(November, 16, 2007) Ten soul destroying band that the Baby Boomers at Rolling Stone have force fed rock fans until their musical livers are proportionally bigger than those of the fois gras ducks of Montreal
Please discuss and add your own.
- Eric Clapton (elevator music "blues" before it was ubiqitous)
- Bob Dylan (infantile, sexist rich-kid boomer anger expressed in bad poetry; like Nixon and Bush Jr. mostly just exists to make bad people feel better about themselves; note to Robert- people who "use a little too much force" (among other things) deserve to be beaten black and blue, not be "tangled up" in it)
- The Eagles (if I have to explain, go read someone else's blog)
- Lynyrd Skynyrd (the paradigm example of the Republican party dishonest invocation of a pastoral past that never existed; all recorded just after automobiles and air-conditioning allowed the "the South" to finish paving itself over into a giant, ugly strip-mall)
- The MC5 (the music is somehow as stupid as the "White Panther Party" political ideas)
- Paul McCartney sans Lennon (if I have to explain, go read someone else's blog)
- Public Enemy (manufactured for white people who don't know what "punk" means when Chuck D says it in a concert (hint, go watch season one of HBO's Oz); the band's grotesque antisemitism and 60's revolutionary posturing, combined with lack of talent, makes this successful bit of niche marketing unbearable to all people of genuine refinement and taste)
- Radiohead (is a little melody too much to ask for? "O.K. Computer" refers to them selling their souls to our robot overlords)
- Patti Smith (like Wagner, I guess it's supposed to be better than it sounds)
- Bruce Springsteen (more bad music for bad people; the only thing clear from his (to be fair, horrible) lyrics is that this hypocrite not only never worked a day in his life, but also doesn't really know anybody who has; his obstinate refusal to pay his roadies union wages during his "Born in the U.S.A." tour is one more example of "The Boss" manifesting the worst aspects of the Bossman; plus (though, considering everything else, it's to his credit), the music sucks and the production value is abysmal)
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(November, 11, 2007) twenty most essential albums for rocking out (in alphabetical order)
You get to bring twenty CDs to tide you over between this life and the
next. To avoid being reborn as factory farmed livestock, you have to Rock Out
as much as possible during your layover in limbo. Which ones do you
bring? Please put them in alphabetical order, so debate is just
limited appropriately to the important metaphysical issues. For me, my
ontological suitcase is always packed with the following.
- AC/DC- Back in Black
- Abba- Gold
- Adam and the Ants- Dirk Wears White Sox
- Angry Samoans- The Unboxed Set
- The Beatles- The Beatles ["The White Album"]
- Black Flag- My War
- Black Sabbath- Black Sabbath
- David Bowie- The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust
- Johnny Cash- Live from Folson Prison and San Quentin
- Chopin- The Complete Nocturnes and Mazurkas
- Woody Guthrie- Smithsonian Recordings
- Metallica- Master of Puppets
- Misfits- Earth A.D.
- Willie Nelson- Red Headed Stranger
- Charlie Patton- Screaming and Hollering the Blues
- Pink Floyd- The Wall
- Harry Smith- Anthology of American Folk Music
- The Stooges- Funhouse
- The Velvet Underground- The Velvet Underground and Nico
- The White Stripes- Elephant
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(November, 12, 2007) I'll never get out of this world alive
Oh lord my hatred of Brittany Spear's tinny, phlegm-infused voice knows no bounds. It's like aural sandpaper.
Is her throat so deformed that she can't take singing lessons or
something? Madonna did at a comparable moment in her career, to great
effect. I can only gather that people's tastes are so debased that singing lessons wouldn't make anybody any more money.
If we had a press worth a damn, they'd be focusing on that, which is by far her greatest moral failing.
I almost said her throat was froglike, but I refuse to insult
Kermit, who is a musical genius- see the incredible duet with Debbie
Harry on Rainbow Connnection (get through the two minutes of arty black and white footage of Austin to Willie Nelson's fantastic interpretation of this song), Kermit's breakthrough hit It's Not Easy Being Green (which Morrisey shamelessly plagiarized over and over again), and Kermit's great new post Muppets-era-demons cover of NIN's Hurt (for more Kermit plagiarism, check out Johnny Cash's version).
My point is, Kermit is an actual frog, born with a frog voice, and look
what he accomplished through hard work. Unless the plan of our robot
overlords is far more advanced than I'm aware, Spears is a human
being. If Kermit can learn English and write and interpret great songs
(a much
harder task than a human being learning to compensate for being born
into this cruel world with a tinny, phlegm filled throat only to be
sold into Disney child slavery by her parents), is too much to expect
Spears to take vocal lessons?
It's an insult to Kermit's memory, dammit!
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(November 1, 2007) Devil in My Pocket set list for gig, as well as link to fun satire
Notice the cool late-period New York Dolls gratuitous use of hammer and
sickle here (sorry Christopher Hitchens!). The band art was done by my
colleague Chris Blakely's wife Carolyn. She totally rocks out at
graphic design, albeit I had to insist on the hammer/sickle thing.
We've pared down the set-lists for tomorrow night. What we have now are-
First Set [originals]-
(1) Thirteen Bridges, (2) Little Black Goat, (3) Rabbit, (4) Zombies, (5) Death By Cool, (6) Snake, (7) Little Man, Part II, (8) High, (9) Lo, (10) The Robot, (11) Gods and Monsters, (12) All Hail the Spider Queen, (13) Werewolves in their Youth.
Second Set [covers]-
(1) Twenty Eyes (The Misfits), (2) No Fun (The Stooges), (3) Out Cold
(Black Flag), (4) Real Cool Time (The Stooges), (5) I Turned into a
Martian (The Misfits), (6) Bella Lugosi's Dead (Bauhaus), (7) Halloween
(The Dead Kennedys), (8) Come Back (The Misfits), (9) War Pigs (Black
Sabbath), (10) Mother of Mercy (Samhain), (11) Sympathy For the Devil
(Rolling Stones), (12) Halloween (Samhain), (13) The End (The Doors).
Em and I (grainily pictured at left) are hosting Em's sister and Em's
sister's fiance (sorry that I have yet to figure out how to get
diacritical marks in this blog, without the diacritical remarks you
have to pronounce "fiance" the way Holly Hunter's character does in Raising Arizona)
the next few days, so I won't be doing any blogging until next Monday.
Em's sister and Em's sister's fiance are fantastic house guests and
more generally just really fun to be around. So I'm not going to screw
around with this while they are here.
Anyhow, absent any new blog posts, please enjoy a retrospective of my rocking out satirical posts which I categorize under superfunpack.
And to further please our great brother Dionysus, please enjoy the
links to the vastly superior satirical columns by my friend Neal Hebert
that you can find here.
If you scroll to the very bottom of the superfunpack link you'll find a
tiny arrow looking thing in the middle of the page, which is a link to
earlier superfunpack posts (or you can just get there by clicking here).
The third post down on that page is a political acceptance speech that
I had the privilege of helping Neal construct over Mexican food. When
he delivered it to LSU Student Senate it went over like a lead balloon,
but it did have a second life serving as the first superfunpack post on
this blog. Most importantly, the muses were well pleased that we
listened to them.
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