Recently in Tuneage Category

So Tom Scharpling directed a video for the New Pornographers for their song "Moves," and it is jam-packed with so much awesomeness, I think the sheer weight of it might affect the earth's axis. See?



I don't even know where to begin. Todd Barry as a harried Other Music employee. Ted Leo in drag. Jon Wurster inhabiting the role of "A.C. Newman". Mike Lisk (aka @APMike) turning in a truly deranged performance (though I'm not sure how much of it was performing and how much was Mike being Mike). "Independent Spirit Award winner" Kevin Corrigan, looking very Kevin Corrigan-y. Horatio Sanz, Julie Klausner, Wyatt Cenac...hold on, let me catch my breath...

Plus cameos from many other comedy and musical giants, and enough Best Show-related easter eggs to delight sharp-eyed completists (like me).

Oh, and it starts with a trailer for a fake movie starring Paul Rudd and Bill Hader (Expectant Dads). If you want more than this video can give you, you must eat diamonds for breakfast, pal.

Speaking of slapped together songs, I believe I may have discovered the worst end credit song in history.

Let me amend that statement, because obviously I'm speaking in hyperbole here: There are many, many terrible end credit songs. The 1980s contained nothing but hideous tunes that played over the end credits of movies, usually coke-fueled hair metal that sounded like outtakes from Dirk Diggler's studio session. The song I've discovered is, truth be told, not even close to being as bad as any of these. It does, however, have all the Nose Candy songs beat in the category of Sheer Lack of Effort.

It comes from the 1999 filmic adaptation of Madeline, which The Baby has been obsessed with lately. The movie itself is thoroughly meh; certainly not awful, but nothing to write home about either. It takes place in a vague De Gaulle-ian Paris, and yet nearly all the participants have English accents. (Except the cook; she has a French accent for some reason.) It does not have the simple charm of the source material, although I admit that's a difficult thing to achieve.

No matter. I'm not here to comment on the film. I am here to comment on the song that plays over the film's end credits. It is called "Two Straight Lines" and is written and performed by Carly Simon. Musically, not horrible. Lyrically, ew boy.

It sounds like she watched the movie and took notes on the action. But then, rather than flesh those notes out into actual lyrics, just sang the scribbled shorthand. I think there's one complete sentence in this entire song. She couldn't have put any less effort into this if she were asleep when recording it. I'm not sure she wasn't.



This is what I do now. I write critiques of songs in movies made for little girls. Proud moments, folks.

As a parent, you realize very quickly that you're going to have to watch a lot of crap on TV you really don't want to. At first, it's because you realize a certain program can calm down a hysterical baby or hasten sleepy-time. (For my kid, that certain program was Predator.)

Eventually, your child will develop his/her own tastes and want to watch the same movie or show over and over and over again. And thanks to DVDs and video on demand, it's easier than ever before to indulge this OCD. Of course, none of this stuff is meant for your adult eyes/brain, but some of it grates on you more than others.

Like many preschool kids, The Baby went through a Caillou phase, which I believe she has finally outgrown (knock on wood). If you don't have children, you have probably never seen this show and I suggest you continue to avoid it. Caillou is about a four-year-old bald kid who is an enormous weiner. I can't think of a better word to describe this kid; "weiner" covers it, with its implication of profound uncoolness.

There's nothing really wrong with the show in aggregate, but the character of Caillou drives me up the wall. He has a squeaky little kid voice with a pronounced Canadian accident. He is preternaturally well-spoken and well-behaved in a way that no four-year-old has ever been. And everything in the world must revolve around him. If you remember The Kids in the Hall sketches with Bruce McCulloch as Gavin, Caillou is like a slightly younger version of that.

Oh, and Caillou has songs. Almost all little kid shows do, but these songs feel slapped together, both lyrically and musically. Really slapped together. I think they were all written by Garth and Kat.

This clip below is a perfect example. I can't remember why Caillou is singing about being in a rock and roll band, not that it matters. The song clearly takes longer to listen to than the composer took to write it.



And yet, when I heard this song, it struck a chord. It reminded me of something--not despite its threadbare intellect, but because of it. It rattled at the back of my mind for a while, searching for a connection, until it hit me like a bolt from the blue: It sounds exactly like Wesley Willis' "Rock and Roll McDonalds". Don't believe me? Have a listen.



In case you don't remember or were too young to catch him the first time around, Wesley Willis was a schizophrenic who rose to "fame" in the 1990s thanks to songs he made with Casio keyboard presets, which he used to drive away the "demons in his head" that would take him on "hellrides". Some of his songs were about how much he loved music, some were about beating up superheroes, and some were obscene rants involving animals.

Of course, since every Wesley Willis song sounds exactly the same, you could say "Caillou's Rock and Roll Band" resembles any of them. But I think this comparison is more apt than, say, "Eat a Panda's Ass."

I don't get a lot of sleep. Between parenting, various external and internal obligations, and my own Night Owl inclinations, it's rare that I get a solid eight hours. Or seven. And even six is kinda pushing it.

As a result, I stay in bed as long as humanly possible each morning. More often than not, I don't roll out of bed earlier than one second before I have to. But there is one thing that can get me leaping out of bed: radio ads for Broadway shows.

I'm not a Broadway Person. Not saying that to make myself seem superior to Broadway People; if that's your thing, good for you. I'm simply saying it's not for me. And the fact that it's not for me is reinforced each time I hear a commercial for a musical at the crack of dawn.

Our alarm is set to WCBS News Radio. Apart from criminal amounts of John Sterling soundbites during baseball season, WCBS also airs tons of spots for Broadway musicals. Considering the average shelf life of a Broadway musical (i.e., not very long), these ads are run with an insane amount of saturation. If a show is about to debut, you are virtually guaranteed to hear an ad for it once or twice each commercial break.

Since these spots air incessantly first thing in the morning when I'm half awake and the human brain is at its most vulnerable, they're imprinted on my brain. Even if a certain show didn't run for very long, an ad for it probably ran in such heavy rotation I can recite it word for word (or warble for warble). I still distinctly remember an ad for a revival of Thoroughly Modern Millie, which ended with the titular character belting out MIL-LIEEEEEE! And there's a commercial for Wicked that's aired for years, in which the Wicked Witch (I think) sings about being so happy she could melt, in that ear-punishing Broadway fashion that makes me want to melt. My own brains. With a glock.

These are all simply annoying, the kinds of sounds I don't want to hear first thing in the morning. But I've recently heard a Broadway ad that slips out of the surly bounds of annoying and attains the status of Maddening. As in, it could actually drive you crazy. I'm pretty sure it was engineered in a CIA lab for the purposes of psychic warfare.

It comes from the musical adaptation of Pedro Almodovar's Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. I have not seen this musical and almost certainly will not see it. I haven't even seen the movie, though I know it's considered a classic. So I can not comment on the quality of the production or its source material. What I can say is that, if this is the first thing you hear when you wake up, after 5+ hours of fitful sleep, there is a 50 percent chance you will go insane.

Here's the audio, although I only suggest playing it if you're running low on nightmare fuel or you enjoy acid flashbacks. Enjoy! (Click here if that player down there don't work for ya.)

I am prepared to let you in on a golden opportunity, a once in a lifetime kind of thing. I have the exclusive rights to a musical based on the music of Orleans, and with financial backing like yours, we can bring Still the One! it to Broadway.

No, "Still the One" was not their only song. I think you're forgetting a little song called "Dance with Me", not to mention the countless other hits they made famous, whose names escape me at this time. This musical uses their entire catalog, up to and including 2008's Obscurities, an unjustly overlooked masterpiece. By my calculations, you would stand to receive a return on your investment of approximately eleventy-bazillion percent. Give or take.

Think about it. The theater-going public can not get enough of these jukebox musicals like Mamma Mia and Jersey Boys. But none of them contain the music of Orleans. No one's even tried yet! We swoop in, fill the void, and watch the cash roll in. Between road productions, soundtrack sales, and other related revenue streams, this musical will make a trillion dollars, easy.

You're exactly right, no musical has ever made anywhere near a trillion dollars. Another gap we can fill!

How do we do it? Generate buzz through controversy. This is the musical the members of Orleans don't want you to see. Original guitarist/vocalist Larry Hoppen begged me to sell the rights to "Still the One" to one of those bullshit multi-artist musicals like Rock of Ages. He was all like, "That's real money to me! I got kids in college!" But I insisted that the full, true story of Orleans had to be told. In musical form!

We see Orleans as they struggle to make it during their early days in upstate New York. We see Rolling Stone name them "the best unrecorded band in America". We see "Still the One" catapult them into stardom and a spot on a legendary tour with Jackson Browne. And just as superstardom is handed to them, it's snatched away when songwriter John Hall departs to pursue a solo career and eventually become a US Congressman!

No, that's not the whole thing! That's just Act One! This thing is epic! We need three whole acts to tell the story of Orleans' triumphant reformation in 1979! The tragic death of original drummer Wells Kelly while touring with Meat Loaf! Their historic appearance at Woodstock '94! Their heated debate over whether to let Burger King use "Still the One" in a commercial! I defy you to name me something that has more drama than this!

Okay, the 20 things you just mentioned are somewhat more dramatic than the story of Orleans, granted, but...alright, you can stop naming things now.

How did I get the rights to this musical? I won them in a poker game. Does it matter? Would it make any difference to you if you found out that the original production of Cats was produced on a dare?

No, that's not actually true. I'm just asking if it would make a difference to you.

You think this one over, because I can't extend this offer forever. I've had this hot property for almost 17 years now, so obviously it's just a matter of time before someone beats you to the punch.

If you change your mind, I'll be right here at my desk in the office furniture section of Target, at least until closing time.

I've already tweeted about this, and Facebooked it, and mouth-talked it. But on the off chance you have yet to see this masterpiece, here 'tis: the video for Ted Leo's "Bottled in Cork", directed by Tom Scharpling, starring Paul F. Tompkins, Julie Klausner, John Hodgman, and a slew of other awesome folk, as they bring Ted to the Great White Way in his musical The Brutalist Bricks! (No Refunds).


Sharp-eyed WFMU-ophiles may spot Terre T, AP Mike, Therese, and some other righteous people. Fortunately for your eyes, you can not see me.

Ya see, I volunteered to be in the crowd scene (brag), but the shoot time got moved up to 4pm, when I would have still been at work. I toyed with the idea of sneaking out early to make the scene, but my German half demanded that keep my nose to the grindstone. (My Irish half was totally down with splitting work and giving everyone the finger as I left.)

Thus, I was denied a shot at rock n' roll immortality.* And a month later, I was let go from this job. There's a lesson in there somewhere, though I'm not quite sure what it is.

*Actually, I may have already achieved rock n' roll immortality, since my enormous bald head can be briefly seen in crowd shots in the following concert films: Fugazi's Instrument, The Make-Up's Blue Is Beautiful, and the aforementioned Mr. Leo's Dirty Old Town. If you can find those movies and spot me in them, you win absolutely nothing.

This video is, quite obviously, a play on the trend of musicals based on a particular band's/artist's oeuvre--particularly ones that don't quite gel with traditional Broadway mores. Like, oh, I don't know, let's just say Green Day. So I assume, anyway. Because there is no way in hell I will ever see any of these quote-unquote musicals without the aid of hard drugs and harnesses.

Especially after seeing this clip someone tweeted earlier today (forgive me for forgetting who, whoever you are), which comes from the Bob Dylan musical. Hey, remember when there was a Bob Dylan musical? No? You're lucky.

"The Twist" (1960)

"Let's Twist Again (Like We Did Last Summer)" (1961)

"Let's Twist One More Time (Like We Did Two Years Ago)" (1963)

"It's Been Four Years Since We Last Twisted (Shouldn't We Do it Again?)" (1967)

"C'mon, Let's Twist One Additional Time" (1968)

"(Would It Kill You to) Twist With Me Yet Again" (1969)

"I'd Like to Teach the World to Twist" (1971)

"Say It Loud (I Twist and I'm Proud)" (1972)

"U Kan Twist Gud" (featuring Slade) (1973)

"Do You Feel Like Twisting Once More? Is that Something You'd Be Interested In?" (1974)

"Disco Twist" (1977)

"New Wave Twist" (1979)

"Twist the System" (split 7" w/Minor Threat) (1982)

"New Romantic Twist" (1984)

"Can You Believe It's Been 25 Years Since We First Twisted?" (1985)

"26 Years of Twisting!" (1986)

"Lets See, 87 Minus 60...Yeah, It's Been 27 Years Since 'The Twist'" (1987)

"Grunge Twist" (from the soundtrack to Singles) (1992)

"New Jack Twist" (from the soundtrack to Cliffhanger) (1993)

"Baile El Twist" (featuring Carlos Santana and Rob Thomas) (1998)

"Twist2K" (2000)

"Twistin' with Stan" (featuring Eminem) (2001)

"I Concentrate on You" (from Chubby Checker Sings the Songs of Cole Porter) (2004)

"50 Years of Twisting (And We're Just Getting Started)" (2010)

Beginning at 7pm tonight, WFMU is holding a 24 emergency pledge marathon. Normally, they hold only one pledge drive a year, but the station is in some dire financial straits.

Should you pledge out of the goodness of your heart and to keep the only radio station worth listening to in the tri-state area on the air? Of course. But if you need some extra motivation, know that The Best Show on WFMU is giving away a monstrously awesome HEROES DO WHAT HEROES DO FUN PACK! What do you get? WHAT DON'T YOU GET?!

• A special Best Show t-shirt designed by Michael Kupperman, genius behind Snake and Bacon, Tales Designed to Thrizzle, and many other comical works of gut-busting hilarity;
• A MP3 CD of Best Show rarities to satisfy lunatic completists like yours truly; AND
• A special CD of punk/rock rarities compiled by WFMU's own Terre T, who ALWAYS puts together an awesome compilation.

Tune in tonight starting at 7pm, and I'm sure you'll hear even more reasons to pledge. Special guests! Hilarity! HELICOPTER RIDES! And much much much much more!

Listen: I got no end of things I gotta spend dough on. I've got birthday parties, engagement parties, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, Bastille Day...I'M STILL PLEDGING, AND SO SHOULD YOU! CAPS LOCK!

And remember: SOME WILL BURN, ALL WILL PAY!

Okay, that's enough haterade for one day. Enough with the negativity! Now is the time to gather together and celebrate those things that we like and think are fun!

For instance, imitating Danzig. Anyone who reads this site will know that I think Danzig is hilarious. Just the idea of him. I mean, c'mon, just look at the guy. So when Ted Leo posted pics of himself dressed as Misfits-era Danzig, I demanded more. And I got more.

I got more than pics, in fact. WE ALL DID. Because Mr. Leo was dressing as Lodi's favorite son as part of a Halloween show down in Philadelphia, wherein he and the band TV Casualty (featuring Atom of Atom and His Package, among others) performed an entire concert of Misfits covers. Better still, some forward-thinking genius captured the whole thing on video and posted it to YouTube.

You might wonder how Ted Leo would perform as Danzig. They're not very similar in stage presence, singing voice, or general bulk. But as part one of this video collection will attest, Ted doesn't just imitate Misfits-era Danzig. He IS Misfits-era Danzig!

Seriously, this is one of the greatest things people have ever done. Watch this, then hie thee to the rest of the set. I particularly enjoyed their versions of "Hyrbid Moments" and "Last Caress", but you can't go wrong with anything in this collection, I says.

Fifty years ago today, Miles Davis' Kind of Blue was released. It's an album everyone says is one of the greatest ever made. It is also one of those rare occasions where everyone is right.



There's probably been more words written about this album than there are notes played in the sessions. So there's not much more you can say about it. All I know is, I'd put up with a million Kenny G's to listen to this album. I could listen to "Blue in Green" a million times and still be astounded by Bill Evans.

It never ceases to amaze me how unbelievably ahead of the curve Miles Davis was, throughout his entire career (well, until the 80s, anyway). Who in music today is so far in front of everyone the way he was? No one. Not even close.

Do you remember Victory Records? You might not have ever heard of them if you didn't run in punk/hardcore circles at some point in your life. During my college years, they were most known (to me, at least) for being the home of the completely humorless militant straight-edge/eco-centric band Earth Crisis. They were not a one-note label, however. Their roster extended to cover all variety of suck.

I have not given Victory Records a second thought in many years, but apparently they still exist. And are still run by a fucktard of the highest order.

As you may have heard, Matador Records founder/Can't Stop the Bleeding blogger Gerard Cosloy's home in Austin burned down last week. As someone who's enjoyed the fruits of both that label and that blog, I was saddened by the news. Plus, based on the posts at CSTB, I believe he's a Mets fan, so the man's suffered enough the last few years.

It's an awful event, the kind that inspires pity even among people who might hate you. Even Deadspin, which Cosloy took shots at over the years (and vice versa), wrote a brief post sending their condolences when the news broke. Because despite the fact that Cosloy was not a fan of Deadspin's editor emeritus, you have to be a special kind of asshole to not offer sympathy to someone who just lost everything he owned.

Tony Brummell, Victory Records head honcho, is just that kind of asshole. In a situation where most people would offer their thoughts and prayers--or at the very least say nothing at all--Tony found the strength within him to send Cosloy a one-word email that said KARMA.

Why such hostility? Because Cosloy called out Victory Records for weird/shitty business practices. I suppose this offended the Great Hardcore Gods in the sky, who then did smite him for his insolence.

I'm pointing this out so if anyone is out there is considering a bulk purchase of the Snapcase back catalog, or you wanna pick up some old L.E.S. Stitches 7 inches, you may want to spend your hard earned deaux elsewhere. And if you're so inclined, you can check out this blog post at Chunklet, where the Victory Records haterade is being poured in full force.

Since I spent several hours yesterday writing totally insensitive tweets about Michael Jackson's death (like this one), I thought it would be a good idea if I spent five minutes not speaking ill of the dead.

I "liked" Michael Jackson when I was a little kid. I put "liked" in quotation marks because in the early 80s, saying you liked Michael Jackson was equivalent to saying you liked food and water. It wasn't an expression of taste so much as an admission of being alive.

One Christmas, I received my first non-kiddie albums ever: Thriller, Off the Wall, and a Jackson 5 greatest hits collection. This last one contained several infuriating "medley" tracks that compressed four or five classic tunes into one ungodly super-mix, thus introducing me to the effed-up world of endless album repackaging. This might have also been the Christmas when I got both Atari and the Castle Grayskull playset, thus making it The Greatest Christmas Ever.

It's hard to comprehend now just how big Michael Jackson was back then. And there probably will never be anyone that huge again, because the media has grown so enormous and ghettoized. Michael Jackson conquered pretty much Everything in the 80s, but nowadays there's a lot more Everything to conquer, and all of it is so compartmentalized. During the height of his fame, there was one music-related channel. Now there's dozens, and the one that made him famous spread itself so thin with reality nonsense and game shows that it doesn't even feature music anymore.

When I heard Michael Jackson died, I felt a vague sadness, if for no other reason than it made me feel horribly old. But I also felt something else that I couldn't really articulate, until The Wife said it for me: "I'm kinda glad he's dead."

She didn't mean it like "good riddance!" She meant that this was possibly the best thing that could have happened to him. Because let's face it: Was anything good going to ever happen to Michael Jackson ever again?

He'd become a walking punchline long ago, so much so that Neverland Ranch Sleepover jokes became the touchstone of cheap hack comics (as Tom Scharpling and Drew Magary tweeted separately, Jay Leno just lost a huge amount of material for his new show). Once joking about you has become cliche, you really only have one choice: Go along with the gag. Poke fun at yourself. You might as well, because no one will ever take you seriously ever again. This is called The William Shatner Principle (or the Gary Coleman Corollary, if you prefer).

The problem with Michael Jackson is, he wasn't a joke because he was a bad actor or because he pissed away all his money. He was a joke because he was a suspected pedophile. What could he do? Guest-host Saturday Night Live and play Father O'Hallihan, the Boy-Touching Priest? Appear in a fake viral video for NAMBLA? Get a sitcom role as the elementary school principal with the wandering eye? That would've been horrifying.

Everyone loves a comeback story. America is the birthplace of the comeback story. We love to tear down heroes just so they can rise again and make us feel warm and fuzzy. But you don't come back from something that awful. You just don't. Even if Michael Jackson was somehow "cured". Even if it was proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that he never molested any child ever, how could that stain ever go away? How could you ever feel good about him ever again?

As horrible as Michael Jackson's alleged crimes might be, the man never stood a chance. The poor guy was doomed the minute his crazy father forced his brood into show business. He had to sing insanely passionate love songs at age eight. Even the kids on Toddlers and Tiaras aren't destined to be warped the way he was.

Listen to this Jackson 5 cover of Stevie Wonder's "I Don't Know Why I Love You". It's great and creeptacular all at the same time. The kid singing this song is throwing his whole heart and soul into it--but what kind of heart and soul do you have when you're ten years old? How did he have any idea of the heartbreak and longing contained in this song when he sang it?

Of course someone who grew up like this would regress into a twisted, Peter Pan-esque perpetual childhood full of llamas and caroussels and Elephant Man bones. As nuts as he was, we're probably all lucky he didn't grab a sniper rifle, climb a bell tower, and start picking people off (while moonwalking).

The way it ended for Michael Jackson is the only good way it could have ended. He dies young. We remember that he had some great songs. We forget the bad stuff for a while. Hopefully, he's at peace now, free of whatever demons plagued him in life.

Plus, a million lousy standups have to retire their lazy, unfunny, outdated material. All in all, a win-win proposition for the human race.

Oh, and Off the Wall was the best Michael Jackson album. I will not debate this.

While stuck in traffic, "Accidents Will Happen" popped up on my iPod via shuffle. I'm sure I've heard this song several thousand times, but not in quite a while. By rule, I am never in a good mood in the morning, but this immediately brightened my commute.



I got that warm feeling you get when you listen to something again for the first time since forever, and you remember how great it is. I thought about how it is exactly the right length. How haunting the outro is. How fantastic the lyrics are; not as overtly clever as in some of Mr. Costello's songs, but simple and subtle in the best possible way. Lines like It's damage that we do and never know/It's the words that we don't say that scare me so.

And I thought about how there was a period when I listened to Armed Forces on a nigh-daily basis. When it was so much a part of my being that, like Jonathem Lethem once said about Talking Heads' Fear of Music, "I might have wished to wear the album...in place of my head". I thought about listening to the whole album start to finish, something I never do anymore with any album in this iPod age.

And as Elvis sang Accidents will happen..., an ambulance came screeching alongside my bus, sirens blaring, lights flashing. It hopped a curb in front of an auto parts store, then squeezed in between a phalanx of parked cars and a truck that completely ignored its pleas to get through.

Real accidents always overshadow metaphorical ones. I hit pause until the drama passed. But when I unpaused the song, it just didn't feel the same. Sigh.

Esteemed rocker/filmmaker Nick Cave wrote a sequel to Gladiator, apparently at the behest of fellow Aussie Russell Crowe. A synopsis/assessment of the script was posted to the intertubes not too long ago. It is, as you might imagine, fucking insane. In the best possible way.

I know what you're thinking--hey, Maximus died at the end! Mr. Cave is way ahead of you. In his script, Maximus has been damned to gladiate (if that's a word) for all eternity for his sins. The screenplay is rife with supernatural hoodoo-ery, like people rising from the dead. Several times. Oh, and there's a closing montage in which the deathless Maximus is shown fighting in the Crusades, World War II, Vietnam, and, curiously, working in the Pentagon.

Still not hooked? How 'bout a climactic speech in which an anti-Christian leader screams CHARGE THIS FISH! How 'bout the movie's climactic battle scene, which takes place in a flooded Coliseum with battleships and alligators.* Tell me that itself isn't worth the price of admission.

* The ancient Romans actually used to flood the Coliseum and stage naval battles there, so this last detail is plausible. But still nuts.

Though the assessor of this script noted that "Cave's writing, the storyline, the dialogue...it's Grade-A material through and through," he/she still rejected it. Why?

-...I'm not really interested in seeing a sequel to Gladiator featuring elements of mythology and the supernatural. They weren't present in the first film and they simply feel out of place here.

-The script renders most of the original film moot...

-I love it as a standalone screenplay but hate it as a sequel to Gladiator.

To all of these criticisms, I say, So fucking what?!

First of all, despite all the Oscar nods, Gladiator was nothing more than a better-than-average popcorn movie. You're not going to "ruin" or "dilute" it with Nick Cave's interpretation. And the first movie was a big enough hit that, as long as Russell Crowe stars in the sequel, you're pretty much guaranteed a certain box office number. Take a chance, Hollywood assholes!

Second of all, look at any movie franchise: the second movie is always the crazy one. And it's always the one that cineaste snobs say is the true masterpiece. Think The Godfather Part II. Think Dark Knight. Think 2 Fast 2 Furious!

If this is how a wonderfully mad potential masterpiece is assessed by Hollywood, I'd love to see the synopsis for some market-researched piece of total junk like Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. "Reading this made a small piece of my soul shrivel up and die. Greenlight immediately!"

This rejection of Nick Cave's vision really puts a damper on my own screenplay hopes. I was just starting to get some meetings about my full-length adaptation of "O'Malley's Bar".

The tweeting of JohnU alerted me to a blog post over at Mandatory Mustache which details a lost Mets-related punk rock classic from 1985 by a band called The Nightmares. I'm sorry it took me almost a month to discover it (the post debuted on April 14), but I'm glad I did, because it is awesome.

I'll let the post speak for itself, but the gist is this: The Nightmares, a New York garage-y band, wrote a tune called "Baseball Altamont", which detailed a riot that occurred in the Shea Stadium stands in 1984. They even had a record release party for the single in the Shea luxury suites, which is pretty friggin rad.

The song namechecks Keith Hernandez and Dr. K, and talks about "sitting up in the sky" in the cheap seats. I found that image particularly evocative, since I spent so much time in those cheap seats, which really did make you feel like you were 10,000 feet in the air. Especially if you sat in the very last section on either the left or right field side, hanging out over nothing. It was both exhilirating and terrifying. Oh, and you couldn't see the game for nothin'.

I don't have much info on The Nightmares, other than they were on Coyote, the same outfit that put out Yo La Tengo's early stuff (fitting that they would share a label with another Met-inspired band). As you might imagine, a Google search yields a million other bands called The Nightmares who are clearly not this one. But the record sleeve shows them posing next to the historical marker in Hoboken where the first organized baseball game was (probably) played. Which is, again, pretty rad.

I also tried to look up some info on the riot in question. Not much luck, except for this remiscence about Opening Day at Shea by Eric Silverstadt, which appeared in The New York Times in 2004:

Twenty years to the day after the first pitch was thrown at Shea, I returned for the home opener in 1984. Ron Darling was the starter, and again it was a beautiful, sunny afternoon. I slipped away from my job as an NBC page on ''Late Night With David Letterman,'' expecting the Doc and Darryl Mets to bring life back to the ballpark. Although the 1984 team won 90 games, what happened that April afternoon could only happen in New York, and perhaps, only at Shea.

The Mets were losing, 10-0, to Pete Rose and the Expos in the seventh inning. Most fans had already bolted. This must have included some members of the New York Police Department because during the seventh-inning stretch, a riot broke out in the left-field bleachers. Tire irons, broken beer bottles, fists flying, bodies tumbling. The culprits? Passive Met and Expo fans? No. Ranger and Islander fanatics, still fighting a week after a brutal playoff series ended with an Islander overtime goal in the fifth and deciding game of the Patrick Division semifinals.

Not sure if this is the event which inspired the tune. Although if it is, 'hockey Altamont' doesn't have quite the same ring.

In any case, give it a whirl and enjoy.

I apologize for not being as prolific on this site as I usually am. Several life events, and the impending HGD 007, have conspired against me.

While you wait for glorious new content, enjoy this site I was alerted to by the tweeting of namethebats. Logan Walters, an industrious man, created Blue Note-esque covers for Wu Tang albums (and Wu Tang-related side projects) for iPod purposes and decided to share them with the world. I am very glad he did, because they are awesome.

I particularly like this Method Man reworking, which totally could have been a Thelonious Monk LP sleeve. I'd love to hear what Method could do to "Epistrophy".

Ever wondered what Rush would sound like all slowed down? Of course you do! Here's "Tom Sawyer" with the brakes on. Kinda sounds like some mutant hyrbid of Black Sabbath and Mission of Burma. Notice how, even slowed down, Geddy Lee's voice is still pretty high.



Hat-tip to Bugle Boy over at the FOT forum for exposing me to this.

A record label that wishes to remain nameless started a blog recently to document some truly awful demos they received over the years. This presents me with a dilemma.

On the one hand, I think you should only laugh at Big Targets. People who can take it. You know, be like The Marx Brothers and make fun of the Margaret Dumonts of the world. It's too easy to laugh at the poor slob who wants to make it big in music, but doesn't have the chops or equipment or connections to make it happen. I don't like when people put themselves on a Hip Pedestal so they can laugh at the unsophistication of others.

On the other hand, holy shit, there is some comedy gold on this site. Especially since most of the songs are delivered in a Chesapeake southern drawl that sounds like Philly Boy Roy crossed with Kenny Powers.

If I had to pick a favorite, it'd be this one, which the anonymous label describes as being "like a step aerobics class from hell". I would have said "like a step aerobics class from hell that just dropped acid".

Okay, St. Patrick's Day, I call a truce. I've spent way too much time being angry at you for reasons I don't even fully understand. So I'm not going to write any more angry anti-St. Patty's Day screeds. In return, if you could make sure that my stoop doesn't have puke on it when I get home from work, then we're cool.

I inherited my resentment against the holiday from my father, who had wildly schizophrenic views on his homeland. He lived the first 10 years of his life in an Ireland that was extremely poor, extremely repressive, and just overall depressing. I think he blamed Ireland for the misery of his early years, and the issues of his later ones.

Mind you, he had a healthy amount of pride about being Irish. But he also couldn't stand a lot of phonus balonus that goes along with Oirish-American celebrations. He loved to cite historical instances of the Irish getting the shaft from world, but he also hated when Irish people would insist on the MOPE Syndrome (that they, and only they, were the Most Oppressed People Ever).

He loved to point out famous/accomplished Irishmen, and also loved to point out that a large number of them had leave Ireland to get any measure of success (or at least not be stoned to death). Conversely, he was a huge fan of English comedy in general, but when he was offered a job at Reuters, he scoffed, "I can't work for them--they're an English company." This statement was notable for its lack of sarcasm, as my father rarely said anything not sarcastic.

I've spent much of my life mimicking his stances on Ireland, St. Patty's Day, etc. But I now realize it's more of a burden than anything else. I've been to Ireland a few times, and it's nothing like what it was in his youth. In other words, I've been carrying around his resentments so they can live on somehow, even though they're resentments for a place that doesn't exist anymore.

So you wanna get shitfaced on St. Patrick's Day even if your last name is Lewandowski? Knock yourself out. I shan't take part, but who am I to keep you from destroying your liver?

I should be grateful that I'm part of an ethnic group that is so assimilated into American culture that it can totally revel in all of its unsavory stereotypes. When people joke about how the Irish are drunks and fight all the time, what do Irish people do? Laugh, usually. They know it's true, and they don't have to waste any time defending themselves, because they no longer have to fight true, institutionalized discrimination.

That's my wish for every ethnic group: That one day you shall be able to freely give vent to the worst aspects of your character, and everyone will think it's hilarious.

If you're in the mood for some green-tinted Haterade, peep these two posts from years past:

The Calvinball of the Emerald Isle, 03.16.07

The Quare Fellows, 03.17.06

Meanwhile, as part of my peace offering to St. Patrick's Day, I offer some tunes from Hibernophile rocker Ted Leo.

"Biomusicology", The Tyrrany of Distance

"Dirty Old Town", Tell Balgeary Balgury Is Dead EP

"A Bottle of Buckie", Living for the Living

"Fairytale of New York", live on WFMU, 2007

If you didn't get a chance to listen to The Best Show's second and final Pledge Marathon Night, first of all SHAME ON YOU. But hey, maybe your kid was sick or your dog was on fire or something. So if you didn't get to listen to it, Stereogum has an excellent play-by-play for you. And no one says you can't listen to the show from The Best Show Archives, or subscribe to The Best Show podcast, ya know.

For those of you who did listen, but would like visual evidence to accompany your fahntasies, Stereogum has plenty of pics from the event. Here's one of my faves: Tom Scharpling in his stellar Judge Smails outfit, with co-host Therese, John Hodgman looking strangely servile, Paul F Tompkins in a Napoleon pose, AP Mike appearing not nearly as creepy as I expected him to, and just in the background you can also see Aimee Mann, Ted Leo and Terre T in their FOT sailor hats.

Human Giant-er Paul Scheer alerted me (and the rest of the world, via his Twitter page) to the existence of the Michael Jackson Auction Catalog. Yes, the King of Pop is auctioning off some of his most priceless memorabilia--although he seems to have had no problem pricing them anyway.

Yes, poking fun at Michael Jackson is as easy as shooting monkeys in a barrel while taking candy from a baby. And yes, making fun of him is a totally hack go-to move for bad comedians everywhere. But take a look at the catalog. Go ahead, just take a look. Then tell me this is not something screaming to be ridiculed.

And it starts before you even see any items, because MJ (or his tech peeps) have insisted on putting the catalog into an unnecessarily complicated Flash interface, where you "turn" the pages on screen with a double click--and it's accompanied by an audio file of a page turning. I feel like I'm really reading a book!

Then come the auction items. Pages 1 through 70 are pretty much all video games. Then, the fun starts. I recommend page 73, which features Item #805: a lifesize statue of Michael Jackson as Batman. I wish I was kidding about that.

The rest of the catalog features many, many mind-blowing artifacts, too many to single out in this space. Surely most of them have spent some time known as "People's Exhibit X". So flip through it when you have a chance. But make sure there's a shower nearby; you'll wanna take one when you're done.

As I alerted this readership last week, the WFMU Pledge Marathon is afoot. So pledge today!

Or pledge tonight, during The Best Show on WFMU. Ted Leo and Aimee Mann will be in studio, playing songs for pledges. Paul F. Tompkins and John Hodgman will be there to provide hilarity. And a pledge of $75 gets you a brand-new pledge-exclusive Scharpling & Wurster CD. Wow! A bargain at twice the price!

But not only that! That same $75 pledge earns you another pledge exclusive: an all-star tribute to the Paul & Linda McCartney album RAM, with songs covered by such esteemed artists as the two titans mentioned above, plus Death Cab for Cutie, Times New Viking, Portastatic, and many more.

What else do you get? Much much much much more! Actually, just a totebag, near as I can tell. But that can be much much much much more, depending on what you intend to use it for.

Actually, you get the satisfaction of knowing you helped one of the funniest radio programs of all time and one of the few radio stations in the NYC area worth listening to. So if you give no other monies to charity this year--and you know you won't!--give to this!

Over the weekend, I saw (most of) Idiocracy, Mike Judge's last doomed film. It has yet to achieve the cable/DVD cult status afforded to Office Space, mostly because it's not nearly as funny. But the movie does a good job of fleshing out the universe contained in its premise: what happens when all the smart people in the world stop breeding, and the planet becomes overrun with morons?

The little cultural touches of the universe work better than the actual plot and characters. In the world of Idiocracy, the most popular TV show is called "Ow! My Balls!", the president is a machine gun-weilding "smackdown champion", and a film called Ass won 8 Academy Awards

Conspicuously absent from the film is what music would be like in this world. Dumb is much harder to achieve on purpose in music than in other media. In fact, I can't think of too many people who have tried to capture the essence of Dumb in music and succeeded, other than Spinal Tap. Apart from "Big Bottom" and other Tap tunes, actual Dumb music made by actual Dumb people beats out manufactured Dumb Music by a mile.

But I think I found the soundtrack to a world filled with people with IQs of 60 (found = saw it posted to several message boards I frequent). This song is perfect for the world of Idiocracy--it's violent, emotionally stunted, sexually ignorant, aggressively misogynistic, and idiotic. I mean, truly, deeply idiotic.

I wanted to say "unapologetically idiotic", but the people who made this song/video would be unable to apologize for their idiocy because they haven't the slightest clue how idiotic they are. When I first saw this video, I thought it might be a put-on. But after a minute or so, as I fought the urge to vomit, I realized that only truly shallow morons could make music this moronic.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I present to you the absolutely worst song I've ever heard in my life, by the worst group in the universe: brokeNCYDE. And don't think too hard about how these mind-corpses are already on tour and playing IRVING PLAZA TONIGHT and probably making huge bank, because if you dwell on that horrifying factoid too long, you'll wanna kill yourself. I know I do!

The Freeform Station of the Nation, WFMU has begun their annual marathon. So give 'em some money. Then, give 'em some more, because they're pretty much the only radio station worth listening to in Ye Olde Tri-State.

I know I pimp The Best Show on this site all the time, but they have many, many fine programs worth your ear-time: Cherry Blossom Clinic with Terre T, Fool's Paradise with Rex, Music to Spazz By, and much much much much more.

Last year, The Best Show had in-studio guests like Ted Leo, Ben Gibbard, and Patton Oswalt as "The Famous Flamer". This year promises to be just as good, and the 2009 edition of The Fun Pack is face-meltingly awesome. So send 'em some change, folks. It all goes to making this area's airwaves slightly more tolerable.

Via a tweet from Ted Leo--who is a veritable fount of information--I found out that eight original members of Sha Na Na hold advanced degrees. Eight. Don't believe me? Click here.

And in case you don't know who Sha Na Na were, they were kinda like a greasy Polyphonic Spree, but they wore wifebeaters instead of choir robes and moussed their hair within an inch of its life and sang doo-wop. So I guess, not at all like the Polyphonic Spree except that both bands have five thousand members.

Regardless, would you want to go to a school that gave one of these guys a doctorate? (Bowser excepted, of course; I enjoy his essays in The Economist.)

A few weeks back, I relayed the sad news about the passing of Stefan Lutak, the proprietor of The Holiday Cocktail Lounge, one of my favorite joints of all time. Now another one has been taken away from us--Antoinette K Doe, proprietress of The Mother-in-Law Lounge in New Orleans.

Antoinette was the widow of Ernie K Doe, who had a big R&B hit back in the 1960s called (wait for it) "Mother-in-Law". She rescued Ernie from a decades-long alcoholic funk and helped him open the aforementioned bar on Claiborne Avenue, where Ernie entertained into the wee hours and performed with himself (via jukebox).

The Mother-in-Law Lounge was a little like the Holiday Cocktail Lounge, in that its operating hours were determined by the whims of its owners, and it seemed to exist for the enjoyment of its patrons and its proprietors, rather than to make money. But it was even more of a cottage business because The Lounge was literally Ernie's living room. And when you were there, you totally felt like you were just having some drinks in a friend's living room.

I never got to see Ernie there, sadly, but I did go a few times in the years after his death, when Antoinette carried on his legacy via The Lounge. The ceiling hung with cardboard cutouts of stars, each containing the name of a star who'd passed into the great beyond--everyone from Buddy Holly to Frank Zappa.

One time I went to The Lounge, I was completely beat from a combination of lingering jet lag and New Orleans-induced party exhaustion. I didn't want to chump out on hanging out with pals, but another drink would've totally leveled me. Antoinette--who always manned the bar--seemed to sense this without me saying a word (maybe it was the enormous bags under my eyes).

So she offered me some coffee, then refused to let me pay for it. "I got it on anyway," she said. I left a generous tip on the bar.

I hope someone keeps The Lounge open, but even if they do, it won't be the same without her.

A recent tweet from Ted Leo alerted me to the latest intertube craze: making fake album covers. Apparently, it goes like this: you get an artist name from a random Wikipedia page, an album title from a random quotation, and a cover image from Flickr's "explore last 7 days" page. It's about as stupid and addictive as it sounds.

I gave it a shot and came up with two decent LPs. This one's from my side project with PJ Harvey:

And this one's from my industrial/goth group:


Update: Ted just posted another example, far superior to mine. He's just as good at making fake albums as he is making real ones.

Whilst in the car, my iPod rolled over to "Satellite of Love" (the Lou Reed version, not the Joel Hodgson version). I started to sing it to The Baby in the back seat, and she seemed to genuinely like it.

I can tell when The Baby genuinely likes something. She is already quite adept at expressing displeasure, or just looking straight past you when she doesn't care to be bothered with you. She can even fake-laugh already, when she thinks she should be laughing at something.

So The Baby likes Lou Reed. I've promised The Baby that for her next birthday, I'm getting her a copy of Metal Machine Music.

Hot on the heels of The Wrestler, Mickey Rourke is now attached to star as Don van Vliet in the upcoming biopic Lick My Decals Off, Baby: The Captain Beefheart Story.

Oh, you thought you could kill it, didn't you? YOU CAN'T KILL IT! HOW CAN KILL DEATH ITSELF!

Of course, "death itself" in this case refers to Holy Goddamn!, the official Scratchbomb.com podcast, which makes its triumphant return to the interweb airwaves TODAY!

In episode 001, I speak on my current preoccupation with Food Competitions, and interview the proprietor of Winger's, which will explain the presence of that horrid ad just above you. Plus, I spin some tunes (listed below for you completists), interspersed with some obscure sound clips that no one but me will remember or enjoy. Fun!

How can you get all this audio hotness? Well, you can play it in your web browser by clicking on the audio player below. If you want to subscribe to the podcast and you have iTunes, click here. Otherwise, you can click on the xml feed contained in the banner above your head or in the navigation bar just to your right. Or here, if you're really lazy.

Oh, and you're welcome.




Holy Goddamn 001 Selist:

Cupid Car Club, "Grape Juice Plus," Cupid Car Club M.P. 7"
Minor Threat, "Salad Days," Discograpy     buy
Elijah and the Ebonites, "Hot Grits," Eccentric Soul: The Capsoul Label (v/a)     buy
Jay Reatard, "All Over Again," Singles 06/07     buy
Future of the Left, "Manchasm," Last Night I Saved Her from Vampires     buy
The Zombies, "Care of Cell 44," Odessy & Oracle     buy
The Hold Steady, "Slapped Actress," Stay Positive     buy

While we're on the subject of Music That Is Good, give Franz Nicolay's Major General a virtual spin here, while it's still streaming free o' charge.

Spin didn't dig it, but that rag's deader than disco, baby. I wouldn't put any more stock in that than a negative review from Collier's.

A few nights ago, I got a chance to listen to music. Just sit and listen and to music, not doing anything else. If that doesn't sound remarkable to you, I assume you don't have the disease I have which forces me to do twelve things at once. You also must not have a 2-year-old stomping around your house. Kids prevent you from doing the darnedest things!

It was a weirdly liberating experience, because I was able to reacquaint myself with music I'd almost forgotten I loved. One track really popped out for me, and made the hair on my neck stand up (which is, sadly, the only hair near my head): "Wolf Boys" by Life Detecting Coffins. That song completely destroys me every time I hear it.

Their album Catatonic Begat Napoleonic is so unbelievable...I won't even attempt to describe it. I can't think of any meaningful comparisons that won't dilute what I mean. I have this very short list of albums that create this atmosphere, this self-contained universe that, when I'm listening to them, I don't want to leave. Catatonic Begat Napoleonic is one of those albums.*

* Also on that list (though not limited to the following):

Miles Ahead, Miles Davis
Get Happy and Trust, Elvis Costello (I love all of the early albums, but these two kill me; I think because Elvis was so worn out and pained when he wrote them)
Double Nickels on the Dime, The Minutemen
Black Star, Mos Def and Talib Kweli

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I know the guys in the band. I guess you could say I grew up with some of them (depending on your definition of "grew up", and if I have, in fact, grown up). But I think I'd feel the same way even if I didn't know them from Adam. Believe me, if had friends who were in a band that sucked, I'd have no problem politely ignoring their artistic endeavors.*

*Although, if I think about it, I've known tons of people who played in bands, and very very extremely very few of those bands were bad. I don't think it's because I cut those bands slack--I think I just lucked out. Or I have high standards in friends.

I'm genuinely baffled as to why LDC didn't become The New Hotness at some point. Not that they should be selling out stadiums and playing on The Tonight Show. But they used to play a lot of shows with spiritually similar bands who were much more popular--Off Minor most often, since Kevin played bass in both bands.

I thought for sure that this exposure would earn them a much deserved wider audience. And yet, they never blew up the way I thought they would. It was especially annoying to watch a crowd politely applaud them, then go nuts for some other band with a fraction of the creativity.*

*Not referring to Off Minor, who I genuinely like. But I saw LDC play with a ton of blah, ordinary hardcore bands that people went nuts for. It was intensely frustrating for me just to watch; I can't imagine what it was like for them to live.

I don't think LDC is broken up per se, but its members are not in close geographic proximity to one another anymore. So I fear they may be defunct, for all intents and purposes. But do yourself a favor: point yourself to their MySpace page and give "The Island Song" a spin. If you like what you hear, get Catatonic Begat Napoleonic. I promise good things.

Last night I was watching VH1's Greatest Hip Hop Songs of All Time or whatever the hell it was called (too lazy to look up real title). "C.R.E.A.M." by Wu Tang came in pretty high on the list, of course. When noting Wu Tang's current hiatus, the narrator mentioned "the tragic death of ODB in 2004."

I think the proper adjective in this case would be untimely. I don't think Ol' Dirty Bastard's death can really be termed tragic. In fact, considering his many, many vices, he probably exceeded his life expectancy.  

Not that I'm glad the guy's dead, but saying ODB's death was tragic is kinda like saying GG Allin's death was tragic. Can't keep putting your tongue on the third rail and not get zapped some day.

Then again, it is a kind of tragedy that we're all robbed of the chance to see something like this again:

 

I couldn't let the holiday season pass us by without sharing with you my new favoritest Christmas song: "A Quick One (Pete Townsend's Christmas)" by Wild Billy Childish and the Musicians of the British Empire.



I look forward to this song being using in Wes Anderson's upcoming film, The Royal Tennenbaums 2: The New Batch.