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New SXSW Exclusive T-Shirt from Heartbreak Beat, a Weezer Blue Album Parody!

2012-01-25T13:08:00.001-06:00

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.

ORDER YOURS TODAY

The Launch Of Heartbreak Beat!

2011-10-31T14:24:00.001-05:00

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!

Fudgeknuckle Say: Top 5 Bands Of The '90s

2011-07-28T23:32:00.002-05:00

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.

STONED OR NOT STONED V 1.0: Death Car!

2011-07-28T00:12:00.004-05:00

(courtesy *Zohn @ deviantart)

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.

TO BE CONTINUED

story and concept © 2011 Darren Robbins.

Forgive Me, Chillens, I Been Bizzee!!

2011-07-26T20:14:00.000-05:00

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!

Yet Another Reason Why The Flaming Lips Are Cool In Our Book - The Gummy Skull!!

2011-06-16T11:12:00.002-05:00

(Photo by Angela De Marco)

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?

Bonnaroo 2011's Best Ten Minutes

2011-06-14T11:46:00.003-05:00

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".

Oh, but you'd be wrong.

Song of The Day: "Don't You Want Me" by Human League

2011-06-06T11:17:00.000-05:00

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.

Boo ya!

I Predict A Hit: Will Kaiser Chiefs Revitalize Album Format?

2011-06-03T20:55:00.002-05:00

For anyone who might have thought the record industry was all out of fresh ideas, you're absolutely right. Near as we can tell, the last original idea they had was in 1984 when they changed formats and made us all re-buy our album collections on shiny silver discs. Ever since then, most of us have cackled with glee as the record industry has made one massive blunder after another, finally coming to resemble the bitter, decrepit old hag that it is now.

Thankfully, at least one band out there has a fresh idea of their own.

The Kaiser Chiefs (you know, the band that blasted onto the scene in 2005 with "I Predict A Riot", which, of course, was three albums ago) have just released their fourth album, The Future Is Medieval. Nothing new about that, right? Well, it seems the Chiefs have added a new wrinkle to the process of releasing a new album by posting 20 tracks on their website and allowing fans to create their own artwork and ten-song track listing. Pretty cool, huh? It gets better. If other fans purchase your version of the album, which will be made available on your very own web link, the band will give you a royalty rate of €1.10 ($1.61 to we Americans) for each copy sold.

We at the almighty Fudgeknuckle think this is an absolutely brilliant idea. The band isn't just releasing an album to fans, they're recruiting each and every fan as a combination A&R/marketing director. With a little creativity, a few fans will be able to make some nice pocket change, one would think.

If done correctly, this could start a whole new wave of interaction between bands and fans, all the while breathing new life into the album format. Even better, it does so without the need for a record company. At all.

Fucking fantastic.

So, Mr. or Ms. A&R Director, click HERE to review the Kaiser Cheifs' new material and see if you can come up with a track listing other fans just cannot live without.

New Limited-Edition Trouser Press "Rick Nielsen/Cheap Trick" T-Shirt!

2011-05-31T02:24:00.001-05:00

BUY ONE NOW!

The year was 1980 and I was just beginning to come to terms with the idea that music was my life. As a kid who'd just entered his teenage years, this instantly and decisively set me apart from everyone else I knew, as they were into sports, sports, and more sports. I had given sports the ol' college try, but the truth of the matter was that I sucked equally at them all.

It was Christmas 1979 when my Uncle Patrick (the proverbial "cool uncle") gave me two albums to record onto eight-track, as my stereo had that capability and his did not. The albums were Foghat's "Beat Motel" and Cheap Trick's "Dream Police". I vaguely recalled hearing Cheap Trick all summer long, as their "At Budokan" had been all over the radio on my recent trip out west. So it was with only minor interest that I began listening to Cheap Trick's latest studio effort. Within seconds, though, I felt an intense and immediate connection to the music. A few days later, when I gave the newly-recorded eight-track tape to my uncle, he told me I could keep both albums. I gave him back the Foghat record anyway, but gladly kept "Dream Police", cradling it in my arms like a cherished, but fragile family heirloom.

Christmas money in pocket, I begged my parents to take me to the local Kmart, where I picked up Cheap Trick's self-titled first album for $3.88. I figured if I was going to get to know them properly, I should start at the beginning. Upon dropping the needle, I quickly realized that their first album was as raw and subversive as "Dream Police" had been studio slick and radio-ready. It was a stunning blow to my senses, but one I quickly came to embrace. While I had been taken with the cynicism and paranoia that mixed with the lush arrangements on "Dream Police", there was no sugar-coating to be found on their debut effort, where the band's music was as perversely crazed and desperate as the characters that inhabited many of the songs.

It was at this moment that Rick Nielsen became my hero - not because he was a rock & roll star, but because he was a poet and storyteller on par with the likes of Bowie and Lou Reed when it came to celebrating the low-lifes and also rans found scattered about the alleyways most people are too scared to explore. Sure, his constant mugging and Huntz Hall demeanor belied the dark nature of the songs he was writing, with Robin Zander's pristinely idyllic vocals providing further camouflage.

The band had only been operating at the major label level for four years when they released "All Shook Up" in 1980, but yet the album seemed to reveal the first cracks in the band's foundation. Tensions within the band would lead Tom Petersson to leave the band at the end of the sessions. I didn't find out until one day when I was scoping the magazine stand and saw a new pic of Cheap Trick in the latest issue of 16 Magazine, with a face I did not recognize. "Pete Comita?", I exclaimed, upon reading the name of Cheap Trick's new bass player.

It wasn't until Trouser Press Issue #57 came along a couple weeks later, giving the full inside scoop on the many changes taking place within the Cheap Trick camp. The cover headline declaring "New Line-Up! New Album! New House!" summed it up nicely, but the article, featuring extensive interviews with Nielsen, gave stunning insight into a band in serious transition. Ultimately, these changes would result in a mass exodus of fair-weather fans as "All Shook Up" didn't quite live up to commercial expectations.

Heck, even Comita was gone by the time the band unleashed the hard rock fury of "One On One" in '82. Those of us who've managed to stick around through thick (a decent chart run in '88 that yielded two Top 5 singles in "The Flame" and "Don't Be Cruel") and thin (Two words: "The Doctor") reap the seemingly endless rewards as Cheap Trick continues to defy the odds by rocking well into their fifth decade. Of course, the more things change, the more they stay the same, as Cheap Trick recently weathered the departure of Bun E. Carlos, coming back stronger and more focused than they'd sounded in a good long while.

We at Fudgeknuckle are proud to partner with Ira Robbins and Trouser Press magazine to bring you a limited-edition t-shirt recreating Trouser Press issue #57, featuring Rick Nielsen, in a beautiful silk screen-printed, full-color design. This is a limited edition of 50 t-shirts so grab one while you can and turn heads at the next Cheap Trick show!

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It Was 30 Years Ago Today...The Clash Begin Legendary Run At Bond's Casino

2011-05-28T01:49:00.001-05:00

To commemorate the 30th anniversary of The Clash's run of shows at Bond's Casino in NYC, we at Fudgeknuckle are pleased as punch that one of our favorite rock journalists (and noted Clash fanatic), Mark Brown, has agreed to do the honors.

Had it been released, The Clash at Bond's surely would rival The Who's Live at Leeds and The Allman Brothers at Fillmore East in lists of the greatest concert albums of all time. The set of 1981 shows planned for a Times Square disco would be the crowning glory for a band at its live and creative peak.

Bond's International Casino was the trendy name given to a rundown former men's clothing store. When The Clash announced a slate of shows, fans lined up and slept in the street to make sure they got tickets to the seven-night stand set to start in May of 1981. But after the promoter sold 3,500 tickets for each show, the fire marshal and other public safety officials suddenly decided that Bond's could safely hold only half that many people per night.

"The first night at Bond's, we were closed down by the fire chief who believed that there would be too many people in the audience," bassist Paul Simonon recounted in the band's official biography. "But they'd sold the same number of tickets for a gig that happened the night before with a group called The Plasmatics, who blew up a car onstage!"

You’d think that the greatest city in the world would open its arms to the four men dubbed by rock critics as "The Only Band That Matters", but New York City was a very different place back in 1981. This was, after all, back when Times Square was still the gritty pre-Giuliani mecca for tourists, freaks and criminals of every stripe, not the sanitized Disneyland it is today. Punk rock still seemed like a dangerous threat from across the sea, even if The Clash had long outgrown its punk roots with classic albums like London Calling and the new, sprawling, epic three-LP set Sandinista! It's no small irony that the album contained the band's raucous cover of "Police on My Back."

But city officials picked the wrong fight with the wrong band at the wrong time. A week’s worth of dates turned into 15 gigs, sometimes two a day; the band dutifully determined that every fan who bought a ticket was going to see a show.

"We decided to play out however many tickets for those gigs, and we ended up doing 15 shows in a row," Joe Strummer said in the band's biography. "We took a stand and it nearly killed us. There's something strangely monotonous about getting up in the same hall, playing a gig, 15 nights in a row."

The New York media branded the band “brash and naïve,” even as their ace film reporters misspelled their names, or misidentified band members. The chaos, hard feelings, and controversy that surrounded the shows led to lengthy, furious sets encompassing and defining the band's career. The band was already a legend on both sides of the Atlantic, but this sealed the deal for life.

The Clash, always eager to provoke, enlisted rap acts such as Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five to open the shows, reportedly to less-than-receptive audiences. One photo of Simonon backstage at Bond's shows a graffiti-strewn brick wall behind him, with big black letters asking "WAS IT REALLY WORTHWHILE?" Oh yes it was.

While the Bond's shows were both professionally recorded and filmed over multiple nights, the Clash have frustratingly left far too much in the vaults. The great 2008 “Revolution Rock” live DVD features 22 songs taken from a variety of sources throughout the band’s career, but just one cut – “London Calling” – from their Bond's shows. This marathon run of show was filmed for a planned movie called “Clash on Broadway,” yet only one other track - “Lightning Strikes (Not Once But Twice)” – turned up on the box set of that name. The 1999 live album, “From Here to Eternity,” included just three more Bond's tracks, “Complete Control,” “Train in Vain”, and “The Guns of Brixton.” Great stuff, sure, but none of it captures the essence of these shows.

“A lot of film was shot, a trailer was shown on MTV, and I was going around telling people it was the first rap western, but to be honest the film was never finished,” said band publicist Kosmo Vinyl in the Clash on Broadway liner notes. “I’ve recently heard that all the film stock has perished or been destroyed, and all that remains are video copies of the trailer and the ‘Radio Clash’ video, which was made up from footage of the film.”

The band itself might be the reason the album never came out - Strummer, talking about listening back to the tapes years later, said that all he could hear was the "fear" and the self-consciousness in his singing - a surprising revelation coming from a man who many fans considered the most fearless, uncompromising frontman in rock 'n' roll history.

Fortunately, through the miracle of bootlegging, the shows live on, including a superb FM broadcast of the entire 24-song set on June 9 – a show and broadcast that never would have happened had the city not tried to shut down The Clash in the first place.

JUNE 9th BOND'S SHOW (MP3 format, zip file)

While there were some good days still left in the band, this string of shows was to be one of their last glorious stands. After the 1982 release of the tension-fraught Combat Rock, the band crumbled. Heroin got the better of drummer Topper Headon, who was sacked as a result. It all came to a head with The Clash at the US Festival in Southern California in May, 1983. Booked by promoter Barry Fey, it was the final show that guitarist/songwriter Mick Jones would play with the band.

"There was SO MUCH going on internally/externally with band at that point," said Mark Bliesener, Fey's publicist at the time. "I remember answering a knock on the band's dressing room (trailer) just prior to Clash stage time, to meet Eddie Van Halen and his Mrs. requesting a chat with Mick. I was told to 'turn them away' by manager Bernie Rhodes."

The band had refused to take the stage unless festival backer/Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak made a donation to the San Bernardino Boys Club. An enraged Strummer ranted at fans from the stage. Making matters worse, a massive fight broke out backstage after the band's set.

"It was a mad night. The blows as The Clash immediately came offstage were between Kosmo Vinyl and others," Bliesener said. "Paul Simonon may also have thrown a punch. The atmosphere was thick with exhaustion, tension, testosterone and the smell of 300,000 youth roasting marshmallows over burning cardboard. Though Mick Jones never played with band again, they were effectively broken up before the gig."

A far cry from the unified front the band had presented to the world a mere two years prior, when the most unlikely of heroes - a British punk band - managed to turn Bond's Casino into the center of the rock & roll universe.

To further commemorate this event, we at Fudgeknuckle have partnered with yet another beloved rock journalist, Ira Robbins, to bring you a limited-edition t-shirt reproducing The Clash's iconic appearance on the cover of Trouser Press magazine issue #84 in FULL-COLOR. This t-shirt is limited to a print run of 50 t-shirts, so grab yours now before they're gone.

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Weezer Covers Radiohead's "Paranoid Android"

2011-05-27T20:56:00.001-05:00

Leave it to Rivers Cuomo and Co. to deliver the best Memorial Day eve eve present EVER in the form of this quite unexpected cover of Radiohead's "Paranoid Android" from OK Computer.

While I'm not a huge Radiohead fan, or Weezer fan for that matter, I must give some major props to Weezer for not only having the guts to cover Radiohead (maybe they're hoping Radiohead will return the favor by covering "The Sweater Song"?), the smarts to not pick one of the obvious Radiohead tunes ("Creep" or "Karma Police", for example), and the proper amount of respect to stay pretty darn close to the original while still making it their own.

I will say that I really wish Patrick Wilson would get back behind the drum kit, where he truly belongs. That's not a slight against his guitar playing, by any stretch, but the guy's got an awesome swing and a great feel as a drummer. Definitely better than Josh Freese, who is great but sounds like a hired gun no matter what he does.

What's most surprising is how at-home the band sounds performing this type of material. Sure, the fact that this particular song is a Radiohead cut gives it a certain novelty, but what if Weezer were to try their hand at recording an album of material in a similar atmospheric vein?

Hey, I totally respect Weezer's trademark chugging guitars and deadpan earworm hooks, but something tells me the guys have been looking for some way to change things up and make them fresh again - Wilson's switch to guitar notwithstanding.

And, last time I checked, Weezer were free agents, licensing their last record to Epitaph, so what's to stop them from making an esoteric record that sounds fucking awesome in a good pair of cans?

The answer: Absolutely nothing.

What Are You Listening To: The Video!

2011-05-26T17:50:00.002-05:00

This is hilarious. A dude with a camera walks around NYC asking people wearing earbuds or headphones what they're listening to. What I found myself doing was giving a lot of people way too much credit for having any taste whatsoever based on the fact that they looked cool, or like a hipster or whatever.

I was wrong on every count. And what's with the guy who some "old" song from all the way back in 1999, Houston emo-punkers Fenix TX? I can't imagine how he'd describe a song from the 60's..."prehistoric", maybe?

Anyway, we don't wanna ruin it for you by describing all the hilarity. Let us just say that it is an absolute work of genius.

Check it out.

(Thanks again to my buddy beatnikdaddio for letting me know about this one)

1989 Version 22.0: Are We There Yet?

2011-05-26T15:43:00.000-05:00

Okay, I admit it, I'm a child of the 80's. I grew up on the sights and sounds of what is arguably the last decade with an original bone (heh heh, I said bone) in its body. Even back then, though, we kids knew we were surrounded by shit. Taco? Tiffany? Milli Vanilli? Stuff like that made you wonder if someone in charge hadn't fallen asleep at the wheel, but there was so much good stuff still out there that we didn't lose much sleep about it.

And, in our minds, the future was only gonna get better. We could hear the footsteps of technology gaining on us and knew that such advances held unlimited potential for human gains. Oh, what great heights we would soon be reaching. I think at some point, we were led to believe that by 2011, we'd have flying cars. The only flying cars I see are the ones driven by Billy Joel late at night in the Hamptons, where mail boxes quiver with fear at the sight of his newly-repaired Bentley, but I digress.

In all the years that have passed since the 80's exhaled its last breath, you'd have thought we'd have progressed by now. I mean, those from the 40's were able to look at the 50's and 60's and see a progression. They might not have liked it, but they'd have been hard-pressed to deny that progress had been made on many fronts.

Yet, here we are in the year 2011 and we haven't progressed a fucking day past 1989. Musically speaking, it's like "Groundhog Day" (the movie) gone horribly wrong. In that movie, Bill Murray is sent to report on the Groundhog Day celebration and ends up re-living the same day over and over until he finally gets it right. In reality, we've been living the same day over and over for twenty-plus years.

As a kid blissing out to the sounds of 1989, if you'd have told me that absolutely no musical advances would have taken place between then and now, I'd have laughed in your face. Back then, the music of Kanye West, for example, would have been seen as the unintentionally hilarious farce that it is. In 2011, he is heralded as a genius. In 1989, we had NWA, Public Enemy and De La Soul doing absolutely amazing things in the field of rap and hip-hop music. I remember wondering with great anticipation how far rap would go. Turns out we've advanced so far that Eminem and Chris Brown are held up as icons, while Ice T plays a cop on TV and Ice Cube seems to have built a career on asking repeatedly, "Are We There Yet?"

No, Ice Cube, we are not there yet. Enough already.

On the pop front, we are led by two musical visionaries, Katy Perry and Lady Gaga, or, as I like to call them Katy Gaga. Every time I see them, or accidentally hear one of their songs, I am reminded of the blaring fact that Madonna did it so much better, yet Lady Gaga rips off Madonna and is repeatedly hailed a genius. Meanwhile, Katy Perry promotes her new album by appearing in zit cream commercials and demanding that her limo drivers not look at her or attempt to engage her in conversation. Poor thing, undeserved fame can be such a bitch.

How, I ask you, does such a thing happen? Is it really possible to have spent three decades trying to create the most dumbed-down version of 1989 we can imagine? Well, I must say, it worked. Whoever decided that this was to be our universal goal, you win. Rich suburban kids walk around with tattoos and their pants hanging off their ass like an extra in the movie "Colors". Guitar Center actually sells a video game that allows you to be a "guitar hero" without ever needing to learn the instrument - and apparently turntables are now a musical instrument because they have a whole section devoted to them.

If you'd have told me in 1989 that DJ's would be the new rock stars, I'd have thought that you were a comedic genius. Today, though, that shit ain't funny.

Back in 1989, we had this musical phenomenon called the "one-hit wonder". Sure, they'd been around since the dawn of time, but, in the 80's, they were everywhere. An artist would come out of nowhere, score one gigantic monster of a hit, fail to repeat that success on their next attempt or two, and then disappear.

Nowadays, we're still surrounded by one-hit wonders, but they're the same one-hit wonders from ten years ago because, for some odd reason, they obviously didn't get the memo instructing them to LEAVE! While the rest of N'SYNC got the message, Justin Timberlake didn't and is still here, shitting out faceless pop music and proclaiming himself an "artist". Here's the funny part: a lot of people believe him.

You know the funniest part about this version of 1989? Bon Jovi is the highest-grossing concert act. Can you believe that? The powers-that-be gave us twenty years to shape the world into something new and amazing and this is what we come up with...Bon Jovi.

It's like we packed up the station wagon for this huge, grand adventure, a whole world of possibilities in front of us, and we never left the fucking drive-way.

"Are we there yet?"

Pink Floyd Reunion...Zzzz?

2011-05-13T12:17:00.002-05:00

I'm not a huge Pink Floyd fan. I enjoy their music when I am occasionally exposed to it, whether it be at the supermarket or when I happen to be listening to FM radio (which isn't often at all). Yet even I was emotionally touched when the band put their differences aside to reunite at Live 8.

Their performance, while a little rough around the edges, was heartfelt and I couldn't help but feel that I was witnessing history - that is, until MTV cut away from their set to talk about god-knows-what. MTV may as well have just said, "Just in case you forgot that we don't actually give a shit about music, we thought we'd remind you of that fact."

So it was with sleepy eyes that I awoke this morning to news that David Gilmour and Nick Mason had joined Roger Waters onstage last night. Gilmour surprised the sold-out crowd at London's O2 Arena by appearing atop the infamous wall to sing his vocal parts in "Comfortably Numb" before ripping into the infamous guitar solo.

As one might expect, the crowd went ape-shit. After all, this was rock history taking place right before their eyes.

As one might also expect, news of this event had spread like wild fire, from message boards and Twitter tweets to the front page of Rolling Stone's website.

Yet, this high-quality video clip of Waters and Gilmour performing "Comfortable Numb" has garnered only 2,519 views.

Granted, this is Pink Floyd and not Rebecca Black. I guess unless millions of mindless teenage sheep care enough to click, nobody else will.

Sigh.

Is this what the world has come to, the lowest common denominator reveling in cultural dog shit while actual groundbreaking and legendary art plays to an audience of a discerning few?

Maybe Rebecca Black can record a version of "Comfortably Numb". Oddly, and sadly, fitting.

Miley Cyrus Smells Like Teen Spirit?! Ugh.

2011-05-04T13:58:00.000-05:00

There are some things some people just shouldn't do. For me, it was play professional basketball and study medicine, for Miley Cyrus, she can now add "cover Nirvana" to the growing list of things she needs to promise never to ever do...ever...never never ever.

Catching Up With Ken Kurson of Green and The Lilacs

2011-05-03T12:09:00.001-05:00

For many Chicago rock fans, Ken Kurson will always best be known as the bass player for 80's alt. rock pioneers Green, whose legendary second album Elaine Mackenzie remains an indie classic, and for fronting his own band, The Lilacs through the early 90's. Our feature on the Lilacs from 2009 not only continues to be one of our most-visited articles as time goes by, but also led Ken Kurson himself to get in touch with us, at which point we decided an interview was in order.

Q: You first came to my attention as bass player in the Chicago band Green, whose excellent second album Elaine MacKenzie is an absolute, stone-cold classic. What do you remember most fondly from your days in Green?

KURSON: Thank you for your kind words about Green and for holding affectionate memories of what I continue to believe was one of America's great rock 'n roll bands.

As for what I remember most fondly, my time in Green is hard to distill into one particular memory. I'm blessed to have had an amazingly exciting first half of my life so far, filled with adventures that are sui generis, unbuyable at any price. My four years in Green are sealed in amber.

I was a very lost and confused kid during high school. My parents' marriage had broken up and I lived alone with my dad and we struggled to make ends meet. We had to sell all of our furniture and there were rooms in my house that were literally empty. I worked 20 - 25 hours a week during high school; I remember adding a year to my age when I applied to work at Baskin-Robbins in Sanders Court so that I could work more hours than a 14-year-old would have been allowed. And I gave much of my pay to my dad because we needed it for food and clothes. I've written a lot about this in magazines, and it shaped my worldview about money. But this period also contributed to my lifelong intense love affair with music and its transformative power. I'm a gigantic lover of every kind of music (with the exception of Opera, despite Rudy's best attempts to proselytize). In discovering music, first with my brother as a kid when he played piano and I sang (mostly Elton John and the Who) but later by myself, was a great way to form my own opinions. I didn't realize that you weren't allowed to like the Cars and the Clash and AC/DC and Dolly Parton and Stevie Nicks and Barry Manilow and the Bee Gees all at the same time. I loved it all and I still do.

During my junior year, when things were at their worst in my home life I began working at Marshall's, the discount clothing store, because I could get time and a half on Sundays. There was a guy working there named Luke Garrott who I kind of knew about because he was a superstar soccer player at my high school and a year older than me. Luke also was (and is) movie-star good-looking and super popular so I was surprised when he rather aggressively befriended me. But he did and remains a close friend to this day. It was Luke who turned me on to the Dead Kennedys and Husker Du and The Reverbs and The Replacements. Then he played a four-song 7-inch for me that he'd bought at Record City because he liked the cover.

That record changed my life. What a cliché, I know, but I mean literally that the direction my life took was very different because I heard Green's first EP. At the time I was playing in an ordinary high school band called Rox with terrible original songs and covering everything from Zebra to the Cars to Zeppelin. Over the summer between junior and senior year I grew close to Luke and his older gang of friends, who introduced me to tons of new music that blew my mind. All these bands could barely play their instruments. How could they be writing and recording songs that moved me so stirringly? All those years I spent practicing in bands to sound tight and sing on key and to play solos like they were on the record–all of a sudden I realized that wasn't what it was about.

Now this particular group of friends – all of whom are still my friends today and one of whom, Dave Levinsky, I later founded the Lilacs with – were typical Indie music jerk-offs. The day they discovered REM was the day they dropped all previous music allegiance. For me, Circle Jerks were the same as The Who. Richard Howell was the same as Bob Dylan. The Three O'Clock were the same as The Cars. I think it is some critical element of my personality that I never grow out of things; I always just add new influences to what's always there. I watch the Brady Bunch with my kids now and I realize I still love the shows I loved when I was a little kid even as I've added grown-up, sophisticated influences in my life.

Anyway, from the moment Luke put the needle down on "Gotta Getta Record Out", I basically decided that the robotic march from leafy suburb to leafy college campus wasn't for me. I sucked at school anyway, so losing me wasn't some giant disappointment to the Ivy League–I was something like 550 in my class at 660 at Glenbrook North. However, in a suburb where more than 99% of high school graduates go on to some sort of college, my decision to rock out was maybe the first original thought I ever had. I had been seeing Green every possible chance I got -- at the West End or Metro, and even if they told me they were playing at a friend's wedding I'd ask if I could go. I got to know Jeff, Johnny and John a little bit and would even hang out at Jeff and Johnny's house in Oak Park sometimes. It was like hanging out with Paul Weller or Ray Davies–to me it was clear as day that Jeff was a genius along that order.

Meanwhile, on December 6, 1985, when I had just turned 17 years old and a senior at Glenbrook North, I met a Northwestern freshman, Heidi Stillman, at a Slugs concert at Mertz Hall at Loyola. I fell instantly in love. Heidi's encouragement and support of my plan not to go to college and to try to find some way to keep rocking out was instrumental in giving me the courage to pursue that path. Heidi was the rarest thing in the world -- a genuine nonconformist. She might be the only one I've ever known. I've done a bunch of things that don't conform and so have many people I admire. But the difference is I'm always aware that what I'm doing is somehow taking a chance and I have to get my head around that risk in order to work up the nerve to do it. A genuine nonconformist like Heidi just does what she does and it doesn't matter how unconventional that pursuit may be -- it just seems like the most normal thing in the world to her. Her attitude gave me a lot of courage -- it still does -- thinking about the way she approached life and probably still does. We're no longer in touch but I bet she's still like that today.

Anyway, in July of 1986 I heard through the grapevine that John and Johnny had quit Green only several weeks before their planned massive East Coast tour in support of their first album. That first album is a masterpiece. Every single one of its 14 songs could have been a monster hit. I wrote Jeff a long letter -- how quaint, writing a letter! -- in which I detailed all of the reasons he ought to overlook the fact that I was only 17 and a shitty bassist and give me a chance to join Green. My theory was that my unparalleled love for his music and my energy and determination would turn me into the true musical partner he never had. Plus, I can sing (see earlier -- all that training from my brother). I didn't hear back from Jeff for a few weeks and kind of forgot about it. I was up at Heidi's cabin in Elko, Wisconsin. To give you some perspective on Elko, the nearest "big city” was Rhinelander. Heidi's grandparents had never met a Jew before–they were actual Norwegians and ate lutefisk and everything. So her grandmother greeted me with a bag of Lenders bagels when I got there and said, "We wanted to make sure you'd have something to eat." Then a tragedy happened in Heidi's family and her parents and grandparents had to leave the cabin to deal with it. A couple days later, all alone in the woods with my girlfriend and her little brother, I was out by the lake reading–Heidi was horrified by how few books I read and was constantly forcing Dostoevsky or Camus on me. She came running out of the cabin to tell me "Jeff Lescher is on the phone!!!" Somehow, Jeff had tracked me down and asked if I could try out for Green later that week.

Heidi and I immediately jumped in my 1978 Oldsmobile Cutlass -- bought from my dad for $500 -- to drive back to my house, where I practiced Green's songs on bass (and harmonies) for approximately 35 of the 48 hours until my tryout. (I should add here that I am deeply ashamed that we abandoned Heidi's little brother Toby, who was maybe 15 at the time, in the scary cabin in the woods.) I made it. I was in. So to answer your question, that began my four years in Green. ALL of which I remember fondly. Living with Jeff on Winthrop when it was a slum, the first time he played "I Know, I Know" for me, playing to 25 people at Phyllis' Musical Inn, playing to 10,000 people at a festival in Belgium or Holland or Austria or Germany, being the hottest band in Chicago, recording the demo for "She's Heaven," being a band that Joe Shanahan would rely on to build crowds for national acts at the Metro, getting a royalty check for my one minor hit, "My Sister Jane," being the band no one cared about in St Louis or Los Angeles or Baltimore -- it was all good. I learned more about life than every single one of my friends who spent those same four years getting wasted at frat parties.

[With Green, Kurson far right]
Q: What’s your favorite Green tune?

Better Way, I Want What You Want, Bittersweet, I Know, I Know, For You, She's Heaven, My Tears Are Dry, a hundred others.

Q:. Who are your biggest musical influences?

I love any kind of music that's got a memorable tune and stirs my soul. I mention above that I really don't draw distinctions between types of music. My ipod will constantly play NWA's Fuck Tha Police followed by Bach's Harpsichord Concerto in F minor; REO's "Time for Me to Fly" will follow Serengeti's "Dennehy." The Kinks, The Thermals, Curtis Mayfield, Jay-Z. My dad was an influence, too -- he was a terrific singer and would always sing these great Louis Armstrong and glee club type ditties. On long trips, sometimes we'd harmonize.

Q: What led you to leave Green?

I felt that Green had progressed as far as it was ever going to get career wise. By the time I left, in January 1990, Green had achieved much of what I'd hoped for -- created great art, allowed me to visit 9 or 10 countries, paid the bills (badly, but still...), and most importantly, given me life experience. And by that point, I had seen Jeff inexplicably say no to several major opportunities that were offering only 98% of what we wanted. Green was like Yasser Arafat at the Camp David talks -- no deal was good enough. And creatively, we were going in a direction that wasn't as satisfying to me. Jeff had grown infatuated with "Blizzard of Oz" (an album I'd owned and loved since it came out ten years earlier) and was obsessed with the idea of combining his uncanny ability to screech with Randy Rhoads/Ozzy style pop metal. It didn't work. I tried to explain to Jeff that what made Crazy Train or Mr Crowley awesome was that they were actually very SLOW and controlled pop songs. He didn't agree -- we'd cover Crazy Train at 100 mph and it sounded like shit. It was time for me to leave.

Q: You then went on to form the Lilacs, who recorded two EP’s and an album, Rise Above The Filth (another stone-cold stunner, BTW). Most notably, while you shared singing and songwriting duties with David Levinsky, you took a more active role as front man than you had in Green and, as a result, ultimately gave Green (which merely replaced you, as if such a thing is possible) a real run for their money. Did you consciously set out to prove your new band could match Green song-for-song or were you just content to go about your business making music?

I guess everyone who leaves one band and forms another is trying to correct or undo the elements of the previous experience he didn't like. With the Lilacs, my goal was never to "outdo" Green -- I could never be the singer or songwriter Jeff is. But yes, my dissatisfaction with Green's horrendous live performance was one of the stated goals of the Lilacs -- I wanted us to be tight and wear outfits and stuff. And it worked. And you know what? Green was probably a better live band after I left. Clay (Tomasek -- KK replacement) is only a passable songwriter, but he's a better bass player than I was and he seemed to up Jeff's game in a way I never could. I think I basically looked up to Jeff with such worship and unconditional love that I could never convincingly get him to raise his game. Clay had been in Slammin' Watusis, which was a mediocre band, but they did have a real record contract and were professional musicians (including Jeff's former bandmate from Next Big Thing, the scorching guitarist Mark Durante), so I think that kind of made Jeff approach his craft more professionally, at least live.

Q: What single Lilacs tune is the one that came closest to fully capturing the band’s true essence?

I would say our signature song was "Hop In the Stanza," which combined a ton of what the Lilacs was about -- raw emotion, laying it all out there, catchy chorus, some interesting songwriting components wrapped into the tightly unforgiving parameters of a pop song, cool little guitar riffs. So that'd be the one that most "captures" the Lilacs. But my personal favorite Lilacs song is Dave's gem, "Pointless." I find it really hard to listen to any of my songs now. I have an "all-Dave" Lilacs playlist on my ipod.

Q: Speaking of the business of music: All things considered, was music a profitable experience for you or merely one where the ROI wasn’t much, but the “life lessons” were plentiful?

ROI? Oh, brother. My dad used to bust my balls by pointing out how little Green earned. I'd be psyched to report to him, "Dad, guess what? A frat at Notre Dame just hired us for a thousand bucks!" And he'd bust my bubble by saying, "A thousand each?" But yes, tons of life lessons.

[With The Lilacs, Kurson far left]

Q: What led to the dissolution of the Lilacs?

Tons of stuff, as usual. OK, the main thing is also the answer to number 10 -- my girlfriend (later wife) had basically grown disgusted by my rock life. I was a 25-year-old college sophomore and my behavior was regrettable. She moved to New York City and I was like "fine, be that way." Six weeks later, I dropped out of college and drove my brother's girlfriend's (now his wife) crappy little stick-shift Honda to Chelsea and begged forgiveness. Thank G-d that Becky (eventually) forgave me.

But there were secondary reasons, too. For one thing, Dave and I could not keep a decent rhythm section together. All these musicians were dying to be in the Lilacs and when we'd put ads in the Reader, we'd have amazing responses and these really good players would show up at our practice space already knowing our songs. But Dave and I are not easy to get along with, and no one kept lasting. After Tom Whalen and Art Kim left, we hired the drummer who'd been in Green, John "Freight Train" Valley, aka the best drummer in Chicago. Then we got this guy Stu Roseman on bass. Stu was a fantastic bass player -- like a session player. Great harmony singer, too. But his approach really bugged me. He would wear like wool suit jackets to shows. And he didn't play with a pick, which I hated. And he was bald. Which is a funny complaint, given the state of my hairdo these days. But still, he just didn't rock. So we fired him. Then we got this guy Bob Michaelson. He was a great kid and loved the band, but he was also very immature and wanted to contribute his own songs. It was hard enough to get a word in edgewise with Levinsky and me hogging all the oxygen, but add to that Bob's songs were mostly about peeing and farting. So we fired him. Then the deal with the devil that brought us Valley started to sour. His home life was never all that stable to begin with and it was collapsing at that time. He got into some sort of epic fight with like all the cops in Wooddale (who lives in Wooddale!?!?!?) and they kind of maced him and still couldn't control him -- he was a total stud. And then he stole our van! So that was the end of the Freight Train. We then hit upon the idea that a good group should really be a band of brothers -- friends first.

We recruited John Packel to rejoin (he was the Lilacs original drummer and my high school classmate and still my best pal) and also our other close friend, Luke Garrott, whom you'll recall from the Marshalls story. Luke and his girlfriend moved all the way from Florida for this great "opportunity" and because I love the guy, I was really really touched by that gesture. He even moved in a couple doors down from me. The problem is ... he sucked at bass. It's a weird thing cuz he has this very musical neshama and even was a decent songwriter. I always felt like a monkey could be a decent rock bassist, but for some reason, Luke just could not nail these very simple Lilacs songs. I mean, this is like a genius guy -- a phd who went to Stanford. And a guy I truly love and look up to. But I remember a gig on Coney Island. I looked back at Luke during the second verse of "Pointless," where there's this marginally complex little time shift/stop and Luke had this pained look on his face, like he knew he was gonna blow it. And he did. It wasn't fun for him and it wasn't fair for us to ask him to do something he couldn't do. I just had basically had it -- the strain of teaching yet another guy the chorus to "I'm in love with a girl in the red dress" was just too much to bear.

And then there's this, too. At that point, Dave had begun a really fascinating religious journey. He was hanging out with all these Hasidic guys and he was clearly torn between the two very charismatic worlds that were tugging on his arms. At that time, I was not a very observant Jew. But I was always a passionate and proud Jew, and I started to feel like I didn't want to be the guy standing in Dave's way as he explored this calling.

At the time I left the Lilacs, we were probably at the peak of our popularity. And we had some really great songs that we never recorded, including the best song I ever wrote, "Monica," (later recorded by Chicago pop group The Returnables) and a little gem called "Henry." The very week I left, we had headlining shows at the Limelight and others booked. But I felt like I couldn't play another time, no matter what.

Q: What led you to found Green magazine (and, additionally, how much time took place between your initial idea to start the publication and you officially launching the magazine)?

OK, I believe that I've had one totally original thought in my entire life and that thought was Green Magazine. Here's how it happened.

When I decided to become a writer, I quickly realized that no one gave a shit about what I had to say because everything I tried to pitch was already covered by tons of writers who were already established. I was working at Harper's magazine as an intern and pitching all these story ideas to Playboy and the Village Voice and whatever. But my story ideas were like "how about I review the Husker Du show" and they were like, "we already have a bunch of people who do that, dumbass." My mentor was Michael Pollan. He used to get all these weirdo seed catalogs and I'd babysit for his kid all the time and he had like zero edible foods -- this was years before anyone knew about "shopping local" or even "organic" but Pollan was way into that stuff. I asked him about it, and he told me he was going to write about it for two reasons: 1) he was interested in it and thus could write with passion and authority, and 2) no one else was writing about it so he figured it was a good career move. To all these treehuggers who worship him now, Michael seems like some sort of modern-day hippie, untouched by crass commercial concerns. But if you know Michael's father (Stephen, who also mentored me a lot and is also a great guy), you'd know that Michael was a guy who very adroitly parlayed his brilliant writing and oddball subject matter into a stunning career. I admired that.
Michael also got me my first paying job, as a fact-checker at Rolling Stone, via his friend Eric Ethridge. So one day at Rolling Stone, I made a list of all the subjects I was interested in enough to write about and then I circled the things on the list that were not regularly covered by the magazines for which I aspired to write. The only one that really made sense was comics. No one was writing about serious comics for serious publications. I pitched a review of Peter Kuper's Kafka book to the New York Times and Eric Asimov called me the next day and said, "great idea, do it." Then a flood of comic reviews and articles in all kinds of places, like a cover story for Seattle Weekly about Dan Clowes and a recurring column about comics in Spin. But the problem with writing about comics is that the opportunities are limited. I wanted to make a ton of money.

Meanwhile, I was working as an editor at a company called United Feature Syndicate, editing stuff like their bridge columns (one of my guys was Philip Alder, who now writes about bridge for the NYTimes) and Bruce Williams. UFS had just hired Vanguard investments to run its scary new 401k program, which would invest our money in exotic things called "mutual funds." It was very low-level finance but all these writers and editors and salesmen I worked with treated it like they were being asked to analyze the impact of the Dodd-Frank Act on the price of credit default swaps. I was writing everyone these long emails explaining what a mutual fund is and how compound interest works and all my coworkers were saying, "Wow, you are the first person who ever explained this to me in a way that makes sense."

I realized that I didn't necessarily need a subject that no one was writing about. What I really had hit upon was a WAY to write that was different and necessary. Basically, I combined my lifelong love of fanzines and the “punk rock” ethos and language with that most un-“punk rock” of topics -- personal finance. I wrote and designed The Kenny Quarterly. It was a huge hit, immediately. So much so that my pal John Packel (see last question) came aboard -- he would publish and I would edit the newly rechristened Green, named in tribute to our favorite band (and also cuz it's a perfect name for a magazine about money aimed at young people). The press attention that Green garnered was overwhelming and immediate. For five years, I was on CNNfn every single week as a paid contributor. I was on tons of other TV and radio programs and every major newspaper in the country wrote about us. We sold Green to Bankrate and then with their help built it into a real magazine and daily website.

Q: When did you split Chicago for New Jersey?

I left Chicago in Oct 1993, but I moved to New York City -- lived in Chelsea for three years before moving to NJ.

Q: What was Green magazine’s highest paid circulation?

Around 20,000

Q: In 1998, you published your first book, The Green Magazine Guide to Personal Finance...give me three reasons why anyone should grab that book, instead of (or in addition to) the gazillions of other books on personal finance.

KURSON: I don't think anyone should buy that book today, although it sold very well when it came out. I actually re-read it fairly recently and it holds up rather nicely. But the financial world has changed a ton since the late 90s and I'm not sure it's sound to rely on such a dated resource. That book includes the line: "With the advent of better security, banking over the Internet has recently become less Jetsonian." So it's not exactly current. On the other hand, I began the book by saying, " This book isn’t about the senseless accumulation of assets. It’s about attaining the freedom to do what you want to do" That's exactly how I feel today.

Q: What’s one thing that the average person who actually gives a crap about their finances and is trying to take proper steps to prepare for their retirement should know?

Starting early is the most important thing. Not just for retirement, but for freedom throughout your adulthood. Start the discipline of investing with your very first paycheck.

Q: What led you to sell Green Magazine to Bankrate (NYSE: RATE) in 1999?

They gave me a million bucks. http://www.allbusiness.com/banking-finance/personal-finance/6703150-1.html

Q: What did you do between then and late 2002, when you returned to the publishing world as co-author of “Leadership” with Rudy Giuliani?

There was no "between then" -- I was hired by Rudy in 2000 and began working on the book immediately.

Q: How long did it take to write the book and what was the experience of doing so like?

It was about 80% finished by Sept 11, 2001, and obviously that changed the content and our approach to writing it quite a bit. It took about two years. It was the most thrilling but also the most awful experience of my life. On Sept 14, 2001, for example, I went with Rudy to the office of Dr. Charles S. Hirsch, New York City's Medical Examiner. We saw cuts all over Dr. Hirsch's face and noticed crazy stitching on the back of his hand. Rudy asked him what had happened and Hirsch said that he got hit covering his head as pieces of the building rained down on him. To avoid diverting doctors who were needed elsewhere, Dr. Hirsch stitched his own hand with a cross-hatch of dark black thread. As we talked, a big rolling laundry cart rolled by -- the kind a maid would use for the bedding at a fancy hotel. Inside were dozens of random body parts, including an arm that was severed but perfectly intact. On its wrist was a watch that was still ticking. I very nearly vomited but was trying my best to act composed among all these unbelievable heroes. Becky was pregnant with our first son. It had been very hard for us to conceive and hold a baby so by the time she was 7 moths pregnant with Steve, we were ecstatic about our lives. And then, on one horrible Tuesday, we realized like everybody else how dangerous and out of control this world really is. September 11 was only part of the experience, of course. Writing that book with Rudy changed my life in just about every way. There's a column in the New York Times called "Public Lives" that profiled a new person every weekday. In July, 2001, they profiled me after I'd been writing the book for a few months. I've been profiled in the Times on three different occasions -- once for Green Magazine, once for running for office and this "Public Lives" and I always felt like that one was the only one that "got" me. I know how tremendously jerky that is to say -- as though there's all that much to "get" about my epically complex soul.

The thing is, the woman who wrote it, Robin Finn, is just a great writer and she noticed a lot of my personality quirks, even as I was thinking that I was doing a great job hiding them, media-savvy fellow journalist that I was and all. Something else interesting about it was that I was displaying three traits in that article that probably seemed kind of corny to a lot of NYTimes readers in July 2001 but became very much in vogue a few months later: 1) Giuliani fandom, 2) I discussed how little use I had for irony as a literary/personality device -- I explained to Robin that I knew it was passé (and maybe even evidence of dumbness) to say what one means but that I didn't care, 3) Patriotism (In the photo of me on my Vespa that appeared in the story, I was wearing an American flag helmet.)

Q: In addition to your duties as COO, you were instrumental in writing Giuliani’s speeches. Were those mostly collaborative efforts and, in such cases, what was that process like?

They were totally collaborative. I write a good number of speeches just to keep my chops sharp and earn a few bucks (I wrote a commencement speech for a major university this year). I've never worked with anyone who's as good a writer and editor as Rudy. You are free to consider me a bootlicker, and it's true I worship the guy and just plain really like him. But the fact is, Rudy was the most feared trial attorney in the country for a good while. What a lawyer does -- craft persuasive, powerful arguments -- is pretty much what a speechwriter tries to do. I spent so much time with Rudy during 2000-2008 that the two main speeches you're referring to -- the nationally televised RNC speeches of 04 and 08 -- were really easy, comfortable collaborations. We'd mostly just sit at the Havana Room, smoke cigars, and talk deeply about what he was trying to communicate. I will add that in 08, there was an additional member of our team -- Fipp Avlon, who's a great guy and great writer.

Q: You’re currently Executive VP of Jamestown Associates. What does JA do?

We win elections.

Q: You are strongly tied to numerous Republican candidates. Would you or JA ever consider backing a candidate from a different party if their platform and political goals were in alliance with your own ideology?

That's not really done in this business. Republican consultants work with Republican candidates and Democrat consultants work with Democratic candidates. It is something of a shame. In my corporate work, I toil alongside tons of Democrats. Some company will hire me to direct a video and the pollster and strategist and comms director will all be Democrats. And I get a chance to see how they think and the techniques they're using and often they're doing stuff in some really interesting way no Republican competitor of mine has employed. But when it comes to candidates, you gotta choose a side. In the old days, great consultants like David Garth would work for both sides. Dick Morris got away with that a bit, too, though it's difficult now to imagine him working for a Democrat. But these days, it's just not done.

Q: As an American voter, and as someone involved in the political process, what are the three most important qualities that you look for when choosing a political candidate to support?

Integrity, backbone and for me a commitment to the two things I care about most -- cutting the size/scope of government at all levels, and defending our nation and our values from attack.

Q: Having been involved in Giuliani’s bid for the White House, as well as a number of Congressional and Gubernatorial races, when will you, yourself, run for office? Heck, we’d register in New Jersey to vote for you!

I ran for State Assembly in 2003 in the 34th District of NJ. Did well in an impossible district. But I deeply disliked the experience. I wrote about it for This American Life so I won't go into too much detail here, but it comes down to this: I've been unpopular my whole life and that's how I like it. At the end of the day, politics is about being popular. It's just not something I want to be.

Q: Bringing this back to music, what new music do you listen to these days or are you just amazed at the crap that passes for tunes these days?

I don't share that "everything sucks now" viewpoint at all. I love a ton of new music. Being in the business of directing tv commercials, I'm around young hipsters a lot and they turn me on to tons of new groups. Blind Pilot, Delta Spirit, The Gutter Press, The Genders, Against Me, Telekinesis -- all kinds of stuff that blows my mind. Artists I've loved for a while continue to put out great music -- The Thermals, Hold Steady, Eminem. And then I discover great stuff from the old days that I missed -- it's not new but it's new to me. This 25 year old shooter in my office had Nilsson Schmilsson on in his car and I couldn't believe I hadn't given it a better chance back when he was kind of contemporary -- great record. And I come to reconnect with groups I always loved in different ways.

I read Rick Springfield's autobiography and found myself singing the chorus to "Kristina" over and over.

I went to Chicago to see Material Issue's reunion show and was reacquainted with what a great band they were. I always knew that (I wrote the liner notes to their fourth CD) but you know what I mean -- that thrill you get when you reconnect with an old love affair.

CD REVIEW: Slow Runner "Damage Points"

2011-05-03T11:22:00.001-05:00

BUY DAMAGE POINTS

The year was 2006 and I was killing a weekend in Vegas when my then-girlfriend and I passed a Tower Records "going-out-of-business" sale. My girlfriend saw the sign before I did, so it was the resigned terror in her eyes that I noticed first (knowing that the sighting of a record store always meant a sudden, yet prolonged detour from present plans) and let me know that a record store was near.

Remember record stores? They were these places where you could find music that you could not only listen to, but hold in your hands. I tried explaining this to my nephew the other day and he replied, "Oh, you mean like Best Buy?"

Sigh.

So there I was scanning the aisles of a dying Tower Records, for what would likely be the last time, when I eyed a copy of Slow Runner's No Disassemble. I remember reading the sticker, which went so far as to use the word "electronica" to describe the band. Based on the artwork, I didn't buy that for a second, but, for four bucks, I was up for taking a chance. I could have walked out of there with stacks of CD's, but Slow Runner would be my sole purchase on that day.

Good thing, too, because it was the only CD I would play for literally the next several months.

The duo of singer/keyboardist Michael Flynn and multi-instrumentalist Josh Kaler had arrived fully-formed on their first record, creating a song cycle that was like a walk around the neighborhood set to music - vivid and conversational in tone. You could almost smell someone burning leaves in their backyard.

Of course, when a couple guys create an album that so successfully exists within its own universe, it seems only fitting that their label (Clive Davis' J Records imprint) should do their darndest to wash their hands of such a band in favor of more trendy "here-today-gone-later-today" fodder.

A lesser band may have hung up their guitars, or at least spent a year or two licking their wounds, but Slow Runner responded swiftly by releasing not one but two albums in the space of a single year. Shiv! showed the band shifting into full-on rock mode while the cover of their third album, Mermaids, should appear in the dictionary next to the word "somber".

While most bands would consider such albums career-defining artistic statements, Slow Runner was just being Slow Runner. Still, the three-year gap between Mermaids and the band's new album, Damage Points, was enough to make this writer wonder if perhaps Slow Runner had managed to raise the bar too high, even for them.

In fact, upon taking possession of Damage Points, I found myself almost dreading the task of opening my ears to the new sounds that awaited me. When I was a kid, a new album by a band whose last album had floored me were opened with great gusto and slapped onto the turntable with equal parts impatience and glee. There was never a doubt in my mind that the new album would be even better.

Ah, but the years have brought many such albums that failed to deliver on the promise of past glories. The man who sits before you now is one who knows disappointment all too well. Even my current girlfriend, who - in one of those "you just may be a keeper" moments - bought me a new copy of No Disassemble to replace the one my previous girlfriend (the one alluded to above) had ruthlessly swiped when she left, wondered aloud how I could be in possession of a brand new Slow Runner album without immediately listening to it.

Of course, she was absolutely right. What was there to be afraid of?

We immediately headed for the back patio, adult beverages in-hand, where I pressed "PLAY" on the stereo and willingly stepped into the unknown.

I've always jokingly stated that if you're gonna name an album after a song, said song should be the first song on the album and, based on the opening title track, Slow Runner know exactly what I am talking about. "Damage Points" (the song) is everything a title track should be - and more. Additionally, it is the perfect antidote to those who apply such words as "genius" and "elegiac" in reference to the latest offerings from Kid Rock or Taylor Swift.

Oddly, only days earlier, I had been mourning the absence of artists able to capture the understated elegance and emotive qualities of prime-era Harry Nilsson. Truth be told, the words "Harry Nilsson" may go right over the heads of most who might be reading this review, but a man can dream, can't he? On "Damage Points" (the song), Slow Runner arrive seemingly on-cue to bring said dream to fruition.

"Auto-Happy" (the song - har har) follows, all synthy bells and whistles, and sounds as if it was created for the sole purpose of promoting Apple products. A few years ago, those would be fighting words to many, but such is the current state of the music industry. Landing a Nivea commercial, which Slow Runner did recently, or iPhone spot is akin to receiving Top 40 radio airtplay these days. Having said that, there are very few songs that so easily lend themselves to promoting the latest hip gadgetry that doesn't leave me clawing at my own ears. Perhaps now music supervisors and ad agency geeks can move on from The Postal Service's "Such Great Heights".

Dig a little deeper, though, and you discover a song with literally layer upon layer of lyrical and musical depth, not to mention one of the best vocal performances Flynn has ever committed to tape...er, you know what I mean.

"Strange Days", on first listen, sounds as if it would have fit perfectly on "No Disassemble" and, while certain sonic similarities apply, this is a song of unspeakable maturity and simplicity that the band is now capable of achieving.

"It's Back" builds upon that foundation, upping the ante in the process by inching ever so slightly toward darkness. Those who may already have a Slow Runner album or two in the collection may be familiar with Flynn's flair for flippancy just when it looks like things might actually get heavy, lyrically speaking. It's the sort of song you could play in, say, a record store (if such places still exist) and have five people ask you who it is before the song is half over.

Okay, I can't just automatically like every song Slow Runner does. I'm almost positive it's a mathematical impossibility, but, then again, I flunked high school algebra...repeatedly. The great thing about Slow Runner, though, is that even their missteps are interesting. "Apocalypstick Kiss", kitschy title aside, is Paul McCartney & Wings to the rest of the album's decidedly Beatlesque highs and, if it is anything like the other Slow Runner songs that my ears initially tossed into the proverbial no-zip sorting bin, they will slowly sneak up on my subconscious and eventually become best buds for life.

"Spooky Ghost" is both schticky and sticky, the sort of song that plants multiple ear worms that'll keep you up nights singing to yourself. I should know, as it was not five minutes ago that my lady elbowed me in the ribs for singing that catchy refrain for the zillionth time.

The thing about this particular album is that just when you think Slow Runner have exhausted their musical palette, left to retrace their previous steps or fall back on their established strengths, these multi-faceted bastards not only have other colors up their sleeve, they shift into an entirely new gear and blow our collective hair back.

Easing back to earth with the gentle, reassuring "Devil Moon" is the move of an expert ensemble, masterfully controlling the ebb and flow of an epic listening experience the way U2 did with "One" on Achtung Baby. It's the sort of song that makes me wish radio still played music beyond the absolute lowest common denominator, and makes me long for those days when 8-year-olds sang along to Steely Dan and 10cc on the bus ride to and from school.

The album closes with "Super Damage Points!", an instrumental reinterpretation of the album opener that brings the song count to an astonishingly economical nine tracks. In most other cases, I'd consider such miserly output to be, in my own words, a major rip-off, but in Slow Runner's hands, nine songs is akin to a transatlantic voyage leaving the listener joyously spent from the experience.

As luck would have it, there's always room for one more if you'd like to come aboard!

Kickin' It With Slow Runner

2011-05-02T15:08:00.003-05:00

In our very first installment of "Kickin' It", we catch up with those dashing young lads in Slow Runner prior to their performance at Chicago's Old Town School Of Folk Music on April 29th.

Being the proverbial procrastinator that we are, things were not finalized until the very last minute, forcing us to exit the friendly confines of our local coffee shop and high-tail it down to the gig where Michael and Josh were just about to devour a deep-dish Chicago-style pizza.

They held off long enough to rock out this interview with yours truly and then went out and rocked Chicago to within an inch of its' life.

On a personal note, I wanna thank Michael and Josh for taking part. I also want to apologize to viewers for the two dudes from Old Town School Of Folk Music who decided to crash the interview early on. Also, if you listen closely, you can actually hear the wheezing of my nostrils ever so slightly. Sigh, live and learn, I guess. Upon hearing my "nose whistle" when I reviewed the footage, a few tears and f-bombs were quickly dropped.

Regardless, Michael and Josh were some charming mothers so don't let my nasal wheeze prevent you from sitting down with the cats in Slow Runner and maybe learning a thing or two.

Enjoy.

My Final Thoughts On The Royal Wedding (And Weddings In General)

2011-04-30T11:02:00.002-05:00

What is it with you women?

From the time you're old enough to walk, you immediately begin dreaming of one day walking down the aisle, planning every facet of your dream wedding - right down to the china pattern and napkin holders.

Now, that's not an entirely bad thing, but I've long believed - based on much of what I've seen with my own eyes - that women honestly believe their wedding day is all about them.

It's like the poor guy they've actually roped into marrying them doesn't even factor into the equation. A few years ago, a female co-worker I had the misfortune to be situated next to was spending an inordinate amount of time each day coordinating every aspect of her wedding. This was literally going on for months.

Figuring I'd have a little fun, I asked her what she'd be wearing on her wedding day. Of course, her eyes lit up and she went into what seemed like a ten-minute spiel about what she obviously perceived to be the wedding dress to end all wedding dresses, not missing a single detail along the way. I imagine if I'd asked an Army mechanic to describe the inner workings of an armored tank, it would have been no less detailed.

Then I asked her what the groom would be wearing. Her answer: "A tux."

Therein lies the rub.

For all of the coverage the Royal Wedding received, what was everybody talking about? Kate's dress, of course! But also the music that was playing when she walked in to, the hats the royal women (and Posh Spice) were wearing, and the fact that the brides maids wore the same color as the bride. GASP!

Women have been so busy planning their wedding day from birth that they've never stopped to realize that the wedding day they've dreamed of for so long actually involves someone other than them. Of course, that's because they've been dreaming of their wedding day for a heckuva lot longer than they've been dreaming of that poor sap they're about to marry.

In fact, I'm absolutely convinced that the reason the divorce rate in this country is so high is because women are so enamored with the idea of their wedding day that they can't stop at just one. I have a female friend (okay, former high school girlfriend) who has been married four times. I asked her why she'd been married four times and she jokingly responded, "I like weddings!"

In every joke, of course, is a hint of truth and, the more that I think about it, the more I wonder if it wasn't just me who had presumed she was joking when, in fact, she had been dead serious.

The question remains: If women are so hung up on their own wedding details that we men may as well fade into the background, one must wonder why we our attendance is even required.

The most obvious solution is for women to marry other women. They don't necessarily have to be lesbians and have sex with each other, but that would be totally hot. Think about it, that's twice the number of dresses per wedding! Holy shit, I bet every woman who just read that sentence had an orgasm at her desk.

Here's the best part: While the women are all off planning their weddings right down to the color of toilet tissue used in the bathrooms at the reception hall, we men will finally be able to do whatever the hell we want - like actually get some use out of that NFL Ticket satellite TV package for once in our lives.

I bet every man who just read that sentence just had an orgasm at his desk.

There, problem solved. :)

"Rain In My Eyes" Behind The Music!

2011-04-24T16:11:00.001-05:00

Over the past few days, I have rediscovered at least a portion of my love for making music. My hunch is that as I continue the journey, I will discover more and more of that love. Yesterday, I posted the first two tracks I've recorded in years and figured I would explain how they came to be, if for no other reason than to entertain myself, and maybe a few others, in the process.

See, when I was a kid, I didn't just listen to music. I read all I could about it, whether it was who produced what records, who played on what record, or how some of my favorite records came to be. So, bare with me as I prepare to blab endlessly about my process. It may not be as exciting as hearing how Dave Grohl spent $700,000 turning his garage into an old-school analog recording studio for the new Foo Fighters album, but it's the only story I've got. I promise at least a couple good laughs along the way.

HOW I CAME TO RECORD NEW SONGS

Several months ago, a music supervisor got in touch, asking if he could use a few instrumental tracks I had been circulating last year. Truth be told, I sent a CD of mostly instrumental tunes around to a few MS's (insider lingo for "music supervisor") and got NO response. I'm not one to beat on doors. I just send the tunes, maybe fire off a "hey, did you get my tunes?" email a week or so later, and hope maybe someone bites. Well, nobody bit so I sold what equipment I had to put into my t-shirt business and left it at that. I mean, I'm not 24-year-old anymore. Maybe it was time to move on from music...so that's what I did.

So, anyway, totally out of the blue, an MS drops me an email, says he loves the tunes, and wants to use a few of them in a new project. Of course, he wants me to tweak them a little, which I can either not do...and kiss that money goodbye...or I can buy some new gear and make the necessary tweaks, make some cash, and sell the gear when I'm done. I'm not like most people, in that I hold on to everything I've ever bought. When I'm done with something, I sell it so I can indulge whatever new thing I'm into. If I needed to, I could literally fit everything I care about into my Rav 4 and take off for parts unknown.

After hitting Craigslist, I managed to put together a reasonably state-of-the-art recording studio and spent two weeks performing the necessary tweaks. I handed in the tunes, the MS asked for a few more changes, I procrastinated and then turned in the exact same mixes at the last minute. Instead of emailing me to say, "Hey, these are the same exact mixes", he sent me a check, which I cashed IMMEDIATELY! Mission accomplished.

For the first time in forever, I felt like a "working musician", but then reality set it...now what?

I put a couple pieces of gear up on Craigslist, but priced them so that only a nut-job would buy them (perhaps I wasn't quite ready to let them go). Then a filmmaker I know asked me to write a song for his latest project. I said "sure thing" and then proceeded to procrastinate for two months, until it was impossible to ignore his emails, which were now in ALL CAPS, with subject lines like "WHERE THE FUCK IS THE SONG YOU PROMISED ME?!" and "ARE YOU IGNORING ME, SHIT BAG?!"

So I wandered down into the basement, powered up the equipment and finally set about recording the song I'd written weeks ago. While I couldn't be bothered to record it during that time, I had been religiously fine-tuning the song on this shitty little Dean Playmate guitar that I keep next to my computer. In between bouts of surfing and working on PC-based projects, I'd grab the guitar and run through the song over and over and over again. So, while I hadn't been responding to any of my friend's emails, I had technically been working on the song.

While I willingly admit to procrastinating, I honestly believe it to be an important part of the creative process. Have you ever listened to an album that you know the artist rushed through? It sounds like shit, doesn't it? That's why I've always embraced procrastination. It is my mind telling the rest of me that shit just ain't ready yet.

Admittedly, when I powered up the recording gear, my gut was still telling me that the shit wasn't ready, but I powered my way through and ended up recording "Rain In My Eyes" in its entirety. Then, of course, I set about mixing it, which was a huge pain in the ass because mixing is the one thing I absolutely dread the most about making music. I mean, if you put ten mix engineers in a room and play them a bunch of songs, I can guarantee you they will find something wrong with each and every track. By the same token, if you let each of them take a stab at mixing the same song, you will end up with ten radically different-sounding mixes.

The whole thing, to me, just seems so arbitrary that I dread it with every fiber of my being. Of course, most of that stems from the fact that I no nothing about mixing. My EQ skills are rudimentary at best and, as a result, I am literally amazed that I can come up with anything even remotely listenable. In the end, I aspire to come up with a finished mix that is at least as loud as the Jimmy Eat World song ("Coffee And Cigarettes" off their new album) that I am using for A-B comparison purposes.

Thankfully, I can always remind myself that at least one of my fave records feature some insanely shitty mixes...Psychocandy, anyone? Plus, I own more than a few records that I bought as a kid where the final mix made me think something was wrong with my stereo. Did I mention that Butch Vig's name is on more than one of them?

So, long story short, I finally finished mixing an knew I had a real stink bomb on my hands. I literally began hunting for my camera so I could take photos and put every last bit of music gear up on Craigslist while, at the same time, trying to figure out how to break it to my friend that my attempt to record the song I had promised him was a huge failure.

Instead, I sent an email to another friend...one whose ears I value more than gold...with the subject line "new tune...is this shit?" He responded the next day, saying that the song wasn't so much shit, but that the drums annoyed him to no end.

The next day, scalding cup of coffee in-hand, I ventured back down into the basement to start from scratch...or so I thought. Before doing so, I figured I'd just come up with some more appropriate drum sounds and fly in the new drum track. Upon doing so, the whole track seemed to come together and the new mix sounded, to my ears at least, like a force to now be reckoned with.

I'd love to describe in endless detail how I carefully selected the most ambient room ever known to mankind and then spent hours meticulously mic'ing the guitars and drums, but the simple truth of the matter is that I just plugged in my trusty Alesis SR-18 drum machine and hoped for the best. For guitars, I ran my $300 Craigslist DeArmond M77 through my $200 Craigslist Line 6 POD X3. Vocals are sung into a crappy $35 mic I've had lying around forever.

I'm running Pro Tools 7 on my PC, but am doing only the minimum amount of on-board adjustments because if I ask too much of it, Pro Tools throws me a variety of different errors during playback. Hence, I minimize my headaches by using the Pod X3's supreme effects and amp modeling capabilities.

Again, limited by Pro Tools 7's propensity for crashing, I mix all 20 tracks down to a "rough mix" that I can live with and then begin a separate Pro Tools session, where I then import the "rough mix" and then administer final edits, fades, and Ozone 4 mastering tweaks.

One thing that annoys me to no end is that mixing in Pro Tools can often yield results that sound great in your headphones, or studio monitors, but not so good in the real world. Even when I do come up with a mix that works, I can rarely get it to sound loud enough. Thus, my final step is to run my final mix (in high-quality mp3 format) into a free software called "Mp3 Gain", where I bump up the levels to my requisite 98dB.

THE FINISHED RESULT - "RAIN IN MY EYES"

New Darren Robbins Single: "I Wanna Be In A Band With Steve Albini"

2011-04-23T18:11:00.000-05:00

Seeing as how our musical equipment had been gathering dust in the corner for the past few years, all it took was a sexy gal asking "Why don't you make music anymore?" for us to wipe away the cobwebs and power up the ol' portastudio once again.

Thankfully, it's no longer necessary to press up a bunch of CD's in order to foist new music upon the world. Rather than wait for Lady Gaga to burp up the next blockbuster single, we figured we'd save her the trouble.

And, as luck would have it, we landed the first exclusive interview with the artist behind "I Wanna Be In A Band With Steve Albini"! What luck!

FUDGEKNUCKLE: So, what led you to write a song called "I Wanna Be In A Band With Steve Albini?"

DARREN ROBBINS: It's funny how the ol' brain synapses work. Sometimes, I think my best ideas come when one of them fires off accidentally, setting the rest of me in motion and doing something that I wouldn't normally do in a million years. There I was on my front step enjoying a cigar and watching my dogs chase each other around the yard when I asked myself what it would take to start another band. Without hesitation, I replied, "Getting Steve Albini to play guitar", and then one of those thought bubbles appeared above my head showing Steve and I tooling around America in a Ford Econoline van like caped musical crusaders. We showed up at a club and played to 50 people. We turned up the amps like we were trying to drown out a Boeing 747 and the audience literally refused to leave until the last person's ears were sufficiently bleeding. Strangely, we sold 52 t-shirts, so either the guy at the door let two people in for free or a couple folks bought extra t-shirts, which is totally what I would do.

FUDGEKNUCKLE: Then what happened?

DARREN ROBBINS: We went on to make an album that sold horribly, which is nothing new for either of us. Thankfully, those who did buy it all went on to write glowing reviews on their blogs and those that didn't already have a blog started one for the sole purpose of praising the album. At some point, a few tweets regarding how bad-ass we were got re-tweeted and Dave Grohl ended up inviting us to open for his band. It was an opportunity for us to play for a whole new audience and have expensive stadium food thrown at us. The upside being that by employing a liberal seven-second rule, we ate for free the entire tour.

FUDGEKNUCKLE: Where were your dogs while all of this was happening?

DARREN ROBBINS: Amazingly, they were in the front yard the whole time. Usually, when I get lost in thought, they take it as an opportunity to fuck with me by either wandering into the backyard, or hiding just out of view. Ultimately, their laughter gives them away.

FUDGEKNUCKLE: So, why write a song about being in a band with Steve Albini?

DARREN ROBBINS: I figured maybe the world had enough boy/girl songs. I try not to litter the world any more than I possibly have to and figured there probably weren't nearly as many songs about forming a band with Steve Albini so I went with that.

FUDGEKNUCKLE: What if Steve Albini calls you next week and wants to form a band?

DARREN ROBBINS: If he's half as cool as I think he is, that will never happen.

Stream or download "I Wanna Be In A Band With Steve Albini" HERE.

Letterman/CBS Post Entire Foo Fighters Concert

2011-04-13T02:33:00.000-05:00

It's one thing for a TV show to post clips of their musical guests' on-air performances online after the fact, but the fine folks at Late Show With David Letterman/CBS went one better by posting an entire 70-minute concert by the Foo Fighters.

In this day and age of autotune and lip-synch pop stars, I gotta say that it is so refreshing to see a band just tear it up without any digital augmentation.

Dunno how long CBS intends to keep this up, so check it out sooner rather than later.

The obvious nod to the Fab Four, who changed the world on that very stage some 40+ years ago, was also a nice touch!

Lastly, if you haven't grabbed a copy of the Foos' new platter, do yourself a favor and do so. You can thank us later. :)

WTF?! Of The Week: Iggy Pop On American Idol

2011-04-09T18:19:00.000-05:00

I don't know which was harder to fathom, a 9.0 earthquake followed by a deadly tsunami or hearing that Iggy Pop appeared on American Idol this week. Either way, this reporter is finding it harder and harder to believe what he sees being broadcast on ye olde boob tube these days.

For starters, the whole idea behind American Idol is to pluck virtual unknowns from the furthest reaches of America and give them a chance to showcase their talent in front of a national audience and potentially gain fame and fortune in the process.

That's why the appearance of Iggy Pop was so mind-boggling. I mean, let's face it, if Iggy Pop were a total nobody, he wouldn't make it past the first round auditions. Still, there he was strutting his stuff sans shirt, hitting maybe one out of every three notes the song required and showing the kids how it's done.

While I consider AI to be responsible for the continued self-destruction of the music industry, the idea that the contestants could somehow learn something about showmanship from Iggy was absurd. Make up your mind, AI, do you want the kids to sing or roll around in shards of broken glass?

Do you want future artists to take the time to learn their craft, or pursue a career of endless annihilation for which one could potentially be awarded entry into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame for surviving.

Don't get me wrong, I adore Iggy. He's proof positive that you don't have to sing on key to eek out a 40-year music career just as long as one of your songs eventually lands in a Carnival Cruise Lines commercial.

As for Iggy's performance "shocking" middle America, that's just a bunch of hype. Middle America has watched Jerry Springer and Maury Povich on a daily basis for the last 20 years. A 63-year-old prancing around without a shirt doesn't even register a blip on their redneck radar. Maybe if Iggy had corn-holed a crippled kid (to quote a line from the flick "Cedar Rapids"), they might have chuckled a little bit, but don't think for a second that Iggy's appearance was anything but some producer's lame idea to garner ratings from a demographic that wouldn't normally go anywhere near an American Idol broadcast.

My only question is why on earth did Iggy Pop think it would be a good idea to go on AI and perform a song that came out in 1986? Are copies of the song now flying off of iTunes' cyber-shelves? Will kids suddenly wake up from their Beiber fever and begin begging their parents for copies of "Blah Blah Blah" on vinyl?

Hell, Iggy may as well have done a fucking Diane Warren song. I mean, he goes on AI and does a song that was foisted upon him by A&M Records, who were scared that his new album didn't have a hit. In my wildest dreams circa 1986, I could not have imagined a sadder sight than that of Iggy trotting out that shit-heap of schlock as some shining example of punk rock. Hell, I'd have rather seen him do "Lust For Life", as played out as that tune is these days.

If the producers of AI really wanna introduce kids to punk rock showmanship, they need to call these guys:

Pop Quiz Alert: Test Your Chicago Rock IQ

2011-04-07T10:12:00.000-05:00

A cool rock trivia test I figured I'd pass on to you fine folks. Click on the picture above or HERE to be taken to the web page where the test is hosted.

Then feel free to report your scores on the Superior St. Facebook page, if you DARE! Superior St., of course, is the premier rehearsal facility in Chicago and the quiz sponsor. Show them some love if at all possible.

New Foo Fighters CD Rocks Out With Its Cock Out!!

2011-04-05T20:46:00.003-05:00

BUY IT NOW!

There's just something inherently cool about a guy who can stand in his own garage and talk about how bad-ass his band's new album is while behind him sits a pink bicycle with training wheels.

The bicycle, of course, belongs to his daughter and the garage is where he and the Foo Fighters set about recording their brand-new album, Wasting Light with legendary producer Butch Vig (Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, etc.).

It is that low-budget DIY aesthetic that drives this new album, proving that while Foo Fighters may very well be entering their third decade, the venerable rock act has not lost a step in keeping up with their contemporaries.

Anyone expecting more laid-back Tom Petty-esque tunes like "Wheels" will be greatly disappointed. Truth be told, Wasting Light is not the creation of a band resting on their laurels, but, rather, one that seems to have a lot to prove.

Album opener "Bridge Burning" comes charging out of the gate like a stallion, intent on throwing one hook after the other at the wall to see what sticks.

"Rope" continues the distortion-filled melodic onslaught in fine fashion. If there is a any justice in this world, this tune is one that will be blasting out of radio all summer long. That is, if anyone still listens to the radio.

Oh, that all mid-tempo ballads should have the rock-solid clackers of a tune like "Dear Rosemary", which marries the band's love for 70's soft rock guilty pleasures to a massive Foo-style modern rock hook.

"White Limo" out-riffs just about any current metal band short of Motorhead. This, of course, is partially due to the fact that Motorhead's Lemmy guests on the track. Can you imagine living next door to a garage where such musical demons are being exorcized, all the while driving down the property values?

"Arlandria" builds from a lone guitar and vocal to a soaring, wistful chorus seemingly still pining for someone for whom everything is never enough.

One of the album's finest moments comes in the form of "These Days"; a song that shows the Foos perfectly capable of adding new colors to their musical palette and breaking some exiting new ground in the process. While we are not privy to liner notes, we are unsure if it is Grohl who sings the opening verse. If it is him, we award the man 50 bonus points for a decidedly heartfelt and soulful performance that soon leads into one of his trademark primal scream choruses. Vig's tasteful production on this track makes it easily one of the most unique tracks the Foos have ever cut.

"Back And Forth" is what we call a "summer car jam radio song"; a fist-pumping ear worm rocker that recalls "Dream Police"-era Cheap Trick, so good it can make a fifteen year-old kid long for the good old days of '79.

"A Matter Of Time" is more of the same crunchy, chugging guitars - albeit a tad more introspective on this go 'round.

Look up "deep cut" in the dictionary and it will play you "Miss The Misery"; a tune that is the musical equivalent of a utility infielder. They might not hit many homers, but they add a little more backbone to an album full of heavy hitters.

"I Should Have Known" is an atmospheric tour de force that sees Grohl unite on record with Nirvana band mate Krist Novaselic, who adds bass and accordion on the track.

Album ending "Walk" starts out with a chiming guitar lick swiped from, of all songs, Tal Bachman's "She's So High". The difference, of course, is that if Bachman wrote tunes like this, he'd be more than the answer to a trivia question.

Add it all up and what you have is the most mature, cohesive, and consistent album of the Foo Fighters' career...the best part is that it's just in time for summer, providing the soundtrack for what will most certainly be the good new days.

Street Date: April 12, 2011

The Kills Return With "Blood Pressures"!

2011-04-04T13:04:00.001-05:00

BUY IT NOW!

After the critical and commercial success that was 2008's Midnight Boom, the transatlantic duo known as The Kills suddenly found that there were a whole lot more eyes and ears eager to feast upon their next sonic platter. That's probably why an album that was started in 2009 took another two years to finish.

Still, having spent the weekend with this record, we at Fudgeknuckle HQ can say with total conviction that The Kills' new rekkid, Blood Pressures, is the best album of 2011.

Thankfully, the duo of Alison Mosshart and James Hince have finally outgrown the lazy comparisons to the White Stripes and created an album that stands on its own like a rising, dark grey monolith of cool.

That's right, we said "monolith of cool".

What makes this record so brilliant isn't that it barges out of your speakers demanding to be heard despite having nothing to say, but that it says what it says with nary a thought as to whether anyone is listening at all. It is that whole "comfortable in their own skin" quality that makes them so irresistible, like the kid in class with the mismatched shoes that no one makes fun of because there's still something kick-ass about the way they eschew convention at every turn and exist in their own little world, which, of course, is getting bigger all the time as more folks clamor to be a part of it.

"Future Starts Slow" begins with a tom-tom pulsating like a beating human heart as guitars swell around it, creating the pedestal upon which Mosshart and Hince's voices can slither to and fro. The song effortlessly ebbs and flows, playing hard-to-get just long enough to nail you with the chorus yet again.

"Satellite" scrapes, grinds and crunches to a start like a '57 Chevy that has been sitting in some dark garage for ages. You turn the key, hear the sound of harsh metal-on-metal, and almost give up on the thing before it comes to life on its own and takes you for a helluva ride. Of course, you have your eyes closed the whole time as your ears take in the sonic data and your mind fills in the blanks.

One only hopes David Lynch can create a movie worthy of such a song as "The Heart Is A Beating Drum", with it's staccato stabs and smoky lounge vocals c/o Mosshart, who has never sounded better, or more seductive.

What can one say about "Nail In My Coffin" that one listen to this song wouldn't say a million times better? For starters, Mosshart sings her ass off, begging the question...why do we waste our time worshiping the Gagas, Britneys and Aguileras of this world when Mosshart outshines them in her sleep? Granted, those gals exist on a whole different plane, adored by millions, their every move followed by gaggles of paparazzi, but can we still not ask why as we scratch our heads in dumbfounded wonder? Meanwhile, the Kills play to 1,200 at the local Metro, or Troubadour, or whatever mid-size club will have them.

Now, just before you get the idea that this is the Alison Mosshart show, along comes James Hince to slyly slay you with the Lennon-esque "Wild Charms". We thought about saying "Nilsson-esque", but didn't want the comparison to fall on deaf ears. Seriously, name three Nilsson tunes. Those of you who can, we award you ten Fudgeknuckle bonus points. The rest of you, you have your homework for the day.

"DNA" makes us not miss Siouxsie Sioux so much, with Mosshart's commanding vocals that seem to thrive on darkness. D'oh, more homework for those of you wondering who the hell we're talking about.

"Baby Says" is our personal favorite, taking the same ingredients from which most of the other tracks on the album are constructed and putting them in an order that strikes total gold. Vibrato-drenched guitars and metronomic drums crash beautifully into Mosshart and Hince's hypnotic vocal hook then, like a kiss in the dark, it's gone.

"The Last Goodbye"...wow. Anyone who thinks Mosshart's vocal prowess is reliant upon an indie-rock wall of guitars and drums need only press "play" on this stunner that sees her sing circles around all contemporaries against a lush, yet minimal arrangement of piano and strings.

"Damned If She Do" is a bit of a misstep, not quite rising to the heights of the rest of the album, but still a nice little cut that has a certain charm. When I was a kid, they used to put 45 rpm records on the back of cereal boxes. We kids would cut them out and play them on our turntables. This sounds like the kind of song that, in a perfect world, would've been on the back of a box of Boo Berries or Count Chocula.

"You Don't Own The Road" sees Mosshart and Hince sticking close to home, creating the sort of bare bones rocker for which they're already known. Give the people what they want.

"Pots And Pans" closes out the album with a laid-back campfire rave-up that'll leave your clothes smelling of smoke and you'll find yourself taking a whiff now and then just to remind yourself of the good time that was had by all, the refrain of "These are the days that we'll never forget" still echoing in your head.

Perfect Gift For The Drunk Who Has Everything

2011-04-04T11:34:00.002-05:00

When we saw this, naturally, we thought of you. :)

Our pals at Gama-Go have unveiled a simply hilarious set of shot glasses. Seriously, can you imagine the look on your buddy's face the next time the two of you decide to throw back a few and he notices that your glass is bigger than his? Maybe he won't even notice, which would be funny, too.

It'd definitely be worth the $12 price tag, if you ask us!

CHECK IT OUT

Charlie Sheen ROCKS Chicago!

2011-04-04T11:16:00.000-05:00

Mere hours after he was practically chased out of Detroit Rock City, Charlie Sheen showed up in Chicago ready to hit the stage as if the previous night had never happened. Gotta love being so high on your own fumes that you can't see the wrecked fuselage still in flames from the previous night.

Anyhoo, Sheen and his crew showed up at the esteemed Chicago Theater and came at the less-than-capacity crowd with an entirely new approach. Instead of the previous night's opening acts, video shows, and whatnot, tonight was essentially a Sheen-version of "Inside The Actor's Studio" hosted by Sheen's highest ranking "yes man" and Live Nation tour producer Joey Scoleri.

Despite some slow moments, by essentially not bombing, Sheen received a standing ovation from a city that is starved for #winners. Chicago is home to the Cubbies, after all, who dropped two out of three to the worst team in baseball, the Pittsburgh Pirates, this weekend.

As we perused the numerous reviews of the show this morning, we saw that most hailed the Chicago gig as a massive victory. It certainly says something about the human condition that, when compared to an embarrassing train wreck, a mediocre performance suddenly takes on this air of greatness. So much so that one website has gone so far as to say that "Charlie Sheen KILLS in Chicago!"

Come on guys, the closest Charlie Sheen has come to killing was when he allegedly threatened the mother of his children with a knife on Christmas Day in an Aspen hotel room.

Or went bananas on a prostitute in a New York hotel room.

What Charlie Sheen has proven to anyone who can bear to see the cold, ugly truth of humanity is that we humans are a forgiving bunch as long as you're #winning. Just ask Michael Vick, whose past was all but ignored as he was hailed as a God in Philadelphia for simply throwing a football.

The more delusional you are, it seems, the more humanity will worship your every utterance. One look at Sheen's Twitter page will confirm this to the 3,427,387th degree. That number, of course, is how many sheep currently follow Sheen on Twitter. Do you think any of them wish to be reminded that they're following the utterances of an alleged wife-beater and admitted drug abuser? Maybe some do. Now those are are the humans to most be proud of, right there.

Thank you, Charlie Sheen, for shining a light upon the dark underbelly of humanity and allowing otherwise unassuming Americans to bask in your greatness. Without your overwhelming omnipresence and complete lack of shame, we'd have no idea which of our closest acquaintances and co-workers to steer clear of from now on.

Open Letter To Those Who Bought Tickets To See Charlie Sheen

2011-04-03T10:16:00.003-05:00

First there were the stories of drug abuse, debauchery and violence toward women. Naturally, this is just the sort of thing you find endearing so, when he began appearing on every TV show that would have him, giving one rapid-fire delusion-filled interview after another, you tuned in. Then he got a Twitter page and - BIG SURPRISE - you and everyone you know were soon following his every tweet.

Then came the Ustream broadcasts from Sheen's Korner, which, admittedly, sucked donkey balls. Before you knew it, all the positive hype about America's favorite drug-addled sitcom star had withered like an un-watered plant. Rather than disappeared into the night, ashamed, Sheen rocketed right back with the announcement that he was taking his show...you know, the one that sucked...on the road. Needles to say, you scrambled to buy tickets before they sold out.

Then you bragged about it on your Facebook page, reveling in your coolness, just like you did when you bought Conan O'Brien tickets.

Finally, after weeks of anticipation and debating which Tapout t-shirt you would wear to the hipster event of the century, the big day finally arrives.

You pick up your lady from work (hey, one of you has to have a job), demolish the boneless chicken wings she brought for you (one of the perks of having a girlfriend who works at Hooters), and weave your 1999 Honda Civic with the purple neon underbody kit and glow-in-the-dark license plate frame through downtown traffic.

Once at the show, you and your lady grab your seats and wait to be entertained.

The opening comedian, whose name you didn't catch, sucked donkey balls. You said so yourself as the first boos started to emanate from the crowd.

When Charlie hits the stage, though, the entire place erupts in reflexive adulation. You turn to your girl and smile knowingly. Are you the coolest boyfriend in the world, or what?

But then it becomes painfully clear that Charlie Sheen has no game. The dude came to Detroit, of all places, with nothing but a funny hat and a smug sense of self-importance. The booing gets louder and the first groups of disgruntled people start to head for the exits.

At this point, you can barely hear what Sheen is saying over the booing. You turn to your lady, who has that universal expression on her face that all women wear when they want you to get them the fuck out of somewhere. The last time you saw it was on your three-month anniversary when the two of you checked into one of those hotels with the heart-shaped beds. You know, the sort of place that charges by the hour. Things were going just fine until you realized that there was a gigantic wet spot in the middle of the bed.

Barely dressed, you and your lady storm to the front desk and asked for your money back. When you told the guy at the front desk that there was a creamy wet spot right in the fucking middle of your bed, it caught you a little off-guard when he just stared at you and said...

"WHAT DID YOU EXPECT?"

The way he said it, though, is what really set you on your heels. It was as if he actually wanted an answer.

"Gimme the manager, I want my money back," you replied.

Turns out he was the manager, which probably explained the dead eyes and the "so what if you kill me" attitude, and that this was the sort of establishment that didn't give a flying fuck about the customer being right. Refund declined.

"Okay, gimme another room then," you plead. The manager shakes his head and anger wells up in your throat and you contemplate reaching for this guy's throat. It is at that point that you see the large guy standing behind him with the t-shirt that says "The Enforcer" on the front.

Gulp.

You're fucked and, at that moment, you are faced with the decision of going back to the room and sleeping next to some stranger's wet spot, or leaving. You turn to your lady, who, in turn, gives you your very first taste of "the look".

What were expecting, though? You went to a hotel that charges by the hour. Not the classiest place to go, in hindsight, was it? For the same money, you could have gone to Motel 6 where you and your lady would be watching post-coital ESPN right now, but nooooooooo.

With the room now thick with the smell of Charlie Sheen's flop sweat, you grab your lady's hand and get up to leave. On your way out, you stop by the box office and demand your money back. This time, the manager is a mild-looking guy whose college degree, at that particular moment, is no longer worth the paper it was printed on as one disappointed ticket buyer after another tears him a new one.

You finally reach the front of the line, but, before you can even get the first words out of your mouth, the manager with the shell-shocked look in his eyes asks you for your ticket stub. You scramble to find the right pocket and hand him two stubs. He hits a few keys on a nearby computer, the cash drawer opens, and a few moments later you, your lady, and your cash are once again navigating downtown traffic.

Instead of giving people their money back, the manager of the venue should have done the exact same thing that the guy with the dead eyes at the fleabag hotel asked you last weekend: "What did you expect?"

I mean, only an idiot buys a ticket to a show sight-unseen, right? Luckily, you're not alone. Thousands of people all across this great country of ours opened up their wallets without even stopping for a second to wonder what the hell Sheen was gonna actually do up there on that stage that would be any different than the sucking he'd been doing for free on the internet.

If I were the manager of the next venue on Charlie Sheen "Violent Torpedo Of Turds" tour, I'd make sure every door leading into the venue had a sign on it that reads "NO REFUNDS" and a sign on every door leading out of the venue that says...

"WHAT DID YOU EXPECT?"

Dave Grohl and Courtney Love Join New Fleetwood Mac Line-up, Will Re-record "Rumours"!

2011-04-01T11:05:00.002-05:00

In the wake of the sudden departures of Lyndsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, who both left late last year to pursue solo careers, Fleetwood Mac's remaining members Mick Fleetwood and John McVie went on an extensive search for their replacements. Exhaustive auditions saw a number of notable rock icons vying for a spot in the band.

Then, last week, all activity came to a halt. Mere days ago, a cryptic tweet on Mick Fleetwood's Twitter page hinted at the future, saying, "Two stars have been plucked from the sky and the Mac is officially back! Stay tuned!"

And today, the band has announced the addition of new members Dave Grohl and Courtney Love. "We are genuinely excited by the opportunity to work with two stellar talents and look forward to getting into the recording studio as soon as possible to begin work on our song-by-song re-recording of our classic album, Rumours," says founding member Mick Fleetwood. "Truth be told, while Rumours was a great commercial success, John and I felt that the inclusion of Buckingham and Nicks on those sessions really held the album back from its fullest potential. Now, with Dave and Courtney on-board, we can finally give our fans the album they deserve."

Dave Grohl, who is also in the process of legally changing his name to Dave Growl, spoke highly of this new chapter in his career. "From the moment I first hit the stage as a young musician, I dreamed of one day playing in a band like Fleetwood Mac. My time in bands like Nirvana and the Foo Fighters was nothing more than me passing the time until such an opportunity presented itself."

Courtney Love seems equally thrilled about her new musical role, saying "Teh mooney iz rilly goof and I cna't see Bean ennyway sooo herE I em."

Amen to that!

Deep Dark Robot: Linda Perry's Lesbian Break-Up Album

2011-03-27T14:06:00.001-05:00

When most people hear the name "Linda Perry", they either think of 4 Non Blondes' bohemian ear-worm 90's hit "What's Up?", Christina Aguilera's "Beautiful (which she wrote), or the fact that her label is responsible for foisting James Blunt's similarly-titled "You're Beautiful" upon the world.

As a result, some may view a new Linda Perry album with disdain, others with great excitement. We wholeheartedly admit to being in the former camp as we prepared to listen to the new album by Deep Dark Robot, a "band" featuring Perry and drummer Tony Tornay. Their debut album, 8 Songs About A Girl, is a stone-cold break-up album documenting Perry's often venomous torment in the wake of having her heart broken by the very woman these songs are about.

That Perry didn't have the guts to issue this album under her own name leaves me just a tad suspicious. I mean, the songs are so gut-wrenchingly personal that issuing them under the name Deep Dark Robot seems almost a disservice to the material. Imagine if Carole King had released "Tapestry" under the band name "Shiny Metal Typewriter".

Is she afraid of "coming out"? If so, she needn't worry, it's 2011. Women can be with women. Men can be with men. Sure, not everybody is hip to that scene, but so what? When you're being this direct and personal, have the guts to sign your name to it.

I can't help but believe that a whole lot of people who might dig this record will never get to hear it because of the name. Deep Dark Robot does not necessarily scream "heartfelt emotional catharsis". No, instead, it screams "third-rate Kraftwerk", which it most certainly is not.

But enough about the name.

Those who do get past the name will no doubt agree that this album should have been put out with Linda Perry's name on it, loud and proud, because, chances are, there will not be a more personal, soul-baring album made all year. From the opening molotov cocktail, "I'm Coming For You", Perry's one and only agenda on this album is to push record and share with us her 7 stages of grief.

In her case, it's more like two stages; anger and depression, which is just fine by me, as those are the only two with any real intensity to them. Nothing worse than seeing someone resigned to their predicament. Even "No One Wakes Me Up Like You", which I presumed would be a straight up love song set in better days, is a rip-snorting exorcism that recalls Johnette Napolitano and Concrete Blonde at their most focused. Then, just as the last note trails away and you think the song is over, it rips off its own pretty face and exposes the sharp teeth of rage and entitlement, Perry screaming "Come on pretty baby, give me what I want, what I want, what I want!"

Can you say "restraining order"? I knew you could.

"You Mean Nothing To Me" sounds like something of the last Codeine Velvet Club record, lilting chamber pop that's incredibly enticing and heartwarming. The juxtaposition of that softness and warmth set against such a cold-hearted sentiment is hilariously perfect.

"It Fucking Hurts" follows, proving the previous proclamation of "You Mean Nothing To Me" to be 100% false, and seemingly intent on planting one hell of an earworm in her ex-lover's brain just might be the best revenge ever.

"Won't You Be My Girl", like album opener "I'm Coming For You", seems derivative of a White Stripes/Black Keys vibe and, thanks to Tornay's ramshackle drumming style, the song doesn't quite take flight the way it could if Perry were a little more able to soar on her own, a la Jack White.

White's frenetic energy, you see, has long been capable of pulling a mediocre drummer to new heights. Perry just doesn't have quite the same guitar mojo and, thus, Tornay's passive drumming tends to keep the album's bar-room stompers rooted firmly on the ground.

Oh, what a guy like Dave Grohl could have brought to this album...

"Speck" sees Perry fall into a mode of self-pity. Meh.

The album-ending "Fuck You Stupid Bitch" sees Perry unveil a very intriguing falsetto singing style set against a funk rock backdrop that goes far in removing the venom that such a song title would seem to carry with it.

All things considered, this is an album that swings like a pendulum from one extreme to the other, just like a lover scorned. Maybe Perry knows that in another six months or so, she'll be embarrassed to have written such songs for a woman who was but a minor blip on her radar, all things considered, but it is a shame nonetheless that she chose to hide behind a band name that will do nothing more than limit the number of people who get to hear these songs.

Why Does Charlie Sheen Want So Badly To Be Conan O'Brien?

2011-03-17T10:50:00.002-05:00

When Charlie Sheen announced that he'd be bringing his, uh, "show" to Detroit and Chicago, our first response was "What the fuck's he gonna do, performance-wise?". Our second was the realization that both shows would sell out. Fast.

One thing the Charlie Sheen meltdown has taught us is that we humans sure do enjoy our public meltdowns. Hell, we not only slow down to take a look, we buy tickets at upwards of $85 a pop.

Considering his recent online broadcasts were free and left a whole lot to be desired, we can't for the life of us imagine this guy pulling it together enough to present a decent show in the little time he has between when the dates were announced and when the first shows go down in early April.

Of course, we've got April 1 in the office death pool, so there is the very real possibility that these shows won't even take place and that those who bought tickets will be left with a collector's item, of sorts. Kinda like someone left holding a Led Zep ticket after Bonham punched his own ticket.

If Sheen does somehow manage to live long enough to see that these shows actually take place, what if he ends up putting on a better show than Conan O'Brien did? It's obvious the guy is using Conan's template to garner public sympathy and support after getting canned from his network TV gig. Twitter account, check. National tour, check. The only thing left to do now is dye his hair red and grow a beard.

Ah, who we kidding? This thing's gonna be a total train wreck.

Those who bought tickets will, more than likely, be left feeling like the many fame-seeking bimbos that get invited back to his place, but who ultimately leave in tears. Their dreams of being made to feel a part of the excitement will quickly give way to the screaming realization that Charlie Sheen's world is an empty one, lorded over by a drug-addled psychopath who is hell-bent on seeing just how far he can push it before it breaks. He doesn't want to rock their world. He just wants someone around to call 911 when he crashes and burns.

Rebecca Black vs. The Beatles

2011-03-16T01:33:00.002-05:00

Watch Rebecca Black's "Friday" video HERE.

Okay, I admit it. I'm one of those dudes who digs music from a by-gone era - and by "by-gone era" I mean mostly the 80's - and has long thought that the Beatles was the sort of musical "perfect storm" that will never happen again in our lifetime. In fact, I had also written off the new generation of hit-makers as a bunch of talentless knuckledraggers propped up by hacks whose own careers stalled in the 80's, but who know rake in millions penning tunes for tween-age girls.

Max Martin, Dr. Luke, and Butch Walker, I'm looking at you.

For every "Katy Gaga" that comes long, one need not dig too far below the surface to find the usual suspects to be behind it all. At this point, the difference between Katy Perry, Avril Lavigne and Britney Spears is negligible, as the music is all cooked-up in the same kitchen.

As a result, I've come to view the current musical landscape as one resembling Japan after a 9.0 earthquake with a tsunami thrown in for good measure. I mean, what kind of tone-deaf culture do we live in where Justin Timberlake is considered an "artiste", or every new Gaga tune is heralded as some monumental groundbreaking event? The gal cut her teeth opening for New Kids On The Block and suddenly she's being compared to legends like Elton John because she sits down at a piano and bangs out a few notes? Aw, hell no.

It's as if by having your PR folks say it enough times, even the stupidest thing becomes regarded as truth by people who are too busy texting to do any actual thinking of their own.

In a way, such people don't deserve good music. At this point, it has become nothing more than background noise. Back in the day, you could pull up to a stop light and hear some kick-ass Journey or Van Halen being blasted by the car next to you. These days, it's a non-stop barrage of profanity and window rattling bass. Where's the artistry in that? It's nothing more than music to wear your pants on the ground to, or to wear your baseball hat sideways to...as if the idiots with tattoos and a penchant for starting each sentence with "Yo, yo, yo" have become the new honor roll.

Maybe you've gathered that my respect for "kids these days" is pretty low. Maybe you've also come to the conclusion that nothing good can come from a culture hell-bent on worshipping shit.

Of course, there was the time I fertilized my pumpkins with cow manure. Ended up with three first prize pumpkins at three different county fairs that year, as I recall. Turns out great things come from absolute shit.

None more so than the mega-talented Rebecca Black, whose single "Friday" has turned into a monumental YouTube juggernaut.

Black has singlehandedly revolutionized the world and is mere days away from forever reshaping the way we think of music. She has proven wholeheartedly that being raised on a steady diet of dung - whether it be from music, movies, fashion or tech gadgetry - can yield truly monumental results.

As I spin "Friday" for the tenth time in a row, the unequivocal majesty of the lyrics finally sinks in.

7:45, we’re drivin’ on the highway
Cruisin’ so fast, I want time to fly
Fun, fun, think about fun
You know what it is
I got this, you got this
My friend is by my right
I got this, you got this
Now you know it

On first listen, lines like those above may seem completely trivial and superfluous, maybe downright stupid, but the truth of the matter is that they hint at a level of genius heretofore unseen in the history of recorded music.

Einstein himself, if still alive, would unleash the mother of all face palms upon hearing such lyrics - not because of his intellectual superiority, but because he has no doubt met his match. The multiple levels of lyrical complexity hidden within such deceptively dense prose actually manage to fold in upon one another, creating the musical equivalent of a black hole in which only nothingness can exist.

Sure, there will be those who will dismiss Rebecca Black and her musical genius because it is so far superior to anything which they can understand, much like when the Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan one fateful evening and blew the heads off of the older folks. Eventually, of course, they had to respect the level of artistry, for it was impossible to ignore it any longer. By then, everyone from Tiny Tim to Frank Sinatra were covering Beatles tunes.

Still, the Beatles, for all of their musical and cultural accomplishments, never made fucking Einstein do a face palm, near as I can tell.

Rebecca Black 1, The Beatles 0.

Join "Team Coke Ho" Today!!

2011-03-11T22:25:00.001-06:00

FOLLOW "SHIT Charlie Sheen SAYS" NOW

Whatever Happend To...Ugly Kid Joe??

2011-03-03T18:40:00.003-06:00

So the other day, my buddy Soul Patch and I are driving around, blasting some righteous tunes in his tricked-out Saturn station wagon and talking about music like we always do when I jokingly compared a song on the new Beady Eye (Liam Gallagher's post-Oasis band) album to an Ugly Kid Joe song.

It was the second time in as many days that this particular band had been the butt of one of my jokes, thus leading me to make a note to myself to Google these guys the next time I got the chance.

Like you, I was well aware of them for that split second in 1991 when they were all over MTV with the Top 10 single "(I Hate) Everything About You", but they immediately dropped off my radar after that.

I had always figured they got wise to the fact that they were destined to the no-sip sorting bin of "one hit wonder"-dom and just broke up once their next single or two totally tanked.

Turns out I was wrong.

Their next single after "Everything About You" was a cover of Harry Chapin's "Cats In The Cradle". Can you imagine that? I certainly can't. Turns out the song not only dented the Top 10 too, but also charted higher than "Everything" had, peaking at #6.

That's right, Ugly Kid Joe actually had two Top 10 hit singles!

Can you believe that? I mean, they were the Right Said Fred of heavy metal, if you ask me. Dollars to donuts nobody on this planet would ever cop to uttering the words, "Hell yeah, I'm-a get me an Ugly Kid Joe cassingle", but somebody was buying that crap.

Their third single, "Busy Bee" tanked. In the UK, though, it went Top 40, which no doubt gave these lunkheads the idea that they were now an "international smash hit sensation". They followed up this success with their second LP, Menace To Sobriety in 1995. The album completely missed the Top 100 and every single from the album imploded upon release.

The band found themselves playing to empty clubs, too. A friend of mine booked them into a 750-seat venue in Phoenix right after the album was released, but canceled the show a month later after selling only ten tickets. Yep, 1995 was a tough year. I think the only mention of them in the press came a year or so later when a recording of a message Judas Priest singer Rob Halford left on the guitar player's answering machine, expressing romantic interest, began making the rounds on the internet.

I must have either made that up, or I'm the onlky one who remembers it because a quick Google of "Ugly Kid Joe" and "Halford" revealed nothing.

Whatever. So, what does a band do when their second album drops like a turd Zeppelin? Why, make a third album, of course! That's exactly what these resilient crackers did, releasing Motel California in 1996.

Finally, 1997 saw the band finally call it a day.

By 1998, you couldn't hit a rummage sale without spotting an Ugly Kid Joe tape being offered for a penny. Yeah, I know, that price is kind of high. Maybe if you throw in that Trixter covers-only album where they demolish "(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party)" and let me leave my car running in your garage, we might have ourselves a deal.

Word has it the band reunited last year and is eager to release a new album and tour this year. While 90's nostalgia runs rampant, I have yet to see anyone eager to relive those glory days when Ugly Kid Joe had two freakin' Top 10 singles. No, I think those days are kinda like the holocaust. We know it happened, but we sure as hell don't like being reminded of it. Still, you've got to remind yourselves of such musical atrocities so that such history is never, ever repeated.

CD Review: REM "Collapse Into Now"

2011-03-03T10:14:00.001-06:00

While the esteemed Athens, GA band's new album, Collapse Into Now, doesn't hit streets until March 8, NPR is currently streaming the album in its entirety.

While longtime fans greet each new R.E.M. album with warm anticipation, the sad truth is that each new lap around the track, so to speak, sees this legendary band's once-rabid fan base noticeably dwindle. Is it a case of life (marriage, kids, jobs, mortgages, etc.) simply overtaking the more carefree pursuits of youth (keeping up with our favorite band's every move), or is it, in fact, a case of a great band simply overstaying its welcome?

Granted, there are older - and lesser - bands still making a darn good living on the nostalgia circuit, but R.E.M. is a band still bent on creating a new musical landscape, not simply reliving old ones, no matter how much money might be in it.

This, of course, is because the members of R.E.M. are, themselves, quite comfortable as far as bank accounts and retirement funds go. They have absolutely no need, or desire, to partake in 80's/90's nostalgia. They are artists and, like any good artist, they live to create!

We, on the other hand, are a world-famous blog extraordinaire whose ears have been trained to spot bullshit and/or beauty wherever it may lurk and to immediately alert our readers so that they may avoid stepping in anything stinky. Let's face it, the world can always use another great rock & roll album. However, it doesn't need yet another crap piece of plastic.

"Discoverer" kicks off the new R.E.M. platter in elegiac fashion, as if Peter Buck might have been listening to U2's War for three straight days, save for trips to the restroom where he made sure to blast a little Grand Funk, before tracking this tune. Stipe soon enters the musical equation with all the subtlety of a man shouting into a megaphone and, while such a move is meant to convey the intended urgency, by the time the track subsides, we listeners are left wondering why.

"All The Best" quickly follows, adding a little gasoline to the fire. In it, Stipe wholeheartedly addresses the idea of "sticking around too long" and "showing the kids how to do it" - as if to beat rock critics to the punch. Stipe is singing with the same urgency as on the previous cut, but, on this one, it feels like he means it. A nerve has been touched. You can question his choice of fashion accessories, but if you choose to question his ability to rock as a man on the verge of turning 50, you will quickly discover that this kitten has claws. "It's just like me to overstay my welcome," he declares with equal parts pride and venom.

What makes "All The Best" such a revelation is that it's the first true all-out rock cut R.E.M. has done where it didn't seem like their hand was being forced to do so.

"Überlin" follows, slowing the pace considerably and heading into "introspective" territory. The song itself is melodically similar to "Drive" (from 1992's Automatic For The People), but I'm not gonna lose any sleep over a band stealing from themselves. The song still manages to stand on its own, highlighted by yet another heartfelt Stipe vocal performance augmented by Mike Mills' perfectly understated backing vocals. Whatever songs may first catch your ear on first listen, this is a song that you will find yourself coming back to, mark my words.

"Oh My Heart" continues the introspection, with Stipe singing in a lower register, creating a mood that is full of both sadness and celebration. This is a song created by a band well aware of its own mortality, seeing those who came before them fall, as all things eventually do, whether they be trees or empires.

"It Happened Today", while ambitious, shows the band revisiting Out Of Time-era themes and instrumentation ("Hey Pete, do you still have that mandolin?") and, while it may initially seem like a throwaway cut after a couple stone-cold stunners, this song will sneak up on you when you least expect it. My guess is right around the third listen or so, you'll glance at your iPod with amazement. "Where was that song the last time I listened to this album?!"

"Every Day Is Yours To Win" would surely make for a great title to the next Tony Robbins self-help book, but, in R.E.M.'s hands, it becomes a rallying cry for the jaded, performed with tongue effortlessly planted in cheek. Not a joke song, mind you, but one that proves you just can't take your eye off this band.

By now, it should be dawning on you that, while every new album by such a revered band is automatically heralded as "their best album since insert-name-of-last-platinum-record-here", in the case of R.E.M., this really is their best album in quite some time. While others heralded 2008's Accelerate as a rocking return to form, I never bought into that belief, hearing only a band forced to right a sinking ship by making a rock album they weren't truly ready to make.

Hearing this new album, though, I can see the purpose that Accelerate served its purpose by waking this giant from its slumber and bringing them back in touch with each weapon within their immense musical arsenal.

Now, if you're anything like me, when you lay your hands on a new album by a beloved band, the first thing you so is scan the song titles. You don't know why you do it, you just do. Thus, your curiosity is instantly raised by a title like "Mine Smell Like Honey". Maybe not enough to make it the first song you listen to, but one that makes you listen to the song with a little more attention wondering what of Mr. Stipe's might smell of honey. I've spun the song numerous times and I still have no idea what he's going on about.

That, of course, is an awesome thing when you think about it. Remember when we had no idea what Stipe was singing about? Hell, we could barely make out the words and, when we could, we were still just as lost, if not more. Those were the days, my friend, knowing you could always count on Berry, Buck, Mills and Stipe to leave you joyously confused, but never more sure of yourself and your band.

Those were the damn days!

"Walk It Back" is a wistful missive of a song, heartbreaking in its piano-laced simplicity, hauntingly ethereal production, and its brevity. It sweeps in softly, steals your breath, then exits before you can get it back.

"Alligator_Aviator_Autopilot_Antimatter" is a total throwaway of a tune - a B-side from a band who used to specialize in such things, if ever there was one - but damn if it won't have you treating your steering wheel like a set of Keith Moon's drums. Be careful not to use your gas and brake pedals as double-bass drum pedals.

"That Someone Is You" follows, indicating that, for this final stretch of the album, R.E.M. seem to have shifted into a new gear. When's the last time R.E.M. sounded this damn fun?! I honestly can't remember, myself.

"Me, Marlon Brando, Marlon Brando and I" sees Mr. Stipe shift his focus from Andy Kaufman to yet another flawed hero for the sake of exploring a magical world that exists only in the mind's eye, where anything and everything is possible. It just wouldn't be a latter-day R.E.M. album without such a detour.

Of course, none of this prepares the listener for the album closer, "Blue", which features a great vocal performance by Patti Smith before reprising the album's opening track.

As a longtime R.E.M. fan who grew disenchanted by the band's concessions to the big time right around the time Monster was released, I can tell you that Collapse Into Now is the musical equivalent of reconnecting with an old friend - one you were once so close to, have seen around over the years, but are finally able to spend some quality time catching up with - and enjoying every beautiful second of it.

The Mighty ROXETTE To Headline Pitchfork Music Festival?? Tix On Sale Friday!

2011-03-02T08:03:00.000-06:00

As the only Chicago hipster mag with their own music festival, Pitchfork continues to be a guiding force in the "we know what you like more than you do" sweepstakes. Thus, when it was announced that tickets for the 2011 Pitchfork Music Festival, to be held July 13, 14, and 15 in Union Park, go on sale this Friday, we at The Shit did enjoy a bit of a chuckle over the fact that the fine folks at Pitchfork could be so bold as to sell tickets to a three-day music event without actually announcing the line-up.

I mean, that's pretty ballsy, right?

Naturally, demand for tickets will be high. After all, every hipster within a three-state radius, if not farther, will be compelled to attend, if for no other reason than to not have to explain to his co-workers at the organic food store why he is unable to attend "the" event of the summer. Let's face it, saying you're too cool for the room just ain't gonna cut it.

But, seriously, who buys tickets to a music festival without knowing what bands will be playing? Pitchfork could sell every last remaining ticket on Friday, then, on Saturday, announce that the festival line-up will consist entirely of Roxette tribute bands from all around the world, with a performance on the festival's final night by Roxette themselves!

Naturally, the hipster brigade would merely take this in stride, reflexively adopting Roxette as the latest legacy band whose recorded output is suddenly heralded as sheer genius on par with Lou Reed, Radiohead, and Jeff Tweedy. Vintage hot pink Roxette tour shirts from the band's 1988 "Look Sharp" tour would flood into Union Park to the sounds of a Bulgarian tribute band Chickidjya butchering "It Must Have Been Love".

Man, I hope Union Park has a bike rack.

Open Letter To Steve Stoute Regarding The Grammys

2011-02-21T14:07:00.001-06:00

In a recent full-page advertisement, veteran music executive Steve Stoute lashed out at the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS), the organization that oversees the Grammy awards and ceremony, saying that the organization has "clearly lost touch with contemporary popular culture".

He then goes on to opine that Eminem's landmark 2001 album, The Marshall Mathers LP, an album that sold millions, should have won Best Album over Steely Dan's Two Against Nature, an album that sold only a fraction of that amount.

Stoute then cites another supposed example of wrongdoing on behalf of the academy when Herbie Hancock beat out Kanye West for Best Album in 2008. Stoute coes on to say, "We must acknowledge the massive cultural impact of Eminem and Kanye West and how their music is shaping, influencing and defining the voice of a generation."

To prove his point further, he contends that Justin Bieber (who he calls "an artist that defines what it means to be a modern artist") should have won the Grammy award for Best New Artist because, in his words, Bieber's "cultural impact and success are even more quantifiable if you factor in his YouTube and Vevo viewership — the fact that he was a talent born entirely of the digital age whose story was crafted in the most humble method of being “discovered” purely for his singing ability (and it should be noted that Justin Bieber plays piano and guitar, as evidenced on his early viral videos)."

Dear Mr. Stoute,

You're kidding, right? When have the Grammy folks ever been in touch with what is hip and cool? Did you just fall to earth yesterday? For all the changes the music industry has undergone as of late, the one constant is that the Grammy ceremony remains a cavalcade of all the worst, most played-out aspects of the industry and stands as a shining monument to those whose own gluttonous self-adulation and blindness to the world around them has driven the industry into the ground.

Now, I don't mean to be a stickler, but your own claim of being a "music executive" with 20 years in the industry is just as much a stretch as Jethro Tull winning a Grammy for Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance in 1989. Near as I can tell, managing Nas since 1995, in between him firing you on repeated occasions, adds up to sixteen years tops.

Additionally, your bias toward rap is more than a little obvious, so much so that you addressed our suspicions before we even had them. If it ain't an issue, don't make it one. But, since you did, I will be more than happy to address it.

See, in the rap world, it's all about building a facade. In the rest of the world, a kid with a few beats is just a kid with a few beats, but, in the rap world, he's a "Producer". Pretty funny, if you ask me. Only by such cock-eyed logic could one possibly arrive at the conclusion that Justin Bieber an "Artist".

I will say that I do agree with you on two points. First, NARAS and The Grammys are out of touch, but the fact that you just now seem to have realized this would mean that you're just as out of touch as they are, if not more. I mean, who the fuck tunes into the fucking Grammy Awards to be turned on to something new? Dude, it's a celebration of all the crappiest crap from the year prior.

Secondly, Justin Bieber does define what it means to be a modern artist these days. When looking at those artists of the past who shaped not only their immediate musical landscape, but also that of an entire generation, it is immensely sad to see such assembly-line pop fodder as that with Bieber's name on it celebrated as "art".

Of course, style has been so celebrated over the past few years that there is an entire generation that has never known music or art with true substance to it. I suspect that you might very well be on the cusp of said generation, or are perhaps largely to blame for the purveyance of such trash as culture.

Lastly, if YouTube and Vevo hits are what constitute a "modern artist" deserving of Grammy attention, then I would suggest that rock band OK Go is owed a dozen or so Grammys for their legendary "treadmill video" alone.

Mr. Stoute, it does not surprise me to find out that you not only wrote your own Wikipedia page, but also bragged about doing so on the very same Wikipedia page. After all, every empire in your industry has been built upon a "fake it until you make it" business strategy more so than actual musical talent. I will also go so far as to say that you calling yourself a music executive is a belligerent slap in the face to every legitimate music executive whose legacy and impact remain long after their work is done. Does Suge Knight not also consider himself a music executive?

Sadly, yes.

By taking out a full-page ad to tell everyone how out-of-touch those darned Grammy folks are, you succeeded in revealing that you're just as clueless. What next, a full-page ad in USA Today declaring the sky "blue"?

Whatever Happened To...Amy Winehouse?

2011-02-21T12:38:00.000-06:00

Remember those days when Amy Winehouse was getting the same buzz that Adele is getting these days? Sure, it could be argued that Adele owes her success to Winehouse first blazing the trail and making the world safe for torchy songstresses to again roam free.

While I was never a fan of her music, I did find Amy Winehouse's image strikingly endearing. She was a little pudgy, but cute and full of spunk. It was easy to root for her, as everything about her seemed to fly in the face of the UK music machine that had been, up to that point, hell bent on churning out one skinny and vacuous star after another.

For once, it was nice to see "one of us" up there getting the attention.

Then things went completely off the rails as Winehouse's obvious self-image problems crashed head-on into the pitfalls of sudden wealth and fame. Within months, she was a rail-thin crackhead whose daily (or nightly, as the case may be) train-wrecks were now tabloid fodder around the world. The spectacle of her personal collapse took precedence over her music, especially since her handlers insisted on continually booking tours and promotional appearances that served only to create the next potential new story/photo op.

During that time, I could not help but wonder who on earth considers attending an Amy Winehouse show when all the world knows she is no longer even physically capable of taking care of herself, much less perform? To answer my own question, people who attend shows by such artists are deplorable, hideous human beings who are either too delusional to admit that their idol is killing themselves in full view of the world, or they are enablers who get off on watching someone self-destruct.

That's why I was relieved to see that Amy Winehouse had retreated from the public eye somewhat and for long enough that I'd realized more than a year had passed since she'd last crossed my mind.

Of course, just because she's been out of my sight and/or mind, that doesn't mean there aren't 10,000 chuckleheads willing to pay $100 a ticket to witness a guaranteed trainwreck.

And thus it was on February 15 in, of all places, Dubai (UAE) that a capacity crowd gathered to watch Winehouse stammer, mumble, and slur her way through her set when she wasn't recoiling in obvious fear of her own microphone or picking her nails.

Reportedly, hundreds of concert-goers immediately asked for their money back. To such people, I would only ask, "What the fuck were you expecting?"

Seriously, every Amy Winehouse concert ticket should come with an explicit warning: "You pays your money, you takes your chances. NO REFUNDS!!"

First off, I find it hard to believe there are still 10,000 Amy Winehouse fans in England, much less on the Arabian Peninsula. That so many fans were still willing to pay $100 to see a fading starlet whose last album came out almost five years ago leads me to believe that money must grow on trees in Dubai.

Either that or there is a highly concentrated population of rich folks more than willing to pay top dollar to watch some chick play with her hair and chew her bubblegum instead of actually sing.

In viewing some of the footage, it's actually jarring to see how much of a shell of her former self Amy still is? She's completely emaciated and lethargic, with empty eyes that seem to no longer be screaming "Get me out of here!" as merely hoping the end is near.

Whoever her handlers are these days, they should be absolutely fucking ashamed of themselves. As for Amy, she too needs to take a good, hard look in the mirror and festering scab that she has become. It kills me a little bit to see someone who was once so vibrant and beautiful give in to a life of drugs and depravity when she could truly have had it all, done it all, and been happy.

Radiohead Singer Thom Yorke Seizure Caught On Video?

2011-02-18T11:43:00.000-06:00

During a recent photo shoot, Radiohead singer Thom Yorke suffered what appears to be a very serious seizure. What makes this all the more stunning was that it was all caught on video. Whereas most other people would have put down the camera and come to the aid of a suffering individual, the fine folks within the Radiohead organization did the wise thing by rolling tape and staying the fuck out of Thom's way until his seizure subsided.

Sure, he might very well have died, but, apparently proper procedures within the Radiohead camp are such that when one has the opportunity to capture an epileptic fit on video, you fucking take it.

Of course, the groundbreaking band known for eschewing convention at every turn has gone one better by releasing the footage publicly via their own YouTube channel. Apparently, Yorke and the band feel quite strongly that the positive benefits of making such footage available outweigh any potential down-side.

We must tell you that the images of Yorke losing complete control of his limbs are, at best, striking, and, at other times, flat-out painful to watch. At several points, we see him almost on the verge of regaining control of his own movements, only to again fall victim to the violent involuntary movements ravaging his body.

It takes a brave, confident man to bear this side of his soul to the world, knowing all too well that there are some who prey upon such physical weakness.

We at Bitch-Ass Motherfucker admire Yorke for taking a stand and shedding light upon a very serious issue. Perhaps, through such effort, a higher level of tolerance can be achieved and more funding can be channeled into further medical research so that a cure can be found. Until that day comes, this footage will stand as a reminder of the immense level of physical suffering people such as Yorke and others must endure on a regular basis.

If we were to list any complaint at all about the footage, it would be the somewhat tedious and boring music that accompanies the footage.

Terence Trent D'Arby Come Back, All Is Forgiven!

2011-02-17T14:47:00.003-06:00

Back in 1987, the UK press began lauding the talents of a U.S. singer by the name of Terence Trent D'Arby, whose debut album, Introducing the Hardline According To..., had just been released there. I, being an American who found myself quite enamored by Britain's ability to appreciate great artists that the American mainstream willfully ignored, grabbed a copy the minute I saw it in the local record store and was immediately floored by D'Arby's talents.

If it were possible to toss Prince, Al Green, Percy Sledge, and Little Richard into a blender, what you'd come up with would have been very much what you heard on D'Arby's debut. On songs like "Wishing Well", "If You Let Me Stay", and "Sign Your Name" (to name but a few), D'Arby's vocals were so evocative of the greats mentioned above, yet his vocal style was entirely his own. This was a cat in full control of his talents and able to sing the cover off a phone book at fifty feet.

With talent like that, the fact that he was a reasonably handsome dude and that this was the video age seemed to ensure that D'Arby's future looked bright. America did the unthinkable and actually paid attention - so much so that "Wishing Well" would become a #1 hit single here. The album too would crack the Top 5. I do still harbor a bit of confusion over the fact that "Dance Little Sister" cracked the Top 40, but "If You Let Me Stay" did not. Only America could pull such a stunt.

Regardless, America's love affair with D'Arby continued in to 1988, when he would win a Grammy. Amazingly, while nominated as Best New Artist (losing to Jodie Watley), he would only grab an award for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance.

Shortly after, the love affair would end, not so much by choice as by slow, festering neglect. D'Arby's follow-up, 1989's Neither Fish Nor Flesh, was eagerly anticipated. It's arrival, however, was more dull thud than smash hit.

The album itself was a huge step forward from his debut. D'Arby's songs were getting more mature, but that didn't mean the artist's genius didn't still scream forth from the speakers. Despite being a far superior album, Neither Fish, Nor Flesh was a massive commercial no-show here and missed going Top 10 in the UK.

While it is often an obvious scapegoat for under-selling albums, the old adage "the label refused to promote my album" became criminally true for D'Arby. Columbia Records, a label once known as a home for true artists such as Bob Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel and others, now seemed actively disinterested in promoting the one guy on the label who embodied that same artistry and commercial appeal.

Having become slave to the commercial side of D'Arby, the label viewed the new album as the work of a "difficult artist" trying to sabotage the label's ability to make money off of him. To further prove their point, they refused to promote the album, thereby allowing it to die on the vine. D'Arby's inability to simply be "a black George Michael" for the label led to a period of deep introspection and a talented voice was silenced momentarily.

He would return four years later with his third album, Symphony Or Damn, which, believe it or not, actually manages to surpass the greatness of Neither Fish, Nor Flesh. While easily his most commercial material to date, D'Arby was not sacrificing one iota of quality in the process. In the UK, Columbia welcomed him back into their good graces and the charts were alive with the sound of Terence Trenty D'Arby once again. Over the next twelve months, the album launched four songs into the Top 20. Back here in America, though, the album reached a peak position of #119.

Can you fucking believe that?

I tell you, if I'd have been D'Arby, made that great an album, and watched the U.S. division of Columbia play dumb, I'd have ripped my dreads straight out of my head.

While D'Arby didn't resort to such measures, at least physically, he did undergo quite a drastic inner transformation, declaring "Terence Trent D'Arby" dead and re-christening himself Sananda Maitreya. What had initially been a bit of a career-killer for the likes of Cat Stevens, D'Arby's mid-career name-change caused his career to take a screaming nosedive as well.

While the label certainly played its part, the truth is that Terence Trent D'Arby was one kooky mofo to begin with and the addition of fame, money, and idolatry into the equation sent the poor guy right off the rails.

For some reason, back in those days, we were not at all tolerant of artists who seemed a little "out there" or said outrageously misguided things in the press. Hell, back then, we made Milli Vanilla give back their Grammy for not actually singing. These days, crikey, we are surrounded by dozens of absolute frauds who fake it without consequence.

What remains a constant, though, is the banishment from the kingdom of any artist who strays too far from the template or refuses to employ cookie-cutters in the making of their music. Quite frankly, this writer is personally stunned that Columbia gave him the opportunity to make a third album after they purposely sabotaged his work two years prior. The label "tolerated" him for long enough to have a suitable reason to get rid of him. It certainly wasn't because his albums sucked. He was just crazy before crazy was cool, I guess.

Fast forward sixteen years and crazy is almost mandatory. We find ourselves in a musical climate that is unlike anything any of us back then could have possibly imagined.

2011 was supposed to be "the future" of our dreams, of the advancement of the artistic muse into new territory beyond our wildest imagination, as if anyone in 1959 could have imagined the advancement of an entire generation compliments of four lads from Liverpool.

In the sixteen years since D'Arby had a career, if anything, artists have regressed. Instead of talent, what we seem to embrace is the equivalent of a temper tantrum at the Chucky Cheese set to "some beats". And who at the top isn't crazy? Kanye West, arguably the most inventive artist of the millennium, can't leave his house without sticking his foot in his mouth. Genius?! Idiot's nuttier than squirrel shit.

This, of course, is to say nothing of P. Diddy changing his name not once, but TWICE and still shifting millions anytime he decided to mumble into a microphone.

What the fuck, ya'll?

Why are you so into "the crazy" now? Why do you accept granola droppings as grandeur and hand out millions of your hard-earned dollars to the likes of these narcissistic gas-bags high on their own fumes? Sure, Terence Trent D'Arby was so cocky as to publicly admit that he believed his first album was as good as Sgt. Pepper, but maybe the crazy man knew what he was talking about. Hell, I know that I listen to Hardline a shit-ton more than Sgt. Pepper. If you have a problem with that, the exit is over there, bitch.

What we need to do - before taking this current path any further renders us incapable of not shitting our collective pants when he belch - is stop the madness. Stop slowing down to a complete stop to take in each musical train wreck that succeeds in worming its way into our anti-culture. You've seen a train wreck before, asshole. Now, either step on the fucking gas or pull the fuck over because I've actually got someplace to be.

Here D'Arby had a voice that embodied the spirit of greats like Stevie Wonder and James Brown amd we ignored him. By comparison, Kanye and Diddy's respective voices embody the dumb kid in the back of class who never talked because every time he did, people made fun of him. Rather then shun the mic, though, these cretins have somehow been led to believe that their absolute inability to carry a tune doesn't matter as long as they can grunt in time, yo. Just auto-tune that bitch and wait for the money to roll in so Diddy can buy his kid another $300k car for getting a C+ on his algebra quiz.

Fuck it. All o' ya'll are assholes taking shits in my vicinity and, quite frankly, I'm sick of smelling it. So is Terence, or whatever he calls himself these days. As far as I am concerned, he can call himself Jiminy Moonboots and you motherfuckers will clap like you mean it or else you'll the feel the full wrath of my moon boot being planted firmly up your ass.

Don't make me come back here if you guys refuse to at least run out and buy TTD's debut and remind yourself what actual fucking talent sounds like. I don't care if you're cursing my name while you do it, just as long as you do it.

Top 5 All-Female Bands Of All-Time!

2011-02-16T06:31:00.000-06:00

You know, it wasn't so long ago that the world was virtually littered with chick bands. Every time we turned around, there seemed to be some new all-girl band trotting out their musical wares and. more times than not, they weren't half bad (to look at). It was an amazingly great time for music, now that we think about it.

That's why we've decided to compile the absolutely definitive list of the Top 10 All-Girl Bands Of All-Time!

5. L7

L7 are best known for the 90's semi-hit "Pretend We're Dead'. Anyone who made the effort to dig a little deeper would soon discover that these gals knew how to bring the rock. If it had not been for Redd Kross pulling out of an L.A. street fest gig at the last minute and L7 stepping in to fill their shoes, I would never know how truly bad-ass this band was. On that night, they not only hit the stage, they pulverized it with a steady stream of bulldozer riffs and heart-pounding drums. If that weren't enough, they looked like the kind of girls who ate heaping helpings of guys like Lyle Alzado and John Matuszak (uh...wtf?!) for breakfast. Heck, we've actually seen a member of notorious rap act N.W.A. turn tail and run at the mere sight of L7 walking in his direction. That alone earns them a place on this list.

4. The Bangles

Would there have been a Bangles without the Go-Go's first blazing the trail? Probably not. While that's reason enough for many to hate the Go-Go's, the simple truth is that it was nice having the Bangles around. They were the Rolling Stones to the Go'Go's Beatles. Plus, Susannah Hoffs was nice enough to look at and played a Rickenbacker. The fact that they covered "September Gurls" at a time when Alex Chilton probably really needed the money makes them forever cool in our book.

3. The Runaways

At the time, we kinda wrote them off as a faux-band concocted by evil rock mastermind Kim Fowley, but the truth of the matter is that The Runaways rocked like nobody's business and the fact that they languished in total obscurity during their brief time together makes me ashamed to be an American. Five hot chicks, tons of great songs - like "Cherry Bomb", "Born to Be Bad" (which was co-written by future Bangle bassist Michael Steele), and "Neon Angels" are just the tip of a very awesome rock & roll juggernaut. If you haven't taken the time to check this band out, do so. Now!

2. The Go-Go's (pictured at top)

Holy fuck, did we ever have the hots for Jane Wiedlin? Those huge, dark eyes, that mischievous smile, and a mouth that made our pants tighten whenever it sang the words "our lips are sealed". Many a sock was demolished at the thought of ravaging the diminutive guitarist, but we digress.

In all seriousness, "Beauty & The Beat" is a great album. In fact, song-for-song, we contend that it is one of the most consistently solid rock & roll records ever made. Every single song on that album could have been released as a single and been a Top 20 hit. The fact that Jane Weidlin, even in her fifties, is still hot enough to bring out "the good wood" has absolutely nothing to do with our decision.

1. Poison

Let's see, the singer's name is Brett, the guitarist is C.C. (which could very well stand for Christina Catherine for all we know), the bassist is Bobby (or is it Bobbi?), and the drummer goes by the name Rikki. They also wear more make-up than an entire high school cheer-leading squad. And get a load of those clothes. Fuck, it looks like somebody put Appolonia, Sheila E., and the Mary Jane Girls in a blender and hit "Dress Me". These girls weren't afraid to write from their hearts either. "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" is probably about getting boned in the back of a flat bed pick-up truck and having the antler from a dead deer poke you in the ear while the third-string Junior Varsity quarterback pokes you in the rear. Ah, leave it to Poison to have their finger on the pulse of what it's like to be a teenage chick. Sadly, like most women her age, Brett has had way too many botox injections and can no longer remember the original color of her hair. It'd be easier, of course, if she actually had any.

Two & A Half Men Producer Chuck Lorre Takes Stab At Charlie Sheen!

2011-02-15T18:00:00.001-06:00

At the end of every episode of hit CBS sitcom "Two & A Half Men", the credits roll and then up pops a white screen with an odd observation, a few words of wisdom, or some other bit of jingo that is often very funny in and of itself. Heck, as someone who has watched the show from Day 1, on more than a few occasions, his parting words were funnier than the whole episode.

On this past Monday night's episode, though, I think Lorre topped himself, saying that he, himself, has gone to regular doctor check-ups, taken steps to live a healthy, stress-free lifestyle, etc.,

Then he ends it with "If Charlie Sheen outlives me, I'm gonna be really pissed."

As we go to press, word has it Sheen still has yet to get a clue and brother Emilio Estevez eagerly prays that Starbucks believes that it really is his name on that job application and that they're still hiring.

God, we love Hollywood.

Bitch-Ass Motherfucking News: February 15, 2011

2011-02-15T16:49:00.002-06:00

We figured it might be fun to do our own daily run-down of today's headlines. Or not. Let's find out together, who don't we?

It's been at least five days since we last heard a peep from Sarah Palin. Somebody might wanna go check on her. She very well might have shot herself in the foot, which was more than likely in her mouth at the time.

Can you imagine being the guy in Egypt who stole the statue of King Tut? Has anybody checked to make sure the dope didn't already post it on eBay? Being that he's the kind of guy who would steal a statue of the most-renowned Egyptian king of ALL-TIME, he also more than likely has set some insanely high reserve price. Asshole.

Billy Ray Cyrus says in the latest issue of GQ that he's worried about Miley. Riiiight. Billy Ray being "worried about his kid" is the same as me worrying if my boss is gonna pay me for not doin' a damn thing at work. That dude has been leeching off his own kid ever since the world told him twenty years ago to go jump off a cliff and take his achy breaky heart with him. Seriously, ever notice how just about every damn Miley Cyrus record has a duet with dear ol' dad on it? Creepy to the max, yo! If you listen closely when he sings, you can actually hear him holding his hand out for money.

Seems Charlie Sheen has already proclaimed himself "cured" and ready to go back to work. Turns out he even thinks that it's cool to smoke crack if you can "handle it socially". What the fuck is he on? Let me be the first legendary journalist to go on-record by saying that, though I think the guy is talented, the rock bottom truth is that he's a drunken, delusional ass-hat who has yet to land in the kind of trouble he can't buy his way out off (which is why the fucker wants to go back to work, no doubt). Hell, if all I had to do is open my wallet any time I drunkenly clocked a hooker in one of NYC's better hotels, I'd be "fine" and "ready to work", too. I hate to say it, but my gut (and a Benjamin) says Charlie Sheen is dead by April.

Seriously, who the fuck votes for Esperanza Spalding as Best New Artist Of The Year except a bunch of old, out-of-touch geezers? Hell, even we hadn't heard of her and, well, we've heard of everybody. Chances are she wears all of her clothes when she performs, unlike all the female singers whose names we actually knew until the Grammy broadcast edjumicated us.

Anybody else realize that no restaurant or cruise line is using The Romantics' "What I Like About You?" in there commercials? Weeeeeeird.

Frankie Muniz (better known as Malcolm from "Malcolm In The Middle") got himself into some serious hot water. Turns out he reportedly cold-cocked his girlfriend while waving a gun around at his crib in Arizona. Looks like somebody has successfully sullied up their image for a major comeback. Props, bro.

Rocker Vince Neil of Motley Crue begins a 15-day jail sentence in Las Vegas for a recent drunk driving incident. Can you believe this fucker? The guy kills Razzle from Hanoi Rocks in a drunk driving incident years ago and has just kept right on drinking and driving to this day as if it's his god-given right to endanger the rest of us just so he can drive himself home from the Pussy Palace after a three-night bender. Dude will probably just film another sex video while he's in there and sell it on his website when he gets out. O.J., my man, you have our full permission to shiv this fucker.

The New Strokes Song Is A Fake?!

2011-02-15T15:45:00.002-06:00

Like most everyone else on the planet, we have an opinion about the new song by The Strokes, called "Under Cover Of Darkness". Of course, a lot of people are of the opinion that it's a very cool return-to-form for the pride of Hipsterville, or, as we like to call them, the Jules 'Blanca & Silver Spoon Gang.

Others opine that the song (which you can listen to HERE) sucks various body parts, but mostly cock, it would seem.

Of course, our opinion, per usual, is the only right one out there. The truth of the matter is that we believe the new Strokes song is a fake.

That's right, a fake.

By the way, does anyone else think that the Strokes guy on the far left of the photo below looks like that James Bond villain known as Jaws because of his shiny metal teeth?

And here's a photo of Bond villain, Jaws:

Now, we can't for the life of us imagine any woman sleeping with a diabolical bad-guy like "Jaws", but, then again, we like to think there's at least one lid for every pot, so to speak. And that dude in the Strokes looks like his kid.

Anyhoo, back to the new Strokes song.

We swear that if you snort enough bath salts, when you listen to the song, the magical truth locked within the grooves of your imaginary vinyl reveal that the song is, in fact, a new Maroon 5 song being played on the wrong speed - like when you play a 33rpm album at 45rpm (sorry to anyone under the age of 30 who has no idea what we're talking about).

While we must say it makes for a shitty Strokes song, it's actually one of the better Maroon 5 songs we've heard.

Rock on, motherfuckers.

Lady Gaga Hates Gay People?! (Or Is She Just A Really, Really Shitty Lyricist?)

2011-02-15T14:35:00.006-06:00

[Lady Gaga takes massive burrito dump in a gigantic egg shell mid-song. GENIUS!]

I dunno if you've heard Lady Gaga's latest joint, "Born This Way". If you have, my most heartfelt condolences to your ears, if you haven't, buy a lottery ticket because you are a lucky mofo.

[Intro]
It doesn't matter if you love him,
Or capital H-I-M
Just put your paws up
'cause you were born this way, baby

[Verse 1]
My mama told me when I was young
We are all born superstars
She rolled my hair and put my lipstick on
In the glass of her boudoir

"There's nothin wrong with lovin who you are"
She said, 'cause he made you perfect, babe"

So hold your head up girl and you'll go far,
Listen to me when I say
I was born this way

Don't be a drag - just be a queen
Don't be a drag - just be a queen
Don't be a drag - just be a queen
Don't be!

[Verse 2]
Give yourself prudence
And love your friends
Subway kid, rejoice your truth

In the religion of the insecure
I must be myself, respect my youth

A different lover is not a sin
Believe capital h-i-m (hey hey hey)
I love my life I love this record and
Mi amore vole fe yah (love needs faith)

[Chorus]
I'm beautiful in my way
'cause god makes no mistakes
I'm on the right track baby
I was born this way

Don't hide yourself in regret
Just love yourself and you're set
I'm on the right track baby
I was born this way

Ooo there ain't no other way
Baby I was born this way
Baby I was born this way
Ooo there ain't no other way
Baby I was born-
I'm on the right track baby
I was born this way

[Bridge]
Don't be a drag, just be a queen
Whether you're broke or evergreen
You're black, white, beige, chola descent
You're lebanese, you're orient
Whether life's disabilities
Left you outcast, bullied, or teased
Rejoice and love yourself today
'cause baby you were born this way

No matter gay, straight, or bi,
Lesbian, transgendered life
I'm on the right track baby
I was born to survive
No matter black, white or beige
Chola or orient made
I'm on the right track baby
I was born to be brave

[Chorus]
I'm beautiful in my way
'cause god makes no mistakes
I'm on the right track baby
I was born this way

Don't hide yourself in regret
Just love yourself and you're set
I'm on the right track baby
I was born this way

[Outro]
I was born this way hey!
I was born this way hey!
I'm on the right track baby
I was born this way hey!

I was born this way hey!
I was born this way hey!
I'm on the right track baby
I was born this way hey!

[Chorus]
I'm beautiful in my way
'cause god makes no mistakes
I'm on the right track baby
I was born this way

Don't hide yourself in regret
Just love yourself and you're set
I'm on the right track baby
I was born this way

[Post-chorus]
Ooo there ain't no other way
Baby I was born this way
Baby I was born this way
Ooo there ain't no other way
Baby I was born-
I'm on the right track baby

Eons ago in Twitter-land, Gaga got all hot and bothered over herself and posted the above lyrics to a song she referred to as her latest "masterpiece". As I read the words, I immediately thought, "How nice of you to print the poetry of a mentally-handicapped ten-year-old girl, but where the BLEEP are the lyrics you wrote, honey?"

Turns out those were her lyrics.

See, what a lot of folks forget is that all of the supposed musical genius that has made Lady Gaga a worldwide sensation comes from her ex-producer. Any Gaga song that the world knows and loves came from him. Sure, Gaga may have added a lyric or two, but without that producer, there is nobody covering up the black hole that is Lady Gaga's musical genius.

I mean, those lyrics ain't any kind of genius. And the actual melody, chord changes, etc. are straight from Madonna's "Express Yourself". Gaga is so delusional in regard to the belief in her own greatness that she thinks she can pull this kinda shit and none of her fans will know the difference.

Additionally, you gotta hand it to Gaga for being so open in her loathing of the gay community. I mean, nobody you loves gay people would humiliate them so boldly in song. Take for instance the very first part of the song where Gaga comes right out and accuses gay people of having paws instead of hands or feet. Yep, Lady Gaga officially thinks gay people are animals.

Later in the song, she goes so far as to call being gay one of "life's disabilities" along with being, to paraphrase her words, black, white, beige, Chola descent, Lebanese, or Orient.

Damn, Lady Gaga is one big ol' hater, ain't she?

That she presumes that a gay person would "hide yourself in regret" or "be a drag" says more about her than it does a larger portion of the gay community. We have many gay friends and every last one of them happens to be one of the most kind-hearted, outgoing, and extroverted people on the planet. Very few of them hide themselves in regret, and none of them are ever a drag. Nor are they drag queens. In fact, the only drag queen we know is as straight as the highway between Fort Worth and Dallas.

Is Gaga dissing drag queens too?

Lordy, add it to the list.

Thankfully, this song has not only revealed to all the world the musical fraud that is Lady Gaga, it also shows us all what a hateful fuck doll this chick is...glad we found out now, I guess.

Justin Bieber's FUTURE REVEALED!

2011-02-15T11:12:00.000-06:00

I realize that a lot of girls out there today are suffering from Biebermania, for which there is currently no known cure. One of the recent side effects of this dreadful disease is violent Wiki-altering mood swings brought on by someone other than Justin Bieber winning the Grammy for Best New Artist.

What these poor girls don't realize is that if Justin Bieber had won the Grammy for Best New Artist, he would have joined an ever-growing list of artists who won the award and were then never heard from again. See, winning that award can be a stone-cold career killer. Just ask Milli Vanilli, Paula Cole, Lauryn Hill, Evanescence, and Arrested Development.

While my best wishes are with these young girls, I am reasonably sure most will grow up to be emotionally scarred adults who seek debauched solace in the arms of older men, of which I will be one. I look forward to a long and plentiful period of asking many of these women, in various states of undress, how ( hip thrust) you (hip thrust) like (hip thrust) Justin (hip thrust) Bieber (hip thrust) NOW?!

For now, I would simply suggest to these young girls that Bieber's Grammy hopes are not entirely over. I think if he were to release a full-length album with a picture of him on the cover playing a guitar, such as he did for the EP My Worlds Acoustic, it could surely be nominated as a comedy album and that, unless Esperanze Spaulding were to also release a comedy album during that same calendar year, he would win hands-down.

As for those who wonder what the future holds for Justin Bieber, we need only look to past artists who did not really sing on their albums, or in-concert, and who didn't come clean with the millions of female fans about the fact that none of them EVER had a fucking chance in hell.

I'm talking about guys like Lance Bass, Jonathan Knight, and Ricky Martin.

See, believe it or not gals, these guys were absolutely HUGE at one time, with millions of young girls fawning over them, worshipping the ground they walked upon, and one day dreaming of being Mrs. Lance Bass. In hindsight, that sounds pretty damn silly, right?

Mark my words, in a few short years, the fact that any of you ever scribbled "Cameron Bieber" on your grade school folder, only to see that your friend Meghan had just scribbled "Meghan Bieber" on hers, thereby forcing you to end your friendship with the dirty slut right then and there, will be cause for great embarrassment.

It isn't now, but it will be the day that your little hero with the bangs in his eyes gets hauled out of a nightclub frequented by gay Marines with the ass of his pants ripped out and a huge smile on his face.

On that day, you will suddenly remember for a brief, fleeting moment that you once thought Justin Bieber was the hottest thing since sliced milk, but that you'd forgotten all about him until now. Then the thought will dissipate like a cotton candy fart, you will snap back to the present day and resume fondling the latest old dude you met on Craiglist.

Crazy Question: When Did KISS Jump The Shark?!

2011-02-13T13:00:00.002-06:00

Sure, it's no longer cool to dig KISS, but, let's face it, if you are a dude or dudette "of a certain age", you did at one time think KISS were pretty damn cool. You owned all the records, went to their shows, and, on at least one occasion, went as your favorite KISS member for Halloween.

Of course, like most bands, KISS made their share of mistakes and, at some point, they jumped the shark, thereby causing a great number of fans to fall off the KISS bandwagon. Of course, some of us have hopped on and off that very same bandwagon more than once. Come on, admit it, when the original line-up reunited in 1996, most of us got at least a little bit excited. Hey, I saw the lines outside Tower Records and other Ticketmaster outlets as fans waited for tickets to go on-sale (these being the "good ol' days" before online ticket sales even existed).

When exactly did KISS truly jump the shark, though?

Was it when the four members of the band each released their own solo album on the very same day in September of 1978, with each dedicating their album to the other three members of the band? Never mind the fact that Gene Simmons felt the need to record his own rendition of the schmaltzy standard "When You Wish Upon A Star", the very idea of the marketplace being flooded by the arrival of 20 million copies of brand new KISS solo albums is mind-boggling these days, considering that album sales of top-flight artists have dwindled so drastically.

Was it when they appeared on national television two days before Halloween 1978 (a mere month after their solo albums flooded the market) in the epic cheese-fest that was "KISS Meets The Phantom Of The Park"? This dreadful drama took place in an amusement park where evil scientist Abner Devereaux (played by Anthony Zerbe) turns Melissa's boyfriend Sam into a lifeless cyborg. After getting fired, he unleashes a robotic Gene Simmons that wreaks havoc upon the park, then neutralizes the band's super powers before capturing them in his underground lair. Sure, there were holes in the plot large enough to drive a dump truck through, but since most of us were quite young and had yet to fully develop our bullshit detectors, very few of us cared.

Was it when KISS went disco on 1979's Dynasty album, unleashing the craptastic single "I Was Made For Loving You"? Sure, the single was one of their highest sellers, going Top 10 in nine different countries (it peaked at #11 in the US), but at what expenses? To their fans, KISS embodied all that was great about rock & roll. For many, seeing their heroes embrace disco was a huge slap in the face.

Was it when they released the Unmasked album in 1980, but remained masked, merely hinting at the prospect of removing their make-up in order to sell more albums? It didn't work, as Unmasked was the first KISS album since Dressed To Kill not to go Platinum.

Was it when they finally appeared on MTV sans make-up a full three years after the last KISS fan stopped giving a damn? By then, of course, both Peter Criss and Ace Frehley had been kicked out of the band.

Was it when, after thirteen years of declining album sales and concert revenue that Gene Simmons begrudgingly brought Ace and Peter back into the fold for a full-fledged "make-up and all" reunion tour in 1996? I mean, let's face it, while many of us jumped at the chance to relive a part of our childhoods, the simple truth is that it was a calculated nostalgia-based cash-in, nothing more, nothing less.

Was it when Peter Criss left the band again in 2001 and was replaced by Eric Singer, who committed sacrilege by wearing the same "Cat man" make-up that Criss had made famous? Let's face it, this move was a new low for the band and basically exclaimed to all that Ace and Peter were expendable members of the band. Later Ace replacement Tommy Thayer went on to wear Ace's "Star man" make-up and continues to do so to this day when the band performs.

Was it when KISS took merchandising to new extremes that same year by debuting the KISS Kasket? Gene Simmons unveiled the ridiculous item, declaring "I love livin', but this makes the alternative look pretty damn good." Amazingly, the band expects to unveil a "new and improved" KISS Kasket this month. Don't hold your breath for too long, though, or you'll be buried in a regular casket before this one becomes available. In the meantime, perhaps you'll be interested in picking up a KISS golf club cover or, better yet, a KISS trailer hitch. Seriously, who the fuck decided the world needed KISS trailer hitches? We're amazed Gene didn't think of offering KISS truck balls (pictured above thanks to our trusty Photoshop skillz)

Or was it when Gene Simmons saw Ozzy Osbourne making crazy money off of his own TV reality show and decided to start his own, called "Gene Simmons' Family Jewels". Sigh.

Crikey, it's not a matter of when KISS jumped the shark, but how many times. That's quite the legacy, Gene.

Darren's Bitch-Ass Thoughts: Fall Out Boy, KISS, Aerosmith, Yuck and More!

2011-02-08T15:06:00.001-06:00

We here at Bitch-Ass Motherfucker are proud to unveil a new weekly column that we call Darren's Bitch-Ass Thoughts. It is a random collection of brain droppings from the mind of someone who should probably keep his thoughts to himself, which pretty much makes him just like everyone else with a blog, so there.

Without further adieu, we now present the first installment of Darren's Bitch-Ass Thoughts.

Prince makes news for kicking one of the Kardashians off his stage. What the fuck was he doing inviting them onstage in the first place? Play "When Doves Cry" all the way through, motherfucker. Cut out the fucking hit medleys, and no more fucking Kardashian bullshit.

Chatter on the interweb is that Christina Aguilera intentionally goofed up the anthem in order to get publicity. If she'd have just done her usual "songbird having a seizure" schtick and not goofed up the words, the fact that she was even there would have been forgotten by kickoff. Part of me thinks that she wouldn't be the first person to fuck up just to make the news, but the other part of me thinks this chick ain't smart enough to tie her own shoes, much less pull a stunt like this.

You guys ain't gonna believe this one: American Idol producers are floating the idea of an "American Idol" summer tour, with headliners Aerosmith. Is that fucking hilarious, or what? Just don't let J. Lo anywhere near a live microphone, that's all we ask.

Is that KISS or Blue Man Group? Seems the band KISS will perform in 2012 with NO original members. It has long been Gene's dream to see KISS continue as an entity with the gradual replacement of all original members, with he and Paul Stanley overseeing the creative side. A long-term Las Vegas production is currently in the works, with the possible addition of other regional troupes, a la Blue Man Group. We can't help wonder if those interested in playing the role of Paul Stanley will be forced to have Star Man's butt hair grafted onto their chests.

Seriously, which one of you motherfuckers keeps telling Katy Perry that she's sexy? Or that she can sing? Cut it out. Fuck. If it's you, Butch Walker, so help me god I will sphincter bop your ol' lady while you're out schtupping some Canoga Park fuck doll with tits, tats and a demo tape.

Seriously, have all the good band names been taken? Cool new band from London that I've been digging...they're called Yuck. Sigh.

We read that Patrick Stump has a new solo album coming out. In reading the article (from the latest ish of Rolling Stone), we suddenly realized we had a king-size boner. Now, this wasn't because we've been looking forward to new music from Stump, or anything. What gave us the good wood was the fact that in the article he is referred to as "ex-Fall Out Boy singer" Patrick Stump. That means Fall Out Boy really have gone bye-bye! Praise dashboard Jesus!

B.A.M.F. Exclusive: Christina Aguilera Inner Dialogue WHILE She Was Singing The National Anthem!

2011-02-07T10:59:00.000-06:00

If you didn't see it when it happened, you've no doubt heard about it by now. Christina Aguilera fucked up the anthem. I love the fact that she - I mean one of her PR people - tweets afterward that "I got caught up in the moment." Having exclusive access to Christina's innermost thoughts while she was singing, we at Bitch-Ass Motherfucker hope to shed further light upon Christina's "lyrical malfunction", if you will:

"Damn, I am singing the SHIT out of this song. I hope these motherfuckers are videotaping every fucking second of this because I'm a-gonna make people forget all about Whitney's Houston's version. Damn, I remember buying the cassingle of her rendition of the National Anthem when I was a kid, even though I knew she recorded it in advance and merely lip synced to it on game day. Fuck, they should put THIS rendition out on a cassingle. Yeah, I know cassingles are obsolete, but my version is so fucking BOMB that people would buy it anyway. Shit, cassette deck sales would go through da roof, holmes.

I rule.

Seriously, check me out, man. I am adding like three notes to every fucking syllable. I just spent five seconds singing the word "and", can you believe this? And, while I can't actually do sign language for the deaf people - oh, what they be missing - I do the next best thing and move my hand up and down depending on how high a note I'm hitting. See, right there? Raised my hand as high as it would go to accentuate the high note, which I then followed with a serious of lower, but damn respectable notes.

Did I mention how much I rule?

Plus, you know how when people say "She walks around like her shit don't stank"? I took a huge dump just before I came out here and my personal assistant agreed with me that it did not stink. At all.

Good thing I had my assistant scoop it up outta the toilet and put it in a baggie. The Smithsonian's gonna want to frame it. Should we gold plate it? Sprinkle some fuckin' rhinestones on it? Sho thang, but it'll cost 'em extra.

Oh hell no...wouldn't you know it? Here I am redesigning The National Anthem for the 21st century in front of BILLIONS and now my kootchie's fittin' ta be itchin'. Easy girl, we's almost home. HA! I just said 'easy girl'. That's what they used to call me back in grade school, yo, but who the fuck's laughing now?

Did I just see Cameron Diaz feed A-Rod some popcorn?

All that bitch is good for, from what I hear. Damn, bitch made me mess up the anthem.

No worries. I got this one covered, yo. It's what we "great ones" call improvisation. Now not only will I sell a gazillion cassingles of this bad boy, I can now take a co-writing credit and make me some BANK, motherfucker.

Peace out, bitches. I rule!"

Black Eyed Peas Halftime Show Was Global IQ Test

2011-02-06T23:41:00.002-06:00

While we at Bitch-Ass Motherfucker HQ had really low expectations for the BEP Super Bowl halftime show, we must commend the Peas for really outdoing themselves and surpassing even our wildest expectations.

On one level, it's quite easy to say that the Peas had absolutely no business getting up on a worldwide concert stage to suck that hard, but that would be missing the point altogether.

See, the Black Eyed Peas didn't just suck, they created an IQ test so that those of us with any brain cells at all can determine the true idiots among us.

How can you tell an idiot based on the Peas' performance, you ask?

It's quite easy, actually. Anyone who saw that performance and didn't think it sucked is an idiot. They should have their driving, voting and, let's face it, breeding privileges revoked immediately.

As for the Peas, they officially have our permission to go away now and take that fucking annoying "Tonight's Gonna Be A Good Night" crap with them. Also, if they've got room on the BEP short bus, have them take Christina "Ramparts" Aguilera while they're at it.

Top 20 Non-Essential Band Members Of ALL-Time!

2011-02-05T18:57:00.002-06:00

Let's face it, most bands have a weak link. Hell, more than a few great bands have included at least one member that was, to put it as kindly as possible, non-essential. We often refer to such members as "lucky SOB's" who who just happened to be in the right place at the right time, or had incriminating pictures of key band members in compromising positions. We at B.A.M.F. have taken it upon ourselves to craft the definitive list of the Top 25 Most Non-Essential band members of all time.

And, as always, our choices are in no particular order because, let's face it, non-essential is non-essential.

Sid Vicious of The Sex Pistols - Sid is the all-time poster child of non-essential band members. Hell, his bass guitar wasn't even plugged in. It may not have even had strings on it, now that we think about it. From the moment he replaced Glen Matlock (a guy who actually did know how to play bass but made the career-killing mistake of getting on Johnny Rotten's bad side) in the Pistols, Sid was there for one reason and one reason only: to look the part of a nihilistic punk rocker. Apparently, to do this and play bass at the same time was too much multi-tasking for dear Sid to master, bless his gacked-out heart.

Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy - If Sid Vicious had been born in 1984, he'd be Pete Wentz.

D'Arcy Wretsky of Smashing Pumpkins - Sure, she had a somewhat interesting look about her (which is something that most guys seem to say about any chick who plays in a rock band, know matter how weird she looks), but she brought absolutely nothing to the table creatively. On their records, Billy Corgan played most if not all of the bass lines. In concert, she merely replicated them in the most ham-fisted, sluggish way possible.

Linda McCartney of Wings - Sure, she had a decent rack, but was a bit of a butterface (not that she wasn't without a quiet, matronly appeal) and had no business playing keyboards and singing back-up in a band fronted by one of the freakin' Beatles. Anyone who has ever been unlucky enough to hear any of the isolated recordings of her vocals and/or keyboard playing knows what I'm talking about. Back then, Paul stuck her out there and let her plink and plunk away to her heart's content, but a smarter man would have had a real keyboardist "in the wings" (get it?) and out of view of the audience.

Nick Mason of Pink Floyd - Apparently, Roger Waters agrees with us on this one, having long been critical of Mason's lethargic playing. Sure, he's one of the founding members of one of the greatest bands in the world, but, as drummers go, he ranks as one of the luckiest SOB's on the planet. On a bit of a side note, can you imagine Keith Moon in Pink Floyd? That would have been AWESOME!

Fiona Russell-Powell (known as Eden) and David Yarritu of ABC - We have no idea what Martin Fry was thinking when he enlisted two non-performing members to join the band for 1985's album, How To Be A Zillionaire. Eden was eye candy, brought in to provide an appealing female visual element and, well, Yarritu was a diminutive Asian fellow with thick glasses and a shaved dome - a cartoon character come to life, it seemed. Thankfully, Martin canned these two shortly after the album was released. Our eyes are still trying to recover from the mockery that was ABC circa '85.

Janick Gers of Iron Maiden - Granted, Janick can actually play the guitar (very well, in fact), but, let's face it, he's one of like eighteen (okay, three) guys currently playing guitar in Iron Maiden. Plus, unlike the others, he isn't an original member of the band. We bet you five bucks he could stop playing altogether and nobody in the stadium would know or care. So, based on that criteria, he is hereby ruled non-essential.

Anybody in a rap group wearing an NFL jersey onstage - Generally speaking, these guys are there to energize the audience with constant hoops and hollering, saying shit like "Hey, Ho!" and "Get yo hands in the air!" in hopes of taking the audience's mind off of how insanely boring a rap concert can be. I mean, ten minutes of hearing some mealy-mouthed meat-head drop profanities over a beat is nobody's idea of a good time. While they try to help disguise the obvious soul-sucking boredom of such performances, these cats just make it worse!

The female guitarist in Paul Schaffer's "Late Show" Band - Seriously, what's her fucking deal? Paul Schaffer no doubt hired her for her singing skills as well as her guitar prowess, but, come on, Sid McGinnis is all this band ever needed. Her presence is smarmy and completely fucking unnecessary. And those fucking DSr. Seuss hats she insists on wearing...give it a rest, girl.

The chick who sang and "played percussion" in Kevin Eubanks "Tonight Show" band - Lordy, was that chick obnoxious. It got so you couldn't go to or come back from a commercial break without either hearing her incessant caterwauling or watching her tossing some lame-ass fucking gourd in the air under the guise of "playing percussion". We know Eubanks left, but have no idea if she's still there, as we haven't watched "The Tonight Show" in ages.

At least one of the Jonas Brothers - Seriously, near as we can tell, two of those cats are not pulling their weight (which can't be any more than 98 lbs), so of the two, one of them must be a total waste of space. I mean, Nick's the only Jonas that's really doing anything and, even then, that's being generous. The Jonas Brothers are like three really smudged photocopies of Pete Wentz.

Dizzy Reed of Guns 'n' Roses - Imagine being some Sunset Boulevard hair metal poser on the verge of going broke and getting kicked out of your apartment. Now imagine you also happen to be buds with Axl Rose. Not only does he loan you some cash to make rent, he makes you a fucking member of what was at the time one of fucking biggest and most dangerous bands on the planet. Only thing was, GNR needed a keyboard player like John F. Kennedy needed another hole in the head. That he is still with the band to this day is astounding. The dude must be one of the best ass-kissers in all of humanity not to get kicked out of the band by "Mr. Mood Swing" Axl Rose.

Andrew Ridgely of Wham! - To this day, we're still trying to figure out what Ridgely's purpose was in the band. I mean, near as we can tell, George Michael seemed to have all the bases covered. We still haven't laughed as hard as we did the day we walked into the local record store and saw, of all things, an Andrew Ridgely solo album. Thankfully, there would be only one.

John Oates of Hall & Oates - Sure, he plays the guitar and sings back-up. Okay, we aren't sure that the guitar is actually plugged in or the microphone is on, but we do know that even if they are, his contribution to the band is so minor. He's even less essential than that without the mustache. If he's going to insist on remaining part of the equation, he needs to re-grow the 'stache. Without one, he looks like a horse jockey going under-cover as a substitute teacher (or vice-versa). Dude's a punch line, for crissakes.

Any Bangle not named Susanna Hoffs - They like to hype the fact that they can sing three-and-four-part harmonies and shit, but the truth of the matter is that the only Bangle that ever mattered was Susanna Hoffs. Hell, their albums featured more session players than a Britney Spears joint.

Joe Leeway of the Thompson Twins - If you don't know who I'm talking about, Leeway was the "multi-instrumentalist and backing vocalist" in the band. In other words, he tapped on a bongo that wasn't mic'ed and sang into a wireless headset plugged into his underwear, near as we can tell. His role in the band was to be the, uh, reggae-looking guy with the dreadlocks. Now, that we think about it, his actual role must have been to make Allanah Currie look good by comparison because we never quite figured out what she was doing in the band, either.

Siobhan Fahey of Bananarama - Seriously, for three gals, you'd think one of them would have tried to sing harmony or something. As it was, all three members of this British vocal trio sang the same exact vocal part over one another, making songs such as "Cruel Summer" and "Venus" sound like grade school sing-a-longs. Seeing as how the current version of Bananarama consists of the duo of Keren Woodward and Sara Dallin, looks like Fahey's presence was superfluous at best. She was married to Eurythmic Dave Stewart until 1996 when, one could surmise, he found her non-essential as well.

Patti Scialfa of the E Street Band - Do we even need to discuss this one? Didn't think so.

Fergie of Black Eyed Peas - From the minute we became aware of her existence, we've been trying to figure out how a gal this non-essential found herself in one of the most popular pop acts of the modern age. I mean, as far as gals go, Fergie's a C+ on her best day and a little long in the tooth to boot. Additionally, her vocal skills are "karaoke-level" at best and her butt-crack sweats a lot. So, what gives?

(thanks to my buddy Willard for reminding me of the Thompson Twins and Patti Scialfa.)

Juicy Melon Movie Review: The Company Men

2011-02-02T22:52:00.009-06:00

From the previews of this flick starring Ben Affleck, Tommy Lee Jones, Kevin Costner and Chris Cooper, I remember making a mental note to check it out once it opened.

Like many of you, I'm a sucker for those Wall Street-type humanity stories where we watch a bunch of suits wrestle with the realities of an economy that's still trying to shake off the nosedive it took in 2008.

In this particular cinematic journey, Affleck portrays an exec making $160,000/yr who gets fired and, as a result, is forced to re-evaluate his life, his existence, heck, his whole universe.

Jones plays an executive - one of the company's first employees, as a matter of fact - who is best friends with the CEO (played ruthlessly by Craig T. Jones), but, thanks to his inability to not voice his ethical concerns, gets shit-canned anyway.

Chris Cooper figures his life is over when he gets pink-slipped. After all, who wants to hire a paper-pusher pushing 60?

Kevin Costner, almost unrecognizable these days, is Affleck's brother-in-law and a blue-collar guy who spars with Affleck over what constitutes an honest day's work.

While not the most creative movie on the subject ever made, much less made this year (it's a popular subject, it seems), it's hard not to like Affleck and Jones. That's why they're in the movie because, if there weren't two likable guys playing these roles, it would be near impossible to work up a whole lot of sympathy for watching some fat cat get the ax and having to sell his Porsche, give up the country club membership, and cut down to caviar only twice a week (that last one didn't actually happen, but I was on a roll).

Strangely, the only guy who still has a job seems to be Costner, who runs a construction business. Didn't the construction biz get hit pretty hard recently too? Granted, if this movie was to acknowledge this truth, then you wouldn't be able to have meat-and-potatoes Costner save the spoiled rich guy's ass.

While I certainly thought Rosemarie DeWitt's ass got better and better as the movie progressed (she plays Affleck's loving wife who seems to always be right, like most woman...in the movies...what's up with that?), I didn't find a whole lot else to hang my, er, hat on regarding "The Company Men".

Enjoyable enough if you turn your brain off. Chicks will like it because they'll think they'd look just as good in whatever jeans DeWitt wears in the movie.

I mean, the plot's been done before, the story's been told. Let's face it, this utter has been milked dry, baby. Rosemarie's scrumptious ass is great, but it isn't nearly enough to save this movie from itself. It is, however, more than enough for me to have enough wood at this very moment to carve Yngwie Malmsteen's name into, which would be a waste of good wood no matter which way you swing.

JUICY MELON RATING:
2.5 OUTTA 5 JUICY MELONS, BABY!

The White Stripes Have Left The Building

2011-02-02T17:30:00.003-06:00

(White Stripes promo photo...or a bad day at couples counseling?)

After a lengthy hiatus, the White Stripes announced in a letter posted on their official website that they have formally disbanded.

Considering that their last studio album, Icky Thump, came out almost four years ago and that their 2007 tour ended with several cancellations (due to Meg's anxiety issues), the writing has long been on the wall, for me at least.

I remember watching the end of their 2009 DVD Under Great White Northern Lights where Meg breaks down in tears as Jack plays a touching rendition of "White Moon" on an old piano. I don't know what that scene was meant to convey, or why Meg was crying, but I walked away knowing that the White Stripes, as of that very moment, were toast.

At that moment, which took place almost a year to the date of this announcement, I remember being pretty moved and somewhat mournful, as something with real depth and flair, not to mention awesome marketing savvy, was now dead.

While I was never a huge fan of the band, I have always respected Jack White's skills as a modern-day snake oil salesman. Who better than he to take a ramshackle roots duo from the bowels of Detroit, Michigan to the motherfucking BIGTIME?

I mean, there are better bands out there, better songs floating in the air on a daily basis, but there was just something so inherently cool about the White Stripes. Somehow, the combination of Jack's "mad-man with a ratty guitar" and Meg's "ex-wife with a rudimentary understanding of percussion, but a damn fine rack" served only to heighten whatever shortcomings the material may have had.

That is not to say that Jack didn't unleash some stunners over the years. I just happened to find their first two albums pretty uneven affairs. In truth, I have Steven McDonald of Redd Kross to thank for getting be into White Blood Cells, as his Redd Blood Cells added some kick-ass bass lines and ended up helping the album achieve the proper greatness that the original fell short of reaching, sonically speaking.

Of course, Jack earned bonus points by not being a dick and demanding that McDonald remove the tracks from his website at once, but by going a step further and expressing his appreciation of the work. Considering that Jack was now part of the Warner Brothers machine, one can see how a lesser guy might have handled it differently.

Jack earned more bonus points from me when he beat the shit out of Jason from fellow Detroiters the Von Bondies; a band whose debut album he'd supposedly produced (although the band now says it was someone else...whatever). I know nothing about Jason, or whether he had it coming, but the way he played the event up in the press, releasing photos of the facial cuts and bruising he'd received, I was left with the feeling that there was no reason on the planet for someone at Jack White's stature circa 2003 to waste his time on some unappreciative punk unless he truly deserved a thrashing. Sure, when you're a rock star, you may have to suffer some fools, but you don't have to suffer them all. Occasionally, you gotta put one down just to send the proper message to the rest.

That's also how I came to view the band's next album, Get Behind Me Satan. They'd enjoyed four years of being the hip, new kid on the block, so to speak, and now they were starting to be seen as perhaps a one-trick pony that had perhaps overstayed their welcome. By upping the ante, recording the album in an actual recording studio rather than some garage in Detroit, writing some of the best, most soul-baring material of his life, he created an album that set all critics on their heels.

Sure, there were plenty of rootsy rave-up's for which they are best known, but the songs that make this album such a stunner are those that wear their proverbial hearts on their sleeve - songs like "White Moon" and "Forever For Her (Is Over For Me)". These were songs you were just never gonna hear from any band that, up until that point, may have viewed themselves as creative equals.

But for what, I ask, do you think the White Stripes will be most remembered?

Leave it to a band with no bass player to create the most-lauded bass line to come down the pike since "Another One Bites The Dust". Such was the opening line of "Seven Nation Army", a song that set off their Elephant album like a powder keg and, quite sadly, is currently being slaughtered by every collegiate marching band in the country. It's getting so I can't watch a college sporting event without wondering aloud if those fucking band nerds know any other song, for the love of Betsy.

Of course, Jack White is still making music. No matter what he does, though, he'll always be Jack White from the White Stripes and all else will be seen as a deviation from the "magnetic north" that was the White Stripes.

Wilco To Form Own Label, Zzzz Records?

2011-01-27T20:00:00.000-06:00

As reported by Pitchfork mag based on what Wilco hired-gun Nels Cline said on a recent radio show, the rock band Wilco seems to be in the process of forming their own label after parting ways with Nonesuch Records, the Warner affiliate that saw to it that WEA pay the band twice for the same record (Yankee Hotel Foxtrot).

Seeing as how every record since YTF was snoozier than the one before it and, thus, sold less and less, I'll bet you those smug bastards at Camp Tweedy blame the label for "not promoting their music effectively."

Looks like Wilco is a tad high on their own fumes, or coffee, rather. Seeing as how Wilco has been whoring their "brand" left and right - they're not just a band, they're a way of life, after all - we'll no doubt soon be seeing more of their songs pop up in commercials. It'll be songs from their WEA days, of course, while the stuff they put out on their own label gathers cyber-dust.

I love seeing these delusional bands that are on the verge of getting dropped because their last three albums sucked leave willingly, then declare "We wanted our freedom." Yep, we recognize the ol' "girl breaking up with you first because she knows you're gonna dump her" trick when we see it.

Let's face it, Wilco made one goof record, Summerteeth. The rest of their albums all suck to varying degrees, with Tweedy seemingly going out of his way not to write a hook. On Summerteeth, for some odd reason, he finally gave in to the inclination and made a fucking great record.

Even with their last few records being total cures for insomnia (whatever you do, don't operate any heavy machinery while listening to A Ghost Is Born, whatever you do), Wilco remains a band whose every move gets covered in the press. It's not like every move Kid Rock makes - which is stupider, but more interesting to read about - hearing whatever knew thing Wilco is up to is like someone watching molasses dry and giving you a play-by-play.

How about Wilco stop with the sandwich shops and the coffees and the starting their own labels and just make a good goddamn record that's worth listening, to...how 'bout doing that? If and when they do, feel free to wake my headless torso out of its cryogenic sleep and say "I told you so."

Until then, zip it

Our Greatest Rants Revisited, Volume One: Heavy Metal Midget!

2011-01-27T19:16:00.002-06:00

Last February, we wondered aloud:

How many times had he cried himself to sleep, wondering why guys who have it all still feel the need to belittle him? They've got girlfriends who ask them to get things down for them from the upper shelves, and when they get in the car, their feet actually reach the pedals. Why any normal person would rub that in the face of a little person doesn't make any sense. It'd be like Peyton Manning making fun of you because you can't throw a football 80 yards.

Read the ENTIRE POST HERE.

DO NOT TRY THIS: Going The Whole Day With An Accent!

2011-01-27T17:46:00.001-06:00

Okay, none of this really happened. I don't work in an office with other people, I work by myself as a superhero...guardian of justice, if you will...and was simply doin what we in the funny papers call "riffing".

From the moment I was old enough to understand what people were saying to me (beyond the incessant "boogie boogie boo", that is), I have been fascinated by accents. I have also laughed hysterically at people with HUGE accents who honestly think they have none. At least the British are self-aware enough to admit that much.

So, on a bet with a co-worker, I agreed to talk the entire day yesterday in a thick southern accent. If you were to be derogatory, you might call a "hick" accent. If I were to slip up in doing so, I would owe my office mates $5 each. That's TWENTY GODDAMN DOLLARS!

Anyhoo, I actually started warming up the night before, trying out my new accent on my girlfriend. She did not like it one bit and was convinced that my IQ had dropped fifty points since taking on the accent. I contend that I was already this dumb, but that my sophisticated accent covered it up. She laughed while grabbing her pillow and padding off to sleep in the guest room (which sounds great if you say it with a British accent, but I digress).

The next day at work, I said "HAY-ELL-LOW!!" (with mental buck teeth glistening in the wind) to the receptionist and off I went.

My buddy Ian was literally amazed to see that I did not drop the accent when talking to customers, remaining utterly convinced that this decision was costing us business! By the end of the day, I had myself quite the tidy stack of fives.

Unlike other accents, the southern accent is kind of hard to drop. Forgive me in advance for saying that it's a lazy accent and that if you devote too much time to employing it, you will become addicted to the drawl, the sauntering-with-a-straw-in-the-mouth cadence, and you won't be able to stop.

Now, I am not saying people with southern accents are LAZY. Delete that email now, my southern brethren, for I meant no disrespect. Lazy, hell, I dream about being LAZY. God bless anyone who actually achieves a state of heavenly LAZY bliss!

I stop by the Thai restaurant to pick up some food and find myself ordering in the same crazy southern accent I've had all day. I know it, they know it, but damn if I can stop it.

Once home, I go to kiss my lady and whisper a sweet "I missed you, baby", but the accent makes it sound like Jethro putting the moves on Elly May. Eww.

Moment killed. No matter what I tried to say, it all came out in that accent. It was so I was afraid to open my mouth. Heck, I even let her watch one of those dreadful pawn shop shows that I hate because I didn't want to say "Give that fucking remote or pack your shit" and not have her take me seriously! Just kidding!

Anyway, shit, it's tough...I still haven't shaken it. Good Lord Peterbilt, how I have tried! This infernal southern accent is killing my dreams!

More Deep Thoughts: Puddle Of Mudd Is Ugly Kid Joe!

2011-01-27T16:53:00.000-06:00

From the moment Puddle of Mudd hit the big time with their sneering Nirvana rip-offs "Blurry" and "She Hates Me", I could not get past the unnerving feeling that I'd heard these guys before.

Years pass by and every new Puddle of Mudd radio hit leaves me slack-jawed and introspective (as a BITCH!) over that same nagging feeling. Who do these motherfuckers remind me of?

Then today it hit me! Finally.

Puddle of Mudd fucking remind me of Ugly Kid Joe.

You don't remember Ugly Kid Joe?! They were a band back in the late 80's, pre-Nirvana, that managed to score a hugely MASSIVE MTV video and radio hit with the sneering hair-metal anthem, "Everything About You".

Then, because they were fresh out of new ideas, the band covered Harry Chapin (Cat's In The Cradle) and were never heard from again.

Like all 80's one-hit wonders - okay, TWO hit wonders: "Cradle" hit #6 - Ugly Kid Joe went away.

Puddle of Mudd are eerily similar to Ugly Kid Joe in that they were both a one-dimensional approximation/regurgitation of the most popular rock genre of the previous year delivered with zero dynamic. They can play the music, they just can't feel the music for the tongue planted so firmly in cheek.

Of course, instead of going away after giving us the one song (that we didn't know we needed but they gave it to us anyway) for which they'd always be known, they just kept right shoveling that one-dimensional "this is our streamlined version of what was popular last year" even though they haven't gotten anywhere close to the Top since "She Hates Me" back in 2002.

That's right, it's been almost ten years since they had a HIT, but they just keep on pestering us with the same joke. Those damn "Ugly Kid Joe Version 2.0" motherfuckers just put out a "Best-Of" last November! That there are more than two songs on it is just not RIGHT!

I've never had a kind word for Ugly Kid Joe in all my years, but bless those guys for not wanting to beat us over the heard with the same dumb stick for ten whole years. Puddle Of Mudd could learn a lot from a band like that. :)

Beatles = BAD FUCKING WAVE?

2011-01-27T15:15:00.001-06:00

Forget that I'm presently stoned and you, more than likely, are not. Let me run this past you.

The Beatles are the single greatest rock band in the history of humanity. Their brief eight-year run yielded more gold (and platinum) than any other band that has ever existed, before or since. Their music not only sold in the millions, it shaped an entire generation and has left an impression on all generations since. They single-handedly changed the language of pop music, creating the very template from which all other pop music springs.

Forty years have not tarnished our love for their music. When their albums are remastered and re-released, people who already own the music rush out to buy a copy. When iTunes finally makes their music available in digital format, those who just bought the remasters and those who already own these same songs immediately feel compelled to hit iTunes the very day the Beatles' music becomes available.

The Beatles were so damn great that their very existence is celebrated by millions five decades after the band struck their final note. They were so damn cool that even a grave misstep like the "butcher block" version of Yesterday And Today have come to be celebrated, with copies of said album fetching top-dollar.

Okay, now lemme run this past you... What if The Beatles were a bad thing?

I admit that it took a sizable hit of the herb for this idea to pop into my own head, as I have willingly participated in celebrating the Fabsters almost from the time I was able to walk. But what if The Beatles ruined it for us? What if their very existence has stunted our societal and cultural growth? What if their re-writing of the pop music template has prevented other forms of pop music from ever taking shape, much less connecting with a mass audience? What if their personalities, their style, their sense of humor, hadn't been given the mass attention by which to become a part of our culture, known the world over?

What if the current musical climate - the preponderance of musical acts all devoid of subtlety, melody and originality - is their fault? It's like they came, took all the fucking good ideas, and we've been left with five decades of rotting table scraps?

It's kind fun thinking about what might have happened musically if The Beatles had never existed. Something would have had to fill the gap after Buddy Holly's tragic death cut short a brilliant career. Without The Beatles' influence, would there have been heavy metal? Would music have gotten heavier at all? My initial hunch is yes, but that the journey from Buddy Holly to Black Sabbath might have taken a few more twists and turns, making for a more enjoyable trip.

See, The Beatles are their own language. What would we have turned out like without that language having shaped all of us in some way? It's like removing one or two of your favorite colors from the crayon box. Take them away and you suddenly realize how dependent upon them you are, but what if you'd never had those colors to choose from in the first place? You'd have made due with what you had.

I love The Beatles, but I have to say that if the music that new artists would be making today was better as a result of them never existing, I'd be okay with it. As a kid, I was surrounded by great new music and movies and cartoons - all of it featuring The Beatles. That was all fine and good, or so I have always thought, but what would I have enriched my life with if they hadn't existed.

Hell, come to think of it, they ceased to exist before many of their hugest fans these days were even born. Can you imagine being so great that the tidal wave you set in motion during your existence is still knocking people down 40 years later?

That's a big fucking wave. A big, BAD FUCKING WAVE. We think that wave was a blessing, a cause for celebration, but what if it actually fucking destroyed us? What if it did such a great job at doing so that we don't even realize it TO THIS DAY?

Damn, that's trippy. Boo ya!

Valentine's Day Alert: Be A B.A.M.F. With A Big Heart!

2011-01-26T15:08:00.002-06:00

If you're like most guys, you're wondering what the heck I could possibly be doing mentioning Valentine's Day in freakin' January. Of course, mentioning Valentine's Day so early is my whole point as we men tend to wait until, oh, February 14th to do anything for our ladies on a day that they take very seriously.

Wait, did your lady tell you not to do anything special for her on Valentine's Day because she isn't one of those gals that buys into this "Hallmark holiday"? Don't believe that for second, man. You best do something special for that woman or you will not hear the end of it.

See, women like to fuck with you by saying the exact opposite of what they really mean. Kinda like those gals who say they prefer being single but can't look you in the fucking eye while doing so. First off, nobody but the trampiest whore wants to be single and they sure as hell don't wanna be single on Valentine's Day.

Come Valentine's Day at the office, a woman who finds herself single on this day can get downright depressed watching every other female in the office get flowers delivered right to their desk. As for those who aren't single and don't receive any flowers from their man..whew, there is one man out there somewhere who has no idea the hornet's nest he just drop-kicked.

That's why I'm telling you guys now...get your shit in gear. NOW! Order those flowers in ADVANCE! Hell, arrange now for you and your lady to take that day off from work (February 14 falls on a Monday this year) and make a romantic three-day weekend out of it. The earlier you book your room, the better.

Of course, having your lady work that day does have its advantages. Women, more than anything, like to show off in front of the other gals at work. That's why making a bombastic show of affection to your lady that she can then rub in the faces of her co-workers is always a great move for you.

Whatever path you choose to take, remember that the more seriously we men take Valentine's Day, the smoother the whole rest of the year will go for us. With just a little bit of thought and some planning, you can be one "Bitch-Ass Motherfucker with a big heart" who just might get a little somethin'-somethin' later on, if you know what I'm saying.

Of course, what better time to unveil our new t-shirt? This is probably one of the few, if not the only Valentine's Day-theme t-shirt for men that a man would actually be caught dead wearing. We gotta believe that any single fella who wears this one out to the clubs is not gonna be single for long, and any married dude would be declaring his big-heartedness (is that even a word?) to his wife and the world. That's not to say that you ladies couldn't also pick one up for your man to let them know that you see and appreciate the effort he makes on your behalf.

Keep in mind that this is a LIMITED-EDITION t-shirt, available only through February 8th (so all orders can arrive before Valentine's Day).

BUY ONE NOW!

CD Review: Farewell Captain "Won't Risk An Explosion"

2011-01-25T14:43:00.005-06:00

Despite the fact that my driver's license says otherwise, I remain a total kid at heart, for better and worse. Part of being a kid, for me at least, was discovering a great new record by some cool rock band and telling all my friends about it. Hell, if not for my unshakable need to do so, this here blog would probably not exist.

Of course, my faithful readers know that it has been an eternity since the last time I came running in with such a huge smile on my face, shiny new album in-hand! Today, though, my musical heart has been awakened from one helluva slumber by Chicago band Farewell Captain and their amazing new record, Won't Risk An Explosion.

The album opens in perfect fashion with the nitro-burning "Jumpstarted". Full of jittery hooks and hyperactive stops and starts, this is a tune tailor-made for the concert stage. Not too hard to imagine how awesome a track like will sound after braving three shitty opening bands and a half dozen or so $2 domestic brews.

Where a lesser record might allow the listener to catch their breath, "You Don't Know When Enough Is" goes for the juggular with a blistering tempo, some kitschy-cool backing vocals, and a freight-train-of-a-chorus that Rivers Cuomo would kill to call his own. Our choice for first single!

While the first four tracks out of the shoot constitute quite the musical one-two (three-four) punch, don't think Farewell Captain aren't also masters of dynamics. Good bands are more than capable of delivering one guitar-driven pile-driver after another, but it is a great band that knows enough to vary the tempos, change brushes, and dabble in some of the other colors on the rock & roll palette.

That's where songs like the aching "Spanish Face" and the Elliot Smith-esque "Stop Asking For Everything" separate Farewell Captain from the also-ran's.

In advance of its proper release, the band is streaming the new album in its entirety. Click HERE to check out the tunes.

Never mind that the music industry itself lies in a state of shambles, shortsightedly shoveling shit to the masses, rejoice that albums like this still exist. They may never go triple-platinum (although stranger things have happened), but they will long outlive the here-today-gone-later-today crap that fills our head space. After giving this a listen, if it moves you even half as much as it did me, I urge those of you in the Chitown area to show this band some love the next time they hit a stage near you. The rest of you, pay it forward...however you can.

CD REVIEW: Motorhead "The World Is Yours"

2011-01-17T23:11:00.001-06:00

Much as I love Lemmy, for the past decade and change, I have come to regard each new Motorhead album as a bit of an exercise in futility. This, of course, is based on the fact that Lemmy's following is a devoted one, to say the least, and that as long as Lemmy and the boys meet the minimum requirements of what a Motorhead album should sound like, business will continue as usual.

And lets face it, for as long as any of us have been around, Lemmy's been a fixture on the metal scene. Hell, he very well may have invented heavy metal for all I know. No other human on this planet embodies the essence, the attitude, and the smell of heavy fucking metal more than Ian "Lemmy" Kilmister. The guy's got nothing to prove. He's Lemmy.

And I guess that's the main problem: having nothing to prove seems to have turned Motorhead into quite the predictable heavy metal machine.

So it was with some trepidation that I first listened to the band's twentieth studio album, The World Is Yours, due January 25 from Motorhead Music/EMI.

I'm glad I did because the new album is a great motherfucking record.

Sure, Lemmy's vocal range is limited to a one-note bark, but who the hell cares when the tunes rock so convincingly? Seriously, this record rocks from start to finish with nary a clunker in the bunch, yet covers a lot of ground musically. The band recognizes the benefit of mixing up the tempos and unleashing a plethora of tasty riffs. It'd be nice to be able to talk about the artistry of the record, the sheer genius unleashed within the grooves, but Motorhead aren't that sort of band and this is not that sort of record.

Produced by Cameron Webb, who has manned the boards for the last four studio albums, The World Is Yours is comprised of deceptively simple elements, yet still manages to show that the union between producer and band is really beginning to hit its stride.

Of course, "I Know How To Die" is easily one of the best tunes Motorhead has recorded in their entire career, with "Born To Lose" not far behind. Both have no doubt made fine additions to the band's current live set lists and prove quite astoundingly that nobody paints in shades of black better than Lemmy & Co., bless their hearts.

A "Special Announcement" from Katy Perry This Wednesday!

2011-01-17T22:05:00.001-06:00

Current ProActiv zit cream spokeswoman Katy Perry will be making a "special announcement" at Facebook headquarters on Wednesday. Reports are that the announcement will be streamed live over Facebook LIVE, the company's live streaming channel (duh).

If you're anything like us (and we pray for your sake that you aren't), you're probably giddy with anticipation at what the announcement might be. We, of course, have made our own speculations and they are as follows:

"Russell Brand is hairier than Bigfoot, EWWW!"

"Why is it that when I actually wear a shirt, nobody listens to me? Hello? Anybody?"

"I just wrote a sequel to 'I Kissed A Girl'. It's called "I Fucked A Homeless Guy' and comes free with any ProActiv order of $50 or more."

"I will be making a special announcement just as soon as Max Martin and Dr. Luke are finished writing it for me."

"Wanna see my boobies?"

"When I fart, little candy hearts fly out of my ass and the room smells of potpourri."

"For my next trick, I'm going to make Avril Lavigne disappear...she's already gone? See, it worked!"

"You guys aren't listening, are you? Good thing my shirt just flew off again!"
Of course, we'll have to hold our collective breath until Wednesday to here her actual announcement. Something tells me it won't be nearly as interesting as anything we came up with...

So Why The Name Change, Bro?

2011-01-17T21:02:00.001-06:00

I've received quite a few emails from some of my regular readers (Hi Mom!) asking why I chose to change the name from He's A Whore to Bitch-Ass Motherfucker. Probably seems an odd thing to do, right? If I was going to change it, you think I'd go for something more palatable to the masses. That was actually the impetus for the change. See, a large online publishing company came along last fall and expressed interest in taking He's A Whore under their umbrella, adding it to a growing list of major blog publications that they oversee.

Naturally, I was excited at the prospect of my work seeing a larger audience. I mean, I'm not in this (or anything, for that matter) for the obscurity. If that weren't cool enough, they'd have paid me too! We were quickly hammering out the details so that we could debut the new, improved He's A Whore on its new platform at the start of the new year, but then we hit a snag.

First off, they wanted to change the name of the blog to, get this, Popspeak. As you can imagine, I threw up in my mouth a little when they ran this by me, but figured they were just brainstorming. Nope, it turns out that they had their mind made up about that and I had no say in the matter. Additionally, they let it be known that cursing would not be welcome in any future posts. Now, I'm no sailor or anything, but I do enjoy the occasional foul-mouthed rant. I mean, fuck, I'm an adult. I couldn't curse as a kid for obvious reasons, but my dad always said "When you get to be an adult, you can cuss all you want." Heck, sometimes that promise of one day being able to unleash a mighty torrent of vulgarity any time I damn well wanted was the only thing that kept me going.

I was slowly coming to realize that these people who once showered me with praise for my edginess and humor, my "encyclopedic musical knowledge" and "unique insight", were like the proverbial girlfriend from Hell. Never mind those first few weeks of rolling around on the couch, feeling each other up, now all they wanted to do was change me.

After a whole lot of soul-searching, I sent a lengthy email expressing my concerns and telling them that if we were to move forward together, it would have to be with no changes to the name, the format, or the language. Their response was immediate, and telling, saying, and I quote: "You can be the guy who writes for a blog called Bitch-Ass Motherfucker that nobody reads, or you can accept our input and know that our only interests lie in seeing you reach the largest audience possible."

The guy had a point, so I decided to take his message literally and "write for a blog called Bitch-Ass Motherfucker that nobody reads."

And prove him wrong.

B.A.M.F. Top 10 Albums Of 2010, Part 2

2011-01-11T03:26:00.001-06:00

Amusement Parks On Fire - Road Eyes [listen to the title cut]
I remember being somewhat hesitant to pop this one in after reading of their loose association with Sigur Ros, but it took mere seconds for my worries to crumble under the glorious weight of a million choral voices washing over me like feathers shot from a cannon. I've yet to hear anyone mention this band without also dropping the "S" word (shoegaze), but that's such a lazy descriptor for a band whose sound is alternately ethereal, expansive, esoteric and explosive. What sets them apart from a number of great acts mining similar territory is their impressive command of melody and their willingness to embrace pop tradition while pushing the envelope.

Chumbawamba - ABCDEFG [listen to "Torturing James Hetfield"]
If you'd have told me this time last year that my Best Of 2010 list would include a freakin' Chumbawamba album, I'd have probably choked on my own tongue, but damn if these tub thumpin' one-hit wonders didn't make one of the more joyous records these ears have heard in a long while. The perfect antidote to the drivel the hipsters are spinning.

Darker My Love - Alive As You Are [listen to "Trail The Line"]
While earlier releases showed a love for (and command of) My Bloody Valentine/Cocteau Twins-ian guitar pop, DML command attention by hitting upon a sound that is a brilliant amalgamation of so many great bands, from CCR to REM, yet entirely their own.

School Of Seven Bells - Disconnect From Desire [listen to "Windstorm"]
Take the carefree and breathtaking vocals of sisters Alejandra and Claudia Deheza, mix in the multi-instrumental and production talents of Benjamin Curtis (ex-Secret Machines), and what you might expect to get is nowhere near as mind-blowing as the actual results, as heard on the group's stellar second effort, Disconnect From Desire. Owing an obvious debt to bands like Cocteau Twins and other 4AD acts of the mid-to-late 80's, School Of Seven Bells create a musical landscape that is cinematic in scope and rich with swirling detail. Slap on a pair of headphones and enter a parallel musical dimension.

Black Mountain - Wilderness Heart [listen to "Rollercoaster"]
If guilty pleasures are your thing, there is no record guiltier than this - a heady mix of glorious 70's classic rock riffage and shameless hooks flying at you from all directions. Those who believe (or need to be convinced) that it's all been done need only listen to this album for absolute confirmation. That's not to say this album is a prisoner of its own influences. Quite the opposite, in fact. The genius is in the construction, the careful selection of colors from the palette and, of course, the execution.

B.A.M.F. Top 10 Albums Of 2010, Part 1

2010-12-30T20:33:00.000-06:00

Like every great rock blog, we have taken it upon ourselves to unleash our own Best Of 2010 list for your perusal. Let me tell you, though, it wasn't easy. 2010 was an absolute crappy year for music as more than a few normally dependable bands that we had come to swear by turned in sub-par albums (we won't name any names, as most of them know who they are). As if that weren't bad enough, most new bands hitting the scene were total douchebag poseurs with nary two original thoughts to rub together. Of course, the very fact that the once mighty music industry has become such a sad shell of its former self just makes the whole thing that much sadder. The music industry has joined the typewriter industry in the "Why the fuck even bother?" department and, hey, you heard it here first.

Having said that, here are ten albums that were pretty goddamn cool!

The Birthday Massacre - Pins And Needles (featured track: "Always")

This Canadian pop-goth outfit broke out of their shell and embraced their melodic side on 2007's Walking With Strangers, but, on their latest effort, they return to the harder-edged sonic attack that made their first couple records so promising. Of course, they are savvy enough to keep the hummable melodies intact, creating an album that skillfully straddles the line between deep goth-cred and something the mainstream could sink its teeth into, if it were so inclined. This is the band's best yet.

Best Coast -Crazy For You (featured track: "Boyfriend")

Nothing new going on here -at all - but who needs new when something this old-school is done so right and sounds so good? Sugar-pop melodies drenched in vintage reverb and soaring female vocals. Our prediction is that the rest of the world catches up to this so-far-behind-they-they're-ahead-of-their-time band in 2011.

Sweet Apple - Love And Desperation (featured track: "I've Got A Feeling")

Having never been a big fan of Dinosaur Jr., we never expected to like this record as much as we did. J Mascis and friends have kicked out the kind of rock album that makes you want to trade in the Prius for a primer-gray 1978 Camaro with a bitchin' eight-track tape deck. If you haven't given this one the time of day yet, do so. NOW!

Jimmy Eat World - Invented (featured track: "Evidence")

Arizona's favorite sons are three albums past the one that put them on the map and, though not as many folks are listening these days, the band have grown better and better with each new effort, creating songs that slyly sneak up on you from behind, compliment you on your retro checkboard Vans, and then blow you against the wall with the force of a thousand Marshall stacks set on stun.

Nada Surf - If I Had A Hi-Fi (featured track: "You Were So Warm")

Considering how great their last two records have been, it's no surprise that the band's taste in musical influences runs just as cool. This collection of covers sees the band covering a lot of ground; from vintage Dwight Twilley to eternally ethereal Kate Bush and beyond. What makes this record such a must-have is the band's ability to weave so many disparate song styles into a cohesive album that doesn't sound like a band running through bunch of other people's songs. Nada Surf achieve the next-to-impossible by making each and every song their own. Heck, Dwight Twilley himself was so impressed with their version of his song "You Were So Warm" that he posted a link to the song on his Facebook page.

TO BE CONTINUED

No Doubt Destroys The Beatles Right In Front Of Paul McCartney

2010-12-29T12:25:00.001-06:00

Okay, I admit thinking that Gwen Stefani was cool and that, even after she made that dumb-ass "Hoobastank Girl", er, sorry, "Hollaback Girl" single, I still would have shagged her...and lord knows she could use it being married to a gay dude and all...but having seen Stefani and No Doubt commit absolute sacrilege on The Beatles at the recent Kennedy Center Honors, this chick is dead to me.

First off, whose idea was it to wear macthing Pee Wee Herman suits? Did they think they were honoring Paul Reubens? Secondly, why did Gwen have her pants customized to look like someone let all of the air out of her ass.

I love the shot of McCartney bopping along politely while the band massacres his music.

I could go on, but, wow, it just kinda feels like piling on at this point.

League Of Suck: Lenny Kravitz "American Woman"

2010-12-28T00:10:00.002-06:00

The first time I heard Lenny Kravitz's remake of The Guess Who's "American Woman", I honestly thought someone was putting me on. It's as if the artist formerly known as Romeo Blue decided that he could either go take a massive dump in the bathroom of his $14 million NYC apartment, or he could crap all over a great 70's classic that was fine enough as it was. Granted, I was never a huge Guess Who fan, them being Canadian and all (just kiddingz), but I sure as hell preferred the original recording to Kravitz's lifeless revamp. Seriously, Kraftwerk could not have made a more white-sounding, groove-deficient ghost of a song if you held a gun to their heads.

As if that weren't bad enough, Kravitz recorded the song for the "Austin Powers: The Spy That Shagged Me" movie soundtrack...yeah, let's re-record a song from the 70's for a movie about a guy from the 60's, and make it sound like it was recorded by a guy in his 80's. Ugh.

Here's the part that really bugs me, though. The song sucks, anyone you ask will say it sucks, yet this song continues to get radio play and is used all the time on TV. Seriously, somebody out there with a lot of pull either likes this song or Lenny has some very incriminating photos of said person in a compromising position with a transsexual midget, a llama, and a truckload of Peruvian marching powder.

Whatever, I can't like every song, right? And don't get me started about that fucking Train song either. Holy shit. I'm fine with such songs existing, as I don't listen to the radio anyway, but when I hear the same fucking shit-stain of a song three fucking times in a six hour period, Houston, we have a fucking problem. That's right, I heard it piped over the PA while I was buying my movie ticket, then I heard it at fucking Chili's where my buddy and I grabbed some margaritas afterward, and then I heard it in the grocery store when I stopped in to pick up some soda on my way home.

Christ on a fucking cracker, if you really need to hit me with so much fucking Lenny Kravitz, at least pick out one of his good songs. I mean, I've never been a huge Lenny fan anyway, but he's got better songs, for sure.
Play one of them, please, I'm begging you.

A-fucking-men

2010-12-27T23:01:00.003-06:00

Bill Burr is one of the Top 20 funniest motherfuckers to stand in front of a brick wall (I know, I know, there's not a brick wall in this shot...don't make me have to explain it).

Career In A Nutshell: Eels

2010-12-27T12:37:00.004-06:00

From time to time, we like to present an overview of an artist's entire career up to that point. As we're more about the artistry than anything, we prefer to focus solely on the studio albums. This installment focuses on the career of Mark Oliver Everett, better known as the man behind Eels.

E - A Man Called E

I remember getting the promo copy of this record in the mail. At the time, I had a little fanzine that nobody read and must have been on the bottom rung of the promo list because the only promo copies I seemed to get from labels were albums by new artists they'd already given up on. I say that because most of the artists whose albums I received would never be heard from again.

Admittedly, I was smart enough to see the pattern by then and had begun to dread opening the envelopes that appeared in the mail. As something of a musician myself, I couldn't help feel that an artist's dreams and hopes were pinned to that album and, regardless of how good or bad the album was, a record company that had once thought highly enough of them to sign them and invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in the making of that record had cut them off at the knees before the starting gun had even sounded.

Thus, it was with these thoughts in mind that I took my first gander at A Man Called E. Ugh, I remember thinking, a name like "E" is commercial suicide. That was also something I saw that a lot of the albums I received had in common - the artists all seemed to have chosen names that you knew just handicapped their chances of reaching the big time..."E", "Y Kant Tori Read", and so on.

While song titles like "Are You And Me Gonna Happen" and "Looking Out The Window With A Blue Hat On" gave me hope that the album wouldn't sound like the proverbial "assembly-line piece-of-shit", the album is ultimately marred by late 80's production techniques (i.e., reverb-drenched vocals, drum machine programming with little to no imagination).

I spun it a few times, found little to hang my hat on and promptly lost the album forever. Of course, I would revisit it, of course, and find that there are many signs of the man who would become "Eels" and that if you can get past the production and the fact that E's artistic aesthetic is a tad watered down by the rather by-the-numbers performances, it's not a bad album at all. Also, at the end of the day, "Hello Cruel World" is a great way for any new artist to open an album, I don't care what you say.

E - Broken Toy Shop

I remember seeing this in the stores when it came out and thinking "Hmm, he got to make a second album...didn't see that one coming." Apparently, "Hello Cruel World" had gotten enough radio play to make the suits finance a second stab at the windmill. I didn't buy the album, didn't care to hear the album, and knew just from the looks of it that E's days with Polydor were numbered.

In listening to this record many years later only out of respect for the man who is now worldly recognized by the name Eels, it's easy to see that he'd amassed a backlog of songs prior to landing his deal, most of the good ones were used on his debut, and a lot of the weaker ones ended up on Broken Toy Shop. Whereas most of the lyrical themes are fully-formed and brilliant on his debut, I am stunned by how half-baked this record sounds. Titles such as "Manchester Girl" and "L.A. River", for example, sound like little more than songwriting exercises - someone who seems to be trying to write their way out of a dry spell rather than take a break.

Additionally, the hope and sly sense of humor so abundant on his debut is nowhere to be seen here. E just seems depressed, lethargic, and perhaps shell-shocked to have gotten the chance to make another record because he also sees the writing on the wall.

The album would be released to little fanfare, sell poorly, and lead to E's exit from the label. So seemingly ends the career of "A Man Called E".

Eels - Beautiful Freak

The year was 1996 and I was on the phone with an A&R guy at Geffen Records. I'd been sending him my demos, trying to get him to give my career the boost it sorely needed, and all he could talk about was the fact that he'd missed out on signing some band called "Eels". Despite losing the band to another label, the guy was genuinely excited about the upcoming release of the album. Heck, so was I until he mentioned that the singer of the band had released two albums under the name "E".

"Aw, crap," I said to myself.

Weeks later, though, on my first trip to L.A. to meet with said A&R guy and do a couple showcases, I heard a song on radio powerhouse KROQ that blew my hair back. The song was a heady mix of paranoia and disillusion wrapped up in a swirling cinematic musical cacophony that was one part Nirvana and one part campfire sing-along. When the DJ said, "That's brand new from Eels, it's called 'Novacaine For The Soul'," I instantly executed an illegal U-turn and made a bee-line for the local Wherehouse Music.

As is par for the course, they had already sold out of all the copies they had ordered (four). As I was asking when they'd have more copies in, I spotted an "in-store play" copy of the album sitting on the shelf behind the counter and pleaded with the clerk to sell it to me. He eventually did and I would listen to nothing else for the next several weeks, if not months.

To fully understand how completely inspired this record is, you need only listen to Broken Toy Shop before popping in this record to see it for the completely rejuvenated tour de force that it is. E isn't the first artist to almost completely reinvent himself, but no single artist has done so more convincingly than Mark Oliver Everett.

In doing so, he created an album that still stands as one of the better offerings from the alt.rock explosion of the mid-90's. It's great when viewed as merely a nice collection of fuzzed-up pop songs, or a musical hand grenade disguised as a harmless rag doll. The musical and lyrical detail contained within paints a sometimes tragic, but always haunting portrait of the L.A. that exists beyond the glitz and glamor. You can almost smell the smog, taste the salt in the ocean air, and feel the sense of utter hopelessness that lies outside "Susan's House".

I remember thinking "How in the world is E ever gonna top this?"

Eels - Electro-Shock Blues

It must be something to be the last one standing, the rest of your immediate family dead or dying. Who the fuck do you call "in case of emergency" then? Who do you confide in when you've had a bad day? It seems from an early age, E has mostly confided in himself. That a man so insular could make an album this jarringly confessional astounds me. That his label let him put it out at all, much less exactly as he recorded it, astounds me even more. That they did is a testament to the fact that, while the rest of the industry had begun a screaming nosedive that would take them right into the side of a mountain, there were still some old school executives that recognized the importance of such artistry despite commercial limitations.

I mean, there's very little here that's suitable for in-store play at the supermarket. Still, I'd rather hear "Cancer For The Cure" at the local Ralphs than some horrible string of cliches like Melissa Etheridge's "I Run For Life". Fuck, if I had a nickel for every time that song has soured my milk before I even got it home, but I digress...

The first time I played this album, I actually laughed out loud at the thought of the hundreds of thousand of fans around the world who'd dug "Beautiful Freak" all running to the record store to buy this new album, getting it home, and having their jaws hit the floor. "What the FUCK is this?", you can hear them say midway thru "Elizabeth On The Bathroom Floor". If any of them made it far enough into the album to hear "My Descent Into Madness" (the album's fourth cut and arguably the most accessible song to be found), I applaud them.

As a result of this album, E and his band took themselves out of the alt.rock running altogether and settled into a lengthy career as "cult band" and those of us who've stuck around are the better for it. Those who jumped off here don't know what they're missin'. Of course, they don't care either, ignorance being bliss and all.

Eels - Daisies Of The Galaxy

Having picked himself up, dusted himself off, and whatnot, E seems in much better spirits on this, the third Eels record. Anyone who knows the amount of personal loss E has experienced is no doubt as amazed as I am that he found the way to do so. Even more amazing is how fucking cheerful this record seems despite the actual lack of any cheerful songs.

Hell, "Grace Kelly Blues" leaves me imagining a jaunty stroll down some tree-lined street, birds singing in the trees, not a care in the world despite lyrics that depict no such scene.

Of course, this is to say nothing of the understated masterpiece that is "It's A Motherfucker". I remember seeing the title when I picked up the album and having to listen to this song first out of simple curiosity. Little did I know I would end the song in tears.

"It's a motherfucker being here without you/Thinkin' about the good times, thinking about the bad."

That first line, like the rest of the song, is so brilliant in its simplicity. Fuck the metaphors, E's understated, conversational asides hit home like a dump truck driving through a nitroglycerine factory.

The album itself is a stunning return to form after the major detour that was "Electro-Shock Blues". Granted, it isn't "Beautiful Freak, Pt 2", but it is the template for what would come to be known as "the Eels sound" - alternately dark and lighthearted ruminations set to tinkly pianos and kiddie song melodies. The band had experimented with such juxtaposition on their debut with "My Beloved Monster".

No surprise that it would be used to great effect in the first "Shrek" movie, which, of course, was a Dreamworks film. It only made sense to fill the soundtrack with artists from the Dreamworks label. This act of convenient symmetry turned into a huge stroke of luck for the Eels and further "Shrek" sequels have each featured music by the Eels, no doubt padding E's bank account in the process.

Eels - Souljacker

The Eels' fourth album, Souljacker, is a hard album to get a bead on. The album title, the photo of a bearded E looking more like the Unabomber than a rock star holding a poodle, and the album opener "Dog Faced Boy" all seem to pointing at something, but what?

After two albums that were by and large the creation of one man, E, to quote Matthew Sweet, must have gotten a little "sick of himself" and started a new collaboration with John Parish (PJ Harvey) that resulted in the adding of a few new colors to the Eels' musical palette.

Musically, the album seems a tad scattershot, as if E started out wanting to turn up the guitars and howl at the moon, but then realized that it made for a very one-dimensional listening experience. He then throws in a song like "Woman Driving, Man Sleeping" because, well, you can't not throw in a track that good. Of course, to quote The Fixx, "one thing leads to another" and, voila, songs like "Jungle Telegraph" and "Bus Stop Boxer" enter the fray. The end result is half an album that appeals to fans of noisy, blown out punk stomps and half an album that seems to exist only to appease those fans alienated by the other half.

Eels - Shootenanny
While Souljacker showed E's desire to resurrect "the rock" with then-accomplice John Parish, but, to my ears, the songs lacked definition despite fine execution. On Shootenanny, though, E takes matters into his own hands once again and the result is yet another fine return to form. Truth be told, "Saturday Morning" and "Dirty Girl" are two of the better barn-burners E has unleashed.

Still, the man is 110% in his element on low-key, atmospheric numbers like "Love of The Loveless" and "Rock Hard Times".

If we could change one thing about the record, we'd have E ditch the megaphone vocal sound that gets way too much use on this record. Other than that, this is arguably E's most consistent record since his debut. At the same time, there is something about this record that whispers "contractual obligation" loudly enough to be heard between songs.

EELS - Blinking Lights & Other Revelations

As one of the most elaborate undertakings of his career, Blinking Lights... features two full CD's of material recorded over the better part of a seven-year period and features the largest amalgamation of guests to ever appear on an Eels record, among them Peter Buck, Tom Waits, and John Sebastian to name but a few.

While the spiritual part of me applauds the dedication and perseverance E has shown in creating such an intensely personal, yet artistically expansive project, the rest of me thinks a whole lot of time and effort could have been saved by whittling this down to a concise single album. In doing so, it is this listener's opinion that whatever message E hoped to convey would have been driven home a lot more effectively.

Now, if this were truly a collection of diary entries, half-baked song ideas, and "things that just didn't fit on past records", that would be one thing, but, to my understanding, E worked tirelessly for a period of three years after Shootenanny to make sure every single song was perfect. This, of course, came at great personal expense, I am told, and there was some question whether the album would ever see proper release.

It did, of course, finally finding a home at indie Vagrant Records, which had previously deviated from their mall punk aesthetic to sign Paul Westerberg a year prior.

The great thing about this album is that most everyone I've met who has the album agrees it would have made a better single album, yet we all have differing ideas about which songs would be contained on a single-album version. It was this realization that made me think that that was precisely E's intent in releasing the album in the first place. Just for shits and giggles, here is my track-listing and sequencing for a one-record version:

The Last Days of My Bitter Heart (edit out first minute)
If You See Natalie
Old Shit - New Shit
Trouble With Dreams
From Which I Came/A Magic World
The Other Shoe
To Lick Your Boots
Whatever Happened To Soy Bomb?
Hey Man (Now You're Really Living)
Losing Streak
Things The Grandchildren Should Know

Eels - Hombre Lobo

With the release of his ninth studio album (counting his first two solo efforts), E has officially earned the tag "veteran recording artist". Unfortunately, in most cases, by the time an artist reaches this point in their career, they suddenly begin sucking. It has happened to too many great artists to mention, but I'll mention some anyway...Cheap Trick (their ninth album was The Doctor, which sucked), Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers (ninth album: She's The One didn't totally suck, but it was a huge step down from their early 80's output), U2 (Pop was their ninth album...best known as the album where U2 scared off most of their audience). I could go on, but you get the point. For those who don't, most once-great artists totally lose the plot right around their ninth record because a) they've been millionaires for quite a while and, quite frankly, have learned to coast a bit, or b) are a million miles away, mentally speaking, from the hungry kid that wrote the songs that made them that first million.

Though his bank account has more zeroes than mine will ever see, E doesn't seem stricken by this malady. In fact, he and his current band of co-conspirators have made an album that's flat-out one of the best of his career. What truly sets this album apart from the rest of E's discography, though, is that you can tell he's having a ball making this record. I can't listen to "Tremendous Dynamite" without joyfully laughing my ass off at the best Screaming Jay Hawkins impersonation I've heard in some time.

As a music geek, I tend to hold the greats to the high standards that they themselves set. As a result, what I find myself doing as I digest a new album by a great artist is imagine if this album had been released in place of the one that put them on the map. In the case of Tom Petty, for example, if I were to slide She's The One in place of Damn The Torpedoes, Petty and the boys would be looking for jobs in Gainesville by the end of '81.

In the case of Eels, if we slide this album in the place of Beautiful Freak, while they are completely different albums from one another, you can totally see this album putting E on the map.

Sadly, at the time of this album's actual release, the industry is in such a sad state of affairs that an album like this will fall on mostly deaf ears in the US because radio can't be bothered to play it, MTV is too busy "glorifying the horrifying", and labels rely on game shows and TV karaoke contests for their latest batch of "stars".

Being well aware of the state of the industry, E could have simply chosen to take his money and go home, but nooooo, he assembles the most rock-solid Eels line-up ever and proceeds to thumb his nose at the world. Seriously, it sounds like somebody hooked up a brand-new car battery to E's nipples and keyed the ignition. Granted, the beards a little bit much by now - probably has more than a couple birds living in it, but fuck it, he's earned the right to look like a crazed auto mechanic with bodies buried out back.

Eels - End Times

E's "divorce album" is an understated, introspective affair that could have been a real bummer of a record, but if there's anyone who can see the humor in things falling apart, it is E.

If I can make a recommendation to anyone who hasn't yet discovered this record, buy yourself a great set of headphones - no, not a stupid-ass pair of ear buds - and a comfy motherfucker of a chair if you don't already have one. Borrow some bud from a friend if you don't have some and just fucking lose yourself in this record. Trying to "get" this record while fighting rush hour traffic or trying to multitask is just a waste of time, my friend. To really get to know it, give this record your undivided attention and I promise that you will thank me for it. Fuck that, thank E for it.

I hasten to even pick out particular songs that move me because cherry-picking is the last thing you should start doing with an album like this. What listeners should do is buy the album, turn off the cell phones and the laptops, and allow themselves to let this album take you on its journey away from the frivolous crap that has invaded our lives so completely. Having said this, I hope to whet your appetite with a little "Gone Man".

Eels - Tomorrow Morning

When I was a kid, most bands put out two albums a year. Let me tell you, those days were the fucking bomb, as opposed to the precedent that was set in the 90's where bands put out a new record every few years so their label could milk the absolute fuck out of it. E no doubt remembers those halcyon days of the 70's the same as I do and must figure that since he really has no label second-guessing his every move, he can damn well put out two albums this year if he feels like it.

If you ask me, E has seemed a little restless since Shootenanny (as "I'm a Hummingbird" seems to indicate, with lines like "I'm a hummingbird, floating tree to tree/I'm a hummingbird, beautiful and free.") I hate to use that tired shark metaphor, but it applies, so bear with me. What keeps E alive and kicking is the fact that he never stops moving, or, in his case, creating. The minute you start repeating yourself, though, that's not creating, that's repeating and it can be the death of you as an artist. E knows this and it is what keeps him going, but every so often, he allows himself to make the sort of album that just comes naturally, effortlessly, and free of any forced agendas.

Take a song like "Spectacular Girl", which sounds very much like the stereotypical Eels song that we've come to know and love over the years. While the song most certainly covers familiar terrain, it is the minor perfections that E has made it that ultimately refine it to the point of near-perfection. To E, though, perfection is the proverbial carrot dangled just out of reach, never to be caught, but he (and we) have come to embrace the beauty that is often found in imperfection.

This is such an album.

For fans both new and old, Tomorrow Morning is like catching up with an old friend you bump into unexpectedly and a five-minute chat turns into an entire afternoon on the front porch with no particular place to be. The sun is just coming up as you drop the needle on "In Gratitude For This Magnificent Day" and, as the last strains of the jubilant "Mystery Of Life", the final vestiges of sunlight do their last dance upon the horizon before being chased down by darkness.

Limited Edition "Gonna Make 2011 My Bitch (Or Die Tryin')" T-Shirt

2010-12-24T03:18:00.001-06:00

The great thing about the fact that it'll be 2011 in a little more than a week is that we each have a chance to undertake a new beginning, wipe the slate clean, and give it another go. For those who intend on doing more than that, of course, we have created a limited-edition t-shirt perfect for those who wish to shout their new mission statement from the rooftops.

Don't just welcome the New Year, make it your bitch!

These shirts are available for only a short-time...end of business on December 27th, as a matter of fact, so bust a move.

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R Gift 2 U: Cheap Trick/Sheperds Bush/12.11. 2010

2010-12-23T15:09:00.002-06:00

While we American rock fans have a gazillion chances to see the eternally "on-tour-since-1974" Cheap Trick, whenever the mighty Trick take a trip to jolly England, it is cause for celebration amongst UK Trick fans.

Obviously, this is the first trip to the UK for the band since they parted ways with drummer Bun E. Carlos earlier this year (to be replaced by Rick Nielsen's son, Daxx), so Brit fans were no doubt wondering what to expect. Based on these performances and a varied set list, which includes a nice smattering of tunes from just about all facets of the band's 30+ year career, what the UK Trick fans got was a helluva rock show.

Highlights from this show include a blistering one-two punch of "Speak Now" and "Stiff Competition", as well as a handful of tunes from their most recent record, "The Latest", and a two song Lennon tribute via "Magical Mystery Tour" and "Cold Turkey".

Enjoy!

Oh Candy
Speak Now
Stiff Competition
Best Friend
Lookout
Tonight It's You
I Want You To Want Me
I Know What I Want
These Days
Wrong All Along
Smile
Anytime
Magical Mystery Tour
Cold Turkey
Sick Man Of Europe
Closer
Surrender
Ain't That A Shame
Rock & Roll Tonight
Dream Police

Need Forgiveness? Five Songs To Play Your Lady The Next Time You Mess Up

2010-12-22T21:14:00.000-06:00

Let's face it, we men are built to piss women off one way or another. The crazy part is that deep down they know they need us. Otherwise the wedding they've been planning since the age of four will never happen, they'll never have kids, and that whole dream of an endless rut of soccer practices, minivans and spilled juice boxes will never happen.

Now, we men could just walk around with an air of superiority and wait for them to come to us (HA!), or we could learn the art of apologizing without really apologizing and actually get laid again.

Here's where things get a little tricky, though. By nature, we men are horrible at apologizing. It goes against everything we stand for. We're hunters and gatherers, therefore, apologizing is seen as weakness. As hunters, do we apologize to the fish we just yanked out of the river, or the juicy steak we just devoured? Hell no!

Unfortunately, though it goes against our chemical make-up, the sooner we males of the species learn the fine art of saying "I'm sorry", the better our life will be in the long run.

Too bad most of our attempts to do so end up getting us in even more hot water.

Here's the solution...so pay close attention, bitches.

Don't actually apologize. That's right, I said "don't apologize".

What I want you to do instead is play your lady one of these five songs. It'll be up to you to choose which one based on what your lady likes and which one best lends itself to the situation at hand.

See, unless you've got a real oddball on your hands, chances are your lady likes music. And like most women, she responds to lyrics that touch the heart and all that crap.

I guarantee you that by playing your lady one of these five songs the next time you do something really stupid, she will forgive you without you ever asking for it. Trust me.

Alright, so here we go.

#1 Daniel Powter - Come Home

Yeah, this is the guy who had a HUGE hit with that song "Bad Day", which "American Idol" and every Top 40 radio station in the country beat into the motherfucking ground. Chances are that even if you initially liked that tune, the massive amount of overkill it got has made you never want to hear another song by this guy as long as you may live. Your lady, though she may nod her head and say she agrees with you, thinks otherwise. Deep down, she probably still likes "Bad Day" and turns it up whenever she hears it in the car.

Play her this song the next time you piss her off and she decides to spend a week at her parents house. Be warned, though, once she hears this song, she will come rushing back home to you so don't play it until you're absolutely ready for her to come back. In other words, play it a day or so after you have the guys over for a night of poker and prostitutes.

#2 Eels - Little Bird

Okay, the use of this song requires a little bit of strategy. Let's say you and your lady are going through some tough times and have decided to "take a little break". It's been about two weeks or so and none of the gals you thought you had lined up have panned out so you start to miss her and want her back in your life.

What you need to do is send her an email with this song attached. All you've got to do is put "Miss you, Sweetness" in the Subject line, and maybe a little note that says something like: "Been thinking about you". The shorter, the better. The more we men say, the more we stand the chance of putting our foot in our mouth. That's why if you can do the "man of few words" thing, by all means, milk it for all it is worth.

This song, like a lot of E's work, is deceptively simple and heartfelt. The delicate musical arrangement of the song will instantly appeal to her and the lyrics will slowly work their magic on her. By the time E sings that first "God damn, I miss that girl", she'll be getting teary-eyed at the thought of you sitting night after night all alone, reading poetry and crying yourself to sleep. She doesn't have to know that you've really been spending your nights at the strip club chasing after girls named Nikki and Mercedes.

#3 Brandi Carlile - The Story

This song's been out a few years, but it's still a stone-cold stunner of a tune. It's best used on a lady who hasn't already heard the tune, but that's not to say it won't also be effective on a lady who has heard the tune before. Heck, I've heard the song a gazillion times and that line where she suddenly goes from singing softly
to really belting it out right in the middle of the first verse just kills me every fucking time. Fer crying out loud, I know it's coming and yet it pulls my beating heart right out of my chest, so imagine the effect it'll have on an unsuspecting listener.

I actually used this song to get me out of the doghouse the time I got super-drunk and started nuzzling this girl with huge fake tits right in front of my lady. I get that way when someone else has been buying rounds of drinks all night and I've lost count of how many drinks I've had, so sue me.

Since my lady drove us there, and I was in no shape to get behind the wheel, I was left with no other choice than to ride home with her after she pulled me out of the joint. Once in the car, I knew apologizing was futile. After all, she'd caught me with my hand in the cookie jar. After a few minutes of absolute silence, I yanked out the Brandi Carlile CD and put this song on.

Within seconds, I could feel the air go out of my girlfriend's angry sails. By the end of the song, I see a teardrop run down my girl's cheek. I think "uh-oh", but then she asks me in a soft voice, "Who the hell is that?" I know that voice and know she reserves it for when she is just too blown away for words.

Then she tells me to play the song again.

An hour later, we parked the car on this scenic overlook not far from our apartment that gave us a postcard view of Hollywood at night and, well, to say that we made up would be putting it mildly.

#4 Natasha Bedingfield - Try

I'm not a huge fan of Bedingfield, but this isn't about me, or you, for that matter. When I listen to this song from Bedingfield's new album, Strip, I just can't imagine a woman not being moved by the sentiment of this song. There's nothing new here, no lyrical revelation, or earth-shattering melody, but Bedingfield just absolutely sings the fuck out of this tune.

And let's face it, playing your lady a song that ends with a lyric like "Don't throw us away just because we're broken/Cuz anything can mend" is gonna hit the mark, no two ways about it. Hell, part of me looks forward to the next time I fuck up with my girl just so I can play this song for her. Maybe I'll throw a pair of red panties into the washing machine with her whites tonight...

#5 Gary Allan - Alright Guy

On more than one occasion, I have had a woman so mad at me that she can't see straight and, yet, right smack dab in the middle of a real shitstorm I have somehow managed to make her laugh. To be honest, given the situation, I had nothing to lose. Reaching that point is actually kind of liberating. You know that apologizing ain't gonna save you at this point so, what the hell, may as well inject a little humor into a no-win situation and see what happens.

In other words, when all else fails, try a little humor.

This ditty, a cover of a Todd Snider song that surpasses the original in my opinion, is bound to crack your lady up and, in doing so, shed a little light on the troubles we men have "being men". We can't help ourselves, we're built to mess up. This song isn't just funny, it's educational and my gut tells me it'll work like a charm for you if you are blessed to be with a lady with any sense of humor to speak of at all.

Joe Motherfucking Strummer Eight Years Gone

2010-12-22T14:53:00.000-06:00

Seriously, while eight years is a long time, we gotta say that it feels like Joe's been gone longer. Maybe it's because the days seem to drag without his stunning truth and conviction shining like a beacon on an otherwise bleak musical and philosophical landscape.

We happened upon a really cool interview with Joe that was filmed not too long before he passed away and it just ripped the scab right off the wound being reminded just how down-to-earth this cat was, but, at the same time, it filled us with great joy at remembering that guys like this actually existed once. The dude had heart, no matter what he did.

Today more than ever, the sentiment behind this tune is now more prescient than ever:
MP3: Joe Strummer - The Harder They Come

Merry Christmas Will Do (Acoustic)

2010-12-19T17:04:00.002-06:00

Bless the kind soul who posted this clip on YouTube! Jim's lyrical mishap (!) ends it all too soon, of course, but does not take away from the sentiment.