Holiday Cheer

I'm sure that you bastards will getting your drink on this holiday season, so I thought I'd share this little chart with you. Now you'll have a little guide to keep you in line so you don't over-do it and barf in the punch bowl...

Who am I? Who are you?

Had a great time at Mardi Gras. Unfortunately, staying out all hours in all weather, eating 'street' food and drinking incessantly is apparently not good for the immune system. Woke up Ash Wednesday without a hangover but with a nasty little virus. Fever for days, night sweats from hell, and a solo 15 hour drive back to Durham only to find the in-laws at our house. Ay Caramba! If only my primary care physician (Poobah Eric) had warned me of all of the above mentioned activities. If only....

Everywhere else, it's just Tuesday

Happy Mardi Gras everyone! Laissez le bon temps roulez!

Catchy Friday

Retro catchy.

Catchy Friday

Morbid but catchy in a Nick Cave meets Interpol sort of way. Can't beat that.

Pink Slip

I got mine.

New Orleans Bound

If I don't check in for the next few days its because we'll be in New Orleans for a wedding this weekend and a couple of days of play afterwards. Not that you bastards would have noticed anyway. I'm extra excited because its been a year (the longest stretch since Katrina) since I've been there. Looking forward to some crawfish, public drunkeness and sharing the streets with basketball players (look it up Jay).
Lurker, you're in charge while I'm gone.

The Drunkest Generation

Courtesy of Cracked.com, ten reasons why our grandparents could drink us under the table.

Bring On the Swift Boats

Finally, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has some credibility

The latest inductees were named today. Madonna, Mellencamp, the Dave Clark Five, Leonard Cohen, and the Ventures are the main recipients. The Dave Clark Five? Jesus Christ. One big hit and no lasting cultural impact. The rest I'm OK with (full disclosure: I own some Madonna CDs). All of the recipients were also named steroid users and HGH devotees. Oh wait. That was THIS list!

Zeppelin Reunion Show

So its been well documented that not all of us are Zeppelin fans, mainly me. However, as rock historian, I can't deny the relative importance of their reunion show in London last night. Or can I? Oh hell, I don't know. Maybe the hooha over the Zep reunion is a reaction to the relative dearth of arena-worthy rock out there right now. Anywho, here's a piece of Stairway from the show, shot on some dude's cell phone. Thank God Andrew is here to finally settle the question of whether Zeppelin is worth a shit. As a child in York, I'm sure he had a Zeppelin lunch pail.

Warning: the vid cuts off before Plant can get into the high pitched stuff and we miss JP's guitar solo entirely.

Concerned

I was talking to Joe about Deathmatch and was reminded of this Half-Life 2 comic that a guy made using something called Garry's Mod. He poses the characters in-game, takes a screen shot, and then adds the dialog. (Sounds time consuming, no?) The comic follows Gordon Frohman, a bumbling idiot who is repeatedly mistaken for the game's hero, Gordon Freeman. Each new chapter in the comic is a different level in the game.

There are lots of these game-derived comics, but this is one of the best I've seen.

It's funnier if you've played Half-Life 2, but you'll get the gist ...

Read it here.

Fellow Fathers, Today Is Our Day

All of you who have passed on your bastard genes, Happy Father's Day! (I make a motion that we allow Dave to join the festivities, since he has fathered several bands, good lads all.) Hope you're all grilling dead animals and getting your daily bread from a can today.

School's Out!

Oh my God and not a moment too soon. I love my students, but I am ready to be rid of them (and they of me) for a month or two. Today was the usual chaos of test-taking combined with energy and excitement. I've only been here for five hours and I'm exhausted. Rock and roll high school indeed.

Night of Nights, Show of Shows

Just got back from a fairly exhausting 24 hours (to DC and back, Elvis show, lots of drinks in lots of bars). The show was absolutely fantastic. A Geeky Fanboy's dream set, really. He played lots of songs from the deep catalog that I'd never heard live before (Strict Time, Lover's Walk, Sleep of the Just, etc.) and an absolutely KILLER cover of the Beatles rarity "Hey Bulldog". The really amazing thing though was the pace. They played for an hour without saying a word or pausing for more than five seconds between songs. These guys in their 50s (Pete Thomas might be 60!) put any young band I've seen in ages to absolute shame. The show was 2 hours and 20 minutes and I'd say that 2 hours and 17 minutes of that was music.

The real treat, especially as I was there with two ex-pat New Orleans friends, was the surprise appearance of Allen Toussaint. He guested on 3 songs, including his own Yes You Can Can. Anytime I hear or see Allen play, it takes me home again. He is an extremely elegant gentleman and he used to park his Rolls in front of my house on Mystery St. when he would visit the Whole Foods (he was always dressed as impeccably as he is in the picture above). One time I drunkenly asked him to sign my 'Spike' CD by Costello (which he had guested on). He kindly obliged and whipped a sterling silver pen from the pocket in his vest with which to sign it!

Set list:

Welcome To The Working Week

Shabby Doll

The Beat

Lovers walk

Secondary modern

Strict time

Brilliant mistake

Country Darkness

Temptation

Clubland

Beyond belief

Kinder murder

Alibi

Watching The Detectives

American gangster time

Lipstick vogue

Riot act

ENCORE 1

I hope you're happy now

No action

You belong to me

Waiting for the end of the world

High fidelity

Uncomplicated

Radio radio

Imposter

ENCORE 2

Alison (solo) (Band intros)

Sleep of the just

****** surprise guest !!!! Allan toussant!!!! ******

River in reverse

Monkey to man

Yes I can can

Hey bulldog

Pump it up

Peace love and understanding

Shit.

The Austin City Limits Music Festival has released its lineup for next year's festival. Not to continue the "whinge" about leaving the Live Music Capital of the World(seriously, they call it that), but come on! Bob Dylan is fucking headlining?!! Not to mention Bloc Party, Lucinda, Decemberists, Amy Whinehouse, Steve Earle, Peter Bjorn and John, the National, Patterson Hood, and Farmer Jason (Jason of Jason & the Scorchers doing the kiddie rock thing), and Spoon among others. Every year I've been here I've been very lukewarm about the line-ups, and now it's a killer. They're doing it on purpose. Fuckers.

On the bright side, I have to return sometime in the fall to defend my dissertation. I may have to make it conveniently happen right around festival time.

Young Brians, redux

Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the pre-grunge Pacific Northwest was all about quirky pop and jangly guitars with a tiny bit of menace underneath. The Young Fresh Fellows and the Posies were a couple of the standard bearers that come to mind. My group, The Young Brians, were the first in the Spokane area to be able to play original music in bars and we gained a huge local following and lots of radio airplay, etc., with one of our 7" singles (remember those?) charting in the Rocket's Top 20 for several weeks alongside bands like Mudhoney, The Screaming Trees, Nirvana, and our beloved Fellows. The band broke up in 91 amidst the usual recriminations and acrimony, but the four of us have remained good friends over the years. I went on to Pophead and Anyface, Jamie plays guitar in the Makers, Brian formed Burns Like Hellfire, and Larry played for a number of groups such as Junk Train before becoming a full-time daddy.

In the wake of the Subteens successful reunion show, we have decided to pull a similar move by playing a show in the Summer of '08 in Spokane. We are all very, very excited and have created a new MySpace page to celebrate. Although the music is fairly dated and our influences are on our sleeves, I'm still pretty proud of this stuff for being written and recorded in the 80s. We got much heavier later- hopefully I can post some of that stuff when I get it digitized. In the meantime, enjoy the tunes and especially the pictures of the artist as a young man.

Refreshing Summer Cocktails

I love beer. In fact, I really, really love beer. But sometimes, especially during the hot summer months, a nice icy cocktail just hits the spot. Here's what I'm drinking right now:

The Greyhound

1.5 shots Vodka
2 shots grapefruit juice

Combine and serve over ice. Damn, that's refreshing. Gentlemen, I ask you to share your favorite summer cocktail recipes on the comments page.

Of Interest ......

Paul Westerberg's wife, Laurie Lindeen, has written a book about life in a rock and roll band during the late eighties and early nineties. The publisher says it best:

"Set in the years between the meteoric launches of Madonna and Courtney Love, Petal Pusher takes readers on a stirring journey across rock and roll, from the big-haired 1980s to the grunge-filled 1990s, when Laurie Lindeen brought her all-girl band, Zuzu's Petals, to compete in the indie rock arena. Minneapolis in the eighties was a musical hotbed, the land of 10,000 lakes and 10,000 bands that gave birth to Prince, the Replacements, and Soul Asylum. For Laurie Lindeen it was the perfect place to launch her rock-and-roll dream. She moved to the city with her best friends Phyll ("Annie Oakley meets Patsy Cline") and Coleen ("former cheerleader gone off the arty deep end") to crash in decrepit apartments and coax punk rock from crappy used guitars. But unbeknownst to her friends, Laurie has a secret in her past -- a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis that fuels her passion to make it big on the local, national, and international rock scene. With inspiring determination, Laurie and her Zuzu's Petals survive the many challenges of being underdogs in a man's world. Then Laurie is thrown a curveball when she falls for Paul Westerberg of Replacements fame and reevaluates exactly what it means to "make it big." By turns hilarious and heartrending, Petal Pusher is a brilliant behind-the-scenes look at music on the front lines, and the awe-inspiring tale of one woman's fight against disease and the disillusionment of life in the rock underground".

Could be a nice read for fans of rock and roll, the Minneapolis scene, and Paul Westerberg. I think we have some of those here.

Continuing With the Gay Theme

The only CD my wife has had in her car the past couple months has been Lily Allen's 'Alright, Still...' After listening to it about 5 times, I have to admit that it's good. Really good. Jay, this is your daughter in 15 years. Enjoy.

For the People.