell out of the first Foo Fighters album, but, after that, it became a little too "corporate rock" for us. The above clip shows the band making their "network TV debut" and is a reminder that they weren't always the overly-slick and Pro-Tooled edgy rock band they've been for the past decade or so.
4. Nada Surf
The crazy thing about Nada Surf being on this list is that we actually HATED them during the '90s. After buying their debut Elektra effort, High/Low, on the strength of seeing the words "Produced by Ric Ocasek" on the back of said album, we were totally let down by the Weezer-lite crap we heard once we played it. But then a strange thing happened: the band got dropped and turned into this really amazing indie rock band that released the AMAZING album Let Go in 2002, which was such a musical about-face that we still can't believe this is the same band that recorded that dreadful novelty hit "Popular".
3. School Of Fish
Wanna feel old? This past April marks the 20th anniversary of the release of School Of Fish's self-titled debut album, which featured the hit "3 Strange Days". If there is any one band we wish we could go see on the nostalgia circuit, iut would be these guys, but, sadly, singer Josh Clayton-Felt passed away in 2000, rendering any such future endeavors impossible. Guitarist Michael Ward has gone on to play with everyone from the Wallflowers to Ben Harper and John Hiatt, all the while ensuring he is able to bring his bicycle on the road with him.
2. Material Issue
My love for this band is well-documented on this blog, so I will not bore you with another long rant about how great these guys are, or how cool it was to have Mike & Ted play with me in the final Time Bomb Symphony line-up. I will say that they did the unthinkable by reforming this summer despite that fact that, much like School Of Fish, their singer passed away. Normally, that would stop a band in their tracks, and, granted, it did for twenty years, but Mike & Ted finally put the music first and blew the dust off of Jim Ellison's catalog opf great pop songs and played select shows in Chicago and Wisconsin, proving that great songs should always take top priority over whether it's cool or not to continue. Of course, it also helped that Hip-O Select released a 20th Anniversary deluxe version of their awesome debut effort, International Pop Overthrow in April.
1. Dandy Warhols
While I didn't really dig their debut all that much - felt too hokey and in-jokey to me, still does to a certain degree - their second album, The Dandy Warhols Come Down, literally stopped me in my tracks the first time I heard it. Their hazy, psychedelic jams have a way of slowly drawing you in and then putting you in a headlock so that you are unable to escape their grasp. Granted, not everybody gets them - my best friend took one listen to this album and called them "gay ZZ Top", which still cracks me up, but I've still got a huge amount of love for that album, not to mention Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia. That love is enough to continue my love affair despite the fact that every album since seems to have stunk just a little more than the one before it. I'm hopeful they'll right the ship at some point.
This is the first edition of a new series we call STONED OR NOT STONED, where I publish something I've written lately and you cool cats and dogs vote on whether yours truly wrote it STONED OR NOT STONED. Alright, let's get this party started.
To Whom It May Concern:
(If you're reading this, then I'm more than likely pushing up daisies...damn!)
Personally, I blame Simon Cowell.
He could have stopped all this. Okay, maybe not, but he could have at least chosen to not walk away when he did and delayed the inevitable for a few more years, giving the few of us who remember "the good ol' days" a few last moments to mourn the killing of the last sacred cow. What we have now is a world gone absolutely wild, where the line between reality and reality TV has been blurred beyond recognition.
This is why I blame Simon...
After more than ten years as the judge of "The Show That Cannot Be Named" because they might come after me in the dead of the night and take away my breathing privileges, Cowell chose to get while the getting was good. Many saw it as the end of the show, as Simon Cowell's acerbic comments and well-honed bullshit detector made him the true star of the show. Sure, some of us may have tuned in to see Carrie Underwood or Kelly Clarkson, but we all tuned in to see Cowell verbally de-bone one lackluster performer after another. He knew it, we knew it, he knew we knew it, we knew he knew we knew it, and so on.
But then the next season, the show ushered in two new judges. Both were "singers", but only one had ever sung on her (oops, my bad) own album. And still viewers tuned in by the millions. The show's producers, who'd also seen Cowell's exit as a sure sign their days were numbered, were surprised - no, shocked - that they could peddle a third, or even-fourth-rate version of their show and the public would still eat it up. Holy crap, they thought, this means we can do anything!
So, after both "singers" returned to their respective music careers, the show brought in racing sensation Danica Patrick as a judge. She'd been racing for a decade and had yet to win shit, yet she was easily the most popular racer, if you take into consideration internet search criteria such as "Danica Patrick bikini" and "Danica Patrick naked". However great he may look in a bikini, Dale Earnhardt surely comes in a distant second.
Of course, Danica Patrick was so successful in her new role that the producers wanted to give Danica even more input into the show, so they incorporated racing into the show. Contestants not only had to sing, but they had to race their own stock cars, too. Of course, the only thing worse than a singer who can't sing is one who also can't drive. Thus, as you can imagine, it was not long before one of the aspiring singers died on the race track. The crash was amazing. The singer had been voted off just minutes earlier and their only hope for staying on the show was to win the "consolation race", so, at over 200 mph, they hit the wall coming out of turn four and were dead before the car finally stopped rolling and tumbling after being hit from behind by three other cars. The world was aghast. Critics of the show now called for its immediate cancellation, but the ratings of the show where the singer had died had been their highest ever. By far.
So the producers did what anyone in their position would do. They immediately cancelled the rest of the season, not in response to public outcry, but to more finely hone their new direction. And to give the public time to warm up to the idea of a show where contestants race to the death.
When they returned the following season, the official title was still "The Show That Cannot Be Named", but fans nicknamed the show "Death Car" and it eventually stuck,
That first season without singing was actually a godsend. Fans no longer had to pretend to give a shit about whether their favorite contestant could sing or not, or buy their crappy album that would invariably come out after the season had ended and the nation had collectively stopped giving a damn. Now all fans had to do was hope their guy or gal made it to the end of the season alive. Oh, they could still call in and vote for who they wanted to win this week's race, but, at $2.99 a call, this was merely a money grab by the network.
The next season, fans could also donate money to their favorite contestant so that they could build a faster or more dastardly car with which to slay the competition. And with the passing of every new season, little by little, so went the rules, until finally there were none. The last to fall - the one that said, in essence, "that audience members were off-limits" - finally made it okay to slaughter your fellow racers with absolutely no concerns over the deaths of unlucky audience members who just happened to be in the wrong place at the right time to have their deaths broadcast live on national TV. In order to attend a taping, you had to literally "sign your life away" and absolve the producers of the show from any wrong-doing. Again, conservative America cried "foul", and again called for the cancellation of the show. Of course, that made everybody else just want to watch it that much more and the result was a season where the ratings were the highest ever.
Ever!
Some of us thought that was as crazy as things could get, though. We were wrong, way wrong, which is why I started keeping this journal, and why I started feeling as if my life was no longer mine, that I was being watched, and that this show might not be what it seems. If you read on, just remember, what you read cannot be un-read. Ha ha! No really!
It all began when I saw my best friend's body catch fire after his car hit the wall at over 200 mph. What keeps me up nights is knowing I was the one who drove him into the wall.
Yes, derelict in my blog duties I have been as my t-shirt empire begins to take flight. What t-shirt empire, you ask? Why, I am the "D" in Big D Custom Screen Printing, which means nothing to 99.995% of you, but to the .005% of you who need custom t-shirts printed up (usually in a hurry), I am your best friend.
It's funny, I've been doing this here blog for nigh on five year with nary a notice from the major medias, yet three years into Big D Custom and we've had our wares showcased on CBS' show "The Talk" (Sharon Osbourne held up some onesies the show had us make for "CSI-Miami"'s Emily Procter, who was expecting her first child), Inc. magazine, and, most recently, the New York Times.
Here's the odd thing, we're just another shop pumping out t-shirts. What makes us so special? I have no idea. I will say that we're as welcoming of small orders as most shops are to the big ones. Truth is, we get bored easily so an order for 40 shirts is right up our alley! Just kidding about the bored part. There is actually nothing better in the world than firing up the stereo, revving up the ol' screen press, and banging out some kick-ass t-shirts.
Our Current Top 10 Albums In The Shop (in no particular order, so as not to hurt any artists' feelings):
Ace Frehley solo album from 1978
This is my personal fave at the moment, just never gets tired. I can literally put this album on repeat and just rock OUT!
The Cult "Electric"
Other than that really ill-advised cover of "Born To Be Wild", this album is a stone-cold stunner that could totally pass as something that actually came out on '78.
The Romantics "National Breakout"
Such a solid record, better than their debut - the one that everybody raves about just because it has "that one song" on it. This one is superior on every level, with so many awesome jams: "Tomboy", "Stone Pony", "New Cover Story", "Friday At The Hideout", "21 & Over", "On A Night Like This" and "Take Me Out Of The Rain".
Lady Gaga "Born This Way
Okay, we have a girl that works in the shop. She's young and, while she does pretend to like the stuff we play, it's a testament to our discipline and fortitude
that we don't chuck that CD into the river whenever she puts it on.
The Vaccines "What Did You Expect From...?"
Sure, it's the latest Hypey McHypefest in the UK, which is usually an indicator of complete raging suckitude, but damn this is one mutha of an album. Could have easily been made in 1989...recalling everything from Echo & The Bunnymen and the La's to Joy Division/New Order. Once you put it out of your mind how much the singer sounds like Chris Martin from Coldplay, or that one of the songs totally steals from Keane's "Somewhere Only We Know", this album will sink its claws into your ear holes and never let go.
Pink Floyd "Dark Side Of The Moon"
This is what happens when you hire an old guy. Great album, but not something you necessarily want to hear when you're racing the clock to finish up some rush orders. Whenever I hear this record, I wanna toke and cuddle. :)
Toto "Turn Back"
You're probably thinking I'm about to blame this one on the girl or the old guy. Nope, turns out I dig the bleep out of this album. Sure, the cover art was a total rip of an XTC album cover - probably why I decided to give it a chance - but the jams on this record are such a guilty pleasure for which I feel zero guilt in digging. Oddly enough, their next album, Toto IV, would sell zillions, but I never even listened to the whole thing until last week when I signed up for Spotify.
Birthday Massacre "Pins & Needles"
These Canadian macabre-wavers totally mine that synths-and-loud-guitars dynamic that I am a total sucker for. With their last album, Walking With Strangers, they went from goth band with good ideas to a totally haul-ass rock band whose razor-blade symphonies were, at their core, really tight pop songs. This album is even better. Of course, they have a new EP, Imaginary Monsters, coming out August 9, too.
The La's
Sometimes when an artist writes that perfect song on their first album (such as the Go-Go's did with "Our Lips Are Sealed"), it's almost a shame to see them continue making records that just don't even come close. On one hand, I feel that way about Lee Mavers. He totally nailed it with "There She Goes", which is by far the best track on this album, and then he stopped. Many wish he hadn't, but I must admit that there is a certain grace in letting your one moment stand, untarnished. Of course, I wouldn't know how great the album was if one of my pushier co-workers
hadn't started playing this one in heavy rotation.
ELO "The Ultimate Collection"
Jeff Lynne gets a lot of flack for having a very distinct sound as a producer for the likes of George Harrison, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty and others, but we've always dug his work because it has always been ABOUT THE SONGS. Of course, it took a recent movie (okay, we forget which one) to remind us of the awesome greatness of this band and how awesome this stuff sounds when you jam it LOUD in a BIG BUILDING!
You wouldn't think that a band like The Flaming Lips would have come from Oklahoma back in the 80's, much less carved out a three-decade career at the major label level. The fact that they are still a vital, ongoing concern is proof that not all who choose to color outside of the lines get crushed by the gravity of mainstream normalcy. Near as we can tell, their tenure with mighty giant Warner Brothers Records saw the band make nary a concession to conventional wisdom. Instead, we were treated to one strange musical trip after another - from the 4-CD set Zaireeka (all four CD's meant to be played simultaneously on four different players to achieve maximum effect) to the groundbreaking musical statement that was The Soft Bulletin.
For any who think the band may have slowed the pace, or lost a step as they venture into their fourth decade of operation, the Lips (and their cult of mega-devoted fans) will kindly beg to differ. First off this year, the band re-recorded Pink Floyd's brilliant career-defining opus Dark Side Of The Moon in its entirety. If that weren't enough, the band will also be performing the album in its entirety at Dave Matthews' Caravan Festival in July.
Not weird enough for ya?
Okay, then you may just want to feast your eyes on the packaging for the band's new collection of music. Nicknamed The Gummy Skull, the band's new EP, if you will, comes on a USB drive housed within a custom-made full-size gummy bear skull. To get to the music, you've got to eat your way through the skull.
Me thinks a fair amount of cannabis was smoked in hatching that idea. Of course, the main difference between the Lips and lesser chemically-enhanced bands is that they actually wake up the next day and not only remember the crazy shit they came up with the night beforel, but then they take steps to make it a reality. Can you imagine trying to find a company to manufacture gummy bear skulls? Where would one look in the Yellow Pages for that?
Thankfully, the band happened upon such a manufacturer right in their own backyard. As if that weren't enough, it turns out the man behind the company capable of creating the edible skulls is a fan of the band. An arrangment was soon reached and, earlier this year, the band began selling The Gummy Skull via their website.
The downside, of course, is that the skull costs $150 and the USB drive it houses contains a mere four songs. Also, the band has promised to make very limited quantities of the skulls available on a weekly basis, but, as of late, they seem to have fallen a little behind on that promise. Maybe being out on tour might have something to do with this. Still, it would be nice to get our hands on one before we spend the money on Ju Ju Fruits and Pop Rocks - neither of which will come with any cool music at all.
Why only four songs on the USB drive, though? One would think this to be the move of a more conventional band. Obviously, the Lips wish to make the music exclusive to those who buy the skull. If they made the songs available on their own, they might not sell as many skulls. So, the conventional thinking would be to include just enough music to make the whole package seem workable to fans eager to eat their way to the new music. The unconventional thinking (for which the Lips are known and loved) would have been to include at least a full album's worth of material.
Give the diehard fans something to really sink their teeth into, pun intended.
While none are currently available, as the LINK to acquire them currently reads "ACCESS DENIED. You are not authorized to access this page.", we are hopeful that this will change in the near future.
Gummy Song Skull track listing:
1. Drug Chart
2. In Our Bodies, Out Of Our Heads
3. Walk With Me
4. Hillary's Time Machine Machine?
If any one music festival has established itself as the hippest kid on the block, presenting a heady mix of current big-name acts, hipster-approved up-and-comers, and just enough DJ's to make you relish the sight of someone actually playing an instrument, it is the Bonnaroo Festival.
Kids across the nation gathered in Manchester, TN last weekend to witness ten day's worth of bands jammed into four days. Based on this year's line-up, the emphasis seemed to be on proving to the world that today's musical landscape is just as vibrant, if not more so, than any other that came before. With a music line-up that covered just about every genre imaginable and featured such current heavy hitters as Eminem, Arcade Fire, Mumford & Sons, Ray Lamontagne, and the Decemberists, along with newer acts Sleigh Bells, School of Seven Bells, Deer Tick, and Matt & Kim, to name just a few, we at The Shit find it oh so fitting that, for all of the "the future is now" proclamations, it was a band that had basically broken up before Woodstock that stole the show.
Thus, by the time Buffalo Springfield took the stage around 9:30PM on Saturday night, those in attendance had already been subjected to three whole days of sun, music, more sun, and even more music. The sight of a bunch of guys old enough to be their grandfathers taking the stage may have sent more than a few festival-goers over to the Solar Stage to catch the the Fresh Trix breakdancing troupe, but those who stayed got a crash course in music history and were eventually treated to the best ten minutes the entire weekend had to offer when the band busted into Neil Young's "Rockin' In The Free World".
It was at that moment that the unwashed and tired masses found new energy and united as one to celebrate all the good things about life in these great United States. Even the most jaded soul had to feel a little swept up in the moment, the crowd swaying in time, singing along to every word. As good as Mumford & Sons may have been, they never even came close to holding the crowd in the palm of their hand like those tattered and road-weary old farts up on stage were now doing.
Every member of every band that had played, or was set to play the festival, should have been standing stage left taking notes.
For all the hype we are fed each and every day about some hip, new band offering some new spin on rock & roll, or a mega-talented DJ trying to make playing records look difficult, much less entertaining, it is refreshing to be reminded on occasion that everything has been done and, let's face it, much better by those bands that came before.
The fact that Buffalo Springfield could blow the dust off a song that has been trotted out by Neil, and Pearl Jam, and a thousand forgotten bar bands across this great land over the past twenty years, and completely revitalize an exhausted human sea is a testament to the ultimate power of music made before many in attendance were even able to wipe their own asses.
I mean, seriously, you would think that there might be one band over the course of four days, and multiple stages, that would be able to top a near-ten-minute version of "Rockin' In The Free World".
With the announcement today of the passing of producer Martin Rushent, we at Fudgeknuckle felt it only fitting to feature perhaps his greatest hit as our song of the day. As a fan of Rushent's work with Human League, Pete Shelley, XTC, and The Go-Go's (to name just a few), we always perked up a bit when we saw his name on the back of a new album. We'll miss you, Martin!
We can still remember the first time we heard Human League's "Don't You Want Me". Despite the fact that synth-pop was not an entirely new genre, no one song had come along yet to single-handedly define the genre until the Martin Rushent-produced "Don't You Want Me" catapulted the Human League from struggling UK synth band to worldwide chart-toppers.
I doubt that I've ever played a single more than I did that one. In addition to the song itself being a stone-cold classic, Rushent's production was free of all unnecessary frills. The sparseness allowed the song to breathe, placing the vocals of Philip Oakey and Susan Ann Sulley front-and-center, where they belonged. Hilariously, Rushent's mix was not to Oakey's liking, so much so that Oakey was vehemently critical of Rushent's final mix and relegated the song to the very end of the album.
I do believe Rushent had the last laugh as the song became Human League's biggest-selling (not to mention career-defining) single ever.
