the sticking point

I Know You Got Soul. If You Didn't, You Wouldn't Be In Here.

Here is the download and the notes for today's Pointcast.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD TODAY'S POINTCAST

01 I'm Gonna Do All I Can For My Lord - John Fahey (The Legend of Blind Joe Death): Blind Joe Death was a blues guitarist who recorded one 78rpm record in the 1920s. About four decades later, John Fahey hijacked the name and used it as an alter ego, confusing the living shit out of blues purists and mouth-breathing shut-ins. His 1959 debut album had only the name "Blind Joe Death" on the cover. It had no liner notes, and no information about the identity of the musician.

Most of the BJD tracks are available on compilations Fahey released in the late 1960s When you listen to him, you can tell immediately that he was doing things on guitar that nobody else ever had. It was cool to hear Matt Ward mention Fahey on the Elvis Costello TV show. Ward is an extremely talented young man and if he says Fahey's the real deal, there can be no debate. Ward's newest record, Hold Time, is sheer perfection, and I'll get some tracks on here soon.

02 Four Winds - Bright Eyes: I was about 12 months late to the party, but at some point last year I found Cassadega, and fell over for it. There is so much good writing and good playing on it. It's one of those "no one makes records like this" records.
As with anything Bright Eyes- /Saddle Creek- /Team Love-related, a typical troop of highly skilled laborers join Conor Oberst here:
Mike Mogis: guitar
Nate Walcott: organ
Dan McCarthy (Tucksy): bass
Jason Boesel (Rilo Kiley, Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins): drums
Anton Patzner (Judgement Day, Two Gallants): violin
Maria Taylor (Azure Ray, Now It's Overhead): vocals
Andy LeMaster (Now It's Overhead): vocals

03 Change - Killing Joke: Their 1980 debut was remastered in 2005, and it sounds real good. One of the alt bonus tracks is a dub version of "Change." Today, we get the original version, straight up, and way ahead of its time. I think I give my Killing Joke records less attention than they deserve. I'll try to amend that this weekend.

04 I Know You Got Soul - Bobby Byrd: What a voice. What a hook! The version I played was a burn of the 1971 single, but it's also on an amazing comp called James Brown's Funky People (Part 2). Hard to find, but so is love and the perfect cup of coffee. How far back do Byrd and Brown go? Way back. They met as teenagers on, of all places, a baseball field where Byrd's church team was playing against a local reformatory prison team. The not-yet-Godfather of Soul was in the lineup for the latter. They shared a love for music, and soon Byrd's family made arrangements for Brown's parole.

Byrd brought so much to the table as a vocalist and arranger (and maybe the world's first hype man!), but he probably cemented his name in history in 1970 by being the "Get on up" to James Brown's "Git up-ah" on "Sex Machine."

Listening back to the recorded Pointcast, I wonder if I could have said the name "Bobby Byrd" a few more times. What do you think? Maybe two dozen utterances weren't enough for you. Duh. I'll chalk it up to being a geeked-out old man who talks about his favorite music with the unrestrained enthusiasm of a psychotic zealot. But anyway.

05 Screamin' Fist - Viletones: They are considered one of the first (if not the first) Canadian punk bands to release a record. This single came out in 1977. Here's a great clip of a Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) news report from that time, where the Nehru-jacketed reporter begins, "The latest fad in popular music is punk rock..." You know it gets good from there. Hey, check it out! Even long-disbanded groups (like the Viletones) now have official websites and myspace pages.

Their earliest singles and EPs are out of print, but most of what you need is compiled on the Taste of Honey CD.

06 Don't Ha Ha - Jürgen Wenger: Popmusik über alles! From the Pop In Germany collection on Bear Family; eight volumes of novelty, curios, and solid tracks in equal doses. This one appears on Volume 3. The series features covers of Dylan, the Supremes, Hendrix, the Box Tops, even Sabbath. There's a cool pass at the Shangri-Las' "Leader of the Pack" (called "Der Feuerstuhl") by a group called Verrückte Mädchen (Crazy Girls). I'll get it on here for you soon.

Here's a clip of Casey Jones and the Governors performing their 1965 original.

I'm surprised more bands haven't covered this song. I wish we could have heard the Ramones or the Cramps bite into it. Would have been perfect for them. I looked around online and all I found as far as contemporary acts doing this song is a band from Berlin called Mr Ed Jumps The Gun. Those guys and Jürgen Wenger? Wow, what is it with Germans and this song? (While I give the Mr Ed guys cred for putting "Don't Ha Ha" out to a new generation, I have to add that the band's canon also include a version of "Smoke on the Water" for the Dance Dance Revolution game, and a cover of Plastic Bertrand's "Ça plane pour moi"... for a Pamela Anderson film flick. Their Wikipedia page has to be a joke.

07 Koladiola - Yello: From their fourth album, the underrated Stella. Nearly everyone knows them for "Oh, Yeah" which took off after it was used in the Ferris Bueller movie. It turned up in more movies and probably dozens of TV commercials after that. The song itself has become a Hollywood cliché, I think. Like "Bad to the Bone" or Jeff Buckley's version of "Hallelujah." But I digress. "Koladiola" is from the same album that "Oh, Yeah" is on; it's a much better album than you, I, or our music snob friends would have thought.

08 Set Fire to the Face on Fire - The Blood Brothers: Fye-uh! Fye-uh! Fye-uh! Another band I missed altogether. I got their 2004 album Crimes but never made time to listen. Years later, they appeared on the IFC Henry Rollins Show and shredded a version of "Set Fire...." I got my act together -- got the 2006 album Young Machetes, then went and picked up all the rest of the EPs and albums before it. It's Young Machetes that I play most often, and it's a great place to start your introduction. "Set Fire to the Face on Fire" is one of the all-time greatest side-A track-1 songs. (Great line, don't miss it: "I'm kicking snowmen like it's going out of style style style!")

Dialogue excerpt from The Shield, 2004.

09 Cyanide - The Lurkers: As long as I'm dropping opinions on all-time this and all-time that, here's another. My all-time favorite overlooked band. When friends ask to hear something new, I go back to 1976-80 era Lurkers. People freak when they hear it, and wonder how it missed them. There's a great write-up of the band on the Punk77 site. This song is from their second album God's Lonely Men. It wasn't as critically acclaimed as the debut, Fulham Fallout, which is proof that most music critics aren't worth the food they're fed.

10 Under Heavy Manners - Prince Far I: From the Trojan ROOTS box set. A great song by a reggae legend. My favorite part comes near the end, when he says, "Discipline is what the world needs today... manners and et-eh-kwett." In the mid-seventies, as Jamaica neared a virtual civil war, the Jamaican Premier declared a state of emergency, and said that the country was about to experience some "heavy duty discipline." The poor and disenfranchised knew it meant the shit was going to come their way.

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I haven't done the Friday 10s in a long long while, but it doesn't mean you had to stop. Set your mp3 player to "shuffle all songs" and let us know the first ten songs in your earholes.

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[posted with ecto]

On iTunes right now: I Hate You from the album Black Monk Time by Monks

Four 'Casts

I've updated the posts for all the Pointcasts. The download links are available indefinitely now, via MediaFire. The entries are:

July 4, 2008: "Dry Mouth, Lip Smack and More!"
August 15, 2008: "The Second Time Usually Lasts a Little Longer, Too"
January 9, 2009: "Do Not Trust The Horse, Trojans"
March 13, 2009: "Collaborate and Listen!"

I hope you think these are getting better. The music is bulletproof for sure, so as I go on I'll work harder to be sure my voice (and what it's saying) is not the lamest part of the recordings. It's been decades since I've been on the radio and I need to shake loose the dust and rust. Hang in with me, because the music is going to get better and better and more worthy of your download-and-listening time.

I'm planning to record another this week and look to get it here on Friday. No theme, just a scalding set of songs. Hope you're back here for it at the end of the week.

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A few weeks ago, SNL aired a best-of compilation episode instead of a live show. The cowbell sketch was on it. I hadn't seen that one since the first time it aired, live, years ago. I didn't "get" the funny then, and I didn't get it recently either. Am I missing something? Or maybe: Is that cowbell sketch my generation's "No soap, radio"?

[posted with ecto]

On iTunes right now: Sleeping In Blood City from the album Miami by Gun Club

The Grid

I did this a while back, thought I'd give it another whirl...

Stuff I'm not supposed to like, but do...
The Sounds, uncomfortable shoes, Staples (and all stationery stores), Grey Goose & Red Bull, "It's Goin' Down" (), Countdown's substitute anchors Alison Stewart and Amy Robach, Major League Baseball's wild card system, kale, HotChicksWithDouchebags, the bus to Barnstable, the whole idea of Corey Feldman

Stuff I'm supposed to like, and do...
Yukio Mishima, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Gore Vidal, Soupman's turkey chili, Flight of the Conchords, Van Halen's next tour, my 3-year-old climbing into our bed at 3AM, Mary-Louise Parker

Stuff I'm not supposed to like, and don't...
Televised talent competitions, Bob Murray, Dora the Explorer, U.S. military stop-loss policy, flip-flops, Perez Hilton, "the surge," evil clowns

Stuff I'm supposed to like, but don't...
Paste magazine, Talking Heads, high-waisted jeans (and the women who wear them), telephone conversations, The Corrections, sports talk radio, punctuation, iPhone, concerts at Roseland Ballroom, Ethan Hawke, selectively bred hybrid dogs, myspace, Big Love

Stuff I like the idea of, but don't really like...
Yoga, picnics, Dennis Kucinich, Barack Obama, Colbert Report, Jay-Z, "massage" parlors, You Tube Presidential Debates

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Here's this week's Friday 10. Made from the best stuff I like.

01 Tomorrow Belongs To Us - Discharge: All the early Discharge singles are perfection. I was a big fan of theirs in the early 80s, then forgot all about them for a long time, until last year when I started putting the vinyl on CDR and gathering up the CD comps. It's great stuff. This track is on the "Decontrol" EP and the Why comp.

02 You Got Too Many Boyfriends - The Equals: I'm ashamed to say that until a few months ago, all I knew about the Equals was: Eddy Grant was in the group, and they were responsible for "Police On My Back." Then my pal SO'C shared the Viva Equals! comp with me and set my head right in regard to this great, great band. I am a fan now, only three decades after the Equals stopped recording. Song after song after song, Viva delivers. I can't believe that "You Got Too Many Boyfriends" was a B-side.

03 Stretcher Case Baby - The Damned: Another great B-side ("Sick of Being Sick" is the A). It was on their second album, Music For Pleasure. I got this version from Skip Off School To See The Damned (The Stiff Singles A's & B's) on Demon.

04 Lose My Freedom - Go Home Productions: I've written it before; I am not a fan of mash-ups. I say, if the songs are great to begin with, who needs DJ Wicki Wicki making a novelty song out of them? But I make two exceptions to the rule. I really like what Eric Kleptone did with all the Queen tracks on Night at the Hip Hopera, and I always check out the Go Home Productions site for new material. Mark Vidler (who is GHP, I guess), created this track, which combines Devo's great "Freedom of Choice" with something by Destiny's Child.

05 Anyone Else But You - The Moldy Peaches: I bet you don't know who is the Moldy Peaches' biggest fan. I'll give you one guess. Go ahead. Wrong! It's this dude Matt, with whom I once shared an office. Strange guy. Nice guy. Matt was entirely into his own thing and that was that. But oh, the memories! The room we shared was larger than most offices, and there were lots of us in there, too. Sometimes as many as six people. It was a quote-Writer's Room-unquote. Which meant that the Powers That Be threw us all in there together, hoping we'd "bounce ideas off each other" and all the ridiculous stuff people who don't write think writers do when they sit shoulder to shoulder. Anyway, Matt, for as well as any of the rest of us could get to know him, had three main interests. First, there was (were) the Moldy Peaches. Twice a week he'd ask the room, "Do you guys want to listen to the Moldy Peaches?" And one of us would invariably say, "No, because they suck." (We liked him, but sometimes treated him as if he was Donny from Big Lebowski. Because he sort of was.) The second of his life's loves was yoga. Not regular yoga. Matt was into the Bikram type, where you go and do your moves and poses in a hellish Saharan hotbox while every liquid in your system exudes from your pores. Sweat? Of course. Salts? Sure. Plus possibly blood, butter, baking grease, K-Y, Gravy Master, crotch jam, old eggnog, and other multiphasic compounds, all settling back onto the skin and into the fibers of one's clothing. Like Matt's. I knew this (we all knew it), because he'd abstain from a post-Bikram shower in order to get back to our writer's room. He'd stride in, his body shining, with a towel hung rakishly from his neck and a hot breeze of moldy ass trailing his steps. By late afternoon, our shared workspace smelled like someone had shit out a book on how to throw up.
The third thing that seemed to make Matt happy was eating smelly lunches. Which he indulged in as soon as he got back from yoga.
But anyway, now there's an actual Moldies song I like. It's this one, from the Murderball soundtrack. Cheers, Matt.

06 Sonny's Burning - The Birthday Party: My favorite Birthday Party song. I can say, without fear of hyperbole, that the first six syllables of this track comprise the best opening lyric in the history of music, in this or any other universe. If you read this site regularly, you're familiar with the Birthday Party -- ancestors of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. I come back to their music often, and I usually hear things differently each time. I have to guess that bands like Jesus and Mary Chain and Dino Jr probably bumped into their share of BP records during their formative years. "Sonny's Burning" is from the Mutiny EP.

07 Hiromi - Squatweiler: If you've never heard this song, I hope it blows you away when you hear it. This is a great, great North Carolina band that deserves a lot more attention. I hope you track down every last morsel they've ever recorded. Maybe you'll start with New Motherstamper, which contains "Hiromi." Motherstamper is the band's third record, but their first after bassist Stacey Matarrese took over the vocals. Throttled the vocals.

08 Give Up The Funk - Parliament: It was just this past Tuesday when Burning Dervish told us "Give Up The Funk" would be his entrance music as he stepped into the batter's box at Yankee Stadium. And here it is on the very next F10.
How cool it was to grow up hearing Parliament, Stevie Wonder, Earth Wind & Fire, and Rufus on the radio all the time. I didn't realize how blessed I was. "Give Up The Funk" aka "Tear the Roof Off The Sucker" is from the classic Mothership Connection record. The Parliament/Funkadelic collective released 19 or 20 albums -- high-quality albums -- between 1970 and 1981. Think about that for a second. You think Ryan Adams is prolific? You think Steven Tyler did a lot of coke? In the 70s, George Clinton could fuel a 747 with a cup of his urine.

09 What Makes You Happy (L) - Liz Phair: I burned this off television program I'd recorded called Sessions at West 54th Street. I've forgotten most of the details about the series, but I copped some good performances from the show onto CDR. I have Phair, Sinéad O'Connor, Ben Folds Five, Beck, and a couple others. I like this song a lot. The version on whitechocolatespaceegg is one of my favorites of hers. It's got the great lines "I feel the sun on my neck / I smell the earth in my skin / I see the sky above me like a full recovery."

10 King's Lead Hat - Eno: The title is an anagram for "Talking Heads." The story that gets passed down through generations of Eno fans and scholars is that he hoped to record it with DByrne and the rest, but it never came to be. Soon after this album, Before and After Science, was released, the Man Himself collaborated with Talking Heads on a few albums. I don't know all of them, but the one TH album I actually like is among them. Getting back to Eno -- the Man Himself -- for a second, I think his reputation as an experimentalist might turn some people away. I'm sure plenty of folks hear "art rock" or "ambient music" and think, "Fuck that! Where are my Stooges records?!" Luckily, TMH's recorded output is as varied as the day is long, the summer is hot, and Dick Cheney is evil. There's plenty in his rewarding canon for everybody; dig in! October is just around the corner, and for me that means lots of Here Come The Warm Jets. His music is good for anytime, but there's something carried on a crisp fall breeze that tells me it's time listen to more Eno. (I have "October music;" I'll explain another time.)

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Tag, you're it. Set your mp3 player, digital jukebox, or Roomba to "shuffle all songs." Hear 10 songs randomly selected for you by the machine. Share them with us in the comments section below.

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Hear it for yourself. CLINK THIS LINK to download this week's Sticking Point Friday 10.

[posted with ecto]

Tuesday Dispatch

I've been enjoying Human Weapon on History Channel. Of the two hosts, I prefer Bill Duff (the ex-football player / bodyguard / wrestler / stunt double) over the mixed martial arts champion Jason Chambers, who seems a bit arrogant and cocky around the masters with whom they are training. Chambers also tries to sneak in mentions of his fighting résumé too often, so he comes off like a tool. But beyond those minor annoyances, it's a cool show that combines geo-historical documentary with martial discipline and the infliction of pain. And that's all I ever ask of my entertainment.

-- -- -- --

Speaking of combining things that entertain me, a couple of the newest Yankees have chosen good songs for their at-bat "entrance" music. Shelly Duncan's got the White Stripes' "Icky Thump," and Wilson Betemit steps to the batter's box to "Better Man" by Pearl Jam. (That one's pretty funny, especially if he thinks it sounds like "Can't find a Bete-mit.") There's a pretty solid list of MLBers' theme songs here.

I would probably change my song every other day, but I can't find anything better than the Blood Brothers' "Set Fire to the Face on Fire." That... is... the... fucking... best. (Unfortunately, the "Listen" features at Amazon and the iTunes Store don't play the song from its incredible starting point. Download it for free -- my gift to you -- here.)

So here's a question... You've knocked the donut off the bat, tossed the pine tar onto the circle, and you're heading to the plate. What song is on the stadium P.A.?

[posted with ecto]

On iTunes right now: I Got Rhythm from the album Embassy Auditorium, 4-22-46 by Parker, Charlie

Blind Date

A friend sent this to me a while ago, and because I'm no fan of "crack whore" comedy, it took me some time to click the link. BUT IT'S GOOD. (The language is unsafe for work.)

Here's today's Friday 10.

01 Blackmail - Thin Lizzy: From Phil Lynott - The Man and His Music, Vol. 5 (Bootleg)
02 I Am Seeing UFOs - Dee Dee Ramone: From Zonked!
03 Stain of Mind - Slayer: From Diabolus in Musica.
04 Smokin' Banana Peels - The Dead Milkmen: From Beelzebubba.
05 Till The Stars in His Eyes Are Dead - Shelley / Devoto: From Buzzkunst.
06 Room of Ruin - Amen: From We Have Come For Your Parents.
07 The Wanderer - Dion & The Belmonts:
08 Genetic Engineering - X-Ray Spex: From Peel Session 03.06.78.
09 Sex Machine (L) - James Brown: From Revolution of the Mind.
10 (I Want To Live on an) Abstract Plain - Frank Black: From Teenager of the Year.

I'll add some notes as soon as I can. There's a pretty cool James Brown story I'd like to share.
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[posted with ecto]

On iTunes right now: Some Things Last A Long Time from the album 1990 by Johnston, Daniel

Shaving Silverman

I've written a lot here, and spoken volumes more, about my disappointment in Sarah Silverman. I used to be a huge fan, then I got tired of her coy, I'm-making-comedy-while-I'm-trying-hard-to-make-it-look-like-I'm-not-making- comedy shtick. It always seemed that she had only a thin sheet of gauze covering the machinery. The last straw was when she stopped making comedy at all and simply regurgitated the same material for four consecutive years. Her budget for development of new material was whatever the Jesus is Magic DVD sells for.

But I can forgive all of that now, because her new show is really... fucking... funny. The Sarah Silverman Program is all over the place and fun; it's whatever it wants to be. There are flashbacks, dream sequences, slapstick, fart jokes, smart jokes, and musical numbers. It's got the absurd appeal of Andy Richter Controls the Universe, but without a major network to fuck it up. It is right for Comedy Central, and I think it will be a big hit. You'll like it, at least.

01 Lush Life - John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman: This is from the Hartman / Coltrane record on Impulse. It's a Billy Strayhorn song. I don't know a lot about Hartman, though every now and then I go looking around the interweb for stuff. There's just not too much I can find. Nothing encyclopedic, I mean. All About Jazz has a writeup, but it's not much. Hartman made a load of records and had an amazing voice -- those are two things I can say with authority.

02 Silver Rocket - Sonic Youth: From my absolute favorite SY album, Daydream Nation. I don't know if it's cool or not to love that one. Maybe it's uncool because it's so obvious or something like that; like I should be heaping blanket praise on their first recordings or some of their more eclectic stuff. I'd liked all their music up to this point, but when Daydream came out, it hit me like a ton of bricks. I just got it. Like a special delivery to whatever was going on in my life in 1988. It even had one track that featured Mike Watt's voice on Thurston Moore's answering machine ("Your memory's gone out the winda!"). This song, "Silver Rocket," is near perfect.

03 Joshua's Light - Bad Brains: This song is 34 seconds long. Why would I write anything that would take longer to read? It's the Bad Brains. It's a gem from Rock For Light. It's better than 95% of the music you've heard in your life.

04 Lonely - Tom Waits: From his must-have Closing Time. Some simple chords on piano, matter-of-fact vocal, and lyrics that could rip your heart out. Tom Waits everybody! (And how about that unfinished line: "And I thought I knew all there was to...")

05 Juke Box Music - The Kinks: From Sleepwalker; a great album but you knew I was going to say that!

06 The Chiselers - The Fall: I love when the mighty Fall of Manchester comes up on these Friday 10s. It's a surprise when they come on, and then -- since their catalog is so diverse, it's always a surprise to hear which Fall sound I'll get. "The Chiselers," as you know, is from the great Light User Syndrome album, but the version I heard today is live (Cambridge, 10/24/95) from The Idiot Joy Show. Machine-gun drums and tempo changes every minute or so. Sorry MLB, THIS is a Fall classic.

07 Do They Owe Us A Living? - Crass: The original anarcho-punks. When I was in high school, I really bought into this band's anarchist preaching. Each import single came wrapped in a poster that would fold out to about 24 x 36 inches. There were no multi-color photos of the band on these posters. They were printed, on both sides, in 8- or 9-point courier type, with Crass' very own anarchist newsletters. Each poster had to have about 70,000 words on it, easy! I devoured it all, though I understood considerably less seeing as how I didn't live in 1970s/80s England and I had little to no world view. The Crass stuff is worth checking out. It's all in print. There's a great anthology that is pretty costly, but The Feeding of the 5000 is a great place to start. The answer to the question posed by the title is: "Of course they do, of course they do!"

08 Sonny's Burning - Birthday Party: "Hands up! Who wants to die?!" will always and forever be my all-time favorite opening lyric. Is that redundant enough to make my point clear? It is my opinion (dear god, here he goes again) that the Birthday Party never recorded a bad song or released a bad record. There are those you prefer more than others, sure, but there is no Birthday Party release where you wonder how they lost the plot. I even think their records got better and better, peaking with the last release, The Mutiny EP. "Sonny's Burning" is from 1983's Bad Seed EP. Cave's vocal is a flamethrower.

09 Stranded in the Jungle - New York Dolls: Shit. How lucky am I? Is this a great Friday 10... or what?! (From Too Much... Too Soon.)

10 Ring The Alarm - Tenor Saw: I've written about Saw before as I'm certain this song has come up on previous Friday 10s. This is the only song of his that I know. I have this one, a live version, and a remix done by Buju Banton. Why do I only have three versions of one song by a guy whose voice intrigues me? Don't know. Laziness, I'd suppose. I vow this year to dig up whatever I can find of TS's and give it all a good listen. Tenor Saw was a rising young reggae star who died in a car crash in Houston in 1988. There's lots of info out there, if you know how to use the Google.
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Now you: Set your mp3 player or digital jukebox to "shuffle all songs," and tell us the first ten you hear at random.
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[posted with ecto]

On iTunes right now: Der Weg ins Freie from the album Perpetuum Mobile by Einstürzende Neubauten

A Dramedy About A Comedy Should Be About Comedy

Linda Holmes wrote a really smart commentary on Studio 60 for the MSNBC site.

[posted with ecto]

On iTunes right now: Moving Target from the album Punk Archives by Raped, The

Fall Commercials Roll!

The headline (on YouTube) says "The Might Fall Sell Out," but I just don't see it that way. I thought it was sort of cool to hear a Fall song ("Clasp Hands" from the great, no superb Fall Heads Roll) on a commercial. Plus, it's funny that a car commercial ends with Mark E. Smith voicing "I was walking down the street..." As in, walking down the street is a nice alternative to driving this gas guzzling SUV!

Advanced Placement (November)

A random gathering of stuff I'm digging on lately.








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Prior to this month, everything I knew about Christopher Titus could be summed up thusly: "Comedian... Looks like Bryan Adams had a kid with Nick Nolte... Didn't he have a TV show that I never watched?" But I've seen some of his work recently because I'm working on a Titus-related "thing," and now I'm a fan. (I'd say his material is not what I expected, if only I had preconceived notions.) Heavy backstory, heavy comedy; Titus is more storyteller than joke-slinger.

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Even though the John Locke and people-at-the-beach plotlines were wrongfully, painfully absent from the first few episodes of Lost's new season, I'm still loving it. Separating the cast was inventive, and it is allowing for some nice new permutations of partnerships. I also appreciate the diminished reliance upon Jack to carry the action. (However, what's the story behind this week's "Fall Season Finale"? Don't bullshit me. The show is going on hold for a couple months. Calling this batch of shows a "Fall Season" is just a load of marketing crap.)

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Last Monday, I went alone and was overwhelmed. On Tuesday, SO'C was my valet. On Wednesday, I went with SO'C again, but I had it mastered. I even knew

where to find the plasticware on my way out. The Whole Foods at the Time Warner Center has become my lunchtime "thing" lately. The food is good but costly. And it's always crowded. And it is unnervingly confusing among the aisles and paths and people clusters. And the food is costly, but it's good.

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Months ago, Micken gifted me with a copy of Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. I picked it up a few weeks before the Korea trip and was immediately deep in it. I love Bryson's style and how easily he handles the involved, deep science of the subject is as fascinating as the topic itself. But, now... with the new baby home... it seems as though I'll still be ambling through this book for months to come.

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The Huffington Post. The Huffer's been at it for a year and a half, but I've only just discovered this site. (Thanks to a lower third on the Bill Maher show.) It is one of only a very few sites I have to visit every day.

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Between naps and babies and other books, I've been squeezing in reading a tiny book by Mark Polizzotti* on Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited, so I've been listening to that record a lot. What an amazing piece of work it is. It's always been a favorite of mine, but the Polizzotti book ongs' phrasings, arrangements, backstories, and allusions. H61R might be the greatest album of the rock era.
*Polizzotti, the director of publications at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, is a weblogger.

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Just as I was relieved to hear that NBC took Studio 60 off its kill list (because I love the show), Sorkin unfurls S60's two worst episodes. Don't know why they took a storyline out of the studio and to Pahrump, Nevada, but they did -- and the show became a big snore. For my money, you can't do any better than having the Matt Albie character in his office, writing sketches for the show-within-a-show. Maybe it's just my personal preference, because I can relate. If this show doesn't get fun and interesting again, and fast, it will hemorrhage its (already thin) viewership.

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The Seth Rogan / Paul Rudd "Do you know how I know you're gay?" dialogues from 40 Year Old Virgin are all I want to hear these days. (If you close your eyes, you can enjoy them, here.)

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Wire’s “Three-Girl Rhumba”; I'm particularly grooving on it's cool high-hat sound.

* * *

Daniel J. Levitin has written a book that I haven't read and don't own, but articles he's written for various magazines and the book's accompanying website, Your Brain On Music, is endlessly fascinating. Levitin is a producer, audio engineer, musician, and neuroscientist whose work explains what makes music appeal to the human brain. I've seen passages on how musicians violate listeners' expectations regargding pitch, such as in The Beatles' "Something," where the melody plays the same note - the tonic - for the song's first six notes. Says Levitin, when George Harrison comes off the tonic, he hits the least likely note in the scale, the leading note. This turns upside down a listener's usual frame of reference, wherein melodies are composed of different notes. (McCartney holds a single pitch for the first seven notes of "You Never Give Me Your Money," and Antonio Carlos Jobim's "One Note Samba" is well... the ultimate example of this violation of standards.) This stuff is a music geek's (read: Tommy Himself) dream.

* * *

"I've got something for you to hear" my wife said one morning. She started the show Weeds on the DVR, and Jenny Lewis and Johnathan Rice's version of “Little Boxes” started playing. Within an hour, I'd burned it to disk and put it on the iTunes. Great song, and their version in particular is amazing.

* * *

Like cologne, valentines, or a heart-lung machine, I'm pretty sure the "What Would Henry Rollins Do?" T-shirt is NOT something one buys for oneself, so I’m waiting for a package to surprise me in the mail. In the meantime, I'll just keep looking at that graphic and chuckling.

I'm still waiting.

* * *

Why am I such a sucker to the allure of any website that generates something? Following on the heels of Fake Name Generator, Church Sign Generator, Band Name Generator, Shakespearean Insult Generator and the like, is Cassette Generator, the most useless of them all, and yet… I was at it like Shaq to a lavender suit. (Thanks to pal Tim for sending me the link.)

.

[posted with ecto]

On iTunes right now: Stop, I'm Already Dead from the album We Are Night Sky by Deadboy & the Elephantmen

Finally, A Wrap Party They Deserve

I don't know what the fundits and comedy wonks are saying, as I haven't read the Monday morning polls, but... this past weekend's Saturday Night Live was absolutely the funniest episode in years. Like, 10+ years.

Obviously, the sketches were funny; but most importantly, they were tight. They got in, got funny, and got out before turning unfunny. A pretty novel approach for the show of late. Credit can be given to Alec Baldwin, who's just funny, inexplicably funny, but still. The writing hit a bullseye nearly every time and the cast was on fire. I know Kristen Wiig will be a star, I just hope it doesn't happen right away because starmaking does not serve SNL well. I've been her fan since she was "Dr. Pat" on the first Joe Schmo season. On SNL, she's either a writers' favorite or she's doing some crisp writing herself. Her "women drinking tea" sketch with Jaime Pressly a few weeks ago was similar in structure and approach to this weekend's "car pool" sketch with Baldwin ("Bobby McFerrin raped my grandmother"). Both were hilarious.

I really appreciated the fact that, while there were plenty of celeb cameos (even Tina Fey, if you want to consider her a "celeb"), the show had enough confidence to let them really be cameos -- not crutches. In recent years, you can bet we'd have seen Martin Short doing a pathetically dated, unnecessary Grimley, instead of what he did Saturday -- deliver a pair of solid lines in a funny new sketch.

The show was nicely paced, too. It came out of the box strong with Wiig doing a nice Nancy Pelosi bit that might have been 15 or 20 seconds too long, a forgivable offense for the cold open. After the monologue, the EZDate commercial parody was great (Wiig making the most of her split second on screen), and the Kevin Federline divorce proceedings sketch was sharp (Britney really does talk that way),

and it ended right on a dime -- without so much as a superfluous syllable. The Valtrex commercial parody (and why shouldn't they do two? If they're funny, do five; it's just a comedy show) was hilaaaarious because Baldwin made it so. ("But then I explained it, and that was the end of it. And there was no need to talk about it.")

The Platinum Lounge sketch touched on a theme I could swear they'd done before (there's a special place at NBC where only stars who've hosted SNL many times are allowed to hang) , but it worked here, with Steve Martin pitch-perfect as usual, and understated cameos by Short and Paul McCartney. (The latter, I believe, was a surprise even to Martin and Baldwin, making Martin's "it is Paul Simon" line a nice piece of textbook improv.)

I dug the sleazy guy ("Roger Corman"?) in Brazil sketch, because it seemed so Bill Murray/late 70s SNL that it gave me a warm feeling inside. It, too, lasted only as long as was necessary, and it contained the following line:

"You know what my favorite part of a woman's body is, really? The vagina."

Two pieces could have been jettisoned from the show. The first was the Tony Bennett talk show, which I suppose happened only because T.B. cameo'd. (That there, is the wrong way to use a cameo.) The other is that Andy Samberg time-killer, "Moment With an Out-Of-Breath Jogger From 1992." Samberg can be funnier than this. There's no "there" there in these atrocious jogger sketches, which he's done twice now; just lazy writing and a performance that would only get a laugh for Gus from Accounts Payable at your office. Samberg -- please stop.

Anyway, funny fucking show, the best I can remember in years, maybe a decade or more. I hope the cast and writing staff are finding their voice and keep rolling them out like this one.

[posted with ecto]

On iTunes right now: Start To Move from the album Pink Flag by Wire

Are You Ready For The Healing?!

Tonight, with great fanfare, they are re-opening the Superdome for football. They are pulling out all the stops, making a night of entertainment out of it. Goo Goo Dolls, Green Day, and U2 will be performing, pregame. The latter two will even play a new song; something about saints. Then, of course, the football and all the inevitable talk about how special this is. How – for the people of Louisiana – this is their Super Bowl.

But something’s not right. This “eventification” of tonight’s game smells bad to me. If the Superdome had simply been the site of an American tragedy, then memorializing it, and moving on, might feel OK. But that building is the site and the symbol of one of this country’s most horrifying failures. It was a destination of last resort, where the most desperate could go and wait to die. Those who died inside or near the Dome were victims of involuntary manslaughter through the criminal negligence of our federal government. That’s something you don’t put behind you or forget, or heal with football and a blowout pregame show. It’s disgusting and crass, how the television industry and corporations (like the NFL) fatten their wallets and goose their ratings by attaching empty words like “remembering” and “healing” to their televised all-star suckfests.

[posted with ecto]

On iTunes right now: Living In Fame from the album Sandinista! by Clash, The

Late To The Party Dept.

Hey! Guess who just arrived? Me and Mrs. Sticking Point. Sometime, round about August, we decided to stock our Netflix queue with batches of all those TV shows you all have been talking about at parties, while we stood silent in the corner eating appies off our cocktail napkins.*

Though we haven't yet gotten to season one and two of The Shield (I'm a Michael Chiklis freak, and yet -- have never seen a single episode), we have been burning through the first season of Lost. Here's something you already know: this is an extraordinary show. There are episodes of this first season (the pilot, "Confidence Man," "Raised By Another") that are already among the best TV shows I've ever seen.

As much as I'm enjoying each new disk as it arrives, I'm concerned that Lost is taking the edge off of my overarching fear of flying. Or, more precisely, of dying in a plane crash. Sure, my heart stopped during the pilot episode when the tail of the plane shears off and rows of seats disappear into the clouds. (Both times they showed it.) But something else is happening. I think I'm being conned into the misbelief that I could survive just such a catastrophe. The once horrifying daydreams, in which my 777-200LR spirals into the Sea of Japan, have morphed into survival stories. In the new versions, my half of the fuselage lands roughly but safely on a Pacific Island, where I live for years with my friends the omniscient surgeon, the musician, and the former Iraqi Republican Guardsman. (Not to mention the lithe, freckled fugitive felon with dark secrets and a heart of gold. Yow!) And none of us have any bills to pay!

I love the show, but I'm going to stop watching if it continues to reverse the paralyzing airplane fears I have been sowing all my life. I have a more-than-14-hour flight to Seoul coming up. If I'm not white-knuckling it, praying to my too-long neglected God, and monitoring the wings while keeping a lookout for fundamentalists with hair gels, what the hell else am I to do?

- - - - -
The truth is, I keep my fear of plane crashes well fed. I'm like a kid wiggling his loose tooth. It's kind of morbid, I know; I just can't help it. My Firefox bookmarks include governmental info sites on various crashes, as well as over-the-top creepy stuff like this, a site that features transcripts and MP3s of cockpit voice recordings from plane crashes. Against my wife's best advice, I've read this. (The subtitle is "Tragedy and Triumph Aboard ASA Flight 529," but it's mostly tragedy, believe me.)

Maybe my biggest problem is not my fear, but my efforts to stoke it.

- - - - -
*Alright. The truth is, we don't go to / get invited to parties anymore, unless half the guests are under 5. But I hate to let a metaphor die with dignity. And we have heard you all talking about these shows, though it was probably on the subway.
- - - - -

[posted with ecto]

On iTunes right now: Bottle Of Fur from the album Saturation by Urge Overkill

You Know?

I'm watching the Yankees postgame wrapup show on YES, and I am -- again -- curious about why Hideki Matsui still needs a translator. He's been here an awful long time to still need it. The translator is even translating the questions, not just Matsui's answers.

But that's one thing.

The other is the fact that Matsui's translator suffers from You Know Disease. Here's are translations of two of H.M.'s answers tonight:

"Yeah, you know, I mean, as a Yankee, you know, player... of the Yankees, I think it's, you know, I mean, it's like, the greatest moment, you know, to be able to do a curtain call."

"You know, I mean, regardless of what's going on, you know, with the game... you know, there's kind of like a sense that, you know, regardless of what happens... that, uh... you know, somehow, you know, we're gonna come out, you know, on the winning side."

Wow. Now, assuming that Matsui is not actually saying all those you knows (because why would the translator repeat them?), I can't understand this at all. Phrases like "you know," and "I mean," and the word "like," are like aural commas in a conversation. They act as cues that the speaker has more words to come... as soon as he thinks of them. It's like me telling you, you know, I have more to say, so don't stop listening yet. I am, you know, trying to choose the right, you know, words.

But why does a translator need to do this? That's a really bad habit, if you turn "I just want to go out and play my game. I'm not looking at the stats or the numbers. All I care about is that we win ballgames" into:

"I just want to, you know... go and and play my game. I mean, you know, I'm not looking at the, you know... stats...."

Is this guy even translating? Or is he making it up as he goes along?

[posted with ecto]

On iTunes right now: Someday from the album Is This It? by Strokes, The

Simplicity

I have the Black Flag bars tattooed on the back of my neck. So why is it taking three weeks of internal debate to decide whether I should put an SST Records sticker on my iBook?

Several weeks ago, H sustained his first serious injury. After a face vs. windowsill showdown, my son came up with a gash near the corner of his eye and the most horrific shiner. It was damn hard to seem him with his face battered as it was. He hung in there, though, unperturbed by it. He had a hell of a good August up on Cape Cod with two of his cousins.

Apropos of nothing, for the last couple days, he's been saying something that sounds very much like "Barbara Turner."

The President is scheduled to make a 9/11-related address during prime time Monday night. I don't want to hear it.

It's been tough to sleep lately. My head has been a roomful of nightmares.

Shuffle all songs. Today's Friday 10... Keeping it simple, stupid.
01 The Commercial - Wire: I could listen to them anytime. All the bands we love have covered Wire.
02 Makes No Sense At All - Husker Du: I was thinking the other day: NO ONE else sounds like Husker Du. Every band has at least one other band in the world that has a similar sound. But not the Huskers.
03 Why Do I Always Want You - Saw Doctors: You can send anyone you know to a Saw Doctors show, and they'll dig it.
04 Padded Cell - Black Flag: This was the scorching demo, with Dez Cadena singing.
05 Baba O'Riley - The Who: Hey! Is it too late to ask -- what does the title mean?
06 All The Little Pieces - Louis XIV: This sounds like Bowie singing an outtake from Abbey Road. You'd think that'd be great, right?
07 Shine On Brightly - Procol Harum: There's a little prog-rock freak who lives inside me. He loves the only-in-the-60s phasing on this song.
08 World Destruction - Time Zone: John Lydon made far more interesting music post-Pistols. My P.I.L. records are treasures.
09 Watching The Detectives (L) - Elvis Costello & The Attractions: Live from Beverly Hills High in 1978.
10 Waitress in the Sky - Replacements: I once read that it was about Chris Mars's sister, stewardess flight attendant.

.

[posted with ecto]

On iTunes right now: Skinner from the album Times Ain't Like They Used To Be: Early American Rural Music by Holmes, Winston & Charlie Turner

Our Third Pet Can Go F*ck Himself

Today, while doing what I do every Saturday afternoon -- Google searching for nude photos of Jeanne Zelasko -- I found something even more sickly seductive. The "personal web page" of her husband, sports anchor Curt Sandoval. It is simple and it's cheesy, in a "look at me, publishing on the InterWeb" / Koolgrrrl's Guide To Life!!! sort of way.

My favorite line: "Two of our three pets fit the sports theme."

Also? C-Sand is the kind of guy who writes "would of." As in, "...they would of gone broke..."

Really? Would they of?

Awesome.

[posted with ecto]

On iTunes right now: Catch Me Now I'm Falling (Original Extended Edit) from the album Low Budget by Kinks, The