Archive for March, 2008
Friday, March 28th, 2008
Tom’s recent blog entry about the Grateful Dead song Dark Star reminded me of my father. Was my dad a Deadhead? Not at all - in fact, I’m not sure he ever heard a Grateful Dead song. So, why does this mention remind me of my dad?My father would have been 73 this March 28th had he not passed away suddenly in 2004. It was almost 30 years before his death that he and my mom took my two brothers (Carl and Mike) and me to see our first concert. I don’t think we even asked to go, so it was a big surprise when they took us to the now defunct New Haven Coliseum to see Three Dog Night.
At that time, Three Dog Night were my second favorite band, second only to The Beatles. While I knew their music from Top 40 radio stations, I didn’t become a huge fan until Joy to the World became a smash. I got their album Naturally (the one that included Joy to the World) as a gift, and, after that, I couldn’t get enough Three Dog Night.
The band was touring behind their Hard Labor album, the one that featured The Show Must Go On. I have a few memories of the show. The warm-up act was the Souther, Hillman and Furay Band, which, as I found out in later years, was quite an all-star band. The crowd wanted no part of them. Three Dog Night, which had been a seven-piece group up to that point, added a second keyboardist Skip Konte, who dressed like a wizard, and played that great calliope opening to The Show Must Go On. I remember younger girls sitting next to me, and waving their arms in front of my face to the music (although I can’t think of what song they could have been doing that to). Oh, yes, and I also remember the pungent smell of marijuana, and not really knowing what it was.
All in all, I remember it as my first concert, the first of many I’ve attended, probably not the best, but definitely the first, and I have to thank my folks for that experience.
So, what does this have to do with the Grateful Dead? It was probably 25 years later when I was taking my sons to the New Haven Coliseum to see a World Wrestling event. We had invited my dad and my brother Mike to join us. As we walked into the venue, my dad looked at Mike and me, and said, “Do you remember when I took you guys here to see the Grateful Dead?”
We laughed and told him that it wasn’t the Dead, but rather Three Dog Night. I’m not sure we convinced him, and I don’t know, if that point, whether he would have recognized a Three Dog Night song or not. It didn’t really matter then, and it doesn’t matter now.
Happy Birthday, Dad, and say “Hi” to Jerry Garcia for us.
Posted in OneVoice | 3 Comments »
Friday, March 28th, 2008
Cutlers is a record store on Broadway in Downtown New Haven. It was founded in 1948, is a New Haven landmark and, although I don’t remember the circumstances which precluded this, there was once a small picture of it in an issue of Vogue Magazine. Maybe it was Esquire. Either way I have been going to Cutler’s since my Dad (OneVoice) brought me there a significant number of years ago. When I learned how to drive I drove myself and my friends there on a weekly or sometimes daily basis to rummage through their collection of 45’s and jazz cd’s. When I got older and started reading Magnet and Big Takeover I would go there to find the latest in super hip indie rock and to browse their used bins for copies of Elvis Costello albums, that was of course until they re-issued all of them but that’s a different story for a different day. When I was older still, about a year ago, I would go to the only place I knew that kept a complete-as-could-be collection of Criterion DVD’s, my drug, my passion, the ruiner of my credit. Dad if you were ever wondering where all my money went you can blame Cutlers and the Criterion Collection. And while the décor inside seemed to change on a regular yearly schedule, there was always Standard Cutlers on one side and to the right of it, the store next door, was Cutlers Classical.I don’t think I need to go into detail about what they sell.
That was until last Saturday. I went there to pick up the new Mission of Burma re-issues, which they didn’t have, a not quite new trend for Culter’s, not having something they absolutely should have, that people count on them having, and noticed that Cutlers Classical is gone. Not only that but Standard Cutlers shrank due to the fact that Standard Cutlers ate into half of Cutlers Classical for their used cd, vinyl and old school arcade games section. That’s 50% less Cutlers folks. Which means the already crowded store is now more crowded. It means a more limited DVD selection and it means, from what I could see, a lot less used product and significantly less used product. Pick an artist. Any artist. You could find that artist in the bins and even if they had only three or four albums Cutlers would have a collection of import singles some weirdo live bootleg and a dvd or two even if you were previously convinced that a dvd for that artist didn’t even exist. That was Cutlers. There was a point in their history where you could honestly say that they had Everything. Now not so much.
So I guess the next question would be why did they shrink their business? I suppose the easy answer would be because the music industry is in the toilet but that would really only be a third the answer. Even if the music business was tanking record stores could continue to thrive at some level if it weren’t for iTunes and other music download sites. I will admit that I am as guilty of this as the next person. If the record industry would like to file murder charges against all of those who frequently engage in the downloading of music rather than purchase that same music at a store well then I will plead guilty in court and will gladly do sometime behind bars. Do I feel guilty when I download an album that only a year ago I would have forced myself to trek to the record store at the end of the world before I would even consider taking the suckers way out and just downloading a hard to find record if it was available online? Absolutely. But while I am certainly not alone, I don’t believe that me and my co-conspirators are the real reason Cutlers cut itself in half and why the music industry is in such dire straits. The real reason is…
The music sucks. And if you don’t see that then you are lucky because you have yet to be exposed to the worst era in music in the history of humanity’s reign upon this Earth. Truly we have hit a low point culturally when the Billboard Top 40 is filled with people like Chris Brown, Rhianna, Flo Rida, OneRepublic, Miley Cyrus, Buck Cherry, Sean Kingston, The Jonas Brothers, Fergie, Three Days Grace, Linkin Park, Finger Eleven, Danity Kane, Madonna! Still with the Madonna people come on. Open your ears to something new but more importantly something good. If we all stopped listening to junk and paying for junk and stop enabling people that created the junk their would be less junk and Cutlers would have to cut it self in half and we could all go swimming in a pool of imports and bootlegs and we can live in a world where bad music can only be played at clubs where people wear white sweat suits with big fake diamond necklaces around their necks and wear their hats crooked, where men call women bitches and refer to themselves as pimps. Where people laugh at things that aren’t clever and who say that things they don’t like are “Gay.” Where people talk about movies like “Never Back Down’ and the newest Tyler Perry movie like they’re art films. If people like this want to listen to bad music they absolutely may. The rest of society doesn’t need them for anything anyway except maybe as examples of who not to act like and what a lifetime of listening to junk music gets you.
I like to think of music as Hell. It has seven layers. The surface or layer one is where you get the junk and have to portray the above attitude towards culture for all of eternity but the deeper you go the better the tunes get, the better the food gets, the better the films get. Its really hot and its tough to get there but if youre willing to put in the effort you will be handsomely rewarded.
I suppose its only like Hell in the layers sense. I suppose I could have used a dip analogy as well but I have never been a fan of layered dips. I’m not a Hell supporter either but I like it better than layered dips. Hell for me would be having to eat layered dips for all eternity.
(Tom cringing)
Posted in music | 1 Comment »
Thursday, March 27th, 2008
I just cannot stop lauging. Im printing this out and putting it in my cube.
Posted in whatever | 3 Comments »
Thursday, March 27th, 2008
To answer the above question…Nope.
People, namely politicians, need to stop trying to convince me that America is the greatest nation to ever grace our rapidly disintegrating Earth. Maybe it used to be when we formed the nation and wrote the Declaration of Independence, or when we came together as a nation for all of a week after September 11th. There have been moments when we have achieved greatness as a country but please read this and tell me that this doesnt set us back as a species and specifically as a nation hundreds of years:
http://www.optimum.net/News/AP/Article?articleId=399904
I checked all the news wires to make sure women still had the right to vote and the we didnt reintroduce slavery into society. I went to the drinking fountain in my office and there is still only one and there is no designation as too which race can and can not use it. There are no crosses burning on any of the lawns surrounding me. For moment i was genuinely frightened that all of these things that we have worked so hard as a country to overcome might come back to haunt us all because of some stupid idiot parents who encourage their six year olds to beat the living s#!t out of each other.
According to the article it doesnt seem like these parents have any idea why normal people in society think that they should be thrown into the belly of an active volcano before they infect the rest of us with their mutant strain of idiocy. These are the same people who Im sure want Michael Vick to get the electric chair for participating in dog fighting while they are essentially engaged in the same kind of scenario: things that dont know any better being pitted against one another in a competition to see who is stronger which is determined by who inflicts more bodily harm on their opponent. But these people are doing it WITH THEIR KIDS!!! We call cock fighting disgusting while we fill our bellies up with chicken almost everyday of the week. So we dont mind that chickens get killed we just dont want them to be killed by other chickens for a latin american countries enjoyment. Well guess what i dont mind my six year olds getting into fights as long as its a school yard tussle instigated by two kids who are similar in age not by their parents dressing them in their gear, taping up their hands, PUTTING THEM IN A CAGE and then cheering them on as they either pummel a child or themselves get pummeled.
I just find this completely unacceptable. If you are grown up and are capable of making your own decisions then please be an Ultimate Fighter. I have no problem with Ultimate Fighting as long as its being done by adults. While this is currently banned in most states, of course not in the Midwest, after i finish this post I am writing to my congressman and asking that they sponsor a bill that makes involving children in Ultimate Fighting a felony and that any violation of this law result in capital punishment or at least having their kids taken away from them, not that they would mind because you have to really hate your kids to involve them in something like this. As county we need to remove these stains on our society by any means necessary. if that means education, if that means outrageous law enforcement, if that means putting these parents, who loath their children to the extent that they take pleasure in seeing them being beaten by other kids, in the ring with actual Ultimate Fighters so that they can see what its like to have someone kneeling on your arms rendering them immovable while you are repeatedly punched in the face and head, then lets do that. i am for that. I would pay to see that on pay per view. I would pay a thousand dollars to watch these parents be handled and broken by an adult who made their own choice to be an Ultimate Fighter.
People need to start using their brains for something other than figuring out how best to gratify their own, to steal a line from the Mighty Bill Hicks, fevered egos. This is all a part of of the grand deterioration of our collective intelligence and ability for reason. For this i say thank you to the following people: Thanks George Bush, thanks religious fundamentalists, thanks people who watch the Hills and Flavor of Love and think that anything Justin Timberlake has ever done in anyway compares to anything that Michael Jackson has done. You people are poisoning civilization, to quote the aforementioned Michael Jackson, “…for you and for me and the entire human race.”
Thats from Free Willy!
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Thursday, March 27th, 2008
The Doors - LA Woman
Sometimes, friends, the universe lines up all of its necessary components and you are listening to the perfect record at the exact perfect moment doing the exact perfect thing. Thus begins the story of album #4 on my list of my Top 15 favorite records of all time, LA Woman.
June 2004. There we were, my cousin Len and I cruising in my already laboring 2001 Corolla, down Route 40 through New Mexico on our way across the country to San Diego. We had just stopped at a ghost town’s gas station to fill up our tank, gas was about 1.40 back then. At that point we had been driving for about 28-30 hours straight, the reasons why are important to me and my family but not to this story, when whatever disc we were listening to finally ended and we had to find something else to listen to. I dont know if the sun sets slower out west than it does in the North East but it seemed like it started setting the minute 12:00 turned to 12:01. The speed limit out there is 75. I think we were probably doing 85 or 90 the whole way. We encountered a minimum of cars, maybe there were more but we didnt notice. We were in what they call “The Zone” and I must have known instinctively that the record that would make this particular moment of our trip one of the most memorable would be if LA Woman was blaring out of our windows and mixing with the New Mexican sunset.
I am planning a longer more involved post about the Doors but now is not the time to start Thinking about the Doors. I will just say that i enjoy some Doors music, specifically the first album and the last album, LA Woman. The quality of everything in between falls somewhere between terrible and ridiculous, but they make up for it with the two great records.
Back to the story…LA Woman is the album the Doors were created to make. It is greazy, its loose, its funky, Jim Morrison at this point is just a drunk with a white bluesman’s growl throwing his inane ‘poetry’ around like a monkey and its feces. But Oh man, when you are flying down the highway through the desert, two thousand miles away from home, trying to make sense of an atlas but in reality not really caring as long as you are going west, there is nothing like that moment when the band kicks in with The Changeling.
To me, three years removed from that moment, every song on the record blurs together into a mass of dirty blues and boogie rock but like i always say, if the songs aren’t tremendous then it doesnt matter when or where or with whom you are listening to it. It wouldnt hit the same way. If The Changeling wasnt followed by Lover Her Madly, If the record didnt end with Riders on Storm and revlove around the title track like our solar system around the sun my recollection of that moment as total perfection and joy, which was needed greatly after only three days before feeling nothing but sadness, loss and anger, would have been either greatly diminished or would cease to exist at all. At that moment i knew that i was doing something that i was going to treasure forever.
Len and I always called driving cross country the one stupid thing we always talked about doing but never did that we actually did do and it didnt hit me that i was doing it until those first snare drum hits of The Changeling.
Hours later, while cruising through Albuquerque, I put on Raw Power by the Stooges and then Superunknown by Soundgarden. At that point we had been up and driving for 36 hours, were driving on super unkown highways, in total darkness, hallucinating and most certainly high from all the red bulls we drank while stopped for gas and food. i think it was one in the morning. Those were scary times. Im not sure how we managed to survive. we stopped for the night at a hotel and when we woke up we found the hotel was literally in the middle of the desert. We had no idea what the landscape looked like because it was so dark and our minds and bodies were so wrecked by the time we finally stopped.
We listened to the Meat Puppets that day.
Posted in music | No Comments »
Wednesday, March 26th, 2008
I wouldnt be surprised to find that Lindsey Buckingham coined the phrase “criminally underrated” just so he could use it to describe every aspect of his musical career. Even when people talk about the Buckingham/ Nicks era of Fleetwood Mac the only time they ever mention Lindsey Buckingham is when they talk about his Stevie Nick’s relationship. Sometimes they talk about how he produced Tusk all weird but thats it. They never talk about the fact that he wrote many of their best songs, that he produced Tusk, in my opinion Fleetwood Mac’s best record and that he is the most phenomenal rock guitar player that no one ever ever ever ever ever ever even considers talking about.
This live record chronicles one of his shows during his Under the Skin tour last year. My Dad (OneVoice) and I were lucky enough to see him play pretty much this same show at Mohegan Sun. Its a double disc record and DVD collection. Im watching the DVD as I write this. I am unimpressed with the DVD not because of anything Lindsey is doing but the camera work is literally the worst I have ever seen in a concert DVD. However, the music is Terrific and the new solo arrangements of oldies, anything not off the new record, like Trouble, Go Insane, and Big Love are amazing. He makes Go Insane sound like its being played by a mid-evil band of Lute-ists and mandoliners. The Holiday Road is fun but unnecessary and the new tunes are so good that they mix perfectly with the classics. Go Your Own Way was underwhelming at the show I saw at Mohegan but here it rips and Tusk, in any version, is on my list of Top 50 tunes of all time.
I would like to share two things that I think are funny. One is that after any song that rock particularly hard Lindsey, while taking off his guitar to switch for another, likes to jump up and down and scream at the audience. This pleases me a great deal. One day I hope to have earned enough respect with my fans to that they will find the times I “Go Insane” endearing. Two is that in the middle of this set before Cast Away Dreams, a song off his newest record, he tells a story about how he wrote the song after his wife joined him on tour with a reunited Fleetwood Mac a couple of years ago. They got into a fight about not being able to let go of something, she flew back to LA and he wrote the song. The song and the fight are obviously about Stevie Nicks, so are a lot of the songs on the new record i might add, which means that 30 years later he still hasnt gotten over her. What the hell Lindsey? Its only Stevie Nicks. Shake that beast free and write yourself some new tunes so you can make another record and live record as good as Bass Hall and Under the Skin.
Posted in music | No Comments »
Wednesday, March 26th, 2008
Sorry Im late, traffic was murder.
I try to do most of my posting while Im at work. It gives me something to think about so i dont have to think too hard about my job. You see I hate my job. Think what you want about that statement and what it means in relation to what kind of person I am, but there is nothing anyone can say or do that can make me retract my statement or feel differently about my exceedingly horrible job. Its mere existence makes me question what has occurred in society to make my job possible. Im not talking about my company as a whole but the specific role i play within in the company.
The point im trying to make is that i hate my job so much that i spent Monday and Tuesday as utterly depressed as it is possible to and logged several drafts of attempted posts that i was just unable to focus on enough to finish due to this not all that unexpected instance of occupational depression (Nicolette, is that a thing? Occupational Depression?).
Im posting now because i took a half day to put all of my efforts into looking for a new job. I havent found anything yet, seeking employment is slow going, however i have been at it for approximately 4 hours and i havent quit yet which is substantially longer than my normal job searches last. I have what is known as a “lack of motivation” when it comes to doing things like finding a new job, getting in shape, writing songs etc, etc. Mainly because, and we’ll go in order, even through i hate my job I do have a job, while i am slightly over weight im not obese and ive never been a gym guy, if our bodies host genes for wanting to go to the gym my parents must have saved all of theirs for when they had my brother, and I wrote the Build-up, some bands that are making millions of dollars right at this moment, touring the world and tricking idiots into buying their records, have never written a song as good as The Build-up.
Or so Ive been told.
Anyway, i’ll try to be better about posting and i will also try to not give up on things so easily. Those are my two goals for the rest of the week. Post more and to not quit. i should be able to accomplish both of them with relative ease. You’ll know if i did by how sunny and warm it is.
Oh, in case you didnt know my moods control the weather.
Sorry for all the wind.
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Friday, March 21st, 2008
He was an invited guest of Bill Clinton’s in 1998.
Boom-shaka-laka! (thats from NBA Jam, remember that game?)
Posted in Politics | No Comments »
Friday, March 21st, 2008
A number of folks have helped come to the rescue of the United States economy this week, from the buyout of Bear Stearns to the Fed lowering interest rates again. While those actions received the big headlines, we must not forget the efforts of my wife Laurie and her partner in excessive spending Fran.
These two women, whom I believe are twin sisters of different mothers, seem to feel individually empowered to keep the economy afloat by any means necessary, typically doing so by making purchases they do not need with money they do not have, leaving me and Fran’s husband Mike to find the means by which to cover their debts (which at this point will result in the two of us working well into our nineties, based on current estimates).
The first question you may ask yourself is whether I have any examples of this behavior, to which I would reply how many examples would you like. We just renovated our kitchen - actually the renovation was done back in June, but I just finished paying for it, or so I thought. In the last few weeks, I’ve seen new pots and pans (the old pots and pans apparently don’t work with the new appliances, although they seemed to be working just fine until a couple of weeks ago) and new spaghetti bowls. What was wrong with the old spaghetti bowls? Well, Laurie said they were too big for the brand new kitchen cabinets, even though most of the cabinets have room for lots more stuff. Then she told me they just didn’t match the rest of her dinnerware. So now, we are trying to unload not just one but two sets of spaghetti bowls to anyone who wants them.
I spent several hours on Sunday assembling a new wall unit for the powder room we just renovated as part of the kitchen renovation. Laurie had the box hidden in her car for a while, then took it out of the car and left it in the garage so that I could see it (and have a mild heart attack). The box was big enough to suggest it was already assembled and all I had to do was hang it. That suggestion turned out to be false. First, I had to assemble it and then hang it, and do so without drilling holes in any of the plumbing running behind the powder room wall. After completing the project and proudly displaying my work, Laurie asked me, “Do you think it’s too big for the room?” Isn’t that something you validate before you buy the piece? Not if you’re Laurie - buy first, find out it might not fit later.
That’s not how this story ends, though. After polling several family members about whether they thought the cabinet was too big, Laurie sighed and said, “Well, I’ll have Fran come over and take a look”, which will just prompt Fran to make a extravagant, unnecessary purchase of her own.
Sorry, Mike!
Posted in OneVoice | 2 Comments »
Thursday, March 20th, 2008
Well its that time of year again. Im at the point now and i dont think that Im alone, where i dont really care about the games or who wins and loses. the only winning and losing I care about is whether or not I win or lose a bracket pool im in with about thirty friends of mine. I decided to do two brackets this year which means im out 20 bones instead of just 10.
In my first bracket, which Im calling my ‘Heart’ bracket, my Final Four is Louisville, Wisconsin, Memphis, and Xavier with Louisville beating Memphis to win the National Championship. Every year i pick Louisville, Wisconsin and Xavier to do well and they never do. My problem is that they are all relatively good every year and enter the tourny with pretty respectable seedings. I dont think im really going out on a limb with any of these picks but every-time Louisville and Wisconsin go out in the second round I am forced to acknowledge that my heart doesnt know s#!t about basketball.
In my second bracket, my ‘Head’ bracket, my Final Four is more in line with the predictions of the analysts and Sports Center thugs: North Carolina, Georgetown, Texas and UCLA, with North Carolina beating UCLA in the finals. I have no feelings for any of these teams or these picks but i think that if i have chance to win this pool its going to be through this bracket.
Whatever, as long as i gets me the money.
Viva La Basketball!
Posted in Sports | No Comments »
